Bumpy Starts

And 2011 gets off to... a bumpy start.

The impact of cold and flu season aside, in early-to-mid January, my beloved laptop started making a horrible whining and whirring noise. It would start quiet, then start increasing in intensity and pitch until it sounded like it was seconds from imploding.

Needless to say, there was a mad dash to get everything backed up on an external hard drive and a trip to the local Geek Squad there... who kept it for two weeks.

But all is well now in Kitland. I've got my baby back, and thanks to a new fan, it no longer sounds like it's planning to kill me the first chance it gets. Maybe now things can finally get back on track!

How to Develop a Twitch

Step 1: Run an older version of Photoshop on Windows 7.

Step 2: Compulsively save your work after every action for fear of the dreaded "Illegal action/Not enough RAM/You just lost half an hour's work!" pop-up.

*headdesk*

It's not a big enough problem that I'm going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a newer version of Photoshop. For one thing, I actually really like the version I have. But it's random spazzing at inopportune moments? Yeah, that I could do without, especially when I have to restart my computer every time it happens.

Needless to say, there's a reason this week's page is going slower than I'd hoped. However, it WILL get done! *strikes a pose of DETERMINATION!*

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

This Week in Movies

I have watched an inordinate amount of movies in the past week. Some good, some bad, some really bad. Some, I'll even watch again. Here's the run-down of what I've watched recently.

• Children of the Corn - My sister-in-law has been broadening my horizons by introducing me to all sorts of bad 80s horror, including a jaunt with He Who Walks Behind the Rows. While I'm fairly sure Malachi's actor did indeed grow up to be a secret sociopath and/or the older brother in The Adventures of Pete and Pete, I think the most terrifying part of the movie was the idea of Bert and whatsername riding around with a dead kid shoved in their trunk for hours.


• Dune, circa 1984 - Dune is one of the classic books of sci-fi/fantasy. It is the fantastic journey of a young man from the pampered son of a duke to the religious leader of insurgents with a death grip on the throat of civilization. It's got political intrigue, deep characters, strong leading ladies, action, adventure, mysticism...
  
  The movie? Not so much.
  
  Sure, the effects and costumes were great for the early 80s, but that doesn't excuse their butchering of the plot and massacring of the characters, especially the women (What's that? You mean Chani actually spends time outside of Paul's bedchamber in the book? Nooooo...). Toss out the plot, add in rampant internal monologues, some epic rock power ballads, hip-thrust-activated blasters, random face-bleeding, and Sting, and you've got... something completely and utterly headdesk-worthy. Only watch it if you and your friends love to MST3K things. Otherwise, skip it and watch the SciFi Miniseries.. Or, better yet, read the book.


• The Spirit - ahaha, where to start... What can I say about a superhero who has an Oedipal complex for his city and gets stuck in a toilet seat in his big introductory fight? This is one of those movies made to be bad, but more often than not, it was the movie equivalent of nails down a chalkboard bad. This is what happens when you've got a mentally unstable vigilante whose only power is that he can't die. Too bad that whole transformation process didn't add a few IQ points, huh?
  
  Of course, I do have to give it credit for one thing: "THIS IS FOR MUFFIN!!!"
  
  You go, Spirit. You go.


• The Seamstress - What happens when you've got a serial killer of children, a desperate mob, and a psychic school teacher who keeps leading people to the bodies? Well, for starters, one dead school teacher and her unlucky husband. They set about haunting the island until a group of college grads show up 20 years later, all in support of their friend's search for her obsessive mentally ill father, and just lookit that body count rise! Lesson here: True friends stick together. Idiotic friends get themselves killed by wandering off on their own.
  
  Not a terrible movie, but not something I'll feel the need to sit through again.


• Boogeyman - Now, this is my kind of horror. Low gore, an unreliable main character, and plenty of playing with your head. Barry Watson gives a great performance as a guy who, after years of therapy, has finally been convinced that he's got no reason to be afraid of closets. Then, his mother's death forces him to go back to his childhood home... and see if those therapists were right.
  
  If you want the full effect, watch this one at night, when you're all alone in the house. Or maybe I'm just an easy target for what's just out of sight in the dark...


• Boogeyman II - Again with the "kid witnesses traumatic death grows up" theme, although this particular kid ends up in a mental hospital, in group therapy with agoraphobics, cutters, germophobes, and whatnot to try to work through her boogeyman issues. Cue the Boogeyman killing them off one by one.
  
  ... Yeah. This one lost all the psychological horror and tried to replace it with gorn. Did I really need to see maggot infestation and reverse lipo? No, no I did not. Do yourself a favor and just stick with the original.


• The Phantom - Hello, update! The Walker family line has a new addition in this two-part "movie event" from SyFy. This one was actually pretty enjoyable, and I do have a soft spot for parkour chase scenes. They probably should have rethought their casting, however, when the 5'9" hero's sidekick(ish) person is a 5'10" woman... in 3" heels. Kiiiinda makes him a little less intimidating when they stand side by side. Overall, a pretty good flick, and the ending leaves it open for sequels or even a series... and yeah, I'd definitely check them out.
  
  And yes, I was ecstatic that our hero refused the wear the purple unitard. There are some traditions that just need to be left in the past.

So, there you have it: what I've been watching in the past week. Now, on to Wimbledon!

D'oh!

Alright, so I was looking through my Squidoo lenses, as I often do in the quest to keep them updated and their lens rankings below 100K. Good thing I did, too. Apparently, last time I'd updated my Urban Fantasy lens, I'd suffered an epic brain fart or been distracted by something suitably shiny, because I had a whole brand new section I didn't remember publishing: What Makes a Great Urban Fantasy Series, According to the Personal Preferences of Kit.

That would be all well and good. In fact, it was something I'd planned on for awhile. There was just one problem... All it said was, "There is a lot of urban fantasy out there. Some of it's good, some's not so good, and some earns a spot on the shelf by my bed where I can easily read and reread it over and over again. What makes those chosen few series stand out among the masses?"

... Yeah. That was it. So, Kit, what DOES make a series stand out among the masses? HA! Not telling! Take that!

*headdesk*

Hopefully, it wasn't like that for too terribly long, but it has now been fixed. So what makes a series stand out to me?

Basically, I like a gripping plot with a main character that I actually LIKE and a good sense of humor to balance out the "omg HOW WILL THEY EVER MAKE IT?!" of the tension. (For a more in-depth explanation, read the lens.)

This pretty much spreads to all the genres I read. At some point, I'll have to go through my personal pet peeves, but that's a topic for another post. The lesson here is for all the little Squidooers out there: Make sure to actually READ your lens once in awhile, and not in the workshop - the actual lens. It'll help you catch little things like unfinished modules that have been making your readers wonder what malfunction's going on in your brain.

Well, Hello There, Melanthe!

Has this ever happened to you: A character shows up out of the blue one day, plunks down across from your laptop, orders a French Vanilla Latte, then looks you square in the eye and says, "Hi. I'll be showing up in your story soon, and no, my name is not negotiable."



It's one of those fun little surprises that tend to spring out at you during the course of a story (along with the "wow, did I seriously just write that? I might have a knack for this after all!" and "hm, things are going kind of slow- oh, hey, so-and-so just set the house on fire! That'll move things along!" moments). They're particularly fond of showing up during NaNo, when you're plowing through your novel at breakneck speeds, with no time to sit around and ponder the writerly way of things. More importantly, you don't have time to argue with those stubborn characters who refuse to budge until you let them have their way.

Well, Melanthe is one of those.

I knew she was coming. I start out with a Big List of What Must Happen - bullet points, if you will, with the hows of getting from point to point left to the passion of the muse and the joy of the moment and whatnot - so I knew her character was coming. I even had a vague feeling of dread about it, that inkling that she was going to pick a name I wasn't going to like, but I figured, "Hey, I've got a good week or two! I can talk her into a new name!"

Nope. Melanthe.

Sometimes, naming a character can be hard. It can involve hours pouring through baby name books or, if you've joined the 21st century, sites like Behind the Name, looking for that perfect name that just slips onto your waiting character like a favorite t-shirt. But there's something enjoyable about it, about finding the perfect name with the right sound that fits your character in personality and sound, not to mention the world the story takes place in. Which, I suppose, is where I have a problem with "Melanthe." It's just not a name you'd run into where the story takes place.

Never mind the pronunciation problems. "Mel-AN-thee. Like Melanie, with a TH."

She's actually the second character in the story to have creative differences with me over their name. In the other one's case, he's gradually getting used to the one I picked for him. Melanthe? Won't even consider changing.

Ah, well. Sometimes, you just can't fight it. And sometimes, you just have to get through the story and use the find and replace function later. :D