Author: Jonathon

Vantage Point and eels

We saw the movie Vantage Point last night. I have to give it a mixed review. The first forty-five minutes or so, were a little too contrived. Jon and I were almost bored, and we shouldn’t have been. It was a very strong opening, but the premise of going back and forth between view points just seemed unnecessary. It seemed like you could have gotten the different view points in a more linear fashion and it would have worked better. The end of the movie once they stopped being too cutesy with the view points was thrilling, and one of the most intense action sequences I’ve seen in awhile. Very cool.
I guess, don’t pay full price, go to a matinee, or wait for DVD.
The other thing that gets mixed a review is that Jon, and our friend Richard, and his girlfriend Jess, went to a sushi restaurant. Now, I was in California when sushi hit big, so I was at parties where really bad sushi was served. So, I’ve avoided it for years. Last night, I thought, what the heck, I’ll try again. It was very good. I had eel for the first time, and loved it. Then late in the dinner the eel decided it didn’t like me. I was trying for the bathroom, to help the eel and I to part company, and my husband is being all romantic. He blocked my way, and said, “Pay the toll,” it means a kiss so he’ll let me pass. It’s something that his parents do, and it’s very sweet that he’s borrowed something romantic from them. But in that moment I could not kiss him, not without risking the eel coming up at the table. I tried to get past, and he blocked my way again and said, “Pay the toll.” By that point I didn’t even dare open my mouth to explain, I just had to get to the bathroom. I finally got past my romantic husband, and fled to the bathroom.
It wasn’t horrible as bouts of that kind go, and once the eel was on it’s own again, I was fine. It made me wonder if it wasn’t the eel, but too much eel. I guess if you’re going to do something exotic you should take it easy the first time. I’m torn between never wanting to eat it again, and thinking that it tasted really good. Hmm, like I said a mixed review. The salmon sushi was good, and I would be willing to try other flavors of fish. So, sushi was good, but was the eel good, or not? I still can’t decide. They had barbecue eel on the menu, maybe I’ll try that next time. I mean, no harm in trying, right?

Made it

I’ve finished my pages and we can still go to the movies as planned. It’s always difficult to plan around my job because some days the page count takes two hours and sometimes eight. How do you plan other activities around that? But, in a wave of optimism and wanting to celebrate that Jon and I are finally over the last lingering effects of the flu we wanted to see a movie tonight. So we bought tickets and made plans with friends, but I was worried I’d have to leave the pages half done. But no, I’m done and with a few minutes to spare before we have to leave for the movies. Yea!
I have to admit that some days when I’ve worked hard, and still am not done, and have to cancel plans that I feel quite punished. Once we include other people then I know I’m committed, and the plans are happening with or without my page count. Gotta go finish getting ready, Jon just came and got the dogs so they can make a last run out before we leave.

Finishing the page proofs

Finishing up the page proofs of BLOOD NOIR. I had a paragraph marked where Anita says that the Browning BDM had an ambidextrous safety. I know the Browning Hi-Power has one, but I wasn’t a hundred percent certain on the BDM. So, off I trooped to the gun safe. By golly, the BDM does, indeed, have an ambidextrous safety, just the like the Hi-Power. I know there are guns out there that are lighter, and even fit my hand better, but there is just something about the feel of the Browning in my hand that is so terribly satisfying. Anyway, fact checked, and that’s it.
I’ve handed it off to Darla to get the changes to New York, because today is drop dead day. That’s a phrase in publishing that means the absolutely last day possible for something to make it’s schedule. Drop dead day, what a nice phrase. I don’t usually cut it this close but the flu laid me pretty low. Even now the cough is lingering, and the tiredness, but I’m feeling a whole lot better. And better, or no, the deadline was upon us.
The Browning is sitting beside me as I type this. I’d checked it earlier today with a piece of clothing, to check the fit, so when I went back to the gun safe for a second time I had to go back through the whole routine of making sure it was not loaded. Yes, the gun had been in the safe the whole time, but, it is a gun and it had been out of my sight for awhile. So, point it in a safe direction, keep your finger off the trigger, pop the magazine, then put it back in, then take the safety off, pop the magazine out one more time, and put the slide all the way back, locked. Now you can see all the way up and through; clean and empty. Put it all back together, and it’s safe. Think I was being too careful? Look at some crime scene photos of what bullets can do to human flesh, and get back to me on that “too careful” thing. I like guns, but I am also a little afraid of them. A little fear is not a bad thing when it comes to dealing with things that can kill you.

Flu

I’m waiting for the tea timer to go so I can have the first cup of the day. Must have tea, regardless of what else has gone wrong. What’s gone wrong? I have the flu. Jon’s apologized for giving it to me, but it wasn’t like he did it on purpose. Real influenza is very contagious, and it’s airborne contagious, not just touch contact. Hard not to catch if someones got a cough and you’re sharing a bed with them. Yeah, and I guess we should have stopped that whole kissing thing, but, well, I just couldn’t help myself. So, I have the flu.
I have my first cup of tea of the day steaming in front of me. Everything is a little better with that. I have friends who joke that I must have been British in a past life because I think everything can be made just a little more right with hot tea. I would say some stuff about reincarnation and how my path of faith believes in it, and my theories on it, but I’m running a fever. One of my rules is never to discuss religion when running a fever. It’s too hard to tell if you’re making sense of a topic that’s already difficult to explain at the best of times.
But I have my tea, and I’m going to sip it, and do this blog, and hope to feel better. I probably should wake Jon up, and have him come down so he can help me with the dogs and everything so I can get to my desk and do my pages on Merry. Hey, I took yesterday off. My schedule doesn’t really include cushion time this year.
If I get over to my office and can’t think, let alone write on the book, I’ll stop, and I’ll go back to laying around and feeling pitiful. But I’ve done work in the past running fevers this high and higher. I think I’ve described my work ethic as puritanical, not really joking about that. But I think I am going to have to call, uncle, on trying to bull my way through this morning on my own. I thought I could do it, now I’m thinking that having help would be nice. Time to call in the troops.
Jon is better than I am, so I can call for help. One of the interesting things while Jon was so sick for this week was doing everything more alone. Jon’s Mom and Dad helped a lot, but I was still cooking dinner, doing the kid thing, and taking care of Jon, as well as getting my pages done each day. It reminded me how truly difficult it is not to have that partnership so you can divide and conquer. I was raised in a single parent household, and this week has reminded me how difficult that is, so my hat is off to all of you who do the single parenting thing for real.

Thanks to everyone

Thanks to everyone that gave so many positive messages on the My Space page. With Darla’s encouragement I actually went out and read them.
Here’s to all my fellow gamers, either current or once upon a time, who feel a debt of gratitude to Gary Gygax. Here, too, a thank you to all of you who just wanted to send a note of encouragement to me. Your notes let me know I wasn’t clear enough in the last blog.
I never have doubts that the writing is what I was meant to do. I took just enough pre-med to know that medicine was not for me. The more real police I interview, the more I know I couldn’t do it for real. Or rather, I don’t want to have a job where life and death really hang on the line. I love that I can always rewrite tomorrow. I’ve written death scenes and undone them the next day. I like that about my job, and wish, only, that it could work the same in real life. As for being a politician or diplomat and help bring peace to the world, well, I just don’t think I’m temperamentally suited to diplomatic work. I can be diplomatic when I must, but it’s not my natural bent. That’s putting it mildly.
I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I was meant to do. There are simply days when I hear old voices telling me that what I do isn’t exactly a serious job. Thanks for letting me know how much my writing has meant to all of you. Maybe this positive experience will help me look on the My Space page more often, and the forum, too. I’ve got to stop being such a big baby about the tech someday.
I did figure out how to use a thumb drive so I could download files to print from other parts of the house this week. I had no choice, my techies were either sick or trapped home by nine inches of snow. But I did it, I managed to print my pages all week. Brownie point for me.

Gary Gygax

I was having one of those days yesterday where you question why you aren’t out there researching a cure for cancer, solving real murders, or trying to find a solution for the middle eastern violence. Most days I’m fine, but every once in awhile when things have been stressful, I question my role in the grand scheme of things. Do you guys do that?
Then I heard about Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, dieing at the age of 69. First, I was surprised that he was close to 70, that seemed wrong, somehow, that the ultimate gamer had grown old.
I remember the first time I played D & D in high school. It was damn near a conversion experience, I don’t mean religion, but that moment that you find something that just fills up a piece of you that was empty before. There is certainly a God, or Goddess, shaped hole in each of us. (All you atheists out there just puzzle me, so sorry.) But there are also other needs, not just wants, but needs. Something about D & D filled a need for me. We’d be sitting in someones basement or living room, or even kitchen, but the inside of our heads were somewhere else. Somewhere that had orcs, elves, dragons, and dozens of other fantastical creatures and people that never existed here around the kitchen table, or the basement sofa. For most of us, gaming helped us find friends, a place to belong, and like every good hobby, it gave us something to think about besides homework and not fitting in. For those few hours, we all belonged. We all worked as a team (okay all you evil campaigners, at least be lawful evil, that way there’s some cooperation), and we adventured together to the kind of places we could only read about in books. The reading was great, and most of the gamers I knew were voracious readers, but reading is a solitary act, and D & D let us do out loud in a group what was usually private and alone. D & D is the bookworm’s triathlon.
My first book NIGHTSEER, grew out of a campaign I Dungeon Mastered (I know it’s Game Master now, but I’m old school and it will always be DM, to me). Alright the book grew out of my frustration with my gaming group. They just wouldn’t cooperate in this great world I’d created for them. Finally one of the guys said, “Fine, then go write it as a book, and stop trying to use it as a campaign.” He was absolutely right. It would take me about four more years to actually get the courage up to try and write a book, but would I have thought of it, if I hadn’t tried to fit my world into the world of D & D? I don’t know.
My grandmother hated that I played. She didn’t think it was a suitable occupation for a girl. Years later when my first book came out and it was magic, elves, and dragons, she apologized to me. “How was I supposed to know it would be so important to you?” The apology was nice to hear, and if you knew my grandmother, you’d value it for the truly rare moment it was.
I went to a Christian college, because it was the only one close enough to home for me to commute. But on the campus you didn’t dare confess to reading fantasy or science fiction and playing D & D was considered Satanic worship. No, really, no joke, I had that said to my face. So all of us that gamed kept it pretty quiet, just safer that way. My first husband and I fell in love partially because we both played. I still remember the day we admitted to each other that we were both “evil” and played D & D. We actually gamed with the same group eventually through late college. We had two groups in California after college and it was pretty much our social network.
Do I game now? No. I’ve tried, but whatever part of the mind is used and happy during gaming, is the same part that writes for me. So after a full day at the desk making books, I don’t find it relaxing to game. It’s like finishing a marathon and being told you have to run just a few more miles.
Jon and I tried to game together, but I’ve grown too cautious. I’m the person who carries that extra twenty feet of rope, and a host of poles, so I can tie it all together and poke at things. My longest living character, Sidon the Cautious, well, I chose the Sidon part, but my high school gaming group chose the latter. Sidon retired at 11th level and took ship to far lands, the only survivor, when the rest of my gaming group rolled evil characters and the DM lost control on that whole assassination problem.
So on the day when I was wondering if what I did for a living actually mattered, I was reminded how much what Gary Gygax created meant to me. Is it an exaggeration to say that I found my career, my first love, and good friends through D & D? Maybe, but if it’s not absolutely true, then it’s close, so thank you Gary Gygax. Thanks to you and everyone that helped make your vision real to the rest of us.

LKH Bit 03/05/08

New comic releases, chapter one of Blood Noir. Writers Digest
NEW COMIC RELEASES
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Issue #9 of Guilty Pleasures is out today. Also Marvel Spotlight will feature Anita and is available today also.
BLOOD NOIR
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Chapter one of Blood Noir is available for a sneek peek:
https://www.laurellkhamilton.com/Anita/BloodNoirChapterOne.html
WRITERS DIGEST
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The April issue is available on newsstands now and features Laurell on the cover and inside with an interview. Or you can order it online at http://www.writersdigest.com/store/magdisplay.asp?id=WD0408
That’s it for this bit!
Darla