Children of Men

Children of Men comes out on DVD Tuesday, March 27th.

I saw it the other night.

See this movie.

This week, next week, whenever you can.

Just see it.

The Tudors and William S. Burroughs

I'm going to be busy writing all weekend as I've gotten a bit behind on my WIP.

So, for my blog post for the weekend, just a reminder that if you have Showtime, the mini-series The Tudors starts on Sunday, April 1st.

But, if you can't wait until Sunday, April 1st, you can catch, I'm asuming, an edited version of the first two episodes at the link below.

The Tudors

I say edited, because I saw the first episode last night and there are some pretty risque sex scenes in it.

Lovely risque sex scenes, but risque nonetheless.

But that Henry, he was a lusty bloke, after all.

If you don't have Showtime, and you want to see The Tudors, don't worry, it will soon enough be on DVD, I'm sure.

As for William S. Burroughs, I happened across this quote of his.

"I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it."

I'm not assuming anyone hates my guts. Maybe they do. *shrug* I don't think any of us are so lovable that someone doesn't hate something about us.

Just though it was an interesting quote.

Fact Vs. Fiction

How "real" does fiction have to be? I ask this because I know that a lot of criticism that some readers levy against a novel or short story, or a movie, for that matter, is that such and such didn't or couldn't happen in real life.

Vice versa, some writers justify events or actions taken by their characters by saying "but that's how it really happened."

"How it really happened" is important when writing non-fiction or else the legtimacy of your article or book will be questioned. But how important is it in fiction?

IMHO, fiction is a cauldron whereby what we, as human beings, see, feel, think, experience or dream is thrown into a big, black, boiling pot. We stir that pot, using craft and imagination, and out of it comes something that I like to think transcends fact and reality. Something that speaks to us in ways that facts just can't give us.

An almost indefinable experience of the truth of the human adventure we call life.

Please note that I used the word truth, not fact. Not reality. But truth. Truth is not necessarily fact. Truth is something that resonates beyond the coldness and sterility of facts. It vibrates with that which is more than mere fact and becomes transcendent, almost spiritual. Truth is something you know with your soul, not your mind.

So, when I read a piece of fiction, I don't look for facts, I don't look for reality. I look for the truth of the experience of that novel, short story or movie. Each will have it's own truth.

If they're done well, of course.

Some fiction may be steeped in carefully researched facts. The writer may have duplicated whatever she really experienced down to the colors of the buttons on the protagonist's shirt, but that story still may lack truth.

And I should say that so called serious or literary fiction is not the only source of this truth of which I speak. In spite of the fact that genre fiction is still looked down upon by some academics and by those who think of themselves as members of the literary patrician class, it too can have it's own truth.

What some call formulas in romance, mysteries, horror, science ficiton, etc., are actually codes or tropes whereby each reader of said genre can know that this particular writer is well versed in the particular language of that genre.

Now, I'm not advocating that writers of genre fiction rely merely on formulas when writing. Heaven forbid!

But when a new writer is advised to read well within whatever genre she is interested in writing in, part of the reason for that advice is in order for the writer to familiarize herself with these codes and tropes. Not only so that she can avoid doing what's been done to death, but so that she can speak in the language that a reader of a mystery novel will expect, for example. And that language will be different, in some respects, from the language of a romance novel.

But back to fact vs. fiction. If I'm reading a historical novel, I don't necessarily want to come across some egregious and glaring mistake. But I'm not looking for 100% accuracy either. If I want that I'll read a non-fiction book on that historical period. And even then I know what is written in the non-fiction book won't be 100% accurate either.

No opinion can be trusted; even the facts may be nothing but a printer's error.W. C. Williams

When I'm reading a romance or a mystery, fantasy or science fiction, horror or a western, all I ask is that the writer remain true to the rules of the world he has established within his fictional milieu.

Waiters who are giraffes? No problem. Just make me believe it and, then, don't violate my belief over the course of the story.

So I'm not big on facts or reality in the ficiton I read. But I am big on truth.

If you're interested, the link below will take you to a website where tropes from television, comic books and videogames are being collected. It's pretty interesting.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/

Keeper Shelf

I have a few books on my "keeper shelf". Books that once I've read them I have to keep close so that at some future point in time I can read them again and again and again.

Most of my "keeper books" have been science fiction or fantasy; the first Dune book, Lord of the Rings, The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge and a some others.

These two books are the only romance books, so far, that I have on my keeper shelf: Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm and Penelople Williamson's Heart of the West.

I've had Kinsale's book on my keeper shelf since I first read it a few years ago. I first read Williamson's book last December. Allison Kent mentioned it on her blog as a great read. I picked it up at the library, read it and loved it! I wanted the hardcover version, but it's out of print.

Yesterday I finally found a used copy of the hardcover at Half Price Books. I was so thrilled! Now it's sitting next to all my other keeper books on the shelf.

It's always great to discover a truly wonderful book. A book that becomes a keeper.

300. Again

Monday night I got a chance to see a free midnight test screening of the movie 300 on our local IMAX theater. Wound up not getting home until 3:00 a.m. and then getting up to go to work at 6:00 a.m. But that's okay.

I survived. :-)

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie! It was like watching a dream. Historically accurate? Nope. Deep plot? Nope.

A visual feast and pulse-pounding action? You bet!

Cowboy Lover

I wrote my first ever historical western back in November. It was a short story and I submitted it to the editors who bought my story, "The Cowboy and the Schoolmarm", which was published last year in the The MILF Anthology

The editors had put out a submission call for an anthology of cowboy erotica so I wrote a story called "The Branding of Miss Charlotte Babington."

I found out this week it was accepted! Here's the cover of the anthology which, I must say, I really like. The anthology is titled Cowboy Lover - Erotic Tales of the Wild West and looks like it will be out late April-early May.