Tag: black spot

Monday Miscellany 070819

Sometimes I swear my life can be summed up in books, pets, baking, and mindless entertainment.  I think I need some more hobbies.

Finished the first season of Black Spot which was very satisfying.  So many times these “weird” mysteries lose track of the actual whodunit in favor of atmosphere and mood.  But there’s a missing girl, a murder, and hey, a murderer who is uncovered. And yes, there’s a lot of atmosphere and mood.  I think that readers of Tana French’s books would feel pretty much at home in Villefranche. I’ve been listening to the dub, reading subtitles, and ignoring that they rarely match.  I feel like between the two, I might get the right story.

I finished reading Teeth in the Mist and what a peculiar book it turned out to be.  I picked it up on a whim at the library, and had a fun surprise when I sat down to read it.  There’s all sorts of artwork and photographs and strange formatting and the like. Lovely to read. That said, I didn’t love the story overmuch.  There are two main timelines (three if you count Hermione, but she’s barely a blip on the pages), and I think that they ended up making each other look less interesting.  Roan, the 19th century girl, has a story that’s full of ominous big magic and enormous emotions–wild lost loves and witch-hunters and trauma and the devil walking the mountain–and it feels really rushed.  In comparison, Zoey, the modern girl, has a really lightweight story that sort of drifts along until it goes crazy at the end. I think I would really rather have seen two books: Roan’s story followed by Zoey’s story.

Off to see the allergist soon.  Here’s hoping they can wave a magic wand and fix the fact that my body has declared war on the ENTIRE DAMNED OUTSIDE WORLD.  I woke myself up sneezing last night, who does that? Just UGH!

The endless re-revision continues.  I keep overthinking the issues, making myself spin in place trying to think of all the variables needed, then underthinking them, reminding myself that really, I’m only altering one POV, which then leads to me falling flat on my face, because even one POV can undergo some big changes.  Still, progress is happening.

I’m also outlining the second book of monster-hunters in love. And contemplating a short story about a retired superhero.  And fighting the urge to work on the super complex urban fantasy. Basically, my brain wants to write ALL THE THINGS but it wants them all done NOW. Which is to say, writer brain status: normal.

No new music this week.  I’ve been listening to more of the podcast Unwell instead.  I’m enjoying it, though it’s definitely a slow burn.  Right now, it’s all about the people: Lily coming back to small town Ohio to help her estranged mom run a boarding house, and the people she meets.  In some ways, it reminds me a little bit of Cold Comfort Farm where Flora Post swans into the countryside home of her relatives and starts trying to “fix” them all.  Flora Post was in the right of it, but I’m not sure where Lily lands yet. It’s been engaging so far, and we’ve just tippytoed into the “weird” segment of the tale… a creepy voice on a recording.  I’m looking forward to where it goes from here.

Monday Miscellany June 17

What am I up to?  Some day I’ll get to answer that question with a wicked chortle and a carefully choreographed hand-rubbing, but… mostly it’s the same old same old.

I did finish the quick & dirty revision of my novel about monster-hunters marauding through America (you can say Supernatural-inspired, I make no bones about it; just don’t expect me to use any of those characters, or really much of the world-building) and sent that off to my long-suffering agent.

I’m taking a week away from writing for Reasons—mostly just chaos and a full workload. Not to mention the Sinuses of DOOOM, Jesus this summer has barely started and I’d like to breathe again, please.

I read a couple books this week, DNF’d a few others. I don’t have anything awesome to recommend to you, but maybe next week! There are all sorts of (potentially) delicious book goodies coming out this month including Alexis Hall’s The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (I’m a sucker for Sherlockiana), Max Gladstone’s Empress of Forever, and Danielle Vega’s The Haunted (because who doesn’t like a good ghost story?) Plus I have my eye on a weird sounding novel called Bunny by Mona Awad.

I’ve been listening to a lot of reggaeton-inspired pop. I like it! J Balvin and Maluma and all the collaborations. Really like “Con Altura” and “Familiar”. “Familiar” sounds a lot like a Ricky Martin song and yeah, I liked his songs too, back in the day.

And weirdly delightful: the batshit crazy cover/remake of “Head like a Hole” as “On a Roll“.

I’m mostly through the fourth season of Lucifer and I’m see-sawing on whether or not I think Eve is an interesting character. I love that she left heaven for excitement and thrills, less enamored of the fact that her entire existence on earth seems to hinge on Lucifer. While I like that this drives her to make violent choices, I’m still bored by it. You can only watch someone making bad choices for so long.

I tried to watch Ralph Wrecks the Internet, but found it weirdly cringe-inducing and gave up. Ralph is a big man baby and I don’t feel sorry for him. Plus, a lot of the stuff I think that I was supposed to find funny just didn’t land with me.

 

So now I’m watching Black Spot, which is hitting the same “ooooh” spot that Happy Town did. I’m hoping this one has more of an ending. As per usual, I spend a lot of my time staring at a dark screen wondering what I was supposed to see there. What shadow? Where? ARGH.  I also have deep doubts about the translations, but since I don’t speak French, what else can I do?