Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

I want a head transplant...

I've spent the last few days fighting a headache that's not quite there but almost and it's irritating. Initially, I though it was my glasses causing it because it starts in the back of my left shoulder and trapezius and my left eye aches. But today as I was pulling my laundry from the dryer I held my head back a bit too much and got overcome a dull throbbing. Like I pinched a nerve but not quite enough to really hurt me.

It slowly went away, but I'm now too damned aware that my body is wearing out. One of the joys of age. So I'd better get my ass in gear and dig into APoS and get it done before I'm recalled to the factory for an overhaul for faulty everything. I guess Advil is now my vitamin of choice.

I was reading Clive Barker's Damnation Game...and reading...and reading...and reading...and finally gave up on it about halfway through. I sort of liked Marty, who was almost the lead character (for some reason I was picturing a young Guy Ritchie as him), but I didn't believe a word of what I was reading. It was like...I dunno...obnoxiously nasty for nastinesses sake. Like Steven King started to write in the 80s. I stopped reading him after Firestarter, but I was getting weary of his rub-your-face-in-it characters as early as The Stand.

One reason I couldn't get into Barker's book was, I didn't believe a word of it; it was so divorced from simple day-to-day reality. A woman gets skinned alive without screaming loud enough to wake a man asleep in the upstairs bedroom? Dogs protecting a house go into a frenzy of barking and howling as they're being slaughtered but no one in the house notices? C'mon...

I feel the same way when I see movies ignore reality in order to keep the plot going. My favorite example of this is A History of Violence. There's a long, loud shootout in a mansion in a wealthy area of Pittsburgh and no cops come. Why? The hero needs to be able to get away. It's lazy, to me. Unimaginative. Takes me out of the story.

The positive thing about this is it reminds me not to get carried away with my normal tendency to meander. I like letting characters talk and explore each other for a while, but it can get boring is not important and well-done...both aspects I still need work on.

Maybe I'll try some Grisham, next...

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