They do not have AC adaptors on their long distance planes, so my laptop will be juiceless before I get to Portland, and vise verse (and I always think of how Billie Holiday pronounced that little phrase in "Born Yesterday" -- "VICE-ah VOICE-ah"). BUT...they do offer free TV and music if you bring your own headphones. NOT the same thing...but does cut down on my superficial grumbles.
I'll also be done with "Ghosts of Belfast" before I'm halfway there. Stuart Neville's a good novelist. The book's following the typical path for a thriller, but he's inventive enough with it to where I don't care. Hell, even though the second this one character named Marie was introduced I knew exactly where it would head, I'm letting it lead me. And despite myself, I like Gerry, his hit-man-hero-psycho-wanna-be-decent-guy. But to be honest, had I not already bought the book before I read his short story in "Requiems for the Departed," I wouldn't have even considered digging into more of his work. It wasn't bad; it just was so typical and lazy a piece of work, I didn't have very high hopes.
However, it's got Brendan and me talking, again...which is a weird thing for me to say, since in "Ghosts..." Gerry is haunted by the 12 people he killed until he kills the men who brought about their deaths, and he's the only person who can see them. But it fits in with Irish manner and mythology, I suppose. The past and the dead mean more to so many than do the living and the future. Of course that's not just in Ireland. Look at Israel and the Palestinians and the whole damned area around them; insults from five centuries ago are still cause enough to kill and destroy. It's too damn typical of the human race.
But he's shown me the way to get him and Joanna together and off to Grianan Aileach circle fort. I have the five reasons I need for it to work.
That's something people never understood about my screenplays, even when I told them -- everything in them has five reasons to be part of the story, and they would interlink. If I removed one or tried to change it, everything else would have to be redone, as well. I think the people rewriting "Lavender Curse" and "Bugzters" are finding that out the hard way...but too late; all their rewriting is doing is destroying the scripts' prospects. And I'm sure they'll think they did their best to make them work right and will just never see they shot themselves in the foot. But they're not my stories, anymore, so I have no say in them. That still pisses me off...even if reality has to be allowed to assert its dominance every now and then.
I sound arrogant. Good. I used to be this way about my artwork but I never felt I was good enough to be like that about my writing. Not until the last few years. Too bad I didn't feel this way 30 years ago; who knows what I could have accomplished.
I'll also be done with "Ghosts of Belfast" before I'm halfway there. Stuart Neville's a good novelist. The book's following the typical path for a thriller, but he's inventive enough with it to where I don't care. Hell, even though the second this one character named Marie was introduced I knew exactly where it would head, I'm letting it lead me. And despite myself, I like Gerry, his hit-man-hero-psycho-wanna-be-decent-guy. But to be honest, had I not already bought the book before I read his short story in "Requiems for the Departed," I wouldn't have even considered digging into more of his work. It wasn't bad; it just was so typical and lazy a piece of work, I didn't have very high hopes.
However, it's got Brendan and me talking, again...which is a weird thing for me to say, since in "Ghosts..." Gerry is haunted by the 12 people he killed until he kills the men who brought about their deaths, and he's the only person who can see them. But it fits in with Irish manner and mythology, I suppose. The past and the dead mean more to so many than do the living and the future. Of course that's not just in Ireland. Look at Israel and the Palestinians and the whole damned area around them; insults from five centuries ago are still cause enough to kill and destroy. It's too damn typical of the human race.
But he's shown me the way to get him and Joanna together and off to Grianan Aileach circle fort. I have the five reasons I need for it to work.
That's something people never understood about my screenplays, even when I told them -- everything in them has five reasons to be part of the story, and they would interlink. If I removed one or tried to change it, everything else would have to be redone, as well. I think the people rewriting "Lavender Curse" and "Bugzters" are finding that out the hard way...but too late; all their rewriting is doing is destroying the scripts' prospects. And I'm sure they'll think they did their best to make them work right and will just never see they shot themselves in the foot. But they're not my stories, anymore, so I have no say in them. That still pisses me off...even if reality has to be allowed to assert its dominance every now and then.
I sound arrogant. Good. I used to be this way about my artwork but I never felt I was good enough to be like that about my writing. Not until the last few years. Too bad I didn't feel this way 30 years ago; who knows what I could have accomplished.
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