Our Catholic Supremes establish a State Religion...

The Supreme Court's white conservative Catholic older males have determined that the only exemption a "christian entity" may use to not follow the law, as laid down in the ACA, is over contraception. The justices were very clear -- Hobby Lobby's nearly 600 stores are all extensions of a closely-held company that is considered to be a religious entity, so need not provide insurance coverage for birth control. Joy to the world, slut-shaming is back with a vengeance. Break out them scarlet letters.

But no other exemption is allowed, according to Justice Alito. Only the conservative christianists are allowed to exempt themselves from the law because they don't want to seen as supporting women having sex without the possibility of pregnancy. Never mind contraceptives are used for hundreds of health reasons beyond birth control. If you screw, you gotta be ready to give birth like some breed mare.

This is rich. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions, but they will be required to provide coverage for that in any policies they have to offer their workers. Christian Scientists limit medical care even more, but if one owns a business and must provide coverage under the ACA, he or she cannot use their faith to refuse to pay for full coverage.

But Catholics get a pass on this part. Protestants. Evangelicals. You name it, so long as they're mainstream christianist faiths. And don't think it'll stop here. The door's been opened for the government to determine what any faith may or may not practice, now. They have determined one sort of religion is better than the others. Christians should not be rejoicing; she should be scared silly. They just gave their religious freedom away, in the name of religious freedom.

Man...you couldn't make this crap up, and if you did, nobody'd believe it.

Preparatory preparation...

Today was reworking the outline for Carli's Kills to see what's left to do. I'm about 2/3 done with the script and know what scenes need to be written, now. I broke one scene in half and may do the same with another. It depends on how things play once I'm done. Then comes the finessing of the characters and storyline.

What's nice about having a somewhat detailed outline is, it gives me a place to hang whatever ideas come to me instead of just writing them on slips of paper and hoping I remember them. I'm bad about filling a folder with them and then having to go through and try to figure out what goes where, according to what I was thinking when I wrote it.

I dumped a bit where Carli fixes a bug to Zeke's belt buckle. Wasn't needed and felt too wrong, once I had the rest of the scene worked out.  And added a bit of humor through Zeke's dog, Loki (no longer Thor). Now comes the fun part, seeing if I can get this done anytime soon.

I'm pretty much back on my body clock schedule, so only worked on this till 6. Then I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's a dark movie but without Alfonso Cuaron's poetry it wasn't as interesting as The Prisoner of Azkaban. Mike Newell's not quite the hack that Chris Columbus is -- he did do Into the West and Donnie Brasco -- but he's no magician, either. However, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Gint and Emma Watson keep improving...while Robert Pattinson proved, yet again, he has the screen presence of a twig. He is one of those actors whose success eludes me.

Not that I have much to say about success.

I take it back...

In an earlier post about needing poetry and madness to make magic on film, I mentioned Alfonso Cuaron as almost having it. I was wrong; he does. I just watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and it hooked me, completely. I think the only thing that I'd have wanted explored more deeply is near the end...when Harry believes his father has come to save him. The idea was unexplored in the least and given an easy out...but that's a minor quibble.

Daniel Radcliffe is improving as an actor. He's still not that commanding, yet, but he's not as amateurish or unfocused as he was in HP1&2. And I prefer Michael Gambon to Richard Harris as Dumbledore. I know Harris died before the making of #3 and had to be replaced, but it turned out for the better.

Getting in so late and not getting to bed till after 4am screwed up my cycles. I slept till 1pm. NOT cool. I'm setting my alarm for tomorrow, even though it's Sunday.

It made me rather lost, today, so no writing done. Dammit. I want to be done with CK. It's ready. I just need to sit down and do it. That's the hard part, for any writer.

What's hard for anybody who's not a writer is listening to us whine about it.

Just got in...

It's 3am...and I'm close to toasted....but other than being hours late the train ride was worth it. I got a lot of writing done because Amtrak does, at least, provide you with power so you can keep your laptop going. Few airlines do.

I couldn't even begin to think of anything to add to CK on the trip back to Buffalo, so I worked more on UG and found out why Dev and Reg were knocking at my door. For the first time Dev realizes he did something wrong, evil, without justification to Reg, and it's tearing at him. For the first time in his escapades, he feels guilt...and this guilt becomes the driving force behind the rest of the story. He's subconsciously trying to make up for his past deeds by helping find a serial killer.

Shit -- another story about redemption. Am I getting caught in some stupid loop, again? Working something out in my own scrambled brain? Dunno.

But I do find it interesting that I'm distilling stories down to a single word. Like OT is about abandonment. LD is really about renewal. BC is about acceptance. A65 is about closure. Hmm...does that work as a single word distillation?

Anyway, the reason I find it interesting is how much I like long explanations of my stories. I've gotten better at working the synopses down to something tight and manageable. But a single word? That's not my style. It's movie-ish. But...it may also be me finally getting an idea of how to hang my stories together better.

Or make them too simple...it can work both ways.

Laughable...

I just spent 25 minutes dealing with Bloomingdales trying to get in contact with someone at a particular part of the store so I could go look at a show trunk we need to collect and ship to London...and I got misdirected and ignored and told "We don't have that information" and asked what it's all about and had to repeat myself so many time, I started laughing. I got sent to furniture...and then china...and then shipping...and public relations (who didn't want to talk to me, at all)...before I finally got hold of a sales clerk who knew something and gave me over to the manager who said the person I needed to speak with wasn't in, today. I still managed to get to come look at the trunk, but if this is a premier clothing operation, we are in deep doo-doo.

It's not just Bloomies, though. I went to the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue to see about getting either the next Harry Potter or the next McKinty mystery to read on the train because there will be no wifi and it's going to be packed. Ain't got 'em. I can order them...but nothing of McKinty's was in the store and they only had Harry Potter 2 in hardcover. I was too wiped out to shop for another book, so I left.

Last night I couldn't formulate a complete sentence, let alone any thoughts. My brain was buzzing with Underground Guy all day, and seven of the books I packed were elephant folios that were too heavy to put more than two in a box, so I just had a burger at 5 Guys, came back to the hotel and sat in a nice hot bath for nearly an hour...as Reg kept tapping on my thick skull. He and Dev want to get done while Tawfi's casual about it, in his rich and easy way.

I should never have 4 writing projects going at one time; they keep trying to interrupt each other, and I'm way too easily distracted.

Busy little beaver...

I've read three books in the last two weeks. I haven't done that in years. First, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, then Bruno, Chief of Police, and now The Cold, Cold Ground. It's interesting to compare the different styles of writing.

J K Rowling has a simple, straightforward style that's accessible to any age from about the third or fourth grade. It's a bit lumpy but moves forward.

Martin Walker's style is more lyrical and soothing, even when dealing with a vicious murder. It meanders a bit, much as life does in the South of France, but carries you along.

Adrian McKinty's style is harsh and cold. Clipped as tight as possible to avoid anything in the way of honest comfort. It's a murder mystery set during the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, dealing with a series of murders amidst riots and politics and territorial hate spiced with sectarian violence. It's told in a first person style that even Raymond Chandler would think is bleak.

I brought it with me on the train, since I didn't have WiFi to keep me busy, and finished it just shy of  Poughkeepsie. It also helped distract me from the Dutch woman behind me, who seems to have either pneumonia or bronchitis or both. If I get sick, I will be pissed.

Again, reading a book's helped me see how I should change something in CK. Nothing major, just a small shift in the final bit at the end that makes a lot more sense. And a willingness to back away from the conspiracy theories I like to go for.  That won't work for CK. They've become so prevalent, people expect them so should not be indulged.

Of course, with The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, all bets are off.

Big Apple Time

Off to NYC in the morning. A 9 hour train ride across to Albany and down the Hudson River Valley. It's a beautiful trip, and I still think of North by Northwest as I travel it. Looks like the job will only be one day, but it'll be all day and my train home isn't till Friday. I may be able to get an earlier one than the 3:40 pm, which is usually late...but I'll deal with that on Friday.

I don't have Final Draft on my laptop, so I won't be working much on CK, but that may be good. I need to sort some things out about it. See how dangerous I want to go. Should CK be amoral as regards Carli? Is everything she does okay because she's out for justice? I dunno, yet.

Funny thing is, Is don't like amoral movies...but that seems to be the direction most are going. Even Martin Scorsese is caught in it -- he made a movie about a sociopathic beast who ripped people off in order to finance a fabulously rich lifestyle, but  wound up being a love letter to self-indulgence. Swordfish, made 12-14 years ago, was even worse in how casually it treated the deaths of innocent people. Same for Boiler Room and its shrug on selling junk bonds to unsuspecting buyers in order to bail out another unsuspecting buyer who'd been defrauded by the guy who did the selling. Money's all that counts, not human suffering.

I think of Speed and how everyone on that bus was made into a human being by Joss Whedon. Then the death of a woman passenger became traumatic for everyone. That's the gold standard for thrillers, so far as I'm concerned -- when you worry about everyone involved and don't have the anonymous background players who can be killed off without much sorrow.

Agatha Christie set up And Then There Were None in a way that emphasized guilt, as 10 people summoned to an isolated island are killed off one by one. Each, it turned out, had committed a crime or brutality against another human being, and those who felt the least guilty about it were killed first, leaving those who felt the most guilty to suffer until they, too, died. It was written in her usual dry style, but the implications of the setup marked me, deep. Maybe I'll incorporate some of that into CK...

Hmm...that'd mean the worst guy would have to go first, and if that happens, the story's over...so maybe not.

A long conversation with Carli and Zeke...

I have my best talks with my characters when I'm not there. It's kind of spooky. My brain connects with something solid -- like reading a fascinating mystery novel -- and in the silence it brings to my scrambled thoughts, my characters make themselves known. No need for Carli or Zeke to tap on the side of my head to say, "Hey, listen to us." It's just the three of us connecting.

I have this story all wrong. I've been telling myself it's about revenge, but it's not; it's redemption. I see it clear, now. It may read as a tossed-off girl-kicks-butt-to-get-even script...but that is not the spine of the story. Not anymore. It's about two wounded people who heal each other.

Carli and Zeke laid it out very plainly, albeit in the back of my mind. My subconscious. Conscious unconscious. Whatever. The story fates have whispered in my ear and I must follow.

God knows what shape the script will take, now.

Reading...

I just started in on a lovely murder mystery, Bruno, Chief of Police. It's set in the village of St. Denis in the south of France, and follows Bruno as he deals with the quiet flow of a sheltered town in the face of a horrific murder and growing racist sentiment. Martin Walker wrote it, and his style is geared to the slower rhythm of country life even as the tension builds.

I started reading it to see how other mystery writers approach their stories, but now I'm genuinely caught up in it. If you're looking for a fast-pace, try Richard Parker or Elmore Leonard. I may read one of theirs, next. But as regards returning to work on The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, I like Walker's method more.

I did more work on CK, of course. Seems I'm into the relationship building aspect of the story...and something that's just sort of happened without me planning it is, Carli's connection with Zeke puts a stop to the violence. For a while.

Part of that is his reticence in revealing his background and how direct he is with her. He even asks her why she's interested in him, and all she can say is, "You're the first man I've met who's just like me."

And, once again, I have no earthly idea what the hell she means. He's not a killer...at least, not since he got out of the Army. He's not out for revenge. He's missing a leg, while her body is intact and unscarred. He's covered with tattoos while she has only one. So she's being cryptic with me as well as him...and I hate that.

And love it.

One step forward, two steps back

Financially. As usual. I'm not working for three weeks at the end of the summer, so my income will drop by ¾ that month. Lovely. I've already sent out feelers for packing jobs so I don't wind up bankrupt. Amazing how closely I teeter to that. Be nice if my books would actually sell enough to make a difference.

I guess I could get CK in order and see if it's sellable for a couple thousand. Only 90% of the people looking for scripts on places like InkTip want things that can be shot for $250K or less. I guess the way CK is going, it could be done. I've only got 4 real locations, so far, and not many cast members. No big car chases or SFX needed. We'll see what happens on it.

I've got 44 solid pages, in line. I'm at the point where Carli and Zeke are connecting, so all I need is 46 more, though since I already have the ending written it's really just 34 pages. I dropped another subplot, but it stubbornly weeded its way back in. Guess the story's got itself set in its own way.

Zeke did another little something I wasn't quite expecting -- he fell asleep on Carli. And then Carli began to weep. I'm not sure exactly why it happened...or what it means, yet...but damn, it felt right. It's at a point where she still thinks he might be part of what happened to her sister...or maybe it's right after she learns he couldn't have been. I dunno, yet.

What's scary right now is, I'm falling in love with both of them...and that's not something an author should ever do. I do it. And I'm aware of it. But it can hurt the story, so I shouldn't.

Except I have to wonder if maybe it helps...