Category Archives: Musings

So I wrote a screenplay this weekend!

I signed up for the NYC Midnight Madness Screenwriters Challenge, got a genre (Sci-Fi, how cool is that), a location (a sightseeing bus, how weird is that) and an object (boxing gloves).  Submitted a screenplay in the “proper” format 3 hours before the deadline.  Wahoo!!

I feel like I’m on fire these days, a great way to start November (yes, of course I plan to do Nanowrimo).  Words are just spilling out.  (I also wrote a fairy tale on Friday for my weekly flash-fiction challenge.)

Quite fun to do a screenplay.  I figured it was a great exercise to pare down to the essentials – the action, the dialog, the plot – a paring down that might help next time I write a short story.

Have several stories out to publishers, which is pretty darn fun.  I’m looking forward to my first rejection (losing contests, I’ve decided, doesn’t count).

Cheers!  Write On!

All Clear, by Connie Willis

My much anticipated book was great!  I still hate the fact that I had to wait so long for the second half of Connie Willis’s novel, but it lived up to my hopes and anticipation.  Over 1100 pages if you combine the two books(Blackout is the first book).  She probably could have cut some, but the multiple plotlines, timelines, and characters were so intricately woven I doubt cutting would have been easy, if even possible.

I’ve put a long review on my LibraryThing, but in short it is a book about time historians from the future who visit London during WWII – and get stuck.  The science fiction part won’t put off people who don’t tend to like sci-fi and the history is truly of ordinary people and so won’t put off those who don’t like kings & queens & royal intrigues.

Check it (them!) out next time you are in the mood to curl up with a VERY long story.  Note – you can’t read All Clear without having read Blackout – they are two halves.  All Clear is not a sequel.