Lilith Saintcrow

SATURDAY: Work, then getting hair cut, coming home and watching COPS and America’s Most Wanted. Early night, because:

SUNDAY: (Yesterday) Helped the Sullen One’s grandmama move out of her apartment. Well, mostly out–we got all the big stuff done and into the storage facility. Both His Sullenness and I were pooped afterward. I barely had the energy to come home and watch cartoons. Which the kids liked. I was so tired I actually fell into bed, read a little Orhan Pamuk, and crashed out before the DHM got back from dinner with D and H.

Somewhere in the space of this weekend, though, I finished Fatal Purity (that bio of Robespierre I was so excited to find in trade paper) and The Sun Over Breda, which is (gasp) an entirely new Captain Alatriste story! No swashbuckling in this one, just a dirty story of a dirty war in Holland and the history of Spain’s tercios And of course it’s Perez-Reverte, who I absolutely LOVE.

Next up: Sylvia Plath (probably a bad idea) and a collected Sherlock Holmes before I go on to the great Shakespeare Summer. And of course I am still knocking away at the forensics textbooks.

My week so far looks like this:

MONDAY: Going back over to the Sullen One’s granmama’s, to finish up the packing. Trying to get some writing in. In the morning, before I’m too tired to even blink.

TUESDAY: The Star Wars event at Beaverton Powell’s, with the 501st (Vader’s Fist,) Timothy Zahn, and Steve Perry. (I think, at least. Peter will correct me if I’m wrong.) Trying to get some writing in.

WEDNESDAY: The DHM has kendo. Writing will get done, I swear. For I will be home almost all day, and tearing me away from the computer will earn one black eyes and/or a bleeding stump where an arm used to be.

THURSDAY: I believe I’m visiting Jeff Davis and Janine. Will lay on their couch and drink wine. Precious little writing will get done after about three PM.

FRIDAY: The Andrew Bird concert with Candy. Wish we could get backstage passes. Candy would just DIE.

SATURDAY: Opening the bookstore, and the writer’s mixer that evening. Someone’s at a book sale, so I’m helming the Enterprise for a little while. Translation: I plan on having a long lunch with a glass of wine on this day.

SUNDAY: Die of sheer exhaustion. Perhaps start detox, because once I start I’m not leaving the house for five days except to get groceries and clear liquids. Next week belongs to detoxing and clearing out a few thousand words on the new Kismet novel that is Bugging Me.

Oh, Lord. I’m just looking at this schedule and reaching for the Motrin.

Next week, I swear, nothing other than detox and writing. Of course, the two might be similar…

My weekly post at the Midnight Hour is up. It’s more introspection. Not for the weak of stomach, I guess…

I know you’re not supposed to write about anything personal in a weblog. Heaven knows, you could end up like this guy. But I’m in an introspective mood today, so you’re going to get a little peek behind the curtain.

I keep it pretty much above the surface here, dear Readers. You hear about the books and things I think, but not a lot of my personal life gets into the weblog. I do have kids to protect. You’ll never read someone’s for-real name here unless I know and am mentioning them professionally, or I have their explicit permission. And even then, sometimes, I use pseudonyms. It’s part courtesy and part defense.

I don’t show many scars here. In the first place, who wants to know? And in the second place, do I really want to give the general public that much ammunition? They’re scars because they hurt, sometimes even when healed over, and there’s no way you want to show everyone those parts.

But like I said, introspective today. It may be watching a lot of Looney Tunes; it reminds me of childhood.

(more…)

Yes, you read that right.

I just got a big box of ARCs of the third book in the Valentine series. Of course I’ll be running giveaways through my newsletter.

My God. It’s actually real. They’re real books. With paper and everything.

Let the whooping and hollering commence.

This is So Wrong. A movie adaptation of The Bell Jar, with Julia Stiles seeking to make the story less depressing.

Thus begins The Bell Jar, a novel whose film adaptation Julia Stiles will star in and produce. Sylvia Plath’s 1950s-era drama centers around Esther Greenwood, who - while spending a summer in Manhattan - grows troubled and eventually descends into mental illness, attempting suicide several times. She likens her depression to being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath…this is a dark novel, exploring the dark side of the human psyche. Yet according to Variety, Stiles wants to make the film…lighthearted, and keep focus on the more uplifting elements. Celine Rattray, of Plum Pictures (attached to produce the film with Stiles), says “Esther Greenwood has a strong outlook on life, and we’re really looking to bring out the humor in the character. We don’t want to do a depressing descent into the world of suicide.” (Gothamist)

Christ, pass the razor blades. How exactly is Julia-frocking-Stiles going to make electroshock “uplifting”? Call the Clue Police, because someone’s Clue Bag has gone missing.

I don’t mind movie adaptations of books. Really, I don’t. But egregious betrayal of the very core reason and theme of a book? That I mind. Like Reese Witherspoon trying to make Becky Sharp more sympathetic. Or Keira Knightley trying to make Elizabeth Bennet a 90s woman. (Maybe it was just her bee-stung, solo-zip-code lips.) And how about those bad comic-book adaptations? (I’m looking at YOU, Ben Affleck. Daredevil was an abomination of a character I loved.)

But then again, I’m a geek.

Classics are classics because they have teeth. To pull those teeth in order to make a classic “more accessible” or “less harsh” is a violation of the very soul of the work. Can you imagine Tale of Two Cities without the threat of the guillotine? Or Count of Monte Cristo without the pathological hatred, class warfare, and opium? Can one imagine Pride and Prejudice without a stiff-necked Darcy and a stubborn 1800s Elizabeth? Or a Stephen King movie adaptation without rock music?

Hey. Shut up. I think King’s a modern classic, and you will not disabuse me of that notion.

The recent LOTR and Narnia movies kept some of the darkness of the books intact. They had bite–admittedly, in Narnia’s case, all provided by the glorious, incomparable Tilda Swinton. I remember going with my sisters to see Fellowship of the Ring and at the very end, letting out a pent breath. My sisters and I looked at each other, and in chorus we said, “At least it didn’t suck. Thank you, God.”

It’s hard to turn a book into a movie, Lord knows. But to compound the difficulty by trying to pull a classic book’s teeth in the process? That’s just stupid, and wrong, and will turn your movie into a flop faster than Uwe Boll can. It’s just ridiculous.

Part of the problem is, Hollywood is like the publishing industry. It is by default a more conservative beast, because the point is to make money and hence the things that made money in the past are trotted out again. Then you add in the process of making a movie or a book proposal by committee, and you have a piece of work that is seriously watered-down before you even begin.

Conservatism isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I tend to think it creates a counterweight to mad bounding forward that can run one straight into a wall. But too much ballast just makes constipation, and bloat ensues.

Really. *chuckles to self* Trying to make The Bell Jar uplifting. What next? Trying to make Oliver Twist an action flick? Or how about making The Scarlet Letter an HEA? Oooh, or turning Moby Dick into a stirringly-uplifting Gone With The Wind romance with a double-wedding ending and some Bollywood musical numbers?

*stares aghast into space*

I think I need to go back to bed.