Author: Jonathon

Twenty-one pages today. The end game is hard upon me. No television tonight. No movies, unless I’m sure of them. Have seen them before. Nothing that will slow me down, or tire me out. Only stuff that energize. Okay, as much as possible. Real life does have a habit of intruding. Wrote until both my muse and my body were just too tired to keep going. Then visit with the kiddo, before she went to her father’s overnight. I needed to get out of the house at that point. So Jon and I went to a nice restaurant, and had a nice meal. I was so tired that staring off into space felt restful. But at the restaurant when Jon got his notebook out making notes on his stuff, I found my head clawing at some of the questions that still need decided before I can finish A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. So out came my notebook, and I thought a little on paper. I think I have my final line-up for the rest of the book. Eighty-five percent sure of what is going in this book, and what is waiting until next book. The problem with a continuing plot is where to cut the cake so that everyone feels like they’ve had a full meal, but you don’t have a two thousand page opus. The book is going to be close to a thousand pages as is. Sigh.
I’m going to bed now.

OK, Laurell is doing her own rant at the moment, so you’ll either read it after mine, or have already done so. I love multipule computers.
OK here’s the rant. Or more accuratly, a guffaw.
I’ve not laughed this much at a serious movie since Leprechaun in the Hood.
Point One: The opening sequance. If a “normal” human body fell off the top of a building, it would crack the concreat of the sidewalk when it hits. but apparently, the vampires in this world…. oops, Vampyres have the ability to ignore Newton’s Laws. The whole Conservation of energy one. Sorry, my science background makes me question the suspension of disbelife.
Point B: Just how much ammunition are you packing? I think Laurell makes this point succently in her post.
Point eye-eye-eye: (That’s iii for those of you playing along at home; its because I have difficulty sticking to one numbering system.) The trusting Vampire er vampyre… I just can’t wrap my head around that poncy spelling. If you were a power-crazed totalitarian warlord, would you trust another power-crazed totalitarian warlord to share fairly and wake you up when its yourtime to take over? I wouldn’t. I check the alarm in our bedroom every night, just to make sure someone hasn’t fidgeted with it to make me over sleep. I’d be even less trusting if I was a Vampire bent on world domination.
Point delta: (see, that pesky numbering thing creeps up again) Where is the world domination? Exactly what are the vamps trying to achieve with their grand society? I get what the lichen er Lycanthropes were after. They were doing a Sparticus but there needs to be some sort of list of demands… you know, like Martin Luthor or the American Reveloution. I could understand if the slavery was from “a time before time” but for less than a mellinium, please. Four maybe Five hundred years is all this movieis giving the Vamps and fungi to get a comunial society, then throw it down the toilet with a war that the movie states has been going on for over SIX hundred years. Oh, Continuity Checker! I can see the wires suspending my disbelief. It appears that the writer is hanging on one of them and sawing throught it gleefully with his pen.
Point the Sixth: (I’m beginning to repeat myself) Its a minor point, but what’s with all the vamps at the front of the mansion. None of them do a damn thing, even for window dressing. I’m guessing their point of Immortal existance is to stand about like a great bunch of Gits.
Ok, I’m tired and want to go to bed.
l8r

Finally saw the movie Underworld. I’m a little puzzled why there were so many people that thought the movie was based on my books. Other than the main female character being short and dark haired, and tough, there just didn’t seem that much in common.
First, let me say that this movie reminded me why I’ve almost completely stopped watching or reading other people’s vampires. It’s a busman’s holiday, and I don’t enjoy the ride. I spend the entire time complaining.
Complaint number one: The death-dealers, are the equivalent of special forces, or tactical teams with the police. I would be very surprised if anyone associated with this movie had ever studied anything about real tac teams, or real special forces. Nor, had they looked at why there are no fully automatic pistols, like regular pistols, not subbies with pistol grips. The most amount of ammo a pistol holds is thirteen, fourteen rounds. Trust me when I say that fourteen rounds at full automatic goes in the blink of an eye, and you’re out of ammo. Say you modify the clip to do twenty rounds, same dif, you just die a few seconds later. Hell, take a full clip in a real sub-machine gun, put the little sliding switch to full automatic, and pull the trigger. You will run out of ammo in a such a sort space of time. An unbelievable amount of ammo goes through the gun in a frighteningly short time. That is why real tac teams, or real special forces, are taught to use short controlled bursts. It saves ammo, and gives you some chance of knowing how much ammo you’ve used, which let’s you know how much ammo you have left. A very important thing in a fire fight.
The death-dealers in this movie were supposedly doing special forces work for centuries, I will credit them with more competency than this movie showed. The vampires, other than Celine, seemed totally out-classed, and don’t get me started on the scene where she has enough ammo to chop a hole in the floor to escape. If she has that much ammo to spare, then don’t run, kill their fuzzy little asses.
Complaint number two: The running fire fight in the subway. Yes, Celine, does mention later that it was unusual to have the werewolves start shooting infront of all the humans. But how the hell do either the fuzzies or the vamps keep hidden with this kind of shit going on. And may I just say that John Woo has not been a good influence on Hollywood fight scenes. Yes, they are pretty, but style over substance is just not my gig.
And what was with the cadre of vamps in the front room of the mansion? What did they do? What were they there for? Too look pretty? To what?
Complaint number three: Yeah, I believe that a master vampire would allow himself to be put into hibernation, and trust that when his turn came the other vamps would wake him up and let him rule. Sure I do. Machiavelli must be rolling in his grave.
So not happening.
Complaint number four: The final fight scene. If you haven’t seen the movie this is a spoiler alert. Celine uses a sword to cut the bad guy’s head in two. But he doesn’t know it for about a minute. She did to his head what the old Zorro movies used to do to candles. You know where the sword is so sharp, and the swordsman so good, that the candles look solid, and the other guy thinks our hero missed, but the touch of a sword blade, or a breath of wind makes the candle tips fall over. This may work with candles, don’t know, haven’t tried it, but it certainly doesn’t work with heads. I would have been fine with his head being split in two. I would have been fine with him living with the head split in two, he is an uber-master vampire, but flesh is flesh, and physics is physics. Your monsters should as far as possible work like real creatures of flesh and blood.
Complaint number Five: Due to many of the preceding, I at no time felt like any of the main characters were in jeopardy. The last moment of suspense for me was the car accident where Michael our hero saves our heroine. Yes, she saves him more times, true.
The usual complaints. How the hell do werewolves walk on walls and ceilings like flies or lizards? It takes very specialized stuff to walk on walls and ceilings. Yes, mice can do walls, but rarely ceilings, and if you’ve ever watched them do it, it’s not as easy as running along a floor, like most movie werewolves seem to be able to do in defiance of gravity and laws of mass and sturdiness of plaster and wall board. Even if you could come up with a biologically logical way for your werewolves to do the ceiling and wall thing, most walls and ceilings would not support the weight and damage of the claws. Just wouldn’t happen.
I am so tired of watching monster flicks where just because it’s vampires and werewolves, or whatever, that no one seems to care about biology, real mythology, real folklore, real history, real fighting tactics, real weaponry used in a realistic manner, and who decided that to be a vamp you have to have the long black leather, or leatherish coats? Have you ever tried to run in an ankle length leather trench coat? I have. Yes, I own one, as some of you have seen at events if it was cold enough. But one day, at our home, when the puppy , Pippin, was much younger, he got away. Pippin was headed for the street and a car. I started running, full-out, and found instantly that the heavy leather trench hindered me. You could follow me across the snow by the line of clothes I left behind. One of the first things I ditched was the leather trench coat. My hat is off to all the actors in this film that did their stunts wearing the damned things.
Yes, Jean-Claude and some of the other vamps like to look good. Jean-Claude is an incredible clothes horse. But I think he’s only worn an ankle length cloak like anything two or three times in the entire twelve book run of the series. There’s a reason for that. I try to do for the clothes, what I do for the weapons. I research it. Substance over style, people, not style over substance. I’m going to bed now. Jon is doing is own rant about the movie. Tomorrow is another day, and I’m playing with the fey, not vamps until this Merry book is done. Watching this movie did not invigorate me. It made me feel tired. Research. Research. Research. Damnit.

Finished for the day. Ten pages. Tired. My goal in life right now is a hot bath, a good book to read, and not to think too hard for the rest of the evening. Book’s going well. We truly are in the end game rush. Thank the Goddess.
I put up a blog on the soapbox/political blog side. Don’t read it if you’re tired of the media coverage on the tsunami. That’s all I’ll say here. If you want more, read the other blog. I’m going to try and keep this part of the blog lighter, so you can decide how deep you want to think. For me, today, not very. Though, I guess, writing the other blog took more wind out of my sails than I knew, because I am done. Stick a fork in me honey, I am done.
Bus will be here soon. If I’m lucky I’ll have a few minutes to sit and be very still, and do nothing before the kiddo arrives, and the homework is to be done.

I just tried to write a quick note to let everyone know that the book is going well. I’m in the end game. It’s a longer end game with the books getting so much longer, but still I can taste freedom like something sweet and clean on my tongue. Let me add that this was about where I got when the blue screen of death came up, and I got the message that my computer was in the process of dumping my physical memory. Dumping my physical memory! That can’t be good.
I hit the intercom and yelled for help. Both Darla and Jonathon didn’t quite understand me. Voices can be garbled over the intercom unless you annunciate. I guess a panicked high pitch was not conducive to being understood. So they’re both going, huh, what did you say.
I changed my message to, “I need an I.T. person up here S.T.A.T. Help!” That message they got. Jonathon came up, took the blue screen of death quite calmly, and fixed it. I lost like a word of my book file, because I save to server, to disk, whatever, religiously. Let’s hear it for good computer habits. I, of course, lost all the blog I was doing. Anyway, it’s all okay. The emergency is over, but the fact that neither Darla nor Jonathon are certain why it happened is a little unnerving. But every I.T. person I know that is honest says the same thing, sometimes bad things happen and you just don’t know exactly why. Jonathon says that all computers work better at least one or two stories up, because you can always threaten to throw them out a window. I’m not sure that actually works, but I know there are days when the thought is sort of cathartic.

It’s the third of January 2005. Wow another year’s gone by! I don’t really know what to say, except that I hope that this year is as good for everyone as last year was. Yes, last year was not the best of years, but it was better than most.
2004 saw a great many things happen, some good, some bad, most indifferent. If in 2005 we can change the ratio of good to bad, or even good to indifferent, so that there is more good than either bad or indifferent, even by a little bit, it will be a good year.
Here’s to hoping!
Cheers!

OK, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but I finally added some pictures of the dogs to their galleries, mostly its Christmas pictures, but its the season.
Cheers!

Its a new year and we’re all excited about what is coming in 2005.

I hope to post more later today, but I just got up and thought to post this.

Cheers!

Happy first day of Kwanzaa a couple of days late. It was also St. Stephen’s day, when once boys went around with rocks killing wrens, and going around asking for pennies in Britain, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland. Other than the fact that Stephen was stoned to death, I can’t find anything to connect him to the annual avian slaughter. My guess after looking at some old folk tunes is that the wren represented a type of seasonal king. A type of Oak or Holly King, or Greenman. It was traditional that when the sun was reborn that the old “sun” had to die first. We have a remnant of that in America even today. Old father time and baby new year.
To celebrate St. Stephen’s day what I’ve started doing is putting out extra bird food in the feeders, make sure the poor cold birds have fresh water in the new heated bird bath that was one of my Christmas presents. I also put out bird seed wreaths and bells on a special tree in our yard. Our libation tree. Every yard should have a special tree, or two. I feel like helping the birds live longer is sort of a nice way to celebrate what must have once been a grisly day for the poor wrens. Around here we have two species of wren. House wren and Bewick’s wren. Feed the birds, save the wrens, everybody play nice.
I’m back to work.

Trinity has just left with her father to go out of town and see other family for a few days. She was very excited because where she’s going has a very white Christmas. Funny how kids get excited about snow and most adults do not. Kids don’t have to drive in it, I guess. Or shovel it, no if they’re little enough. Our rule is that Trinity must be taller than the shovel to clear snow.
Jonathon and I did brunch with his parents, at their new house, which is only minutes away. Very cool. Then we got to come back and have a relaxing afternoon just the two of us. It was a very nice afternoon. Yes, the dogs were here, but they got to stay down in the livingroom and kitchen and play with all the toys that Santa brought them. We took pictures of all the stockings. Check the Dog’s Pictures for the Dog’s picture with Santa. Its a Four Dog Christmas. St. Stephen’s day is tomorrow, the hunting of the wren.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, everyone be safe.