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My 80s Childhood Scarred Me

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Cute, plucky kid who went through some mighty  disturbing shit.   When I was a kid, for one year, I had a stalker.  I don't know how or why, just that an older man became interested in me and would call my house on a semi-regular basis.  When he got me on the phone, he would ask me questions in a very creepy voice that I still remember to this day.  He claimed to be a friend of my father's, yet when I gave the phone to my dad, he would inevitably get a dial tone.  One day it started and then one day, just as mysteriously, it stopped. And I didn't think about it again for years. Until recently, when I stopped to think just how fucked up that was.  Where were my parents?  I never answered the phone, so how did they just decide it was okay for an adult male to speak to their child?  My mom claims that she doesn't recall that sequence of events at all.  I recall as a kid feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn't understand it. The question is why,

Novel Update: I Came, I Saw, I LitCrawled

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So last Saturday, I had what might be considered my first promotional event. Saturday night marked the end of a full week's events in the San Francisco Bay Area known as LitQuake .  LitQuake is some sort of harvest festival for people who love to read.  I really don't know how else to describe it.  It started with a an official launch party on Friday the 10th, then showcased reading and writing events all over the Bay Area.  The piece de resistance was LitCrawl , a 3.5-hour event in San Francisco that was capped with a closing party. LitCrawl occurred in phases.  Phase One lasted from 6 to 7 pm.  Phase Two lasted from 7:15 to 8:15 pm.  Phase Three lasted from 8:30 to 9:30 pm.  My reading was part of Phase Three.  Each Phase took place in two dozen different San Francisco venues, mainly along Valencia Street between 16th and Mission and 21st and Mission.   How did I volunteer to be part of such a massive event?  Mainly by accident.  I was at a Historical Novel Society

Blog Update: Time For My Usual "I'm Still Here" Post

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Once again, with new job and lots of writing stuff going on, I haven't had time to do a lot of updating.  Next week I will be taking part in the San Francisco Lit Crawl , which I will blog about afterward, and I have various other posts in progress.  One thing I'm going to do not this month, but when it finally concludes (sniff!) is a revisiting of my The Legend of Korra post , to give my expanded thoughts not only on the series, but on the entire Avatar  universe as a whole (including Avatar: The Last Airbender ).  In the meantime, enjoy this trailer from The Legend of Korra , Season Four.

Les Miserables the Movie: The Rewatch

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I had no special reason for posting this, except that I decided this past weekend to rewatch the Les Miserables  movie, having not watched it for a while.  I was curious to see whether my impressions of it have changed. Overall, while I'm not as wildly over the moon about the Les Miz  movie as when it premiered, I still find it to be a worthwhile production.  Several have criticized Tom Hooper for failing to go larger than life with it, like in the stage production, with a barricade the length of a football field.  However, I think his choice to make it gritty and closer to the source material is commendable.  It would have been easy to follow the blueprint of the glossy costume musical, where the peasants' clothes glow brightly, there is not a speck of mud on the ground, and the players mime along to lyrics during elaborate dance numbers.  Hooper made some notable deviations, and they mostly paid off.  If his choices aren't better valued, it may be for the reasons I cr

Through an Introvert's Lens: Roseanne

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For about its first five seasons, Roseanne  (1988-1997) was a revelation.  Those put off by Roseanne Barr's abrasive personality missed one of the few television shows (let alone sitcoms) to portray family and the working class in a realistic manner. You just didn't see shows like this on the air.  Its fellow sitcoms included The Cosby Show  and Growing Pains , both shows involving well-to-do families with large, impossibly neat houses.  Whereas Roseanne and Dan Conner's house looked like the house you might have : an old, faded afghan covering a worn-out couch; magazines strewn over the coffee table; odds and ends crowding a desk in the background. And their family seemed like one you (or *cough* at least I) might have as well.  Not one where the kids were endlessly subservient to, and stupider than, the parents, like on The Cosby Show .  Becky and Darlene fought with their parents, sometimes viciously.  They fought with each other the same way.  They frequently deri

How to Reduce Your Novel By 50,000 Words in 50 Easy Steps

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Okay, so it's not quite 50,000 yet, just about 48,000.   My neo-Victorian novel stood at 174,000 words at its longest.  Now it's just under 126,000 and falling.  The goal is to get it as close to 120,000 as possible, or even lower, without killing it. So far, with just under 6,000 to go, the novel still lives.  So how did I do it?  It's easy! 1.  Read through your entire book, snipping extraneous "even"s, "that"s, "only"s and other filler words that don't alter the meaning of the sentence if removed.  That's good for 1,500 or so. 2.  Read through your entire book again.  This time, on top of snipping extraneous words, snip certain extraneous sentences as well.  Now you've cut almost 6,000 words from your novel.  Wow! 3.  Cut a short chapter that, though it provides character moments, disrupts the flow and doesn't really add anything to the story overall.  So out it goes, all 2,000 words of it.  Goodbye fun little cha

Unpopular Opinion: Take Your Fad Diet and Shove It

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Two unpopular opinions in a row?  Can the universe hold? Eh, I was having a bit of a dry spell for a while, unable to think of anything I truly liked or disliked that most other people felt the opposite way about.  Then I remembered one of the most personal aspects of life, the one thing most likely to spur strong opinions. No, not motherhood. I'm talking about diets.  "But it's not unpopular to hate fad diets," you say.  Unless they're the ones you swear by. I should back up and explain.  Now and then, I have digestive ailments, and I am sensitive to a variety of foods.  Tired of dealing with the issue, I went to a nutritionist at my glorified McDonalds of a hospital network, who determined that I was gluten sensitive.  (As to why I was not simply referred to a gastroenterologist?  My hospital network demands that you jump through hoops first, including attending a special class and then seeing a nutritionist.  Because going to a GI doc right away woul