The Ready Writer

Oh my goodness y'all.  This movie is a roller coaster! It's hard for me to say that I "liked" it. But I didn't...not like it. It's a bizarre, metaphorical movie. This movie doesn't take place in any specific place or time. It takes place in a large home in the middle of nowhere, and starts with 2 newlyweds, not named, just referred to as Him and Mother. What we know in the beginning is that they are newly married, and he is a poet and she is renovating the house.  There was a fire, and Jennifer Lawrence's character is rebuilding the house from the ground up. Then, a man shows up. He says that someone directed him to this house thinking it was a bed and breakfast. "Him" says that The Man can stay the night, even though Mother seems to not want a stranger in her home (understandably). The next day, a Woman shows up, she happens to be The Man's wife. She is mostly insufferable. She pry's into their relationship, she drinks a lo...

I know I mentioned that the review for "Mother!" would be today, but since that movie is so...intense, I need a weekend to get my words composed.  So in the meantime, I'm giving you a review of Happy Death Day. Also, I know there is a lot of horror movie reviews in a row, but as January is my birthday month, it's easier to....coax? gently force? people into watching scary movies with me.  There will be a lull in scary movie reviews after my birthday. Okay. On to the review. Spoilers ahead. Plot Summary:  Theresa "Tree" wakes up in the dorm room of a classmate named Carter after a drunken binge the night before.  It happens to be her birthday.  She goes through her normal college day, being rude and dismissive to those she encounters. She keeps ignoring her father's calls, throws the cupcake her room mate makes her into the trash, and is having an affair with one of her professors. That night, on her way to a party she is lured into a tunnel wh...

Just to warn you all up front, there are spoilers in this review. Plot Summary: Anna suffers from severe agoraphobia (the fear of the outdoors) and hasn't left her childhood home in 10 years, since the death of her father.  She takes care of her brother Conrad as he suffers through pancreatic cancer and gets her food delivered to her by a food delivery guy named Dan. Eventually though, Conrad dies, but before his death he tells Anna that she needs to forgive their father.  What he should be forgiven fr isn't mentioned at that moment, we just get Anna's stern "no". After Conrad's death, Dan arrives with a food delivery but Anna, emotional and lonely, breaks down. After Dan expresses how he too feels trapped in his current situation, Anna offers him a bag full of money to help him, but he declines. On the day of Conrad's funeral, Anna finds herself home alone, too scared to leave. That is, until 3 men break into her home in search of some money. Th...

So one of my reading resolutions for 2018 is to read outside of my comfort zone.  I joined a fantasy/sci-fi book club (even though I read very little of both of those genres), and I'm specifically trying to avoid horror (though I have a couple classics on my 2018 reading list) because I don't want it to influence my project too much. I also just think that reading outside of your comfort zone can be good. Now, as a librarian and a writer OF COURSE I have the view of "read whatever you want, don't feel like you can't read something or HAVE to read something else", but for me personally, I'm trying to take in as many different kinds of stories as possible. So. My first book of 2018 is "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" by Neil deGrasse Tyson I gave this book 3 stars, which for me isn't a bad number. 3 stars in right in the middle. I liked it, it wasn't my favorite, I probably won't re-read it, but I've suggested it to a c...

Sometimes you just have to reread something to remember why you love it. I was shelving books in the little library I work at, and I picked up a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway.  I haven't read Hemingway in a long long time and as I was holding the bookand remembering a short story that I had read in college when I was working towards my undergrad. I flipped through the book looking for the story: "Hills Like White Elephants" and found it.  I re-read it, and I realized why, after it had been 5ish years since I first read it, why I remembered it. It is just so damn good. I will do my best to not spoil it for you here, you have to read it for yourself. The premise is really simple: two people (a man and a woman) are talking at a Spanish train station while waiting for their train.  That's it.  But it is WHAT they are talking about that makes this story so powerful.  And not just what, but also how.  Again, I don't want to spoi...

2017 was a...rough year.  BUT there were a lot of good stories to come from it, so in no particular order, here were my favorite stories of 2017.  We'll start with the Podcasts: I know I've mentioned this podcast before , but it remains one of the best stories I've ever listened to. It made me laugh, cry, and just generally FEEL (which was hard to do in the numbing shock that was 2017). Even though this is nonfiction, it still influences me and helps me to think about the ways in which to tell a good story.  Told in a similar way as S-Town, Dirty John is an episodic (but limited) nonfiction podcast.  It is about love, deception, forgiveness, denial, and pretty much every other feeling you could feel. You can listen to the destruction that John Michael Meehan causes as the podcast or you can read about him on the LA Times website .  The podcast isn't quite as...lyrical? Poetic? as S-Town, but it's content will make you want to binge it. You...

The first date in the "52 Dates for Writers" book has us "Cook Something Luxurious" Although food doesn't play a major role in my novel, the setting sort of forces me to think about it.  My novel takes place in the "ambiguous south" (or at least the South is a major influence) and food plays a huge role in Southern living. My novel isn't some extravagant adventure story that is going to take my characters into far off lands, it takes place in one little neighborhood in the humble homes of my characters. My characters are middle class. Both parents work, kids go to public school, very similar to my own growing up.  Meals aren't multi-course, fine china events, but they are cooked with love and enjoyed around the table. And while my novel doesn't take my characters on grand external adventures, they sure go on some extreme internal ones. My MC is going to go on an emotional adventure, and it is imperative that my other characters notice...

I really think that in order to write productively you need to have your own space. Maybe your space is the couch or at a specific table at your favorite coffee shop, or locked in the bathroom while your kids are screaming on the other side of the door. That’s okay. You don’t need to have an office to write. This is my space: Sure the furniture is mismatched, and the view isn’t great, and it needs some better storage (and a good vacuuming and dusting) but it’s mine. I can go in there and close the door and write. I can make it smell however I want, I can organize the furniture however I want and I can put whatever I want on the walls. It. Is. Mine. And I hope to use it a lot more in 2018. I spent a ton of time in there during my grad school years doing work and writing papers, but I haven’t done a ton of creative work in there. My resolution is to change that. Words will be written in there. My words. Memento mori &;

It is 2018! There will be some exciting things happening here on the blog. New Things: Book reviews! If you're not following me on Goodreads yet, you should be.  I will be posting reviews of the books I read both on Goodreads and here on the blog.  If you wanna be a writer,  you gotta be a reader. More Flash Fiction! I'm on Scribophile now so if you want small tastes of my spooky short writing - you can find it there or here on the blog. Updates: Twice weekly posts! These will be updates, movie reviews, video game reviews, horror history, and whatever other nonsense I want to post. They will be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am going through this book  so I will record my progress here on the blog too during those Tuesday or Thursday posts. Last thing: 2018 is the year of the (online serial) novel! The first chapters will post THIS YEAR. More teasers to my online serial novel later. Share in the comments what your reading & writing go...