Things I Know I Know

I used to write more about the books I was reading and I'm going to try to get back to that, because although I haven't been writing about them, I have been reading them. Although many of them have not been very good.

However, let's start on a postive note.

Lisa loaned me Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart and I loved it. Loved it. It's not perfect (in spite of its title) but it's very good.

Sometimes I read small press books and think--they should have just resisted the urge to publish this book at all--but not this one. This is a good book.

The main character in Perfect Circle is Will "DK" Kennedy who sees ghosts. "DK" stands for "Dead Kennedy," which is an urge the author should have resisted, though it does have its moments. Will doesn't drive because at night he can't tell the ghosts from the people (the ghosts are black and white, but it's harder to tell at night). He has a basically hosed-up life--dead-end jobs, lousy apartment, ex-wife--which he blames mostly on the ghosts. The family relationships are terrific, most of the characters are more complex than they may seem at first, and the story is about life and living it, about different ways of dying, about how important the way we see things can be, about happiness, about death, and about family.

It reminds me a lot (and not in a plagerism sort of way) of a book I read and loved a good few years ago--Almost Famous by David Small, which I found on a drugstore book rack in some town I don't even remember. Almost Famous is not at all fantastic and isn't, really, even my sort of book, but I loved it a lot when I read it. It was one of those books that you feel different after reading and you're not even sure why (this is as opposed to books that you feel different after reading and you do know why--and I don't mean the ones that make you stupider). Almost Famous is about a guy who was destined for baseball superstardom, got in a near-fatal accident, and has been pissed off about it ever since--without admitting in any way that he's pissed off and pretending that he doesn't care.

Posted by debco at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

--It has rained all--and I mean, all--day today.

--It has also been very windy.

--I took John Henry for a walk this morning when it was only raining a little.

--Billie and I went tracking and I learned something very interesting (I am sure you will all find it interesting too--stop rolling your eyes right now). She has failed the last two tests at the same place and today, despite a really great start where it was clear she had the scent, she also started searching for the corner at just about the same damned place. Now, really, she can't be counting steps, but there's something that's telling here there ought to be a corner _right there_ and I am finally thinking that it's, maybe, not the actual track. Hmmm....something to work on.

--The exploding robots story now contains this line: Okay, first of all, never listen to a man who calls himself Ropy.

Posted by debco at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

--No love for the whiny white professor story. GVG says: 'Sometimes we think we're funny, but we're not.' [Okay, that's actually what boss's boss once told my boss. But it was totally more or less almost like that.]

--Working on a new story that begins: 'On Tuesday, the robots exploded.'

--All the Rage this Year is nearly finished for optimistic definitions of 'nearly' and 'finished.'

--The number of unfinished stories I have sitting around has far surpassed ridiculous. Clearly something must be done.

Posted by debco at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Billie and I were here this morning not passing a tracking test.

Except for the not passing, it was a very nice trip. We drove up on Saturday and stayed at a motel where they asked if Billie enjoyed her stay when I checked out. They also put us in the end room right next to the outside door, which means I avoided the 'people bursting out of their rooms while I'm walking a big dog and carrying a suitcase in a narrow hallway' issue, which, trust me, is not as much fun as it sounds. The motel itself seemed about due for some updating, but those two things made it a very nice place to stay.

We had to be at the park for the 'draw' (the order in which the entered dogs would run the tracks) by 7:30. The motel was about 20 miles or so from the park and, of course, I'd never been to the park before being it was in Illinois and the first time there'd been a tracking test there and all. So, I check out and leave shortly after 6:30 AM and there's no traffic because it's Sunday morning and apparently normal people have other things to do (what those other things are we shall discover shortly) and I make very good time and am feeling pretty good and thinking, jeez I'm going to be arriving at this test embarrassingly early.

So, I get to the main entrance to the park and there's a line of people waiting to get into the park. "What's going on," I ask the two guys at the end of the line. "The park doesn't open until 8," one of them says. "That can't be right," I tell him. "I have to be in there at 7:30." He shrugs. He is going fishing and, plus, he's the guy at the end of the line. I figure that this 8 o'clock rule can't possibly apply to me (since I seriously have to be there at 7:30) so I drive past all the guys with boats waiting in line--and there are at least 25 or 30 of them--thinking well, there has to be someone at the beginning of the line who will let me in. But when I get to the beginning of the line there is a big gate across the road and no freaking way to get in. I turn around (very carefully as there is a big, and I mean big, ditch on one side of the road plus the thirty cars with boats on the other. I tell the guy at the head of the line (who is wearing camo pants, what is that, so the fish won't see him?) that I have to be in the park at 7:30. It is clear why he is the guy at the head of the line because he tells me that there is a back way in and gives me mostly good directions for how to get there. They are only mostly good because although I get to the right road easily enough, I can't actually find the entrance. Thanks to the beauty of cell phones, though, at that point I call the test secretary and she gets me the rest of the way there.

Now, I am no longer embarrassingly early, but rather pretty much right on time. Billie and I draw the first track, which many people don't like, but which I am pretty happy with. Billie starts okay but gets drawn off about half way down the first leg and gets blown off by the judges. For anyone keeping score at home this is where she failed in the last test too.

So, fooey.

However, in tracking it helps to have alternate measures of success, since there is only perfect or failed. This weekend my alternate measures were to learn something and for Billie to have fun. It was a nice day and a nice drive out the day before. It's the first overnight trip Billie and I had been on since she started having seizures. She had a pretty good time tracking--she doesn't care from judges blowing whistles, for her it was just a new tracking field. She met new people, slept the whole way home. I got good advice from a couple of women who have trained tracking champions, ate some good food, spent some quality time outside, and had an uneventful drive home. I kept thinking I should be more disappointed about not passing, but, really, it was a pretty good weekend.

Posted by debco at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, John Henry had his latest followup checkup at the vet school. His lungs are still clear, which means they're not seeing any metastases, which is very very good. It's been almost a year since he broke his leg. He looks good and he acts good and I'm delighted he's still around.

The doctor said she doesn't think he misses his leg. I don't think he even remembers he ever had four of them.

Posted by debco at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Posted by debco at 10:57 AM | Permalink

I walk my dogs all year round in all kinds of weather. In the winter, I'm often the only one out there no matter what time of day. When the weather gets nice, though, there are lots and lots of people out walking dogs and working on their yards and just generally engaged in activities at once nefarious and innocent (ok, I don't really know if anyone in my neighborhood engages in nefarious activities, but the odds are someone does).

So, I came home from work the other day and I let the dogs out and let them in and changed my clothes and picked up leashes and treats and bags and set out with Billie to take a walk.

At the corner of my block, I looked down the street and I saw, on my side of the street, a woman with a stroller and a five year old and a dog. The five year old was walking the dog. Also, on my side of the street was a very large Golden Retriever behind a very small fence. On the other side of the street was a woman with a small-ish terrier. As I stood on the corner deciding where we were going to walk that would, possibly, result in the least amount of barking, a little (little, but not young) newspaper girl walked up behind me.

"I hope there's not going to be a dog fight," she said.

"Well, I don't think there is," I told her.

She then pointed out all the dogs that might start a dog fight--the dog in the yard, the two dogs down the street. Plus, she told me, "There are two more dogs over in that yard. And that house right there has a little dog."

"That house has two little dogs," I told her, trying to be helpful.

She turned this new information over in her mind. "Well, I hope there isn't going to be a dog fight," she repeated, her voice resigned, as if she didn't see any way out. There would, inevitably, in her mind, be a dog fight.

At that moment, the five year old let go of the dog she was holding, which came running toward us. I'm sure, right then, the little newspaper girl was thinking, 'Yup, see, there's always a dog fight.' Disappointingly, or luckily, depending on your perspective, it was Sunny, a dog I know, and she did what I expected she'd do--ran up to Billie, laid down and wagged her tail until her owner retrieved her.

Sunny and her people went on their way, the terrier and her owner went somewhere, the Golden Retriever stayed in its yard, the other two dogs stayed in their yards, the two little dogs didn't even come out of their house.

No dog fights.

But I'm thinking this is my new slogan for certain situations; I hope there isn't going to be a dog fight.

Posted by debco at 09:31 PM | Permalink

To show you that I am endlessly fascinated by many things, I give you the how to tie your showlaces site.

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

--Magic in a Certain Slant of Light was third in the Strange Horizons Readers' Choice Awards. Yay!

--I have been stuck on several stories for days now, but yesterday started a new story called, Sleeping Beauty in Upstate New York with Cows, Pigs, and an occasional Rooster, which I think I can finish this month. The writing will go faster as soon as I figure out what it's about.

--Billie and I are entered in another tracking test in Illinois in two weeks.

--John Henry has his next cancer checkup in two weeks (these are not on the same day).

--For some reason, unknown even to them, the lawn guys fertilized my lawn twice in five days.

--The fence guy told me today that my entire lawn is now considered a front yard by the City. This means that if I didn't already have a fence, I could only have a four foot fence instead of a six foot fence. The City is crackers if they think a four foot fence would be a good thing for my yard to have.

--Before John Henry lost his leg, he would jump up and look at people over the top of my six foot fence.

--Some of these items are related.

Posted by debco at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, I'm reading The Best American Short Stories of 2005 and in the authors' notes, one of the authors says:

What made the fictionalized version of interest to me, in the end, was the turn that comes in the final paragraph--which has nothing to do with my friend's real-life account. Without that final turn, the story might be simply ordinary and predictable. With it, everything that precedes it suddenly shifts into a new conifguration. That turn still surprises me, and I hope it surprises readers too.

But it doesn't. It is totally and amazingly predictable. Because, for one thing, she completely gives away the ending in the title of the story, 'A Taste of Dust.' And even if she'd managed not to spoiler her own story with the title, it's not that surprising an ending. It's like she said, well, it could be either this or that and pickedthat without ever trying to see if there was a third or maybe fourth alternative. The writing's nice and all, but I'm beginning to think that endings are not the strong suit of the lit crowd (okay, if you only read certain SF/F stories, you'd probably conclude that endings are not the strong suit of the SF/F crowd either).

I am very picky about endings (which is very snobby of me considering that I have only recently begun to achieve even half-decent endings to my own stories). A bad ending can ruin a good story for me and even a 'blah' ending can negate most of the great writing, world-building, and characterization that have gone before. But a good ending...wow, it makes everything else worthwhile.

Things that I think make a good ending:

• Completely surprising and totally predictable at the same time
• Resonates with and completes the beginning of the story
• Is fully earned by the characters in the story
• Makes the story make sense in a broader way
• Arises organically out of everything that has gone before
• Completes an emotional arc in some way

A good ending makes me happy to have read the story, whether it's a happy ending or not.

A good ending doesn't have to be happy, but it has to be right.

Of course, none of this says anything about how to write a good ending. Mostly for me, I think it's knowing exactly what the story is about narratively and emotionally.

Thoughts?

Posted by debco at 09:27 AM | Permalink

I promised Chance I would make a post today so I decided to start with the thing that is most boring to everyone but me.

Billie and I were in a tracking test last weekend. First, you should understand that tracking tests are on Sundays and this tracking test was on the Sunday after the Saturday night time change so, you know, a start time of 7:45 AM really means--sure, it's 7:45 AM today, but yesterday the exact same time of day was 6:45 AM. And I don't even hate daylight savings time like some people. But, even so, I don't get all excited about leaving home at 6:30 AM CDT (translation: 5:30 AM just the day before) on a Sunday morning.

So, anyway, it's raining and it's supposed to rain all day, but luckily it doesn't. Even more luckily, five out of ten dogs passed. Unluckily for me, none of those dogs was Billie.

I have been trying to learn this thing where I go with her when she gives the slightest indication where the track goes. This is very hard for me to do. I want her to insist that it's the right way, though I am trying to train myself out of it. A woman at the test (who passed, btw) said, no, that's silly of course you don't insist. But she has a Border Collie and I have a Rottweiler and Rottweilers are Different (yes, it is and I can prove it, plus, I will have Chance get out the SCIENCE if you don't watch it.)

Anyway, I figured we failed because I didn't go with her, so I was disappointed in me, but glad that we were out there and pleased that it was a good track on a decent day and, you know, you take away from it what you can. Later, looking at the map and the terrain and the way the wind was blowing, I realized that it was a little because of me and a little because of her and a little because of the way the land lay and a little because...well, just because.

And that, my friends, is tracking.

We are in another test in a couple of weeks, so keep your fingers crossed for us (it won't actually do any good but think how great you'll feel if we pass--like you totally contributed).

Posted by debco at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)