Sunday report

As I might have predicted, that "giving up tea" thing was a bust. In the words of Bertie Wooster, "until I have had my early cup of tea and have brooded on life for a bit absolutely undisturbed, I'm not much . . . for the merry chit-chat." (Or the merry anything, actually--it's my sole source of caffeine.) So, for the sake of my family, I've settled on one small cup a day, with a drop of milk and no sugar. For me, that's pretty austere.

If you're a fan of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, I highly recommend this post over at Gaudium Dei: http://www.gaudiumdei.com/2012/02/priests-are-scary.html (I can't make the link work--must be something wrong with my computer. Paste it into your address bar.)

In fact, I highly recommend any post over at Gaudium Dei. Joseph Jablonski and David Birkdale are giving me hope for my generation with every new post. They're shrewd, funny and resourceful, and if there's any place on the internet you should be frequenting during Lent--in fact, during the entire Liturgical Year--it's their blog.

On a writerly note, this post is making me consider digging out a "Screwtape Letter" of my own that I wrote last year. Maybe I'll air it out on the blog one of these days.

Until next Sunday - God Bless.

Off the Internet for Lent

Also off tea. Tentatively. We'll see if I survive the first week.

I may pop in on Sundays to check things out. Meantime, enjoy Ash Wednesday, and God Bless.

"Please, Jeeves"

I am very happy right now, for several reasons.

1. My latest obsession, Jeeves and Wooster, has its own manga series.

2. It's an excellent manga series with dead-on perfect illustrations, stories and dialogue lifted right from the short stories, and facts pages at the end with information from the Wodehouse Society and photographs of the actual places where the stories took place. And it was clearly written and drawn by people who love what they're doing.

In fact, the only problem a chappie could possibly have with "Please, Jeeves" is that it's too dashed short.

I'd actually been thinking what a great anime Jeeves and Wooster would make. Anime and manga is, as a whole, surprisingly fond of "wealthy English gentleman" humor. (I think the artists just like to draw all those great sleeves, ties and tophats.)

If you like, you can read it here.

Now someone please make this into an anime.

quick post

In one of my favorite Krazy Kat strips, the mouse asks the Kat if he's been keeping a diary these days. "Not these days, Ignatz," the Kat replies. "Because s'all I can do to keep myself."

Well, that's a nice convenient explanation for my lack of blog posts this past month. (The real explanation is probably something more like "I've been reading ancient comic strips when I should be getting some writing done.")

Lately I've been wondering just how much Google knows about me. Creepy, the way this company seems to have a claw in every area of the internet. Including this one. That's right, my literary haven, my sweet new little Blogspot blog, is accessed via my Google account. I fully expect to have it deleted and purged after Google's totalitarian regime takes the reigns of the world.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But I'm kidding with a tremble in my voice.

Characters as Chemicals

One of my favorite examples of character chemistry comes at the beginning of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The author explains that Bilbo is a hobbit, and hobbits are, for the most part, easygoing little creatures that love nothing better than their comfy, ordinary lives and avoid adventure like the plague. Bilbo is no exception, a textbook hobbit--but wait, his mother was from a family of rather notorious hobbits who were famous for their wild adventures. So he's got that blood in him--a tiny little bit of adventure. Maybe it's dormant, maybe he's aware of it and in denial, but Tolkein makes sure we know that it's there.

In comes Gandalf the wizard--and before anything even happens, the author makes sure we know that Gandalf is a legend. He roams the country shrouded in mystery, tales are told about him…but most importantly, adventures happen everywhere he goes. He causes them with his mere presence.

So here's an determinedly ordinary guy with a little bit of potential adventure in him, and he's about to meet an extraordinary wizard famous for causing adventures. It's as if a person with a tiny bit of kerosene powder in his bloodstream is about to meet a pyromaniac. What's going to happen?

The answer is predictable. It's also unpredictable, hilarious, exciting, terrifying, and incredibly satisfying. In fact, the answer is the entire story.

So here's the cure for writer's block--make your characters into chemicals that compliment and contradict each other, and then put them into a vat, snap the lid, give it a shake, and throw it as far as you possibly can, cackling with maddened glee.

If you can turn out characters so fiendishly potent that you just can't wait to combine them, you're probably a very successful author.

This is my new blog

It might still change its name. Or its color. Venturing onto "settings", I was delighted to find that I could alter my background to match any color of sherbet ever craved by a mortal tongue. But this one will do for now.