I come before you once again with a fictional scenario for which I'd like some factual information. We're in the legal realm this time. I know only a little law (for instance, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to run someone over with your car without giving them your insurance information beforehand), so feel free to use small words in your answer.

Scenario: a woman is pregnant and does not want to keep the child herself. She has agreed to let the father, her ex-boyfriend, take the baby. For what it's worth, he says she's free to visit anytime, though she claims she won't want to. What do they have to do, legally, to cement the custody decision? I assume something needs to be signed. Anything more?

To confuse matters, they're both Americans, but the child is born in England. Will that matter?

Further confusing things: ex-boyfriend/current father now has a boyfriend of his own, who, all parents agree, will be co-father. Is this easily covered in the agreement? Does any state (or national or international) agency ever have to step in?

Extra credit question: there's a phase in which it seems like the two guys may have to fight the birth mom for custody. What might they find out if they asked lawyers about their chances of winning? Or would they be better off asking social workers? They live in Seattle, by the way. Presumably that will play out differently than a similar scenario in Mississippi. Assume the mother is basically fit but a smidgen unstable, and would be raising the child alone.

That's all for now. If you read my posts carefully enough, you could piece together the plots of all my novels!

I was discussing writing disappointments on an email list, and wanted to repeat my part of the conversation here. So, for anyone who's interested, here's a quick rundown of some of my bigger writing-world letdowns. This does not even count the hundreds of rejection letters I've collected--some of which arrived a year or more after my query.

- Circa 1999, a small publisher offered me a contract on a novel. Hurrah! I mentioned that offer to an agent, who quickly signed me on. Double hurrah! She then read the proposed contract and noted that the publisher wanted ALL rights--film, TV, all media that's not yet been invented, etc. And they wouldn't budge on it. So we passed on that publisher. Oh, well. She'd find someone else, right?

- Wrong. After about a year, during which time I heard almost nothing from her, she closed the agency, admitting to all her clients she couldn't handle the work and stress. Okay. Back to square one.

- I wrote a screenplay based on that novel. I sent queries to filmmakers. One guy, an indie director, called me and said he liked it. He wanted to option it. He'd send me the contract. OMG!! Hurrah! Only...he never did. I never heard from him again, except when months later he mailed back the script with no explanation. Plus I had to pay the extra postage due before I could pick it up from the post office. You suck, Hollywood.

- In 2002, with epublishers appearing on the scene, I took my chances and queried some. I got a novel published with one. And a different novel published with a different one. Hurrah and huzzah! But a few years and not many sales later, both epublishers folded. I was back to being unpublished.

I still don't have an agent. All the stories mentioned above are still unpublished (in any and all media). But at least now The Wild Rose Press has one of my books out (which is now an Eppie Award finalist), and another in edits, so my spirits are much improved. Maybe someday I'll get an agent too, and Hollywood will come begging for my forgiveness. But even if not, no way are those afore-listed setbacks keeping me from doing what I love. And thank you, publishing world, for helping thicken my skin and force patience into my unwilling temperament.

There's an article about me on the Nights and Weekends site--I'm their featured e-author this month! Come read it and learn who I cite as my influences and what scents I would capture and stick in a bottle if I could.

And since it mentions the occasional perfume giveaways on my blog, let's do one now to reward anyone who comes looking for one...

Today's double header:

Cafe Noir by Dawn Spencer Hurwitz - has notes of bergamot, black pepper, cinnamon bark, pimento berry, benzoin, Bulgarian rose otto, jasmin, labdanum, coffee absolute, tolu balsam and vanilla. A rich, luscious, peppery coffee scent. It is an eau de parfum.

Labdanum 18 by Le Labo - Le Labo Labdanum 18 eau de parfum features the soft, lingering scent of labdanum (cistus) with a slightly animalic base. This is a lovely, intriguing scent.

Both are sampled, but mostly full, 1 ml vials from The Perfumed Court, who provided the scent descriptions above. To enter to win the samples, comment on this post. I'll choose a winner by random number on Sunday. International entrants welcome. Non-LJers too, as always, though you'll have to leave me some way to contact you. Good luck!

It's been weeks since I finished reading Eclipse, but some things about it still bug me. First off, let's admit: the fact that I liked some of it. That just makes the annoying parts more annoying. Why couldn't it just all have been good instead of merely certain scenes? And for the record, the main part I think of as a good read was the strange love triangle on the mountain, the night Bella spent with both Edward and Jacob (in of course a totally non-sexual way), and the aftermath the next morning in the form of snogging Jacob for realsies.

However...blegh, it's such a mess. Edward annoyed me royally in early sections of the book, with his borderline abusive relationship behavior (having Bella more or less kidnapped; stalking her; glaring at her when she dared to see Jacob again...). But at least he recanted later, and I hated Bella for crying all over his shirtfront for seriously about 24 hours straight when she decided she couldn't see Jacob anymore. Dude! You don't do that to your boyfriend. You don't fall in love with anyone else, ideally, but if you do, you don't cry to your boyfriend about giving up Guy #2. It's horrible and cruel and selfish and unwise. Yes, teenagers do it, but it's still all of those things. So, that bugged me a good deal.

The other complaint that keeps returning to my mind is the dialogue. This is the kind of thing I wouldn't have noticed if I weren't a writer myself, but when the characters speak, they all sound pretty much alike. There are several monologues in this book, spots where one character or another goes off into their life story or the story of the Quileute werewolves or what have you, and gosh, they all sound 1) like each other, which is also 2) like Stephenie Meyer's narrative voice as Bella. We're lacking idiosyncrasies; there are no traces of personal turns of phrase and speech habits. Writers can get away with this (obviously), but the fiction is flatter for it.

In all, this series strikes me as the type of junk food you know isn't even all that yummy, but you keep eating it anyway. Like those sugar-free wafer cookies that come in pink, beige, and brown, and feel like styrofoam on the tongue.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in contrast, is like Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos. And sometimes it's as good as the best gourmet brownies you ever had. And, once in a while, it's a delicious full-course meal.

But maybe you prefer those wafer thingies. It's okay. To each her own taste.

Hey writers, does this ever happen to you? You're trying to describe a moment or scene, in your head, mentally groping for the proper, unique words, and your description goes off the rails until you have a contender for the Bulwer-Lytton Awards on your hands. Then, if you're like me, you actually try to turn it into such a sentence and make it as dumb as possible. A couple of examples that have spun out of my brain lately:

- Dale "Gruff" MacCleod knew a storm was coming, not only from the red hue of the clouds in the sunrise over the bay, or his sixty years of sailing experience, but because he had checked the weather report on his iPhone this morning before leaving the cabin.

- The sun's rays spilled over the windowsill, illuminating the bed and the sleeping couple, who lay still and peaceful, Rachel's arm outstretched and her knuckles resting upon Jacob's cheek, as if she had been frozen at the precise moment of punching him in the face.

(Neither of these are real story moments I planned to use. I don't know where exactly they originated, but that's where they ended up. I conclude that you shouldn't start a story with sunrises.)

I should start by saying this ramble comes from someone who hasn't read the whole series yet. I only just started book 3 (Eclipse), and the fact that I picked it up at all after the many annoyances I found in book 2 (New Moon) is at least one compliment I can pay Stephenie Meyer. I do want to know, at least on the surface, in a soap-opera way, what happens with these characters. There's also the desire to obtain the whole picture so I can ridicule it, or at least critique it, better. I admit that. But both desires are there for me, conflicting and warring and sparkling absurdly in the sunlight. I haven't had such a bipolar reaction of being compelled to read more and wanting to smack the author and the characters every other chapter since discovering Thomas Hardy about ten years ago.

As I've recently discussed on Facebook and elsewhere with dirae, kenshi, and others, the "vampiric death = sex" metaphor shines glaringly clear the more you read of the Twilight series. (And it was immediately and almost hilariously obvious in the film, with Robert Pattinson using all his considerable James Dean angst to convey vampire-Edward's difficulty in keeping his hands, teeth, and other body parts off that jailbait girl-crush of his.)

But Edward's way of dealing with it is the dull, mildly religious-conservative route: abstinence only. In some ways I find it refreshing, I suppose; a book for teens that's free of sex, drugs, or swear words. On the other hand...is that really the teen life any of us knew?

When Joss Whedon introduced his teenage heroine (Buffy Summers) to a "nice" vampire (Angel), and later a not so nice one (Spike)--well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer yet (which everyone should), but much more dramatic things happened. Believe me, the subtext of "vampires=sex," and the correlating "sex can equal death," rapidly became text. Buffy's interactions with Angel and Spike illustrated it loud and clear, and with about fifty times as much fascination, humor, and heartbreak as the chilly Cullens have inspired in me so far.

Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite veered other directions with their vampire series. Rice's vampires were, she claimed, chaste, but please; every scene was about how sensually obsessed they were with each other. Brite just went ahead and made her vampires all promiscuous lovers, having them use sex to draw in mortal victims as well. You want a really sharp, horrifying picture of the "vampire sex as death" thing, even involving teenagers, go read Brite's Lost Souls.

For that matter, going back farther, anyone over the age of about 16 who reads Bram Stoker's Dracula can clearly see the Victorian horror of female sexuality inherent in the story. Demure young women get forced to taste blood, and they turn into red-lipped, heaving-bosomed seductresses whom one must stake and decapitate as soon as possible. Yet there's a thrill in it too--everyone knows that Dracula and his she-vampires are considered sexy and alluring, at least in the lives they've taken on outside the book. Within the book itself they're not exactly painted in the most flattering terms. But the fact remains, Stoker isn't afraid to let more bad things happen to more good people than Meyer seems to be. When Stoker writes about his vampire sneaking into a young lady's bedchamber, that vampire isn't there to "watch her sleep." He's there to bite her neck, feed her his blood from his bare chest, and Make Her His.

Speaking of watching her sleep: again, anyone over about 16 who reads the Twilight books is a bit troubled by the stalker-like, semi-pedophiliac nature of Edward Cullen. For whatever reason, it hasn't occurred to young teens on the whole, but a man sneaking into your bedroom night after night, without your knowledge, just to watch you sleep, is scary, not romantic. Call the freaking cops if this is happening to you. Furthermore, we adults immediately find it weird that 100-year-old immortals would want to attend high school over and over, instead of, say, college at least. But you know who finds the scenario just perfect? High school girls, that's who. And that's part of the allure of the Twilight series as a whole: we are entirely locked into Bella's first-person, impulsive, obsessive, honest, female-adolescent point of view. Even when she annoys the hell out of me, I find it weirdly interesting to read what is, in effect, her diary. I just wonder if the books might not benefit from the point of view of an actual adult once in a while too.

(Yes, I hear Meyer's writing a new one from Edward's point of view. But he's not exactly your usual adult, so we'll see...)

On a note unrelated to sex and death, but still related to realism in the teen world, there aren't nearly enough cell phones or computers in Meyer's books. The kids mostly call each other on land lines and pass each other handwritten notes. It's almost as if...gosh, as if the author is someone my age who's remembering how things were back when she was in high school. I still don't text-message, so I feel her reluctance to fake it in fiction. On the other hand, teens are eating this series up despite the anachronism. Goes to show, there's no predicting what will fly and what will crash in the world of fandom.

All the same, vampires have been done to (sexy) death. Guess I'll have to try my hand at making Greek gods, fairy folk, ghosts, or selkies the next hip thing instead.

...MS Word's spell-check "errors" include the following:

texted/texting
oooh
hottie
snog
laddie
ick
yay
ringtone
Spidey
raincheck
crackhead
indie
wifi
kissyface
hickie
ew
ain't
fanboy
eyeshadow
jangly
sucky
bleh
yuckiness
offed (oneself)
Googled
aww
nutjob
microwaved/microwaving
snarky
creeped (out)
wowsers
chitchatty
sexeh
YouTube
stalkerish
winky (emoticon)
righto
grody
iPod
earbuds
spaz
skank
Chapstick
hiya
freakin'
sluttiness
sniffly
hyperdrama
cluelessness
buttload
tard
blissed (out)
slimeball
woohoo
neato

LJ doesn't like most of those either, incidentally. But it allows some of them to pass without the red underlining, so it's apparently a step hipper than MS Word.

Despite Saturday attendance at LJ being historically low, I feel like posting a Buffy ramble. Been too long, right?

I'm rewatching the series slowly, and just saw "Enemies" from Season 3. Though it's an excellent episode, I think it has some of those typical Joss "please ignore that illogical bit" plot points. The mayor hires the blue-shrouded demon with glowing eyes to steal Angel's soul, but at the end we find out blue guy was actually in Giles's employ and thus on "our" side. Fine, and of course I love the line, "I introduced him to his wife," but how did they ensure that the mayor call that particular demon? Was it just luck? Oh, well. Ignore that detail and it's fine.

Of course, a similarly illogical detail hangs at the very crux of one of the best plotlines in the series: Angel becoming Angelus in Season 2. As probably ten million other fans have figured out, Angel's curse makes no sense. Having his soul reinstated so he can suffer forever remembering all the mayhem he committed as a vampire--sure, that makes sense; that's a good curse. But having his soul taken away again is no punishment whatsoever. The second he becomes Angelus, he loves being Angelus. As Angel, he loathes the possibility of this happening, but until it really does happen, he doesn't know it will happen because the gypsies never told him about that Moment Of Perfect Happiness clause.

The curse would have worked a lot better if they had, since then he'd carry around double torture: "I'm doomed to remember all the terrible things I once did, plus I can never be truly happy or I'll turn into a monster again." As it is, he doesn't even realize the second half of that sentence until after Season 2. It's almost like the gypsies planned for him to 1) find out by trial and error, and 2) get his soul reinstated by someone, somehow, so that 3) he could then live in the full torture they intended, with some nice new regrets about how he treated his new friends.

Yeah. No sense. But dang, it sure was a compelling story to watch.

Moving to the "Angel" series for a moment, let's take a minute of silence for poor Andy Hallett. He, as Lorne, and Glenn Quinn as Doyle, played two of the most lovable characters on that series, and now both actors are dead. If I were Amy Acker I'd be worried, since Fred was the only other lovable one. (I rate the rest of the cast as highly likable and/or interesting, but only those three as lovable.)

And then a note on the Buffyverse as a whole:
naill_renfro and I have been discussing the shows in email, and he points out that Joss's characters have some serious father problems. As Naill puts it:

"There's Buffy and her absentee deadbeat dad, Angel and his verbally/physically abusive father (who, as Angel later says, "tasted like chicken!"), Wesley and his abusive father, Kate Lockley and her emotionally paralyzed, criminal father, Xander and his horrible father, the demon father Doyle never met and whom he wishes had never existed, Giles' rejection of and attempt to escape the destiny his father imposed on him... I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but there seems to be a pattern emerging here."

Good point. Add to the list the long-drawn-out Series of Dysfunctional Events between Angel and Connor. We also mustn't forget John Ritter as the disastrous robot suitor of Joyce's, who sure didn't give stepfathers any better a name. We never see Willow's dad to my recollection, and Spike's father was, what, dead his whole life or something? Spike might view Angelus as a father figure early in his vampire career. That's not healthy. And though Giles makes an admirable father figure for Buffy and the gang, it sometimes feels a little un-familial and almost romantic. (Or am I just projecting? Hmm. Moving on...) In all, the Mayor of Sunnydale comes off as the nicest dad figure, in his interactions with Faith, and that whole relationship is, of course, demonic parody.

In fact, aside from Joyce, mothers don't turn out much better. In all the above cases of abuse by fathers, the mothers don't seem to be of any help. We only see Willow's mom once if I recall, and it's when she and the other moms try to burn the town's daughters at the stake in "Gingerbread." Spike's sweet mum had to be staked before she did something really icky to her son. Principal Wood teaches us that Slayers don't make good moms either. Lorne's mother gives him a memorably discouraging (though hilarious) greeting when he returns home. And Darla--well, yeah. At least she was merciful enough to remove herself early from the picture.

Fred's parents may be the only sweethearts in the series, come to think of it.

But then, this isn't necessarily any psychoanalysis of Joss himself. It's just a staple of good drama, going way back to myths and fairy tales. If your parents are always around and always loving, you can't get into many interesting adventures.

Rambling concluded. Go dye some eggs or scarf some Cadbury.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Molly Ringle
Email: writerofirony at earthlink dot net

SEATTLE NOVEL WEAVES TOGETHER GHOSTS AND LOVE



April 3, 2009 - Seattle, WA (USA) - West Seattle author Molly Ringle debuts in paperback this month with The Ghost Downstairs, a paranormal romance novel depicting an unusual workplace relationship in a house whose spirits refuse to rest.

The idea of setting the story in a former sorority house stemmed from Ringle's college days. She was a Tri-Delta in a huge old house that was, according to some members, haunted.

"The idea of who would be haunting a sorority and why stuck in my mind," Ringle says. Her house position as recording secretary led her to the file archives one day, where she discovered meeting minutes from the early twentieth century. She was intrigued by the strict rules the house once had regarding houseboys, college men who work in sorority kitchens. "The girls were expressly forbidden to interact with them, but I'm sure they did anyway," says Ringle. "So I took that, plus the ghost idea, and made up a story."

Though Ringle's sorority was at the University of Oregon in Eugene, she relocated the story to her adopted hometown of Seattle, and gave the fictional former sorority new life as a nursing home. Into this facility arrives the main character, Lina, a nurse moving in to assist the elderly residents.

Lina finds anything but peace. She soon hears of ghosts haunting the house, and of two tragic deaths that took place in the 1930s, when the house was still a sorority. Unexplained events lead her to ask questions of a handsome younger coworker named Ren. But Ren holds his own secrets, and the closer Lina gets to him, the worse the paranormal activity grows.

"In my own mind it's like a modern, supernatural Jane Eyre," Ringle says. "But others have told me it's like Twilight for grown-ups--with ghosts instead of vampires."

And at that old sorority house in Eugene, did Ringle herself ever see any ghosts or mysteriously levitating books? She smiles. "None. I apparently don't have the sixth sense. That's fine with me. My imagination's enough."

More about Ringle and her writing can be found at her site, http://www.mollyringle.com.



* * * *

Ordering information for The Ghost Downstairs:
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
ISBN-10: 1601544472 ISBN-13: 978-1601544476
Available through Ingrams, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other distributors.

The Ghost Downstairs is officially released tomorrow! Very exciting. But apparently Amazon's already shipping the paperback to people, so order right now if you like. Barnes & Noble probably is too. If it's the ebook you want, wait a day. Don't worry, I'll remind you. Also keep in mind that by ordering it you can win a Sony eReader.

In the meantime, my mom whipped out a poem for the occasion in probably two minutes flat. She's eccentrically talented that way. Here it is in its silliness for your enjoyment:

Looking for excitement? There's
A great book called The Ghost Downstairs!
'Tis witty, scary, not pedantic,
Spooky, eerily romantic!

You think you've met attractive men?
They're all fools compared to Ren,
Who was a houseboy way back when
They had such things upon the scene
At old Tri Delta in Eugene,

But now have mostly disappeared -
Unless they turn up, sad and weird
Doing things most unexpected,
Hope the guy gets resurrected-

OOPS - don't give the end away!
Better order yours today!
(The author's name is Molly Ringle -
Sorry, guys she's wed, not single.)

---

Thanks, Mom. :)

"...when I have read a long novel, when I have entered systematically into a sensibility that is alien to mine, the author's or a character's, when I have become interested in another person because he is interesting, not because he is privileged or great, there is a possibility that at the end I will be a degree less self-centered than I was at the beginning, that I will be a degree more able to see the world as another sees it. ...

When I've read lots of long novels, I will be trained in thinking about the world in many sometimes conflicting ways. ...Perched on the cusp between the particular and the general, between expertise and common sense, the novel promotes compromise, and especially promotes the idea that lessons can be learned, if not by the characters, then by the author and the reader."

- Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, pp.175-176

Yeah! Amen!

In reading this book so far, I've actually wanted to quote her and say "Yeah! Amen!" about a hundred times. But I'll restrict myself to this one for today.

An email from the LJ turns 10 moderator person...

Dear Esteemed LJer,
As you may have heard, Live Journal is turning 10 next month—and one of the ways we’re celebrating is by publishing a beautiful anthology that will highlight 100 favorite journals and communities from over the past decade.

That’s why we’re writing: your LJ is on our shortlist for possible inclusion in the book! Congratulations! If your entry makes the final cut, you’ll receive a $20 LJ gift certificate—not to mention that you’ll have one of your LJ entries highlighted and preserved for all time in the Live Journal 10th Anniversary Anthology.

The entry we’re considering is:
http://lemonlye.livejournal.com/85020.html

(etc.)

Cool! And it wasn't even one of my parodies. Heh.

----
As a sidenote, ZOMG I'M ON AMAZON!1!!1! AND BARNES&NOBLE!!!

Ahem. I'll announce that more coherently tomorrow, perhaps.

...Or at least, badly cooked biscuits.

Writing recipes is not a form of writing I usually think much about, except when it's done badly. Here is your forum for complaining of recipe-writing errors, confusions, or just general weirdness. The two examples that come to mind from my own experience are:

1) A recipe for Greek meatballs, which called for a couple of fresh tomatoes, "shredded." How, I ask you, do you shred a fresh tomato? (The sad thing was, I actually tried. Don't. Just don't, ever.)

2) Recipes that wait until the last line to tell you something that would have been best to know in the early stages. For instance, a buffalo wings recipe I used recently included the recipe for the sauce, of course, and listed those steps after the whole chicken preparation part. That'd be fine, except the last line? "Cover and chill [sauce] for 2 to 4 hours." Would've been good to know two to four hours ago, thanks.

What are your recipe complaints?

I've written condensed parodies for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows as well--books 6 and 7. I clearly do things in the wrong order. But I'm beginning to remedy that. Below is my condensed version of Sorcerer's Stone. Eventually I'll get to the other four.

Special thanks to lalael for sending me a copy of the book!

-----

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE (or PHILOSOPHER'S STONE if you want to get technical), condensed
By Molly Ringle
(with apologies and only the nicest thoughts for J.K. Rowling)

CHAPTER ONE

NUMBER FOUR PRIVET DRIVE

MR. DURSLEY: (grumbling to self) Dratted weirdos in pointy hats and cloaks everywhere today...invading my personal space, calling me a Mugger... And cats! Cats staring at me!
MR. DURSLEY hurries into his house.
EVENING NEWS ANCHOR 1: Sure are loads of owls, shooting stars, and plagues of locusts soaring through the skies tonight, eh Jim?
EVENING NEWS ANCHOR 2: That's right, Ted. Quite the amusing day. Expect tomorrow we'll have the Thames running with blood. (congenial laughter) Right then, the weather report. ( Read more... )

One more item about me and my writing, then I'll be quiet about it for at least a week, I promise:

Over at the Wild Rose Press site, my Free Read is now available for downloading. It's a short piece of romantic-ghost-story fluff called "The Man in the Rain," just in time for Halloween (even though I set it in April for some reason).

To get it, you have to go through the procedure of putting it in your shopping cart there, and checking out, but of course you don't actually pay anything. I imagine they do it that way to keep track of downloads better. So, go read, if you have the stomach. And have a good weekend!

I've just finished proofing the (electronic) galleys for The Ghost Downstairs (yes, I'll tell you once I have my release dates), so it's time for some lightweight material. What better for the occasion than this long, but hilarious, thread on the phrases in romance novels that drive readers crazy?

Considering it goes on for 700 comments and still running, I haven't read them all. But some of my favorites are:

"man-root"
"burning sword of his manhood"
a character having violet eyes (A peeve of mine for sure. I have never seen anyone with violet eyes.)
bodies turning to "molten lava" during sex
"laving" of nipples
"going blind" during sex (one reader writes, "all I can do is hope she isn't actually suffering a retinal detachment")
"releasing his boiling tribute into her"

Yikes. I better stop there before this post becomes unsuitable for minors.

How much do you remember about learning how to read?

My mom asked me that recently, and for me the answer is "Nothing, really." I was quite young; two or three, maybe. Now my son appears to be following in my footsteps.

At age two and a half, he's already stopping to point to letters and numbers on signs or cars or anywhere they appear, and reading them aloud. So far it's mostly just the individual characters ("F! O! R! D!"), but in at least two cases he's remembered what the whole word is. (Those two cases, in typical negative two-year-old fashion: "No" and "Stop". Well, they're both on signs on lot.) We iz proud parentz!

In not exactly related news...

Analyzing my webpage hit statistics shows clearly that the old parodies are really what people still come to read, both the Lord of the Rings film ones and the two Harry Potter book ones. This indicates to me that the smart thing to do, self-advertising-wise, is parody the first five HP books too. So, eventually I'll get started on that. Anyone have an extra copy of Sorcerer's Stone they want to send me? I borrowed the first three books when I read them.

Maybe I'll even get the first one done before the next film comes out. Which, at this rate, gives me plenty of time.

Woohoo! At TheNextBigWriter.com, my short memoir piece "I Ought to Send That Bitch a Thank-You Note" was chosen as one of the ten to go into the My Writing Life book project, which the site is putting together. I don't know much about the book yet, but it sounds like the kind of thing that wouldn't look too bad on the CV.

Some of you got to read the piece here on my LJ, but I've had to lock the entry, since I'll be signing a contract giving the online publishing rights to TNBW. If you didn't see it, it basically said, "I started writing novels as 12-year-old in a jealous snit, and my early works were laughably bad, but in the intervening two decades I've learned a few useful tips on the craft, such as 'Don't quit your day job.'"

In any case, it was a lovely surprise and a nice birthday present to boot. (I'm about to turn 33. Give me virtual chocolate and picspam!)

The premise of Brigadoon has plot holes big enough to drive a horse and carriage through. Anyone who has worked on the play, seen the movie, or ever heard of the plot has seen the immediate problems with the set-up.

Even assuming the magic is possible--that a village in the Scottish highlands could vanish in the 1700s and reappear for one day every hundred years, its inhabitants looking more and more anachronistic with each reappearance--the timeline still makes no sense.

If it were the 1700s when this miracle got instigated, and it's the 1900s when our two American heroes stumble upon Brigadoon in its one appearance during the twentieth century, then gosh, let's do some quick math: In Brigadoon time, the miracle began two days ago. They're placidly walking around as if totally used to it, when anyone who truly lived in such a place would still be going, "Holy *^&@! It's seriously another hundred years later out there?"

Couldn't they have made it reappear, say, every twenty years? Then at least it would have been going on for ten days in Brigadoon time; and twenty years for the outside world is still enough time to be a romantic obstacle.

For that matter, if it's such a remote village, and the citizens are not allowed to leave it, how do they even know the miracle's working? If, in Brigadoon time, no one from the outside showed up yesterday (i.e., the one appearance in the 19th century), how would they have any idea whether a hundred years had really passed or not?

Also, the linguist in me can't help pointing out in this and in all other time travel stories, there's no way the inhabitants of an 18th-century Highland village would be easily understood by 20th-century Americans, or vice-versa. The dialogue really ought to be all:

FIONA: I'se gang wi' thee, lad.*
TOMMY: Sorry, what?

In short, if I'd come up with the idea of Brigadoon, I would never have written it, because all the practical difficulties would have doused my inspirational spark within five minutes. Surely the difficulties occurred to the actual writers too. So how did it get written?

My conclusion: the story is romantic, and the music is great, so everybody dismisses all the outrageously bad plot devices and enjoys the show. It's totally unfair, the passes that musicals get as long as the songs are good.

On the other hand, maybe it means I shouldn't stress so much about believability in my stories, especially the ones with paranormal elements. Readers or viewers want their disbelief suspended. They only ask that you help hold it out of the way with your delightful storytelling, no matter how ridiculous.

Good to know.

Waitin' for my dearie (to get home from work),

Mol

*Stolen shamelessly from a Robert Burns poem.