Happy Squamous B-Day

The eldrich horrors in my head compel me to say, "Happy birthday H.P. Lovecraft." May your angles never be Euclidian.

Sweet Esoteric Order of Dagon, WTF is this?

(via Matt Staggs) Someone has been naughty and I really wish they would have been nice. They made a travesty movie called "Cthulhu." As most of you know, I have a deep and abiding interest in such subjects. However, this isn't about Cthulhu, this is about the Deep Ones. From "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (if memory serves) comes this retelling. Certainly HP's writing would need to be 1) modernized and 2) have real dialog added, but I'm not sure this is the movie that does it well (take a look at the "awards" screen, recognize any of those? I didn't even know there was an HP Lovecraft Film Festival). And can you really trust a movie that has the wrong frickin' title?

When will someone make "At the Mountains of Madness" (although wiki says it's for 2010)? When I saw the opening of the trailer to "Aliens vs Predator" I was all happy, until I saw what it was really about? I guess "Shadow Over Innsmouth" is one of the few stories that could be made into a movie easily (most would make excellent short films, although some of the FXs budget would be exceedingly high, "Color Out of Space" anybody? "Rats in the Walls"? " "The Dunwich Horror"? Although Night Gallery did "Pickman's Model") Although looking at the wiki article on HP, I guess a lot of his stories have been adapted ("Shadow" and "Dunwich" being the most adapted stories). I'm so behind the times.

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

Well, tried to get work done this weekend, and did a lot of little things, but not anything major. Rewrote parts of "History of Lightning" (yes, it's not done, but I cleaned up some of the language getting back into the story).

Kristin Nelson is spilling the beans about young writer mistakes. Here, and here, once you get over those there's this, a riff on titles, and don't do first chapter info dumps. I've been guilty (and continue to be guilty in some ways) of all of these. Including my favorite, substitution of dialog for action (including the recent "History of Lightning", yeah, part of what I fixed).

John Scalzi takes the Whatever on summer hiatus and then promptly reminds us all that Tor.com is finally open for business including a new short story by him and a Laundry story from Charlie Stross. john goes off to work and finds the rest of us another time sink. So there was another hour of not getting work done (I love me my Cthulhu/Laundry universe, Atrocity Archive is one of those books I was halfway through and thought, "Damn, I wish I could have written this."). Patrick Nielson Hayden gives a sort of mission statement.

Next weekend is Confluence, which (as long as the waters don't rise) I'll be attending. If you're in the Pittsburgh neighborhood and want to attend a very cool writing (and filk) focused con, Confluence is some great fun. I need to rewrite some poetry with notes from the critique group in case they have an open poetry session (like last year). Also I get to catch up with some very cool people I know who attend (and whom I met there a few years ago).

I need to write a bio for ConClave. Was going to do that this weekend, and I've had some ideas (yeah, like I'm going to write a serious one). It also would be good to have since most of the magazines I've submitted to recently have asked for one as well (you know, like if I get published).

Finally watched "Pan's Labyrinth" last night. Wow. There is so much going on in that film, and it looks fabulous. I mean, really, it's gorgeous. The story travels some well worn paths of fairy taledom, lost princess, special sight, rules not obeyed, magic, and finding your true way through the world. It is by no means a children's story, although it revolves around a child. It is brutal in some places, and implicates more brutality off screen. Just like Hamlet, most of the main characters find themselves dead at the end. Still, I recommend it.

Old Miskatonic U

One of the people I introduced myself to at Confusion was William Jones. Bill is an editor for some magazines I've submitted to, and from the panels I saw him in he seemed like a cool guy, so when I had a chance I went up and said, "Hi, I'm Joeblow Neo-pro and I just wanted to introduce myself..." . One of the things I like doing after meeting people is to look and see if they have a blog, and sure enough, he's got one. He is also running a contest for blog posts about ol' MU. It's a Lovecraft/Cthulhu/Horror thing. So, if any of those writerly people I know out there are looking to scratch a particular itch they maybe having, high thee hence and get a blog posting.

Oh, and for my entry, I only rewrote it twice. Fairly quick for my work, but I wanted to keep that raw blog post feel. If I rewrote it again I think I would have started to smooth it out too much (I already had to stop myself on the second rewrite).

Holy Great Pumpkins!

Acording to Jeff VanderMeer, yesterday was International Cephalopod Awareness Day! So, probably like me, you're going to spend today buying Belated Happy ICA Day cards and getting them in the mail. I guess I spent yesterday in the wrong patch being as sincere as I could be. Instead I should have been swaying to the rythms of the waves and chanting my sincerety to the seas.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. (Call of Cthulhu)