STRANGER THINGS

No, I'm not talking about the DNC.  Sigh.  We used to have a democracy.  Now all we have is a rigged 3 Ring Circus.

The highlight of summer 2016 hasn’t been any blockbuster movie, at least so far.

 Nope, it’s the pleasant surprise that is the new Netflix series, STRANGER THINGS.

It is set in 1983 and though many have mentioned it is a homage to Spielberg, 

it is really more like Stephen King's STAND BY ME melded to his IT.

It is much more about mood and atmosphere and suspense and dread than it is about gore.

It is also about friendship, being a misunderstood outsider, and first love.

 If you grew up in the ’80s, or just love movies from that era,  

Stranger Things will have you hooked, and you’ll likely binge watch the 8 episodes over one weekend.

Not to worry.  

It tells a complete story while leaving enough unanswered questions to spark another season.

 

HAVE YOU SEEN

STRANGER THINGS?

WRITING WITH THE SOLAR PLEXUS

The ghost of Raymond Chandler sat in the leather chair stroking my cat, Midnight, 

who was more than a little rattled to be that close to a ghost.

"I looked you for you all weekend, son.  But you were off on your blood runs.  

You do know Lincoln died to end slavery, don't you?"

Midnight squirmed and popped out of his arms, and I said, "Saturday was your birthday, wasn't it, sir?"

"Yes, and Clemens and Hemingway threw me a party 

where Clemens insisted on only talking about himself and Hemingway kept challenging me to box.  

I pulled out my automatic and both of them became blessedly scarce!"

"Ghosts can kill ghosts?"

"You wrote GHOST OF A CHANCE about it, remember?"

"Even put you, Mark Twain, and Hemingway in it, too."

Chandler nodded, 

"Like me, you sneaked into it a quality which readers would not shy off from, perhaps not even know was there … 

but which would somehow distill through their minds and leave an afterglow."

"I tried."

Chandler shook his head, 
"November is coming where many of your friends will try to vomit as many words as they can a day."

He snorted, 
"I took four months to distill my first short story.  Four months.  I continued to work with painstaking slowness when I began to write novels.  

I believe that all writing that has any life in it is done with the solar plexus. It is hard work.” 

Midnight, over his fright, jumped back into his lap as Chandler continued, 

"Ten years after my first story was published, I was still on the breadline with four novels behind me."

He sighed, 
"I began to wonder if the effort had been worth it. 

But by 1945 cheap reprints of my books were selling in their hundreds of thousands, 

and the critics who had hitherto ignored me were vying to outdo each other with superlatives." 

Chandler snorted, "The world is simultaneously a horrible and beautiful place."

His words made me think of what he had his detective say in THE LONG GOODBYE:

  “I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what’s the matter. You don’t make a dime that way… 

I’ve got a five-thousand-dollar bill in my safe but I’ll never spend a nickel of it. 

Because there was something wrong with the way I got it. 

I played with it a little at first and I still get it out once in a while and look at it.” 

I thought to myself as I watched him pet Midnight 

that the best we as writers can do is make the most of our books, trying to make poetry out of the pulp of our dreams.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

 

WONDER WOMAN meets CAPT. KIRK!

All right I admit I am fickle.

  

Now, I am enamored of Wonder Woman.

 

But so is Captain Kirk.

I am looking forward to this movie as well:

Have you seen STAR TREK BEYOND yet?

If so, what did you think of it?

STAR TREK BEYOND

One of the abiding pleasures of “Star Trek,” in its old and newer iterations, lies in its balance of stubborn consistency and canny inventiveness.
A. O. Scott  - New York Times

The actors, in particular, carry the essence of Roddenberry’s inclusive vision into the present. Star Trek Beyond is designed to dazzle. 

Stephanie Zacharek - Time

A return to fun, and a return to form for the new version of the old Trek. 

The 13th Trek movie is also the second good odd-numbered installment in a row. Lucky for some. 

Chris Hewitt  - Empire

What did I think of it?

INTO DARKNESS almost persuaded me never to see another new Star Trek movie ever again.

But STAR TREK BEYOND has redeemed the franchise for me.  

It tilts the eyes, stirs the imagination, tickles the funny bone, and touches the heart.

What more could you ask for?

This film further develops the Spock/McCoy feisty, funny dynamic from the old series and breathes new life and depth to it.

This is the first film of the three reboots that begins with the full crew, separates them into new teams, and then reunites them --

all the while keeping the momentum going forward in fun, unexpected twists and turns.

"Oh, but it is the same brand going where it's gone before" is one thing some reviews whine.

Not every wheel needs reinventing. 

 Sometimes it just needs a little axle grease and a shine ...

which STAR TREK BEYOND does ... for me.

After all, all I can say about a movie is what it did for me.  

And this movie made me a kid again, enjoying the wonderment of a universe of spectacle and mystery.

And Jaylah is my new Sci-Fi heart-throb.

HOW TO MAKE TIME WHEN THERE IS NO TIME

“The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”
 - Martina Navratilova

Don't you wish you had a time machine?  I sure do.  You could have a 48 hour day every day.  

Think how much you could get done!

Well, there is only one way to get more time -- you take it.

All of us under-utilize time.  

Time we could use for our novels is waiting for us to seize it:

Waiting in line. Time you are in the car.  In the shower.

If we look hard, we can find the time that we are giving away.  

We just have to look for it in the right frame of mind.

There are little slices of time we are letting go fallow.  

Take back a few minutes every day, and you will be surprised how it builds up to quite a chunk of words written or ideas discovered.

If you had a time machine, 

what would you do with it? 

“You may delay, but time will not.”
- Benjamin Franklin

 “Time is what we want most,
but what we use worst.” 
- William Penn 

HOW TO CREATE SUSPENSE

The suspense is killing me ...

The FIRST rule ...

Create characters with such depth and resonance that the reader cares when you place them in jeopardy.


The SECOND rule ...

SLOW BURN.  

The danger must approach relentlessly, slowly, seemingly unstoppably ... then BAM!!

The THIRD rule ...

SIZZLE sells the steak.  

The problem of readers being bored isn’t solved by adding action but instead by adding apprehension. 

Suspense is anticipation; action is payoff. 

You don’t increase suspense by “making things happen,” but by promising that they will.

The FOURTH rule...

FORESHADOW don't TELEGRAPH the danger.

The FIFTH rule ...

Make Death not an IF merely a WHEN.  

Make the suspenseful scene seemingly impossible to get of.

Now, get out there 

and raise some goosebumps 

on your readers!

I'M IN LOVE

Just don't tell John Oliver ...

“It's the most emasculating thing I could possibly do to go out with someone who has actually done something valuable with their life."

 “I can’t come home and say I had a really tough day at work today and see her roll her eyes and go, 

‘Really?’ And she would be like, ‘I can’t imagine how difficult it was for you. You clown!’

Rightly, I have no place to whine about anything. 

That’s the problem with living with someone who has fought a war. You lose the moral high ground.”
 - John Oliver


While she was in high school, she was involved in a terrible hit-and-run accident. She had to learn to speak and walk all over again.

After 9-11, she enlisted in the Army as a medic in response to her horror at what had happened.

How did they meet?

In 2008, John was working behind enemy lines at the RNC for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

When convention security chased after him for entering into a restricted area Oliver, who was still on a temporary work visa,

found himself at risk for potential deportation.

 Attempting to avoid arrest and subsequent Breturn, the reporter and his camera crew happened upon a group of veterans who offered to help them hide.

Yes, you guessed it.  

Among the veterans was Kate Norley.  John worked up the nerve to exchange email addresses with her.

A friendship, then a romance happened.  

He proposed to her on St. Thomas in 2010, and they were married a year later.

Kate did all the painful work again when she had a baby boy with John in 2015.
***
I keep hoping the Western will be re-born as a genre 

(my main hero, after all, is an undead Texas Ranger!) 

This movie looks promising: