“One project does not define a career” as Jennifer Hiller tells us in this short story of rejection.
DVD Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood
So I wrote a while back about buying the DVD set of the old English Sir Lancelot TV series, starring William Russell. All in all it was fairly disappointing, compared to my childhood memories. The production values were low, and the plots rather silly.
I expected little better when I bought the complete The Adventures of Robin Hood from the same period (at under 20 bucks a great deal, as it ran 143 episodes). I’m happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised. The Adventures of Robin Hood holds up considerably better than Sir Lancelot, or so it appears as I complete my viewing of the first season.
My main worry was ideological. As is well known, the producers of Robin Hood hired a number of American communists, blacklisted in Hollywood, to write for the series. My occasional viewing of random episodes over the years gave me the idea that party line came out in a number of story elements.
But (at least in the first season) I actually saw little of that. In fact, much is made of the injustice of the Norman’s stealing the property of Saxons (Robin in particular). At one point, somebody even goes so far as to say that unjust taxes are theft. Also, the Church is treated with considerable respect (doubtless in deference to English broadcasting standards of the day). Continue reading DVD Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood
Ah, the Sweet Tang of Sin
From Twitter: @ScottyWardSmith: “May the gospel be the sweetest manna and sin be as rotting lutefisk in our mouths.”
My further adventures
It was a weekend to remember, the second in a row for me. A weekend whose chief feature was that what I expected was almost never what actually happened.
The plan was to visit my brother in Iowa, because my niece and nephew-in-law, missionaries in China, are home on a short leave. The original plan was for me to ride down with another family member who was coming from further north.
But he had car trouble, and had to cancel. So I loaded up Mrs. Hermanson and turned her nose south.
In northern Iowa, near Mason City, she lost power (though the engine continued running). I pulled her over to the shoulder, and phoned AAA. Continue reading My further adventures
Strange goings on
I know only heartache can come from this. I get my hopes up, tremblingly extend my trust, develop confidence over time, and then… it’s gone again. Where I looked for a light respite from the trials and stresses of modern life, there is only the brute word, “Hiatus,” evocative of hernias.
Yet hope persists. And so I share the link with you — Anthony Sacramone’s brilliant Strange Herring blog is back.
For now.
Rejection
Gertrude Stein had a least one manuscript rejected, as you will see in this rejection letter. This is good.
While I Was At the Conference
I don’t usually tell you what I do offline. I’m sure enough connections have been made for an investigator to find me, so maybe I’m just kidding myself about how much distance really have between here and, well, where I am. But I want to point out some articles I’ve written this week on the men’s conference I have been working.
CBMC held a great men’s conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last week with several solid speakers and a moving prayer and communion meeting on the snowy battlefield. Read the overview here. There are other short articles and videos, which you can reach from the Good News front page.
Champion's Books For Writers
Ed Champion is a remarkable reader, critic, etc. (feel free to add to the list of how remarkable he is), and in this interview he recommends books for writers.
Ultimately, a novelist’s job — irrespective of whether she is writing speculative fiction or hard realism — is to understand how human behavior emerges from systematic consequence. If you can generate an atmosphere based on systematic consequence, then your novel will likely feel “real” even if it is set in a land populated by dancing elves or talking fruit.
For plot structure, “read Richard Stark.” For great openers, Burgess, Cain, and Murray have good examples.
Long weekend
I won’t be posting the rest of this week, as I’m going out of town today on a family matter. See you next week.
Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White
Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White, struck me as a fascinating study in excellent story set-up and development, capped by a middling resolution. The amateur psychological wiseacre in me suspects that the author himself must be ambivalent about the kind of stories he writes, and that ambivalence is working itself out in the reader’s sight.
If you’re not already familiar with him, Marion (“Doc”) Ford, White’s continuing hero, is a semi-retired US government commando and assassin, now living in happy obscurity in Florida, making his living as a marine biologist. His peace is frequently disturbed, however, sometimes by other people’s problems which can only be solved with his special skills, and sometimes by a call from his espionage handlers, who still keep him on a slack string.
In terms of creating and building dramatic tension, Tampa Burn is admirable. I thought, as I read, that I’d rarely come across a suspense novel so well plotted. At the beginning, Doc is contemplating proposing to his long-time on-again, off-again girlfriend, Dewey Nye. Suddenly his life is invaded by his old lover Pilar Fuentes, the one other woman he’s never been able to quite get over. She has recently informed Doc that her teenaged son Laken is in fact his (Doc’s) son. Doc has been keeping in touch with the boy, but Pilar has kept him at a distance. Up until now.
Now Laken has been kidnapped, apparently by a mysterious figure known across Central America as Incendiaro—the Burner. He has that name because he is horribly disfigured by burn scars himself, and gets pleasure from watching other people burn. Continue reading Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White