salymander is the 200th person to flist me. salymander, if you wish to email me your mailing address to cemurphyauthor at gmail dot com, I'll send you a signed copy of whichever of my books you like. Except if you want URBAN SHAMAN you're going to have to wait for me to get my act together and get more copies of it myself.*pauses to go email the right person to get those*
There.
Um. What else. Writing: two steps forward, one step back. Which is better than the other way around, I suppose, but I wrote about 9 pages and deleted 4 or 5. Probably 2500 words; 2K forward, then stitching things together in the stuff I cut out. I have had *enough* of fixing the damned setup now, please. Frustratingly, I wasn't sure about the stuff I'd written today, but when Ted and I walked into town today I flung myself on his plotty mercy and he helped me figure out that what I'd written was okay and how to make it work with ongoing conflict and problems. I may have to suck his brain again tomorrow, though, 'cause I only half remember it right now.
Speaking of Ted! Ted has a JOB! He's going to be working at the Commodore Hotel in Cobh, and there are more details on his LJ. Yay Ted! *beam* We're pretty pleased about this! Yay!
Hm. Oh yes, the last thing was that nigh unto a year ago,
debela sent me the first 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls, on the logic that I would probably like it. Given that aberdeen, whose media tastes largely coincide with mine, adores it, and that agrimony squees happily over it, this was a fairly safe bet. I've now watched the first 4 episodes. Generally I do like it very much, in fact. My first impression was that it was Sorkin Light: I spent the first two episodes in particular waiting for the banter to get up to speed. It's like watching week 4 of a 6 week rehearsal process: everybody knows their lines, but they haven't got the snappy comeback speed quite down yet. They're picking up, but I kind of figure I'll stop noticing it before they're really up to speed.
Lorelai makes me want to smack her; Emily is less dreadful and more sympathetic than I expected, even if she's incredibly annoying; Rory is *slightly* too competent, but I think that's actually because the relationship with her mother is so weird. Her fairly regular method of ending conversations with, "I'm going inside now," or, "I'm done talking about this," is ... not teen-like to my mind. But the relationship is an odd one, and she's pretty clearly the maturer half of the family, so I'm not too critical about it, and besides, I like Alexis Bledel very much.
I have the vague idea if I'd seen Northern Exposure I'd be more charmed by the Gosh They're Quirky townfolk. The harp player is too strident to be funny; the chef is too neurotic and accident prone to be believable (possibly because I live with one), though I like her relationship with the poor grocer. I do rather like the enormously fat ballet teacher, who reminds me of someone in Kenai. Luke, whom I presume is Lorelai's long-term love interest, works for me, mostly for his absolutely dead dry expression of horror when Rory blissfully says, "Sure, I knew that," about golf courses being insanely bad for the environment but she went golfing anyway. :) And Michael, despite being completely over the top, is awesome. I just sort of feel like they're trying too hard to People The Small Town With Darned Original Small Town Folk.
Despite these complaints, I'm enjoying it thoroughly (it's more fun to like something you can complain about!), and it's made me laugh out loud more than once. I shall continue apace, and perhaps by the time I'm done with the first 3 seasons the rest will be out. How many are there, anyway?
(Also, season 4 Alias has got nothing on seasons 1 and 2, or even 3, for that matter, at least not 6 episodes in.)
miles to Isengard: 139
ytd wordcount: 195,500
