Fall's always hard for a gardener philosopher. This one is more so. Somehow, my life appears to have gone a bit wild without first getting my expressed consent.  Some of the craziness is my own choice, some isn't. In any case, for the last bit, I've been feeling overwhelmed emotionally and intellectually and creatively. So today's blog? SHORT! UPDATES! ADVICE!

Update #1: I am officially declaring my beta-draft ready for my beta-readers. (This is probably something like my sixth or seventh draft.) I will be sending it out to my potential beta-readers today.

Update #2: I've incorporated a blog into one of my classes, Telling the Story Queer, a first-year seminar that's focusing on story-tellers who break narrative conventions. As a way to make student writing more real, (i.e. not writing to an audience of one--the prof,) I'm having them blog about our novels. They've all just introduced themselves; next week they'll start on their reflections on Fun Home, the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. I would love it if Scribblerati readers/members would pop over occasionally and comment on the student blogs. Find us here.

Advice #1: Do you feel the need to self-medicate? But do you also need to be prepared to be awoken for the day at 5:30 in the morning when your kidlink stumbles into your bed? Yoga is good, sugar is grand, but Sherlock is better. Last year the BBC updated Sherlock Holmes. Clever, silly, and fun. And streaming on Netflix.

Advice #2: Especially for Ms. Claudia. I've also been enjoying the Forsyte Saga - yummy clothes, especially when they get to the 1920s; yummy architecture, especially the Arts and Craft-y/Deco-y Robin Hill; yummy cast: Gina McKee and Rupert Graves.

Cheerio. By my next blog things should be settling down.

Book Review: Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code

I used to be a voracious reader. I wasn't a fast reader, but I was dedicated, and like the proverbial turtle, I made the finish line more often than most. I couldn't even tell you how many books I've read in my lifetime, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that number is in the high hundreds.

Writing has changed all that. I now spend the vast majority of my time writing and I bet I haven't read more than a dozen books in the last three years. So you can understand how excited I get when I actually have an opportunity to do some serious reading, like on a vacation. I try to choose my books carefully, but more often than not I find myself underwhelmed or flat-out disappointed.

My latest read, consumed by the pool in Vegas, was Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code. Resurrection Code is a fun, exciting, thought-provoking dose of boo-yah! in a marketplace overrun by safe, unexceptional, and unoriginal fare. It's also, in my humble opinion, the best book Lyda has written in several years.

Resurrection Code is billed as a prequel to the other four books in her Angel Link universe but it also works as – if not quite a sequel – a coda to what came before. The book starts out in the present with Mouse (international hacker extraordinaire), Page (the sentient AI Mouse created), and Dierdre (PI with an Angel fetish) but doesn't waste time before flashing to the prequel. The story weaves back and forth between coda and prequel, and Lyda manages to intertwine the stories with polished ease. The coda story starts like a walk in the park with old friends, then quickly develops into a story in its own right, but the heart of the book is the prequel, which takes us into a part of the Angel Link universe that the previous books only gave us the barest glimpses of.

That this was the first book in the Angel Link universe in several years was immediately obvious. Maybe it's just that I haven't read one of those books in a long time, but I felt that the tone of Resurrection Code was colored by Lyda’s experience writing as Tate Hallaway. Turns out that color is a good thing. I felt like there was a new, natural whimsy to the writing that enhanced, rather detracted from the serious nature of the underlying themes.

Did I say themes? All good science fiction has an underlying theme and Resurrection Code is no exception. In this case that theme is gender, or more specifically, transgender. Without giving anything away, the prequel story features a heretofore unknown transgender character. There's a bit of romance, and while it's sweet, the story doesn't shy away from the realities faced by our transgender brothers and sisters. This story challenges your preconceptions and makes you think. That also is a good thing.

Is there anything didn't I like? I could've done without some of the pop culture nods, particularly the zombies, which felt a little crowbarred in, but that’s a giant nit pick among nits. And now I'm remembering the Battlestar Galactica reference - that was full of awesome, so I guess I’m Mr. Inconsistent.

What was my favorite thing? I have two. The first was Page’s commentary to the Mouse interviews that begin each chapter. Hilarious! The second is Morningstar. That’s Satan to the rest of you. Not a pitchfork and horns Satan, but an approachable – dare I say sexy? –Satan who all too often reminds us of ourselves.

In closing, go buy it. You won't be disappointed.

Disclaimer: I know Lyda. Were not bosom buddies (heh, I said bosom) but we’ve shared a laugh or two, so take that for whatever it's worth. Even so, I'm not afraid to dish out criticism where appropriate. Just ask my fellow Scribblerati!

** UPDATE 6-5-11: So, while this comment was fun to write "in a marketplace overrun by safe, unexceptional, and unoriginal fare" it's not fair to those of you working hard to write, publish, etc. I'm sure there's great stuff out there, I just haven't stumbled on to much of it and that's more my fault than anyone else's.

I feel better now - conscience absolved! :-P

A Few Thoughts About Art

This is supposed to be an apolitical blog. That said, this post is going to tread dangerously close to that line.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Two weeks ago two rather stunning events occurred in my life. The first was that I received one of those anti-gay marriage DVDs Catholic Archbishop John Nienstedt has been sending out to Catholic households. The second, was that the church I belong to, the Basilica of St. Mary, fired their Artist in Residence, Lucinda Naylor. She had held that position for 15 years. I don't know Lucinda personally, but having been a member of the Basilica of St. Mary for well over a decade, I'm intimately familiar with much of her religious artwork.

Now, if this blog wasn't apolitical, the rest of what you would see on this post would be one frakking shit storm of a rant about how much I disapprove of this whole thing. But it isn't, so we'll leave it at that.

Among the many topics these events have prompted me to dwell on over the last couple weeks, has been the nature of art and what it means to be an artist.

Art, as we all know, can come in many forms. To name but a few: music, film, literature, sculpture, etc. Within all of these categories, art can range from simple fun, like an Iron Man movie or a good pop song, to something that is deep, long-lasting, and thought-provoking.

Good art, in my opinion, challenges our preconceived notions of what is right, or just, or appropriate. The best art, does that in ways that are nonthreatening; ways that make us think about a topic without being unduly provocative.

Maybe I'm biased, but I think that fiction writers are as well tuned into that notion as anyone. If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you can probably rattle off several stories (novels, novellas, TV scripts) that have surprised you with their content and stuck with you long after first reading or viewing them. If you're a writer, then you inherently know that a story cannot function without conflict and that your better stories are those that integrate that conflict into the social and/or societal issues that affect us every day.

Lucinda Naylor was fired because she wanted to take Archbishop John Nienstedt’s DVDs and form an artistic work protesting his actions. My understanding, is that her vision is to shape these DVDs into an image of the Holy Spirit moving through the church and effecting positive change.

That, my friends, is the very definition of the best art.

For more on Lucinda Naylor check out her Facebook page DVD to ART