Stories of the Week for September 25, 2013

Well, streaks were made to be broken, I guess.  My 5 pages a day writing goal crashed and burned shortly after last week's SOTW.  It was only a matter of time, really, as it had been getting more and more difficult the closer I came to the end of the book.  I'd liked the climax I'd written, but I also thought it could be improved.  So I ended up rewriting the entire penultimate chapter.  I then started work on the final chapter, and it took me many, many attempts before I found a scene that felt right, both in tone and in pacing.

Even with as difficult as this last section has been, though, this particular book has been an absolute delight to write.  It combines horror elements with a sense of adventure and fun that I don't often see combined.

Of course, I'm already dreading the submission process (writing a query or a synopsis is not exactly my idea of a good time), but I really can't wait to start sendin' this puppy out.

Still can't say much about the actual story yet, but here's one of the research topics I checked out this week:

http://www.rexophone.com/?p=1175

It's all about how people lit their homes in olden times.  I'm not sure how interesting it'll be to other people, but I enjoyed reading about it. 


And the return of Movie of the Week, in honor of Iron Man 3's release on Blu Ray and DVD yesterday:

I loved this movie.  In many ways, it felt like Marvel's take on the Dark Knight.  Tony Stark has no superpowers himself, but he has a ton of gadgets, can think on the fly, his mansion gets attacked (similarly to Batman Begins), and he's a billionaire who's haunted by his past.  He even puts on his detective cap to investigate a crime scene or two. 

There were some laugh out loud moments for me, as well.  Typically, I find scenes with child actors to be a bit painful to watch, but they played it perfectly here. 

And hats off to Marvel for giving the filmmakers free reign to take a fresh spin on the Mandarin character.  I won't say anything about it to avoid spoilers (I love that I went in to this movie without knowing), but Ben Kingsley was excellent, and it seemed like a role that only he could play. 

Arbitrary Star Rating: 5 Stars.  Highly Recommended.  It also might be my new favorite Christmas movie.