The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Hell's bells! A newsy day

First thing when I opened my e-mail this morning (at the crack of, er, noon), I got this message from my mom:

Today would have been Grampy's 100th birthday!

My maternal grandfather, Col. Hal Peter Andersen, died when I was in ninth grade. I wish I could remember more about him; we have a wonderful photo of the two of us out in front of his and Grammy's tidy grandparently home in Manteca, me dressed in Spanky Pants (tm) and hair ribbons, him teaching me the proper way to salute the flag. He built us doll furniture, wrote us notes in his neat squarish block caps and told my sister "You have a cookie in your left hand and a cookie in your right hand. That makes you a P-I-G. Do you know what that spells?" To which she replied, "Ambidextrous!"

Happy birthday, Grampy. I'll have to ask Mom tonight if she can take out some photos of him to show my boys.

Also: I finished a story today. Not "the" story (i.e., book), but a short story (4500-ish words). Haven't actually finished a piece of fiction since my sophomore year in college. Hope this bodes well.

"Help," she yelped

So I have another show coming up on Saturday, 9-midnight. The theme for this one: Drinking and Drugs. Pro, con, positives, negatives, happy party time, when the party goes sour, addiction, recovery, dead in a ditch like your mama always warned you would happen.

And this is where you come in! What's a stellar-awesome, preferably radio-ready (I can edit, but it's sort of a pain) drinkin' or druggin' song that deserves to be played? I have 1.8 hours of music on this theme ready to go and need about another hour's worth.

Y'all have until about Thursday afternoon to let me know. Thanxomuch.

Fantasy books that don't suck

So after some quite lovely comments posted on the "20 reasons I won't read your fantasy book" thread here (except: Hillary Clinton as hateful as Ann Coulter? Whatever, dude. I don't even like Hillary, but she's not exactly out there calling 9/11 widows "witches" or conservatives "the party of rapists," is she?) and a heated-ish thread over at Absolute Write (in which several misguided souls attempt to defend the indefensible practice of ran'domly a'postrop'hizing na'mes)... I figured it was time to turn the other cheek, as it were, and offer up some examples of Fantasy Novels that Don't Suck.

Damn, that was a long sentence.

Can you stand any more posts about iTunes?

Well, it's not really about iTunes. I promise. Or is that iPromise?

But the fact remains that it is a very fine and handy thing to have iTunes around when you are planning playlists for your new Community Radio Show.

Yep. The official debut of Audio Quicksand with RedMolly will be next Friday, June 23, 1-4 p.m. You can listen live here:

Why...

...am I sharing with you this picture of two out of three of my cats?

An open letter to authors and publishers of Fantasy Novels

Yesterday was a strange day. It rained thoroughly and steadily. It thundered, it winded, it stayed blessedly far below 100 degrees (where it'd been hovering for the previous far too many days). So we celebrated as Newmans are wont to celebrate stormy weather... by going to Borders.

(And a side note about what happened when we went to Borders: on the front table, the new book by 9/11-widow-insulting harpy Ann  Coulter was prominently displayed. A woman was actually thumbing through this foul volume. I said to Fisher as we passed, loudishly I suppose, "I don't know why they have to mess up the front of the store with this crap." Fisher told me a few seconds later, "Mama, when you said that, that lady said 'But I like it!' " God, I can't wait to get out of this misbegotten town.)

The last several times we went to the bookstore, something weird happened: I didn't purchase a damn thing. So yesterday, I sorta kinda made up for it by picking up not one, but three fantasy novels: First Betrayal by Patricia Bray, Raven's Shadow by Patricia Briggs and Medalon by Jennifer Fallon (all of whose work I've read & enjoyed before). But in the process of picking out these three, there were many (O, many, dear reader) which I picked up, then put down again promptly. And having just re-read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, the reasons why I decided against these books were perhaps more sharply delineated than usual in my mind.

So in the interests of Improving the State of the Genre (ha ha) and Expressing My Cranky Self (indeed!), I hereby present to you this list of

Reasons to Put a (Fantasy) Book Back on the Shelf

Capote

We just watched this movie last night. Jim finished reading "In Cold Blood" a few days ago, and I read it in college, then re-read bits and pieces over Jim's shoulder. So we were both kind of in that Truman mode.

I haven't seen many movies about writers. Kind of a boring subject for a movie, really--who wants to watch some guy sitting at his typewriter/computer alternately staring blankly, pounding the keys frantically and swearing prodigiously? (And "The Shining" doesn't count as a movie about a writer. Really, it barely counts as a movie.)

But the one thing that stood out to me--a random, almost throwaway detail--was the scene where, while in Costa Brava, Spain, Capote's sweetheart Jack Dunphy has gone to the market and gotten all kinds of lovely food in preparation for "Nelle" Harper Lee's visit. And, as he goes back into the house, he mentions offhandedly:

"I finished a novel last night."

He finished it. Not puttered around some more, or came up with a couple of good ideas, or cranked out a few damn fine paragraphs. He finished it.

Then a short time later, we see Truman talking with his editor William Shawn about the book. And Shawn says, "This book will change the way people write."

Which was true.

Capote called it "The book I was meant to write." And he never finished another book.

The power of words: to build and destroy, to reinvent and reform and recalculate and redefine, to change our perceptions of an underprivileged murderer hanged for his crimes more than forty years ago.

There is allure in finishing... but there is also something terrifying about the concept.

How do you know, when you've finished one, that there will be another?

Genius or OCD?

The two are so frequently joined at the hip:

Fisher: "Zeus. Apollo. Athena. Hercules. Pluto. Hera."

Mama: "What are you doing?"

Fisher: "Thinking of names for my brine shrimp."

Today's Quotable Honoree: Dorothy Parker

An acerbic, cynical woman who was the toast of the Algonquin Round Table and author of  such poems as "Threnody" and "Braggart," she also came up with such timeless gems as these:

I wish I could drink like a lady,
I'll have one or two at the most.
Three and I'm under the table,
Four and I'm under the host.

and...

Time doth flit; oh shit.

and...

If you want to know what the Lord God thinks of money, just look at those to whom he gives it.

But the Important Thing about Dorothy Parker is that her stock response to answering the telephone is quite possibly my favorite quote of all time:

What fresh hell is this?*

(And I'm the one who added it to her Wikiquote page. Yup yup yup.)

*actually, this is now how my cell phone greets me whenever I power it up... abbreviated, for space-saving purposes, to WFHIT?

The immortal Douglas Adams

(...may his Memory be Eternal... props to Mimi...)

Why did no one tell me about Wikiquote before? Hmpf. Guess I should play around on teh internets more often.

Anyway: here's a quote of the day for you from the ultimate Hitchhiker:

"If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat."

And one more... just because this quote gets stuck in my head Every Single Time I go to an airport:
"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort."

Watch out, man... I have access to a whole buttload  of quotes and I'm not afraid to (mis)use 'em!