i myself am strange and unusual.
The quote of the day:
I would totally believe in a religion that included magic like that.
Running news:
Today: 5.3 miles.
Yesterday: day off.
Thursday: the gym.
Today's Will Clark's birthday! How's that for trivia I never forget?
When I asked for recommendations for historical mysteries, several people mentioned Anne Perry's books. And I discovered I was reluctant to pick up one of her books, because what I mostly knew about her was that she was Juliet Hulme (the Kate Winslet character) from Heavenly Creatures (a great movie, if you haven't checked it out).
I mentioned my reluctance to Darin, who gave me his patented Were you raised by wolves? look and said, "Yes, in fact, you are being very silly."
I bought the first Thomas and Charlotte Pitt novel, The Cater Street Hangman, which was very good but had an absolutely dreadful ending. I had guessed who the murderer was, but the explanation for the crimes came out of left field and is rushed into the last two pages. However, the rest of the writing was decent enough and I liked the characters.
So I bought the first William Monk book, The Face of A Stranger, to give it a try. Monk has had an accident and has total amnesia, so at the same time he's trying to solve a murder (he's managed to find out he was a detective), he's trying to find out who he was. The crime is a little boring but has lots to do with the English class system, Victorian era, and Monk has found someone who knew him before the accident...and at the part I'm at in the book it looks as though these two threads are going to meet. There had better be a very good explanation for that or I'm tossing the book against the wall.
Thursday night, on the way into the restaurant, I said to Darin, "I had a really bad workout at the gym today."
And he said, "Thank God--I was afraid you would have no reason to think you're a bad person today, but you've managed to find one."
(That was sarcasm. He dislikes the way I talk about myself.)
At dinner we talked about my script, and he let me know what he thought of my end of Act II/end of the movie--not much--and wanted to work on better ones. I think it's completely not fair he can do this: I tell him what I've learned about how stories are constructed; he internalizes the information; he's able to apply it to all stories, including mine. I think it's intensely not fair. Or, he deserves a teaching post at USC.
His questions and prodding did force me to come up with a better end of Act II, by the way. Damn him: he's contributed so much to my work he'll want half of everything I make off it. (Oh wait a second--we live in California.)
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com