Tag: travel

Sometimes I Go to the Movies

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Yes, I did see the new Star Wars movie, and yes, I liked it.  But I’d like to take a moment to talk about the other movie I saw recently, which didn’t get nearly as much media attention:  In the Heart of the Sea.  Jim Macdonald and I made a six-hour round trip (not counting the movie itself and a dinner afterward) down to Hanover NH and back in order to see it,  because it wasn’t showing anywhere closer and probably wasn’t ever going to be.  A based-on-a-nonfiction-book film about the fate of the whaleship Essex isn’t going to pull big audiences into the movie theatres at a season when they could be watching heartwarming dramas or the triumphant return of a major franchise, but if In the Heart of the Sea could be said to have a target audience, my husband/co-author and I are it.

It turned out to be a good movie, if not a movie to most people’s taste – very pretty to watch, with a haunting musical score, and it didn’t leave Macdonald muttering about nautical inaccuracies. (At one point near the beginning of the film, the sailors see a squall line approaching like a solid black wall on the horizon. “Does it really look like that?” I asked Macdonald in a whisper. “No,” he said. “It looks worse.” After which we get a truly impressive storm-at-sea sequence.)

I must confess that I, as a lit geek with a fondness for Moby-Dick, and a certain amount of awareness of its sources and analogues, did do a bit of muttering. For one thing, the whale that rammed and sank the whaleship Essex was not a white whale. That was a different whale, known in the sperm whale fisheries as Mocha (not Moby) Dick.  I’ll give the folks who did the CGI whale points, though, for depicting it as the actual Mocha Dick was supposed to look–not a solid white whale, but a mottled white-and-light-brown one, sort of a pinto effect. I expect that the CGI artists did their research in the same historical source material where Melville did his.

I did wince a bit, though, at the recurring “[N] days stranded” captions during the post-sinking portion of the film. Because you can’t be stranded in a small boat on the open sea. Being stranded requires being left or cast up on a strand — a seashore. (If somebody puts you there deliberately, you are marooned.) If you’re in a boat, you’re either adrift (if you aren’t at least attempting to make progress in some direction) or at sea (if you are, however desperately.)

Not that I’m picky about such things….

Bookstore Mapping, Continued

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Jim Macdonald writes some more about his Independent Bookstores of New England GPS Points of Interest project, over here.

Independent Bookstores of New England

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…considered as a set of Points of Interest for the TomTom GPS Navigator.  It’s a project that my co-author (and, not so coincidentally as all that, husband) Jim Macdonald is working on in his spare time, and blogging about here.

Weekend Comma Upcoming

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We’ll be at the Burlington, MA, Marriott for Readercon, which we’ll be doing on a relaxacon basis again this year (also on an extremely attenuated shoestring, thanks to the necessity of paying off this past winter’s even-higher-than-usual electric bill.)

One of the things we usually do at Readercon is finish up on Sunday with a summer movie.  I’ve heard some good word-of-mouth about Spy, of the “Don’t let the posters mislead you” variety.  And there’s always Jurassic World, or the latest Terminator outing, either of which would at least provide the requisite summer-move quota of violence and explosions.

In any case, if you’re in or around Burlington this coming weekend, Readercon is a nice place to be.

It’s Magic!

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starcat030513For all you folks out there who are interested in Jim Macdonald’s other artistic vocation (the one that isn’t writing novels), tomorrow and Saturday he’s going to be doing close-up street magic in Bradford, Vermont, as part of the local downtown merchants’ Customer Appreciation Days. Look for him out in front of Star Cat Books – he’ll be the one in the hat.

Road Trip!

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Magic Expo SignThis past Saturday Jim Macdonald and I went down to Boston to see Penguin Magic’s traveling expo, which was there that day.  The route and the area were familiar to us, since the Readercon site is in the same general neighborhood, but this time it wasn’t science fiction that brought us there, but Jim Macdonald’s other freelance avocation, stage magic – which isn’t as far a cry from writing sf and fantasy (or writing in general) as one might think.  Both jobs involving entertaining, and sometimes enlightening, the public by creating believable illusions . . . and both of them take a lot of hard work and practice.

Jim had a good time watching the demonstrations.  I don’t do stage magic myself (my job, in my role as Magician’s Significant Other, is to be the test audience and general critic for new tricks, old tricks, and routines under Magic Demodevelopment), but I had a good time anyway.  The event had a lot in common with various other specialized meetups I’ve attended or spectated at in my time – rock and mineral shows, mustache-growing contests, sf and fantasy conventions, and yes, writer’s workshops.  There’s a peculiar pleasure to be had in the company of a bunch of other people who all share the same obsession, and who can be counted on to understand why a person might spend all afternoon working on a new method of cutting a deck of cards, or trying out different ways of punctuating a particular sentence.

(Do I want a comma here?  Would a period and a new sentence work better?  How about two independent clauses and a semicolon?  No, that doesn’t work – the heck with it, why don’t I just cut the whole thing?  Can’t do that either, dammit; it’ll ruin the pacing, and besides, that’s an important bit of information I’m trying to slip in.  Let’s look at it with the comma again….)

Diamonds Magic StockAs is often the case at these specialized events, there’s also the pleasure of cruising the dealers’ tables and trying not to spend more money than one had absolutely budgeted for the purpose.  The setup to the left there belongs to Diamond’s Magic, which is local to the area (up here in the north country of New Hampshire, we count Boston as “local” for certain purposes. Montreal is actually closer, but we don’t need a passport to get to Boston, or at least not yet.)  We highly recommend them for all your magic-related shopping needs.

And a final note:  speaking of specialized groups and shared obsessions and the company of other people who understand why that comma is important enough to spend an afternoon fretting over it:  The application period for the Viable Paradise workshop remains open until 15 June.  If you’re planning to apply, why not get your application in now and avoid the last-minute rush?

Where I’ve Been When I Haven’t Been Here

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Working, mostly, clearing my way out from under a couple of editing gigs. Our trip to Albacon went well – it was a pleasant local convention with congenial people – and we were able to make a side trip to Ausable Chasm on the way out.

Chasm Sign02

Jim Macdonald (husband and co-author) has had a hankering to visit Ausable Chasm ever since he was a kid and first saw the classic Charles Addams cartoon showing the man and wife at a ticket window, with the caption “A round trip and a one-way to Ausable Chasm.”

Well, this year we finally made it. It’s impressive, even from up on the bank of the chasm:

Ausable Chasm01

All we had time for – we didn’t want to miss the Albacon Ice Cream Social later that evening – was the basic two-hour self-guided trail walk (well, Jim did the trail walk; I, as befits a person who has been spraining my ankles on everything from loose rocks to cracks in the linoleum since I was six years old, stayed up on the bank and enjoyed the tranquility.)  But I suspect we’ll be going back, now that we know what’s there. Both the chasm and the convention come highly recommended – do check them out if you have the opportunity.

Albacon This Weekend

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Jim Macdonald and I are going to be in Albany, NY, this weekend, at Albacon 2014.5.

The Doyle and Macdonald schedules for the con:

My schedule

  • Saturday 12:00 PM – The Real World in Fantastic Fiction
  • Saturday 1:00 PM – Autographing
  • Saturday 2:30  PM – Reading
  • Saturday 10:00 PM – Villaincon
  • Saturday 11:00 PM – If I  Am Ever The… (Evil Overlord, Hero, Sidekick, etc.)
  • Sunday 10:00 AM – Noir in SF Cinema (or, perhaps, Science Fiction in Film Noir!)
  • Sunday 12:00 PM – Novel Craft – great plotting & effective world-building

Jim Macdonald’s Schedule

  • Friday 10:00 PM – Crowning Moments of Awesome
  • Saturday 10:00 AM – Steampunk 101
  • Saturday 11:00 AM – Deathbuilding
  • Saturday 1:00 PM – Autographing
  • Saturday 2:00 PM – Reading
  • Sunday 12:00 PM – Novel Craft – great plotting & effective world-building

(The sharp-eyed reader will notice that Jim and I will be autographing jointly, and reading sequentially.)

A Timely Reminder

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Applications are still open for the Viable Paradise Writer’s Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, running this year from October 18-23.  If you’re definitely planning to apply, help spread out the admin workload by going ahead and doing it now; if you’re still on the fence about it, let me urge you to give the workshop a try.

It occurs to me – as it does every year about this time – that not everybody outside of New England can be counted on to know that Martha’s Vineyard is an island off Cape Cod, accessible by Cape Air and the Martha’s Vineyard  ferry.  (Or, I suppose, by your private plane or personal yacht, should you have one.)  As such, it has excellent seafood, five picturesque lighthouses, and glowing jellyfish.

Applications close on the 15th of June; get yours in now and avoid the rush!

Well, It Was a Weekend

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Two entries ago, I said:

If we’re lucky, Boston will have shoveled out from under its most recent snowpocalypse by this weekend, and won’t get another one while we’re there.

If you were watching the weather reports for the East Coast of the USA over the past few days, you’ll know that we didn’t get that lucky.

We did, however, make it safely down to the convention before the snowstorm started, and made it safely out of Boston again on Sunday.  Which is more luck than a lot of people had, so I shouldn’t complain.

Meanwhile, as of last report, Jim Macdonald and I are still goingto be doing our reading/signing at the UConn Co-op this evening at 7.  If you’re in the area, feel free to drop by.