Sorry I haven’t written much lately. I’ve been doing so much work on short stories and my novel that I’ve been neglecting the website. So far I’ve completed approximately seven thousand words on "The Dark and the Young," which will be my submission to the Elder Signs Press anthology, tentatively titled Horrors Beyond. This weekend I also started my Xmas shopping, shined my shoes, ironed my shirts, cleaned the bathroom, and bought cat food. Yep, when the gf’s away, the writer is one proficient mahfah.

Ian

I had a fairly busy weekend of writing and starting my Christmas shopping (God help me), so I didn’t get to tell you how I got to see Kevin Smith at Roy Thompson Hall last Thursday. Big thanks to Lyn for hooking me up with the ticket. Smith was there filming the sequel to his very successful An Evning With Kevin Smith DVD. This one is tentatively titled Kevin Smith Puts the Podium Down, which he did, both literally and figuratively. Several references to Canada, Tim Hortons, and Degrassi (he is currently filming a three-episode arc for the most recent incarnation of the show, where he plays himself filming a new movie in Toronto, Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh!), which kept all us Canuck Smith fans happy and salivating. He was extremely funny, so much so that I can only remember fragments of jokes he told during the evening. Many of these revolved around Ben Affleck (in response to the question of how he made Affleck cry in Jersey Girl, Smith said: "I just brought in an astrologer and had her lay out the cards for the next two years of his life." Ba-zing!), Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks, and hiding behind a rock (you need to have been there to understand that last one). He also took some delicious shots at fanboys – comic fanboys, especially – and said the reason he puts references to Degrassi High in his movies is because he’s always felt he was born "just a little too south." That he decided to go to film school in Vancouver instead of the numerous accredited institutes in the States suggest he might not have been pandering to the Canadian audience. Either way he was extremely entertaining and I had a great night.

Ian

In light of its recent (and repeated) rejection, I’ve decided to retire my short story, "Inheritor," for the time being. Of course, God doesn’t close a door without opening a Pizza Hut… or something like that. By which I mean I have some new short stories on the cooker. The first one, "The Tattletail," is done and has been sent to Book of Dark Wisdom. Here’s hoping they like it. Tomorrow I begin work on "The Dark and the Young." It’s sort of like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly except it’s not a Western and there are lots of demons and … well, okay, it’s not really like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at all. But I have another short story, and it’s going like a house afire. That one … well, I’ll tell you about later. Can’t give it all away up front, can I? Gotta give you a reason to come back, right?

Anyway, I expect to finish these two as quickly as I seem to be finishing all of my short stories of late. Maybe it’s a new trend.

Also, an interesting article I read on CNN.com about why Canada rules.

Ian

Just finished the final draft of "The Tattletail." It’s a story about a boy and his demon. I think that’s all I want to say about it right now. But if it’s as good as I think it is, you’ll be able to read it yourself one day soon (hope, hope). I think it’s a fairly decent piece, well written and clever in all the right spots. Here’s hoping the magazine editors think so, too.

I was checking out some older entries and noticed that I never posted the ever-interesting year-end stats. Last year I posted the number of journal entries I had made and the total word-count of said entries. This past year’s numbers differ quite a bit from those of the year before. Here they are for the period of October 14, 2003 to October 14, 2004:

Number of journal entries: 108
Number of words: 27,849

Not too shabby. Quite the increase in activity over the past year. Either I’ve got more to talk about or I have way too much time on my hands. Probably a little of both. But it’s all good practice. The number of stories I’ve had circulating is higher than it was last year, as well, and I suspect there will be even more in 2005. Now if I could just get a magazine to buy one …

Ian

I just finished reading the new Dean Koontz novel, The Taking, and I thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

First of all, I should mention in advance that this review will spoil much of the book’s plot. But you won’t be missing very much. Although The Taking starts off promising, it quickly degenerates into one of the worst Dean Koontz books I’ve ever read. That’s brutal, I know, but the guy is capable of writing a good book and therefore must be graded thusly.

Part of my annoyance with The Taking comes from Koontz’s current habit of using characters who are just a little too goody-goody. Anyone who is familiar with the breadth of his work might have gotten the impression that Koontz found Jesus around 1995 or so. That’s when his books (which, admittedly, have always read like Danielle-Steel doing bad horror/sf) got really preachy. Despite their respective faiths and beliefs, the protagonists in books like From the Corner of His Eye and One Door Away From Heaven seem to operate on a rudimentary belief system that reeks of fundamental Christianity. There’s nothing wrong with Christians, but one should refrain from injecting every single one of his protagonists with the belief that as long as they keep love and faith in their heart, they’ll beat the bad guys in the end. And bad guys, a two-dimensional term if there ever was one, perfectly sums up the antagonists in Koontz’s books, The Taking included. Throw in some intelligent dogs and a couple of plucky (and often annoying) youngsters straight out of a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew adventure, and voila! you have a Dean Koontz novel.

The protagonists of The Taking are Molly and Neil Sloan, who wake up in the middle of the night to discover a strange silver rain drenching the small mountain town in which they live (the Great Flood bit, for those big on religious subtext, also known as "Noah’s Archetype"). The book focuses primarily on Molly (her husband, a shotgun-touting ex-priest-turned-cabinetmaker, speaks perhaps a dozen times in the entire book) and her mission to save the town’s children, who we learn are being threatened by aliens that are taking over the world via biological terrorism. And, as mentioned, there are several super-intelligent dogs. This time around they are the guardians of the children who are threatened by the aliens for reasons that, like much of the plot, is never really explained. The aliens can’t harm Molly and Neil directly – because they’re motives are pure or some stupid shit – so Koontz throws in a psychotic father for Molly, because as we know, most of Koontz’s female protagonists tend to have daddy issues. This one killed a bunch of Molly’s schoolmates when she was a kid, thus providing the armchair psychology needed to explain her determination to save the children from the aliens. Still with me?

As far as character development is concerned, Koontz has delivered another pair of pseudo-religious idiots with chips on their shoulders so big the aliens can probably seem them from space. Molly is a writer haunted by her own inner critic (she’ll never be the lit’ry writer that her mother was, oh the pain of it all!) while Neil is an ex-priest turned cabinet-maker who was raised by Jesuits. ‘Nuff said.

As mentioned, the book is packed full of religious metaphors and banal subtext — i.e. science has robbed us of our faith, repent or get anal-probed! Of course, I’m being sarcastic and perhaps a teensy bit caustic, but it’s not far from the truth. At one point, Molly and Neil discover several cars that have been abandoned in the middle of the road. The people are gone but their possessions have been left behind. Molly takes a child’s doll because although they haven’t found anyone who has been abducted by the aliens, she hopes that one day she’ll be able to return the doll to the little girl who owns it. Excuse me whil

e I grab my insulin.

Koontz is a good idea man, which is the only reason I even bother to finish his novels, but when it comes to writing his books follow typical patterns that propel the characters toward obvious conclusions. This isn’t a big surprise to those who know Koontz’s work, but The Taking is pretty stupid reading fare even by Koontz standards. Go read Phantoms instead.

Ian

In the it’s-funny-’cause-it-didn’t-happen-to-me news, a Russian scientist surrendered eight cannisters of plutonium-238 – the arms-grade variety used in the construction of "dirty bombs" – to the authorities. He had been keeping it in his garage for the last eight years (I shudder to think of what he kept in his tool-shed – anthrax?). The wire service didn’t mention if police observed any rodents of unusual size lurking around.

Heh. RoUS’s. A Princess Bride reference. Almost slipped past me. Wooo.

Ian

So we’ve got four more years of Bush to look forward to. Not sure how I feel about that. I’m worried a bit (understandably so, I feel), though I can’t say if Kerry would’ve done a better job. Might’ve been a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But it would’ve been nice to give another guy a try behind the wheel. I guess as long as Bush doesn’t drag us into nuclear war I’ll be able to deal with whatever comes our way. And there’s some comfort to be had in the knowledge that he can’t run for a third term.

I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and 2008, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that no matter how hard it gets, the people with the nukes will keep their cool and remember that what they do affects us all. It would be just my luck if the world was blown to atoms before my first novel hit the shelves. It all leads back to the theory that my life is really a lost episode of The Twilight Zone.

Ian

I really can’t say enough about Wikipedia. It is truly a useful website. In addition to being an excellent (and free!) online encyclopedia, Wikipedia features world news headlines and a randomly chosen feature article of the day. Lately I’ve learned about infinite monkey theorem, Louis XIV, nuclear winter, Son of Sam, and Air Force One – did you it’s not just the call-sign of the two Boeing 747s that fly the U.S. president around but of any aircraft that happens to be carrying Great White Father? Tantalizing, I know.

I also want to mention another online writing resource that I find extremely helpful. Synonym.com features a good search engine for synonyms, as does OneLook, Merriam-Webster, and Dictionary.com, but it’s one of the few sites that also has an engine for antonyms. It might not sound like any great shakes, but trust me, us writers get all frisky over stuff like this.

Ian