Category: Uncategorized

Adios Nueva York, hola España!

Today I’m off to Spain!

As you read this, I’ll probably be stumbling, jet-lagged and caffeine-deprived, through the Madrid airport as I transfer planes en route to Mallorca.

The hubs and I will be spending five nights here:

      

We shall eat, drink, swim, hot air balloon, and generally laze about.

Then it’s on to Granada to tour the Alhambra and up to Madrid for a few days.

I’ve got a few blog posts scheduled during my absence, so it won’t be total radio silence here at Comedy and Tragedy, cause I’m awesome that way.  Abrazos y besos! I’ll miss you all while I’m gone.

Updates to follow 🙂

RIP Ray Bradbury

A literary great has died today.  Ray Bradbury.

So sad.

I thought I’d remember him by re-reading my favorite of his books: Dandelion Wine.  I love the sweet nostalgia of it, the golden summer it captures.

Here’s a quote:

“It won’t work,” Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. “No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.”

So, that’s my favorite of Bradbury’s many excellent works.  What’s yours?

Book Review: City of the Lost

City of the Lost by Stephen Blackmoore (Fantasy/Noir, 2012, 224 pages)

City of the Lost might be summed up thusly: funny, dark, sexy, fast.

It’s urban fantasy, I suppose, but with a low-level criminal turned zombie turned unwilling gumshoe as the antihero lead.  There’s witches and demons and mysterious, possibly immortal, love interests.  There’s heart-munching undead maniacs, powerful sorceresses who really just want to do social work, and a frantic search for one very special talisman.  Plus, it’s all set against a gritty, underbelly-ish, crime-ridden L.A. that could be a movie set for the best Noir thriller ever.

There was a lot I loved about this book.  First, as the above description suggests, it blends sub-genres very effectively.  Second, despite the protagonist, Joe Sunday, being a rather unremarkable thug who turns into a zombie and starts eating dead hookers, he’s likable — very likable.  Just try not to root for him, I dare you.  Third, City of the Lost tears right along, leaving little time to catch your breath…but just enough that you don’t cast the book aside in a fit of action-sequence-fatigue.  Blackmoore’s nailed the tone and is liberal with his twists and turns.

Though it may seem a little dark for your summer beach read, I bet if you give it a chance you won’t be disappointed.

Stranger than fiction: shaman’s burial

Plenty of us write about magic and witches, but nothing can be cooler than this 12,000 year old shaman’s burial from the site of Hilazon Tachtit, Israel.

Walled away inside a cave high on a cliff face, this elderly, disabled woman was buried with an incredible array of grave goods, including 50 complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot (not her own).  Many of these animals were either extremely rare or locally unavailable at the time, suggesting a great deal of planning and effort went into this woman’s interment.  Plus, a human foot!

Thus far, this is one of the oldest known graves of a potential shaman.

Read more about it here.

Bits and bobs

Marshaling my thoughts this week has been akin to herding cats.  This is partly due to my efforts to escape from my aforementioned liminal state.  There are lots of ways out of that maze and all of them are varying degrees of shiny.  So, in herky-jerky, bits-and-bobs fashion, here’s a smattering of all things Miranda this week:

1. I wrote a new short story!  It’s my first effort at a short in nearly a year.  I think it’s pretty darn good.  It features hedge fund douchbags, 16th century Venetian courtesans, and fireflies.

2. Grading is my ongoing albatross.  I try to work through the pile of papers and exams and they seem to mate and multiply.  I try to ignore them and they press oppressive fingers of guilt on my heart.  I try to burn them and they erupt in a wild bonfire of…wait, no, sorry…that last one is just a fantasy.  Seriously, though, I should be done today. Finally.

3. I fell off the wagon with my dieting and exercise while traveling for Paradise Lost, but I’m back on the horse (or, more accurately, the elliptical machine) again.  I’ve shed 4lbs so far–and all without going to extreme measures–which means I’m almost halfway to my goal.  I’m sure our upcoming trip to Spain (during which I will eat my weight in Jamon Iberico) won’t erase all my progress.  No, of course it won’t.

4. Here’s a bit of shiny that’s been distracting me from my work lately:  ever heard of tilt-shift photography?  I hadn’t either till I visited Ana Silva’s blog and saw her post on Ben Thomas’ work.  Basically, he works magic to make his photographic subjects (mainly cities/urban landscapes) appear as miniatures.  Mind-bendingly cool.

5. Another cool link: Abandoned ships stranded in the desert from iO9.  Very Mad Max, if you ask me.

6. What else?  Oh, yeah…those novels I’m writing.  Sigh.  Progress on my latest novel is a little stop and start.  I’ve gotten the first three chapters revised and have taken about 1400 attempts at starting the 4th.  I’ve got it outlined.  I know what needs to happen, but it just isn’t working on the page.  Should I chalk this up to the limits of outlining or to my paralyzing fear of actually writing this thing and screwing it up?

Since most of my writing blocks tend to resolve themselves while I exercise, I think I’ll head off to the gym.

Please share your own bits and bobs for the week in the comments!