All posts by katloe

New Year’s Goals and Plans

calvin-hobbes-new-years-resolutionsI like to call them goals and plans, rather than resolutions. Resolutions carry the implication that you can make up your mind to do something, and that the act of making this decision is all that is necessary to make it happen. In reality, we all know what happens to resolutions without thought and planning behind them. Somewhere about the third week of January, maybe even sooner depending on the resolution, you start skipping days. You eat that extra cookie, or even eat a cookie at all. You skip the gym. Put down that classic novel in favor of the new thriller by your favorite author, and then never pick it up again.

So, goals and plans. Goals are like having a target to aim for, or knowing what the final scene of your novel will be. I know where I’m going, which makes it much easier to figure out how to get there. I have to think about my goals, and break them down into steps. I can do steps, and lists with checkboxes. That’s–not easy, but workable.

So, what are my plans for this year?

Well, I’m going back to school, to do a degree in computer programming (as long as the money lasts). You’re probably going to hear me ranting on and off about this, for various reasons, including ridiculous workloads, and the very obvious sexism that I’ve already encountered. I want to do well in these classes, because I know that being female and older, I’m already starting twenty yards back from where my classmates are. My steps for succeeding in this are:

  1. to read ahead in the textbook for every class. Note that I didn’t say I had to understand everything, just that I had to read ahead and be somewhat familiar with the material before I go to class.
  2. spend 15 minutes each day studying. It’s not much, which will make it easy to do. This is outside any time necessary for assignments, and outside any time needed to read ahead. The goal is to cover all the material three times before I have to move onto the next topic.

I also plan to carve out some more time to work on scifi and fantasy novels. I’ve been focused on my romance writing (yes, I also write romance) for the past couple of years, mostly because life kind of went to pieces after the death of my husband and I only had brain cells enough for one genre. So I read spec fic, and wrote romance, and tried to keep a foot in each boat. This year, I plan to:

  1. plot one of the mad wizard urban fantasies completely in February (because January is tied up in romance stories)
  2. plot the Search and Rescue in Space story completely in March (because there’s a week in there where I don’t have to get the kid out of bed)
  3. make a freakin’ decision about whether the griffin story will be romance or science fantasy and plot it (in May, because April is exams)
  4. write the one I think has the strongest storyline during the summer and fall

Another thing I want to do is get my life organized a little better. I live in an old country house, without much in the way of cupboards and storage. Add that to 20 years living with a packrat who threw NOTHING out, and it’s a mess. My goal is to clear away a bunch of junk we don’t use in the house and the shed out back. My plan is:

  1. four days a week, I will pick one thing we never use anymore and throw it away or donate it to charity if its still in decent shape. (Note to self: I’m going to need a box for the charity things.)

And the last thing I want to work on is looking after myself. I put on a bunch of weight, between everything involved with my husband’s cancer, and my own discovery of a fairly serious food allergy. The allergy left me exhausted and I was having difficulty breathing, so my running schedule eventually petered out. I stress eat, and combined with an allergy that puts most savory foods off the menu (hummus, I miss you!), I was constantly shoving sweets into my face. (We have a joke in the family now. If I look at the food on offer at a family get together and realize I can’t eat most of it, I claim the sweets table as mine. I need a flag to plant in the middle of it, like an explorer. 🙂 ) To accomplish this, I want to get my flabby body back into shape and change my eating habits. I plan to:

  1. buy fruit that I like, even if it’s expensive
  2. make a concerted effort to come up with (and write down) recipes that can substitute for a lot of pre-packaged things I used to enjoy.
  3. buy new running shoes (mine are shot)
  4. start with 15 minutes a day on the treadmill, until that gets easy.

It looks like a lot to keep on top of, so I enlisted the help of an online and mobile app called Habitica. It’s a game where you level up for doing the things you’re supposed to do, and lose health for not doing them. I’ve added entries for writing, for the treadmill, for housework, for decluttering, and for food. As I get more comfortable, I’ll add in more. Part of the trick with this is keeping the steps small. You’re much more likely to succeed if you aren’t trying to solve calculus problems at the same time you’re learning to multiply and divide.

If you like the app (it’s free!) and you want to play (because apparently you can play in groups), I’m Oldbrasscat. Come play with me!

The Force Awakens — some thoughts (and a few spoilers)

Force awakensSo, I had the opportunity to go see The Force Awakens on opening night. I probably wouldn’t have gone, except the tickets were free.  I wasn’t expecting much–the prequel trilogy sucked the joy out of the universe for me.

To my great surprise, I enjoyed it. I mean, really enjoyed it.

I can’t say for sure if it was a function of having ‘lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut’ level expectations, or if the movie was actually good. And there seems to be a lot of discussion going on over whether it was or not. You’ll see me use the word original a lot in this post, for good reason.

Personally, I think the movie did exactly what the producers wanted it to, and I give them credit, because that would be a tough balancing act. They needed to appeal to a new, younger audience, while still keeping happy the ones who saw the original in theatres more years ago than I care to admit (I was 10, I believe).

It was a good opener to the trilogy, if possibly a bit too predictable. The plot followed very closely on New Hope’s, just transposed a few years into the future.

That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, because it gave the producers the opportunity to make callbacks to the original, with a few extra touches. It does mean that if you’re going into the movie looking for surprises, you’re going to be disappointed.

In the beginning, we have a rebel pilot carrying the Very Important Plot Point/MacGuffin, who is captured by the Empire/First Order, but not before he manages to give his adorable droid the McGuffin. The most novel part of this was that the stormtroopers were actually hitting things they aimed at. (I know–shocking!) Then we have a desert planet, with a girl scraping a living scavenging parts off the detritus of the war from IV, V, and VI. This type of movie often ignores that aftermath of a space war, so I was really happy to see all the dead machinery lying half buried in the sand. It only makes sense that this stuff would still be sitting around, and that a scavenging industry would be built up around it. So, not exactly subsistence farming, but it evokes the same desolate setting from New Hope. (On a side note, I now want to go sand dune sledding.)

BB-8 is, of course, R2D2, cute and funny and the Keeper of the Very Important Plot Point/MacGuffin. Finn is, I’m guessing, this generation’s Han Solo, or will be. He’s going through his ‘encased in carbonite’ phase right now.

There’s the requisite cantina scene, the requisite watching the heroine captured by the bad guys scene, the requisite bad guy showing off his powers scene, the ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ scene, etc. I did get a huge kick out of the one where Kylo Ren is destroying the chair in a toddler-like temper tantrum, and the stormtroopers coming around the corner hear the noise, obviously know what’s going on, and go back the way they came, because it seems that stormtroopers have used the past thirty years to become, not just better shots, but smarter. The respect and fear that Vader commanded is noticeably lacking. Kylo Ren is young, and not handling anything in life well–a throwback to Luke in the originals that I thought was an interesting switch. I’m curious to see what they do with this.

The scene on the catwalk was an obvious homage to the scene in New Hope in which Vader killed Obi Wan; Vader killed his figurative father, and Ren killed his actual father.

They destroyed the Dark Side’s giant weapon in nearly the exact same way–a few tweaks to the process, but anyone who sees the planning stage for it will feel the ghost of the original in the room.

But, despite all that, it was still a fun watch. I will freely admit that I squeed when the Millenium Falcon came on screen. (My movie boyfriend–hey, don’t judge.) Most of the movie was spent going “Haha, I remember that!” I suspect that this is the transitional movie–it’s balanced between the two story lines, bridging the gap between Return of the Jedi and the rest of the saga. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were fewer references to the original in the next movie, and almost none at all in the last. They’re easing us older fans away from the New Hope trilogy, and into the Force Awakens one.

My overall impression? This felt very much like that thing we sometimes do in books, where the echoes of the past are felt in the present, and the job of the current hero is to do the exact same thing as the original hero, but better, and to finish the job the first hero couldn’t. It’s a definite go-see, but probably better if you remember A New Hope.

One last thought–Mark Hammill only had a few moments of screen time, but he did it well. Unlike his tendency when younger, he didn’t overact. In fact, it was so well done, you could almost hear the mental “Noooooooooooo!” there at the end, but only the most subtle of expressions appeared on his face. (I still have trouble thinking about him, though, and not remembering the time he guested on The Muppet Show with the Gargling Gargoyle. Classic.)

 

Me, Me, Me, Me!

942659_655585181137605_983857124_n😀  Just kidding. But I thought, since this is the first post here, that I should maybe introduce myself.

So, my name is Kat. I’m female. I have two stepsons and one daughter. I have a pony, three cats, and a fish tank I’m debating starting up again. I live in the country, in the province of Prince Edward Island (so I’m Canadian).  I speak English pretty well, and French aussi bien que mal. (I’m okay with it.) This is probably going to be an irregular blog–life is pretty interesting right now, in that Chinese proverb kind of interesting.

I’m currently going back to school–or trying to–because an allergy that I’ve had for most of the past ten years has suddenly ramped up and is causing me more than a little anxiety.  Because I’ve always had an interest in computers and programming, I’ve taken the leap and signed up to do a degree in computer science, so you’ll be hearing a lot about that in the future.

I write anything that can be called speculative fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, science fantasy–they’re all home for me. Right now, I’m picking away at a YA paranormal romance that I started at my daughter’s request. I’m also sketching out the plotline of a science fiction (maybe space opera?) story that I hope can be parlayed into a series. There’s a science fantasy idea that I’m wavering on, too. I have a pen name for anything I come up with that would fit the romance genre better, and it would probably do well there. And an urban fantasy dealing with mental illness, and what if it isn’t an illness at all?

Currently, I only have one thing out on submission–a short story written on spec for World Weaver Press’s Sirens anthology. The editor, Rhonda Parrish, is another Canadian (not that I think it gives me an edge or anything). I’ve been reading other things that she’s edited, including her other anthologies with World Weaver. It gives me hope, and then dashes it to the ground, as I go through the stories. I question what I was thinking when I wrote Mer Island Tours, but then I read my beta comments and think, “Yeah, maybe this has a chance.”  You just never know, until the email comes in.

What do I like to read? I was raised on classic Asimov and Zelazny and Moorcock and all those big names from the days before people realized that women write really good scifi and fantasy too. They’re still kind of my comfort reads, for when I don’t have brain power to deal with something new. I really liked Anne Leckie’s Ancillary series, though I found I had to be in the right mood for it. For a fascinating world, I like Delilah Dawson’s Criminy series. I like John Scalzi’s blog better than his books, but I read them too. Joe Abercrombie, Wes Chu, CJ Cherryh. I like the Rachel Bach Fortune books, but couldn’t finish her Eli Moonpress series under her other name. I don’t tend to have auto-buy authors, so each book and series gets judged on its own merits.

Other than that, I don’t know if there’s much of importance. Right now, I’m in my office in the spare bedroom, hoping the tomcat doesn’t wake up and decide he must sit in my lap. Hard to type when he’s there. I’m not ready for Christmas, as is usual, but hope to finish shopping on Saturday.

And, right now, I should go, because I have words to put in stories, and my stomach is growling. 🙂