More Than You Could Imagine

I was driving home from Plano, mulling over these complaints that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is just a retread of the original 1977 movie. So I decided to make a mental list of all the things in the movie that we've never seen before in any Star Wars film. Because I'm nerdy like that.

Anyway, here it is. Please correct me if you can think of a single example of any of these things in the first six films.

1) a rolling ball droid
2) a hot-shot pilot who's a major character and also with the resistance when we first meet him
3) stormtroopers making a landing for a ground assault
4) a Force user who can freeze blaster bolts and paralyze people
5) female stormtroopers
6) a stormtrooper taking off his helmet
7) a stormtrooper breaking conditioning
8) a full explanation of where stormtroopers come from
9) a woman as the central protagonist
10) a fully formulated economic ecosystem based on scavenging the wreckage of a galactic-scale war
11) humans who have learned to understand the language of astromechs
12) the inside of a wrecked Star Destroyer
13) people on a desert planet being thirsty (!)
14) self-rising sponge food
15) good guys flying a TIE fighter
16) TIE fighters strafing civilians
17) someone having to get the hang of piloting a spaceship
18) atmospheric spaceship combat
19) Han Solo actually smuggling something (!)
20) Han Solo listening to Chewbacca and treating him like a partner instead of a pet or underling
21) the interior of a large civilian spacecraft
22) fighting alien monsters aboard a spaceship
23) someone who is sexually attracted to wookiees
24) a female general
25) a planetary-scale weapon being fired with a view from the surface that shows its beam taking up the entire horizon
26) a Force user who can read minds
27) a Force duel that's entirely mental
28) a sun being sucked away into darkness as the visual and thematic backdrop to a high-stakes dogfight and an even higher-stakes personal confrontation
29) a human female wielding a lightsaber
30) a female with a speaking role who is a Force user


Did I miss any?

Not What I Expected

I got this CD in the early '90s for the song "Soul to Soul," which was getting airplay on several of the stations I listened to in Dallas at the time. Based on that one song, I was expecting edgy, unpredictable indie rock with a lot of creative modulations -- depending on how generous you are, "Soul to Soul" has six or eight distinct motifs, as compared to the typical pop song's three to five.

So when I put it on for my first listen, I was gravely disappointed that the rest of the CD sounded to me like nothing more than a proficient '80s hair metal band. None of the other tracks had nearly the complexity of "Soul to Soul," and as my disappointment mounted, track 6 came along and served up the ultimate hair band crime: an obligatory ballad with the acoustic guitar-strum lead-in joined by humming and/or whistling on the part of the lead singer.

I tried to give the album several more shots, then wrote it off as the work of a thoroughly indistinctive band that happened to exceed their capabilities for a single, lucky song. Because I'm a pack rat, the CD stayed on the shelf or in a box through four or five moves. I think I tried to sell it to CD Exchange once and they didn't want it.

But I reached the B stretch of my collection for this feature, and I didn't want to go straight into the Beatles, and I was also curious as to why I'd bought "Dancin' on Coals" in the first place, since I couldn't even remember the title of the one song I'd liked. So into the car CD player it went.

And darned if it's not a pretty good album!

This time around, instead of expecting edgy, unpredictable indie rock, I was expecting boring late '80s hair-band music. And the CD turned out to be just as far from that prediction as from my original expectation in 1990. Bang Tango, at least in this incarnation, blends funk-metal, glam-metal, and some alt rock stylings into a highly listenable concoction full of blistering guitars and amazingly inventive bass parts, making it hard to believe that I mistook this for hair metal, which almost always relies on alternating two-tone eighth-note thudding for its bass lines. There are saxaphones and harmonica solos, and even some gospel-ish backing singers on "Midnight Struck" -- the song I mistook for a cliche hair-band ballad -- and none of it's thrown in; every song is carefully and solidly arranged with thoughtful layers and variations from verse to verse. The production values are great without the CD being overproduced or glitzed-up. It's just all-out solid rock and roll, very well put together.

And "Soul to Soul," far from being just a kind of cool song, is downright incredible.

So thanks, CD Exchange, for turning this one down, if I'm remembering that part of the story right!

This One's Beyond Obscure

So, maybe you know the crazy guitar-organ-flute-yodeling-accordion-Popeye-the-Sailor-vocalization masterpiece "Hocus Pocus" by the Dutch group Focus. Or slightly less likely, you might know their song "Sylvia." But I'm pretty sure you didn't know that their guitarist, Jan Akkerman, recorded an album of classical lute songs interspersed with far-edge eclectic art rock as one of his solo endeavors.



That's Tabernakel. I can't for sure remember what inspired me to buy this CD, but I think it was the unintentionally hilarious set of liner notes in my copy of the digitally remastered Focus 3, wherein the producer of most of Focus's albums waxed Spinal Tap-esque about the genius of the band. Somewhere along the way, he mentioned Akkerman's obsession with lute music and that he thought the guitarist had actually recorded a whole album of lute songs. Like I suspect is the case with most of the stuff in those liner notes, that wasn't quite true; about a third of the album is art rock. But there are a lot of lute songs.

I'm guessing if you like lute music, this is pretty kick-ass stuff. Akkerman is a hell of a musician, and the songs have enough complexity that there are times when I think, surely he overdubbed that with a second lute track -- it can't all be him just playing one lute. But I'm pretty sure it is.

Anyway, if you've got a hankering for lute tunes, check it out.

Random ABBA Thoughts

So I've been terrible about this CD feature so far, but I'm going to try to crank several out over the next few days and get myself in the habit.

Up next is ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits.

I'm not ashamed to say that I love ABBA. I think they're officially the second-highest selling pop group of all time, so I've got company, even if they also personify some of the silly excess of the 1970s. And in my defense, I only love them enough to have their greatest hits. It's not like I've got all their albums, right?

Anyway, I have no unifying thesis for this ABBA fest. Just a potpourri of observations and memories.

First, there are some genuinely poignant and uplifting moments in the music of ABBA. "Chiquitita, you and I cry / but the sun is still in the sky and shining above you." "I believe in angels / something good in everything I see." Maybe the words are a little saccharine on their own, but those voices and the music really make me buy it.

Next, I can't think of ABBA without remembering that there was an ABBA movie, and that I watched it on cable, probably several times, but can only remember one scene from the very end of the film. (Spoiler: I guess the characters in the film spend the whole time trying to see ABBA in concert or meet them or something, and they totally fail, and then in the last few minutes after they've given up, they get on an elevator and ABBA are there. Is this ringing a bell with anybody?)

Finally, there's a snippet in "One of Us" that's pretty much exactly the vocal hook from Ace of Bass's "I Saw the Sign." It was very weird putting this CD in my car player, getting to a track that I'm really quite unfamiliar with, and then hearing this 100% familiar moment that was only familiar because of a different, later song. I'm not accusing Ace of Bass of stealing it, but they totally stole it.

I Have Not Been Selected!

But thanks anyway to everyone who nominated my book in the Kindle Scout program. I still think it's a cool program, but I guess I'm just destined to do a little more legwork.

I should be able to get Charms and Witches self-published in the Kindle store and in hardcopy form on Amazon in a week or two. It basically had to be ready to go for ebook publication in order to be submitted to Kindle Scout, so I just have to format the paperback version.

Since I didn't get selected for Scout publication, I have no way to identify people who nominated me and send them a free copy the way Scout automatically would have. But if you watch this space or follow me on Twitter (@HerbMallette), I'll announce when the book will be on free promotional giveaway status.

Thanks again to everyone who voted for me! I appreciate all the support!

A Little Red-Faced

So ... I consistently kept up my new weekly feature for exactly one week!

In my defense ... well, I'll make up a defense later. I'm a procrastinator, in case you couldn't guess.

Anyway, this week's CD (or last week's or maybe it was the week before's) is the soundtrack to the marvelous animated classic, Hoodwinked.





If you haven't seen this movie, it's probably on Netflix or if not, the DVD is crazy cheap, like four bucks. The concept is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story as a police procedural, using the storytelling technique of Akira Kurosawa's Roshomon. I've never seen Roshomon, but Hoodwinked makes me want to.

Aside from being clever and cute and funny as hell, Hoodwinked is notable for having a tremendously fun genre-hopping soundtrack of original pop songs, rock numbers, Henry Mancini-style caper music, and even a couple of songs from that rarest genre of all: rap music that I actually like.

In addition to numbers where stars Anne Hathaway, Jim Belushi and Andy Dick strut their vocal stuff, the soundtrack includes a wistful melodic piece featuring Ben Folds, along with score music by the film's composer and lots of songs written and performed by the movie's co-director, Todd Edwards, who's obviously a multi-talented guy.

One of my favorite tracks is a bluegrassy tune sung by a yodeling billy goat. Trust me, it makes total sense in the movie.

All in all, a dynamite soundtrack and a movie to be enjoyed by kids and adults alike.

Check it out!

New Feature!

In an effort to get myself blogging more often, I'm going to steal a page from my friend Donna Beck and schedule some features. To start with, I've decided to write a weekly piece in which I'll examine one of the albums in my music collection. For lack of a better plan, let's begin at the top of my CD rack and move along one artist or perhaps one category at a time and have a brief discussion of whatever merits, drawbacks, and/or interesting facts strike me about one of the CDs.

And the inaugural CD is ...

The complete Basil Poledouris score for Conan the Barbarian.

Right off the bat, let's get this out of the way: although I've got a soft spot for this movie, I am not its biggest fan. I saw it twice in the theater as a teenager, which for financial reasons I only did with movies I really liked. But the summer after it came out, I actually read all the Conan books and discovered that the Conan in the movie was a big wimp compared to the Conan in the books. And other than having muscles, Arnold Schwarzenneger actually looks nothing like Conan. Nor does he really talk like Conan or display much of Conan's cunning. So by late adolescence, I was already pooh-poohing the film, and rewatching it in adulthood didn't do anything to improve its standing with me.

But the soundtrack manages to perform the amazing feat of elevating an inauthentic adaptation of the character into a sweeping and majestic epic, and for that reason, I was more than happy to shell out the thirty bucks (plus shipping) for this 3-disc extravaganza.

I'm sure your first question is, "Who the hell needs three CDs worth of Conan the Barbarian music???" The answer, of course, is no one. Which is why the "complete score" part of the package is all on two CDs, with the third disc in the set comprising the truncated soundtrack released on vinyl in 1982. So this product is really aimed at people with both a completionist mania to possess all 108 minutes of the full score and an understanding that it will often be preferable to listen to the 48-minute version everyone else considers more than sufficient.

To sit through the whole thing, you've got to have a pretty significant appreciation for theme and variation. Poledouris crafted a number of distinctive melodies for this soundtrack, but not as many as you'll find in, say, John Williams' original Star Wars soundtracks. So there are a lot of recurring motifs and themes, rendered in different arrangements and at different tempos.

Rather than try to work my way through a description of the musical highlights, I'll just give a couple of personal notes on my connection to this music.

First, does it say something about my 16-year-old self that my favorite piece from this soundtrack is called, "The Orgy"? Maybe. But the music for the orgy scene is so sensual and lush, and really just does a perfect job capturing the carnal and charnel decadence of the Doom cult's fiendish bacchanalia. Even though it's been maybe 20 years since I last saw the movie, hearing this bit still vividly conjures images of Conan and his partners in their bizarrely conceived makeup (intended as camouflage?) sneaking around the huge chamber full of dazed, indulgence-sated cultists. It's gorgeous music, and it always reminds me of the Jupiter movement from Holst's "The Planets."

Second, I'm one of perhaps three people in the whole world for whom Poledouris's main title theme doesn't conjure images of Conan or wild Hyborian battle sequences. Instead, it gives me visions of a bunch of claymation Dungeons and Dragons characters fighting trolls and evil sorcerers. In high school, my friends and I used to make stop-animated films using modeling clay and a super-8 camera, and one of our best ones featured our D&D characters marauding through a dungeon with the Conan music playing in the background. By some miraculous quirk of fate, the title theme matched up almost perfectly with the stop-motion adventures, even the part where the brash, percussive battle theme modulates into the more sedate, sweeping, Romantic segment. I've got the movie on VHS somewhere, if the tape hasn't decayed with age. Someday maybe I'll pay to have it transferred to DVD.

So there you have it. Rush right out and buy your copy. And if you're really ambitious, buy a single-frame-capable video camera and some modeling clay, too!

Help, Please!

My romantic fantasy novel, Charms and Witches, is up for nomination in the Kindle Scout program! I hope you’ll consider nominating it.

If you have an Amazon account, you can read a free sample and nominate it for publication. Everyone who nominates it gets the free Kindle book once it’s selected and published! Just click the link below, expand the free excerpt, and then click the “nominate” button. Thank you!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/170B92J676K8O

While you're there, you might want to check out some other books up for nomination too. I was pretty impressed by one called What We Left Behind (zombie apocalypse) and another called Floor 21 (mysterious post-apocalypse). (What We Left Behind has only two days left in the nomination window, so it will be gone after Thursday the 19th.)

Nine Questions Every Writer Needs to Ask – Over and Over Again

[Here's a post I wrote for a nice book review blog called Scookie Reviews back in December. I figured it was finally time to cross-post it here. Enjoy! And check out the blog!]

Many beginning writers struggle with doubt, uncertainty, and confusion about mastering their craft: how to build a plot, how to develop rich characters, how to make dialogue ring true or sparkle with wit and humor. If you’re one of those writers ... congratulations! Your worries, your insecurity, and your occasional bafflement do not represent weaknesses on your part – in fact, they are your greatest friends.

Why? Because writing is a process of discovery.

In school, we learn to write as a means of expressing ourselves – of capturing ideas in language in order to relay them to others. But fiction doesn’t work that way. Fiction is not about constructing the right phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to say something. It’s about finding the world inside your head, the mystery and its solution, the key to the lovers’ hearts, the life-experiences that make a hero or a villain tick.

You can’t do any of that without doubting and wondering and repeatedly rethinking yourself. So here are some questions you may find useful in honing your doubt and uncertainty into tools of discovery.

1. Why am I doing this?

This question trumps all others. Do you have a deep need to turn one of your personal experiences into a narrative that could help others or help you achieve a sense of closure? Is your goal fame and fortune and occasional appearances on late-night talk shows? Does writing simply provide you an enjoyable means of escape from daily hum-drummery?

If you lack a clear understanding of your own motives for writing, you won’t know how hard to push yourself when answering the rest of these questions. And because your motives may change and flow over time –especially as your understanding of the writing process deepens – you can’t just ask this once and assume that a single sense of purpose will always carry you through.

2. Who are these people?

Stories are about human beings. (Or maybe aliens or elves or robots or personified animals – but even in those cases, they’re ultimately about human beings despite outward appearances to the contrary.) Without an understanding of where your characters come from, what drives them, and how their personalities and emotional reactions differ from one character to the next, you can’t create a personal focus to carry the reader through your story. No matter how intricate the plot, how shocking or awe-inspiring the concept, how beautiful your prose, if the characters don’t live and breathe for the reader, everything else suffers or even collapses.

3. What would he or she say next?

Once you know your characters and how they react to things, you must stay true to their personalities when they speak to one another. Sometimes I’ll skip ahead and write scenes out of sequence because I’ve come up with dialogue or a soliloquy that perfectly captures my intent. But when I get to those pre-written scenes, I often find that the characters have grown and shifted in the meantime. I understand them better or even just differently, and therefore I have to throw out words that were going to be the linchpin of the scene or even of the book’s climax because they no longer fit with how the characters have developed.

Just wanting a character to say something isn’t enough, regardless of how cleverly sarcastic or worldly wise or heart-warmingly romantic the words might be. Unless a line of dialogue arises naturally from the character’s response to events or to the words of others, the reader isn’t going to buy it, and you need to either change the character’s dialogue or rework the stimulus that provokes the line until they fit together seamlessly.

4. What is the logical repercussion of the action my character just took?

We perceive the world in terms of cause and effect, behavior and response, action and consequence. Fiction works and seems real only if it mirrors the patterns that we know occur in the real world. If a murder suspect flees from police, jumps in a car, and drives off, the police are going to immediately muster all available resources to pursue and halt the vehicle. Taking a couple of quick turns through an alleyway isn’t going to throw them off. If you want such a suspect to escape, you need to fully understand the resources available to the police – roadblocks, communications with dispatchers, helicopters, etc. – and then you need to figure out a genuinely plausible hole through which the killer (or alleged killer) can get away. People and organizations and objects react predictably to our interactions with them, and if your reader can make real-world predictions that your story overlooks or ignores, the result will be eye-rolling at best and the book being put down unfinished at worst.

5. Why did or didn’t my character anticipate that repercussion?

If your reader can spot the killer or predict the words needed to win the heart of the tall, dark-haired stranger, then you need to have a good explanation for the protagonist failing to do so. The creation of drama or conflict is never sufficient reason for a character to overlook the obvious – or even the not-so-obvious, if we’re supposed to believe the person is highly competent. When characters make bad decisions simply because a good decision wouldn’t move the plot in the direction you want, you risk alienating readers who have high standards for heroes (or villains).

6. What detail can I use to give this scene or setting its own reality?

Reality is composed of small things. If an artist paints a picture of a room and includes nothing smaller than a square yard, that room is not going to look like someone lives in it, or even like it’s a real room, since there won’t be any doorknobs or hinges or wood grain. When I pick up a wineglass, I can pick it up by the stem or by the bowl or by the rim. I can hold it between my thumb and fingers or cradle it with the stem hanging between my ring finger and middle finger. When I set the glass down and leave the room, it might be empty or it might have a finger’s breadth of wine left in the bottom. How I pick it up, how I hold it, and whether there’s any wine left when I set it down are all small atmospheric details that can be interspersed with dialogue or action to create a richer scene than simply writing, “He drank from a wineglass during the conversation, then set it on the table and left the room.”

7. What happened earlier in the story that I can use now?

The details with which you build your story’s moment-by-moment reality can easily play a larger role as well. If I drink wine in several scenes, holding the glass the same way each time, a sense of consistency is created. If I leave a half-inch of wine in the glass, that wine could be tested for DNA or for poison later. If I habitually hold the glass by the rim, a detective may be foiled in trying to get my fingerprints from the surface, since I’ll leave only partials at the very lip of the bowl. These things need not be pre-planned, as long as the writer is constantly mindful of details from previous scenes that can be exploited as the story evolves. Perhaps you need character X to communicate something wordlessly to character Y. You think back to earlier in the book and remember that characters X and Z exchanged business cards when they met. That means X has Z’s business card and could use it to write a note because there’s no other paper available. Later, you need character Y to be suspicious of character Z, or to connect Z to X. Voilá, character Y can happen across the business card when emptying her pockets at the end of the day.

8. Is now the right time to be asking these questions?

The answer to this one is usually going to be “Yes.” The worst writing occurs when a writer blazes heedlessly along under the assumption that everything they’re writing is terrific. However, that’s also the mode in which some people are most productive, and the last thing you want is to hit a roadblock because you don’t know the answer to a question. The answers to some questions may need to wait until the second draft (when you need to be asking even more questions!) so that you can get the first draft done. Don’t be afraid to write an unresolved question down in a word-processing comment and then push onward.

9. Why am I doing this, again?

Questions without answers may lead to frustration and to insecurity about whether the effort is even worth it. In those moments, take a deep breath, and remind yourself of your ultimate purpose. You’re a writer. The answers will come.