Monthly Archives: March 2012

La Vie en Rose

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Movie Review:  La Vie en Rose, Director Olivier Dahan, 2007

La Vie en Rose tells the story of the life of Edith Piaf, born in 1915 into a life of poverty and raised for a portion of her life in a brothel.  As a child, she joined her father’s street performance act, and began singing at an early age.  Eventually she was discovered and began the rocky and personally tragic road to fame as one of France’s most famous singers.

I’ve heard a few of Edith Piaf’s songs, but knew nothing of her life prior to the movie.  I can’t say I know much more of her life after the movie.  One issue with La Vie en Rose is the method in which her life story is revealed.  The movie switches constantly between her youth, which appears to move chronologically, and short excerpts of her at fame and at the decline of the career.  These do not appear to be presented chronologically, which causes great confusion.  Did this happen before that?  The moments we see of her in a sort of nursing home setting, do those happen before her collapse on the stage or after?  Did she have multiple concerts where she collapsed on the stage? 

People appear in the movie at seemingly random moments, presented as though we are supposed to know who they are and their significance.  I’d latch onto a character, remember his name, only to have him disappear forever after a few scenes.  Suddenly another man would appear, and I’d wonder if this was the childhood friend grown up?  Or perhaps the delivery boy briefly introduced twenty minutes before that I assumed was an extra?  Add this problem in character significance to the inexplicable timeline and I was lost.

The most frustrating part of the movie was in the very end, when Edith is on her death bed. The movie cuts to at least four flashbacks of different parts of her life.  Again I struggled to figure out what happened when.  Suddenly, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, we discover that Edith had born a daughter in her youth, a child she struggled to care for as she continued her career as a street performer, a child who died young of meningitis.  This revelation came like a lightning bolt in the last ten minutes of the movie.  I was outraged that such a significant portion of her life was slapped onto the end, like a minor afterthought in her life.  I can’t believe, given her own difficult childhood and equally difficult relationship with her mother, that her own struggles at motherhood and the death of her daughter were nothing more than a blip in her life. 

Disappointing, disjointed.  Edith Piaf deserves better.

Wings

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Back when I lived at the lake, I loved to watch the vultures in the trees.  There would be dozens of them in the bare branches each winter.  Patient.  Watching.  Sometimes they’d be on the ground and I’d marvel at their size and the breadth of their wingspan.  With their bald heads and dull black feathers they were ugly in a way that commanded respect.  In the air they’d hover in the thermals, then edge forward as if by magic.  They were my chthonic symbol.

Here on the farm, I see the occasional vulture, and they are constantly in the sky as I drive.  I’ve found a new love though with another raptor, a bird of action that I love as much as my bird of mysteries.  The red tailed hawk.  They are everywhere, and when I think they have abandoned me I hear their cry pierce the air.  I see them on the power lines, scanning the fields below for prey.  I see them circle, rising and falling in the currents.  I see them dive to the ground, an arrow to their mark.  I see them dance above me in the sky.

“What would you do if you had wings?” I asked Sweetie one day, watching vultures as I drove, while he entreated me to keep my eyes on the road.

“I’d save a lot of money on gas,” he replied.

You couldn’t exactly cram wings into a car, although you wouldn’t really need a car if you could fly everywhere.  They may not fit in a lot of doorways either.  Sleeping position might be an issue too.  Maybe if we could overcome the laws of physics they wouldn’t need to be so big to lift us above the ground.

I watch them circle in the dome of blue sky and imagine the feel of muscles stretching out to hold me aloft, currents supporting me motionless in the air.  I imagine the rush of free fall as I fold my wings in to dive.  I fantasize that they are not really hawks and vultures flying in the heavens but angels and demons so high above me that I can only make out their dark shape.  Not the fat winged baby angels with Cupid bows, but sleek raptors with talons and clear sight.  Cold, impersonal, immoral to our minds steeped in duality.  They fly so high above us that their perspective is beyond our comprehension.

The Unsaid Feedback

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I’ve had a couple of Beta Readers that were willing to read my first draft, and I truly appreciate the feedback they gave.  It’s made my book much tighter, cleaner.  But some of the most valuable feedback is the kind I never really received. 

One of my readers is my brother, Frank.  He’s perfect.  He’s a commercial graphic artist who has owned an indy comic book publication company, published several of his own indy comics.  He regularly gets his artwork out there in contests.  He’s not ashamed to admit he loves role playing games.  When he’s not reading comics or graphic novels, he’s reading science fiction or fantasy.  He told me it would take him a while to finish my book because of his schedule, and proceeded to work his way steadily though it, telling me what he liked and areas where he thought I needed to take a second look.  And then he stopped.

“Have you finished it yet?” I asked him eagerly a few weeks ago.

He told me that he’d been busy and hadn’t finished the book.  I asked him where he was in the novel and he told me.  It was the same spot he was at two months previous to that.

He had put the book down two months ago and hadn’t touched it since.  I don’t care how busy someone is, that’s a five alarm wake up call for any writer.  Two months.  I’d lost him.  My own brother.  Houston, we have a problem.

Sweetie had plowed through the whole novel and had given me some very stinging and honest criticism that I didn’t appreciate at the time, but came to realize was valuable and spot on.  One of the areas he’d had a problem with was what he called “The CSI Moment”.  He felt the tone of the book changed significantly in that section and that it was jarring to the flow and the atmosphere of the novel.  I’d had a nagging sense in the back of my mind that this section didn’t fit well with the rest of the novel, but was perplexed how to convey the information differently.  Sweetie gave me some ideas, and I put it all on the back burner to address later.  Yes, that was exactly the section where my brother had put the book down.

I asked Frank about that section and he gave it favorable comments.  He didn’t feel it changed the tone in a bad way, and said he enjoyed the ‘CSI’ type details.  He was being honest, but he had put the book down right there and not picked it up for two months.  That kind of action demanded my attention as a writer.

I proceeded to guilt Frank into continuing the book as only a close relative can.  The good news is he later reported that he had been so entranced by the book at that point that he caught himself reading it for two hours straight, unaware of the passage of time.  I had redeemed myself, and re-captured my reader in the latter part of the book.  <insert sigh of relief>

And now I find myself looking at “The CSI Moment” and pondering what to do.  I may need to take out my Machete of Death, otherwise known as the ‘delete’ button.

Keep reading, keep writing, keep drinking local beer.

Hey you, read this!

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I’ve asked a few people to beta read “A Cockroach Bound” and am lining up others as we speak.  So, who should beta read your novel and why? 

  • Another author. 

No, please don’t go pestering Dean Koontz to read your book.  Most of the time the author should be the one to approach you and ask to read your work.  If you do ask an author, expect them to say “no” and don’t be insulted.  They’re swamped.  The polite way to do this would be to casually indicate that you might like it if said author read your book and gave you feedback.  They will, with equal politeness, say “of course, I’d be happy to”.  From that point forward the ball is totally in their court.  If they approach you again, cool.  If not, take their “I’d be happy to” as a polite response and let it go. 

Ideally an author who beta reads your book should be one who knows your genre and has been published.  Self published is ok.  Either way, always do your research.  Is their book any good?  What do the reviews say?  Did the darned thing sell more than ten copies?  If not, then they still may be valuable beta readers for you.  Just remember to view their feedback as you would a potential ‘reader’ and less as someone with deep publishing industry experience.

There are some authors who offer to read and edit (not copy edit) your work for a fee.  Do huge research before opening your wallet and don’t be shy about asking for references.  Most authors are way too busy writing and editing their own work to provide this kind of service, and there are many weasels out there who will give you crappy advice and take your money. 

Sometimes  an author from a different genre or industry can provide a much needed viewpoint.  For example, Sweetie pestered me to death to read “A Cockroach Bound” until I finally caved.  He’s not a huge fan of urban fantasy and I was worried that he wouldn’t ‘get it’.  He is, however, a prior indy film writer, producer, and director who knows the excruciatingly competitive world of screenplay writing.  The film industry has very specific formulas that promote good disciplined writing, so Sweetie’s knowledge of screenplays actually led to very valuable feedback. Which leads me to:

  • Your family

“What?” you say.  Yes, your family will think you are the best thing since sliced bread.  They will hang on your every word.  They will wave your half finished manuscript in the face of all their friends and neighbors.  We all need this.  Our mailboxes are going to be filled with rejection letters.  That’s the way of the world.  Knowing that Aunt Mable loved your vampire book much more than ‘that Twilight woman’s’ and is willing to force everyone in her bridge club to buy a copy is just the kind of thing that will keep you going on a bleak day.  Everyone needs cheerleaders.

  • Bookworm Friends

We’ve all got them, and usually they truly are salivating to get their paws on your book.  These are your friends with careers who are in a book club, or who post on Facebook what they’re reading.  Maybe they carry a paperback or their Kindle in their purse.  Make sure you outline what kinds of feedback you are looking for and how they should present it to you.  One caveat, make sure it’s reasonably edited before you send it to them, since they don’t want to beta read the twelve different edits of your book over the next six months.  (pssst. gift card or at least a thank you note.  Get Aunt Mable one too) 

  • Yourself

Seriously.  If my foray into ‘the first five’ did anything for me it was teach me new ways to view my own work.  As authors, we get very lost in looking at individual trees, and sometimes don’t see the forest, or even a small cluster of saplings for what it is.  Look at your first five pages and see what they tell you.  Is your main character well defined?  Has action occurred?  Are you dumping information in a massive block of text that would make Henry James shake his head?  You know what’s going on in your novel, but how would someone who just saw these five pages perceive it?  Now look at three chapters and do the same.  Supporting characters?  Love interest?  Ball rolling firmly on the plot?  Then the first half.  Do you know where your plot is???  Have your characters grown at all?  How about the last fifty pages?  Action should be cranking at this point.  Where is your climax?  Does your end drop you off a cliff?  If you’re writing this as a series, you can’t just leave your reader hanging.  Remember this book needs to stand alone and complete the plot, even if there are some outstanding questions left to tantalize readers into buying book number two.

Anyone I’ve left out?  If you’ve got any suggestions on potential beta readers you like to use, please feel free to comment or e-mail me at deb@debradunbar.com.  And, of course, I am a twittering fool on Twitter debra_dunbar.

“A Perfect Blood” (The Hollows Series), Kim Harrison

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As many know, Sweetie and I went on our annual pilgrimage to Aruba this March.  I managed to read 5 books during my week long vacation, much to Sweetie’s chagrin.  (Evidently it’s not very romantic to have your nose stuck in a Kindle)  Although I read “A Perfect Blood” a few days into my vacation, I wanted to blog about it first since I’d read some comments on the book that I felt the burning desire to address.

First, I first became hooked on The Hollows via a freebie Kindle download of “Dead Witch Walking” – the first book in the series- a million years ago.  I went on a credit depleting rampage after that, buying up everything to date and pre-ordering everything I could.  So, with full disclosure, that makes me a rabid, two foot long drool stalker fan.  Yep me.  Go figure.

When we last left Rachel (“Pale Demon”) she was neutered (or should that be ‘spayed’?) of her demon skills to give her time after a near-death experience to think about who she was and who she wanted to be.  Not a bad thing.  Sometimes life happens at a breakneck pace and it’s a gift to be able to take time to access where you are in your journey and how that fits in with your moral and ethical structure.   Don’t we all wish we had that luxury?

Being deprived of most of her power means that the heat is off Rachel, but it also means that she is denied the most basic of rights in a Kafkaesque nightmare of MVA and personal identification.  Illegal immigrants have it easier; at least they are considered part of the human race.  Unfortunately her ‘harmless’ status is called into question when witches appear to have been killed by demon magic.  Since Rachel is the only day-walking, non ever-after living demon known, she is under suspicion.  Rachel jumps right into the investigation, less because she is threatened with having the crime pinned on her than with the need to be busy, interested, and involved.  I totally sympathize.  There’s only so much time you can spend baking cookies, trying to get your license, and jogging in the zoo before you go ape-shit bonkers.

Without spoiling too much, I loved the book.  I felt Rachel was less impulsive, more in touch with her unconscious (I am a Jungian after all), and beginning to reconcile her demon self with her witch self.  This is positive character growth on a scale that is believable.  I hate it when authors have a sudden about face of character.  It’s called growth for a reason folks!  I was also glad she started to give Trent a break after the elevator scene.  The constant anger at him was beginning to feel a bit forced.  Rachel has grown.  It was time she recognized that Trent has grown also and re-evaluate the guy based on his current actions as opposed to who he was in book one.

I really want to address the criticisms I’ve read that Rachel is whiny, that she “waffles” when it comes to the dark stuff, the killing of a really bad guy.  Come on folks!  Yes, we’ve all seen and read about tough characters who deliver justice, who can deal the killing blow without a second thought.  How many of us could do it, honestly?  Maybe, when we’re in direct combat, when our children are being threatened, or when our lives are at stake, we might be able to kill another human being.  But some of us would pause even in that instance.  (SPOILER ALERT)  When Rachel is in the coffee house and she just can’t deliver a dark curse in cold emotion, Trent steps in to do the deed.  I’ve heard too many criticisms of this and it pisses me off.  Rachel has established a strong moral and ethical code for herself.  Finding out she is a demon doesn’t instantly negate that.  She wants to remain the person she always has been, regardless of her DNA, her blood markers, or the box she checks on the MVA form.  Isn’t that admirable?  Yes, she may eventually come to terms with the need to do a dark deed if the circumstances are right, but shouldn’t that be on her own terms?  That’s what makes her real, and less of a cookie-cutter character.

And as for the whiny thing.  First person POV.  Listen to your own head for 24 hours and see how self absorbed and whiny we really are as human beings.  Eeeek.  Not a pretty thing, trust me!

Keep reading.  Keep writing.  Keep drinking local, quality beer.