The 2009 BBC version of Austen’s Emma

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Emma BBC Romola GaraiYou read some reviewers because they regularly set you back in your chair with keen insight. You read others because their phrasing and voice are so delightful that you find yourself unable not to read, even when they venture forth into exciting areas like soup cans and lug nuts. I, alas, fear I cannot occupy either role when I tell you about the BBC’s 2009 mini-series production of Jane Austen’s Emma.

I cannot because have no keen insight into acting or film-making or film adaptations. I am not an expert on the late 18th and early 19th century England.  I am not an Austen junkie (although you can be sure I intend to become one shortly).

Surely, as a writer, I could come up with some kind of amazing assessment. But I cannot because I am speechless. I am filled with a fine joy. I have spent nearly four hours with my wife and two of my lovely daughters watching a delightful tale unfold about the fates of a number of characters–some foolish, some arrogant, some quirky, but most of them splendidly human and noble.

This. THIS is what I go to story for. To be transported. To laugh. To cry. To hope and fear and feel suspense for another.  To spend time with wonderful characters.  To have lived just a little more while under the story’s sway.

Gush, gush, gush.

Such an unmanly thing to do. But to hell with that. I am a man who loves Jane Austen and shoot ’em up thrillers both.

And if you enjoy Cranford or Pride & Prejudice or Downton Abbey, then you will love this production of Emma too. You will want to own it.

Romola Garai plays the star role of Emma. I enjoyed every minute she was on the screen. I didn’t know who she was, but it appears she was in the 2006 Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffudd. I might have to watch that one again just to see more of her work. Mr. Knightly, Emma’s lifelong friend, is played by Jonny Lee Miller who starred in Eli Stone, one of my favorite TV series. I loved watching every minute with him equally as well. There were some other familiar British actors; and more I hadn’t seen before. I thought they all did an excellent job.

As for the story, it’s about Emma, who believes she has an amazing ability at match making and prognosticating and very soon runs into to trouble because of it. It’s also about kindness, and generosity, and, most of all, love. Of so many varieties.

If you’re wondering what to watch this next week, order this one now.

The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

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The Drowned Cities by Paolo BacigalupiI just finished The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and, holy cow, folks—this story rocked.

It’s set in the future in the area around Washington D.C. which is the titular drowned cities. They’re drowned because the climate has gotten warmer, the seas have risen, and D.C. is half under water, permananetly flooded. It’s more like Georgia or Florida—gators, kudzu, the works. But this is not another dumb book about global warming. If it were, I wouldn’t be writing this.

No, the United States has fallen apart. Up north there’s some alliance with money and power and the ability to keep those in the Drowned Cities out. South, who knows? West? Don’t know. But right around D.C. everything has gone to hell.

It’s like Mogadishu, Somalia in the 1990’s (Blackhawk Down) with warlords fighting each other, tearing the place apart.

It’s like Sierra Leone at the end of that decade with different factions butchering locals and forcing kids to fight as soldiers.

Except instead of the U.S. or Europe or the U-freaking-N sending in peacekeepers to stabilize the situation, it’s China. And just like the U.S. in Somalia, the warlords send the Chinese peacekeepers packing. And so now it’s just chaos.

Talk about a setting for a story. But Bacigalupi doesn’t stop there. He adds in genetically modified creatures. He starts the book with one named Tool. A creature that’s got the DNA of humans, mastiffs, tigers, reptiles and who knows what else all combined to make him smarter and stronger than humans ever could be—a monster that’s the ultimate killer, the ultimate soldier, the ultimate war machine. One that was bred to submit to a master, but something went wrong with Tool. And he was able to break free of that bond.

Tool is trying to escape prison and death. But as mighty as he is, he’s weak and injured. And then two kids from a village run into him while in the jungle. He knows they’re going to reveal his whereabouts to the warlord searching for him. In his weakened state, Tool is only able to grab the small boy named Mouse.

Mahlia, the girl, promises to bring medicine if Tool will only spare the boy. He knows she’s lying.

And so starts a rich tale of the monster, the boy, and the girl: a tale that is filled with friendship, triumph, loss, heroism, cowardice, and earthy sci-fi coolness all set in the midst of a guerilla war. The beginning sucks you in. The ending leaves you breathless. Along the way you get to see into the character of all three plus some of the bad guys. In the end you get a story about sacrifice and love.

If you liked A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child solider in Africa; if you liked The Hunger Games, and not primarily for the romance; if you like person in jeopardy fiction or war flicks where a small group has to fight for its life, I think you will love this book.

This is the second book set in the same world. The first was Ship Breaker. Tool, one of the most interesting characters I’ve come across, is in that one too. But you don’t need to read that to enjoy this. And I wouldn’t put this read off to do so. Go give The Drowned Cities a try. Three or four pages in, I suspect you’ll be completely lost in the wondrous tale.

Witchbreaker by Author James Maxey

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I’m supposed to do this tag thing where one author tells about his or her latest project and then tags other authors to tell about theirs and so on and so on until we turn into some weird internet author borg and eat your brains out. 

Heck with that.

I want to simply share something cool with you instead. James Maxey (who tagged me in the borg fest) writes stories with lots of action, fun, and character that also make you think. They always start with a bang and never let up. For example, look at how GREATSHADOW, his last book, starts.

When Infidel grabbed me by the seat of my pants and charged toward the window, I didn’t protest. Partly this was due to the speed of her action, but mostly due to my inebriation from the sacramental wine we’d stolen.

If an opening like that isn’t going to make you want to read more, I don’t know what will. Especially when the wine was stolen from a lava-pygmy temple carved into the sheer cliff face of a volcano.  I’m not alone in my appreciation of Maxey’s writing. Orson Card wrote this glowing review of GREATSHADOW earlier this year.

Here is the opening to Maxey’s “To The East, A Bright Star” which was published in Asimov’s.  It has one of my favorite beginnings.

There was a shark in the kitchen. The shark wasn’t huge, maybe four feet long, gliding across the linoleum toward the refrigerator. Tony stood motionless in the knee-deep water of the dining room. The Wolfman said that the only sharks that came in this far were bull sharks, which were highly aggressive. Tony leaned forward cautiously and shut the door to the kitchen. He’d known the exact time and date of his death for most of his adult life. With only hours to go, he wasn’t about to let the shark do something ironic.  

Which brings us to the fact that Maxey has another book out called WITCHBREAKER. That’s such a cool title I wish I could off Maxey and steal it for myself. The book has, as you have seen to the right, a fabulous cover as well. About 5000% better than the horrid thing Solaris put on GREATSHADOW.

Maxey talks about what inspired WITCHBREAKER in this blog post, which I recommend you read in full. But just in case you’re a lazy son-of-a-gun like me, here’s the meat of the thing. WITCHBREAKER is about a woman named Sorrow. Says Maxey:

Her father was a judge who hung his own mother after she was accused of being a witch. Sorrow rebelled by becoming a witch herself, but her hatred isn’t directed directly at her father, it’s directed at the religious and political institutions that empowered him. So, Sorrow’s life mission is to overthrow that system. She’s one woman against the world, fighting to make it a better place even though everyone she meets keeps insisting that the world isn’t so bad. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for characters locked into a lifelong battle against forces more powerful than they will ever be.

Blast that dang Maxey and his character genius. I’m not envious at all. No, sir. Which is why I suggest you give Maxey a go. Maybe you’ll appreciate him as much as thousands of other readers do. Read the first few pages of WITCHBREAKER here with Amazon’s look inside.

My presentations at LDStorymakers May 10-11, 2013

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I’ll be giving two presentations at LDStorymakers this year.

“Vivid and Clear” — Despite the often repeated 11th commandment for writers—show, don’t tell—writers NEVER show. They can’t. It’s all tell, tell, tell. The trick is to tell in a way that helps your readers imagine the situation (action, thought, dialogue, description, etc.) with such vividness and clarity it triggers an emotional response.  In this hour we’ll explore a number of simple but powerful prose techniques that help you do just that.

“Story Turns” — Story turns–cliffhangers, rugpulls, plot twists, reversals, surprises, revelations (and more)–are a core part of an exciting plot, pacing control, and making a reader want to turn the page. In this workshop we’ll explore the main types of story turns and how they work so you can use them in your writing. (They’ve got me scheduled to give this one twice.)

More importantly, I get to attend some very interesting looking presentations from other writers when I’m not on stage. I had a blast last year.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

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After this year’s presidential election I emailed my sister, a smart, super-competent, true-blue, bleeding-heart, save the weeds and snails liberal, who volunteered to do campaign work for Hilary Clinton in Colorado during the 2008 Democratic primaries and, of course, voted loudly for Obama in this last election.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “How can anyone who doesn’t have a carrot for a brain want more of the same? I don’t get it. Obama? How can so many Americans be that gullible? I’m totally baffled.”  And that puzzlement wasn’t rhetorical. I was seriously baffled.

“Are you kidding me?” she replied. “Mitt Romney? How could anyone vote for Mitt Romney?  Talk about baffled.”  She went on a rant listing all of Romney’s supposed deeds and positions of sooper evil and stupidity. Then she questioned how anyone could support that Hitler in his Mormon clothes.

Okay, she didn’t say “Hitler,” but she did claim he was “evil” and “despicable.” And when I think of evil, my first thought is always of folks like Mitt Romney.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the Juarez drug cartel, which is responsible for hundreds of gruesome murders each year and . . . Mitt Romney. Oh, yeah. They’re like brothers. In fact, wasn’t Romney’s dad born in Mexico? And, hey, one of Romney’s sons even knows Spanish. That boy wasn’t on a church mission there. No, he was making connections with the jefe!

Sonia Montoya-Cadena, the one who ran a human trafficking ring in Denver exploiting young girls for sex and . . . Mitt Romney. Yeah, Romney’s just like that. If he could run slave brothels, he’d do it in a minute to make a buck. In fact, doesn’t Bain Capital own a couple of slave brothels in Greenland?

I wanted to unload. I was prepared to destroy her with fiery analysis of the first order.

Thundering analysis.

Mountain crushing logic.

She was so freaking blind.

Except,

She had never actually considered what I had to say in any of my previous emails. It never mattered how powerfully vast my brilliant logic was. She’d demonstrated wax ear time and again. All of my intellectual might never made a dent in her liberal force field. I brought blood and thunder, and it always seemed to bounce off her like bullets made of styrofoam.

Nevertheless! Clinton? Obama? Save the gerbils?

I made a comment that sent Smart Sister into DEFCON 5. Foolish me. Eventually, her liberal ire cooled and she decided to order comrade Putin to stand down and not push the big red button.

Meanwhile, I started to think.

I noted that if things didn’t change, the Republicans wouldn’t be winning the presidency any time soon. If they couldn’t beat Obama when the economy was in the tank, then there really was no hope. Which meant we are going to end up like Greece, with continuing inflation (which is not only an intentional, government-led annual pay cut on the disgustingly rich, filthy rich, and annoyingly rich, but also on the middle class, poor, destitute, and various and sundry hoboes everywhere), huge debt, stupid taxes, ridiculous health care, Soviet-style redistribution, blah, blah, blah.

I asked myself, like all Republicans did, what could we conservatives do differently? Follow Obama’s example and improve our operations to get the vote out? Build up a conservative La Raza? Do the right thing with the children of illegals? Get someone willing to land more blows on the opposition (Romney could have decimated Obama in debates two and three, but he didn’t; he totally failed to define his opponent).

Maybe it was in the messaging. Maybe what we needed to do was develop something that actually changed minds.

At this point a faint ding sounded in the distance in my mind. A small light bulb suddenly flipped on and illuminated a dark cubby of my mind.

Hadn’t I just read about studies showing how a soap opera in Mexico, a radio play in Tanzania, and sitcoms in America actually changed viewer attitudes and behaviors about literacy, HIV, and abortion? Didn’t I already know about the power of concrete and vivid storytelling? Not sermon-telling, but storytelling.

Why, yes. Yes, I did.

Had I not witnessed the use of storytelling on U.S. television for, what, fifteen years by those wanting to build sympathy for homosexuals? (A good thing, even if I disagree with some of the gay agenda.) And the cheapening of sex by others? (A bad thing.) And the clearly conscious promotion of many other attitudes and beliefs via various media programs?

I determined there was something to this.

If people were going to vote for fiscal responsibility in Washington, something like this was going to have to be done. It wasn’t going to happen in flame wars.

About this same time I was browsing through the recent Radio West programs. I saw one called “The Righteous Mind.”  It was an interview of Jonathon Haidt about his new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Hey, wasn’t that addressing my question?

The program blurb states: “Monday, our guest is the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose latest book sets out to explain the root causes of the divisions in our society. At the heart of his argument is the idea that the human mind is designed to “do” morality. But when we separate into tribes – say political affiliations or religious denominations – we focus on different moral foundations. Haidt joins us to explain why he says we need the insights of liberals and conservatives to flourish as a nation.”

I listened. And loved the program.

Haidt shared a number of deliciously insightful things about how our mind works and how we choose our affiliations. He shared so many insights that I immediately requested his book at my library. The library ordered a copy for their collection. I, of course, was first in line to read it. I just finished the book.

It’s one of the best books I’ve read all year.

Haidt explains why my sister and I were both baffled by people who voted for the opposition candidate. He explains how human morality works. How our reason does not lead us to make the judgments we do, but instead more often acts like a lawyer to justify our positions to others.

As soon as he explained that I saw how I had done that time and time again. For example, in this election cycle I blamed Obama for the economy. In the Bill Clinton re-election I vigorously argued that the President doesn’t have any effect on the economy and is lying if he takes credit for it. I’m not saying that Obama didn’t do things that might have hampered the recovery, but how did I know his actions exacerbated our problems? What evidence did I really have?

Haidt explains that there are six basic moral bases then points out which ones drive liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, and how we can use that knowledge to disagree more constructively. He provides strong insights into how our reason and intuitions and judgments work, the evolutionary function of our morality, and how our wiring for group affiliation affects it.

I didn’t agree with some of his conclusions. He sometimes takes his points too far. For example, he seems to suggest that people in cities are pre-disposed to be liberal. And that’s why they live there. Um, no. That’s not why they live there. They live in cities because that’s where the jobs are. The agricultural revolution made sure of that, remember? In his effort to explain the smaller biological basis of our beliefs, he also downplays the larger effect our families and groups have. But despite these excesses, he shares so many fresh and exciting ideas that they don’t matter. And he shares them all in such a fun and clear way that I couldn’t help but stay up late a number of nights reading this book.

Do you know how much I wanted to trash Obama to my sister?  That Soviet-style central planner.  That drunken sailor spender.  That choom wagon pot head.

And yet, you and I also know that will never work. I now know better why. Because of Haidt, I think I see a better way. I certainly see how I have done exactly what drives me mad about those who have drunk the opposition candidate’s Kool-aide. I see that I have my own conservative force field that deflects liberal bullets (and perhaps even blinds me to the truth sometimes). And why I need to watch my reason, that cunning lawyer part of my brain, as well as my intuition.

Haidt, a liberal, has given me, a conservative, a great gift. I intend to use it. If you are interested in the two taboo topics of politics or religion, if you enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink or the Heath brother’s Made to Stick, if you want to find a better way to influence than flame wars (as fun as they can sometimes be), then I think you will enjoy the wonders Haidt shares in his fine book.

Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the Radio West program http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/righteous-mind for a taste of what awaits you.