I have a post up on The Fictorians today. I talk about how to deal with monkey-throwing wrenches. Check it out.

Stay tuned...

I'm in the middle of a twelve day stint with no time off which means:

1) I'm exhausted.
2) I haven't had the time to write a new blog post.

So unfortunately I must leave you wanting. However, it's not for too long. I do have a post on the Fictorian Era coming up next Tuesday (the 24th). I'll post the link once it goes up.

Take care. I hope your week is less crazy than mine.

Changing the past for a better future

Spoiler warning!

I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past last week. I was on the fence about it at first. I'm still cringing from what they did to the Phoenix saga in X3 and despite some good performances First Class was a bit of a bore. However curiosity got the better of me. I had to see Bishop on the big screen. He's always been a favorite.

Bishop didn't disappoint (the little we got to see him) and the Sentinels were super scary and bad ass. The Time in a Bottle sequence was the best three minutes of the movie and I have to give the writers props for doing an admirable job retconning X3 out of existence (not going to cry about that). However they created unnecessary conflict in the past when all they needed to do was put the existing conflict in the future to better use. 

Kitty, Bishop, Colossus, Warpath, Blink, Sunspot, and Iceman was everything the X-men should be. They were a strong team of people who trusted each other implicitly in the most dire of situations and combined their strengths in amazing ways to fight back. It saddened me that we didn't see more of their struggles, how they became so cohesive. That's the movie I wanted to see. 

Did we need to spend 70% of the movie in the past? No. The final scene with the Sentinel attack on the White House lawn would have been just as good if it was in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. All of the key story elements could have been done in half the time, leaving a plenty of room for distopic battles that let the diverse future team shine. 

In spite of the setting imbalance and the fact that we didn't get to see Bishop, Warpath, Blink and the others nearly enough I still enjoyed it. There were enough geeky goodies to keep me happy and the resolution was satisfying.   

The crossfit writing regimen

My days are punctuated by the deafening music, floor breaking thuds, and adrenaline fueled yops from the crossfit gym next door. Every morning and evening the members do several laps around the block. I assumed that it was their warm up but I'm not sure anymore.

Lately a few of the members have added extra equipment to their run and I'm not talking about hand weights. They're dragging hundred pound weights -- the kind you usually see on a barbell -- or large duffle bags filled with dark matter for all I know. I'm not a runner. Big boobs and crooked achilles tendons have guaranteed that I never will become one. However, if I were I wouldn't be crazy enough to carry a fifty pound duffle across my shoulders because sooner or later my face would meet the pavement.

I understand that it's the Super Saiyan training method. Since technology won't allow humans to train under 4X gravity they're using the tools available. It's logical but still baffles me. Why push so hard? A conventional workout is much safer.

After considering it for a while I realized that I do the same thing with my writing. Every time I try to meet an insanely close deadline or write from a POV outside my norm I pick up that bag of dark matter and heft it around the block. Yes, it's scary. Yes, I do often find my face meeting the pavement. But every time I try I make it a little further. It only takes one fall to remember that a certain spot has uneven pavement.

The story I'm writing now is a new genre for me, and a new kind of POV. However it's also a story that a year ago I wouldn't have been able to tackle. Then it would have been too far outside my abilities to even consider and the story would have lacked because of it. I know it's scared a few of my beta readers when I told them what I'm attempting with this story.

Now I agree that it's probably not the most conventional way to strengthen my creative muscles but it seems to work for me. I'm up to the point where I can take the duffle bag around the next corner and discover what obstacles and challenges await. I may still fall flat on my face and earn a few new scars but I can live with that. Scars are cool.

An overlooked resource

When it comes time for an author to promote their newest book the local bookstores are often the first stop (and if they're not than they should be). However where a lot of authors go wrong is that they try to get the store to carry the book rather than get the staff to sell the book. The difference is bigger than you think. If you want to know how to take advantage of their selling skills take a look at my post on the Fictorians.

My next post on the Fictorians is coming this Friday (5/9). I'll be talking about one of my favorite books. You won't want to miss it.

The balls you didn't know I juggled

Last month I announced my decision to cut back to blogging every other Monday and why I came to that conclusion. Well there were two reasons that I wasn't at liberty to share then that I can now.

I've been doing guest posts for The Fictorians for over a year now. Last month they asked me to become a full member. I know it doesn't make sense to cut back on one blog just to post on another but my posts for them have been well received, and I have a lot of respect for the other members. I'm honored to be among their number. I'll only be doing one post a month for them so it won't cut into my schedule too much. Next Tuesday (29th) my first post as a Fictorian will up on the site so make sure to mark it on your calendars.

The other reason is that I'm returning to the stage. I auditioned for and was cast in Albany Civic Theater's upcoming production Avenue Q. I'll be playing the role of Christmas Eve and I'm so excited! I'm excited to be back on stage, I'm excited to work with this amazing cast, and I'm so happy to check one more show off my bucket list. I've wanted to portray Christmas Eve for years and I'd never forgive myself if I passed up this opportunity. She's such a fun character. So if you're local I'd love to see you in the audience. Just remember that this isn't a family friendly show.

So why did I withhold this information? Well when I made my announcement I hadn't been officially instated as a Fictorian. As for Avenue Q the auditions hadn't taken place yet. I did take it into account when I made my blogging decision, even though it wasn't guaranteed I'd be cast. Doing a musical takes a lot of time and energy and I wanted to be certain that I wasn't overloading myself. My conclusion was that if I stayed with a weekly blog schedule it would be exactly that. They were the weights that tipped the scale. Now that both items are official I'm glad that I took them into account and acted accordingly. It's going to make the next four months doable.

Captain plot hole and the repetitive threat

(SPOILER WARNING)

I saw Captain America: the Winter Soldier on Saturday night and even though I enjoyed it immensely there were a few plot holes that prevent me from calling it the best Marvel film of all. Yes, the predecessors in the franchise all had their flaws too (I'm still trying to forget the first Thor film) but I don't feel that their flaws were as far reaching as CA2's. Remember that I still liked the film. The action sequences were excellent and I love Steve and Natasha's interactions. I also loved the congruity with the TV show. However, those delights didn't compensate for the rest of the film being poorly written.

Two of my friends have commented on their blogs that Hydra's presence within S.H.I.E.L.D. should have been discovered years prior. They're right. Someone would have let something slip in conversation or an intercepted communiqué that would have started an internal investigation. I also have problems with Hydra's reasoning, as explained by Zola. He claimed that the only way for them to succeed was to have the people freely surrender their liberty but when they were allied with the Nazis that's exactly what they had. Not across the entire globe of course though they had enough of it. If that approach had already failed than why try it again?

I also had big problems with the Winter Soldier. First was that he had supposedly been operating for fifty years without anyone catching him or discovering his identity. Again, someone would have found something in all that time. They also eluded to his having been repeatedly frozen, thawed, and had his memories forcefully repressed. Unless he possessed the healing powers of Wolverine he shouldn't have been able to survive that. One freeze and thaw, sure. But a repeated course over fifty years? No way. And since we're on the subject of his abilities wouldn't the changes resulting from the Hydra experiments have manifested during the many operations he, Steve, and the rest of the team carried out in Europe during WWII?

My second problem with the Winter Soldier was that he was Bucky. In the first Captain America they used him for the gut-wrenching plot twist. That they did the same thing with the same character a second time is lazy. They could have expounded on Steve's dissolution with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the fact that the Winter Soldier was a Hydra operative and that would have been enough, I think. The fact that they went ahead with this copycat twist when they took the time to give Thor and Iron Man new and interesting conflicts is appalling. Especially when they negate all Steve's "I don't want to fight my friend" stance in the final fight scene. If Steve was so against it why did he throw the first punch?

The last plot hole that should have been addressed was Zola. If his mind and the algorithm was so essential to Hydra's operations why hadn't he been uploaded to a more modern interface? Those circuit boards shouldn't have been operable and the speed of modern components would have made the transfer worth the risk.

In any other film all of these flaws would have made me call it a massive failure. Fortunately for them the first class fight scenes made me a very happy bloodthirsty girl. Oh, and the relationships and the continuity with the TV show. But mostly the violence.