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Aug. 11th, 2023 08:02 pmSo now, we have Reddit refugees? Add them to the Tumblr, Twitter, and LJ refugees.
1. What's the most random thing you've ever researched for a story? If you come across something where you have reason to believe the creator hasn't done their research, would that cause you to stop reading, or would you grit your teeth and bear with it? Do you/would you ever ignore the outcome of research and go your own way?
I hate research. Extremely good at it - was taught how to do it the hard way (card catalogues, microfiche, Lexis/Nexus, Boolang Databases) and now that I have the easy way - it's even easier. Still hate doing it though.
But because it's so easy - I can get irritated by obvious mistakes in books I'm reading or television writing or films. However, I'm also likely to handwave - because I don't like to research and it's easy to get the wrong information now - if you don't know what you are doing. And since most folks weren't taught how - that happens a lot. Also, depends on the genre.
Part of my difficulty with the straight up "historical" fiction genre -- is unless the individual is a historian and excellent at research, and a good writer - the book will annoy me. They fail on one of two fronts: 1) research is sloppy, unable to figure out what is accurate and what isn't. or 2) throw the research in, but skimp on characterization and do a paint by numbers plot. There's a lot of bad historicals out there. *cough*JohnJakes*cough*. Science Fiction doesn't bother me at all - mainly because I don't know enough to catch mistakes - however if it defies my suspension of disbelief completely - I'll get annoyed. Mystery? Is dicier, mainly because I have a background in Criminal Defense Law and know something about the Justice System in the US, how it works, how police work works, legal and evidentiary procedures. For example? You can't get reliable fingerprints off of furniture, cars, windows, glasses. They get smudged. Forensic evidence - can get corrupted easily. DNA evidence - is hard to get intact. I stopped reading a lot of these - because it wasn't hard for me to get pulled out of the story. (Never read or watch a genre that deals with subject matter in which you know too much.) My father got annoyed with Business Thrillers, so wrote his own. Romance? It's rare I'll have issues. Usually bad writing or illogical sex scenes will pull me out, which is more often the case in fanfic romances than anything else. Although I've run into it in cheap romances on Amazon. They have sex scenes in them that I think, okay, that's just not possible. ( sample of impossible sex scenes in fiction ) People say the writer has obviously never had sex. Eh, no, more likely they don't know human anatomy and need to research it? There are books on this sort of thing. It doesn't require actual practice or experimentation. There was one fanfic - that had the female character, Buffy, with a prostrate. (Women don't have prostrates.)
Most random things researched? Hmmm...gun shot wounds. For the book I published. I looked into what actual damage a gun can do to someone. (Most people get it wrong.) Also how to buy or get a hand gun (it was insanely easy in 2004-2010, still is, just not as insanely so).
Also researched the effects of space travel and zero gravity on the human body for a sci-fi novel, and linguistics.
And the geographical topography of Main.
2.Play in the Sand Day: As a child, did you enjoy playing in the sand – either at the beach or in a sandbox? Did you build sandcastles? As an adult, is this something that still appeals to you?
Yes. We had a sandbox in the back yard most likely created by my paternal grandfather (who was a professional carpenter - it passed down to my brother and skipped my father and I entirely), when I was living in PA. We had a big backyard in PA - this was the semi-rural portion of my childhood, before my family moved to the nasty mid-western suburbs (of which we shall not speak). Did I enjoy it? Eh. I don't remember? It was a long time ago.
We visited a lot of beaches in my childhood. My father had a fondness for the Florida Keys - so we went there a lot. Also, Puerto Rico (great beaches). This, again, was before we moved to the Midwest. Once we made it to the Midwest - it was Colorado, and to a degree California and Arizona.
My father liked Scotsdale and Tuscon, Arizona, he also liked San Diego, California, and Marine County, north of San Francisco (where his brother lived), also Colorado (we went to Colorado a lot). Also Hilton Head. My father liked anywhere that he could hike (or do a lot of walking), play tennis, and swim, not necessarily in that order. Also be outside without being too hot or too cold. And he hated camping - so nice place to stay, with nice restaurants.
Did I build sandcastles? Yes, sigh. But mainly I think I swam and walked the beach a lot. Some of my fondest memories are of walking the beach with my Dad. He loved to walk beaches. We'd do it for hours. Sometimes walk the entire breadth of the beach.
As an adult, is this still something that appeals to you?
Walking the beach? Yes. Building sandcastles? No.
I don't like sand. It gets in everything. And I'm not fond of it. Also not fond of sunbathing. Or swimming in a body of water with a lot of life in it - makes me edgy.
But I do like walking the beach and looking at it and the water. Also dipping into it and out again.
I honestly think I'm more a forest and mountain girl than a beach girl?
3. You know times have changed (in my opinion in a good way, YMMV) when they are now having Male/Male contemporary romances with lots of sex on Amazon Prime - adapted from bestselling contemporary romance novels. Red White and Blue - and it actually looks good and has some handsome leads? Wish I could say this was true of all of the adapted heterosexual romances. But alas no. However, we do get LGBTA romances now. Progress. I remember a time in which we couldn't see a kiss or let them hold hands. (Basically the entire 20th Century?)
4. Weddings...from the Friday Five
* Do you want to get married?
Not that anyone has ever asked or that I've ever found anyone that I'd want to be married to...but no, not particularly. I'm kind of ambivalent to be honest? When I was a kid - an Aunt (whose wedding I was in and who is now, long since divorced) gave me a "wedding" board game. It was kind of fun - you get to roll dice for things like matching flower arrangements, gowns, etc. But I found it ultimately silly.
I share my immediate family's ambivalence for weddings. My parents had a simple one, with not a lot of people in attendance.
The best one that I've gone to is a tie between a friend's wedding at the Air Force Academy where they did a sword salute, a Russian Orthodox one where they danced around each other holding crowns, and my brother's wedding which took place in a swimming pool. I actually liked my brother's the best - it was a surprise, it was irreverent, and it was kind of fun.
Also, it supported the bride who was 9 months pregnant at the time. (They'd been living together for more than 17 years at that point.) They only got married because NY is not a common law state and you kind of have to - in order for the father to have rights to the child.
* Wedding colors?
Purple, White, and Black.
* Venue?
Probably the Unitarian Church, or in a wooded place.
* Honeymoon?
Alaska or Machu Pichu or the islands in Thailand
5. A lack of respect: Catalonian nudists campaign against clothed tourists
t was on a sun-kissed stretch of beach in Catalonia that Segimon Rovira began to feel self-conscious. For as long as the 56-year-old could remember, the area’s turquoise waters had primarily been frequented by nudists. Now, he was painfully aware of being surrounded by sunbathers – in their swimsuits.
“Before, people would arrive at a nude beach and either leave or strip down,” said Rovira. “Now they stay and keep their swimsuit on. But what they don’t realise is that if there are a lot of them, they end up making us uncomfortable. It’s a lack of respect.”
Now Rovira and other naturists in Catalonia are fighting back, with a campaign aimed at protecting the decades-long tradition associated with 50 or so of the region’s beaches.
“Nudism is not banned in Spain, you can do it on any beach,” said Rovira, who leads the Naturist-Nudist Federation of Catalonia. “But so as not to bother people, we prefer to go to beaches that have traditionally been nudist and where most people are naked. We want people to respect this.”
Pesky tourists.
It's not banned in France either. People were topless on the beaches in France when I visited in the 1980s on a exchange program. I took pictures - the photography center refused to develop the ones of the topless swimmers.
Sigh.
6. Lisa Jewell...I once Read 40 Agatha Christie Novels in a Year
Found this author Interview odd. (Turns out she's one year younger than I am. Although, I've never heard of her until now, and her interview responses don't exactly inspire me to read her. These interviews can be counter-productive marketing tools.)
( Read more... )
7. Got a lot done today at work - so feel accomplished. Also, BYT and I are getting along. Weirdly, everyone else leaving has resulted in a better work environment? I think BYT and BB realized that they have to be nice to me - because I'm all they have left and they need me more than I need them.
At any rate, this year so far, has been much better than last year. It admittedly didn't have to work that hard to be better. 2020-2022 set a very low bar.
Tomorrow - off to see Oppenheimer on 70 mm, not Imax (which I'm actually fine with - since I was a little leery of seeing a movie that is mainly people talking and bombs exploding, on Imax.) Mask in toe.
My allergies today are driving me nuts. End of August is high allergy season for me.
1. What's the most random thing you've ever researched for a story? If you come across something where you have reason to believe the creator hasn't done their research, would that cause you to stop reading, or would you grit your teeth and bear with it? Do you/would you ever ignore the outcome of research and go your own way?
I hate research. Extremely good at it - was taught how to do it the hard way (card catalogues, microfiche, Lexis/Nexus, Boolang Databases) and now that I have the easy way - it's even easier. Still hate doing it though.
But because it's so easy - I can get irritated by obvious mistakes in books I'm reading or television writing or films. However, I'm also likely to handwave - because I don't like to research and it's easy to get the wrong information now - if you don't know what you are doing. And since most folks weren't taught how - that happens a lot. Also, depends on the genre.
Part of my difficulty with the straight up "historical" fiction genre -- is unless the individual is a historian and excellent at research, and a good writer - the book will annoy me. They fail on one of two fronts: 1) research is sloppy, unable to figure out what is accurate and what isn't. or 2) throw the research in, but skimp on characterization and do a paint by numbers plot. There's a lot of bad historicals out there. *cough*JohnJakes*cough*. Science Fiction doesn't bother me at all - mainly because I don't know enough to catch mistakes - however if it defies my suspension of disbelief completely - I'll get annoyed. Mystery? Is dicier, mainly because I have a background in Criminal Defense Law and know something about the Justice System in the US, how it works, how police work works, legal and evidentiary procedures. For example? You can't get reliable fingerprints off of furniture, cars, windows, glasses. They get smudged. Forensic evidence - can get corrupted easily. DNA evidence - is hard to get intact. I stopped reading a lot of these - because it wasn't hard for me to get pulled out of the story. (Never read or watch a genre that deals with subject matter in which you know too much.) My father got annoyed with Business Thrillers, so wrote his own. Romance? It's rare I'll have issues. Usually bad writing or illogical sex scenes will pull me out, which is more often the case in fanfic romances than anything else. Although I've run into it in cheap romances on Amazon. They have sex scenes in them that I think, okay, that's just not possible. ( sample of impossible sex scenes in fiction ) People say the writer has obviously never had sex. Eh, no, more likely they don't know human anatomy and need to research it? There are books on this sort of thing. It doesn't require actual practice or experimentation. There was one fanfic - that had the female character, Buffy, with a prostrate. (Women don't have prostrates.)
Most random things researched? Hmmm...gun shot wounds. For the book I published. I looked into what actual damage a gun can do to someone. (Most people get it wrong.) Also how to buy or get a hand gun (it was insanely easy in 2004-2010, still is, just not as insanely so).
Also researched the effects of space travel and zero gravity on the human body for a sci-fi novel, and linguistics.
And the geographical topography of Main.
2.Play in the Sand Day: As a child, did you enjoy playing in the sand – either at the beach or in a sandbox? Did you build sandcastles? As an adult, is this something that still appeals to you?
Yes. We had a sandbox in the back yard most likely created by my paternal grandfather (who was a professional carpenter - it passed down to my brother and skipped my father and I entirely), when I was living in PA. We had a big backyard in PA - this was the semi-rural portion of my childhood, before my family moved to the nasty mid-western suburbs (of which we shall not speak). Did I enjoy it? Eh. I don't remember? It was a long time ago.
We visited a lot of beaches in my childhood. My father had a fondness for the Florida Keys - so we went there a lot. Also, Puerto Rico (great beaches). This, again, was before we moved to the Midwest. Once we made it to the Midwest - it was Colorado, and to a degree California and Arizona.
My father liked Scotsdale and Tuscon, Arizona, he also liked San Diego, California, and Marine County, north of San Francisco (where his brother lived), also Colorado (we went to Colorado a lot). Also Hilton Head. My father liked anywhere that he could hike (or do a lot of walking), play tennis, and swim, not necessarily in that order. Also be outside without being too hot or too cold. And he hated camping - so nice place to stay, with nice restaurants.
Did I build sandcastles? Yes, sigh. But mainly I think I swam and walked the beach a lot. Some of my fondest memories are of walking the beach with my Dad. He loved to walk beaches. We'd do it for hours. Sometimes walk the entire breadth of the beach.
As an adult, is this still something that appeals to you?
Walking the beach? Yes. Building sandcastles? No.
I don't like sand. It gets in everything. And I'm not fond of it. Also not fond of sunbathing. Or swimming in a body of water with a lot of life in it - makes me edgy.
But I do like walking the beach and looking at it and the water. Also dipping into it and out again.
I honestly think I'm more a forest and mountain girl than a beach girl?
3. You know times have changed (in my opinion in a good way, YMMV) when they are now having Male/Male contemporary romances with lots of sex on Amazon Prime - adapted from bestselling contemporary romance novels. Red White and Blue - and it actually looks good and has some handsome leads? Wish I could say this was true of all of the adapted heterosexual romances. But alas no. However, we do get LGBTA romances now. Progress. I remember a time in which we couldn't see a kiss or let them hold hands. (Basically the entire 20th Century?)
4. Weddings...from the Friday Five
* Do you want to get married?
Not that anyone has ever asked or that I've ever found anyone that I'd want to be married to...but no, not particularly. I'm kind of ambivalent to be honest? When I was a kid - an Aunt (whose wedding I was in and who is now, long since divorced) gave me a "wedding" board game. It was kind of fun - you get to roll dice for things like matching flower arrangements, gowns, etc. But I found it ultimately silly.
I share my immediate family's ambivalence for weddings. My parents had a simple one, with not a lot of people in attendance.
The best one that I've gone to is a tie between a friend's wedding at the Air Force Academy where they did a sword salute, a Russian Orthodox one where they danced around each other holding crowns, and my brother's wedding which took place in a swimming pool. I actually liked my brother's the best - it was a surprise, it was irreverent, and it was kind of fun.
Also, it supported the bride who was 9 months pregnant at the time. (They'd been living together for more than 17 years at that point.) They only got married because NY is not a common law state and you kind of have to - in order for the father to have rights to the child.
* Wedding colors?
Purple, White, and Black.
* Venue?
Probably the Unitarian Church, or in a wooded place.
* Honeymoon?
Alaska or Machu Pichu or the islands in Thailand
5. A lack of respect: Catalonian nudists campaign against clothed tourists
t was on a sun-kissed stretch of beach in Catalonia that Segimon Rovira began to feel self-conscious. For as long as the 56-year-old could remember, the area’s turquoise waters had primarily been frequented by nudists. Now, he was painfully aware of being surrounded by sunbathers – in their swimsuits.
“Before, people would arrive at a nude beach and either leave or strip down,” said Rovira. “Now they stay and keep their swimsuit on. But what they don’t realise is that if there are a lot of them, they end up making us uncomfortable. It’s a lack of respect.”
Now Rovira and other naturists in Catalonia are fighting back, with a campaign aimed at protecting the decades-long tradition associated with 50 or so of the region’s beaches.
“Nudism is not banned in Spain, you can do it on any beach,” said Rovira, who leads the Naturist-Nudist Federation of Catalonia. “But so as not to bother people, we prefer to go to beaches that have traditionally been nudist and where most people are naked. We want people to respect this.”
Pesky tourists.
It's not banned in France either. People were topless on the beaches in France when I visited in the 1980s on a exchange program. I took pictures - the photography center refused to develop the ones of the topless swimmers.
Sigh.
6. Lisa Jewell...I once Read 40 Agatha Christie Novels in a Year
Found this author Interview odd. (Turns out she's one year younger than I am. Although, I've never heard of her until now, and her interview responses don't exactly inspire me to read her. These interviews can be counter-productive marketing tools.)
( Read more... )
7. Got a lot done today at work - so feel accomplished. Also, BYT and I are getting along. Weirdly, everyone else leaving has resulted in a better work environment? I think BYT and BB realized that they have to be nice to me - because I'm all they have left and they need me more than I need them.
At any rate, this year so far, has been much better than last year. It admittedly didn't have to work that hard to be better. 2020-2022 set a very low bar.
Tomorrow - off to see Oppenheimer on 70 mm, not Imax (which I'm actually fine with - since I was a little leery of seeing a movie that is mainly people talking and bombs exploding, on Imax.) Mask in toe.
My allergies today are driving me nuts. End of August is high allergy season for me.