Monday, December 19, 2005

One more down...

Another chapter is finished. That means only three to go and I'm already working on one of them, so really only two after the current one. Yea! On Saturday, I managed to get through a difficult conversation between Zara and Caelan that I'd ducked out on in the previous draft. I told myself that she'd let a particular remark slide, due to the surrounding circumstances not being right for a giant discussion, but she has overruled me. : ) And the scene and chapter are better for it. So, I'll keep working away. I'm excited to be this close to the end. Getting through that difficult conversation was a major hurdle for me, so I'm feeling good that's done.

ButI don't have any Christmas gifts purchased, Christmas cards are a distant dream on my to do list, and I have a cookie exchange tomorrow for which I've baked no cookies. *sigh* Yeah. This week is going to be a little tricky.

Here are some fun links to check out:

-Woolly Mammoth Park. It could happen. I'd probably even pay to visit, as long Newman wasn't in charge of security and all. Best quote in that movie?

Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum): "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs..."

Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern): "Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth..."

-I read somewhere recently that in order to attract their target audience (women, primarily), the marketing folks for Brokeback Mountain looked at movie posters for 50 of the most romantic movies of all time for inspiration in creating their movie poster. Titanic, it turns out, was a huge inspiration. I, despite having seen that movie and wept over it despite my irritation with the end (hello?!? An entire ship went down and there was only one person-sized, floatable piece of wood out there?), could not remember what the poster looked like to save my life. So, I did a little research. I found it interesting to see what similarities the marketing folks picked up on and how they chose to use them. I mean, most people wouldn't even probably notice the likeness, but I wonder if it has a subconscious effect. I bet it does. So, here you go, have a look for yourselves:

Titanic movie poster

Brokeback Mountain Movie poster

-Also, am I the only one willing to admit a junior high/early high school obssession with the works of V.C. Andrews? Oh, goodness, they were like soap operas in print. People sleeping around, sometimes with siblings (Ick!), evil or absent parents, tragic pregnancies and even more tragic miscarriages--I'm sure I'm glossing over the weirdness of them, but for some reason, I was utterly entranced by these novels. Flowers in the Attic was the first one I read. And yet, knowing exactly what happens in that book, I was totally squicked out by the new cover I saw on it at Target the other day. Here is the old cover you might be familiar with. Here is the new cover. Chris and Cathy are siblings, people. As in, incest! Am I the only one weirded out by this new romantic cover photo being used to sell incest as romance?!?

2 comments:

Pat Kirby said...

Most of the people I went to school with were Catholic. Which means, they were told not to have sex, but not what sex actually was.

So I think have the allure of Andrew's books were the sex scenes. Same with Judy Bloom. Funny, because by today's standards, the sex scenes in both are pretty mild.

Stacey said...

You know, I can't really remember how graphic the sex scenes were in V.C. Andrews. I remember them as being scandalous. But that was the perspective of a 13 year old! I'll have to maybe glance at one of them again, just to see : )

But yeah, I think you're right. The sex scenes probably were a big draw at that age.