I LOAD UP ON MICHAEL CONNELLY BOOKS : READING FOR HIS WRITING

I recently got two Michael Connelly books, The Fifth Witness - a Lincoln Lawyer Novel, 

which manages to involve the sell of a criminal murder case for movie making, and The Drop - a Harry Bosch Novel, about the hunt for and arrest of a child molester. 

I wrote about discovering Michael Connelly as a writer of local (Los Angeles) crime fiction a while back and am only sorry that I didn't hear about his work sooner because I love to read about events - fiction or nonfiction - that take place in a topography and cityscape I'm familiar with.  Now, I think that some day, far in the future I'm going to have to read one or both series from the first book forward.  Of course each book stands alone but still, there are the subtle nuances of character building from the start, and I feel maybe I've missed out. 

SO I DON'T KNOW IF PERHAPS Connelly has revealed this bit of information before or if I caught it, on page 132 of the hardback of The Fifth Witness, as the first of the revelation but it turns out that The Lincoln Lawyer has a half brother who is...  Harry Bosch.   Interestingly both men have teenage daughters and are divorced.  And Connelly has set it up that at least one of these daughters may follow her father into police work so... does that mean that in a few years there will be crime fiction based in LA from a FEMALE POINT OF VIEW!  I kind of hope so and I can't wait to see what he does, if so, with the sex scenes!

As I was reading I felt my self with the literary training turn on.  This is not the self that usually reads for enjoyment nor the self that writes in long deep sessions of uninterruptable concentration.  It's the self that says "Now exactly how did he pull this story off?"  How much is in flow and how much is calculation?  Does he have the plot charted before hand?

PATRICIA CORNWELL WINS LAWSUIT : FINANCIAL ADVISORS DIDN'T PROTECT HER WRITERLY ENVIRONMENT AMONG OTHER OFFENSES

This article is swirling around the net in various forms.  Here's the link to the BBC News version.

Patricia Cornwell wins $51m deal over financial losses : BBC NEWS

ECERPT "...The lawsuit added that because Cornwell suffered from bipolar disorder - a condition she says her business managers were aware of - the author's "ability to write is dependent upon the ability to avoid distractions."

"A quiet, uninterrupted environment, free of the distractions of managing her business and her assets, including her investments, is essential to her ability to write and to meet her deadlines," it says..."

THE SINGING DETECTIVE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Loovved this movie, but I was sewing when I watched it the first time and thought I should watch it again to resolve some questions I had about the plot. I decided I wanted to understand the screenplay behind it.


 I did watch it again and decided that was terrific, and not just because Robert Downey Junior is one of my favorite actors. 

RD Jr.  acts as Dan Dark, a pulp fiction writer who has been badly physically burned, and while in the hospital recovering, flashes back to episodes in his past fiction writing, which take place in the 1950's and uses music from the 1950's as a lead into memory. 

As many writers can testify their real life experiences can also be used in or inspire fiction.  So Dan Dark's memories cross into his real life as well.  The confusion he experiences and which I experienced watching the film, which took artful editing and masterful writing (Screenplay by Dennis Potter) works, and some of the brutality is softer because the viewer knows these are fictive characters.

You know I won't ruin it by telling you the story, but if you haven't ever watched THE SINGING DETECTIVE, watch it - at least twice.

C 2013  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

ANTHONY HOPKIN'S SLIPSTREAM FILLED ME WITH ANXIETY : THE WORD IS SHATTERED : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Anthony Hopkins, known for his work in some scarey freaky films,  wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and worked as an actor in the film, so I had to see this. 

Slipstream was edited with disturbing breaks and rapid images.  OK, I had trouble following the story and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I have never watched reality television and love long periods of deep concentration. 

So I read the back of the DVD package to get a clue, and then realized "OH, OK this is a story about a screenwriter (could be any writer) who begins to live in his script/ the world he has created, so much so that he looses his sense of reality. 

A viewer really had to pay attention and pick up clues quickly.  I apparently was unable to do this.  Yet, I understood what was intended and realized that Anthony Hopkins had effectively conveyed to the viewer exactly what it was he wanted to!  In this case the DVD package wasn't lying when it said "Soon, he is thrown into a vortex where dreams, time, and reality collide in an increasingly whirling slipsteam.

Let me explain that early on a female character does define "slipstream" for the viewer, and so I thought this had something to do with reincarnation, which is a subject I've long been very fascinated with.  However, there was nothing I was cognitive of while watching that seemed to be about past lives.  Perhaps what was being suggested was instead the phenomena of Deja Vu, the feeling that you have been to a place or scene before, which some people attribute to past life memories.

This film also left me with a temporary depression.

As a result, I didn't give it a second go to try and figure it all out.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

WOMEN OF MYSTERY : THREE WRITERS WHO FOREVER CHANGED DETECTIVE FICTION : SARA PARETSKY : SUE GRAFTON : MARCIA FULLER : FILM REVIEW

WOMEN OF MYSTERY : THREE WRITERS WHO FOREVER CHANGED DETECTIVE FICTION : DVD REVIEW

The three women writers (some of us prefer to just be called writers) are Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Fuller. The focus on this film was how the woman detective characters that these three writers have individually invented has proven to be a role model for women readers in real life. For instance, Sara Paretsky tells of a letter she got from a Japanese fan, a woman engineer still dealing with daily sexual harassment on the job.

The film also focused on testimonials from the authors on how well they "know" their invented character and how at times the fact that the character is different than they are, even nothing like them, can become an issue of separation, as if that character were a real person.

I wonder, does a writer sometimes feel obligated to design a character who is inauthentic as a result of feeling the pressure to be, say, nice, in their own real life?

Maybe because I've heard authors speak of their chaacters and have invented some of my own, I know that we must "get into the head" of our character. We must know them as we know ourselves. We ask what would she (not us) do in any situation?

NEW DAY FILMS is the source of this older DVD.