Diana Dru Botsford

Fox has put up a 12 minute mashup of clips from Ron D Moore’s Virtuality pilot.  The two hour “original science-fiction thriller movie,” airs on Fox June 26 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and its still not known if the series will ever get a clear pickup.

The old trope of Artificial Intelligence gone bad seems to have a new twist here with a Truman-esque element that might just give the series the fresh ‘twist’ it would need to sustain a decent run (though the dialogue is a tad twinge worthy but hey, so was BSG).  See for yourself:

Do you have a short film collecting dust on the shelf?  One you’ve shot in the past few years?

We’re less than two weeks away from the submission cut off so here’s 5 simple reasons why, if you’re a filmmaker in SW Missouri, you should submit to the Springfield Little Film Festival:

1. It’s a chance to have your work shown off to the public at a great venue.
2. Whether you’re an entrant, or a finalist, or a winner, it looks good on your job or graduate school application.
3. It’s for a good cause - helping future film students achieve their dreams.
4. It’s a chance to share your work with the community.
5. Two words: after party.

So what are you waiting for?  Pull out that film and submit it before the June 30th deadline!

If you’re like me, you don’t get to read as much as you’d like, or rather, what you read isn’t exactly “for pleasure.” Therefore, when you do have the opportunity to read what you want, you get picky. In my case, that means turning to the works of a rare dozen or so authors who have never failed to engage me in their fictional worlds.

C.C. Finlay is most definitely on that list. There’s an ease to his use of language, a rich tapestry of setting and character that immediately pulls me in, and his stories are always fresh in their plotting. I’ve yet to be disappointed in reading any of his work.

Finlay’s latest historical fantasy novel, The Patriot Witch, provides an extra bonus as it’s set against the rich AND realistic backdrop of America’s struggle for independence (a personal favorite historical period).  War is not pretty and Finlay never shies from showing us the clear and dirty details without ever slowing down the story. If you wanted to fight for freedom, more power to you. Don’t have a rifle? Just wait a few moments. Someone else will fall and you can use theirs. If nothing else, Finlay makes it clear that a pragmatic mind is the only thing that keeps you alive in the midst of battle… if you’re lucky.

As it turns out, luck – or to be more specific, MAGIC, may have something to do with staying alive as well.

While there’s ample historic underpinnings to The Patriot’s Witch, the story’s heart lies with Finlay’s protagonist Proctor Brown, a 20 year-old young farmer and minuteman. Proctor learns many a painful lesson in this first part of the Traitor to the Crown trilogy. Coming of age during the American Revolution is one thing. Discovering the dark ugly side of magic is another. Up until the story’s kicked into gear, Proctor’s only exposure to magic is the benign art of scrying – the ability to see into the future (though interpretation is key as he painfully discovers). He soon learns that his dreams of peaceful farming have no place in the harsh realities of a war reaching far beyond the battlegrounds of Lexington and Bunker Hill into the realms of the rights and wrong of magical power.

It is that exploration of what defines right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, which makes up a sizeable portion of this novel.  Finlay allows the reader to share in Proctor’s confusion, discovery and realizations by exposing the character to witches loyal to opposing sides in the colonies’ fight for independence. Desperate to hold on to their lands, the Brits will do whatever is necessary… including enlisting witches of dark magic to defeat their enemies. The American witches, however, (ever the underdogs) resist the use of life taking magics, even when it comes at a price.

Yes, there’s a metaphorical element to the story with bad witches as the British (the bad guys) and good witches as the Americans (that would be us good guys). That said, several threads are set up in this first novel that make promise of a more complex, less easily defined sense of good vs. evil. In fact, as fun as this first book was, I’m a bit impatient to start the second one (A Spell for the Revolution) as I’m eager to see how Proctor and the colonies maintain their youthful optimism as the Revolution’s first blush subsides and the harsh realities of fighting a war with limited resources can make the line between good and evil all the thinner.

Ward Botsford, Author, Classical Music Producer
June 22, 1928 - April 1, 2004

***Warning***
Yes -  I’m about to get introspective.  I’m about to stop the clock for a moment, look around, and think…

“My Gods, has my Dad really been gone 5 years?”

As much as we may try, most of us leave this planet without making as much as a dent.  Not so much for my dad.  I’m not sure if there’s anything he didn’t accomplish in his 76 years.   Life was a grand adventure and he lived it to its fullest.   No sitting around, no wasting time, no waiting to see what life could throw at him.  Dad sought out each and every experience, knowing that life’s too short and for all we know, we only live once.

He’s been gone 5 years but he’s still here.  Still nudging me, poking me, laughing with me.  Most of all, still teaching me that yes,  LIFE’S TOO SHORT.

Make the most of it.

PS: If you’re interested in reading about this most awesome man, there’s a tribute over at the Classical Music Guide.

I know — most of us take this right (or privilige, though that’s not really the point of this post) for granted.  As children, we went to elementary school.  It was expected.

As teens, we went to high school.  Again, with the expectations.

As adults, many of us went on to college.

Bottom line, we received education.   Call it good, or bad, at least we had the opportunity.  Not so for girls in the Middle East.  A few headlines to underline my point:
IRAQ: Number of girls attending school dropping
Iraq: Girls Denied Education
Al-Qaeda plan to destroy girls’ school in Tarmiyah thwarted

Bombs built into schools to punish girls for learning.  Young women gunned down as they eagerly walk to school in hopes of expanding their minds.  Young girls raped as punishment for daring to dream.

I’ve been aware of this phenomena (sic) for a while but the reports have becoming more frequent as of late so as of late, I’ve become more sick to my stomach when I read this stuff.  Sitting here in the U.S., my own precious daughter soaking up her college education with zeal, I can’t help but want the same for all women.  I want it badly enough that I scoured the internet yesterday, looking for an organization to contribute either money or time to… none exist.  Oh sure, there’s Unicef.  But their focus seems to be predominately in Africa, when it comes to education.  Believe me, I want young African women to have education access as well… but I’m not reading/hearing much about their very lives being threatened for trying.  It’s more a case of resources being available.

I’m safely ensconced at a University where I have some terrifically talented young woman under my tutelage, yet there’s no way to ensure these rights apply to a region of the world where my tax dollars are going and where my friend’s sons, daughters, husbands and wives are putting their lives on the line.  I’m sorry, but I find that unacceptable.  What the hell are we fighting for if not to ensure liberty for all, especially in the form of learning?

If I’m wrong, and there is an organization out there, someone please — let me know.

Last week’s little anti-social media experiment worked.  I generated a few healthy, dense pages.  So new rules @ Chez Diana:  On days I wear my instructor hat, yes — go, social media!  Make contact!  Tweet!  Blog!  Facebook!  LJ!

On days I wear my writer hat…  GONE FISHING.

Now where did I put my tackle box.

Cya Sunday night.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Live Journal.  I love Facebook.  Twitter makes me giggle.   But my gods, talk about a time sucking setup…

So begins today’s grand experiment.  It’s 1:42pm, all my work and social obligations are fulfilled for the moment so it’s time to “get to” with the writing.  Let’s see how long I last…

13 hours and 2k words later, I’ve tumbled into bed. It’s been a day of enthused writing spurts mixed with equal quantities of dragging my brain, and my fingers on the keyboard, through mud.

I gave up for the night, unable to break through the wall hiding what I’ve been searching for since starting development on this piece: the theme… or to be more specific, the heart and blood, and therefore the purpose of the story. Five minutes of laying in the dark, shutting my mind down, and bam! It came to me.

Thank gods for the voice notes app on my iPhone.

And yeah, a possibly new creative habit for me: hit a wall? Lie down and take a mini nap.

Before I had my daughter, I could drop 5 pounds just by skipping a couple of meals.  No breakfasts, no lunches for 3 days and bam! back to my fighting weight.  Post-baby, the old ways didn’t work so hot.  I could starve myself but barely lose an ounce.  I learned the hard way that I would have to eat in a completely different way to lose the 30 pounds I’d gained.

Believe it or not, that little allegory has everything to do with the a few epiphanies I had today upon finishing Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.  You see, before the holidays, I’d created a few ‘creative habits’ to get me focused each writing day.  I’d get up, feed the horse, spend an hour reading email and scouring the net for news.  Next up, a shower and then down to the business of getting my head in the game which meant listening to a playlist entitled “Pre-Write” while playing Freecell until I won.

Then I’d write.

Silly?  Maybe.  But it worked for me.  I wrote (and rewrote) several extensive outlines for books either in progress or ones I’d hoped to work on in the near future.  I even wrote a few short stories this past fall.

Then the pattern was broken thanks to Santa Claus, a menorah and the five thousand things that knock us off our schedules during the holiday.   I came back, forced myself to believe I was back in the ‘zone’ but my heart wasn’t into it.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Of course, there’s days and weeks we’re going to feel like hacks when we work — at whatever we do.  But seriously, life’s too short.   More importantly, I’m a big believer that if your heart isn’t it, the world will eventually figure it out.  Disingenious, anyone?

That’s where Ms. Tharp’s brutally honest and insightful book comes.  Playing a round of Freecell isn’t going to get me bupkiss.  I need to rein in the unruly child that is my creative industry.  She gives some excellent advise about how to find your own methods of madness to do so, from physical actions such as creating a literal box for each project, to developing the objectivity you need to not beat yourself up when your work is less that perfect.  Deadlines are discussed, natch, but so is the value of creating and finding the spine of your work… and no, that doesn’t mean having the backbone to see it through.  It means knowing the point of your work in question so you never wander too far afield and get lost in a morass of pointlessness.

New habits for me?  Up an hour earlier.  Feed my animals, do my 1 hour of internet but then, a bit of stretching: a 1/2 of literal body bending as I think out what I want to write that day.  In other words, a daily review of my story’s spine so that morass never comes too close.