Guilty pleasure

Yes, blowouts can be fun. This graf from ESPN sums up UofL's performance against Murray State quite well:

Harry Douglas caught five passes for 151 yards and two touchdowns, the first on Louisville's first play from scrimmage in the first half, the other on Louisville's first play from scrimmage in the second half.

It was one of those games. Enjoyable, but with seven minutes left in the third quarter and UofL up by nearly nine touchdowns, Lera and I just wanted Louisville to take a knee on offense. I mean, really. Nine touchdowns.

Born under a bad sign

If it wasn't for bad luck, they wouldn't have no luck at all.*

So Alan Curbishley, how's that £6 million looking now with two broken bones in its leg? I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even Kieron Dyer, but the guy is in serious need of an exorcist or something. How is it possible that one athlete can have so much freakish injury karma?

On the other hand, there are the Reds, currently with the best second-half record in the National League. Over the weekend, all of the Cincinnati papers ran articles discussing the likelihood the Reds continuing their run into the playoffs. My gut here tells me no, and statistics seem to bear this out. Check out Justin's (as always) insightful analysis, and if you really want to dig in to it, read the comments, too.

And tomorrow opens the college football season. We wait in eager anticipation of Louisville vs. Murray State. Yes, we're that desperate.

Look, UofL athletic director has been saying for two years that he can't get anyone to schedule Louisville. Georgia backed out of a home-and-home deal at the beginning of last year, and Miami showed no interest in renewing their deal with UofL for another two games.

UofL has its highest preseason ranking ever, but maintaining that ranking into a top tier BCS bowl will need two things: an undefeated season (doable if challenging) and strong performances from the other teams in the Big East (unlikely). West Virginia is formidable, South Florida is always surprising (if inconsistent) and Rutgers is likely to be solid (but don't expect another 10-2 season). Alas, Louisville plays half its season against teams from the bottom of Division I (in Murray and Middle Tennessee) or the bottom of the Big East (Cincinnati, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Syracuse). Unless teams can exceed expectations, even lopsided wins in those contests does not bode well for a high BCS rank. Worse still, losing only once can put UofL out of the BCS picture altogether, a la Wisconsin last year.

Playing: Brahms, String Quintet No. 1, op. 88; Juilliard String Quartet with Walter Trampler.
Reading: Best American Poetry 1999; Swords and Deviltry
Listening: Blood of Victory, Alan Furst. This novel has one of the slowest evolving plots I've ever read. But Furst is such a great stylist (and George Guidall is such a great reader) that I am captivated. For some sense of Furst's style in miniature, check out this Absolut ad styled after his writing.
Pipeline: Today (tomorrow at the latest) I'll top 20,000 words on the novel, for a little less than 7,000 words per week on average. I am pleased with that.

*I admit that I first heard "Born Under A Bad Sign" in the Clapton version, not the Albert King version, so it's unfortunately impossible for me NOT to hear the soft drolling Brit instead of the Velvet Bulldozer talking about having no luck at all. Pity, that.

Unlikely confession

I have committed poetry.

I should have seen it coming, really. The book I'm working on now includes a rather rigorous system of spell casting. It requires rhymed and metered poetry. Eventually, I will have to write the poems that will fulfill these requirements of story, and to that end I have been reading a good bit of poetry. Most contemporary poetry is not helpful in a specific way to this task: many poets eschew rhyme completely (and some markets actively discourage submissions in rhyme) and meter is a tool in the poet's box rather than the law of the land.

However, the essential nature of poetry should appeal to all writers. There is an economy of image and word in good poetry that any writer of prose could incorporate to great effect. Jim Van Pelt starts his high school students with poetry for this reason. As an example, read Elise Paschen's "Birth Day" at Poetry 180. These few lines are layered with images and meaning.

Reading: Baptism of Desire, Louise Erdrich (poetry); Swords and Deviltry, Fritz Leiber. I bought this edition (which sells on Amazon for $5) for $2.25 at Burke Used Books. I've not read any Leiber before, but I remember reading something from the Slush God or from Gordon Van Gelder that Leiber was the kind of high fantasy that they would tolerate in F&SF.
Pipeline: I actually submitted the poem I wrote this morning. I have no idea what will happen there. The Second Novel cooks along, now up to nearly 16,000 words. Work deadlines approach, so progress there is likely to be slower. But I am also working on a resurrection of a trunk story.

Thoughts on The Bounty

Popular histories sometimes (not always, but often enough to notice) suffer from one of two things: a deliberate paring away of detail--be it description or incident--to make for easier reading or a slimmer volume, or a concerted refusal to acknowledge or explore information that does not gird the author's thesis. Caroline Alexander's The Bounty has neither condition: it is as exhaustive an examination of a single moment of history as anything I've ever read.

Which is not to say that the reading is not compelling. Alexander goes to some pains to strip away the romantic veneer covering over the facts of the mutiny and those culpable in its execution. Nor does she provide complete exoneration to Captain Bligh, who is revealed as an able, conscientious and decent man, whose few failings were amplified by a flawed crew and lack of support (mainly in the absence of marines on board The Bounty) from the Admiralty. Oddly, but appropriately for such a scholarly work, Alexander pieces together much of what is known about lead mutineer Fletcher Christian from the extant evidence, which in most cases is second hand.

The exhaustive nature of the book does tend to drag in places. The build up to court martial introduces the tiresome (no more here though than she was doubtlessly so in life) Fanny Hayward, along with detailed explanation of the members of the court martial. Interesting and ultimately useful in sorting out the fractured loyalties that defined these men and their subsequent actions, it does get to be slow reading.

But more than a story of one mutiny in the Pacific, it is a tale of a changing world, where the virgin paradise of Tahiti is imbued with the failings of the British Empire, where Nelson's final words, "thank God I have done my duty," are not the anthem of a subsequent age but an epitaph for a waning one. An epic worth reading.

Highly recommended: GOOD ENOUGH TO BUY

Skipping along

In addition to the list I maintain of books I have read (so far this year I've read 55), I also keep track of the books that I start but can't, for whatever reason, finish. So far this year there are 14 of them, some of which I simply could not read before the library demanded their return, some of which I set aside intending to return and never got around to it and others that simply did not agree with me.

Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
London Revenant, Conrad Williams
The Not So Big Life, Sarah Susanka
Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, Stanley Elkin
Tales from Q School, John Feinstein
The City Is A Rising Tide, Rebecca Lee
Market Forces, Richard Morgan
Intuition, Allegra Goodman
Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, David Schwartz
The Market Place of Christianity, Ekelund, Hebert and Tollison
Mockingbirg, Sean Stewart
The Girl Who Married A Lion, Alexander McCall Smith
Yes! You Can Be A Successful Income Investor, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth
Rebel, Bernard Cornwell

I was surprised at my distaste for Rebel, seeing how I adore Cornwell's work in general. I'll have to try again there. I have since purchased my own copy of Roll the Bones since I had to take back the library's copy. I doubt that I will give Intuition or The City Is A Rising Tide another chance.

Playing: "Maybe You'll Be There," Diana Krall (followed as I typed by Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays," Ella Fitzgerald)
Reading: On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Watching: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Coveting: Single Scene Short Stories, Margaret Bishop, ed.
Pipeline: Oy vey. I've hit a good rhythm on the Second Novel and should easily make the Columbus Day deadline. Assuming that goes off as I intend (yeah, I know--I can hardly write that with a straight face), on October 9 I will start the Third Novel, a mystery about a murder in an major urban opera house to submit for the St. Martin's Minotaur First Crime Novel Contest by December 31. I've also figured out how to alter one of the first short stories I ever submitted so that it is perhaps saleable. The alterations will be extensive but should be fun. And I'd like to submit something for the Apex Digest Halloween Contest. So, yeah, lots going on here. A little ambition goes a long way.

Thoughts on So Yesterday

I've mentioned how much I loved Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters books, but I'd not tried anything else of his until I just happened to pick up So Yesterday at the library. Though this book is overshadowed by the Midnighters and Uglies series, it is an absolute gem, a mystery, thriller and scathing satire of consumer culture.

I'll not spend any time in a plot recap, partly because in the time it takes you to read one you could be a quarter of the way through the book, it reads that fast. But I realized what I like about Scott Westerfeld's inventions, his unique looks at the world. As in Midnighters, he takes a seemingly chaotic aspect of the world and systematizes it. In Midnighters it was technological evolution. In So Yesterday it's consumerism, specifically what's cool. And this works because he does it so thoroughly (complemented with copious germane research) that it is entirely plausible that such systems actually exist.

Highly recommended: GOOD ENOUGH TO BUY

With bated breath

I await these soon-to-be-released titles. (Andy beat me to the punch on this one, but we are unanimous in our enthusiasm for those books, especially 20th Century Ghosts.)


Axis, Robert Charles Wilson, September 18. The sequel to Spin, which is one of the very best books I've read.

Inferno, anthology, Ellen Datlow ed., December 10. An impressive table of contents.

Wastelands, anthology, John Joseph Adams ed., January 1. Another impressive TOC on a theme (post-apocalypse) that too often has been done either with little frequency or little imagination.

Sword Song, Bernard Cornwell, January 22. The fourth of Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles, one my favorite series of any kind. Start with The Last Kingdom.

Sometime this fall we'll see new editions of Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories, edited this time around by Stephen King and Carl Hiassen, respectively. I can't say that I'll buy either of these as soon as they come out (as I certainly will the four titles above), but I am always interested in the guest editors' selections and honorable mentions.

Reading: Open Season, C. J. Box.

Various and sundry

A step forward? First, a scoreless draw against Aston Villa at St. James' Park is unacceptable. Just as much as Chelsea drawing with Liverpool at Anfield should be considered a catastrophe (shambolic refereeing notwithstanding), so too should Newcastle United have turned their surprising defensive rigidity into more than a single point for the table. That said, I was struck by Newcastle's consistent defensive patience. There was only one utter defensive collapse that I can recall, and that more formidable front before the goal made our memories of Harper's contributions his two terrific saves.

I didn't realize that novelist Anne Perry was Juliet Hulme. That aside, last week I finished her first Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel, The Cater Street Hangman. I enjoyed this quite a lot, but it's not what I thought it would be. The mystery aspect of the novel involves a crime and various suspects in Charlotte's own house, but there is little detection, at least "on screen." It's almost more of a suspense story, where the threats and pressures on the protagonists builds and builds, than the kind of cozy mystery you expect from a novel with a Victorian milieu. As to that, the manners and customs of that period--and Perry's subversive take thereon--remind me of Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword.

A new novel. Yes, I have left the First Novel for the time being, and have begun the Second (Unrelated) Novel. Most of my research here is going to be into poems and prosody; for the latter there exist surprisingly few dedicated resources. Anyway, I'm about 8,000 words into it, so at that pace I ought to have a first draft finished by Columbus Day.

In paraphrase of Paul Hogan

That's not a baton. This is a baton.--Sir Edward Elgar


Read the article at The New York Times about the attempts at resurrection of Elgar's reputation worldwide.

They're not trying to be funny

But this phrase, whatever you think about immigration in the U.S., is pregnant with fallacy.


The only way this really makes sense is if it says either "This is America; Speak Like An American" or "This is England; Speak English." I mean, no one is complaining that there are too many British immigrants. Why? Because they speak English. Nothing to do with skin color, surely, or class or income or anything like that.

Photo Credit: By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post

Thoughts on I Love You, Beth Cooper

Actually, there aren't that many.

1. Lots of adolescent wish fulfillment going on here. Fortunately, it's all quite twisted adolescent wish fulfillment, and...
2. Larry Doyle is hilarious. The story: Denis Cooverman is the undersocialized valedictorian of a small Midwestern high school. In his valedictory address at graduation, he eschews the typical "new beginnings, new horizons" tripe and instead admits to his unrequited devotion for the cheerleading captain, Beth Cooper. Hijinks ensue.
3. This will be a movie. In fact, one could almost lift the thing from the novel directly to the screen. And I would go see it.

Also worth noting: on the Amazon page for I Love You, Beth Cooper, Amazon has one of their "buy together" deals, where they suggest you buy Larry Doyle's book and an ostensibly related or similar book. Alas, they seem to have missed something here. Check out the bottom of this screen capture.

Surprises, pleasant and not so much

Newcastle 3, Bolton 1. Ha, ha. What a fine way to open the season. And Manchester United drew with Reading. I could tolerate some more of this.

Steady cam? We don't need no stinking steady cam! The Bourne Ultimatum is a solid thriller, if not the end-all-be-all of the genre that I expected from the various gushing reviews I've seen. One of its great strengths is the way in which the three films tie together, thematically and plot-wise. There are questions left unanswered, but in a plausible way that commends the movie. David Strathairn and Scott Glenn were wasted, but Joan Allen and Julia Stiles are top notch. But Paul Greengrass opted to film an enormous portion of the movie in bouncing, sometimes fidgety camera work, ostensibly to make the film more visually jarring and realistic. Alas, all it did was make me sick. Really. We were sitting in the furthest reaches of the theater from the camera (literally the upper back corner, because there was no other place to sit) and I still got sick. Recommended for a much smaller screen.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is hilarious. I'm only about 30 pages in, and already I've had two bouts of laughter that forced me to stop reading and regain control. It's a bit thick on the stereotypes in places, and I can easily envision it as a movie a la Mean Girls, but that does not mean it isn't funny.

I am currently #67 in the queue for On Chesil Beach.

Don't count your chickens

Disgusted as I am with baseball, its records and the appalling defenders of a certain Giants outfielder, it is with great pleasure--and relief, really--that I look to the coming Premier League season.

It goes almost without saying that Newcastle United should field a better side this season, owing both to notable additions (Allardyce, and subsequently Rozehnal, Enrique, Viduka, Caçapa, Smith, Geremi and Barton), overdue returns (Ameobi and, someday perhaps, Owen) and welcome exits (Bramble and Moore).

But it is interesting to see where Newcastle rates. Odds makers generally suggest a sixth place finish, based on odds of winning the league. Manchester United (11-8) and Chelsea (6-4) are neck and neck, with Liverpool (9-2) and Arsenal (10-1) each gapping a bit lower. Then there's a big break to Spurs (80-1), and an even bigger one to Newcastle (200-1), Everton and Aston Villa (each at 250-1). Sixth is also about where most writers have Newcastle, though I've seen one as low as 14, and a cheeky prediction that Sunderland will finish higher than Newcastle and Middlesbrough.

Sixth place would be the best finish since 2004 and return Newcastle to European club competition, certainly an unqualified success given the fiasco of last season and the slew of changes to the club. And there is good reason to think that such a high finish is possible, perhaps even likely.

Newcastle have a legitimate defense. Rozehnal, Caçapa and Enrique are vetted defenders, whose collective presence should eliminate the desperate need to field a back four of children Huntington, Edgar, Ramage and Taylor (who is the only regular holdover from last year's defense).

The bench is deeper. The midfield clearout, retooled defense and ostensible health of the forwards gives Newcastle far more options and more injury cover than it had at any point last season. You could field a decent enough side from Newcastle's non-starters: Harper, Carr, Huntington, Edgar, Babayaro, Solano, Butt, Dyer, Duff, Martins and Ameobi. This depth also covers the forwards, where the thin ranks forced the purchase of Martins and saw Damien Duff in attack at a couple of points early in the season.

No European play. "Losing... it's the new winning." For a team that is as new and fragile as this one, the slate of games being likely no longer than 50 matches (including cups) is not necessarily a bad thing. Except that it sucks. But still, a silver lining and all that.

However, there are some serious concerns about this team.

1. Injuries. Whatever Allardyce's long-term impact on the readiness of players from an injury standpoint, his brief tenure has not yet made improvements here. Barton and Owen are out for a while with injuries sustained in preseason. Add to this the litany of lingering injuries (Given) and continuing recoveries (Emre and Duff), and the depth of the side, so formidable at first blush, is questioned.
2. Defense. Though better qualified than last year's farce, all of the new defenders are new to the team and new to England.
3. Strikers. On a team this deep up front, who starts? My bet is that, barring injury, we'll see lots of Owen and Viduka. With Owen out, though, look for Obafemi Martins. Will Owen regain some part of his previous form? Will Martins be the killer he was from November through January, or the clubfooted mess of February through May? What role for Ameobi? Smith? Is Andy Carroll ready for the first team? Is Albert Luque still here?

It's safe to say that anything less than a top-half finish is a colossal failure, and sixth or seventh would be a successful turnaround.

Honestly

A moment of truth: the First Novel, the one I worked on for seven years and have hoped against all odds to sell, is broken. No, really. I couldn't see it last year, but I see it now. A couple of weeks ago I accused Fred of breaking the novel, but that's not accurate.

So what to do?

Oddly enough, admitting that you have a problem is the first step. And as soon as I admitted that selling this novel (or another novel with these ideas recast or repackaged) would consume vast amounts of time, Fred piped up with a potential solution to some of the novel's biggest problems. Not that this solution won't be just as time consuming, but the timing of this realization was... interesting.

The second step is to write something else. I've been tossing one idea around for a while, free writing and brainstorming to familiarize myself with the material, but it has been too new and fresh and amorphous to write much of its narrative. This morning, a first paragraph fell out in one solid block. So we go from there. I have considered that this is a novel-length piece, but I'm just going to write for now and see what comes. This is a darker story than anything else I've written, and I think it would be best to write something short in this vein to see what happens before trying to swallow a bigger fish. But we'll see.

This has been a painful realization about the First Novel. I appreciate the habits and skills that developed from its writing--now including the willingness to admit the thing is broken. But, as with all of one's creations, I had hopes that it would emerge healthy, fully formed and ready for the adoration of the universe. That is perhaps not to be for the First Novel, at least not yet, and that is hard to accept, however true it is.

Still, I write because there are stories I want to read that have not yet been written. I am not writing so that I can sell that book. This is not a capitulation, just a strategic retreat.

Better headlines

A good headline is concise but descriptive, and a superlative headline works on multiple levels of meaning. Consider this amendment to the front page story in The Washington Post as an example.

To amuse

First, The Washington Post eulogizes Weekly World News.

Then we have this lunatic. (via John Scalzi)

And these questions. (via John Schoffstall)

And finally, this bit about Leroy Lita's off-field injury.

Contrarian indicator

A few weeks ago when I was writing "Electric Yarmulke," I wrote something that startled me. I allowed it to stand, and the "brazen blasphemy" that I described then became part of the spine of the story, which I think is one of the strongest I've written.

This morning produced another startling development, this a potential plot element for a likely novel-length piece I've been kicking around for awhile. It's not brazen or blasphemous (and poorer for it, probably), but it is... uncomfortable for me as it draws on personal history and relationships gone sour. This is not to imply that what I'm writing is potentially libelous or likely to bring on a chorus of "hey I knew him back when and he based this character on me" or anything like that. But it is uncomfortable all the same.

So, as I did in "Electric Yarmulke," I'm going with it. This particular element may have no role to play in what I'm writing now once the story is fully realized. But where there is discomfort there is also latent power, and so I'm going to jump in with both feet and see what happens. Excelsior.

Listening: J.S. Bach, Adagio, BWV 564; E. Power Biggs. The link is not to E. Power Biggs on the Fleintrop organ at Harvard , but to Rosalind Haas on the Organo del Sol Mayor in Marbella, Spain.

The greatest record

Much of the talk surrounding the rumored hitting of home runs of numerical significance (no, I'm not going to be more specific than that because there is no record being broken, I tell you, none), deals with the way fans (myself foremost among them) are picking and choosing the records they want to mean something. You can't discredit an eventual breaking of the greatest record in sports, that of career home runs, because you don't like the person doing it, so goes the argument.

Two things to that:

1. I'm not picking and choosing because I don't like the fellow who is rumored to be breaking the record. I don't like him, true, but I didn't really like Mark McGwire all that much either. (Hello, he played for the Cardinals.) I'm discrediting the purported breaking of the record because the ostensible record breaker cheated.

2. It's not the greatest sports record. It's not even the greatest baseball record.

As far as greatest baseball records, I have two names for consideration, neither of which is related to home runs: Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Ted Williams .400 season are records of excellence that I see no trend toward being broken. That is, it is entirely too easy to imagine a future when the career home-run record is broken at the end of both Alex Rodriguez's and Albert Pujols' careers. Hell, even Adam Dunn has a shot at it, given his consistent home run hitting and 160-game seasons.

But both DiMaggio's and Williams' marks are indicative of consistency that is almost impossible to match. DiMaggio went out and got at least one hit every day for nearly 12 weeks. Williams averaged about two hits every game for an entire season. By comparison, the best home-run hitters manage the feat every 12 to 15 at bats. Give me runs at DiMaggio and Williams to set the heart apounding, not inflated jerks hitting over-ambitious fly balls.

Playing: "Caravan," Wynton Marsalis.
Listening: "The Tell-Tale Heart," Edgar Allan Poe.
Reading: London Revenant, Conrad Williams.
Watching: Glory Road
Wondering: About the similarities between Kieron Dyer and Jessica Fletcher. Disaster seems to follow in their respective wakes wherever they go.
Pipeline: Rather bare at the moment. I've spent most of my writing time doing some free writes on a new novel idea, hoping to get to know some of the characters better. I've got two stories, "The Secretary and the Maguffin" and "Electric Yarmulke," out now, and another, "Dead Reckoning," that needs some revision. My longstanding goal has been to have at least five out at once, so I need to get cracking.

Move along, nothing to see

Rumor has it that some baseball player recently hit a home run of some sort of numerical significance and that in the coming days he is likely to hit another home run of even greater numerical significance. Two things about this: 1. His name is not Alex Rodriguez. 2. Don't believe the rumors. Why? Because the home runs this fellow is hitting are of NO numerical significance.

Why is that? BECAUSE STEROIDS MATTER. No matter what these blowhards say, steroids matter to me, Joe Sportsfan, whether it's baseball players' heads literally swelling from HGH, or 350-pound offensive linemen trying desperately to become 360-pound offensive lineman, or Floyd Landis or Lance Armstrong, or East German women (ostensibly, at least) swimmers. STEROIDS ARE CHEATING. They are unethical whether banned by sports organizations or not, and they are disgusting whether anyone knows you're using them or not. Oh, and you know what, baseball apologists? So were amphetamines. CHEATING.

When I pay an exorbitant amount of money to see professional athletes, I want to see the pinnacle of physical and competitive achievement. I HAVE NOT PAID MY MONEY TO SEE A CHEMISTRY COMPETITION between cheaters and testers.

Anyway, there is nothing going on with regard to numerically significant home runs. Nothing at all. At least not until A-Rod breaks Aaron's (and any sham records that may or may not exist by then) in 2014.

Cancelling out

So I really wanted to say that Jayson Stark is a raving lunatic. His book, The Stark Truth, posits to name the most over- and underrated players at each position, including lefthanded and righthanded pitchers and designated hitters. It's hard to argue with some of his underrated listings many of whom (like Stan Musial) I don't think are really underrated at all, just infrequently mentioned. But his overrated players are a mix of the obvious (Ron Blomberg, Steve Garvey and Steve Sax), the counterintuitive (Nolan Ryan) and the outright ridiculous, how-did-this-get-past-a-conscious-editor? picks. That's right: genius here rates Sandy Koufax as the most overrated lefthanded pitcher of all time.

And so I want to call out Stark and tell him he's a moron. But... Stark says that the most underrated shortstop of all time is Barry Larkin.

And he is, of course, right. And therefore he cannot be a raving lunatic or a moron. Instead, I prefer to think that Stark is atoning for his lack of discernment about Koufax with a truly golden insight about Barry Larkin. At least, that's what works for me. Others, who did not witness the glory that was Barry Larkin in his prime or the absolute inability of the Reds to even consider winning in his absence during his 19-year career, may disagree.

But Stark gets a pass on this one.

Where's my left back?

Holy crap! Another striker! So what he can play at midfield, too? DEFENSE. That's what's wanted 'round here. Yes, yes. Everyone in the Northeast loved the Kevin Keegan years, but the league doesn't go to the side with the biggest goal difference. And what with Babayaro inheriting Kieron Dyer's role as "mysteriously and lingeringly injured" and Rozenhal already on the shelf for a few weeks, WE NEED DEFENSE. There's a whole chain reaction of blame stretching all the way across last season to Michael Owen in the World Cup, but I'm not going there right now. And so long as we don't see Steven Harper in attack again, things won't have gotten as bad as they might.

And while we're talking about football... I've gone all summer without saying this, but I can't take it any more. Carlos Tevez is surely one of the ugliest fellows I've seen.

Thoughts on Queen & Country

I've read more than I've written in the past few weeks--which is to say that I've read a lot and written hardly at all, but I digress. However, I have been reading my own work during that time, checking out the trunk for some gem (or gem-like substance) that might be repaired or refashioned into a workable story. I find that in most of my unsuccessful stories the problem is not the writing itself or even the idea on which the story hangs. Rather, it is that the stakes are not high enough, for characters, their universe or readers.

Enter Greg Rucka's A Gentleman's Game. A novel, A Gentleman's Game is an extension of the Queen & County series of comic books about top-flight British secret agents. Q&C is my favorite comic book for several reasons: it's timely, smart, gritty and, oddly enough for a spy thriller, character driven. Rucka makes what these people do credible, and adds on credible consequences for those actions. No martini-swigging James Bond here. Instead you get camouflage, leg cramps in a sniper's nest, dead colleagues and agents with varying degrees of substance and personal abuse.

Rucka takes all that to another level in A Gentleman's Game, but the compelling thing about it is how he makes the hardships believable. Main characters with personal problems are nothing new, and in many cases are just as stock and typecast as the jobs they do (cop, forensic investigator, spy, whatever--it's all been done). In these situations, pain inflicted upon such characters is really just par for the course. What Rucka does so well is put these characters in situations of great personal and professional cost and pins them there until they make a decision--and he makes their impossible choices plausible while refusing to let them escape from the consequences.


The greatest disappointment about Q&C is its mind-numbing delay. Rucka has ascended to the upper creative reaches of DC, part of the team that guided much of their Infinite Crisis storylines and wrote the subsequent weekly 52. Q&C has taken a backseat to these (likely better-paying) responsibilities, and the final issue in the first major story arc has been delayed for about a year. Further, Rucka has said that he doubts if the series will pick up again for at least another 18 months, and the hiatus may stretch as long as three years. The publishers gave Antony Johnston a go at writing a short Q&C mini-series, but it was truly underwhelming.

Still, there is much to like here, a good bit of it (32 issues of Q&C, three mini-series and two novels) and much, it seems, to learn. Rucka and Oni Press published a scriptbook of the first six-issue arc of the series that I intend to check out.