Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Everybody saw this coming.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

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Reader Interactions

76Comments

  4. 4.

    Poopyman

    Who’s “they”? I’m more worried about Google than the gummint.

    Oh wait! This is fiction? Not really, you know.

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne

    I think I’m restarting my abandoned novel. (Well, technically I’ve already started since I wrote the midpoint yesterday.) Everyone say nice things to me.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    That sounds like a great idea. Really enjoyed the previous Q & A with your writer friend!

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I was just catching up on a thread from a day or two a few minutes ago. I woke up all my guys when I read your “Bend over for Baud!” comment. thanks for that.

  13. 13.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Having got through every Dorothy L Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey novel, and all of the short stories, the one Sayers/Paton Walsh unfinished novel and all of the Jill Paton Walsh Lord Peter books, I’m into Jill Paton Walsh’s Imogen Quy mystery novels.
    After I read 2 1/2 more of those I’ll be ready to buy more books.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    If you like the Sayers books, you may like Jacqueline Winspeare’s Maisie Dobbs mysteries. Same time period with most of the mysteries revolving around the lingering aftereffects of World War I. I keep meaning to recommend them to raven since he seems to be on a WWI kick right now.

  17. 17.

    Prescott Cactus

    Slightly off topic, but it concerns books.

    The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson was a 5 star read.

  19. 19.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Mnemosyne:
    Thank you. I’ll go add those to my Amazon lists before I forget. Someone ‘here’ recommended Sayers and I read at least a dozen with great pleasure.

  22. 22.

    Mary G

    I have an ad for Mark Levin TV, only $59/year!

    Any time not early on the West Coast is good .

  23. 23.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Mnemosyne:
    My reactions to the Sayers books varied. Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors were superb and I will read them again. Five Red Herrings and Gaudy Night, probably not.

  24. 24.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Yeah, words are so yesterday. Unless you’re willing to whip your dick out on stage, we may have to rethink our Baud! 2016 strategy.

    edit: Are you willing to whip your dick out on stage?

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    Ha! If I had a nickel for each time I was asked that question….

    Seriously, it seems inconsistent with the whole idea of being a virtual candidate, don’t you think?

  28. 28.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I haven’t read any Christie. My grandmother had them all. I understand she was a contemporary of and of similar style to Sayers. Some of the books have not aged well in terms of social content. Certain shocking language that seems racist to us now. But they’re interesting glimpses into their time and environment. And a well made mystery is always a pleasure.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Mnemosyne: That’s great! Are you using a beat sheet? I just learned about them earlier this week, but it seems like it would be a helpful tool for any writer, but particularly for you since you say you are ADHD.

  30. 30.

    redshirt

    @Prescott Cactus: I read it and would give it 3.5 stars out of 5. I thought the latter half of the book was far weaker than the first half (approximately in page count). Good book overall but could have been even better.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    I got about two-thirds of the way through “Five Red Herrings” and gave up. I like Sayers better than Christie because there’s less embarrassing social content. She has several sympathetic lesbians to counteract the murderous one.

  33. 33.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    How do you like Jill Patten Walsh’s non-Wimsey series?

    Sayers is a fave rave, a master of style, and I still love her despite some troubling race/class attitudes.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I will have to ponder your question further, but my initial thought was “well, I’d rather see Baud whip out his virtual dick than see Trump…”

    Well, enough of dicks for tonight, virtual or otherwise. You are still my favorite candidate. It’s Baud! or no one for me! If you’re not the nominee, I will vote for Hillary. But I know that if you don’t win the nomination, you’ll be the guy to bring our party back together.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @WaterGirl:

    Not yet, but I probably will eventually. This is a book I was working on a while ago, so I have quite a few of the beats in mind already, and my screenwriting training means that I’m used to plotting things out that way.

    @Miss Bianca:

    It’s a Regency romance, which is the same time period. Though unlike JoyceH’s books, there will be sex.

  39. 39.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Miss Bianca:
    The Jill Paton Walsh Lord Peter Wimsey books are top drawer. I recommend them without reservation.

    In Sayers’ Five Red Herrings a bastard and a bully that everyone hated gets killed. The rest of the book is the mechanics of working out who and how. I dug down deep in my bag of fvks to give and found none.

    The Nine Tailors is a gem. Murder Must Advertise has excellent characters and shows shifting social patterns and the end of the old aristocracy after WWII. Great female characters.

  40. 40.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne:

    Ooh! (bounce, bounce, bounce). Love it. Maybe you will inspire me to pick mine up again – started as a rewrite exercise of a Georgette Heyer novel and strayed off into faeries and werewolves, to my infinite confusion.

    Let me know if you ever want a beta reader! It’s one of my favorite genres.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @Miss Bianca: Beat sheets are what I would call worksheets for writers. It seems like a way to get some basic thoughts/ideas down. If you google you’ll find some good links, here’s Beat Sheets 101.

    I would definitely use one if I were going to write a story.

  43. 43.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    Five Red Herrings was the first one I ever read, and I’m amazed, AMAZED, that I went on to the rest, because of the “load of rubbish about railway timetables” (to borrow an immortal line from Monty Python). But “Murder Must Advertise”, “The Nine Tailors” and “Gaudy Night” stand out as gorram literature. Gotta ask, since it’s my favorite, why you didn’t care for “Gaudy Night”?

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    @Miss Bianca:

    These days, you can combine fairies, werewolves, and Heyer if you want! Take a look at the Cecelia and Kate series by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. So far, I’ve only read the first one, but it was a hoot. They apparently wrote it as letters to each other in the voices of the characters and had a lot of fun with it.

  45. 45.

    scav

    Thing I like about Sayers is the writing style (which did improve) and the books are so different. And there are usually counter-examples or complexity of characterization along with the stereotypes. I like Gaudy Night, rather like Busman’s, certainly The Nine Tailors, but Murder Must Advertise has some passages that are as true now as ever. Most hairlifting examples of different social mindsets and race attitudes are in some of the original Bobbsey Twins — golly.

  46. 46.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Miss Bianca:

    Gotta ask, since it’s my favorite, why you didn’t care for “Gaudy Night”?

    I didn’t care for the setting, Oxford. Such an insular and neurotic community. They seemed to accomplish nothing but bickering and getting under each others’ skins. Characters were described as ‘brilliant’, with no evidence of their having done anything but drink port, chide undergraduates and maneuver for political position within their small college community.
    And the crimes were trivial.

  47. 47.

    Prescott Cactus

    @redshirt:

    Good book overall but could have been even better.

    Would have liked more depth. Another 100 to 200 pages would have suited me fine.

    Just started “When Breath Becomes Air” and I know the the ending.

  49. 49.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne:

    y’know, I read the first one and sadly didn’t care for it – I think it might have been that the girls’ voices were too similar. Or maybe I’m just too picky. ;) But I love, LOVE the idea of the writing exercise that started it. A really masterly epistolary novel is Steven Brust’s and Emma Bull’s “Freedom and Necessity”, which is a little later than Regency (I think it’s set during the 1840s – at least I think that’s when the Chartist movement began).

  50. 50.

    scav

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Bickering is what people do under stress and those trivial crimes were playing a huge part in setting up the conditions for exactly that reaction — seemed to be the very goal of them. So, you’re certainly not seeing those characters at their academically productive best. It’s a very mental academic head-games book, so I can see if college settings aren’t your thing, you wouldn’t like it. But there are all sorts of issues being tossed about which are fun for those that like that sort of interplay.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Miss Bianca:

    Mary Jo Putney tried to do some Regency novels that incorporated magic, but I don’t know how far the series went — the one I have is The Marriage Spell. She also did at least one short story that had two fairy leads.

    But the short version is, these days anything goes in the genre, so you be you.

  52. 52.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    I didn’t really consider the crimes trivial in “Gaudy Night” – one girl gets driven almost to suicide, for example. And the Poison Pen’s express purpose is to sow hatred and discontent in a community of women, which I consider a rather non-trivial pursuit, myself. I think one of the things I liked the most about it was that it demonstrated there could be crimes *other* than murder that could be fodder for a detective novel.

  54. 54.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @scav:
    I see that but to me it amounted to rather small stakes, and didn’t hold my interest. And it was quite long for the material covered. It seemed she was paying homage to the traditions and culture of the university as much as anything. I didn’t feel that the story really made the case for her regard for it.

  55. 55.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Mnemosyne: Keep it up! I’m rooting for you. I’ve been working on a book off and on for ten years now :(. Given my work schedule and the demands of my job, which I enjoy, I decided that I’d write a book of short stories instead of a novel. I’ve published two of the short stories (one in an anthology, another in a now-defunct literary magazine) but just don’t have the discipline to write every day. I’m in awe of anyone who has that discipline and consistency.

  56. 56.

    scav

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: If you’re not on the wavelength, you won’t see it, which is utterly normal. But from my perspective, it’s fugual, all sorts of counterpoints about the life of the mind versus the life outside academe (or perhaps rather more active, as the latter isn’t limited to academe), the range of alternatives in negotiating a marriage / relationship or lack of one, with upsides and downsides of the alternatives and lots of examples in seemingly minor characters as well as the obvious big ones. Gloriously complex.

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    I’ve used a program call Free Mind. It’s a somewhat free form outline tool/thought organizer. Takes a bit of learning to use it effectively but it puts everything in whatever order/structure you want. You could use it for keeping track of a plot, for character lists, scene lists, random ideas that you want to put somewhere.
    It’s sort of a over all beat sheet. And could be used for many other things.

  67. 67.

    dopealope

    I believe I recently heard an interview with this author on Democracy Now. It was pretty interesting, and I’m tempted to give the book a whirl.

  68. 68.

    Tehanu

    I’ve just finished reading The Gods’-Eye View and it was really exciting. Hope I’ll be able to participate.

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    In Sayers’ Five Red Herrings a bastard and a bully that everyone hated gets killed. The rest of the book is the mechanics of working out who and how. I dug down deep in my bag of fvks to give and found none.

    I agree with you about the book, but the Ian Carmichael mini-series version of it is by far the best of all of them. We’ve probably watched it 20 or 30 times. The Scottish setting, the actors (including John Junkin, Donald Douglas, and the gorgeous young David Rintoul, who I will proudly assert was a far better Mr. Darcy than Colin Firth — and I like Colin Firth) — well, it’s just a gem. Do yourself a favor and hunt up the DVD, it’s really worth it.

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    FYWP won’t let me edit, but to Ultraviolet Thunder, I posted my question before seeing that you and Miss Bianca had already discussed DLS/JPW in some detail. Sayers is my desert-island writer, so I’m always interested to see what other people think of her.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Tehanu:

    Fully agree. I love Edward Petherbridge as Wimsey in the three Harriet TV films, but Carmichael holds a particular place in my heart, and Five Red Herrings is among the best (am also very fond of Clouds of Witness in the Carmichael series). I have them all on DVD and binge-watch frequently.

  73. 73.

    Groucho48

    I’ve enjoyed Eisler’s John Rain books. Solid thrillers with an interesting main character and a nice story arc as the series progresses.

  74. 74.

    LunarG

    In a bit of synchronicity, Amazon just e-mailed me to tell me I ought to read Eisler’s book. Maybe they have a point there.

  75. 75.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tehanu:

    I agree with you about the book, but the Ian Carmichael mini-series version of it is by far the best of all of them.

    Late to the party again, but it was BECAUSE of the Ian Carmichael “Five Red Herrings” – which I saw back in high school, I believe (!!), or college – that I essayed the book. I’m rather glad it was my first, because they just got better from there. Haven’t watched the series since then – I would love to revisit it!

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Sayers is a desert-island read for me too. : )

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