Saved! (or not)

After not writing for about a week, and only picking at it from then on, Morbid Curiosity has been saved sacked. I re-worked the ending into something that actually yields clues (and doesn't upset me). Actually, the ending I came up with was total crap and the whole thing is going in the trash. However, the 50,000 word challenge is pretty well in the toilet -- but that's okay, because at least I'll come out of it with an outline. I'll probably tackle the prose in a month or two and do my own 50k challenge (which I've done twice).

I'm also very excited about my other projects: still working on my short story for Generations, which I hope will be nice and light after writing mysteries for so long. I also remembered I started on a graphic novel of Metropolis, which, after watching the newly restored version on TV the other night, really deserves to be finished.

After all the drama that's kept me away from writing this month, I'm eager to get back to it. Also eager for a pause in drama.

(edited 3:49pm)

Persepolis

Took me a little while, but I've finished Persepolis (part 1).  Like Delisle's Pyongyang, I went into this story not knowing a whole lot about the culture behind it.  

The story was a little slow, but if the narrator is to be believed (and since the book is labeled "memoir", I think she can be), Iran was not a nice place to grow up in the early 80's.  I'm looking forward to reading the second part -- possibly even watching the movie after that.

Comic?

Today I finished reading my first graphic novel.  While superhero stories and stuff with a lot of violence isn't my favorite thing, I've shied away from them for a long time.  But after talks from my sister (who just wrote a short graphic novel), and seeing Persepolis everywhere, I thought I'd see what was out there.

The one that immediately caught my attention was Guy Delisle's Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea.  I love to travel, so realizing there are a handful of countries out there I'll never be able to visit simply because I'm American leads me to be curious about that place.  Once I saw pictures of North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel (and how creepy it is), I thought a little research about it might be worth my time.  (I mean, talk about secluded: Google maps doesn't even have anything labeled in that country!)  So when I saw this graphic novel, I was intrigued.

The story impressed me.  No one turned into a robot, and there were no vampires.  With pictures accompanying the text, reading was almost like watching a movie ... or almost like being there.  I guess there's the appeal of comics!  Well worth checking out: the author mixed humor and curiosity into a very strange subject.