Actors in Roles

Some writers cast real actors in the roles of their characters. They do this with as much care as the casting directors on big Hollywood production teams. They take into consideration the look of the actor, and the mannerisms, and whatever else it is that inspires them about the actor and makes their characters come better to life.

I don't do that.

Why?

I've wondered about that. I still do.

The thing is, while I can appreciate an actor's skill, and while, when I was a teenager, I used to do all the heart-thumping swooning of your average fan-girl over some actors, it was ever only a phase. It didn't take me long to realize that I was more interested in the fantasy I built than in either the real person or in the legend created by movie studios.

Today, if I particularly enjoy watching an actor, it's an actor in a specific role.

Why?

Because I enjoy the complete fantasy. The look of the character and the personality of the character as portrayed by the actor with his peculiar mannerisms -- even better if he's good enough to develop specific mannerisms for a given character.

Oh yeah, I'm talking male actors. Hey, it's my fantasy, isn't it?

What would I do if I met the actor in person? Would I be impressed? Awed? Fan-girl dumbstruck?

Probably not the latter. I hope I outgrew that awkward stage. But impressed and awed? Possibly. I don't have any acting skills, and I'd want to know all about what it takes to get into a character's mind and project a non-me onto a screen (or stage) like that.

So would I enjoy a romantic dinner with Hugh Jackman?

Yes, but probably not the way you imagine it. I'd want to quizz him about his craft.

Really.

Did you still have illusions that writers are not strange?

There are Aliens... and then there are aliens....

And then there are aliens like me.

I almost don't consider myself one. Really. You couldn't tell from my writing. Besides, I've been well trained... I mean, educated in the ways of American pop culture by my husband and my kids. I get most references, even some pretty obscure ones. If I didn't tell you about my Russian background, you wouldn't know just from reading my writing.

But then something happens. And I really, really feel that I am truly an immigrant.

Now don't get me wrong. I dont' feel alienated. I don't feel like an outsider. In fact, I never felt more the sense of homecoming than that one day when my plane was slowly descending towards Texas and I was following the flight plan on the onboard GPS. And I was flying back from Paris, from visiting my brothers, and from attending one of my nieces' wedding.

Yup. I'm certainly home. I chose to be home here, and there's not one day I'm not amazed at just how home I feel. But that's a post for another day.

What brought on the post about aliens?

The prom tradition.

Yes. That.

It's that season, and my oldest child is a senior in High School.

It's not the social dance gathering part of the event.

I grew up in Paris in the Russian emigre community, and we had our share of formal annual events with their formal and old-fashioned dances. In formal dresses. With a display of formal, old-fashioned manners.

It's not that.

It's the school event part of it, and the whole mystique of it, the buildup, the talk, the memories everyone seems to share.

The kids were cute. Sweet. They went to the prom as a group, they stayed together, and I was happy about that. After all, each of them is headed for a different college and has college and career plans.

But still. Some part of me just doesn't get it. Some part of me is standing on the sidelines and watching it happening, and is bemused. The other kids' mothers are so excited, so thrilled that their own children are going through this... rite of passage.

Ah yes, that's it. I'm not a member of this tribe. I've been adopted, but I was too old to undergo certain rites of passage.

Like the prom.

So even though this vibrant, friendly, warm, American tribe has adopted me (and I, it), I am still the "adopted outsider" for having missed the rites of passage that would have made me an insider through and through.

My kids don't have that problem. I also think they get a perverse enjoyment out of their alien mother's occasional confusion.

Teenagers!

And the Winner is...

Well, I am behind. But as always, when I'm getting ready for something, I end up in a mad scramble.

We had our conference this weekend at the San Antonio Romance Authors, and I was there to help out.

We had a great time. I met some wonderful people. I got a ton of books to read.

Now it's back to work.

Oh yeah, and the winner is...

This is becoming a tradition. My younger child picks the winner and makes a face. But she does it.

So the winner is...

Karen H!

Contact me and claim your gift certificate!

Congratulations!

It's Easter! (go look for eggs!)

What?! But it was LAST week!

For you, maybe. But for millions of Eastern Christians, Easter is only THIS Sunday.

Easter is the only Christian holiday that has no fixed date, and because its timing depends on calculations (full moon, first day of spring, and other calendar considerations), a few other holidays have a variable schedule. But but not on their own! Lent begins 40 days before Easter. Pentecost happens 50 days after.

And those facts are the same whether you're in the Eastern Church or in a Western denomination, that is, Catholic or Protestant.

Traditionally, Russian Christians are for the vast majority Eastern Orthodox, like the Greeks, the Bulgarians, the Armenians, the Serbs.

How do we celebrate Easter? Pretty much like everyone: Church, food, and family.

Having been raised in an educated family, I know more than my share about the formal aspects of the religious rites, but I will refer you to the real experts in the subject if you want to learn more. The Orthodox Church of America maintains a great number of sites with a variety of articles, links, and images. Most individual parishes have their schedules on the web today, and you can catch up with folks at home if you're traveling to the ends of the universe.

The family aspect of holidays, well, it's universal. There's the grandmother, the kids, the mother and father, the relatives who make phone calls (or forget to). There's cheer and strife.

The food, well, that's something else.

I don't take the time to cook ethnic dishes very often anymore. Modern life doesn't give you the leisure to spend a whole day preparing a one-pot dish and baking bread, nor will your family agree to eat the same meal several times in a row, even if you disguise it with interesting sides and desserts.

So ethnic dishes are relegated to special occasions.

Like Easter.

Kulich, or Easter Bread, a rich, yeast bread, full of good stuff like butter and sugar, vanilla, almonds, raisins, cardamom, takes three risings and a lot of kneading. It doesn't lend itself to modernization. Forget transposing the recipe to bread machines. Oh yes, I've tried. It's too rich, too dense for the poor appliances to handle it.

No, you have to mix it and knead it by hand. You have to get your hands messy. You have to sprinkle flour all over your kitchen.

Three risings, with mixing in ingredients after each one, that takes hours. And baking this kind of bread, that takes another hour and a half. So you see why I don't do it more than once a year.

But when they come out... Ah, the pride.

The other dish in demand is Paskha, or Syrnaya Paskha, Cheese Paskha, is made from fresh farmer's cheese and, you guessed, more butter, eggs, and sugar. It's like cheesecake, but smoother and meltier. Oh, and I found a recipe here, with pictures, that will give you an idea of what I was doing yesterday. One comment though: I'd rather skip making Paskha than using cottage cheese. It's much too watery, and too bland. It has to be farmer's cheese.

Guess what breakfast was this morning? Tea or coffee, and Kulich with Paskha.

Decadent? For sure! But you have to remember, if you really follow the tradition, then you haven't been eating any meat or dairy products for 40 days. None. At all. No milk, cheese, yoghurt, butter, no beef, chicken, pork. Vegetables and fish and oil. But if you think it makes for a boring diet, you're wrong! Don't forget that lobster and shrimp are "fish," too! And caviar, and wine is made from grapes, and sauces don't have to be cream-based, and spices are most often seeds or flowers.

Umm... I'm getting hungry...

But I confess, I'm not so hard-core. Not like my Mom used to be. I haven't forgotten, though, and I'm still capable of baking all the traditional dishes.

It has to count for something.

I haven't forgotten that you came here for the Big Contest! So go look for the Contest Egg on my site for a chance at the basket, and post a comment on this blog to be entered in a drawing (at the end of the month) to win a $5 gift certificate to The Wild Rose Press -- and remember that the Rosettes are on sale until the end of April!

And the next stop in the blog hunt will be: http://www.ashleyladd.blogspot.com. Ashley Ladd will post her contribution tomorrow!

Happy Reading!

A Sale at The Wild Rose Press!

All the Rosettes (short stories) are on sale! 99c. until the end of April!

And that means The Joining is too!

Take advantage of the offer to find out what makes Erik crash on a planet on the far reaches of the known universe. Discover alien places, for sure!

Memories

Don't you love showers? They're not just convenient means of waking up and getting oneself clean. They're also the source of endless inspiration, the place where your thoughts come into focus and your plots take form.

Many a story has been hatched in the shower.

Can you believe that once upon a time I hated showers?

More than that. I dreaded them. I shook in panic at the mere thought of taking one, and baths were not an alternative at that time. We only had a small half-bath in our efficiency, my mother and I, and that was it.

Obviously, I got over it. How? I don't know. It was a long time ago. Somewhere along the line, I discovered the pleasure and luxury of showers. The delight provided by the sensory isolation of the sound of running water, the soothing effect of hot steam, and the knowledge that no one expects you to hear anything for at least ten minutes.

When you're a mother, that's a lot.

And so I forgot the absolute fear and loathing of showers I once had.

What brought it back to mind is the realization that my elderly mother detests being cold, and the constant noise and irritation of running water, and therefore she will not take a shower. It's her old-age fussiness that brought back memories of my own childhood aversions.

What else have I forgotten?

I read several sci-fi novels recently where memory, either too-acute, or lost, is a central element of the plot. Whether regained, impossible to erase, or forever gone, memory is such an essential part of what makes us, that we don't even give it a thought.

Let's not even ponder memory as personal history: that's merely the simplest aspect of it.

Memory makes and remakes us constantly. Memory and recall. Recall and memory. Our ability to recall long-term memories and short-term memories: events that happened a long time ago, or just moments past. Our ability to arrange the memories into sequences, and more than that: into meaningful sequences, related to other memories and events, that are also arranged into meaningful sequences, themselves easily related...

That's how our mind works. A spiderweb of connections: ideas, deductions, recalls, memories, connections. All of these are made up of words, images, sensory information, emotions, rational thought processes.

Eliminate one, and you have a big gap that nothing can bridge. Forever and ever, you will go around it, but never over or across. That place is simply lost.

Whether you're considering the actual human mind, or a fictional story-world, this web is there: an infinite network of connections that you can never know fully, but you're aware it's there. And when you need it, you can dip into it. The same gaps that loss of memory cause in your mind can be created by lack of foresight in a fictional story-world, with the same result: an empty space, devoid of information.

Even if you have no gaps, in the case of a fictional story-world, you mustn't tell it all, or put every detail of it into your story, any more that you would recall every memory at every moment of your actual life. But as the writer, you must be aware of all the possible details of your story-world, as you are aware of your own self. You must know your story-world down to the molecular level, down to every sensory input. Know the colors and the scents, and the flavors of your imaginary places, and the way the people think there. So that the logic of your story is always that of your story, even if it's not necessarily quite realistic.

Because, hey, some days, we just don't want reality. We want the reality of the story, not the one outside our door.

Don't Forget to Read!

I mean, we're all readers, or else you wouldn't be stopping by.

I like books. You like books. We all like books. We forgive our favorite authors their lapses in characterization, their little plot holes, the things they forget to tell us, and we fill the blanks in our own minds, recreating a story-world that becomes all ours.

As long as the story is compelling, we'll forgive. Pile up too many errors, and we get mad.

Whether we read or watch a movie, we tend to argue with the characters. "You idiot, how could you believe this, he never said..." (fill in the blank). Or: "well, of course, I don't know what you heard, but that's not what she said."

We want the characters to pay attention. And a skilled writer will play on the fact that a reader will be more aware of the story-world than even its own people.

Why then don't we read everything with the same care and attention?

Contracts. Announcements. Ads. Newspaper articles.

What's there is obviously there, but we never seem to stop and consider what isn't there. What hasn't been said. We become both the characters (but not the smart detectives) and the fiction readers of our real world.

We fill in the blanks of our reality the way we fill in the blanks of our story-worlds. With what we'd like to be there.

Whereas we should be the detectives of our reality. Eve Dallas. Columbo. Patrick Jane. Sherlock Holmes.

We should be observing, noting the missing pieces, the things unsaid, the details avoided, and drawing conclusions as much from the missing evidence as from the facts staring us in the face.

And like the CSI heroes, we shouldn't just leap to conclusions. We should look for that evidence.

All that in a text.

Paranoid? Who, me?

Nah. Just a reader.