Busy week! Hit 59k in Shapeshifted, which was a good stopping point, so switched over to working on Nightshifted copyedits. I’m at page 160 out of 444, and they’re going really quickly, which is awesome! They’re due on 11/3, which of course is just after World Fantasy, but I’m hoping to finish them prior to that and just mailing them from San Diego. (Amusingly, I’ve heard so many friends complain about almost telepathically crappy timing on getting copyedits…when I got an email titled “Copyedits” two days before last week’s camping trip, and thought, “Ut oh, here it comes,” but they didn’t get in until Monday, so camping was mostly guiltfree ;).)

I did spend a bit of time staring at them trying to figure things out. Here’s a nice list of copyedit symbols. At first, I didn’t realize they were for the printer, not for me. So I was baffled by the fact that they wanted to, seemingly, take out all my em-dashes. After I figured out they were just marking them so they wouldn’t be missed later, I was greatly relieved.

I went to see The Thing last night with my horror movie girlfriend. We’re disappointed by the lack of actual chiller fare this Halloween season — we missed the haunted house one, and then Paranormal Activity 3 doesn’t come out till this weekend, when I work. (Although we will be seeing that with bells on, as soon as I get back from WFC.)

The Thing was 1/2 the Original The Thing (plot), 1/2 Doom (CGI), 1/2 Aliens vs Predators (sadly, also plot), and 1/2 Original Alien (cgi/plot combo). The CGI was good — the monsters were like Doom (the game, not the movie) by way of Cthulhu. The whole showing the space ship thing was not so good — anything that took away from the actual suspense part was disappointing for me, being a fan of the original. I did like the actress protagging it though, Mary Elizabeth Winstead — she brought a lot of strength and really filled the role. I really want to believe in kick ass female leads, and she handled both science and a flame thrower admirably.

Oddly, these people down the isle from us had brought their 3 yr old with them. I can see wanting to have a date night, and not being able to afford childcare…but how do you think a kid’s gonna sleep through The Thing? Even if they won’t be scarred by it (I don’t figure they will) you have to know there’s going to be suspense-bangs! and bright lights and jumpy parts. Maybe pick a rom-com instead? They wound up leaving like halfway through.

As a kid, my most traumatic movie viewed ever was when my folks rented Alien. This was back when you had to rent the VCR machine along with the tape, because no one had one at home yet.

I knew the unveiling of the VCR from its plastic carrying case was an event. And then when my parents told me to stay in my room because I couldn’t watch the movie with them — no. I couldn’t do it. So I waited until they were watching, and I crawled out on my hands and knees and hid behind the couch to watch the film with them.

In retrospect, it was its own punishment. I was watching things I couldn’t understand, couldn’t peel myself away from, and I couldn’t talk to my folks about without being found out. At the end, uncaught but definitely scathed, I crawled back to my room and waited for things to burst out of my chest all night.