Drowsy pirates, flying wizards, & dang good books

This is a catch up blog. A little bit of everything. Wednesday I worked my normal 8 AM to 4 30 Pm shift at work. That night I returned to work at midnight and put in another 8 hour shift without any sleep in between. Afterward I caught a two hour nap then attended my son's award ceremony at school and finally at eight thirty got in bed and dies for the next ten hours.

Yesterday, I went to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie with my wife, four year old son, and four teenage girls that are friends of the family. Yes, they swooned over Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, but not nearly as much as my wife. The movie was okay. It certainly had its humorous moments and I appreciated the Un-Disney-esque ending. Won't say more so as not to spoil anything but The Curse of the Black Pearl was by far the best of the three. This one just got weird at times and the plot was a bit erratic. I did enjoy Keith Richard cameo and as usual they paid good homage to the original ride at Disneyland and Disney World. Can't wait to go back to Florida next year and ride the revamped version.

Finished another couple of books over the last two days. In case you are wondering why I always post these in pairs, it is because I generally read two books at once and seem to finish them within a day or so of each other. The first was Flyte by Angie Sage which is book two of the Septimus Heap series. The writing isn't elaborate, it's not meant tow be since the target audience is eleven and twelve year olds, but the story and characters are captivating and I'd recommend the series to anyone with children or to those who don't mind suspending their belief and acting like one.

I also read Alice Hoffman's Here on Earth which is exactly the kind of book I wish I could write. Dark, rich in character, physcological in nature, suspenseful, entertaining . The characters lives are a an out of control train that you know is going to run of the track. It's just a matter of when where, and how. This is not a feel good story, but I don't always read to feel good. I've often heard, especially on my first two novels that my writing is too dark. I realize that I am no Alice Hoffman but novels like Here on Earth give me encouragement that there is an audience out there for books that take a close look at life, the good and bad, that entertain yet teach at the same time, and that do not fall into the trap of happily ever after. Life never quite works out that way so why should fiction that is supposed to mirror reality?