Spooky got two photos:


Photographs Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn A. Pollnac
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Yesterday, I finally began "The Maltese Unicorn." I wrote only 617 words, but at least it's a beginning. Since May 8th, this story has been kicking about in my head. This week, I wrote many pages of notes for it, actually working through the plot, something I might never before have done with a short story. But it's an unusually complex plot for me, plottier than most of my plots, with all the crosses and double crosses one expects from noir. Plus its a period piece, which makes the whole process several times more difficult than usual. It's a first-person narrative set in May 1935 New York City, inside a frame set in German-occupied Paris in October 1941.
Last night, we saw Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (2009, based on Tony Burgess' novel, Pontypool Changes Everything). A brilliant, terrifying movie that I can't recommend strongly enough. Superbly suspenseful. Every single moment is pulled taut. In a film about a linguistic virus, sound and silence are used to maximum effect. Nods to both Burroughs' language as virus and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. A stunning performance from Stephen McHattie. And no, it's not a zombie movie. It's something worse, but I'm sure people have called it a zombie movie. Exquisitely surreal, claustrophobic, and it wields dread like a scalpel. See it.
And I guess that's it for now.