Chatty chatty

I haven't been around LJ/DW much lately, aside from posting a bit of fic here and there. No specific reason -- just that it's spring, and I've been outside a lot. I did a bit of (local) traveling, put in my garden, worked on a number of projects around the house and yard (such as building the chickens' summer quarters, and then shoring up my predator defenses when we had a casualty). And I've also been writing a lot. Or perhaps I should say trying to write -- there is a lot of staring at the blank cursor, or starting on projects that never go anywhere. Par for the course with me, though ... I wrote a short WC fic for "Whump-a-palooza" (which won't be posted for awhile; I'm signed up to post on June 10th), and have thus far completely failed to do anything on my Big Bang. Should probably get on that.

I adored the Avengers movie (and my love for it only grows the more I think about it) but it hasn't engaged me fannishly, at least not fanfic-fannishly. I will occasionally read a fic if someone on my flist recommends it and it looks interesting, but often I lose interest halfway through. There are a few reasons for this, I think, the main one being that fanfic, for me, is the "something more" that I go looking for when I've run out of canon, and with Marvel, there is SO. MUCH. CANON. If I want to read about, say, Tony Stark or Thor having adventures, all I have to do is head down to the comic store and pick up some back issues, or prowl around scans_daily for a while. It's true that it's not quite the same take on the characters as the movie, but neither is fanfic -- it's all different voices anyway, and the thing about Marvel comics, as well as the vast quantity of it, is that the comics are full of the sort of randomosity that in most canons is only available from fanfic, with dozens of different characterizations and everything from ridiculous crack to h/c to gloomy emo stories in which the characters all die.

And there's also a weird sort of "crossing the streams" effect, where I'm not into fanfic for comics because for so many years comics existed in a totally non-fanfic space for me. I don't know if I can explain it any better than that -- it's just that I never have related to comics fannishly in quite the same way that I do to TV, anime and (sometimes) books. I've been reading about these characters and wanting to make comics professionally since long before I had the slightest glimmering that such a thing as fanfic existed, and later, I got involved with writing/drawing independent comics and going to conventions and basically hanging out and discussing comics with people who were not fanfic people at all. I'm not opposed to comics fanfic, of course -- I will read the occasional fic that drifts across my radar, and I can imagine writing it for Yuletide or whatnot -- but in general it's a non-fanfic sort of fandom for me.

(Though I reserve the right to change my tune if I get seriously fanfic-fannish about a comic at some point in the future. *g*)

On the other hand, this means I'm reading comics again! Which is rather fun.

Also, my brain is still full of Carnivale. I'm amazed at how much I came to love that series once it was over and could settle into my brain. Again, not really a fandom sort of thing (partly because there is no fandom for it, and partly because the show itself is so weird, macabre and highly changeable that I don't really want to be part of a fandom for it) but my brain is still all CARNIVALE CARNIVALE CARNIVALE a lot of the time, and I've rewatched certain parts of the show more than I want to admit. As difficult as some of it was to get through (and I can't recommend it without giant caveats, particularly in how it treats some of its female characters), I'm very glad I pushed through, because the awesome bits were worth it (and made all the more awesome by how depressing, bleak and miserable a lot of the rest of it was).

Anyway, because I haven't been online much lately, I'm feeling all online-chatty at the moment and I want to write more about ... well, something. I have all of these half-finished posts in my head about writing (especially revising), and about Carnivale, not to mention that I'm only up to #4 on my "100 posts" and also, saphirablue had the lovely idea of "Squee Week" (seven posts to share the happy!), which I would really like to participate in. Perhaps I will get to at least one of these later today.

Book rec: Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco series

Okay, one more post because I had to drop by and make squeeing sounds about the book I started reading tonight. I'm already 2/3 of the way through because I can't put it down -- well, I forced myself to stop for a while because I wanted to get some writing done tonight, but I can't wait to pick it back up again. :D

The book is The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis, and it's the first in a series of historical murder mysteries set in Ancient Rome. Assuming nothing horrible happens in the last third of the book (I reallyreallyreally hope she doesn't kill any main characters, because I adore all of them!) I am already addicted and will be dashing off to the library for the next few books in the series. Luckily there are a LOT of them.

And the book is an absolute delight. The narrator, Marcus Didius Falco, is basically an Ancient Roman private detective. The general tone of the books is similar to a hardboiled P.I. novel, except that the narrator only thinks he's hardboiled, but is in fact a HUGE pushover for the book's large supporting cast consisting of his friends and his ginormous, mostly female family, all of whom basically have him wrapped around their finger. He reminds me a lot of Harry Dresden minus the magic (his narrative voice is very similar), although he starts out with a lot more of a support system than Harry has. His best friend Petronius is a Roman city watchman who TOTALLY makes me think of Peter Burke in almost every conceivable way, and there is a fantastically snarky, practical love interest who reminds me of Terry Pratchett's typical heroines. (I was trying to figure out what Falco and Helena's dynamic makes me think of, and finally got it: Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart from Going Postal. Though there is a lot more genuine animosity between Falco and Helena at first.) And, yeah, I know that I'm comparing every single character to someone else, but they really are very much themselves -- it's just that I'm only starting to read the series and I'm still at the "these people make me think of all these other people" stage.

But basically, the characters are adorable, the setting is very vivid and (as far as I can tell) well researched, and the story alternates between laugh-out-loud funny and heartrendingly serious. If you like light, breezy historical fiction -- and once again with the caveat that I've only read the first 2/3 of a book in a series that's got like 15 books in it -- I wholeheartedly recommend!