Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Cancer Graduation and Deb & Jon vs the Summer Blockbuster

No long march to radiology until 2014.
The breakfast after being told my test results, not even a second cup of coffee could keep me from nodding off not even an hour after waking up. This was after a deep and peaceful twelve hour sleep. It seems I had a great deal of sleep dept built over the last few weeks. You see, the same creative mind that conjures new civilizations and real people that can live in my head is really good at conjuring the most dire result with the thinnest shreds of evidence. Was I being silly, maybe. I recall a time after the surgery when my blood work was good yet it was decided I should have 12 rounds of chemo as a 'precaution.' I am in no way second guessing my treatment. I'm just saying that indications looked fine before, and I still ended up having ten rounds of chemo before I could go no further.

It should be easy to understand how I could get really wound up in the wake of some abnormalities in the March tests. It wasn't a constant state of anxiety. I barely spared the tests a thought save for how they would impact my schedule in June. It hit me where I was sleeping or where I was supposed to be sleeping. I got wound up subconsciously and spent two weeks or more hardly sleeping. How I was functioning and reasonably polite is a wonder. Not that I was the most efficient at my work as I would have been well rested. I've found that past dinner time, I was fairly useless save for some social networking.
The B-12 shots go on but no Oncology appt until Dec.
Things were getting done, but it was like walking on eggshells for those weeks.

When the doctor told me that I wouldn't need to test until next year this time, I promptly burst into tears. I had no idea I was that wound up. After the tears came the sleepiness. Immediately afterward. I was zonked out on the train home. Luckily, my stop was the end of the line. Even more lucky was the bus driver knew my stop (it's a very short route and I see this kind soul often). Napping all the way home and all the excitement of being free didn't blunt the sleepy. I was even falling asleep during phone calls. My apologies to anyone that I drifted off on.

The upshot is that I am clear of PMP cancer. My overall health (heart, blood pressure, etc) is very good. I am so grateful to all my family and friends who have helped Jon and me get to this point. I honestly don't know what we would have done without such steadfast support. We feel very fortunate about so many things in our lives. Our hearts are very full. However, there are ongoing problems caused by chemo. I'm still working out my pain management and nerve damage issues through nutrition and exercise. I'm ecstatic about being cancer free, but I am not the same as I was before. I can deal with that. I have support systems in place for everything that I have planned. And there are a lot of exciting things in the works – if only I could stay awake to put the plans in place. Seriously.

I've been fortunate in some things. The editing contracts I have are all done for the moment. I could be hit with another half dozen books any time now. I've only got one short story with a hard deadline on the horizon. Unfortunately, I have a heap of work that I created myself that is absolutely essential for my various projects. This stuff is time consuming and leaves me with little time for my more popular and widely awaited works. This won't be going on for very much longer. But it is very important. Believe me, I wouldn't take on more work when I am so very tired if the work weren't essential. I do hope to be able to talk about some of it soon. My life is weird. I admit that.

Deb & Jon vs The Summer Blockbuster

I shift gears dramatically to talk about a problem the Hubs and I have had with family and friends and the films coming out this summer. It happens every summer, but this summer is especially bad. There have been movies coming out that all indications show that there have been films that we would want to talk about with family and friends. We have been approached with puppy like excitement that pains us to rebuff. But before I go further, let me tell you a little bit about our experiences pitching films. Jon and I write good, solid scripts that get us meetings. We've gotten meetings when there is no logical reason that we should get meetings. But that is not to say that these meetings have been easy on us. Studio types have fragile egos. The idea that nobodies could waltz through their office and into a film deal is something that cannot be tolerated. So, we would be given notes demanding that we explain the links between characters until all suspense was gone or challenging the logic of our universe to the point we wondered why there was ever a meeting. This was often a condescending and demoralizing experience, because, after all, they are studio suits and we are nobodies. After all of that humiliation, we wouldn't get the deal. This does make a body bitter. We know that if we had written material like those of many of these summer blockbusters, we'd be tortured and ridiculed if we were ever seen at all. Yes, we still like sfi-fi and action movies. Iron Man 3 http://youtu.be/Ke1Y3P9D0Bc was a hoot and a half AND a very smart film. And we can't wait for Pacific Rim http://youtu.be/5guMumPFBag (GIANT ROBOTS!!). We even root for dreadful films, because if the genre falls out of favor we lose our chance to sell our work.

But we don't look at films the way normal viewers do. We generally don't get lost in the snazzy special FX.
We're thinking about all the cynicism involved in the deal. We think about how much the suits prefer reboots and retreads to new material. We think about how they prefer to dumb down a script to get the wides audience age range possible. It is discouraging for us and it is also infuriating.

So, no. We are not insulting your intelligence when we rail about how inane the latest blockbuster is. We're not thinking about your reaction at all. We're thinking about those meetings and the scripts not sold in favor of studio hacks with fraternity connections. We are glad that you were excited that there was finally a Star Trek film you thought you could talk to us about. And we do apologize for turning purple and screaming at you. It wasn't personal. How do you talk to us about films? Let us bring it up. If we loved something, we let everyone know it. And for goodness sake, if you've never done it before, don't ask Jon what he thought of that sci-fi film you really enjoyed. He will tell you what he thought, no matter the carnage that causes. I can't tell you how many screenings I've dragged him from to keep him from insulting someone or everyone. The man just can't lie.

The next blog will have project updates!

Stay tuned!

1 comment:

Yvonne said...

Congratulations on your news! Big Hugs to you.