Dating Yourself...it's a problem

I'm not talking about having a close personal relationship with your hand here but writing in a way that makes your writing seem old-fashioned. Most writers are savvy enough not to use transient slang in their stories, but there are other, more subtle ways in which writers betray their age. For example, I have a friend whose "tell" is that she knows Yale University didn't start admitting women until 1970 because she entered college in 1969 and wanted to go to Yale. But if she mentions that, it immediately tells everyone that she's 61.
I have another friend who frequently makes reference to obscure movies that came out decades ago, and also makes extremely subtle jokes referencing vintage.  That would simply mark him as eccentric but then he attempts to explain the jokes while laughing heartily and it's just truly painful.
So there are ways to avoid the obvious things. But ... sometimes even when you're careful, you're blindsided.
I have a client who wanted his script read by one of my subcontractors, a smart guy in his early 20s.  The reader liked the script a lot but was puzzled by one thing. The main character's backstory included a reference to the "Oklahoma City Bombing" with no other explanation.
"The writer does not explain what happened to the protagonist's family," the reader wrote in his report.
He'd never heard of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
He was six years old when it happened.
The writer--like myself--just assumed that everyone would understand his reference.
It's easy to say -- "but everyone knows about the Oklahoma City Bombng," but my smart, young sub-contractor did not.
My client rewrote the script.

Review of Macbeth starring Sam Worthington

There are more than 60 different versions of Macbeth listed on IMDB, which is kind of amazing. This film, a modern-day adaptation set in Australia, is ... intriguing. It opens with three red-headed schoolgirls defacing the gravestones in a cemetery, a sequence that is disturbing and creepy, especially since the colors are so subdued that their red hair and the red paint they're using just pops out like ... blood.
The scene soon shifts to a neon-soaked waterfront meeting place where a drug deal goes sideways in an operatic, balletic orgy of violence that is equal parts Quentin Tarantino and Baz Luhrman.
Director Geoffrey Wright filmed the movie with more Dutch angles than an Amsterdam neighborhood, but the overall effect is incredibly stylish. There's real carnality in the scene where Macbeth is confronted by the Weird Sisters who hail him as the Thane of Cawdor and he who shall be king thereafter.
He has never really considered the idea--we get the impression he's really sort of a drone--but once he's considered the possibility of being the king, the idea will not leave him alone.
The adaptation maintains Shakespeare's dialogue but strips it down to the bare minimum. (That's good because sometimes the actors' Aussie accents get in the way, as in the line, "Takes the reason prisoner," which comes out "Take the raisin prisoner.")  A lot of dialogue is delivered as voiceover, which keeps it from sounding too melodramatic in the context.

Summer of Shakespeare continues!

From Star Trek: The Next Generation to Shakespeare. Michael Dorn is appearing in a production of As You Like It this summer in Los Angeles. (This month in fact.) It's a modern-dress version (it's often performed in modern dress) and directed by an associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Goldstar has cheap tickets, so I hope to go.

Buy Shakespeare

Shakespeare iPhone cover

Show your love for the Bard by wearing Shakespeare-themed stuff!  And purchasing quote mugs, posters, and prints.  Available at this Zazzle store.

Pulp Ink 2 is here!!

Huzzah--thanks to editors Chris Rhatigan and Nigel Bird!! These stories have a horror and a fantastical edge. Buy it here for kindle for just $2.99.  Buy the print version here.
Here's what you need to know about it:  Pulp Ink 2’s got beautiful killers, visions of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty rats, and one severed arm on a quest for revenge. No half-assed reboots here, just some of the finest writing in crime and horror today.

Featuring stories by Kevin Brown, Mike Miner, Eric Beetner, Heath Lowrance, Matthew C. Funk, Richard Godwin, Cindy Rosmus, Christopher Black, Andrez Bergen, James Everington, W. D. County, Julia Madeleine, Kieran Shea, Joe Clifford, Katherine Tomlinson, R. Thomas Brown, Court Merrigan, BV Lawson, and Patti Abbott.

Win the Ultimate Shakespeare getaway!

Airfare to Stratford, Ontario, accommodations and two tickets to three of the Shakespeare Festival's offerings. Details here.

Feminist Fiction Friday--CJ Cherryh

I started reading CJ Cherryh's books in the mid-70s but somehow (denial is a powerful drug), it never occurred to me that she would now be ... coming up on 70.  (September 1, as a matter of fact.) I always figured that she used her initials instead of her full name (Carolyn Janice) because most science fiction writers at the time were men. It never occurred to me that "Cherryh" was not her real last name. According to Wikipedia, she added the silent H at the end of Cherry because her then-editor (Donald A. Wolheim) thought "Cherry" sounded too much like a romance novelist.
Well, nobody mistakes her for a romance novelist now--not after 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, a clutch of Awards (including the John W. Campbell award and a couple of Hugos).
And did you know she taught Latin and Greek after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma and recieving a Master's Degree from Johns Hopkins where she was a Woodrow Wilson fellow.
Cherryh has never pigeon-holed her writing into any specific genre or sub-genre. (In fact, she's gone on record as being very much against that kind of categorizing.) She has written books from alien points of view. She has written books in shared worlds. I am a huge fan of Cherryh's fantasy and the first book of hers I read was the first of the books about time-traveling Morgaine, The Gate of Ivrel. I always thought the time-gates of her Morgaine books were much more interesting than any of the Stargates. I also loved Cyteen, which was a genre mash-up on a grand scale, featuring a cloned scientist trying to avoid the fate of her original.