Anybody up for some CRISSCROSS discussion?

The other day I was in the book store I frequent in the poetry section, when I looked to my left and, at eye level, sat The Haunted Air, completely in the wrong section, and the only RepairMan Jack book I don't have yet. Some divine force must truly love me, although I'll keep my fingers crossed as I hope that it's not the otherness.
PS. sorry if this is uneventful, uninteresting or irrelevant.

For those who haven't read it, you can find it at:

http://www.doingfreedom.com/gen/0600/fa....eggin.html

And while you're there, check out the rest of the Doing Freedom site.

This has become must-see TV on Monday nights in my house.

Take David Caruso at his most pretentious. Add some of the worst dialogue ever written. Then have the former mouth the latter with grave portent and Shatneresque pauses, and you've got yourself a good time.

The stories are ofen gripping, and that saves the show from complete self-parody, but who writes the dialogue? (Unless Caruso the auteur is writing his own.)

After rereading Hosts and starting again on Haunted Air, I was wondering: did we ever see Joe and Stan K before in an earlier novel and I missed it? Same question in the very beginning of Haunted Air, when Jack recalls a fix-it job where a tattoo on his knuckles landed him in hot water, and also the big job he did for Burkes with terrorists in The Tomb; did these jobs ever appear in a short story or other novel, or is Jack just recalling them for the heck of it?

From the Science Fiction Weekly newsletter:

-> SITE OF THE WEEK
Ray Harryhausen, F. Paul Wilson and other celebrities sound off in the
"Sci-Fi Overdrive" audio interview archives housed at "Interstellar
Transmissions."

http://www.interstellartransmissions.com.../index.php

(If this topic doesn't belong here, I apologize. I seem to have a knack for creating topics in the wrong places, even when I'm not new to a forum. Sorry if this topic is taboo or insulting or something, but the opportunity to communicate directly with the creator of Jack...it's more than I can take!)

This is directed mostly at you, FPW, and to any published authors in this forum.

FPW, I know you're a working physician and yet you're still able to write lots of unique, tightly-plotted, detailed books, and do research for them, etc, and that amazes me. Would you be willing to give some tips about getting a full story out on paper? (or on the computer screen?) Do you run with a beginning and see where that leads, or plan out the entire plot before you begin writing?

Becoming a published author's one of my dreams, and it seems dauntingly difficult to become one by a major publishing house unless you already have connections or lots of money. Or both. A key example is the new fad Eragon, a fantasy book by a 19 year-old which was no better or worse than any other fantasy I've read. But it's the Big Thing with the tweenagers... mostly because the author's parents have their own publishing company. Is it impossible for an unknown person to catch the eye of a publisher? What's it like going through the publishing-house machinery out there? I read Stephen King's autobiography, and I think it was him who said that when he was first trying to get published, he had enough rejection slips to wallpaper his bedroom. Was it also hard for you to get published? How'd you get started writing in the first place?

I appreciate anything you'd or anyone else would like to share.

I just finished reading Sims last night and absolutely LOVED IT. I'm already a huge FPW fan, and this book was awesome. I work in the biotechnology industry so the premise is particularly interesting to me. I was just wondering what other thoughts were about the book. BTW, I'm new to the forum, but I've been stopping in periodically to read what's here for a long time.

This film is a documentary about the 1999 National Spelling Bee. It follows 8 kids from regional contests to the Nat'l finals. Sounds like a terrible bore, right? That's what I said when someone recommended it. Then someone else recommended it. So I gave it a shot.

Gripping from the git-go.

The amazing thing is how many of the kids are 1st generation Americans; English is a second language for their parents. It's about competition, obsession, and very much about the American dream. Seven of the kids are sweet and charming; one is completely obnoxious (you'll immediately know who), but I wouldn't be surprised if he has a neurological disorder (maybe a Tourette's variant).

Well worth the rental fee.

I finally had the opportunity to watch Ju-On: The Grudge 2. For those of you not familiar with this series, it's a Japanese horror franchise that is considered one of the scariest films to date. The series started off with two direct-to-video movies (just titled Ju-On) which was then followed up by a theatrical release, Ju-On: The Grudge.

As with a lot of Japanese shows, the creators sort of reinvent the story as they go along. Even though the direct-to-video and movies have the same themes, the stories are completely different. The basic premise of the story is that a man murders his wife and child then suddenly dies in the street days later. The house is bought by a new couple and each in turn dies mysteriously. The reason? Ju-On of course! The spirits of the wife and child are so angry and rage filled that they want revenge for their deaths and that includes the innocent people who had nothing to do with their murders.

Ju-On has always had an interesting way of presenting itself to the audience. It's non-linear in its editing (ala Pulp Fiction) by following one character for a bit, they disappear, move on to the next character, repeat. All characters are connected, sometimes by close ties, other times by threads. One of the fun things about Ju-On is seeing how the characters know each other, no matter how trivial.

The Grudge 2 picks up after the events of the first movie. A television show is doing a special on the house where the murders occurred. After the shoot, everyone goes their seperate ways... and start being haunted by Ju-On. People die and disappear... all the same night. It is the job of the director of the show and the celebrity actresses guest hosting the show (dubbed "the horror queen") to figure out what is happening because, for one reason or another, they were not killed nor did they disappear like everyone else.

Not quite as scary as its predecessor, The Grudge 2 still packs some pretty good scares into its 90 minutes. With a good story and good cast, anyone who has seen the original will enjoy this one. If you've never seen this series it's definitely worth checking out. Just watch it with the lights off.

And see it before the Americanized remake comes out.