Books and Baby

Welcome back, Skirmishers!

The past few months set their shoes on fire as they sprinted by, and I’m wheezing in their smoke as I try to keep up. Life has been a mix of the joyful, the sad, and the bittersweet this spring. My jolly, Jesus-loving father-in-law died suddenly in his sleep the Sunday before Easter, so April was busy with traveling to California to attend the wonderful memorial service and spend much-needed time with Ben’s family, with whom we are very close. April was also punctuated by naps, coffee, and more naps as I staggered through the happy exhaustion of my first trimester with Baby #2—due this November! We are so, so thrilled to be growing our family and I can’t wait to spend more time chasing a chubby crawler instead of writing my WIP. Between travel and fatigue, my writing time has been almost nil, so I focused on reading, reading, reading (mostly for research).

For a writing update, movie recommendations, and book reviews, read on!

In this Skirmish

✍️ Writing Update: Gorge yourself on research

🍿 What I’m Watching: the best movie I watched this spring was made in the 90s

📚 What I’m Reading: I can’t stop sailing with Jack Aubrey

Writing Update

I have finished the bulk of the research for my Elizabethan sea adventure and currently feel like an anaconda that swallowed a jeep. I learned way more details about Elizabeth I’s teeth, Philip I’s gout, the Duke of Parma (genius), English guns vs. Spanish guns, political intrigue in France, and how the Tudor English would stuff their mattresses with straw (or feathers, etc.) interspersed with lavender than I will ever overtly mention in a middle-grade novel, but still. The details will be there in my head, infusing the book with the mood of an author who read a thing or two (or who swallowed a jeep).

This is one of my favorite moments: when it’s time to set aside the research and start typing. The words flow much faster when I’ve read ~1,000 pages of historical background + planned my characters, the beat sheet, and the eucatastrophe at the end that is why I wanted to write this story in the first place. I’m currently 2 chapters in, and once I hit 5ish chapters, I plan to submit to my editor and see if it’s working. By “it,” I mean primarily 1) the world-building (a trouble area in earlier drafts) and 2) the hero (is the male protagonist acting like a male protagonist?).

What I’m Watching

Ben and I watched a lot of solid C+/B- airplane movies this spring. Entertaining, moderately clever, not that memorable, great for vacation or lazy evenings when the emotional pregnant woman doesn’t want anything intense.

The Lost City (Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum) - Acts I-II were a pleasantly clever and funny satire of the romance novel industry and air-headed females who adore it, featuring Sandra at her self-deprecating best. Then Act III kinda phoned it in when it tried to go all Indiana Jones. Still, we laughed.

Red Notice (The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot) - Decent heist movie with a few too many hard R sex jokes and too much raving immodesty to make this easy to recommend. Most of this movie has been done before—better and cleaner.

Mercy (Chris Pratt) - What if AI was in charge of the justice system, and the burden was on you to prove your innocence but you had access to nearly infinite knowledge? Chris Pratt demonstrated capable acting range with almost zero physical movement (he’s literally strapped to the execution chair for 99% of the movie) but overall the movie was, obviously, rather far fetched.

War Machine (Alan Ritchson) - I believe this was my husband’s favorite of this list. Alan Ritchson plays a guy in Army Ranger school whose final training exercise is to lead his fellow candidates through a wilderness excursion that goes haywire when alien robots invade the US. Lots of language, and I found the plot dumb, but the movie was a pleasing ode to guts and testosterone and the best kind of toxic masculinity in general. Teenage boys will be tougher for watching it.

Anaconda (Jack Black, Paul Rudd) - Netflix suckered us into watching this by showing a funny 30-second clip from halfway into the movie. Turns out, this movie is best appreciated by high school boys and/or fans of the Anaconda franchise (perhaps I repeat myself).

The New World (Christian Bale, Colin Farrell) - I was excited to watch this movie set just a few years after my Elizabethan novel, but it was nauseatingly fat, slow, pompous, undisciplined, and fatally self-absorbed. How many shots do we need of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith vibing at each other? Or said princess running sexily through the grass without a plan? Or random nature being nature? We turned it off.

October Sky (Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper) - Since this was released in 1999, I am decidedly late to the party, but I loved it. It doesn’t fit neatly into the glutted genre of movies where the dad is wrong and the kid is right. It subversively creates a genre within that genre, where both the dad and the kid have strengths and weaknesses and must humble themselves and learn from each other. Very well written and well nuanced. And charming.

What I’m Reading

Master and Commander (Books 1-4) - I read Master and Commander initially purely for ship research, and quickly got sucked into the series. I lapped up Post Captain, HMS Surprise, and The Mauritius Command in a breathless sprint and I can’t wait to dive into Desolation Island as soon it arrives this afternoon. Patrick O’Brian not only knows ships, he knows history, characters, dialogue, prose, and how to spin a tale in general. One of my favorite elements of his writing is his efficiency. Despite spending 30 pages on a single riveting ship chase, complete with riveting detail about every shift in the wind and raising of sails, O’Brian is remarkably elliptical in his stage directions. He is spare with his dialogue tags, and doesn’t over explain his characters moving about the room. These are pleasing gaps he lets you fill in with your imagination. (Writing tip!)

How to Be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman - Maggie O’Farrell listed this book in her acknowledgements in Hamnet, and since one of the features I loved best about Hamnet was its immersive, historically gritty, you-are-there world-building, I bought this book instantly. It proved immensely helpful as I researched the ordinary lives, food, clothing, and work of everyday Elizabethans. Ruth Goodman is the modern authority on all things Tudor. She’s wonderful.

The Armada by Garrett Mattingly - Gorgeously written and thoroughly researched. Much better than In Search of a Kingdom. Told me everything needed to know about the Spanish armada’s attack on England and alllll the historical events and major players around it.

Plymouth, A New History by Crispin Gill - Plymouth, England, changed almost overnight due to the catastrophic bombings of WWII, so I was grateful to find this history written by a man who had seen both pre- and post-war versions of this key port city. My Elizabethan novel is set in Plymouth (when my characters aren’t gallivanting on the high seas), hence my interest.

The Sin of Empathy by Joe Rigney - Nonfiction, obviously, and a great book both for personal conviction and for crafting flawed/villainous characters.

That’s all for now! See you in September, at this rate.

Cheers,
Gwen