Book Review: Red Dahlia

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Ileandra Young

Author: Lynda La Plante
Title: The Red Dahlia
Genre: Crime
ISBN: 0743257073
‘A young girl is found dumped on the banks of the Thames. Horrifically mutilated and drained of blood, her death is an ominous mirror image of an unsolved 1940s case in Los Angeles known as The Black Dahlia. ‘

I’m missing something. I must be. This is the second book by La Plante I have read and I am less than wowed. Part of me screams ‘what right do you have?!’ but the rest of me says; ‘plenty! I’m a reader as well as a writer. I can dip my feet into both sides of the pool.’ Then I get totally side tracked and think about a t-shirt I want from the OOTS shop saying ‘I’m true neutral; I go both ways,’ but that’s another story.

Yawn. This book has fell into the same holes that Silent Scream did, but worse. This is earlier than that one, so I can see where La Plante has improved going forward. But it still not enough to stop me tutting. I’m reading the books out of sequence, but I’m fortunate enough that this makes no difference to how I feel about the stories/writing except to make the relationship between Anna Travis and James Langton hop around like a cat on a hot tin roof. But it does that anyway. o.O

Langton is actually a fantastic character in that he has earned my deepest, deepest hate. Lol. I don’t know enough about him (maybe his first appearance to the series might have put me in a different mind set), but he is the typical workaholic chauvinist with a seriously irritating Hamlet complex. Any woman out there could (and would) scream that he is not good enough for the intelligent, undervalued Anna (sorry, is my sarcasm too loud for you? -_-). The problem is, I don’t have a similar feeling about Anna; not that I don’t dislike her, but that I don’t feel anything for her. Nothing at all.

That is the big failing for me.

This marks my second meeting with Anna Travis the amazing detective but she is still bland, lifeless and just a little bit silly in my eyes (seriously; what the hell was she thinking with that reporter?!). Coupled with that thirty-forty pages down the line I may be able to get off the wild ride at the next stop (yes, back to my train analogy from Silent Scream). It slow. Far too slow in paces and in others it leaps along so fast that I can’t keep up. Particularly the end where the police are starting to narrow the net on their killer’s whereabouts. Why oh why oh why does it take them so long to pin this guy when they know damn well its him from about half way through? It just makes it boring. 😦

But I’m not yet completely put off. This book marks one of La Plante’s earlier novels before she really got her teeth into what she is capable of. There is plenty of potential to go a long way with the series, so I will make a point of picking up another of her books when next I see one.
Honest guv.

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80 Post Challenge – Post 26

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Ileandra Young

What was the longest amount of time you have spent waiting in line for something? What was it, and was it worth the wait?

I’m having trouble with this one. I’m sure it was a ride at Alton Towers, but now I’m not so sure. Its the only thing there was a line for. Even when The Deathly Hallows had its midnight launch I just bopped straight into WH Smiths at 00:03, picked it up, paid and ran home. It was easy. In fact, when Return of the King was on at the Odeon down the road, I was there early, but there wasn’t really a queue, just a whole bunch of geeks getting interviewed by the Mercury.

little rollercoaster from OPenClipArtNo… pretty sure it was Alton Towers. It was for the ride Air. It was new at the time, and its that one where you get strapped in and leaned forward so it feels like you’re flying Peter Pan style (though I don’t recall Peter Pan ever having to wear massive straps! :p).

The queue started at one end of this huge jungle feature filled with fake lions, bamboo and waterfalls. I remember cutting myself a piece of bamboo and making myself a blow tube. That entertained me for quite some time, shooting pieces of twig and gummed up bamboo pulp at people further down the queue. They weren’t especially happy, but they couldn’t see me, so that’s fine.

The first section of the queue was two hours. Seriously and every three minutes or so, a carriage with ten screaming adrenalin fans would go shooting over head. I saw three shoes get lost in that part of the queue.

Then we spent another hour in a tunnel. It was just a section of the queue that had to go directly underneath the ride, so it had a roof (probably to protect from falling shoes), but it was far less entertaining in there. I’d lost my blow tube, I was hungry and my feet were starting to ache. -_- And the inside walls of this tunnel had nothing interesting on them to look at; just lights and the occasional bug.

Outside the tunnel the queue started to move quickly. We decided that it made no difference if we were at the front or not, so the queue forked into two. People who insisted on going at the front of the carriage had to wait longer, while the rest of us just clustered on in batches of eight. That last section took half an hour and by that point I was too far towards needing the toilet to maintain any sort of excitement.

Finally we’re there, lining up in pairs before a plastic pair of automatic doors which open up (like saloon doors) when the last occupants of the carriage had gone. We ran out, climbed in, strapped ourselves down….

The ride lifts you up so you’re feet are off the floor. Then it tilts you forward until you are suspended face down over the mucky floor tiles. All the blood is rushing forward in your body and you know you’re going to have a huge bruise across your boobs because that’s where the rescue bar was. Your feet dangle into space. Some idiot starts screaming – even though you haven’t moved yet – and then woooooooooooosh!

Spins, turns, loops, jumps, wriggles and flips. The ride goes nuts and if you can keep your eyes open long enough there is a great view of the park to be had. You can see all the other chumps in the queue and you grin because they still have an age to wait. Someone behind you in the carriage shrieks that they’ve lost their glasses (moron). Someone else insists they are going to be sick any second….

90 seconds later the ride is over. Seriously. 90 seconds. It might not even have been that long. To this day I feel that I desperately want those hours of my life back, for the simple fact that the wait was not worth such a short payoff. Sure the ride was good, but that is pretty much half of your day gone in a place like Alton Towers. Especially when it takes so long to get from one side of the park to the other. Next time, I’ll leave the new rides (they’re really not so great as the old favourites anyway) and ride things like Oblivion and the Banana Boat multiple times.

Because I can.

 

 

 

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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Step Six: The First Rejection

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Ileandra Young

It arrived at the weekend, but I wasn’t around to get it.  I picked up the post when I got back into the house and recognised my own handwriting on an envelope. Then I was glad that we left someone behind in the house, because I made the envelope recorded delivery, meaning it had to be signed for.  o.O

I looked at it and even said; ‘Hey… my first rejection!’

I didn’t mean it in a defeatist or negative sense, only in a realistic one.  You may feel that’s pessimistic in itself, but to be honest, I know that’s not the sort of luck I have.  I’ll never get run over by a bus or struck by lightening, but I’ll also never win the lottery, or be one of those few authors who picks up an agent from their very first submission.    That is the sort of luck I have and, frankly put, I’m fine with that.  I’d much rather have that, than win the lottery and get struck by lightening before I could enjoy the winnings.  That would be rubbish!

Anyway… I knew it was from the first submission, because that was the only one I’ve made recorded delivery back to me.  So I popped open the envelope and had a look at the work inside and I’ll tell you what… there are only a few things that make me certain they even opened the original envelope:
1) The return envelope came from inside it
2) The amusing postcard came back (remember I talked about it coming back here)
3) My cover letter wasn’t there

In the place of the cover letter, however, was a new letter from the agency in a nice neat format (though the edging was so rough that I’m sure it was run off the photocopier than morning – along with about thirty others), with my name and the date hand-written into the appropriate slots.  The letter started with the standard ‘thank you for allowing us to consider your work,’ before going straight into ‘unfortunately this is not for us.’

Bizarre… I expected to feel more upset.  Or at least a little miffed that its so easy for a stranger to dismiss my brain child. But that’s not the way it works, is it?  Of course not.  They’re in this business AS a business.  They can’t afford to spend time and money on something that’s not going to offer a return for them. Part of me is pleased that they were so quick to respond, because it means that its one name I can tick off my list as ‘don’t need to worry about these any more.’ The other part of me is more like ‘blimey, did they actually read beyond one page?’  And the answer actually is… perhaps not.

I have to prepare myself for that fact.  These people have to know within two or three paragraphs, maybe less, whether something is worth reading. They have to know that its worth getting to the end of the chunk of paper they hold, or if they should put it down and move onto the next thing.  Really, what I need to be sure of is that I do everything in my power to tempt them into reading.  And reading.  And reading some more.

So… I’ll never know for sure if they got to the end of the sample, but its one tick off my list and on with the next one.

One of the lines towards the bottom of the letter said ‘don’t be disheartened.’  Its this line on the letter I’m putting the most stock in.  Because I can’t alone myself to be disheartened.  I have to keep going, keep pushing; maintain the drive to continue sending out these packs on the understanding that more letters like these are going to come – for sure! – but somewhere down the line, sooner or later, someone is going to want to read the rest of it.  And who knows… after that, they may even want to take it further.

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80 Post Challenge – Post 25

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Ileandra Young

Turn to an entry in your journal or diary from a year or more ago. What has changed and what has stayed the same since then?

closed diary clipart from OpenClipArtHehe, I was looking through my diary for 2004. I kept a diary religiously for almost seven years and I still have all of them locked up in a chest somewhere. I’ll need to crack out the rest of them at some point; if I recall, some of the things I used to share with those pages would make me cringe now. I was a particularly sex starved teenager, from what I can tell. Heh, so I guess I can tell you first of all, that that has definitely changed. :p

No… in 2004, the entry I read was me getting ready to going mapping for my university project. I had written about work (I was in Asda at the time) and how glad I was to have so much time off. I was talking about my preparations (my ‘sanity-keeping items’) which included hard copies of Gaea, Silk Over Razor Blades (such as it was at the time), If Only, HouseMates (probably episodes 1-6), Mathias and Antonio and Michelle (now known as Clash Of The Animal Kings). All that, and then I took with me three PSone games, 15 DVDs and more CDs than I ever realised I owned. And probably three reams of paper and pens.

I didn’t have a computer at the time. I didn’t have a laptop. There was no way for me to write except by hand and I wanted to make damn sure that I could.

That hasn’t changed. When I went to Tenerife this year, I had about three notebooks with me so I could write my hand. I didn’t get much done, just some lime yaoi, but it was enough to stop me going nuts in the quite points of the holiday.

Since then though, my writing has become far more serious. That’s a definite big change. And I’ve finished uni. I have a full time job, I have a boyfriend who I live with. Lots of positive things that have happened since 2004 which is great to put in perspective.
I still roleplay though. I still write (obviously). I’m still in contact with some of the people I went on that trip with (one of them has just had a baby! – she’s going to be an AWESOME mummy!). Its funny looking back. I like being able to see how much I’ve grown. In fact, the things I talk about and think about and care for have matured too. I’m glad of that.

The particular entry I’m thinking of was all about worrying whether I’d still have a big bum after six weeks marching up and down those hills, and whether or not The Ice Wolf Tavern would be okay without me. Oh and I was also concerned about money. I suppose that is one of the things that never, ever changes. Money is always a worry unless you’re J K Rowling. And its worse now than it was then, though I’m definitely in a better position now than I was then.

 

 

 

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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80 Post Challenge – Post 24

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Ileandra Young

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be, and what would you do if later on you changed your mind?

Well this one is tricky. I answered it straight away in my head and said ‘I would want to be slimmer!’ And then I thought about it a bit more. Not only is that completely untrue, but it also gives completely the wrong impression of myself. The truer answer is ‘I want to be healthier,’ and everything that comes from that just leads on afterwards.

I just spend some time looking at MSN’s editors pictures of the week. 42 pictures of celebrities in all their various guises, going about their lives. Every single one of them; thin as a twig. Its not right. The only one of them who I’m certain is ‘healthy’ rather than ‘skinny’ is David Beckham. As a footballer, there is a certain level of fitness you have to acquire and maintain to be able to do the work that he does. So his physique is a lot to do with that. The rest of them are just frighteningly, dreadfully, painfully thin. Not slim, because that’s different; these women are thin. And its unhealthy.

doing aerobic exercise from OpenClipArtSo I would change how healthy I am. I would want to be more healthy and, most pleasing of all, is the fact that its something that I can change. Its something that I’ve been working on in truth.

I’ve lost two stone in the last year (I put one back on again, but that’s really not the point). Just as a result of loosing that little bit of weight, my skin and mood have improved, I’m sleeping better, I’m more active. There are lots of things that go hand in hand with that. And I lost that weight because I began to change my lifestyle to one that was slightly more healthy. No crazy crash diets (diet is a swear word in my house!), just looking at what I’m eating and changing it. Riding my bike more. Walking to work. Laying off the sugar and chocolate and crisps. All things that are very small changes, that have a very positive effect on my health.

I can’t imagine ever wanting to be less healthy. That’s slightly crazy, which is why this question is one that I’m sure was meant to be answered in a physical sense. Unfortunately, the physicalities of my body aren’t where my primary focus tends to fall. Maybe if I gave myself more fingers I’d be able to type faster. That would be cool. Or I could give myself longer hair or eyelashes. They’re all small, petty, cosmetic things that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really mean much.
Saying that… I will stick with my original answer. I would change my health; I would increase it, and my fitness. If I ever changed my mind, then that would be easy to remedy; I guess I could go back to having a takeaway every week and chocolate every day or something daft like that. I’d soon change my mind again!
 

 

 

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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