today's horoscope, the stars have a sense of humor, as always

[offbalance]

Surprises and miracles are a matter of course. Whether you're the cook, the host or the guest, special things seem to happen in the presence of food. Why talk when you could be singing?

"Life's a song you don't get to rehearse
and every single verse
can make it that much worse...
So give me something to sing about!
I need something to sing about!"

so today I send my resume and a rather nice (I thought) cover letter to HR about an admin asst position in sales. It was filled TODAY. grrr!

and though I'm really adoring Neverwhere, there's a teeny tiny voice inside of me yelling about how Gaiman stole the whole London Below concept from TV's Beauty and the Beast series (the one with Linda Hamilton). Only difference is that the one in the series was a utopia underneath New York, and the one in the novel is more of a dystopia, but I digress. It's still an amazing book, and it's taking real discipline for me to not just sit and read it all day. I want to. It's calling out to me. But that's what lunch is for. As is for getting my New York Public Library Card, to match my Brooklyn Public Library One. ;)

Comments

[octette]

two things:

- there is a history in urban fantasy (and various other literatures) of the "underground" being meant literally, and using things like subway/tube stops, old tunnels, etc. it's the same sort of thing as the "other"/"hidden" america. in the more modern canon you have writers like mike ford and poppy z brite and emma bull and gaiman and francesca lia block and lisa goldstein, and even jk rowling -- all worth reading if you have the time. (there's a bunch of authors i can't even remember, and that's not including all the writers who did it during the 19th century.)

- neil gaiman has this theory (and i tried to find it on the web, but it's likely just something he said to kelly or gavin or nalo who just repeated it to me) that the place where writers go for their fiction is like a big collective unconscious soup pot, and one person puts in something, and another puts in something else, and in the end you have this thick, rich soup that everyone can have a piece of -- and once every takes their own portion, they add special things like spices and exotic vegetables to make it something all their own. it's why he didn't sue jk rowling for plagiarism.

Re:

[offbalance.livejournal.com]

1. I was actually thinking about that after I posted and before you replied. In the link to the article you posted (a really good one, btw), he was talking about the whole JK Rowling nonsense and he was talking about the first things you change if you plagarize, how you usually worry about the inconsequential things (hair/eyecolor, etc) if you're really ripping something off. the rest of the time, it's just happenstance. I thought what he said was very true. It just floored me how similar the two were, you know? In my head, I guess I just conjured up the images I'd had stored from all those years of TV, but the stories are anything but new.

(and yes, I've read many of those authors, and I believe you have been after me to read Poppy Z. Brite since HS.)

and I love his soup theory. It sounds like him - his descriptions are really marvelous, and I'm amazed that I can honestly smell some of the things he's talking about in this book.

speaking of soup, it's lunchtime!

[octette]

(ps, as an aside, the gaiman stuff is all gossip and rumor and front-page news in scotland.)

[dolores.livejournal.com]

ps, as an aside, the gaiman stuff is all gossip and rumor and front-page news in scotland

It is? Which stuff and which newspapers? I'd be interested to know, being of a Caledonian extraction...

[octette]

here's the best on-the-record info i could find:
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:3FgJDZ-Ek4wC:www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/gaiman.html+neil+gaiman+rowling+tim+hunter&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[dolores.livejournal.com]

Aaah. Well, that's the Scotsman for you. The editor is a right-wing git and generally likes to stir up trouble.