April Culture Pop and Writing Life
TV Shows, Movies, Books, and Everything Else
April flew by about as fast as March did and now I’m officially on my countdown to my much-needed vacation at the end of the month. In April, I booked a couple of events to go to, which I’ve added to my website.
The first is the Pride in the Park in 100 Mile House, BC July 26, after the Pride parade. There will be live music and performers, food trucks and market vendors. I was told by one of the event planners that I’m the first author they’ve had sign up ever, so I’m pretty excited to join in on the festivities.
The second event is in Enderby, BC for the second annual Lit-Con on September 13. Last year’s event looked super fun and I had hoped to make it (as a patron), but couldn’t swing it then, so I’m really looking forward to it this year (especially now that I have a book).
This past month I was still in my reading slump. This was partially due to also doing developmental edits on two very different books, which has been short-circuiting my brain. Having to read my own books over and over and over again was something I wasn’t fully prepared for when I decided to become an author, and I have to say that the editing process is not my favourite. It does get better once the first pass through is done and the book can go off to beta readers. Sharing with others and seeing their responses, although sometimes difficult, is more enjoyable than editing on my own.
I ended up DNF’ing quite a few books in April. Not necessarily because they were bad, but that I felt anxious about my time, being busy both at my day job and with writing, and didn’t want to waste any time on something I felt I wasn’t going to benefit from. The other issue is that my book club at my day job is still on hiatus, and that usually pushed me out of reading slumps. So my husband decided to join me and we started a book club together.
We started with Jaws, since it’s one of his favourite movies, and he needed something to ease into, as he’s just getting into reading more. Jaws was…interesting. To be frank, I’d say to just stick with the movie. The general idea of the book is the same as the movie, but there are a lot of extra parts that really weren’t needed and were not great. Lots of rape talk (thankfully no actual SA was shown), misogyny, racism…and mobsters. None of which played an important part, so I could see why Spielberg cut them out. In fact, there were times where I questioned if the author, Peter Benchley, was okay. However, what I took away from the book were some great thrilling scenes, getting inside the head of the “monster”, and well laid out action scenes. I’m working on an aquatic monster horror novel, and there were a lot of inspiring scenes. I also really appreciated the multiple third-person POV, and am considering straying from my first person POV because of it.
The other book that I read through and found value in was First Time Caller by B.K. Borison. This was a romance novel that stood out from most as the writing was very strong. I don’t often annotate in books, but this one’s writing was so good that I bought the physical copy, highlighting and adding tags as I went. It was a great study for learning strong dialogue, interiority, and descriptions.
Because I’m working through the edits of the second book in the Douglas Mountain Mystery series, I figured why not learn from the best, and got a BritBox subscription. We crushed Towards Zero in a weekend, a new Agatha Christie limited TV series. Plus, it had Angelica Houston. I will always watch Angelica Houston act, she’s amazing. It was enjoyable and the acting was great as always. The murderer wasn’t a usual choice for Christie, which was fun.
But the mystery series that I really enjoyed in April was Netflix’s The Residence. The break-neck pace, the traditional genius level detective, the layers. So good! I loved Knives Out, but I think this one might have even surpassed that. It had a ton of characters, but somehow it wasn’t hard to keep track of them all, because of the way it was structured. If you love mysteries that mix both contemporary and traditional tropes, this is it.
The only movie that stuck out for me in April was The Beta Test. This was another Jim Cummings movie, one of my favourite writer/directors/actors. His movies generally have the same theme, his characters have a slow descent into madness. But he’s just so good at it that I could watch a dozen more movies with that theme and it wouldn’t be enough. The Wolf of Snow Hollow will likely always be my favourite of his, but this one had a very different storyline than I was expecting, putting that type of character in a more realistic role.
The X-Files re-watch is still going well, and I’m enjoying that some of the episodes have a supernatural element, and some have a Scooby-Doo vibe, where it seems supernatural but it ends up not being. I have a general idea for book three of the Douglas Mountain Mystery series, and this has been helping a lot. Plus, the writing is always very good on X-Files.
As always, thanks for reading and if you have any recommendations for books/movies/shows, please comment them below! I read/watch pretty much anything!