pjthompson | Entries tagged with meme

This one is making the rounds, so I thought I’d chirp up.

Lincoln’s Dreams by Connie Willis. All I have to do is remember its final line and my heart fills with emotion.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. A comic masterpiece.

Kage Baker. Everything. Her combination of humor and sorrow, darkness and light fit my worldview perfectly, and her characters are like old friends (and enemies). If I had to choose just one…I couldn’t. But I did love her first Company novel, In the Garden of Iden and The Anvil of the World beyond distraction.

Andre Norton. A seminal influence on me. I loved her Witch World series from early days.

The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook. I love her Guardian series, too, but this one is so much fun, the characters so engaging, the world so deeply realized and brought to life, that it was an utter pleasure from first to last.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. The Sookie Stackhouse books are so very much better than that tatty TV series.

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. The first Mercy Thompson book. Gotta love a character with the last name of Thompson, but in the case of this series, I think Ms. Briggs creates wonderful characters and moves them through a logical and consistent alternate contemporary world.

Black Ships by Jo Graham. Wonderfully rich and well drawn historical fantasy that lives inside you. First of the Numinous World series.

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane. Dark, lovely, well-written, well-imagined futuristic urban fantasy.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. A massive recent-past historical fantasy, but riveting from the first page. A scholarly thriller.

Damiano by R. A. MacAvoy. This historical fantasy trilogy (Damiano, Damiano’s Lute and Raphael) is one of the most amazing and moving I’ve ever read. She’s an incredible writer. I’ve loved everything I ever read by her. I just wish she was still writing.

The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald. The first book in a great sf trilogy: the Australian space Navy, a touching love story, Dreamtime mythology made real.

Ilona Gordon – Ilona and her husband write together. Their Kate Daniels series is consistently interesting and fun. Slightly in the future, semi-dystopian, urban fantasy.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley – Another slightly in the future, semi-dystopian book, with a breathless narrator you will either hate or love. I adored her.

Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow – First book in a five part series. High octane, futuristic urban fantasy.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Another seminal work.

The J. D. Robb Eve Dallas series. These are more police procedurals, but I’m including them because they’re set in the mid-21st century. They’re my ultimate comfort read!

I know I’m going to kick myself, be chagrined, and otherwise embarrassed for forgetting someone essential. I’ll add ETAs as needed.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

What do you consider your greatest strength as a writer. Your biggest weakness that you try to overcome? (Listing more than one strength or weakness is cool.)

Feel free to post this question on your blog and link to it in your answer here in the comments. I’ll go first in the comments.

Ahem. My greatest strength, I think, is characterization. I immerse myself totally in my characters, know them backwards, forwards, sideways, upside down, right side up, and crammed into small trunks. Um, so to speak.

Therein also lies one of my greatest weaknesses. Because I know them so well and have developed gobs and tons of gobs and more gobs about their backstory I seem compelled to put in all on the page in my zero drafts. I do weed through this nonsense in the first drafts and get rid of much of it (though my betas can scarce believe that), but I’m often left with a panicked sense of “What if I leave out something important??” Often my poor suffering betas have to kick me hard and tell me to cut some more. I can and do cut quite a lot by the final draft, but it’s often painful.

Therein lies another fault: a tendency not to trust the reader enough to get the characters and subtext and stuff without putting gobs of tons on the page.

I think my sense of humor translates onto the page pretty well, but it isn’t to everyone’s taste. I trust the reader enough to determine that for him or herself. I also trust them to be intelligent and perception people. I don’t write down to them.

I think I have fairly original ideas, except for the ones that have been done to death. I always try to find an oblique angle for the familiar, but that doesn’t often pay off in synopses where you have to reduce ideas ad absurdum.

Did I mention I was not good at reducing things, ad absurdum or just in general?

I do a decent job with the image making, I think.

Except for those times when the scenery takes over the story.

I could go on making lists, as I am an obsessive list maker and an obsessive self-critic, but then I’d be getting into trouble about reducing things again. I’d rather not go there yet again. This post is already, I’m afraid, proof of a sorry theme in my life. as I am an obsessive list maker and an obsessive self-critic, but then I’d be getting into trouble about reducing things again. I’d rather not go there yet again.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

You were born during a Full moon

– what it says about you –

You’ve spent your life in the middle of things, whether it’s between people who oppose each other, ideas that oppose each other, or places that are very different. You’re very aware of perspectives outside the norm and good at anticipating how different people will see a situation. You value second opinions, because they give you a feeling of balance. You don’t have a single group of friends and the people you spend time with may not have a lot in common with each other.

What phase was the moon at on your birthday? Find out at Spacefem.com

Mostly true except for the bit about friends at the end. I tend to stick to friends like gum on the bottom of their shoes—only much more loyal.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

In 2011 I am living in a house in Los Angeles with the roommate.
In 2001 I was living alone in an apartment in Mar Vista (L.A.)
In 1991 I was renting rooms from a married couple in a house in Los Angeles.
In 1881 I was living with two roommates in an apartment in Venice (L.A.).
In 1971 I was living in a ramshackle old house with my parents in Venice (L.A.)
In 1961 I was living in a ramshackle old house with my parents in Venice (L.A.)

This ten year breakdown completely misses the cottage I lived alone in for five years from 1983-1987. It was nice. On the back part of the property with the main house on the front part. Secluded and peaceful. One of my favoritest places I’ve lived, although that apartment in Venice with the roommates was tons of fun. This also misses the brief amount of time I spent living in the nicer home my parents lived in in the late 70s and early 80s. I stayed with them there briefly in the late 70s.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

This meme which I got from hominysnark:

Go to Wikipedia.org. Select ‘Random Article’. Whatever comes up is the name of your band.
2. Go to quotationspage.com. Select ‘Random Quote’. Choose any quote you like on the page, the last few words of the quote are your album title.
3. Go to flickr.com. Select ‘Explore’. Select ‘Interesting photos from the last 7 days’. The third image is your album cover.
4. Go to any photo editing site or use Photoshop/Gimp/…, and put your mad editing skillz to work.

Confession of slight cheat:
I did use the third picture, but I clicked random three times before I came up with a third picture that didn’t involved somebody’s girlfriend sticking their mug or their a** into the camera. I am SO not going there.

And I did this once before, long time ago. Everything old is new again.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

And I’m quite enchanted that my Livejournal interests lists generated this rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

pjthompson sent to me…

Twelve ghosts drumming

Eleven spirits publishing

Ten hauntings a-painting

Nine carnivals writing

Eight pellars a-reading

Seven anglo-saxons a-weaving

Six babylonians a-scrying

Five lo-o-o-os angeles

Four earth mysteries

Three eleusinian mysteries

Two witch trials

…and a neuroscience in an astrology.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

The Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

(Please, do this if you like..)

These are the first fifteen off the top of my head. I’m sure I’ve left someone(s) vital out. Some of these are “for better or worse” (I won’t say which ones); others I no longer read all that much, but they definitely influenced who I am as a writer. They stay with me forever in that way, even if I don’t read them anymore.

Rosemary Sutcliff
Carlos Casteneda
Mary Stewart
Charlaine Harris
W. B. Yeats
Carl Sandburg
Kage Baker
Andre Norton
Anne Rice
Peter Beagle
Karl Shapiro
Edna O’Brien
Charles de Lint
Billy Collins
John Fowles

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

(Please, do this if you like..)

Rosemary Sutcliff
Carlos Casteneda
Mary Stewart
Charlaine Harris
W. B. Yeats
Carl Sandburg
Kage Baker
Andre Norton
Anne Rice
Peter Beagle
Karl Shapiro
Edna O’Brien
Charles de Lint
Billy Collins
John Fowles

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

ETA: This is a scam by a crooked “How to get published” con artist. You can read about it here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012502.html

And I suppose it all depends on what parts of your ms. you choose as a sample. But here are my results: an unnatural mating of Stephen King and James Joyce.

A randomly chosen internalization piece from one of the characters:

SCAM MEME MESSAGE TELLING ME I WROTE LIKE STEPHEN KING.

A randomly chosen piece of description:

SCAM MEME MESSAGE TELLING ME I WROTE LIKE JAMES JOYCE.

A randomly chosen dialogue run:

SCAM MEME MESSAGE TELLING ME I WROTE LIKE STEPHEN KING.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

A music meme via Marshall Payne.

1. Reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.

2. List 5 songs that start with that letter.

3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

I got the letter M.

I decided to try to do this without consulting any music lists. You know, relying on my brain. Ahem. At least it’s eclectic.

1. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” – Yeah, okay, it’s stupid, but it’s the first thing that popped into my head, okay???

2. “My Sharona,” The Knack – Which of course leads to

3. “My Humps,” The Black-Eyed Peas - And that leads to

4. “My Funny Valentine” – Which really is one of my favorite, favorite old songs, but making a concerted effort not to come up with another “My” song, I come up with

5. “Moon River,” Hank Mancini – Mancini was like brilliant with the melodies, man.

Of course, I always have to do this whenever I see it making the rounds. Kind of a compulsion...

Here are the first lines of everything I am currently working on:

Venus in Transit

A lizard with a fleshy crest stared back at Sam Dunphy with red-glaring eyes.

[Boy, that first line was a long time ago. It's almost certainly going to change in rewrites.]

Blood Geek

Spotlights pinned him like a butterfly to a board.

"The Comfort of Stone"

Beatty couldn’t understand how the guy could cling to the side of the building like that.

"Band of Angels"

The sky is too beautiful on days like this, a razor-edged robin's egg that cuts my heart and blinds me.

"Loose Dogs"

"Gabrielle is such a night owl."

Mommy talked as if Gaby was not in the room, this time to Mrs. Krieg, the woman Mommy hoped would be the new nanny.

Time in a Bottle

Spring rippled wet and green across the hills of Somerset as surely it had done for millennia, bursting the flowers and gorse from the ground, the symphony of birdsong keeping time with the drip of rain, the shush of wind blowing through the new leaves.

[That's a working title, I think. I'm not that crazy about it.]

The Confessions of Thomasina

31st Meckellan, the Year of Our Suffrage, 1882

Dear Diary:

I believe that one should not set out to do a great deal of writing unless one has something to say.

[That title is subject to change, too, I think.]

Shivery Bones

Jolene's earthquake passed through her midsection, rolled along her limbs, then off into the grass beneath her toes to make the ground shake.

[A perennial entry. It just keeps coming back into play.]

Elizabeth says I need to do this and she could be right…

SIX NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. PJ
2. Pamela
3. Pam
4. Ms. Thompson
5. me-OWWW
(According to Min.)
6. @#$%%^^&&*(!!
(According to the guy in the SUV this morning.)

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. Lavender stripped blouse
2. Black jeans
3. Lavender Mary Janes

THREE THINGS YOU WANT VERY BADLY AT THE MOMENT
1. The return of the Muse, dear, sweet, darling Muse.
2. A fire in my belly.
3. The grace to recognize the truth of things.

THREE PEOPLE WHOM YOU HOPE WILL DO THE MEME
1. Jaime
2. Kevin
3. Lisa
(I don't usually name names but felt called to do so today. If I haven't named you and you feel the urge, please consider this your invitation.)

THREE THINGS YOU DID LAST NIGHT
1. Ate a carnitas tostada from Baja Fresh.
2. Read more of Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs.
3. Provided a lap platform for Min.

THREE PEOPLE YOU LAST TALKED TO ON THE PHONE:
1. My boss.
2. Mom
3. Ann.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO DO TOMORROW:
1. Drag my carcass into work.
2. My usual Friday night bookstore crawl.
3. Watch some truly bad TV—because I just can't help myself on Friday nights.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS:
1. Coffee in all its many and splendid forms.
2. Bogle Old Vine Zinfandel or Morro Bay Cabernet (2 recently discovered faves)
3. Cran-Blueberry 100% juice.

THREE THINGS THAT MADE YOU SMILE TODAY:
1. Min.
2. Baby the bird.
3. Nataliedee.

I was tagged by

mnfaure and was so very, very tempted just to update this entry from a few years back and pretend it was new. That wouldn't be sporting, would it? But that list is much more interesting. I've been squeezing my brain to come up with some more things. I'm really quite a boring individual and if I'm ever asked to do this again, I'm definitely using a previous post.

1. Although I'm right-handed, I'm quasi-ambidextrous in that I'm always doing things left-handedly. I wear my watch like a lefty on my right wrist, for instance, and, weirdest of all, I taught myself to use the mouse upside down. It seemed natural to me to go UP when I wanted the cursor to go DOWN.

2. I am related by marriage to the Old West desperadoes, the Dalton Gang. One of the siblings of one of my ancestors married one of the Dalton boys.

3. I once asked Danny Elfman if his mother was named Rosemary. We were at Madame Wongs, he was in Oingo Boingo at the time and between shows, I was drunk, someone dared me. I've been humiliated in retrospect ever since, but at the time I knew no shame. Hussy! (Hmm. Maybe I should have posted this to

postsecret instead of here.)

4. There are three degrees of separation between me and Marilyn Monroe. 1) My friend, Stephan, had a writing partner I knew as 2) Bobby Miller. I later found out his real name was Arthur Miller, Jr., and 3) Marilyn Monroe was once married to Arthur Miller, Sr., therefore Bobby's stepmother.

5. I've been to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It has an open-air ramp winding all the way around the outside, always going up (naturally). When I got to the top, an Italian film crew was filming a commercial.

6. I've had my purse snatched three times, and my old apartment which I shared with roommates, was robbed four times. I am hypervigilant and distrustful as a result.

7. I have roughly 400 books in my To Be Read pile (really, three small bookshelves), and that's not even counting most of my nonfiction and the one or two boxes still packed in the garage. Can you say "sickness"?

8. My biological father was a lot older than my mother. Added to that, I was a late in life baby for my mom. As a consequence, the timeframe on my father goes back much further than most people my age. Dad was born in the year 1900, lied about his age (by one year) in order to join the Army, and fought in World War I. This also means my half-brother (now deceased), fathered by Dad in his mid-twenties, was two years younger than my mother. It also means that all but one of my nieces and nephews are older than me.

9. On another genealogical note: two creeps from history share a common ancestor with me—the genocidal maniac and incompetent general George Armstrong Custer, and the obscure, crazy, Nazi-sympathizing poet, Ezra Pound. I sure hope it doesn't run in the family. Why couldn't it have been somebody cool???

10. The house I grew up in was in the middle of the city (Venice, part of Los Angeles), but had open fields on both sides, which was quite lovely. However, this house no longer exists. Developers bought the entire block and turned it into a public storage facility. This makes me very sad.

The other day I had such fun (odd sense of humor and all that) reminiscing in the comments section over at

marshallpayne1's Super-Sekrit Clubhouse that I decided to dust off this old meme and give 'er another try. Marshall is not to blame for the use to which I have put our exchange—but let's blame him, anyway. More fun that way.

Your instructions (using the original type passed on from wherever I got this) (okay, so maybe the last three lines are all on me):

If you are reading this right now, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your LJ and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.

(Got it? F-A-K-E.)

(You sure you've got it? N-O-T-T-R-U-E.)

(Srsly. I can TALK IN CAPS ALL NIGHT LONG IF YOU'RE UNSURE.)

Or maybe not, but the Meyers-Briggs personality test has been around a loooooong time. It used to be administered only by therapists and other mental health professionals of a Jungian bent (as it's based on Carl Jung's philosophy), but it's all over the place now. It's become just another meme—or perhaps the granddaddy of all memes.

I've taken it three times in my life, with several years between each takeage, because a therapist friend of mine once told me that it can sometimes shift as the years go by. It hasn't much for me. The first time, when I was pretty young, I was almost evenly split between Extrovert and Introvert, but it looks like I've gotten more introverted as time has gone by. I guess that's kind of natural. Being young is all about "social networking," even if one sucks at it, as I mostly have. One thing that was no surprise to me was that INFJ's are about 1% of the population. I'd known for some time that I wasn't like most of the people I knew. I didn't find it isolating so much as I found it liberating.

We did an amusing experiment back on the OWW mailing list some years back: everybody took the Meyers-Briggs to see what results came back. I seem to recall that most people came back as INFJ or INTJ. I guess they aren't lying when they say that one of the frequent professions for INFJ is that of writer.

This is one of those sites that requires you to register. "It's free!" Click on the graphic if you want to take the test.

INFJ - The "Confidant" Jungian Personality Types
INFJs, making up an estimated 1% of all people, are the most rare type (males even more so). They are introspective, caring, sensitive, gentle and complex people that strive for peace and derive satisfaction from helping others. INFJs are highly intuitive, empathetic and dedicated listeners. These traits tend to act as a "tell me what's wrong" sign on their forehead, hence the nicknames Confidant, Counselor or Empath. INFJs are intensely private and deeply committed to their beliefs.

(I had the "tell me what's wrong" sign removed from my forehead. When I was younger I thought it my duty to listen to every tale of woe, but I reached such a point of saturation that it threatened my own sanity. I like to think I'm still a sympathetic listener, but I'm a bit more selective who I listen to these days. Self-protection is not a sin.)

Current Music: Never Learned - Pete Droge

Not totally, I guess...

Gentlemen Prefer Succubi was a very fun read, btw. Breezy, smart, erotic, funny...I had a good time!

But with this result, what else would I have had?

Succubus

Succubus

You are a SUCCUBUS! Sure you have to answer to a Serim and a vampire, but you traded that for an Afterlife that reads like an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and a libido that won't quit. So guys won't stop talking to your boobs? Small sacrifice to make for eternal hotness.

The World of Jill Myles

It's that kind of day, folks.

Remember: Isolation is like Richard Nixon. (Brought to you by the Similie of the Day generator which

ccfinlay kindly shared with his flist.)

And I got this from

stillnotbored who should really have a happy birthday:

In 2009,

pjthompson resolves to...

Admit my true feelings to

hominysnark.
Become a better gnosticism.
Find a new ereshkigal.
Go to neuroscience every Sunday.
Get back in contact with some old witch trials.
Learn to play the byzantium.

I'd say that sums up my hopes for the new year nicely. And as for this:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

pjthompson sent to me...

Twelve sumerians drumming

Eleven picts piping

Ten cats a-weaving

Nine babylonians painting

Eight tricksters a-scrying

Seven carnivals a-writing

Six labyrinths a-publishing

Five ca-a-a-alifornia indians

Four witch trials

Three fortean times

Two quantum physics

...and a ritual in a publishing industry.

Give the gift that keeps on giving, I always say. I do seem to be obsessed with witch trials, though. And last, but certainly not least, here's something for my fellow romance lovers:

Current Music: Air a Danser - Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Copied from

hominysnark.

01. Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' and I will pick 6 of your icons.
02. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I picked.

And here are the icons she asked me about:

1. moppet

This is my inner child, aged 2 or 3, caught in the act of "helping" to make breakfast. No one has smeared grease across her face, that's just the way her freckles presented themselves back in the day.

2. trenchcoat

This is from this Diane Arbus photograph. This young guy is all spiffed up in his trenchcoat and fedora and probably thinks he looks pretty cool, but she's probably taking a picture of him because she thinks he looks funny. There's an innocence in his expression that's quite touching to me—maybe I'll give Arbus the benefit of the doubt and say she saw it, too. To me, this is a symbol of sincerity in the face of irony.

3. le monkey de suck

I use this for "suck monkey" sometimes and sometimes as an example of seemingly good ideas that go horribly, horribly wrong. This was a marionette somebody had posted pictures of on a website (available for children's shows). It is one seriously scary, creepy mama jama. Here's another shot of the dear thing:

4. daredevil kiss

I got this one from this magazine cover from 1940. One of the stories listed on the cover is "That Daredevil Kiss." It's my emblem of frothy/girlie stuff. You might also want to check out this cool website.

5. thunderbolt

I found this one when I was writing my alternate universe steampunk novel, A Rain of Angels. I particularly like the detail of the Indian standing on the ground as if yelling, "Hey, what they hell--?" Thunderbolt is the name of one of Frank Reade's airships. Frank Reade was a fictional character in a series of dime novels for boys written by a series of different writers starting in 1876. I guess he was quite popular back then, but he didn't get as much wuffie as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Not continental enough, I guess. You also might want to check out this website.

6. SC vs. the Martians

hominysnark said, "That one's probably self-explanatory, but you know I had to go there."

Yes, she did have to go there because she's into obscure, very bad movies just like I am. And Santa Claus Versus the Martians is one of the highest quality truly bad movies in existence—and also one of my favorite episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The jokes practically write themselves, folks! Truly wonderful horribleness. I use this as an example of schlockiness and also as "alternate Christimas" icon. This icon is also from Santa Claus Versus the Martians:

Here's a meme about short stories...via

stillsostrange...

Give me the title of a story I’ve never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got submitted to magazines, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I’d been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

Profile

pjthompson

My Website

Navigation

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 10:02 am

Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with meme

Favorite sf/f genre novels by women book meme

Meme

Moony

Census meme

Census meme

My album cover

Okay, it’s that time of year

Influences

Influences

Parts is parts

My Mary Moon

First line meme

Threes and sixes and a trine or two

10 unusual things about me

These are a few of my favorite memes

The world's oldest meme

I'm surprised?

Random bits of madness

Iconography

And in accidental conjunction with Stephen King

Profile

Navigation

May 2025

Syndicate

Expand Cut Tags