Montreal Comic Con 2018

Yes, it's happening in Montreal, July 6 to 8, 2018, and I'm going! (insert lots of fan girl giggles)

It all started about three weeks ago when my oldest daughter casually said "You know, Marc Sheppard is coming to Montreal.."

What? How? When? Really?! Really?

None other than Crowley, my favorite King of Hell, of Supernatural fame, is coming to Montreal!

Wait! It doesn't end here!

Then she said, "David Duchovny is coming too..."

What?

Oh, my beloved Special Agent Fox Mulder...

Almost faint with excitement, I started googling away... and, lo and behold, there they were, all of them, and so many more.  

Including these guys...

and all of these amazing comic book artists.

And, to think that I'm coming back home from a faraway land just on time for the second day - the only day when Duchovny is there... yes, I could faint... (more fan girl incontrolable giggles)

Haven't been to a Comic Con before, so it's about time...

First Snow in November

The Winter Queen is dancing

above the town

When she sways

and swirls

to the music

of angels

or of the spheres,

her ball gown

-regal as she is-

sheds pearls and diamonds

on her subjects

They make luxurious jackets

for trees and squirrels

and turn into hot kisses 

on my eyelids


 
 My backyard on this evening of November 27th, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!!!

Love in the Time of Zombies

How is that possible? Even thinkable? One could experience horror, disgust or at best pity for these wretched creatures all while either running away from them like hell or hacking at them- the head, you have to destroy the head, isn’t it?- lest their bite would turn you into one of them.

Terror, yes, but love for a zombie?

Well, I guess it is possible if he’s Nicholas Hoult’s R. in “Warm Bodies.”

  

Because R. is a Corpse (that’s what they’re called in the movie) who hangs hard onto the flicker of humanity that’s somehow left in him. His interior monologue is humorous, mostly of the self-ironic kind. He is a keen observer of his new world and, while he does obey the primary impulse of hunger, he also tries to transcend it. (I suppose in this he also represents the teenager trying to surpass awkward bodily and emotional limits.) And how does he do it?

By trying very hard to stay connected with what it means to be human. Companionship, music, dreams and memories (even if they are not his and the way he acquires them is… well, yuck!).

And love.

Love. Love can thaw a frozen heart. Love can save you. (Love does conquer all, I guess.) And that simple gesture of holding someone’s hand suddenly shows its very complex significance.

 I loved, loved, loved the movie! (It’s been filmed in Montreal!) It is a wonderful mix of romance, comedy and suspense, and all the actors are doing a very fine job to convey them. Besides Nicholas Hoult (R.) there are Teresa Palmer (Julie), John Malkovich (General Griggio, Julie’s father), Rob Corddry (M., R.’s friend) and Analeigh Tipton (Julie’s friend, Nora). Jonathan Levine, as director and writer, has also done a great job.

Watch here the first four minutes of the film.

I went to see “Warm Bodies” on Saturday afternoon with my oldest daughter (not yet a teenager) –the youngest stayed home with my husband- and while I was not at all surprised that females made up for the vast majority of the audience I also found it amusing. I guess the few guys present were boyfriends or husbands dragged in there by their YA loving (better) halves. LOL

This makes me think of how most of the YA literature is directed at girls. Which reminds me of another zombie one can fall in love with…

Bram from Dearly, Departed: A Zombie Novel by Lia Habel.

I got this book from the library but halfway through it I decided I liked it so much that I wanted to buy it. (Long live Amazon!) Steampunk, romance and zombies in the same story might seem like a strange mix, but Lia Habel succeeds in a fascinating way. It is 2195 and the world as we know it has been destroyed. What remains of it has rearranged itself into a high-tech society with Victorian manners. But this world is conflicted and Nora, the high-society girl more interested by military history than debutante balls, finds herself right in the middle of it. That’s how she meets Bram, the young soldier, brave, handsome, noble… and dead. He has retained his humanity even better than R, with the help of medicine, yet theirs is a star-crossed romance for he is… dead and his decay inevitable…

You can read an excerpt here.

Finally, it’s funny that after all these thoughts on romance, I can’t help also thinking of Minheer Vanderhausen. What about him, you say? If you don’t know who he is or if you’ve forgotten, I invite you to (re)discover him in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story, Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter. You can read it here or here. Let me know what you think…

P.S. I just realized that I haven't mentioned at all the book upon which the movie is based, "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion. I cannot comment on it since I haven't read it yet...but I will... soon... :-)

Missed October

I haven’t stopped in a long time to smell the roses… or the chrysanthemums… and not even the coffee steaming in my mug. I missed crisp, fiery, possibly-my-favourite-month-of-the-year October entirely –this is the first year I haven’t prepared at least one Halloween story or poem- and I am almost inconsolable… I also miss you, my blogging friends, and the creative environment of our community, and the warmth or your virtual presence… very, very, very much…

I’ve hit some dead ends in my novel and that brought me to the realization that I no longer can avoid a (detailed) outlining. It was fun for a while to make it up as I went along, to play the “archaeologist” uncovering the story and the characters, but if I want to get anywhere, in any good way for what I want to do, I really need to take the map out of my pocket. So, that’s what I’m doing now, thinking, thinking, thinking, plotting, plotting, plotting. I’m not sure it goes that well...

There is a minuscule stretch of woods next to my house, which has escaped the excavators, and which is, in its unkempt wildness, much more beautiful than the enormous houses that suffocate it. I took a few pictures there two Sundays ago and I would like to share them with you as a taste of the fine poetry of nature…

Tall Ships in Montreal

We’ve had some distinguished guests in Montreal this weekend, the Roald Amundsen, the Bounty, the Pride of Baltimore II, the Lynx, and the Unicorn. Five tall ships from the yesteryear called at the Old Port, on the Saint-Lawrence river, from September 16th to the 19th.


The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday so we decided to go downtown and enjoy the day.

Unfortunately, there was no way of visiting the ships without waiting the better part of the day in slow-moving lines. Besides, the real attraction was not in rubbing elbows with visitors with digital cameras in their hands.


Unless you get to really sail on them (which can be done, as I found out on the Internet), their polished woods, their lovely worn decks are much more likely to reveal their beauty and their secrets to the imagination.

I love ships because I love the sea. Tall ships, in particular, make me think of unbound adventures, of the mysteries of the high seas, of Captain Blood and Captain Jack Sparrow (The Bounty was used in “The Pirates of the Caribbean”), of the Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, of everything that allows the spirit and the mind to soar unhindered.