Curse of the ‘mummy-tummy’!

It’s now been five months since my youngest was born and I am still plagued by my bulging belly which still looks as though I am at least six months gone.

I swear nothing is as bad as fighting a post-baby body (yeah, okay, I know – world famine, flooding, rare and untreatable illnesses – but just humour me for a moment.)  I hate dieting – just hate it.  I get so much pleasure from food.  I love everything about it – shopping for food, cooking food, and of course eating it!  Then comes the alcohol consumption.  I know there is no way I will be slim and gorgeous if I keep drinking beer and consuming a couple of good sized glasses of wine in the evening.

So I am trying to diet, but bugger-all is happening.  Every time I step on the much hated scales I just want to open the fridge and eat everything inside it.  It sucks.  I know I am going to have to start running (which I also hate), but as I don’t have either the time or the money for a gym membership, it is my only option.

Of course I love my daughter more than anything and I would never swap one of my children for my pre-baby body, but it would still be nice to have the pert body of an eighteen year-old Swedish girl (not that I ever had that to start with!).  My husband drives me insane by complaining that he has put on a few pounds, and I have to do everything in my power to stop myself from grabbing him and screaming in his face like a maniac, ‘You think you’ve got problems!  Try growing another person and then get back to me!’

In the future, when I can afford it, I will be calling in the surgeons (probably will even have them on speed-dial), but until that time comes I am either going to have to suck it up (literally) and stick with the diet, or else accept I am going to be a good stone over-weight, eat and drink what I like, and embrace the baby-belly.

So today I am sending much love out there to all the other women battle body issues (and I am sure there are many).  We will probably never be happy with our bodies and will spend the rest of our lives fighting them! 

True Blood Interview

There’s a really cool interview with Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill in True Blood, over at the NZ Herald.  (I come across such things because my husband is a Kiwi).

It’s an entertaining read, with him talking about his engagement to Anna Paquin (who is a kiwi) and going down under to meet her family.

He says about doing the sex scenes; "the naked aspect is part and parcel of the show. And honestly, when I'm doing a sex scene, all I think about is the food I'm going to eat after the scene is finished.

"Everybody has to starve themselves so if they put the sex scene after lunch, it's a f***ing nightmare. Believe me, there's nothing exciting about doing those scenes."

He pauses. "Actually, I nearly came in naked today, with a cock sock on, just to make your day." Moyer is nothing if not entertaining!

Can’t wait for Season three to come to the UK!

Today blogging over at…

I am blogging over at Write in the Shadows today about where I think the paranormal genre will be in five years time.

I have also posted a movie review of The Lovely Bones over at Something Wicked if you want to check it out!

Phew! All blogged out for today!  Need sugar…diet not going so well…

The Lovely Bones (movie) review!

It is always difficult to watch the movie of a book you have loved.  Invariably they never meet up to the imaginary world you have created in your head while reading. The characters never look as you have imagined them, and then normally what happens is that some big-wig executive in Hollywood has decided to change the ending!

Susie Salmon, fourteen years-old, takes her usual shortcut home through a cornfield when she is trapped, raped, and murdered by her neighbour George Harvey.  Harvey lives alone and builds doll houses.  After Susie’s disappearance the police question him, but have no reason to take it further.

Susie’s family do not want to accept her death.  Her father continues to search for her killer, her mother runs away, and her sister is left to deal with things.  To help out her drinking, smoking, ‘tough-love’ Grandma, played by Susan Sarandon, moves in to help.

While all of this is happening Suzie is watching from a place between heaven and earth.  It is a type of Dali landscape, both beautiful and strange, which morphs around her.  She watched her family try to get on with their lives, but when Harvey starts to pay too much attention to her sister, she is able to affect things in the real world, trying to point her father in the right direction.

It was hard watching the part where Suzie is trapped in a underground bunker built beneath the cornfield and then murdered.  I really wanted her to escape, but of course that would be impossible as it is the whole premise to the story!

Stanley Tucci, played George Harvey did some great acting.  It must always be difficult for actors to play those kind of roles, but he really did it justice.  And I loved the grandma, played by Susan Sarandon (exactly the type I grow up to be!)

I loved the novel of the same name, by Alice Seabold, so I was sceptical when my husband brought home the movie. However, I was pleasantly surprised.  There were some parts in it where I thought, no stop doing that – namely the parts where Suzie was in the world in-between heaven and earth.  Also, I didn’t really believe in Ray, the boyfriend Suzie had before she died.  He was supposed to be English and his performance was stilted, and he had a really bad dress sense which was off putting!  But generally it was an entertaining movie and certainly not as bad as I had thought it was going to be.

Something Wicked 6/10.

Busy, busy, busy…

With a lot of hard work from both my self and my publisher, I am hoping that my second novel (in publication, not in actually writing) will be out by the end of September.  Hurrah!

As well as getting the novel publication-ready, I am also working on a short story which I plan to submit to a Vampire Anthology.  I don’t write many short stories, but this one is lots of fun, and I am hoping it will be accepted.

One thing I am really enjoying at the moment is helping to design my book covers. It’s one of the great things about working with a smaller publisher.  You get so much more control and input over what actually happens to your work.  I’ve always been quite an ‘arty’ person, so getting involved with that side of things is great fun.  Also, it’s always fantastic to see your name on the cover.  It’s like seeing all your hard work finally completed.

On top of that there are all the normal things in life that fill our days.  Our dog from Spain has finally arrived after spending five-and-a-half months in a Spanish kennel, waiting for her pet passport to come through.  It’s great having her back again, though she is a complete lunatic (think Marley and Me, but without the cuteness), and the house we are in is half the size of the Spanish villa.  Not too good for four people and a big dog.  Still, after a bit of adjusting, we are enjoying having an animal in the house again.  I just can’t wait to add a couple of cats to the mix (though that won’t be for a while yet).  I miss having a little ball of fur to curl up with on the couch or to keep your feet warm in bed!

So between juggling the kids, the husband, the dog, the novels, the short stories, and the blogging, life is pretty full! Just how I like it!

Flashback -- Dead of Winter

So, Marissa's fond of teasing me that I need to update my viewing list with items that are dated like, past 2000 (what?  They actually bothered to make movies after 1989?!).  I'm working on it, but in the meantime, I had the pleasure of viewing one of my old favorites, Dead of Winter.

Seriously, I hadn't seen this movie in like, 20 years, and I'd just been thinking about it, so it was a treat when it was on a few weekends ago.  AND Roddy McDowall is in it (Peter Vincent), and he does a stellar job being the creepy toadie.

The premise is this:  Mary Steenburgen is an actress who is offered a part in a movie, because the lead actress has taken off due to a mental breakdown.  Or so she's told.  She needs to audition out at the director's house, conveniently located in the Middle of Nowhere, where you cannot run or scream for help.

And it's cold and snowy.

Whilst at this house, Katie (Steenburgen), starts noticing that the Director, Dr. Lewis (played by Jan Rubes), might not have been completely honest with her.  Like how the actresses' mental breakdown really ended in a suicide, (Katie finds pictures of the corpse).  Unfortunately, by this point, Katie is held as a prisoner in the house because she bears a remarkable resemblance to the dead actress, as well as her sister (Evelyn, also played by Steenburgen).

It appears as though Evelyn had her sister killed for some reason, and Dr. Lewis and his oh-so-lovable toadie, Mr. Murray (McDowall), want to play games with Evelyn and make her think Julie (dead actress sister) is still alive.  Hence the need for Katie to film 'screen tests' which are actually then sent to Evelyn as 'proof' that Julie is still alive, and would she please send along some cash for their silence?

Unfortunately, Evelyn doesn't like to be toyed with, and Katie gets severe cabin-fever, especially after she wakes up one morning to find her hand bandaged.  Way.  There's even a mirror in Katie's room that's actually a doorway to a secret passage through the house (I just LOVE those!). 

I won't spoil the plot any further -- see it for yourself!  It's a very good flick that I think holds up today, with good old-fashioned suspense and acting to flesh out a decent, classic plot.

Something Wicked -- 4/5!

Gareth Edward’s Monster

Ever since I saw this movie reviewed on Sky news this weekend, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  I think it looks great, and the fact it was made on a fifteen thousand dollar budget amazes me.  Basically Gareth Edwards just took off backpacking with his friends around South America, recorded scenes, and then each night downloaded the stuff to his computer and Voila! a movie was made. And apparently the computer he did the special effects on was bought from a shop (not specialist), but was more powerful than the one they used to make Jurassic Park!

Synopsis: Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life form began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an INFECTED ZONE. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures"...... A US journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.

It’s due to be released on the 12th November 2010 (UK). Visually it looks fantastic, and certainly not like it was made on a fifteen-thousand dollar budget.  A lot of people are saying that it is just a Cloverfield rip-off, but I have a feeling it will be much better.

Here is the trailer:

 

These successful, low-budget movies mark an exciting time in film-making.  Of course it does mean that every nerd out there will be picking up their video camera in the hope of creating a blockbuster.  But on the other side of things it also means that film studio’s will take more chances with relatively unknown, and low budget, film-makers and writers. 

Rather than throw millions at one big (hopeful) hit, they are spreading their bets on these low budget films and hoping one sticks.

I’m currently putting together the bare-bones of a screen-play which I have been playing with in my head for some time, so the idea of more studios taking chances sounds like a good idea to me!

In the meantime I will look forward to Monsters release!