I am still proceeding very slowly in writing the courtroom scenes for my new Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye. Lots of research, lots of consideration and reflection, lots of care in the selection of each word and phrase. So slow going.

I have also decided that it is time for me to start addressing some of the inconsistencies that have sprung up in my Gold collection. Okay, okay, that's a grandiose way of saying: my memory stinks and I'm not going to get away with changing characters names (eye colours, hair colours, height, weights, vocal patterns, etc.) in mid-novel any more. I honestly write a character's name, then forget it two pages later.

It's really quite sad.

So, just as I am in the process of preparing a Harry Potter concordance, so I have decided I need to create a Phillip Gold concordance to ensure that characters and locations are consistent from book to book, page to page. It should also help me create signature descriptions for each recurring character, recognisable behaviour patterns, even pet words and phrases. I have always been impressed with how J.K. Rowling was able to create, very quickly, speech patterns that allowed me to recognise characters immediately from what they say: Dolores Umbridge's "Hem Hem" and Ron Weasley's "Are you mental?" to name but two.

I started the process on Saturday and spent four hours working on it. It was then that I realised both that I have written a lot of fiction involving Phillip Gold and also that I have created a pretty impressive collection of people and places that populate his world.

Here is a list of the Phillip Gold fiction I've written to date:
A Fleck of Gold, a full-length novel;
All That Glisters, a full-length novel;
The Gold Figure, the first chapter of a novel;
The Prequel, the first 60 pages of a so-far untitled novel;
"The Rare Book", a short story;
"Violet and Gold", a short story; and
The Silent Goodbye, a three-quarters complete novel.

That's a lot of writing. And it also represents a great number of characters and settings, both ones that are specific to a particular work and ones that recur throughout the collection.

My job now is to identify those characters and settings that do or might recur, locate every section of each story in which I have provided useful details about them, and copy those details into a encyclopedic entry. Once that's done (and, including today's three hours, I'm up to seven full hours of work on this task), I will review and revise each collection of entries so as to create a useful summary of each person or place.

I will also have to make some decisions between conflicting descriptions of a particular person or place. For example, Stacey McLean's eyes have been described as blue, green and hazel in different stories. I'm going to have to decide what colour they are, then go back and correct the descriptions throughout the various novels and stories.

The process also gives me a chance to flesh out the back stories for some of the major characters, especially Phillip Gold himself. This will allow me to ensure that his reactions to current situations are true and appropriate according to his life history. It will also, I trust, make him a more interesting, well-rounded character.

Of course, it will be a lot of work. But I'm finding it interesting. And kind of fun to think I've written enough about Gold and his world that this is necessary and possible.

The final product should also help me remember the names of characters from page to page as I continue to write The Silent Goodbye.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Harry Potter

I dipped a toe in the water of my trial scene. I'm very proud of myself. The thing had been intimidating the heck out of me so I thought I'd take two steps to get myself re-started: first, I went on the web to see if I could find sample Crown openings for jury trials (I could); second, I decided to proceed very slowly, very carefully while trying to be cognizant of what each character would be thinking, doing, aiming for with every word.

So I wrote about 300 words of Sharon Kyle's opening to the jury. I spent some time not only on what she would say but also thinking about how she would act and what impact her words and actions would have on Phillip Gold. And there's a lot going on there.

The last time Gold saw Kyle in action in a court room, he was on the witness stand and she was tearing him to pieces. So he's feeling a little bit vulnerable and embarrassed.

Meanwhile, Gold is not very confident as a trial lawyer while Kyle is the consummate professional. He wants to watch her closely so as to learn from her as much as he can.

And Kyle is drop-dead gorgeous, a fact that is not lost on Gold (nor on any one else in the court room).

This gives me lots to think about and lots to write about.

Going slowly seems to be working. I just hope my sister will be ready to receive a draft when I'm done. I'm thinking I should probably send her it piece by piece as I go along, rather than in one big chunk. That would give her a chance to review in brief spurts, focusing on each individual aspect of the trial (are you reading this, Janice?).

On the other side of the process, I think I mentioned that I have been re-reading the Harry Potter series (surprise, surprise!) from the beginning. I have just completed the fourth and fifth books (The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix, the first two longer novels) and was surprised to find that I have only read each of them once or, at most, twice. As a result, the movie versions were more prominent in my mind. I was delighted to rediscover how really excellent these books are, how much detail Rowling puts into them and how complex and layered the plots are.

It brought home to me, again, the deficiencies in the films. I guess I'm going to have to work hard to ensure that it is Rowling's originals, rather than the film derivations, that stay uppermost in my mind.

Anyway, back to work on Phil and Sharon, Gold and Kyle.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Rowling, Harry Potter

After my brash statements in my last post about being "back at it" and all that, I am ashamed to admit that I haven't been working on The Silent Goodbye as diligently as I should be. I can come up with all kinds of excuses but the simple fact is I am intimidated at the thought of writing the trial scenes, even with my sister's expert help, and therefore am stalling.

A terrible thing to have to admit, to be sure, but it's true. I revised the section including Gold's opening address to the jury immediately prior to my last post (and, hence, my optimism therein) but wrote what I think is a terrible opening statement by the Crown. It is so flat and uncreative, lacking in drama and pizzazz, that I'm quite embarrassed by it. It must be rewritten.

That being said, I'm a little scared at the thought of trying to rewrite it. I guess I have to force myself simply to sit down and hammer something out, then revise revise revise, get input, and revise some more.

It occurred to me that I am trying to write in one sitting an oral presentation that the Crown, herself, would probably spend a long time preparing. And she has all kinds of experience doing this kind of stuff. Maybe I just have to accept that I have to put in the same kind of work in preparation for writing the trial scenes that the various lawyers would put in to prepare for the actual trial.

Seems obvious, once I've written it out like that. It's kind of arrogant for me to have allowed myself to think for a minute that I could just sit down and, in a couple of hours, hammer out an effective, dramatic, realistic opening statement to a jury.

So it's back to work for me. And work it will be.

Tags: Phillip Gold

After a break of about a week to work on other projects, survive a heat wave and deal with some weird family issues, I'm getting back to Phillip Gold and The Silent Goodbye. Finally.

Much of the credit for the return has to go to my sister, Janice, whose enthusiastic response to some questions I posed to her over e-mail has led to a rekindling of my own enthusiasm and a genuine belief that, with her help, I might just be able to write an entertaining, convincing trial. Janice, you see, was until recently a Crown Attorney extraordinaire and her insights into how a criminal trial would be run have been most helpful.

Janice has offered guidance on the mundane details of criminal procedure, such as who speaks first and what would the judge do in certain situations, but she has also been kind enough to share her insights into the more exciting stuff, like how the Crown would design her case, how the defence attorney could attack that case, legal and psychological gambits each might employ with the jury and such like.

The conversations themselves have been fascinating and she's been kind enough to agree to read the first draft once I've finished it and offer more guidance, more insights and more insider info. I'm quite excited at the thought.

The only problem is, I have to keep reminding her that my character, Phillip Gold, is not supposed to be a very good lawyer: I think Janice has a hard time playing down to his level, so to speak.

It is still challenging for me to sit down and work through the narrative on my own since every sentence seems to bring up another question but Janice's help does make me feel like, when all is said and done, the trial will be a realistic, exciting part of the book.

At the same time, I found out that a local library has a pretty sweet collection of films on DVD, including classic stuff and international films as well. One of the first DVDs that jumped out at me was the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's excellent play. The movie version, also written and directed by Stoppard, stars Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as the title characters and is a fabulous piece of cinema.

I won't try to write a review here but will offer this: if you haven't read the play or seen the play or film, do so immediately. Well, do so after you've re-read Hamlet, Shakespeare's play from which Stoppard's work spins.

What I love about Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, apart from the sheer cleverness and entertainment value of it, is the fact that Stoppard created two different versions of the same idea, each designed to take best advantage of the medium in which it will be delivered. Stated simply, he rewrote his own highly successful play to create a screenplay that is filmic, rather than just a filmed version of the stage play. He made some major changes in writing the movie to take advantage of film as a medium, while still remaining true to the soul of the original.

It's genius. And the DVD I borrowed from the library is a two-disc set, the second disc offering indepth interviews with Stoppard himself, as well as the two main actors in the film. I'm halfway through the interview with Stoppard and it's excellent. Great insights into the play, film and the creative process itself.

I have been a huge fan of Stoppard for some time and this DVD gives me all the more reason to admire him.

There's a personal connection for me too. While working at a hotel in Toronto in the early 1990s, I had occasion to meet and actually chat with Derek Goldby, the man who directed R&D Are D in its first professional production in London in the late 1960s. He was in town directing another Stoppard play, Rough Crossing, for one of Toronto's professional theatre companies. A very exciting opportunity for me and it was neat to hear Stoppard himself talk about Goldby in the interview on the DVD.

I'm looking forward to watching the film again and to seeing the rest of the interviews. It helps that Gary Oldman, who plays Rosencrantz, also plays Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Stoppard, Goldby

New Brunswick is sweating through its first real heat wave in two years with day-time temperatures climbing into the 30s and the humidity closing in on 100%. Fortunately, our basement stays pretty cool so we spend a lot of time down there and, today, we went for a drive through the Fundy National Park to Alma, New Brunswick, an interesting little tourist town with massive tidal variations to the water levels in its little part of the Bay of Fundy.

We got there just at the right time to enjoy low tide, meaning a great shelf of often-submerged ocean floor is walkable. How neat to pick your way through drying seaweed, pools of water, barnacle-encrusted rocks as well as sand, mud and sea shells. Unfortunately, we got fooled by the optics: we decided to walk to the water's edge, thinking it would take maybe ten to fifteen minutes; instead, we spent almost 90 minutes on the trek. We were exhausted and sun-stroked by the time we got back to the car. Poor Marlee was at her puppy-wits' end.

Of course, the temperature at the Bay of Fundy is about 10 degrees cooler than in Freddie, so that was something. We drove back via the Hopewell Rocks (we didn't pay to go in; we were just too tired) and then Moncton. A nice way to spend a hot day. Too bad we had to come back to the oven that is Fredericton.

With regard to writing, I've completed the draft of The Silent Goodbye up to the start of the trial. I'm actually quite stunned by my progress to date. I am currently on a little break from writing both to collect myself before diving into the trial itself and to spend some time doing video editing work in preparation for a training program I have to put on at my work in about 10 days.

My plan is to use scenes from popular movies and TV shows to show the participants examples of harassment, discrimination and other such issues. I have, therefore, been hard at work at this computer arranging the editing the scenes I want into usable shape. It's fun but frustrating since video files are so big. Even this very new iMac dual core I'm working on takes a long time to manipulate video files. I am, for example moving a one-hour TV show into iMovie and it is going to take more than an hour do so.

I'm training myself to set the computer to work, then go off and do other things. I should really be using that time to write but there's so much else to do. And some nasty heat to get through.

Tags: Phillip Gold

I just needed a little distance.

The first time I went to see the newish movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I was very disappointed. You can read my disappointment in my blog of 21/07/09. In anticipation of seeing the movie, I had re-read the book and, with Rowling's powerful prose fresh in my mind, I went to the cinema with high expectations.

It turns out, I approached the movie with the wrong mind-set. I went in looking for the ways in which the movie version stayed faithful to the book and the ways in which it diverged. Though Half-Blood Prince is likely my least favourite of Rowling's seven, I still respected it for its consistency of tone, its psychological and emotional depth and the new directions in which it took the characters. I also knew it would be tough to make this deeply introspective, tone-poem book into a successful movie.

This time, I went to the cinema on the spur of the moment Sunday afternoon, now three weeks separated from reading the book, intent on judging the film on its own merits. Well, my opinion of it has improved significantly. Yes, I still think it is a pale, shallow, hollow imitation of the book but, as a film, it works. (Now that's a back-handed compliment if I ever wrote one!).

I will never like what Steve Kloves did to the book in making it into a film script. I will never like the liberties he took not only with Rowling's scenes and story but also with her characters and their motiviations.

I do, however, have a strong appreciation for the look, tone and atmosphere of the film. David Yates and his crew have done exceptional work at creating an artistic film, filled with beautiful images and interesting visual constructions. Yates is especially creative in finding visual ways to show Draco Malfoy's despair as he languishes in his efforts to fulfill the Dark Lord's orders to him. Rowling used the literary device of having another character (Moaning Myrtle) tell the reader (and Harry et al) about Malfoy's torment; Yates isolates Malfoy in the corners of frames, pans from scenes of youthful frivolity to images of Malfoy alone and lonely, pens him physically in the architecture of the school.

Yates also does a very nice job with the "Wizards in the Muggle world" scenes, particularly when the sisters visit Severus Snape in Spinners End. The image of Peter Pettigrew seen through the fogged glass of the home's front door is stunning and Snape seems right at home in the dusty library.

I would (and no doubt will) watch this movie again, not simply because it is an adaptation of one of Rowling's books but also because it is so beautifully filmed and beautifully acted, at least by the veteran back-up cast. I can't say any of the three leads particularly impressed me with their acting skills but they do have a nice chemistry and the film's emphasis of the growing friendship between Harry and Hermione (a steadfast, unquestioning, rest-of-their-lives friendship) is a nice touch in preparation for the final films.

Tags: Harry Potter, Rowling, Half-Blood Prince

Beans! About a pound of them. Fresh, green, crisp and delicious, straight from our garden to the table. What an amazing feeling of accomplishment it is to find the garden you dug and planted is now turning out fabulous-tasting morsels of freshness.

Even more exciting, the pound we picked the other day represents just a portion of the beans that were hanging on the plants. I had been worried that we'd have to pick some of the smaller, younger ones to round out the meal but I was pleasantly surprised to find there were quite enough full-sized beans to satisfy our hunger. And they were so good. Much better than the pathetic, thin-skinned things you find at the grocery store.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, I have also been making excellent progress again on The Silent Goodbye. I wrote an entire section the other day, as much as 3,500 words in one sitting. I have further developed and deepened the relationship between Gold and Constable McLean and I think I have done a decent job of providing some of the backstory from previous (unpublished) novels without dragging things out.

So far, so good. I have one more major scene to write before Gold starts the trial. That's going to be fun to write. I'm calling on my sister and brother-in-law, both legal professionals, to help me make sure I get points of procedure right.

I know, stop writing about writing it and get back to writing it.

Tags: Phillip Gold

A surprise long weekend. Monday is, apparently, New Brunswick Day. I didn't know it was coming up but, fortunately, I didn't plan any meetings so I have a nice three-day weekend.

Patti has gone back to Ontario for the weekend so it's very quiet here. Marlee and I are spending quality time together, going for walks, lying on the couch watching movies, sleeping. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, this means I'm not doing much writing. I'm not too concerned about it, though. I am doing a lot of thinking about the next patch so it's not all wasted time.

I have been amazed at how much this last part of the novel expanded and how important it became. It was supposed to be simply a bridge passage between one major plot development and the next and, instead, it has taken on a life of its own. I think it's quite good and there is both some good suspense and some strong character development, so that too is exciting.

Friday night, some friends and I went down to Saint John to catch the opening of a new theatre group dedicated to reviving Irish Theatre in the port city. Headed up by a colleague of Patti's from work, Patrick Toner, the theatre company —"An Amharclann" — put on a performance of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. Now, I personally like Brian Friel's work very much, having read and attended a performance of his lovely piece, Dancing at Lughnasa, in Toronto some years ago. As a result, I was interested to see what this fledgling company would do with Faith Healer, a fairly challenging play.

I have to admit, I attended more to support a colleague than with the expectation of quality theatre but was pleased to find myself impressed with the performance. Faith Healer consists of four monologues by three different characters, all telling their own recollections of their lives together. It's funny in parts, heartbreakingly sad in others and it is in the inconsistencies of the different versions of the stories that we learn the most about the characters.

I felt David Cook was excellent in the title role, Frank, the Faith Healer. He was both natural and entertaining, sympathetic despite the often horrific portrait that is painted of his character, often unintentionally, by the others. Mr. Cook could have projected better into the balcony, where we were sitting, but I associate the Irish with quiet, lilting voices so the fact that I missed the occasional word or phrase seemed appropriate.

Willow Edwards also delivered with her performance as Grace, Frank's companion (lover, mistress, wife, care-giver, etc.). Edwards, in my opinion, faced the toughest task, taming an often over-the-top emotional monologue to make it sympathetic, effective. She did a nice job, capturing the audience's attention and working us nicely through a very sad set of stories.

The weak link in the chain was Bob Vienneau, in the role of Teddy, Frank's manager. One hallmark of Teddy's character is that he is Cockney, as opposed to the other two, Irish characters. Unfortunately, Vienneau's struggle to produce a Cockney accent often undermined his presentation of the character and, perhaps more importantly, his version of the story. As one of my companions suggested, the company would have been better off to adjust the play's script slightly to rescue Vienneau from the accent. With a little tweaking, it might have been fun to allow him simply to be a French Canadian.

As I said above, I was impressed with the play. This is an excellent start for the new company with another play to come for St. Patrick's Day next year. I will look forward to that.

In the meantime, to my amazement my tiny little cucumber vines have suddenly popped out bright yellow flowers. These six-inch plants are actually going to try to grow cucumbers — heavy veggies that will outweigh the plants themselves long before they reach full size. I wish I could convince them to wait!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Garden, Brian Friel, An Amharclann, Patrick Toner