A Touch of Dead - reading

Finished "A Touch of Dead" by Charlaine Harris. A collection of stories about Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress with vampire and werewolf friends. The stories were entertaining and quick. Pick it up!

Ice - reading

Finished "Ice" by Linda Howard. First of all, if you name a character Darwin, I am expecting he will be the first to die. Second, if Darwin is coupled with Nikki, I'm thinking you're a Prince fan (Darling Nikki). There was a lot of repetition of phrases, and a lot of times when the phrasing didn't make sense - enough that it was distracting. There were times when I thought the author didn't do her research. The distance between the climax of the story and the end was much too long for such a short book. It wasn't all bad, though. On the good side, she wrote from the perspective of different characters and it influenced how she wrote each one. I thought the change in style from each character was well done. I could have done without the overlap in story when perspective changed, where the same section of story was told from both sides. The premise was good, and there were some good (though brief) tense moments. I didn't expect the sex scene, but I am not familiar with Linda Howard's other work. Maybe there's more of that in her other books. I was torn between rating this 3/5 ("I liked it") or 2/5 ("It was ok"). I must be feeling nice.

The Kite Runner - reading

Finished "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. Sadly it was the abridged version. I will have to find the full version soon. It was beautiful. It was violent. It was poetic. It offered a glimpse into a culture I only know from the outside. I might have to see the movie, now.

Intervention - reading

Finished "Intervention" by Robin Cook. My first experience with Robin Cook was Coma, which I read when I was in high school. I loved it. Intervention, on the other hand...

*possible spoilers ahead*

The first third of this story was a waste of time since it never really went anywhere. I get what it was trying to do - establish the main character's beliefs - but it was really done poorly, not to mention I didn't like many of the characters. The middle was good when it got rolling. The ending was a let-down, though. The premise of the story was interesting enough, which I think is why the middle was decent. It just didn't hold up throughout.

2 out of 5 stars.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - The Rest of the Story

In week 3 I nearly doubled my word count from 12,160 words to 23,410 words. My words-per-day for the week was 1,607.1, meaning I was just a shade behind par for NaNoWriMo pace. In reality, I had three good writing days where most of my words happened, and several non-writing or low-writing days.

I nearly doubled my word count from 23,410 to 45,036 in week four, and then finished with 50,115 on day 29. While I did end up winning, I would certainly not recommend an exponential approach to anyone (doubling words week over week). It's too stressful! My best day of writing this year was when I had the house to myself all day and I did word sprint after word sprint on Facebook, netting 8,447 words in one day.

Now that it's done I can look back on it and make a few observations. The first is that going into the month with nothing of a story and no outline makes the writing process much more difficult. I didn't paint myself into a corner too often, but there were enough times where I just didn't know what was going to happen next and the story ended up sitting still for days at a time until I became inspired again.

And here for historical purposes is my graph from this year. It's a little inaccurate because there was a problem with it on the 15th or so. I actually reached 15,000 a day before it shows here. When word count is everything, things like that can be very distracting!

2011 NaNoWriMo Word Count by Day for theicemage

I am not crazy about the ending and am likely to change what I came up with during November in favor of something that gives a lot more closure and more of a full life cycle for the characters. And I say that meaning the story I tell in this should cover the birth to death cycle of the characters. They're fairies, and they basically live one year at a time. For more details than that, you'd have to read my story (when I make it available).

And now to get back to other projects that were put on hold to make time for writing, like translating the Visual Basic simulation for OrcSports.com into C# so I can get the site running again.

NaNoWriMo 2011 week 2

Week two seems to be when I started actually writing this year. At the end of week 1, I had 2,329 words, averaging 332.7 words per day. After the second week I was sitting at 12,160, averaging 1,737.1 words per day for the second week. With NaNoWriMo's par of 1,666 words per day, week two looked pretty good.

The trouble I'm having now is: I have no idea where my story is going. Yeah, things are happening, and yeah, I like my characters - well, some of them, anyway - but there's no overarching plot and no strong direction this year. I have no outline and no real idea of what is going to happen next.

One thing that has helped beginning in week two has been hanging around on Facebook in the NaNoWriMo group. There are a lot of other people hanging out there, and you can usually find a word war, word sprint or something along that line. I have enjoyed two types of word sprints. The first is a timed sprint. Someone would say, for example, :00 for 15, meaning 15 minutes of furious writing starting at (whatever hour your clock says):00. The other type was a sprint to a specified number of words starting at a given time. The one I did like this was a sprint to 1,000 words. I came in second on that one, but really, I won because I had 1,000 new words in my story.

One drawback I've had this year has been the lack of a laptop. I still have the laptop from work, but its battery doesn't hold a charge and it's super-slow. Not that I need a powerful computer for writing, but it would be nice if it booted up in something less than 15 minutes. Talk about unproductive use of time at a write-in!

Par for day 14 was 23,333 words, meaning at the end of week two, I was 11,173 words behind. I hope I can keep pushing on it in week three!

State of Fear - reading

Finished "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. I really didn't like the characters, especially the stupid lawyer main character (Mr. "I don't know") and thought the plot needed, well, something more. It's not that I'm a huge advocate for global warming and offended that he's put it in a bad light, either. I'm not, and that had nothing to do with the problems I had with the book. I just thought the characters were perhaps two-dimensional, perhaps too focused on some aspect of the story, and that the main character was an idiot.

NaNoWriMo 2011 week 1

2011's NaNoWriMo has thus far been disastrous. In the first week, I was only able to get 2,329 words. The only bright spot is that I learned how to use Scrivener, and found it to be very good for writing.

The distractions have been numerous, including the fact that my OrcSports server needs a pretty major part of it (the simulation) translated from VB to C# in order to continue working with the new web host, and I'd really like it to continue working so I don't lose all my players. I've also admittedly been playing Everquest II instead of writing, and need to spend far less time doing that. There are other distractions and excuses, but really if I want to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, I have to change some habits and get to writing.

Heaven's Shadow - reading

Finished "Heaven's Shadow" by David S. Goyer & Michael Cassutt. I give it 2 of 5 stars ("it was okay"), mostly because I grew disinterested when the story moved into Dean Koontz territory of weirdness. Yeah, they justified it in the end, but I was hoping for a different story than I got. To the authors: it's not you, it's me.

Paul is Undead - reading

Finished "Paul is Undead" by Alan Goldsher. Laugh-out-loud funny in places. A fun, quick story! (And I don't read much zombie fiction.)

Black Hills - reading

Finished "Black Hills" by Dan Simmons. This was about Paha Sapa, a Sioux (Lakota) Indian and his life from being a 10-year-old at Little Big Horn until he was an old man. I wasn't too crazy about the jumping around from one time period to another, but the story was pretty good. You could tell quite a bit of research went into it.

World Without End - reading

Finished "World Without End" by Ken Follett. This takes place in the same setting as "Pillars of the Earth" only 200 years later. I don't remember the first book having quite this much sex in it. It seemed gratuitous. The events of the time were included and made for a nice backdrop. Otherwise, the story didn't seem quite as epic. It was good, but not as good as the first, occasionally bordering on Soap Opera.

48HFP practice session - August 2011

I don't remember exactly when I wrote this, as it has taken me a while to get back to typing it up. It's probably the worst practice session I've done.

Man watching TV (Occupation); Robin Scherbatsky (Character name); The fountain will test you (Quote); Musical or Western (Genre)

Open on an old man watching TV. He's saying, "You know me as Robin Scherbatsky, but back then I was Robin Banks."

"Very funnny, grampa."

"There was this one time..." /dreamfade

OUTSIDE
Man riding a horse, galloping across rough western landscape

VO (woman) "The fountain will test you"
CU rider
Rider (shouted)
"What does it mean?"
Riding at a gallop
VO (woman) "...will test you." (fading echoes)
Riding (gallop)
Rider (shouted)
"Arghh...!!"

VO (woman) "Ride to the edge of the plains; ride until you can't go on and then ride a mile further. The fountain will test you."
Riding, looks exhausted in the saddle. Horse is walking slowly now. Man falls off the saddle. Horse walks away.
Show sun at high noon, beating down. Man lifts his head groggily, looks ahead.
Show landscape shot - mountains without clouds. Show one single cloud rising up in a billow (maybe use factory steam rising if needed)
MCU man (hoarse, dusty voice)
"The fountain"
He picks himself up and walks on, still exhausted, but almost there.
Cut back to the old man and his grandson in a room talking.
"Grampa, this is boring."
"What happened next is really interesting."

...and that's as far as I got. I remember hitting a wall at this point, trying to make it interesting and failing miserably. There's no plot! Nothing of interest! I was too hung up by the "fountain will test you" line to get anywhere. Ah, well.

The Pillars of the Earth - reading

Finished "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. I chose Ken Follett because a coworker said he enjoys Ken's books. I read a few reviews of this before I picked it up and can now say that I agree with what those reviewers said. There are definitely times when the author tells us things that we have already figured out, as though explaining it to a child. There are times when the author repeats things that he need not repeat. This is why I went with 4 stars rather than 5.


BUT


As the story unfolded, I could look past that. I was so interested in the characters and the events of their lives in the several decades the story spans that I found myself thinking, "okay, Ken, I know this. Let's get back to the story" whenever the unnecessary explanations came up, but that was it. It was a distraction, but not enough of a detraction. The story itself brought that period of history to life.

48HFP practice session - 2011-07-19

This is the first practice session I've done in a while. I wanted to take a break from my Tuesday-lunchtime-writer-group editing and write something new. I settled on a 48 Hour Film Project practice run. (Click the 48hfp tag on this post to see my other attempts.)


Character:
Random word Lager becomes Margareta Lager or Georg Lager (I used Margareta) for the name
Random word Server becomes Process Server for the occupation


Prop:
Spring


Line of Dialogue:
Random word "falling" becomes "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."


Genre:
Heist


The first impediment is that my laptop's battery was totally dead, so I had to go analog today. The second impediment was the shortened writing session, in order to grab some actual lunch.


Script
EXT. OUTSIDE CLOSED APARTMENT/HOUSE DOOR


MARGARETA LAGER checks her WATCH.
CU: Watch - 12:45 PM
ML: (Knocks on the door, paper in her hand)
BILL BARNES: (opens the door from inside, looks ML up and down) Yes?
ML: Mr. Barnes?
BB: Yes?
ML: (hands a FOLDED PAPER to BB) You've just been served.
BB: (takes folded paper, turns on the charm) I didn't catch your name.
ML: You're right. You didn't.
BB: (charming) I haven't had lunch yet. Would you join me?
ML: (gives a crooked smile, checks watch again) I think I will.
BB: (beams/grins) Great! (tosses folded paper over his shoulder, steps out, closes and locks door as ML watches) You can't be too careful these days, right?
ML: Right


EXT. SIDEWALK BETWEEN APARTMENT/HOUSE AND CAR
BB: Do you mind driving?
ML: Not at all!
ML and BB walk away from the door, towards her car.
BB: So, what do you like to eat, Ms. ... (hinting at her giving her name)
ML: Lager. Margareta Lager.
BB: (stops walking, looks skeptically) Seriously?
ML: Serious as a heart attack!
BB: (seems to realize something)
They start walking again
(small talk)
They reach her car


INT. SITTING IN CAR, ML IS DRIVING
BB: (gets a text on his CELL PHONE, looks at it) Excuse me.
CU on Cell Phone: TEXT: How to get past guard?
BB texts: Fake heart attack. I'm serious! (puts cell phone away)
(small talk)
BB guides ML to RESTAURANT


EXT. OUTSIDE TABLE AT RESTAURANT
BB guides ML to an OUTSIDE TABLE. He checks the view and holds a CHAIR out for her. He then sits down such that he can see the NEXT BUILDING over.
BB texts: Guard in position. Team 1 go
Small talk about how BB is wanted as a "person of interest" in a robbery investigation.
Behind BB & ML, background scene is a MAN FAKING A HEART ATTACK.
GUARD comes forward to help.
People sneak in behind the guard. 
Check arrives. ML offers cash, BB puts his VISA down.
WAITER takes check, returns with RECEIPT and a FOUNTAIN PEN.
Come out in minute with STUFF.


In background, you see one man sending a text
CU on Cell Phone: TEXT: Need something small and metal to stop burglar alarm
BB reads the text, picks up the fountain pen delivered with the receipt, unscrews it and removes the SPRING. He holds the spring between thumb and forefinger and launches it over ML's head as she is reaching for her purse to pay her part of the check.
Man on cell phone catches the spring, tosses it to an ASSOCIATE still inside the building. 
Man faking heart attack appears to be recovering, keeps distracting the guard.
Thieves escape, alarm does not sound. ML sits up again.
Talk between BB and ML at table winds up with, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."


ROLL CREDITS


During credits, cut back to restaurant scene. Show BB and ML leaving, his arm around her shoulders. Show guard returning to his post. Show heart attack faker walking away. Guard waits a moment, then goes inside the building. A moment later, he comes out and sounds the alarm.


THE END

Bloodroot - reading

Finished "Bloodroot" by Amy Greene. The style of the story reminded me a great deal of "This Bitter Earth," except that I couldn't get into a single character in several generations covered. It just wasn't my thing. Also, the quote on the jacket was really misleading in my opinion. I was hoping for a bit more mystical connection than what was delivered. I appear to be in the minority on my rating, so it's probably just a matter of personal taste.

Edited to add: I'm sure my opinion was influenced by the fact that I just finished the Millennium series in which the action and escalation was much more intense.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - reading

Finished "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson. It seemed as though the author was gearing up for a fourth book, but then decided to put all the content into the third since there were so many things repeated in this one. I'm not necessarily talking about the switch from one character's perspective to another's. I'm talking more about the explanations of things that are well established.

As to the story itself, my suspension of disbelief was challenged here and there, but the events were well done. There were some quite shocking moments, and (without giving too much away) the style of the story was different than the previous two books. There were a couple characters who behaved in a way I did not expect, to their detriment. I either expected more from them or expected there would be hints more in line with their ultimate decisions and actions.

And a lot was packed into the epilogue. It seemed like the author had a scene in mind and couldn't let it go.

The Girl Who Played with Fire - reading

Finished "The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson. This one was a bit more escapist than the first, but still a good story. The ending wasn't so much an ending as it was a break between chapters. I picked up the sequel right away.

Scribophile and "Following the First Star" part 2

Overnight I received two more critiques of what I posted to Scribophile. The first of the two HATED the piece but offered several legitimate criticisms. My answer back was that it was about time someone hated my writing! He acknowledged that his critique might have been a bit harsh (it was). But it is nice to get critical feedback from someone I don't know and who isn't afraid to point out things that are wrong. This same user then critiqued something that I had written a critique for, and immediately contradicted two things I mentioned. It's a bit frustrating, but shouldn't change how I use the site. I am interested in getting my work out there among folks who can help me improve.

The second overnight reviewer was far friendlier and also had a lot of good criticisms, done in a far more positive light.

The question now becomes: how do I manage making changes to my story based on this feedback? Since I don't really work well on-screen - strange I know since I do that for my job - I'd like to print out their critiques, but that would be 32 pages long! (And would need to be in color, I think.) I might be able to pull something together through Word's "compare documents" feature.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter - reading

Finished "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay. I'm a big fan of the Showtime show and in my mind, Michael C. Hall *is* Dexter. I felt a bit impatient as I went through the story because it was going over familiar ground. The ending was very different, though, and now I want to read more of the novels!

Scribophile and "Following the First Star"

"Following the First Star" is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2010. I have recently been working on a second draft of it. I actually made a change where what was chapter 1 and chapter 2 before is now the prologue. The unfortunate side effect is that now the prologue is 6,000+ words long! (I'm still actually debating on whether it is a good idea or not.)

Scribophile is a web-based forum where writers can post work for others to critique. In order to post something for critique, you have to critique other people's work to earn 5 Karma points (or become a paying member of the site, but we all know how cheap I am).

You can see where this is going. I posted the first HALF of the prologue of "Following the First Star" - essentially what was originally Chapter 1 - to Scribophile. I have so far gotten one reviewer suggesting I look again at the point of view I used. This is mildly humorous since a review I did recently talked about having difficulty establishing the point of view of someone else's story.

Anyway, this is a new experiment. I've seen some good reviews on Scribophile, and am hoping I get some decent feedback from there.

An Irish Country Girl - reading

Finished "An Irish Country Girl" by Patrick Taylor. I have in mind a story I would like to write that includes fae-folk, so in the meantime, I picked this one up from the library. It would've been several hundred words shorter with the word "so" removed! Unfortunately, the story only started talking about the Sidthe ("shee"), and then for much of it, they were no more than a bit part. It was otherwise a love story bordering on romance novel. The ending was much like the ending of some stories I've written - far too short and abrupt! All in all, it wasn't bad.


I should also mention - this is fourth in a series, and reports are that other books in the series are better, though this one stands up fine on its own.

Have Space Suit-Will Travel - reading

Finished "Have Space Suit-Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein. What can I say? It covered a lot of ground but never went anywhere, if that makes sense. It was okay.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - reading

Finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. If the previous book I finished caused me to lose all faith in the genre, this book restored it. I had no idea what to expect when I started, and found the back cover text to be somewhat misleading, which caused me to take a little while to warm up to the story. But after that, apart from getting a bit bogged down in a somewhat biblical "who begat whom" section, the story flowed well and escalated well throughout. It also tied up loose ends for the most part and still left the door open for the sequel.

Proof received!

I got the proof copy of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. Aside from the picture on the front cover being a bit too low-res for the size it was printed, it looks awesome. It's put me in the mood to push on my editing a little more.

Speaking of editing, I've worked my way through the first four chapters and am working on chapter 5. I'm making at least decent headway!

Draft Ordered!

I ordered the draft of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel today. I can't wait for it to get here! /bounce

Treasure Hunt - reading

Finished "Treasure Hunt" by John Lescroart. I think I'm going to give up on the private eye/murder mystery genre, and this book is to blame. I picked it up solely because the project I'm doing at work is codenamed Treasure Hunt. By the time I was halfway through, I was tired of it. I couldn't wait for it to be over. The dialog was lame and repetitive, and the author seemed to have some kind of food fetish. I *really* don't need to be walked through the entire recipe your character is preparing! So, yeah, not recommended.

Redwall - reading

Finished "Redwall" by Brian Jacques. It was the cutest little story of war, brutality, maiming, death and heroism I've ever read!

CreateSpace Draft of 2010 NaNo Novel

I just spent a couple hours compiling a version of the first draft of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel for CreateSpace. Hopefully if it gets approved, I'll be able to order a print so I can put it next to the one I printed with LuLu from 2008. Then I'll need to figure out what I'm going to use to print a copy of my 2009 story.

On the up side, CreateSpace provides Word templates that you can use to format your book contents. On the down side, I have OpenOffice, so it might not come out exactly right, but hopefully it will be close enough. Also on the down side, OpenOffice crashed when I got about halfway through the reformat, so I had to basically start over from there. I saved much more frequently the second time around, I assure you!

Now I'm off to read a bit.

February, March, April 2011 catch-up - reading

February 15, 2011:
Finished "The Terror" by Dan Simmons. Nasty and brutish, but not short (766 pages), this explored the 1845 Franklin Expedition searching for the Northwest Passage and the difficulties they faced, both natural and mythical. Fantastic and immersive, I admit the ending was less satisfying than I would have liked, but still enjoyable and revealing. I was particularly tickled at the difference between the sea captain's thoughts and words while in polite company.

February 17, 2011:
Finished "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!" by Bob Newhart. This was my break after finishing The Terror, and it definitely was a change of pace. Silly stories and jokes, recaps of old routines, old shows and old friends, it was a light memoir from someone I remember from when I was a kid. I do like his dry sense of humor.

March 5, 2011:
Finished "Saturn" by Ben Bova. This didn't even get interesting until most of the way through book 1. After that, the author liked to show his hand a lot, so it was really only alright.

March 14, 2011:
Finished "Time Travelers Never Die" by Jack McDevitt. Of all the time travel books and movies I've read/seen so far (and there are a LOT of them), this one is the lamest. It's not that the writing was necessarily bad. It's just that the two protagonists were just that stupid throughout. I was amused when near the end they were described as a comedy duo because of their differences, since throughout the story I was thinking it should've been called, "Laurel and Hardy Find a Time Machine." Or Abbott and Costello. Maybe it was Laurel and Costello.

March 25, 2011:
Finished "Variable Star" by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson. Have you ever been impressed by a discussion with someone who is very smart and quick-witted, who always seems to be just ahead of you? That was the beginning of this story for me. The pace was quick, and the main character smart and funny. It was difficult to maintain, however, as though the very smart, quick-witted person got tired but kept talking for a good chunk of the middle. The ending was excellent, though - almost as good as the beginning. Overall, this was entertaining and well-researched. I find myself wanting to look for more from Spider Robinson after having finished this.

April 13, 2011
Finished "The Dark Volume" by Gordon Dahlquist. I did not realize this was a sequel to another book! (Such is my curse, it seems.) Not having read the predecessor did not detract from this book much, though. I loved the world he created, and the "science" of the clay and glass. Mr. Dahlquist's prose describes a scene so efficiently that it sometimes takes a couple passes through to really understand all the nuances he has presented. Not to say it is bad - just that I couldn't keep up! He certainly had some pet words (scruple & snort!), and used more analogies than he really should have, but the writing was generally solid. On the other hand, the story itself was a bit hard to follow. I had a tough time keeping track of everyone and what they were doing and with whom, especially when some were using aliases and others were "remembering" things that someone else had experienced. The story ended with a cliffhanger, which I really did not appreciate. I would have liked some things to be wrapped up a little better.

April 20, 2011:
Finished "Haiku: A Novel" by Andrew Vachss. I really liked this story of a group of homeless who are drawn together from vastly different places. On the other hand, the main character, Ho, reminded me of Sphinx from Mystery Men, so I found comedy in places where it wasn't intended.

April 26, 2011:
Finished "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien. This was my first time reading the trilogy all the way through. (I've seen the movies, of course.) This emotional conclusion pulls together the rest of the story quite nicely. Even in triumph, the cost of victory is heavy. I still need to go through some of the appendices. I find it difficult to push my way through Tolkien's writing style, which is why it took me so long to get to this point.

January 2011 Catch-Up - reading

January 4, 2011:
Finished "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. Though highly rated and recommended, I didn't like it. Two forms of deus ex machina; suspension of disbelief suffered from several things I just couldn't buy into even temporarily; lots of time wasted running circles around the main character's insecurities. Also, if I were betting on the games, I'd have good reason to claim fraud on the part of the game controllers.

January 6, 2011:
Finished "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club). I'm still not sure what to make of this one. While the transformation of the main character was extreme, in some respects I might have better enjoyed the story of the main character's brother. On the other hand, filling in the blanks as the story unfolded was kindof interesting.

January 18, 2011:
Finished "Catching Fire" (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins. The writing was better than The Hunger Games (better editor?). I hate when the main character is left to her own thoughts, devolving into irritating worst-case scenario self-loathing. Rarely do her thoughts come to pass, and as such, I tend to dismiss them out of hand. Plot-wise, I can only say, "It's about time."

January 30, 2011:
Finished "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan. This showed up in my mailbox randomly yesterday, sent to me by my employer (also the book's publisher). It was kindof like reading someone's blog posts on food. There were 64 rules, each just less than a page long. What they said made sense, mostly. Most annoying thing: referring to rules by number, particularly to ones that appear later in the book.

End of 2010 reading

November 23, 2010:
Finished "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink. Starting as a 15-year-old boy and a 30-something woman's affair and leading through her trial years later as a nazi war criminal, it was interesting, though the main character was mostly spineless. The "secret" wasn't much of a secret. Whoever did the translation of this did an excellent job. This was a welcome contrast to Falling Awake's poor writing.

December 9, 2010:
Finished "Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette" by Sena Jeter Naslund. Poetically and patiently written from Marie's perspective from her entry into France until her beheading. A lot of research went into it. I was wondering how the author was going to tell the beheading part of the story given that it was written in more or less a diary format from Marie's perspective. I thought she handled it well.