Ready to submit? Use Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript to help!

Here's a glowing review for a seemingly dull book: Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript, by Chuck Sambuchino and published by Writer's Digest Books. It goes into the nitty-gritty, boring old details of exactly how you present your precious writing to a potential agent or editor.

It's all in the details

It covers all major forms of writing, from article writing to nonfiction to short stories to novels to children's books, scripts, and poetry, and it details not just how to present your manuscript itself but also all the essential elements that go along with it: a query letter, a book proposal, an author bio, a synopsis, and more.

You might think the book would gloss over details, like that you'd have to infer from a generalized description of fiction submissions how to cater for a particular genre, but this book is all about details. I love books that are all about details! Are you writing a mystery novel? Covered. A graphic novel? Covered. An author-illustrated (or not) picture book? Covered. Need to know how to submit the acknowledgements page for your nonfiction book? Covered. An endorsements page for your novel? Covered. How about your radio commentary? Dude, it's covered.

Thank you, Mr. Exposition

Sam and I are junkies for mysteries and appreciators of the jerk-cum-genius character as showcased popularly in House. So we decided to give Backstrom a watch.

For those who aren't as glued to their screens as we are, Backstrom is a new TV detective show on Fox starring Rainn Wilson. The titular character is presumably fabulous at closing cases but is otherwise a nearly unbearable boor. I found the pilot we viewed problematic for several reasons, one of which I'll talk about here.

Despite that, I'm curious now to try out the original source novels by Swedish author Leif G.W. Persson and have the first on hold at the library. I'm wondering how different the show is from the books. For instance, are the women as vapidly pretty? (/sarcasm)¹ Here's an affiliate link to the first in the series on Amazon (the English translation), where you can see the dubious tactic of putting Rainn Wilson's face and full-body silhouette on the cover, a choice that might backfire if the series is canceled.

Anyway, what I'm going to address today is the writing sin of telling readers the background facts in a plodding fashion. There's a scene in which Backstrom goes to his house and says something to the man there along these literal lines: "You're my roommate who's a gay man and who also fences stolen items, which I tolerate because you are my criminal informant. We are not romantically involved."

It's not quite that awkward, but close.

New Mummy Episode from Castle!

New Mummy Episode sighting:

Castle's Episode 110 from Season 6, "Time Will Tell," deals with oh-my-gosh-are-they-really-real time travelers.

Is this guy really from THE FUTURE?! Spoooky!

You can watch the episode online, so I won't spoil it except to say:

CLASSIC Mummy Episode. Classic.

In celebration of a good novel: Kathy Reichs vs. Bones

Actor Emily Deschanel and author Kathy Reichs on the set of Bones (image courtesy Fox)

I just checked out Bones Are Forever, by Kathy Reichs, from the library and realized it had been a long time since I felt that pull of a well-written novel. I found myself seeking out excuses to slip away to read, and I carried the book around with me in hopes odd respites would present themselves and need to be filled with a good book.

The TV show Bones, based on Reichs' work, is so goofily overwritten that it's astonishing it came out of the Temperance Brennan novels. I even like Bones, but it's so cringe-inducing for how two-dimensional the characters are and how painfully obvious each emotional revelation becomes.

It was refreshing to dive back into the original world of Tempe and enjoy Kathy Reichs' dry, exhaustively detailed, but fascinating peeks into the world of forensic anthropology — with some shootouts and kidnappings along for the thrills, of course.

The Mummy Episode: A TV trick to watch for

Will a mummy prevail over Sam and Al?

There's a construct in the world of television fiction that Sam and I have dubbed "The Mummy Episode." I recommend you start looking out for it from now on — you'll quickly start to recognize its ubiquitous presence.

We named it after watching two episodes of disparate shows that both featured mummies and the same peculiar twist at the end. One was Quantum Leap ("The Curse of Ptah-Hotep"), and one I cannot remember. I thought it was Young Indiana Jones. (Did I mention we're nerds? But you figured that out anyway, right?) But I rewatched that one on YouTube, and it's not it.

Regardless: In each, there's a rumored mummy curse that's said to be causing all sorts of mayhem. The main character (Sam Beckett the scientist in Quantum Leap) is level-headed and rational and insists there's no such thing as mummies that rise from the dead and that therefore the destruction must be the result of a very human person's mischief. The secondary characters (such as Al the emotional hologram) insist that mummies coming back to life are very, very real. But over the course of the episode (spoiler alert!), they deduce that, indeed, human hands were behind the chaos, and rationality wins the day.

Or does it?

Because both episodes close with a tantalizing hint that … NO! MUMMIES DO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD! THEY DO HAUNT THE LIVING! AAAAA!!!

For instance, the Quantum Leap episode (again: spoiler, if you care, since the show's, like, over 20 years in the past) ends with a glimpse of a wrapped hand reaching forward. Oo, spooooky!

Only it's so DUMB. Why spend the whole episode with the main character convincing us that logic will light the way, only to invalidate his whole message in one brief coda? Are we to believe that the villains they apprehended are not the bad guys after all? Or did they in fact cause the mayhem but did so only by orders of the evil mummy overlords and The Curse?

(Wait — that's a menstrual cycle, right? Well, same diff.)

We have since seen multiple other examples of this sort of Mummy Episode. Quantum Leap had extra Mummy Episodes within its run that dealt with other phenomena, like the vampire ("Blood Moon") who's really just a weirdo … until Sam can't look in a mirror to see his reflection … woooo!

Many Mummy Episodes deal with otherworldly messages and psychics who are disproved … or are they? Like The Mentalist, whose whole premise is that psychics are just tricksters but that keeps muddying the waters with appearances from another is-she-isn't-she psychic. I was just watching the middling show Body of Proof (I could say a lot about the writing and acting there, but I wanted something detective-y to watch and it was free on Hulu), and it was the same thing (spoiler alert for reals): The daughters of one family are supposedly possessed by Satan, until it's revealed they've been drugged … but then one of them has these messages from beyond the grave for the main, rational doctor character. Huh-wha?.

Psychics and spiritually possessed characters being generally discredited but who have one zinger of a line per show are such a staple of fiction that sometimes I think we forget that it is just fiction. Only a TV show can have such a convincing moment of beyond-the-grave communication.

The same sort of thing has happened in Bones and House, and you know from the one-word series names (just joking) that these people are über-logical. In fact, Bones makes a career of Mummy Episodes, though you'd expect that from such a nonsensical show. (I even like Bones, but it's so far removed from the science-minded Kathy Reichs novels it's based on that it's astounding.)

Other variations on the Mummy Episode include aliens from outer space, mythological creatures, angels, ghosts, visitations from the (non-mummified) dead, or mysterious objects reappearing where they shouldn't be. At least one character insists such things are not logical and proves the point against the more gullible characters by solving the mystery — until the ending provides a hint that, no, the seemingly fictional element really was real.

And as for the purest form, it's shocking how many Mummy Episodes contain mummies. It's probably around 30%. Can you imagine if 30% of episodes that "jumped the shark" involved actual shark jumping?

The problem with Mummy Episodes is that the infuriating ending negates everything that's gone before. It's like if each Scooby Doo episode ended with revealing that the ghosts were just bad guys in masks … and then another ghost floated by and everyone ran for cover into the Mystery Machine. The whole point of mystery shows is that there's a logical explanation for what's happening that can be deduced through observation and right thinking, and that the main character is the right person for that job. To have that undermined by a glimpse of something spooooky at the end makes all the hard work meaningless.

Agatha Christie gave Hercule Poirot a Mummy Episode of sorts … only hers ended the right way: with bad guys captured, superstition unmasked, and mummy curses disproved. The very goofily enjoyable Psych even had an actual marauding mummy in an episode who was revealed to be a real-life mortal murderer, end of story. So not everybody falls under the curse of the Mummy Episode!

Look out for Mummy Episodes now and tell me when you see one!

{Added October 22, 2013:} Castle's Episode 110 from Season 6, "Time Will Tell," deals with oh-my-gosh-are-they-really-real time travelers.

Photo Credit: Leapers Unite

Movie review: Failure to Launch — High on animal attacks, low on romance

Continuing in my fine tradition of reviewing things no one cares about anymore, I bring you: Failure to Launch, the romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker, neither of whom I can stand.

Oh, dear, I meant to be more circumspect and just say something like "I have trouble connecting to those actors," but the truth came out. I'm sure they're lovely people. I just don't like watching them. There you are.

So why was I? Because Sam signed us up for a preview of Amazon Prime, and I was determined to explore the instant video options available. I really want to watch Downton Abbey, but for my purposes that day, I needed something that could run comfortably in the background.

I'm glad I didn't give Failure to Launch any more attention than it deserved.