Post toasties: I liked that line, but one of the judges is from The Wire, yo. Have to represent. No weak-ass shit, as they say on the corners. Don't wanna be a punk. My fake hometown pride is at stake.:) I write pop-culture cause I think like that. Makes some of my writer friends nuts...one called it scary, how much Buffy I quote. And the Homicide...oy. I asked him "sexy-scary" or Rain Man scary...never found out which. And the irony of saying that while paraphrasing Stan Bolander has not escaped me.

I write pop-culture cause I think like that.

Me too. And sometimes they slip into my writing without my even thinking of them, and then I look at it and wonder if I should bother explaining it or not. Cause it ruins the moment if you have to clarify what you're making reference to. As long as it makes sense in context, I guess it's all right, and the informed reader merely derives an extra level of pleasure.

And another way to satisfy the jones is to make your characters actually discuss it in a relevant way. I have this scene in the death story set in a comic book store I really enjoy.

(writer lady with iron glove over here)

Yes, my loves, and it is fun, and very often fun to read.

But as said above, when writing it, you have the responsibility first to the story you're trying to tell. And there's an inherent problem with any pop culture: in a few years, it's obsolete.

What happens to fiction entirely based on ephemera? It disappears, along with the sources.

Susan, I just realised, I am scum; I have two chapters of yours, which I will do my very best to sit down with.

Scum, like the scum of someone who just realized she still has a certain writer-lady's prologue?

Man, I'm lame. Will attend to that tonight. Really.

Yeah, I know, hence the ditching.And there's nothing worse than reading one that doesn't make its point, anyway...that's just embarrassing for me when I read that, or see it in a movie, (cough) Tarantino(cough) Sometimes they're brilliant...other times...read a book without pictures, Quentin. There will be another place to write about freakishly babealicious district attorneys if I have to(Another reason why I love Homicide...Ed Danvers not being much to ogle, although ZI might be offended that I would say it that way, but I digress.) Sometimes, I think that kind of stuff adds realism that people see movies that you don't have to make up and it can be a source of...in my case, usually, comedy, but Deb is right about there not being story enough for it in this instance. I just wrote down the first things I thought of.(Maybe that means my brain is a little impoverished...nah, more like junk in a collectible store...everything all piled up together so that somebody's life crisis calls up Sam Waterston. I'm sorry. That doesn't mean I'm gonna write papers about the philosophy of FrankenTim does it? Cause, yikes, if so.)

I have a copyright question. If I submit an essay to a magazine and it actually gets published, would I still have the right to use the same essay as part of a book later?

(I'm dreaming big here.)

I'm pretty sure you can, Kristin. Have you ever looked on the back of the title page of a book of short stories? It has this whole list of "This story originally appeared in so-and-so magazine, blah-di-blah." I imagine it works the same way for essays -> books. I think the main issue if submitting to more than one magazine, because most won't print previously published work.

Also, it makes me smile that you're dreaming big, and I want to buy your book right now.

Oh, Kristin, I really liked that. I keep meaning to tell you then Tangent Girl Strikes Again.

Thanks!

Yep, Sunil, I have seen that, but I wasn't sure if it was something that one had to get permission from those original sources to do or if it can just be done. (Holy convoluted sentence, Batman.)

I'm not sure...