Wonder Woman at ten thousand metres

Hi there. Did anybody miss me? I've been away overseas to (literally) the other side of the world. It wasn't the best trip I've ever had. Getting sick while you're traveling really does suck. However, as usual, I'm blogging the journey, so if you're interested you can find the trail here.

I want to offer huge congratulations to all the authors in the Embrace the Romance anthology on achieving New York Times best-seller status. That's a fabulous effort - especially because it's not free, or $.99 cents.

I'm becoming increasingly depressed at how so many authors are tossing their hard work away. Readers just have to sit on their wallets and wait for the next "twenty-something full, brand new books for 99 cents" deals. They're coming out there, thicker and faster, all in the hope of NY Times best-seller status, or attracting new (paying) readers. On that point, I can see some value in having something like a first in series free. I do it myself, with The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy. But sorry, folks, the days of giving away my work are over for me.Writing is too much of a hard slog. Besides, it's not just the writing. We have to PAY for editing, covers, maybe some marketing. It all ends up with a negative balance that is very hard to claw back on other titles.

One thing about looooong haul travel is you have time to catch up on a movie or two. I got to see Wonder Woman somewhere over Asia. Here's the trailer. I'm not going to give it an enthusiastic five stars because I'm not a super heroes fan. I watched this one because it's a WOMAN. And it was very well done. I loved that the older women were older women, scars, wrinkles, and all. Despite my known aversion to women going into fights in bikinis, with WW it's different. She's an Amazon, a Greek warrior. Back then the men didn't wear too much armor into battle, either, so it fitted the background. Also, the color scheme was toned down from the bright crimson and blue in the comics, so it worked much better.Sure, I had to suspend disbelief with the Greek gods thing. Given the history of the Wonder Woman comic, I guess that's unavoidable.

I had some quibbles, and I don't think I'll be giving much away when I ask what happened to the gunship? But all in all, it was a fun movie with a wonderful heroine. If I was a comics fan I'd be looking forward to seeing WW in future Avengers movies and such.

One of the best bits of dialogue in the film comes when Steve is getting all doubtful about sleeping in close proximity to Diana, who doesn't turn a hair. At one point she says something along the lines of, "You need a man to procreate, but that's not necessary for pleasure." Love it.