Moira J. Moore's Blog

I wrote a book that my agent, other agents, and every publisher I contacted hated. I don't blame them, it's an angry book, but I thought, what the hey, it's done, might as well offer it. Not only has it never been edited, no one has even read a draft, so this is pretty stupid because people see what I produce without help.

It's called Chasing Magic. You can get a copy from me through email at moirajmoore@yahoo.com or you can read it at wattpad. https://www.wattpad.com/user/MoiraMoore7

I hope you enjoy it! What follows is the blurb. If you like content warnings, I can give them to you.

In 2027, Detective Madison Diallo works in the Homicide Unit of the recently stripped-down Ottawa Police Services of Ontario, Canada. Only a few years earlier, magic had exploded into existence, giving criminals new options for mischief, and leaving the police scrambling to catch up. Having so far avoided investigating crimes involving magic, Madison doesn't want to believe that the unlikely deaths of three men who had nothing to do with each other might be the work of a magic-using serial killer. When she discovers all three victims were sexual predators, a weak connection that has her instincts ringing, she races the clock and calls in favors to build a case that will convince a skeptical legal system that magic can be a tool for murder.

Really long time no post. Mostly I post on Facebook and twitter nowadays. But today I thought of the screenplay I wrote years ago, based on Resenting the Hero.

It was a very interesting exercise concerning how much I would need to change to shift a story from inner monologue to something visual. The answer? Pretty much everything. Not a single line of dialogue survived the shift and really, only the basic shell of the plot remains. Anyway, I remembered it today for some reason, and I thought those who enjoyed the book might also enjoy this version of it. I have put it up on Google Docs.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nb3gKpryz8IYa1VFYIDLusLxEiq150Kc/view?ths=true

testing

The first draft of my detective/urban fantasy was written over the course of about two years, interrupted by a lot of other projects and events. The plot takes place over the course of two weeks, each day is covered. I kept an outline of the story, of course, but because a day can run over several chapters, what happened five chapters earlier can still be "yesterday," which means it's far too early to have something happen the next day. I'm half way through the revision and realized I'm going to have to do some serious reconstruction, moving events around, to make the timing make sense. And there lays easy traps for screwing up.

Ugh.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying it.

I am delighted and relieved that the Supreme Court of Canada has decided that provincial law societies can’t be forced to accredit a law school that will practice discrimination against those of the LGBTQ community. It was a long time coming. Not just that this whole thing started in 2012, but that the court heard the case on Nov.30 and Dec.1 2017, and just released the decision today. That’s a long time to be on tender hooks.

The school is Trinity Western University, a private evangelical school that requires all students, staff, and faculty to sign and adhere to a community covenant. The covenant has creepy demands regarding everyone’s personal lives, including that they all abstain from sex outside of traditional heterosexual marriage. (They are also expected to spy on each other and report violations to a school authority. Punishment can include expulsion.) This obviously discriminates against those in same-sex couples, married or not. It discriminates against people in common law marriages, as well, but no one really talks about that. An additional layer of revolting is the school’s expectation that it’s students go out in the world and change all institutions into Christian institutions – radical change, is the term they use – with warnings that other beliefs are false and supported by Satan.

The core of the dispute is whether the societies have the right to consider any issues other than competence and the technical merits of a law school in determining whether to accredit it. The societies say they have the right to consider the impact accrediting a law school that has discriminatory practices on our culture as a whole, as they have a duty to encourage respect for and belief in the legal system. They can’t do that if they give a gold star to a place like TWU. Also, we’re trying to draw people of marginalized groups into the legal system, not make them feel unwelcome in it.

TWU feels the societies don’t have the right to consider anything other than competence and the quality of the education. Personally, I think TWU fails the quality test, as they claimed they were going to teach the law from a Christian perspective. Their version of Christianity. Given their bigotry, that’s a horrifying idea. We’ve got enough backwards judges who make disastrous decisions involving marginalized people. We don’t need judges from a law school that actively teaches and enforces bigotry.

The court sided with the provinces.

Some Christians are flipping out. One of their claims is that this decision is a strike against diversity. They also assert that, as they are a minority within the Christian religion, they have somehow suffered as genuinely marginalized groups have, which is an appalling claim to make. The covenant and the reprehensible demands to “transform culture” tell us how much they value diversity, which is not at all.

And we have the idiots who are saying, “Would they do this to a Muslim university?” to which the answer is, “Obviously.” A Muslim school telling its students to engage in radical change by transforming all institutions into Muslim institutions, and that all other beliefs were false, wouldn’t be allowed to exist at all.

TWU has announced that they won’t be building a law school in the near future, despite the fact that they would be accredited by six provinces and all three territories. I imagine this decision is grounded in the fact that a law degree that isn’t recognized in Ontario, the province with the biggest population, the capital, and Toronto, wouldn’t be appealing to many students, and therefore the school would receive fewer applications. But the first year of the law school was going to have only sixty students. Surely, if there is such a great need for a Christian law school, the only Christian law school in Canada, they would draw in enough students anyway? After all, there’s a lot of work to be found in the other parts of Canada. So I don't know what's going on there.

There were two court decisions, one for Ontario and one for BC.

https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/17141/index.do

https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/17140/index.do

I've finally finished the first draft of my detective/urban fantasy thing, as finished as I can be with that one massive scene left out. As I've mentioned, I can't fill that scene in until I go to Ottawa in August, but there's plenty to do before then, like research police procedure, coroners, and the Crown Attorney office. There are also a lot of false starts, in which I initiated plots that didn't pan out, that I have to cut out, and some characters. And I have to add a new character who will be very important. Lots of work ahead of me, but it's create to have the basic story finally laid out.

So this is stupid, but I think it's fascinating.

Apparently, on May 25, there was a phone call between Trudeau and Trump during which Trudeau asked how Canada could possibly be considered a security threat, and Trump said, "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?"

To be honest, if this were in different circumstances, without the damage that a trade war will cause, and if Trump were witty, I'd find this hilarious. But this is a tense time, people will be hurt, and because Trump doesn't have a drop of wit in him, it matters that he thinks the War of 1812 has some relevance to the tariffs now.

People are bashing Trump for thinking it was the Canadians who burned down the White House, when in fact Canada as a country didn't exist at the time, and it was the British who did the deed. I don't criticize him for that, because there are Canadians who think we burned down the WH, there is even a wildly inaccurate song about it. Though I suspect the American education system refers to the concept of Canada only as the land on which most of the battles were fought, not the people living on it. I wish Canadians, or the proto-Canadians, had done it, it would have been epic, but wishing doesn't change facts.

Now we've got people asking whether it was a joke or not. I'm thinking, not.

We've got Canadians bragging about how "we" kicked American ass, which I hate, because bragging is so immature, and the ass-kicking was primarily done by the Brits, with settlers and Indigenous warriors participating.

We've got people confusing burning down the WH, which we didn't do, with fighting at all, which we did.

We've got people saying, "Actually," the burning down of Washington was in retaliation for the Americans burning down Toronto, which is true, but no one cares.

We've got Americans bragging about stomping the Brits and that the Brits still aren't over it, when in fact the Brits don't even know they were involved in a war in North America in 1812, it mattered so little to them at that time that they don't learn about it in school.

And we've got Americans saying, "Why the hell are we talking about this when this, and this, and this other far more important stuff is going on?" which I can't fault them for.

And I'm sure the Brits have no clue, and why would they? They threw off any responsibility for Canadian-American spats 150 years ago.

I shouldn't find it all entertaining, but I do.

Link to article: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/war-of-1812-donald-trump-justin-trudeau-tariff/index.html

This weekend was fantastic. I live in a nice city that I love, but there isn't a lot of resources for a geek, so the annual genre book expo is one of my favourite events of the year. It's great to be around people who love the kind of books I do, or at least aren't all caught up in the kind of books I can't stand. (Literature.)

It was also really helpful for my book, partially because my brain was revving in a way it isn't usually inspired to do. I realized I started my book in the wrong place in the story, and the new beginning will be much better. I have to add a coroner. A concern of mine is trying to portray the police department in a realistic way, so it was a relief to hear one writer refer to his books as "police non-procedurals" - the characters are cops who behave in ways no real cop would - and another talk about having friends who were cops and instructed her, but who hand-waved some inaccuracies because that's how it's always done on tv.

A coroner said that if you have pets and you die and no one notices for a while, dogs are more likely to eat you than cats. When cats do eat you, it's usually just the eyes.

Yesterday, I finally finished the chapter immediately before the chapter/s that will be the climactic scene in the book, and there were honestly times where I didn't think I'd make it. I've never been one to believe in the idea of forcing yourself to write when you don't want to. (But then, I can't live off my royalties, so who knows.) I was afraid of making it a chore. But despite this mindset, I forced myself to write while going through a stressful 18 months, and the writing was a chore. I think I kept going because I was terrified of admitting to myself that I might have lost my love for something I'd been doing since I was 14. Finally, things lessened up, and I started to like writing again, and finally the ideas started coming. But I'm left with three quarters of a book I didn't enjoy writing that will need significantly more revision than any other book I've written.

I think it's problematic to use the term "minority" when discussing a group of people who are suffering and have suffered systematic discrimination and oppression, because the abuse hasn't been about numbers, but about power, and the label of minority can too easily be co-opted by the powerful. For example, straight white Christian males are a minority group in Canada, always have been, because they are fewer in number than the combined groups of people who are LGBTQ, people of colour, people who aren't Christian, and people who aren't male. We've got a court case in which the very powerful, never oppressed white Evangelicals are trying to claim that, because they are a minority within the Christian faith, they have somehow suffered oppression akin to what those in marginalized groups have actually suffered. And that's why I use the term marginalized instead, to refer to those who have been pushed aside or down to the benefit of that very powerful minority. If someone has a better term, I'd like to know of it.