Christopher Rowe

FanFic for College Credit

My Jane Eyre class is designed, very sensibly, to have the hard stuff in the middle so that we can ramp down to funner, easier stuff at the end of the semester (we went from reading Jane Eyre to Wide Sargasso Sea and will end with The Eyre Affair).

The last big project is to pitch an updated movie version of Jane Eyre. I sold the women in my group on a fantasy version. Our take is that when Rochester calls Jane a changeling, he's literally correct. Bronte's novel, then, is the story of the fairy Jane in England. Our movie is the story of the human Jane in Faerie.

She goes to the Lowood School for Wizards and Witches where she endures the stern tutelage of Alan Rickman, meets the Fairy Lord Rochester as he's transforming from horse to centaur to man, escapes Thornfield to the human community of Marsh End where a fellow changeling, the fanatic St. John (Paul Bettany) wants her to accompany him back to the mundane world, and then makes her way back to Ferndean to magically heal a Rochester caught in media transformare between horse and man after barely surviving the witchfire that kills Bertha (the secret source of his power).

It's all Powerpoint and Photoshop, but it's a ton of fun. And a ton of work, so that's it for now.

My Vonnegut stories

(1) When I was seventeen I had a car wreck (the day before I was supposed to graduate high school, actually) and wound up spending a week or so in the hospital being tested and monitored for head/brain injuries. During that time, my friend Russ brought me a paperback copy of Mother Night, which I read straight through, drugs and all. I remember the MRI techs taking it away from me right before they slid me into the tube.

(2) Also as a teenager, I went and saw Vonnegut speak at a university. I hadn't thought to bring any of his books with me, so in between his talk and the lining up for signatures I hustled out onto the campus and pulled down one of the posters advertising his appearance. It was one of Vonnegut's cartoon self-portraits, done with a black Sharpie or Magic Marker. The only color was the red tip of his cigarette. When I got up to the front of the line, he looked me up and down then wrote, "To Christopher, who thinks he wants to know what it is he thinks I know."

Goodbye, babies.

Workshop

Starting this Wednesday, I'll be leading an eight-week workshop down the street at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Here are the details, as they appear in the Center's Spring Catalog.

Science Fiction
Wednesdays April 18 to June 6 6:00-7:30 pm
This peer review workshop will consider short stories and novel extracts in science fiction, fantasy, and allied genres. For intermediate to advanced writers. Led by a Hugo and Nebula finalist. $80 Christopher Rowe

If you're interested in attending, or know somebody who might be, the Center can be contacted via e-mail or phone (859-254-4175).