not based on a true story

So I read more fiction than non-fiction. It’s a moral failing, I know: I prefer the make-believe. Too, though, I mean I write fiction. Makes sense to read it, yeah? Where else am I going to learn technique, cue into little narrative shuffles this or that writer pulled off, all that? To take it a little further, if I want to be part of the ‘dialogue’ of fiction, then I need to be listening to what the other writers are saying. But this starts …

In Five Words or Less:

Boring title, good movie.

In More than Five Words, with / without spoilers:

In 1998, Sam Raimi adapted Scott Smith’s debut sensation A Simple Plan (1993) for us, and, though a lot of the narrator’s nuances were lost in the compression, still, Smith had written a strong enough dramatic spine that his story survived the transition, and made Paramount some money. Ten years later, now, Ron Howard has adapted Smith’s sophomore novel The Ruins to the scr…

AVATAR 3D in IMAX, wow. it’s SCANNER DARKLY and FERN GULLY and BRAVEHEART as percolated up through DANCES WITH WOLVES and POCAHONTAS. loved it in spite of those last two, even. and, though I can’t find it in his bibliography now, I was pretty sure I’d read a Samuel Delaney book/story about wearing bodies like suits to explore alien planets, and the explorers wearing those bodies of course just running off into this new place, never coming back. help? were th…

which is what Bo and Luke used to always do, once the day’s chases and jumps and explosive archery fun was over. but, for me, “Jukin” is having another story in the cool JUKED. “Wolf Island.” completely safe for work, unless you work at a pet store.…

new (old) story, “The Many Stages of Grief” (one of my maybe four favorites ever. of mine, I mean. which, yeah, that’s like 180th in the Great List of Stories I Love). the debut issue of PALIMPSEST. Also, a short story “Girls” (only a third as good as the Crue song, yeah) and an essay, “Another Final Frontier,” soon to be real in a special issue of FLORIDA REVIEW.…

New interview. All kinds of fun, as always. If I remember correctly, too, that pic there, the shirt I’m wearing, I borrowed it from somebody in the driveway of the photographer’s. Had a red outline of the state of Arkansas, I think. Kind of liked it, but then he wanted it back. People (okay: one of my brothers), and al…l their memories, and ‘ownership.’…