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Archive for October, 2008

Thus Spake Pumpkinhead

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Don’t know if everybody’s been keep­ing up, but over at Pop­mat­ters Marco Lan­zagorta (of the never uncool “Dread Reck­on­ing”) has been doing a Night of the Liv­ing Dead for­ti­eth anniver­say essay col­lec­tion the last five days. Some ridicu­lously cool stuff, includ­ing a lit­tle intro from Romero. Any­way, got a piece up there today, as a […]

Four Movies, Five Days

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

Which really isn’t that many, I know. I mean, I used to love cue­ing up the whole STAR TREK series, watch­ing them back to back. Any­way, all over the spec­trum here: SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK. Free screen­ing with Char­lie Kauf­man there for the Q&A. Which was great. Or, great if you like watch­ing some­body writhe under a […]

Two Fast Links

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Texas Monthly’s been doing this ser­ial novel, TWIN WELLS. I’ve got chap­ter 11. Pod­cast too. Here. First line: “Bald­win wished he could have mus­tered a bit more sur­prise when the dead man rose from the road in the sheriff’s head­lights.” New inter­view up at Rain Taxi. And a third link too: I’m on Face­book now, […]

Incunabula

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

That sounds like some secret cousin to the incubus, yeah? If I’m even spelling it right. Any­way, was dig­ging through some old stuff yes­ter­day and found this sheet of paper from 1997, when I was fin­ish­ing Fast Red Road, try­ing to make it all straight in my head (some­what). Think the only other novel I’ve […]

The Least of My Scars

Friday, October 10th, 2008

One of my bet­ter mem­o­ries is work­ing for this seed research com­pany fif­teen years or so ago. Way out north of Lub­bock, TX. There was this guy called Rooster who ran a lot of cot­ton and sorghum out there, fields which were all on the way to the plots we worked every day. Rooster was […]

Hindsight: Appaloosa

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

The west­ern may be one of the few if not only gen­res where char­ac­ter devel­op­ment is actu­ally at crosspur­poses with audi­ence expec­ta­tions. We don’t want the passing-through cowpoke/gunhand/lawman/whatever to actu­ally change, do we? Isn’t it all bet­ter if they stay the same? Granted, maybe a more intense ver­sion of them­selves, of the self they’re trying […]

Beautiful line

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

It’s by Roger Ebert, in his review for Nights in Rodan­the: “Paul doesn’t evac­u­ate because of some dia­logue he is made to say.” I don’t see how I could love any­thing more than that. It’s even bet­ter in con­text, too. And, as for why I was read­ing about Nights in Rodan­the. No idea. I was […]