Author: SGJ

Some movies give me hope. Just, generally. I mean, that you can still mix a movie up from just fast, bad cars and a bunch of happy-go-lucky characters who can’t really ever die. But maybe I should preface this by saying I’m  much more of a Cannonball Run/Smokey and the Bandit/Deathproof kind of fan than I am of all the Fast and the Furiouses. Just because those cute little cars in F&tF, I’m sure they’re fast and somehow desirable, but they’re just not bad. Want to know one …

I’ve usually got my tongue di-rectly on the pulse of anything slasher, but somehow — two months of book tour? — Detention slipped past. In April, yes, when Growing Up Dead in Texas was just advance copies. And just a couple of days ago I was having a big talk with a good friend about slashers that are probing the edges of the genre, feeling out the limits, poking the necessary fun: Cabin Fever, Leslie Vernon, Tucker & Dale, Scream, Severance. The Killage. T…

I knew from the first time I saw the title of this book that I was going to have to consume it, and then I lucked onto an ARC, meaning all I had to do was steal some time from myself. Which, I can be particularly unwatchful when the reading’s good enough. And, here, it is, it was, it would be again. And, like me, I’d guess a lot of you are getting Amazon emails with Lydia Netzer’s Shine Shine Shine at the top of their lists. Deservedly so. There’s a wit here, a ligh…

Man, I know: last week I hit Prometheus, and just did a status update somewhere saying it was decent, it was cool, and now here I am with a non-review of a movie fourteen years old already. Still. This one I want to talk about it for a short bit: 1998. Dan Rosen’s Dead Man’s Curve (on Netflix Instant as The Curve). This is two years after Scream changed the horror scene once and forever. One year after Scream 2 made the sequel legit again. One year after I Know What You Did L…

Just went to the most excellent lecture-discussion led by David Ulin, with Matthew Zapruder and Rob Roberge and Elizabeth Crane Brandt and Mark Haskell Smith and Tod Godberg chiming in—more people as well, but, you know, you lose track. Not of the talk, though. It was about John D’Agata’s About a Mountain, and the kind-of follow-up/undercut The Lifespan of a Fact, neither of which I’ve hit (so lost in Song of Ice and Fire). But I’m going to now.

And, to ramp right off of the actual …

Hey, Growing Up Dead in Texas is an LA Times Beach Read. And also all around. And Goodreads reviews are coming in — thank you, readers, talkers, passers-on. Bob Pastorella‘s writing about it from Texas. Amazon reviews are coming in. And, for the first time the other day, I saw it live in the wild (shipped direct from the printer to Mystery Bookstore):

And, the launch party‘s June 12th, 7:30, at:

I’ve hit both Laird Barron’s collections, of course — if you’re going to play in the horror fields, his bloody square of grass goes for an acre or two — and, in the way of disclosure, he was kind enough to pen the intro for my first horror collection, and I know and respect him as a quality human besides, so of course I was going to hit The Croning, first chance I got. As for that first chance, though, it got lost in the void, evidently; not even a month be…

by Caleb J. Ross:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAQBd_GWOE0…

New story up at DIN, “Secret Maps” (they’re the best kind). More stories soon, too, in excellentcool places. June will be all linky.

“The Ones Who Got Away” made it on/to EWN’s Short Story Month.

My weird flowhcart at Weird Fiction Review is all BoingBoing‘d up, thanks to Cory Doctorow. And I made Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s top 13 weirdest stories of the century, over at The Huffington Post.

Growing Up Dead in Texas is e-vai…

Man, where to start. How about with John Mellencamp:

When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand

“Rain on the Scarecrow” came out in 1985, the year Growing Up Dead in Texas happens. Or, that’s when the events happen. Right around that time I remember walking the fence with my great-granddad, Pop. A hot fence, to keep the cattle out of the ten acres my grandma’s house was (and is) on. And I knew it was hot by then, of course; I’d been za…