Category: etc

1. Another BLEED INTO ME review. Montana Magazine. Here.
2. This, from up front in Amy Taubin’s BFI book on TAXI DRIVER:

Really, it is not violence at all which is the ‘point’ of the western movie, but a certain image of man, a style, which expresses itself most clearly in violence. Watch a child with his toy guns and you will see: what most interests him is not (as we so much fear) the fantasy of hurting others, but to work out how a man might look when he shoots or is shot

Maybe it’s this way for everybody, I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll stumble across something in a book, anyway, and it’ll just burrow right to the core of me and never leaves. I say sometimes, but, I suppose, I’m only about to list three. And, it’s not that they’re said all that perfect or anything, it’s more like they’re just obviously true. Trick was, I’d just never thought about them:

• ‘Everybody has a ce

• or, it’s swag to me, anyway–a gift from the blue. specifically, from Noose, over at the Velvet (Noose of course being the guy who authored the original site this site still owes a lot of its code to). A very cool little animated gif and a whole suite of images. Spooky, I mean. Over to the right here (got to wait a bit for it to do its thing)
• too, another Demon Theory sample. the afterword. click here for it (it’s in FlashPaper). if anybody needs it in PDF, either for t

No excuse for it, I’m sure, but somehow I missed BEWITCHED when it was at the theater. I mean, I loved the series–it’s kind of been instrumental to my whole identity-formation-thing (it and I DREAM OF JEANNIE)–but had doubts they’d be able to cast an Esmerelda as good as the original. if I’m getting the name wrong, I’m talking about the mom-in-law there. Anyway, just got this in my inbox, from a friend: it’s a still from BEWI…

The first is central to Seven Spanish Angels, the second kind of prescient to Demon Theory:

[ click them for the larger img ]

That monkeys-img is thanks to a reader. the cite on it, I think, is: by Massimo Carnivale. it’s the cover for the 40th issue of that Y the Last Man comic (Brian K. Vaughn).…

I don’t write essays, but, anyway, been meaning to for a couple of years now. planned subject: all the fake throwing up in movies. it’s so insulting to me when the character leans over and hurls up some obvious mouthful of soup or something. their sides hardly contracting in dry heaves, none of that. maybe it’s just that throwing up was the one sport I could have gone olympic in, I don’t know.

won’t be writing that essay now, however, as, finally, …

On a sad note, SciFiction is a gone thing. Of course, wherever Ellen Datlow lands next will be the new hot spot for speculative stuff. Just hope the wait isn’t too long.

My selfish reason for being sad, of course, is that I cut my teeth on OMNI’s fiction* back in the 80’s. Which is to say Datlow introduced me to the short story, more or less. So I’ve been amassing rejection letters from her for about twelve years now. Maybe longer, even. I should rig them up i…

instead of thumbnails, which would be prettier, just some links, bullet-style, cause I’ve got no time here:

• Austin Statesman
• Reader (I think this is the one with the title I dig)
• NYT [1]
• NYT [2]
• Houston Chronicle
• Austin Chronicle, 4 parts: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4

I can only remember two–the first-first glimmerings of BIRD & FAST, then the full glossary for BIRD (okay: there were two novellas as well, but they’re gone, now, sorry).

That FAST piece, I wrote it deep in the morning, after having just lied to an editor at a party that I’d finished the novel already. so I went home and started it. and, BIRD: it ook forever to find the right and proper voice for that one. but then of course it turned out to be many voices. as f…

Early, scary stuff here. All of it right about fifteen years old. Not sure how I ever learned to write, really. Just that I had to. Included: “The Parrot Man,” which has a scene in it I’ve still yet to stop trying to tell; “West Texas Dirt,” which got me my first-ever fiction award, and $150; “Breakfast for Two,” which maybe had potential; then the first story I ever turned in for workshop, “Whiter Shade of Pale.” back w…