Hadn’t thought of it like this
I mean, in spite of wondering and wondering and not being able to figure out why all the intolerance we’re seeing, experiencing, trying to live through, are going to have to live down somehow:
select
Mapping the Interior of Mapping the Interior
For the book that became The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, I kept a kind of running diary of the writing of it, The Camopede Files. Was fun. It made me kind of look at my process in a new way, a helpful way. So, when I started Mapping the Interior, I figured I’d try
Werewolves & Me
Me in my office, playing with all things werewolf related. At least those I could reach without getting out of the camera’s eye. Also some talking, some reading, some injudicious swaying from side to side, like I just spilled koolaid on the couch but nobody knows about it, and I really-really need to get outside, like
Society Isn’t Doomed
mix Buzzfeed‘s “23 Things that Prove Society is Doomed” with Salon‘s “War & Peace on the Subway: How Your iPhone is Saving Literature,” then angle it through my publicists’ rose-colored glasses, and you end up with something a lot like: 1. Sitting together and reading still counts as socializing: ↳ Via quoteinvestigator.com, once upon a time. 2. It’s
Reeling in the Years
Back in the late nineties, I’d see Stephen Dixon stories all over and flip back to his author bio at the end of the journal or whatever not because I didn’t already know it, but for the rush: it always said he had some three hundred stories published. I had maybe six at the time?
Scared Straight: The Conjuring
I keep thinking about these two kids who left the theater early. Say, ten minutes shy of the end, right when things were at their goriest, most sacrilegious frenzy. I mean, first and of course, eight- and ten-year-old girls shouldn’t be seeing The Conjuring. Boys either. I’m not even sure I was old enough to
Cabin in the Woods intro/extro
[ this is the script of the pre- and post-words I gave for a charity event Cabin-screening Friday night, down in Manitou Springs ] wolf kisses and bear traps The slasher. We can all make a list of our ten favorite, yes? Which of course we consider the ten best. So . . . that list starts
e-booking: a summation
Just a rough list of the e-book issues I can think of. And, I should say up top here that I’m pretty much addicted to my Kindle. So this isn’t an attack on e-books (which — a lot of of those are taking the form of nostalgia, right? like when we went from cassettes to CDs?).
Tonight’s Cage Match: Fiction
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,
The Ruins: Poison Ivy (postdate:2008)
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
Where the Camopede Roam
Though The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti‘s not officially released until early September, it looks to be slipping through Amazon already. And that seems to me to be a good time to explain it a bit. Or, not explain it, but explain around it. And not like this, but with this running journal-thing (my first
This Much I Know Is True Works
So a while back, I started a list like this but it got all out of hand, yeah, turned into that House of Fiction thing, which was really just a version of this other post, I suppose. When all I really wanted was something short, to pin up by my monitor, help me keep it
I Won’t Be Back : What T3 Could Have Been
Third installments of a franchise the audience is in love with are very difficult to pull off. Nobody says Alien3 or Return of the Jedi or the third Scream are their favorites of the series, right? Even Godfather III, as good as it might be, is overshadowed by the first two. Granted, by the third
In my movie, should anybody ever let me make one:
if anybody’s carrying a bag of groceries, it won’t have French bread in it nobody will flick playing cards into and around a trashcan or hat if the characters need to hack into somebody’s computer, the password will be unguessable if there’s some big and final showdown on a boat, then it won’t be finally
What I wrote after (finally) reading Ben Marcus’s piece in Harper’s on Jonathan Franzen and experimental fiction
[ the title and the whole piece here may not make much sense–it may not anyway–without cueing into TheValve.org, which, it looks like, may have the original Marcus article in PDF ] Just what is experimental fiction, then? The easiest definition for experimental or innovative or non-conventional fiction is fiction that, both at armslength and
Cinesthasia
So a while back a friend i was borrowing DVDs from asked what horror he might need to have a somewhat complete collection. I told him I’d pen him a list sooner or later. Only just now remembering this. And, yeah, two disclaimers before I even start here: 1) I’m surely forgetting as many as
The Gospel According to Demon Theory
The best place to hide from an axe-weilding maniac is with your back pressed up against a wooden door you’re pretty sure is both solid and impenetrable. This is because that maniac who’s after you, his first strike with the axe will nearly always be from two to six inches from the left side of
Ludovico Treatment, Demon Theory style
Been trying to figure out what scenes/images from horror movies have become so indelibly imprinted on pop-culture that even people who don’t watch horror kind of have to know them, or at least of them. Which is to say I can’t just pick the coolest or best horror clips–the ones that imprinted me once upon
A Sense of an Ending in THE DESCENT
First, as this is just all about the end of THE DESCENT, then, yep, it’s just chock full of spoilers. So stop here if: you’ve not seen it you’re going to see it and you don’t like to know how a thing’s going to end Not meaning to say THE DESCENT has a gimmick-ending or
Death Boobs, or Why I Read Christopher Moore
Well, I mean, yeah, because he’s got titles like THE LUST LIZARD OF MELANCHOLY COVE and PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING. These are what originally got me peeling his books up from the shelves back whenever ago. Years already, I guess. Too, though, I’ve yet to read a CMoore book that hasn’t made me smile, and then impressed
Open Letter to Publisher X
Editor Y: In today’s trend-oriented publishing climate, you need to either be the celebrity-of-the-moment or you need to have a bulletproof plan to plug into what’s hot, what’s guaranteed, what there’s already an audience for. And, sir/madam/etc., that you don’t already know my name from the tabloids should suggest that, while not infamous for killing