I should have put a podcast category on my 2015 list. I’ll just do a whole post instead. Because a lot of them deserve a wider audience, and, honestly? Not sure I could really pick a favorite. Podcasts are so . . . situational, like. At the gym I want one thing, driving another, walking across campus yet a different one. And, when I know the hosts, or the guests, that’s yet another variable to factor in. Like, I like you, dude, sure. But I don’t want you driving to D…

‘Tis the season for lists, yes? And mine at this time of year, they’re always skewed by my terrible recall—the books and films &etc that just happened always seem to get higher billing. Still, in an effort to be even-handed, I did scroll back a few places, just to refresh, refresh (that’s a story joke) (which is hilarious), and here’s where I land, more or less. This time with pictures, and, yes, this time including books by friends, because, I mea…

Know that STP line, “what’s real and what’s for sale?” Mongrels is now both:

[ click to pre-order; contact Jessie Edwards for inquiries ]

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This would have been cool for the short-film day we had in Werewolf Class this fall. It’s pretty cool just watching it alone at home on your laptop too, though. One of the more excellent Little Red looks I’ve yet seen:

End Of The Road_TEASER from Unmanned Media on Vimeo.…

It’s a good time to be a slasher. Nearly twenty years ago, Scream revitalized the genre, kicked off a series of clones and also-rans—some of them quite excellent—that finally landed us at Leslie Vernon, at Tucker and Dale, at Cabin in the Woods, at You’re Next and It Follows, even accomplishing the unheard-of feat of crossing over into television land: Harper’s Island was the first, but now we’ve got Scream and Scream Queens.

Everybody who says the …

I read this first at Isleta Casino in Albequerque. Not just randomly, mongst the slots, but for a keynote-thing. Why I wrote a commencement address for that, no idea. Then Jon Davis (there at Isleta) asked me to read it for his MFA students at IAIA (click around, there’s also a chapter of Mongrels out-loud, first-time ever, and likely the only time I’ll read that chapter in front of people), said he’d post it for all, and he wasn’t lying:

I wish I’d taken more pictures. A part of my heart is still with each of these trucks. I remember dragging a chain out of the bed and leaving a big gouge on the bed rail of one. I remember loading a piano into one of the tall ones, in the sun, when I wasn’t sure I had gas money to get home. I remember a dog I picked up one day to get it a little farther down the road, and how it kept biting me and biting me. I remember pulling over in the ditch to write. I remember working through the ni…

In post-production right now. I got to swing out to Hollywood for a bit of the shooting, too. So cool to watch it all coming together.

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Because I kind of insist on assigning amazing stuff for my grad workshops, I of course assigned Jeremy Robert Johnson’s Skullcrack City (my original write-up here). It was dug by all. Here’s JRJ’s answers to the questions we crowd-sourced:

—To start with the ending: Is this bleak or is it hopeful? Are they (that is, ‘we’) winning? What others ending were under consideration, if any, or did you have this as your get-to point the whole time?

This was always my …