Author name: SGJ

Mongrels UK

Happening just after it does on this side of the water. Also: these are the first final copies I’ve seen. Very exciting.

Canceled Shows I Still Carry a Torch For

And, two that “finished,” but maybe didn’t get to quite go their intended distance: Uncoincidentally? Deadwood and Hannibal are my two favorite things to ever happen to television. So it probably stands to reason that I’m A) going to want more, and B) going to suspect they didn’t get a fair shake.

Slasher TV

And lo it came to pass, that the slasher did migrate to the small screen. Well, what we used to call the small screen. But the home viewing experience isn’t what it was in 1988. Nowadays, the image-quality and sound are practically theater, right? But that’s not the reason for the move, I don’t think.

Serious Poeming

Layli Longsoldier, killing it on the page. This is exactly how art can work. I would say how poetry can work, but, really, this feels bigger than just one form, one medium. As the poem talks about. Click here to go there, and then never leave, except to spread this poem more and farther: My

Al Jazeera Panel

Was live, and now it’s here. Good times, good panel, good hosting; we could have gone a couple hours I figure. And, we were all talking before things cued up, and I don’t think any of us are trying to pull JK Rowling down. I mean, all writers owe her for creating a whole generation

Three More for the Shelf

Last three I read over the last . . . ten, twelve days? Something like that. I know, I know: how have I ever called myself a horror writer without having this one on my mental bookshelf? No excuse. It’s good, too. Most interesting, maybe, is the way Bloch starts so many of the chapters

Three for the Shelf

Meant to write this last weekend, when these were actually the last three books I’d read, but . . . I don’t exactly recall: something went on to keep me from doing that. However, I already can’t remember whatever book I read this week, so, kind of technically, these are still the last three books

Brushdogs

So cool, having this one read aloud, and read aloud so well. Click the image to go the place:  

Some Kind of Hate

This is the best horror I’ve seen since—since Deathgasm, I guess. But Deathgasm was playing it for laughs. This one, it’s out for blood. And there’s gallons of it. What I dig about it the most? It’s not the Holes setting, it’s not that the main guy could be the fire-kid from Sky High (really, he’s

Ye Olde Writing Tips

First among them would be Don’t adopt antiquated speech patterns and/or diction for your subject lines, unless you’re Cormac McCarthy. But even he (He) doesn’t use “ye”—which, correct me if I’m wrong, but nobody did, right? It was just a tyopgraphic/typesetting shortcut, which still  got a proper “the” when read off the page. Anyway, searching

PI Grad Seminar

Thinking I might need to do one of these soon. Or, I’m thinking of trying out an undergrad senior seminar on Alan Moore’s work, then—different semester (as I’m a sane human)—something like this course. How do I know when it’s getting to be time to try this kind of stuff? Because the books start lining

Podcasts

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

Year in Review: 2015

‘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)

Advance Mongrels

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 ]  

End of the Road

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.

The Final Girls

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

Letter to a Just Starting-Out Indian Writer, and Maybe to Myself

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

Elvis Room on screen

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.

Jeremy Robert Johnson & Skullcrack City

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,

The Little Werewolf Novel that Could

Until World War Z, I’d been hearing that same thing about the zombie. And I guess it was kind of true. A lot of fun had been had, no doubt—the bulk of it on film and in the short story—but nobody’d Tolkien’d out the zombie landscape with a story that really sang. Not until Max Brooks applied

Endless Janes: Ex Machina

Have we come a long way, baby? I don’t know. I’m not going to pretend to have a line on the first AI done in film or novel or story—and, after Ex Machina, no way am I going to profile myself Feed-style by entering this into a search engine—but, working from my limited set, I can

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