Ladies of Fright, Me, & Elizabeth
Ken Greenhall’s Elizabeth, which is a-a-a-a-amazing. https://www.ladiesofthefright.com/podcast/2018/5/29/lotf-11-elizabeth-discussion-with-guest-host-stephen-graham-jones
craft
Exactly
not sure how to embed the thread, so here’s the top one anyway, which leads to the rest: I wanna talk about ~historical accuracy in worldbuilding for a bit, particularly in secondary world fantasy. Because it’s something that’s come up in discussions w/ friends lately and it won’t let my mind go. So. A mini-thread!
Jaipur Literary Fest vids from the fall
Which I’m just now figuring out exist. This first one’s “On Cultural Appropriation,” with Anne Hillerman, Jovan Mays, Saikat Majumdar, and Yassmin Abdel-Mageid, Laird Hunt moderating: And this one’s “Ancestral Cultures: Legacy of the First Nations,” with Crisosto Apache, Erika Wurth, and Janice Gould, Margaret Coel modding: Just became aware of these thanks to Bret Smith posting
Back Cover Copy
Strikes me that the reason a lot of novels start out so slowly is that they don’t take into account the version of the catalog copy on their back cover. That copy nearly always gives away the central conceit or trick or surprise of the novel, but the novel, pretending to itself that it exists
On Good and Evil in Fiction
This makes me rethink and rethink and then reconsider: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-pop-culture-obsessed-with-battles-between-good-and-evil
Yep
Truly, I get raked across the copyediting coals for exactly this so, so often. And? It’s not just Indian. In CJ Box’s books, there’s a lot of lip-pointing, a lot of chinning at stuff. Feels so right. Feels like the world I know. Which matters. First Nations man breaks 100-metre Lip Point record Thanks to
Process
This is what writing is: you throw a lot of stupid stuff at a wall, then see what sticks. And you never really understand it enough to do it like that again, and, meanwhile, people say it means this and that, and for reasons you can’t figure out, the story lasts, even though it was
The Plural of “Venus”
This is a key sub-thing in a novel I just wrote: The Venus of Brassempouy is one of the earliest representations of the human face. It was sculpted in mammoth ivory about 25,000 years ago in southwest France. Since its discovery in 1894, there has been much debate about the sex and whether he/she is
The Nine Circles of (Mis-)Usage Hell
I might heretically add a tenth level for the semicolon clueless. But, yes, I’d be adding it from the eighth circle, I suppose. Which is a fitting fate for me, and one I’m asking for every day, pretty much. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/dantes-nine-circles-of-hell-reimagined-for-linguistic-transgressions
Words per minute
I dream of a word processor that throws a little a WPM gauge up in the right corner, so I can keep a close eye for when I’m backing off the throttle more than I should. Way back, when instant-messaging first came around? I used to write chat scripts to talk to different hardly-remote people,
Skiffy & Fanty (longer interview)
That one from a few days ago was a spotlight/author kind of thing. This is a conversation about horror, with other hosts, other horror writers: https://skiffyandfanty.com/2017/10/23/338indigenoushorror/
Starlit Wood
Angela Slatter let me answer a few questions about it: The Starlit Wood: Stephen Graham Jones
The statistical approach
Yes, wonderful, thank you, Grady Hendrix. I spent so much of time doing this kind of stuff to stories, to books, to authors—to everything. It’s how I attempt to order the world, such that I can move through it. Nice for a little of that work to already be done: https://www.tor.com/2017/10/18/the-great-stephen-king-reread-final-analysis/
When ATBS was just a line in my notebook
Hey, cool: this is exactly where All the Beautiful Sinners started (season 6, ep 1) pic.twitter.com/l9M2VhaSG3 — Stephen Graham Jones (@SGJ72) September 25, 2017
Genre & Literary
Using the ampersand there because I’m tired of seeing the “vs.” Too? I keep thinking I’m done with this discussion, this rabbit-hole, this time-suck. But then I stumble across something like this, and it rings true in a way I’d never considered: That’s from American Grindhouse. And, that freedom Jonathan Kaplan’s talking about there, that’s
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
All the Pretty Hominids
Back when The Fast Red Road wasn’t called that—this is late 1997, early 1998—the way I intended to write it was as a series of long answering machine messages left in this one guy’s trailer while he’s off gallivanting around with a carnival or something (he’s got pet jackals—this is the kind cool stuff you
Desks
Years back, somewhere around 1997, I’d guess, I asked Janet Burroway, my dissertation director, for her advice on embarking on this whole writing thing. Janet’s answer was pretty much exactly this, from King—don’t wall yourself off from your family in order to write. Rather, write in the middle of them all. [ original page/image is
Lovecraft eZine
Whilst Lady Gaga did her thing at the superbowl, I was hanging out here with Lovecraft eZine:
Landis, Cronenberg, Carpenter, and Garris
This may turn out to be the absolute coolest thing I see all year. Not just these four in a single conversation, these four all talking WHEN they’re talking.
Sometimes a Cool Thing Happens
and it’s shaped like a book, one I’d never have guessed could be real. Thanks so much to Billy J. Stratton and all the contributors. Honored. Amazing. So cool. Clickable here. And here it is in BookWorks, down in Albuquerque (thanks to Amanda Sutton for the snap): And — it’s like a gnome, photobombing, yes? —
Horror at the Stanley
Looks like this is the second Stanley Hotel post I’ve done here (the first). This time it’s for teaching, though. Also? Every single place I go on CU campus—bulletin boards, monitors, displays—I’m looking back at me: This is that click. And, for the media fun, here it is on the front page of Boulder’s Daily Camera,
Stories that aren’t (but are) stories
Which is really probably my favorite thing in the world: a recipe-as-story, a ransom-note-as-story. glossary-as-story. Much etc—honestly, I want to compile them all into a big book of happiness. Anyway, this non-story story, it lines up quite well with Daniel Orozco’s “Officer’s Weep” story, from his Orientation collection (and . . . was it originally
Picking Up Things Instead of my Pen
This post is not endorsed by facebook. Nor twitter. Though it is because of twitter I’m writing it. Just noticed I’m up to about 7100 tweets. So I did what any rational dude would do: opened my calculator app, multiplied “7100” by a guessed-at average tweet-length of 120 characters. Where that gets me is: 852,000
Writing: It Takes a Village
For the thing I’m writing right now, I of course needed info. This is just for today and yesterday, too. Here’s the process: What’s a likely military-cargo plane out of the Middle East? ➔ called my dad (retired USAF) Where’s John Wayne buried? ➔ asked Google How does a doctor get certified to perform surgery? ➔ facebook-mailed
Sequencing a Collection
Of flash fiction, anyway. Just stumbled on this—I forget who it was for (maybe Christopher Rosales, the editor? maybe myself-only?), but I know what it was for: States of Grace. The little pocket-sized book I still can hardly believe I was lucky enough to get published. Not e-, not even on Amazon, I don’t think.