Was just on a panel about villains at Denver ComicCon—actually, my second villains-panel there—and then, just now, I went all the long way down to Alamo Drafthouse to see Footloose on the big screen for the first time in thirty-two years, then listened to the Sir Patrick Stewart episode of The Nerdist on the way
Makes me half-nervous, making fun, as I know you see your own frailties best in others. But still—well, I don’t like coffee, or beer, or fine dining. But I’m sure I’m a poser in some way all the same: List of Things That Don’t Make You A Writer When I moved to Austin, I was
Y’all been hearing the same thing I have? That we’re kind of easing into a novella-friendly space? Like: http://io9.gizmodo.com/tor-com-explains-why-novellas-are-the-future-of-publish-1685440234 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/business/media/james-patterson-has-a-big-plan-for-small-books.html? And more and more, I’m sure. As for what constitutes a novella, a short novel, a novelette, a long story . . . who knows. I mean: editors know. There’s word-count thresholds. Granted, they maybe
Which is a slasher I wrote . . . two years ago? I’d just reread The Virgin Suicides, and thought, Man, that was cool, sure—along with American Psycho, maybe the book of the nineties—but, wouldn’t it be cooler if that royal first-person delivery could be used to deliver something with a lot of people dying
Figured I’d archive the posters/banners each place makes, and slip the link in so’s they don’t get just completely lost. Will embed when embedding’s a thing, too: TIH 092: Stephen Graham Jones on Werewolves, Mongrels and Common Writing Mistakes Check out the “Show Notes” on that click, too. Most places? They don’t give you a
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
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
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,
Those are the three letters I’ve been tagging onto the end of each writing session since forever. Everybody do this? I can’t not do it. Just a way a laying claim to the blank page, like. Same way you leave your jacket on the seat in the theater, saying you’ll be right back, that this
Not a ‘new’ book . . . yet. Just a book I’m writing right now. May never even finish it, who knows. As for when I started—tab, tab, tab—it looks like: And, not really keeping this as journal of this book or anything. I have done that once, with “Where the Camopede Roam,” but that
I wrote Not for Nothing right on the heels of a second read of Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress. And that read was because the movie showed up on some ninety-nine cent shelf, to remind me, to impress me, to lure me. And I’ve been telling anybody who asked that that was probably right around 2006
I’m pretty sure the first rashomon I ever saw, at least the first where the on-the-fly construction of the story really set me back on my heels, was this one: After that I was hooked. Completely. Forever. Happily. Now I keep a running list of rashomon stuff, which I’ll annotate below some. But it also
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?
I can’t remember if I wrote The Gospel of Z right before or right after The Least of My Scars. They were right next to each other, anyway. Oh, yeah: I wrote the first draft of Z before Scars, then the next draft after Scars. I’m pretty sure. And, it wasn’t the first zombie thing
It’s live over at LitReactor. And it’s in keeping with that write-up I did over at Fantasy Matters a bit ago. And I guess I also kind of winged off the same stuff in my reviews of Freedom and The Last Werewolf. And, hopefully it’s not in any working against my first write-up dealing with
and, nothing against Oklahoma, either. I watched Saving Grace, I mean, and I’ve read some good books and stories out of there — however, when I wrote ATBS, I remember very specifically driving everybody way around Oklahoma. Just because I knew that if I let anybody set tire there, that the story was going to
Back in 2005 or so, I was under contract to write a sequel to All the Beautiful Sinners for Rugged Land — they’re gone now, but they were hot for a while, and produced some gorgeous books, and, as far as I know, did the first ever serious book trailer, too (For Henry’s List of
For ten Wednesdays the subject will be fiction. Mostly yours. With our class meetings going all afternoon, too, it’s not unlikely for you to be bringing a story to workshop each week. No essays or memoir or journalism either, please. Just lies, told in a fashion so compelling that we impart reality to them, that
1) Characters are most interesting when they lie. It’s when they’re the most naked, the most vulnerable, the most perplexing — the most like us. Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn’t thrown out of balance, and so there’s no need for a
Or, the logo Jen Michalski’s got up over there’s so cool, I have to paste it here. Click on it for the post on “Exodus.”
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,
Doing a reading today, a Dead Authors thing, where we all take turns reading stuff from writers who died this year. I’ve got David Foster Wallace, and’ll of course be doing the aloud thing to some Infinite Jest. Too, it was cool: I wrote a friend, asked him what I should read, and one of
If only I could. But this would definitely be in there, right along with the TOTALL RECALL/2001 saga: “The ‘Road to Perdition’ novelization was a nightmare, frankly,” Collins says. “I went after it for obvious reasons — I didn’t want a ‘Perdition’ novel written by someone else out there. I proceeded to write the best
Though, to be honest, I don’t even think there’s links yet for just all of this: Right before Valentine’s Day 2009, I’m in Chicago for the AWP Conference. The panel I’m on: “Digi-Analog: Bringing Together Print, Online, and Alternative Delivery Methods for Literary Journals, led by JW Wang. You may know him from Juked.” Don’t
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
A new essaything I have up over at the Cult. Click here to get there. So far, too, this is getting the award (derision?) for shortest post ever. Anyway, lost in the surf of Duma Key right now, and looking forward to snagging The Plague of Doves afterwards. Writing this novel too all the while,
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
Working on a new slasher right now, and leaning towards making it a screenplay, mainly so the form can keep it reined in for me, somewhat. Too, this time, I’m doing what I’ve never done: thinking it all through ahead of time. Which has involved a lot of re-watching, a lot of thinking. And, on
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
Was poring through some story or novel the other day, to submit it, and realized, now that the story was more or less in place, at least until somebody else jammed their hands into it, that all I was looking at were the words, the sentences. Which is nice, yeah, makes a piece feel ‘done.’
