Demon Theory at Litblog Co-op
All week. Guest bloggery, interview, discussion, podcast. Should be a good time. Click the banner to go to the place: Or, just go the main page here, to keep checking for updates.
What to do just right before you turn 35 :
First, and this is important, get Vince Liaguno, the guy who knows slashers so well that he managed to somehow trap one on the page in The Literary Six, to have written just a supercool Demon Theory review over at Unspeakable Horror, then, moments after that, find out that Ellen Datlow, she who more than
The Glass Teat
Benson: only the good die young Cheers: have a good life “You oughtta know”: grammies bball–23 sick and scoring 55 or whatever challenger (jfk/towers) rockford: 50 people tell you you’re drink, maybe you oughtta lie down uncle jesse: only one way to go down a hill. STRAIGHT down. tasha yar: going back chrissy to jack:
Forthcoming Stories
“Father, Son, Holy Rabbit” will be in Cemetery Dance 57, looks like — with an excellent/cool illustration ( then “Hell on the Homefront” in #58 ) “Code,” out in Grasslimbs before too long “The Parable of the Gun,” in Clackamas Literary Review “The Talk,” in the debut issue of Yellow Medicine Review “The Sadness of
Listmaniaâ„¢
Everytime I search Amazon, I always end up falling into this maze of lists, each opening to more and more. And I find some cool stuff in there, thought I’d take a stab at a couple myself. Slasher 101 Horror-Comedy And yeah, that Slasher 101 one really should be a ‘guide,’ but I clicked on
After Lazarus
Man, turns out Only Revolutions, at 360 pages, was an easy read, yeah? I mean, as compared to three million pages. But it is Richard Grossman, so maybe three million pages is just the right amount [ see below ]. As some of y’all know, I’m always pushing that seventy-page sentence fragment from his The
The other (first) Stephen Jones
Looks like Amazon has me having a hand in a couple of books I only wish I’d had a hand in: [ apologies for the ‘see more’ junk on those images — no time right now to dig for clean images ] Don’t guess I’ll be getting any checks for them, though. Anyway, just to
You might be a novelist if . . .
. . . you could never*say : No, please, no — my book would make a terrible movie. Actually, I never thought about if this book would outlive me or not. Well, I mean, that book’s obviously better than mine. That’s the only reason it’s on the best seller list. Of course I would only
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
Best of the Cineplex, 2006
And I think I can say ‘cineplex’ there — none of these are really indie, or at least didn’t end up that way. And, before I even list them, the caveats: I’ve yet to catch BORAT or PAN’S LABYRINTH or APOCALYPTO or INLAND EMPIRE or CHILDREN OF MEN or THE FOUNTAIN or the BLACK CHRISTMAS
Against the Day
I first read Pynchon when I was twenty-two, I think, between a B.A. and an M.A. The only reason I read him, too, was because I’d hit up a professor I trusted for a list of books I’d need to have read if I didn’t want to get laughed out of grad school. She of
Just in time for Christmas . . .
An Amazon short, “Gabriel.” Would say something about it here, but I think it’s all allready1 there. Only thing I didn’t say to/for them, I guess, was that, when I read their guidelines and saw that there was a 10,000 word cap, I of course scoured my story directories for something just a touch over
One Character in Search of a Novelist
as always, spoilers abound.1 Man, mix even parts Adaptation and The Wonder Boys, let Will Ferrell shake it, and you’ve got something a lot like Stranger than Fiction. And of course, as all movies about writers of whatever kind have to end, Stranger than Fiction pulls the same trick those two do. Or, that Get
Trailernalia
I don’t have nearly enough time to devote to this now — I’m in the early stages of a study that hopes to finally conclude whether the Bulletboy’s old “Smooth Up In Ya’” song1 (1989) really had hidden sexual overtones or not (next up: Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”) — but I feel I’ve got to say
The Good, The Bad, and Demon Theory
Looks like, in pre-celebration for TURISTAS1, Demon Theory pulled two reviews this week: & [ click em to hit the rvws ] Cool places each, though the reviews are kind of opposites of each other. Anyway, it’s none other than Mike Bracken on the Toxic Universe one. Which, I mean — for my first novel,
A Red Shirt with Flowers
hey, way down in that Halloweenie post I wrapped up by lamenting that there were no pics leftover of my shirt. Turns out it was a lie. There’s this one (click it to enlarge): The farthest-back person in the room’s my friend William J Cobb, and the frontmost is Jay McInerney. I’m in the middle
Man is in the Forest
and his freezer’s now spilling over with elk. which is to say dancing days are here again, all that. and, because all this can’t seem to organize itself any other way, a list: That 32 Poems (Fall/Winter 4.2) with my story “Lunch” is out and about now. Just had “The Sadness of Two People Meeting
Ten Horror Bests from 2006
Best line, by far: Samuel Jackson’s SNAKES ON A PLANE one, here Best monster kill: that last one in FEAST Best justice: in the bathroom stall at the end of HOSTEL Best subtitle: “[Zombies Panting],” from SLiTHER Best remake: THE HILLS HAVE EYES Best prequel to a remake: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING Best tanning
. . . But the Party Never Ends
Bleak. Unremitting. Is to the road trip book what THE HILLS HAVE EYES was to the family vacation movie. And as far as post-apocalyptic stuff goes, Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD makes you see what a happy fantasy A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ was, how tame DR. BLOODMONEY was. That that road in THE PARABLE OF THE
Torn to Pisces (by that Leftwrist Twist)
everyone dreams the dream but we are it It’s like a word problem: If two ribbons, one gold one green, approach each other at a rate of eight pages at a time in a three hundred and sixty page book, will they ever meet? Because of course one-eighty isn’t a multiple of eight — you’re
Halloweenie
Showed up at the wrong bookstore Halloween night to do a DEMON THEORY signing — kind of awkward when you’re wearing a Jason mask, carrying a big fake knife — but finally found the right one, had a blast (notice all the LISEY’S STORYs behind me there, yeah?). Rented FEAST that night as well, though
12 Things I Won’t Do in Horror
Man, if everybody doesn’t have a list, right? I’d guess, if I took the time to look, somebody’s already got one like this, I mean: things they’re tired enough of in horror to make a public plea that those things stop, lest the whole genre cave in or something. Or, really, those things we get
T is for Title
For a long time now I’ve gone to bed early For a long time now I’ve been writing “title shot” in the back of every book I read, along with a/the page number. Most, anyway. All it means is that this (page) is the first time the title of the book appears in the book
A Horror Test, A Book Review, his Wife and her Lover
Just a couple of quick links: Wooden Spoon’s posted a cool Demon Theory review In anticipation & celebration of Halloween, that fifth page of the Demon Theory quiz-thing‘s been very updated I just last night rung that 100-page bell on the novel I started a few days ago, which has a title still probably too
Anatomy of a Review
Just thinking about what I said in that last post, about how I don’t do reviews because I’m pretty sure I’d set my standards impossibly high, just so I could shoot down every book in my path. That may be a little too broad a statement, though — I don’t mean to suggest that all
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