Joel Arnold's Blog, page 3

Dorset Festival of Authors and Artists

I'm heading up to Dorset, MN Saturday to participate in their Festival of Authors & Artists. I'll be signing books from 4-6 pm at Sister Wolf Books. Should be fun! Dorset bills itself as the "Restaurant Capital of the World" - I'll try to find out why this weekend. Should be fun!

Jubilee Hitchhiker - Finally!

Back in 1994/’95 when I lived in Bozeman, Montana, I worked at a Kinkos right outside the University of Montana campus. It was a fun place to work at the time, but we were always busy. One day I made color copies for this guy and his girlfriend (or wife – I’m not sure) and I made a mental note of how beautiful this woman was. She was dressed in traditional Native American clothing – a buckskin dress, etc. Well, turns out the guy was William Hjortsberg, author of Falling Angel (made into the movie Angel Heart) and other things, as well as screenwriter of Legend (and other things.) Later, I learned he was giving a reading at a bookstore in Livingston, MT (about 20 miles east of Bozeman) for the release of his newest novel Nevermore. I attended, and he did a nice job. Someone asked what he was working on, and he said it was a biography of Richard Brautigan, a favorite author of mine. I waited and waited, excited for this to come out, pestering bookstores once a year or so, but eventually forgot about the whole thing.

Until now!

Looks like it was finally released in April, 2012. Jubilee Hitchhiker; the Life and Times of Richard Brautigan. So yay!

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If you'd like to follow me, my twitter name is @authorarnold
I don't quite get it, yet, but I'm trying.

Holy Crap - or - My Cute Cats

With all the lolcats and cute little fuzz-filled pictures you see of cats on the 'net, it's easy to forget how they're really malicious killing machines. Don't get me wrong - I love our cats. They're great and fun to have. And they're soft. Oh, so soft.

But.

But...

When they're outside exploring, they bring us things. Leave them on the porch for us to find. If it's just a mouse body, that's fine. Still kind of gross, but you can just pretend it's sleeping (while you pick it up with the plastic trash bag.)

But ...




Sometimes it's just a head. Or a little tiny heart. Or a brain.

But yesterday it left on  our porch what has to be the grossest thing I've seen in a long time; the bottom half of a pregnant mouse, with five tiny mouse fetuses spilling out. Jesus H. Christ.

Thanks a lot, kitty!

Valley of the Zombies - 1946 - Republic

I watched the 1946 Republic movie Valley of the Zombies on Netflix. It was actually quite good, despite the fact that there really is no valley or any zombies to speak of. The valley of the title was only mentioned by the villain of the movie, Ormond Murks, played wonderfully by Ian Keith. He is a zombie, but only in title. He claims to have discovered a potion in the aforementioned valley that made him virtually dead, but he needs blood transfusions to continue to survive.

Murks isn’t a post Night of the Living Dead zombie, of course, since this was made over twenty years prior. But he’s not the Voodoo zombie of films like The Zombie King or White Zombie, either. In fact, there is really nothing zombie-ish about him at all. Despite that, he steals the movie with his almost, but not-quite over-the-top escaped mental patient role (an escaped mental patient “zombie”).

Clocking in at only fifty-six minutes long, his is a B-movie in the classic sense, and has all the elements that make B-movies great. The use of shadow and light is wonderful, and one of my favorite line deliveries is in the beginning when Murks tells one of his former doctors, “My wants are simple, Dr. Maynard. Very simple…blood.” There are also some nice details. For example, when the male and female leads, played by Robert Livingston and Lorna Gray respectively, enter a supposedly abandoned house, one of them lights a candelabra and there are only two candles intact, one worn down more than the other – instead of three fresh candles just waiting for the intruders.

Yes, there’s the typical scene of a hand emerging from the shadows, flexing menacingly about to grab the unaware heroine by the neck, but no! The male lead turns to face her just in time, and the hand retreats, unseen by either of the leads. Then, when the male lead turns his back to the female again, out comes the hand…but no! Male lead turns just in time, hand retreats, and the two leads are still none-the-wiser.

Of course, given the time the movie was made, the female lead has typical lines like, “You might need help, and I’m good at screaming.” And even though she plays a nurse, she gets squeamish at the sight of a dead body.

But if you want a good, classic B-movie to watch late at night, try this one out. I bet you won’t be disappointed.

The Sucking Suckathon of Suckiness

Whenever I sit down to write something, I'm always overwhelmed by doubts. Will this be any good? Has my best stuff already been written? Will I even remember how to write? Do these jeans make me look fat?

And then, as I work on the first draft, the doubts stay with me. This sucks. When are people going to realize I'm a hack? Have I lost my mojo? Look at all of this drivel - it'll take actual power tools to mold this prose shit-storm into some kind of shape resembling a story. And no, it's not the jeans, it's the shirt. This shirt makes me look fat.

I'll go through a 2nd, 3rd and 4th draft, and maybe finally the story starts turning into something decent, and I'll send it to some markets, or put it out on my own, and then wonder, wonder, wonder is it really any good? I shouldn't have put it out there. People will realize I'm a fraud. And why bother? Even if it is any good, it will get lost in the miasma of hundreds of thousands of other stories and articles and blogs out there, and even if someone runs across it, they probably won't actually read it, and no, it's not the jeans or the shirt, but it's the fat that makes me look fat. Goddamn fat. 

But then maybe the piece gets bought by a publication, or someone sends a nice email about it, and then I start to think, yeah, maybe it's not so bad after all. This part is okay. And I really do like this paragraph, and this sentence here. And yeah, it is the shirt that makes me look fat after all! Goddamn shirt.

22nd Annual Midwest Book Awards - Ox Cart Angel won!

I'm happy to announce that my novel Ox Cart Angel won a Midwest Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel of 2011! If you'd like to see some pictures from the event, head on over to my Ox Cart Angel blog.

'Writes of Spring' signing & discussion at B&N last night

The Writes of Spring signing and discussion at the Har Mar Barnes & Noble last night went well. Seventeen of the thirty-four authors were there, as well as Nodin Press head honcho Norton Stillman, and editors Gary Schulz and Pat Frovarp. Even with the horde of writers, the audience still outnumbered us, which is a good thing. My nerves were getting the better of me at some points, and when it was time to give my little spiel about my story, I’m not really sure what I said – although I did get a chuckle at one point, and I think it was at a point where a chuckle was appropriate.

But anyway, nerves or not, it’s always nice to be included in such things, and it’s always good to see the familiar faces of writers I admire.

Owatonna Orphanage

I visited the Owatonna Orphanage Museum over the weekend and wrote about it here.

I've got sort of a personal connection to the place, since my dad was adopted from there when he was a toddler. 

A Writerly Week Ahead

I'm going on a little writing retreat over the weekend so will hopefully have a good productive couple of days. I'm hoping for a maximum of writing and a bare minimum of flagrant self-abuse.

On Monday, about half the Writes of Spring authors are doing a signing/discussion at the Barnes & Noble at the Har Mar Mall in Roseville (7:00pm). 

On Wednesday night, it's off to the Midwest Book Awards, where Ox Cart Angel is up for Best Historical and Best Young Adult novel.