Kristopher Kelly's Blog, page 14

Distribution Center Blues

Men in Black II—or MIIB, as they incessantly refer to themselves—arguably have it the worst, because they were a sequel to a major summer blockbuster. They didn't expect to end up here, slumming it with White Oleander, Blood Work, K-PAX, and S1m0ne.

We were born from success, all of us. Things were pitched, agreed upon, gushed over. There was a lot of cocaine-fueled love, but, drug-induced or not, it still counts. Stars and talent were sold on the ideas. Scenes were shot, edited, given the thumbs-up, greens means go, world premiered, west coast premiered, east coast premiered, applauded, reviewed, and people went and saw them, talked about them, then on to the video store, where … well, about that.

We don't want to gossip, but some of those MIIBs were never rented at all. They had their week on the New Releases wall, then a week or two later and it was time for something else, and onto the 'Previously Viewed' table they went, even if they were technically never viewed, and then, when they didn't sell there, they had to move again. This time, they went into boxes underneath the tables, where they remained for months, meeting us in time, as we were inventoried month after month, seeing fluorescent lights only briefly as we were scanned and determined to still be here, still waiting for some point to our DVD existence, and never finding one.

As for us, White Oleander, well — at least we heard one of the clerks talking about how we were "actually not bad." We'll always have that.

Shut up, Men in Black II, no one cares about your box office! You're just as dusty as the rest of us. And at least the rest of us were rented.

We'll be melted down and recycled soon, we suppose. That's what all the Blook Work are saying. We actually hope its true. Holding onto these boxed-up identities forgotten in a warehouse seems like a waste.

We could go for a fresh start–a chance to try again as something else, something a little more loved.

But with our luck, we'll probably all end up raw materials for copies of Men in Black 3-D.

Review: The Grove

The Grove by John Rector


My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There's potential here–the writing style itself is pretty clean and the setting is evocative enough–but unfortunately this story suffers from a character continually doing the wrong thing for moderately inexplicable reasons. The plot is simple enough: a man, who should be taking medication for some kind of schizophrenic disorder, has gone off the pills. One morning, he wakes up to find his wife gone and a dead body out in his field. He can't remember the fight with his wife, which apparently was pretty bad, nor can he be quite sure he didn't murder the teenage girl. He chooses not to report the body, and the rest of the book concerns his modest investigation into what happened to her. I found the choice there hard to take; why, after continually blacking out and being so afraid that you're doing terrible things, do you not either 1.) start taking your pills, or 2.) turn yourself in? The resolution of the plot also left me cold. The ending was far too simple. I'd love it if there was more adventure in a self-published work; why be so cookie-cutter when you have the freedom to do whatever you like? Still, it's a short, to-the-point thriller, modest in its goals, and at times effective.

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I'm So Mad I Could Write a Cryptic Facebook Post About You

I mean, because then you'd see, by God, and, oh, how it would burn! Imagine it: scrolling through your happy little social networking news feed, reading about this one and that one's kids, so-and-so's bar-drinking fun, the other one's vacation in Patagonia, and then BAM! You see "Kristopher Kelly is fucking PISSED OFF!" Like, whoa! Is it about you? Is it not? You don't know, you can't say, but you get a feeling that it's certainly possible you did something wrong, but what could it be?

Ha! As if I'd tell you! That's how fucking PISSED OFF I am at you! You made me carpet-bomb all my other Facebook friends for the sake of sending my lily-livered vitriol through a system of tubes, and now everyone's wondering, everyone's worried, and no one knows who did what to me. My post is just a big bright shining middle finger to–well, everybody, really.

You're so vain, you'll probably even want my post to be about you.

But my update will just stand there moping, like some douche at a dance standing in a dark corner, arms crossed, a sour look on his face, waiting for someone to come up and beg a cheerful attitude out of him, because it's awesome to sit and seethe and make other people do the hard work of getting you to talk. Eventually, someone else will post beneath my post, asking me, "What happened?" And I'll reply, "Nothing. Just some people, you know? Tired of JERKS!" And the other person will agree, and we'll post a few more lines about jerks as a general construct, maybe even "like"-ing it up, clicking all over each other's posts and suckling on each other's thumbs-ups and cackling because DAMN the world is just too goddamn full of jerks like you.

You know who you are. You know what you did. And you'll get to watch all this indirect trash-talking about you and feel like the cretin you are. But I'm not going to name names, because I'm not fully committed to airing my dirty laundry. Too many specifics and people might start taking sides, even yours. If I'd wanted you to get sympathy, I would've posted something on your wall. But this is MY wall, bitch! The sympathy goes one way here, and that's into my face.

Because let's be real, here–it's all about the sympathy. Man, when that one girl tells me to cheer up and that she hopes my day gets better–wow, that'll be the exact mental salve I'll need! And someone else will pray for me, I'm sure. To God and Jesus! Against you! Can you beat that? And yet another person, some guy, will remind me that things could always get worse, that other people are much worse off. Well! That will blow my freakin' mind and turn my whole perspective around. So many kindnesses, it'll be like I cranked the brightness on my monitor all the goddamned way up. The sun'll break through the digital clouds, motherfucker! No way you'll feel as good, getting anonymously flogged in a public forum. You'll probably end up stifling sobs at your nondescript desk at your no-name company in your who-gives-a-shit job. Yeah. Good. You'll digitally deserve it. Just ask all the people who will take my side in this. You'll be able to see them if you visit my page. You'll be able to see them taking the shit out of my side!

And one last thing while I'm on the subject of how much you suck: stop uploading that kind of photo of yourself! Seriously. You know the kind–the kind where you're all bleeeaaaah-bleeeeeaaah, and bleeeeaaaaah-bleeeeaaaah-at-the-beach-lookit-me-and-my-ehhhhh, ehhhhh. It's lame, and enough is enough.

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book, about a freshman in high school in 1991 who pines for a pretty senior while discovering drugs, music, and literature, hit so close to home, most of the time it reads like a happier revision of my own life (I was a freshman in 1992 and briefly dated a few juniors, so … close!). I even read most of the same books, including The Fountainhead, and had conversations with adults about them very similar to what Charlie has here. What really drew me into the story, however, was the earnest sweetness of the main character; kinda wish I'd been more like him at the time. Oh well!

Anyway, the story itself can seem a bit like a salad of After School Special topics (domestic violence, child molestation, date rape, drug and alcohol abuse, homophobia — the list goes on and on!), written in a decent imitation of J. D. Salinger (although Charlie's so much less of a dick than Holden), and while I appreciate the craft of writing a young voice, the bland rhythm of a young voice can get tedious after a while. It also detracts that every single beat of some subplots are predictable (the gay romance subplot, for example, holds few surprises). There are a lot of good-natured observations about life here, but they're all a little bit obvious for this reader. Even so, I have to admit that it was a pleasure to read something so refreshingly well-meaning and good-natured, after all the other tortured stuff I'm usually reading.

Something so gallantly irony-free could only be set in the early 90s, and it made me miss those days a little bit. I just wish it had dug a little deeper and tried to get a little bit more out of the shadow of The Catcher in the Rye.

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Selected Reactions from Viewers Progressively in the Future to Seeing Telephones in Films from the Past

"No dialing? You mean you just … asked an operator? How quaint!"

"I totally want a phone I can use to call people from the beach! That is awesome!"

"Holy crap, that phone is HUGE! Remember when I said that was awesome? How silly!"

"Oh my god, Mom and Dad … you used to connect your phone to the wall?! With a cord?!" 

"Look at that! A flip-phone! Cuuuuuuute!"

"Ha ha ha … they used to make movies about phones! It's like cavemen making a movie called Wall-Painting."

"Direct peer-to-peer voice messaging? Why would anyone do that? I hate these old-timey films!"

"I can't imagine what it must be like for people who still remember talking as being more popular than brain-to-brain Bleating."

"I can't imagine what it must be like for anyone who still remembers talking!" [further reactions uninterpretable for anyone not using a CyM3ld v7 or better]

Review: Snuff

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because I just got out of a really long relationship with a George R. R. Martin novel and wanted something fast and super-entertaining and thoroughly inappropriate. Snuff in all ways fit the bill.

This book really made me feel gross most of the time I was reading it, but I loved the experience. Palahniuk throws out more fake porn film names and euphemisms for jerkoff than I think anyone really needs to, but I still love the energy.

This story takes place while 600 men stand in a room, waiting for their chance to go on camera as part of a record-breaking gang-bang porn film. There are five main characters, men #72, #137, and #600, as well as the female talent wrangler Sheila and the pornstar herself, Ms. Cassie Wright. I found all five to be interesting, well-drawn characters, and I loved the character revelations. There were a lot of surprises.

But what I most liked about this book was the way it made me feel about flesh and how we treat our bodies. There's a lot of sex/death comparisons, but I simply can't shake the disgusting way Palahniuk relates condoms to bowls of junk food (there's a table full of junk food, and a bowl of condoms, which … well, I'll let you take it from there).

And then there are the fun facts, or "True facts", as they are called here, which are top tier. Seems most of these characters have a Palahniuk-like love of the random bit of amazing trivia (such as that Hitler invented the blow-up doll, which blows my mind in so many ways). Loved it all. These tidbits are worth the read all on their own.

But at the end of the day, I think this might also be one of Chuck Palahniuk's sweetest novels, as well as one of his most icky. Really liked it.





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A Life of Their Own, Free Short on Lulu.com

Got another one in the rejected-by-McSweeney's and the 600-words-or-less department. There really shouldn't have been room for overlap there, since McSweeneys.net does not do short stories, as I was told this morning when the piece was rejected.

Oh well. This one is funny.

Available on Lulu.com now, assuming, once again, that it will eventually make its way to Amazon and others.

 

A Life of Their Own: Free eBook on Lulu.com

Got another one in the rejected-by-McSweeney's and the 600-words-or-less department. There really shouldn't have been room for overlap there, since McSweeneys.net does not do short stories, as I was told this morning when the piece was rejected.

Oh well. This one is funny.

Available on Lulu.com now, assuming, once again, that it will eventually make its way to Amazon and others.

 

Embrace the Ground, Free Short on Lulu.com

Looks like I'm going to bail on NaNoWriMo plans this year. Sorry to say it, but the ideas just weren't there this year. Rather than force a half-baked idea, I've decided to focus on some short story goals and editing Ed at Eleven.

As far as the short stories go, I've set my sights on publication in Cemetery Dance and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And then there's my McSweeneys.net project, where every week I send them a new submission as soon as they reject the previous one (in my head, I call this "Andy Dufresne-ing" the editors).

Last night, I noticed there's a contest on Lulu.com for the month of November. Publish a 600-words-or-less story through Lulu, and you can enter their short story contest. Prize is a Nook and $500. I figured I might as well, since I Held My Breath as Long as I Could featured a lot of stories around that length, and I've sort of gotten used to the format. Last night, I submitted my first entry, "Embrace the Ground," available now for free on Lulu. Presumably it will eventually find its way to Amazon and iTunes. In the meantime, keep checking back here for news on additional free stories. I'm aiming to write somewhere around five of these pieces this month. Little snacks for the faithful (e)readers out there.

Post-Mortem: Notes on I Held My Breath as Long as I Could

Maybe you're one of the people who wondered why I Held My Breath as Long as I Could started off with one of the worst stories. Maybe you want to know more about why someone would self-publish. Maybe you're just bored and have nothing better to do. Whatever the case, the following is an interview examining and explaining the thoughts behind the stories included in an admittedly strange collection.

**** SPOILERS FOLLOW ****

John Mandler: So let's start with a soft-ball: why did you self-publish this collection?

Kristopher Kelly: I was tired of reading about the success others were having with independent publishing while not trying it myself. I didn't see any reason I couldn't have something out there, as well. Given that I was struggling with the editing of two novels, it also seemed a good chance to develop editing skills on shorter pieces. Also, I knew no one else would let me get away with the kind of collection this is, combining fiction and nonfiction, genre and non-genre, etc.

M: Will you do it again?

KK: Probably not. Unless something changes, I feel like it's simply another giant slush pile. The goal is to get out of the slush pile, not live in it.

M: A lot of readers complain about the strength of the first story, "You Know What Your Problem Is?" Why did you start with this arguably flimsy piece?

KK: Ha, well, first of all, I didn't think it was that bad. Secondly, enjoy its place now, because it's getting moved in future versions of the book. Yes, it was a mistake. But I wanted people to get a good sense of what they were going to find in the book, and I thought that one, even if it wasn't the strongest, was somehow representative of everything. What is my collection if not gruesome, sad, and allegorical? I don't know. I thought it was a good way to not false advertise. I do plan to move "This is All My Fault" to the lead-off position in the final update to the book.

M: Why did you include nonfiction pieces in what is ostensibly a horror collection?

KK: Because I'm dumb? Okay, seriously, I was trying to say something about where horror fiction comes from, what monsters really are, and how they're born–be that in my mind or in a more "real" world. The title of the collection comes from two stories, "Dogs of Nashua" and "Grim Remains." In both, characters feel polluted by a monstrous world. It's my feeling that we live in a really rough world, and most of us, I feel, are fighting the good fight to not breathe it in and to stay better people than the world might make us.

M: So this whole book is about your anger surrounding your divorce?

KK: It's my criticism of myself and, if there is a message in all of it, it is to not let bad things turn you into a bad person. You look at the regret apparent in a story like "Radiation," for example, and I think you see a protagonist who wishes he'd turned out to be a better person than he is. Granted, it's all exaggerated, because horror allows you to do that kind of thing, but the emotional truth of the story is that the character regrets his own hate. Contrast that with the stories in the Odds, Ends portion of the book, where there's a more hopeful message to the pieces. In "The Side-Effect," there's a silver lining to a zombie apocalypse. In "When You Have to Go," a place that seems terrible to the main character ends up being a place filled with love–get it? The two nonfiction pieces, placed together, are trying, in my foolish way, to shove love, not hate. That's why "King to E1″ is placed first, to establish that, after everything, I still loved my ex-wife's family and I am fine with the way things have gone. I truly wish her the best. And in "Knife in Hand," you see an example of a guy realizing that even if efforts end up not accomplishing much, even if things don't go the way he wants them to, life, as a whole, is still good. Tim ends up wishing good things for his ex, and that's really the closest echo of my real feelings.

M: Oh, so "Doggie-Style" isn't? Because I thought …

KK: Yeah, it's hard to defend that one. But if it helps, I'd like to say that I wrote it before I was ever married, and that it was actually inspired by an Alice Walker short story, "How Did I Get Away with Killing One of the Biggest Lawyers in the State? It Was Easy." The character told a story about horrible things, but the tone was so detached. I'd been trying to come up with a villain with a strong voice who people wouldn't feel comfortable liking but who was still vaguely realistic. I was looking to write something really disturbing, but before I found Joe Beldon's voice, the whole story was, frankly, really unpalatable and unwritable. So … thank you, Alice Walker, for pointing me to a solution. I'm sure everyone's grateful.

M: Let's talk more about The Beldon Variations. What was your goal with these stories?

KK: Again, it all comes back to monsters and monsters creating monsters and what it means to live in a monster-populated world. Setting up "Dogs of Nashua" with "Doggie-Style" really, I thought, gave so much more weight to what Jasper is going through. It makes the awfulness of his situation even worse, and it makes his treatment of the dog even more important, even more symbolic. But then the end is so tragic, there's so little comeuppance, that I feel like, without "The Field," it's too unsatisfying. Not that there's any great comeuppance in "The Field," but I feel like it tears Joe Beldon down in an interesting way and strips him of a lot of his power. He's really just someone else's lackey, and his master doesn't even like him all that much. I imagine that Jimmy Beetle would feel about Jasper much as he feels about Clyde–that he wishes he and his friends hadn't destroyed him. Beetle really regrets what happens to Clyde, and he has really no one to blame but himself, for playing the part that he thought the world around him wanted him to play. He realizes playing that part only leads him to help to destroy things he wishes were still around. But another note on that: you see Clyde's brief transformation also echoing the theme of someone letting a sad situation turn him down a dark road. Hence why he dies moments before lying about everything. He let things get the better of him, and that will always take you down a dark path. Even in "Doggie-Style," you see that message. Joe goes completely off-the-rails after something terrible happens to his wife. Trauma always tends to lead to more trauma.

M: An interesting example of this is "Please Don't." You make the treatment of trauma into a traumatic experience in and of itself.

KK: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, the message is everywhere in this collection. Open to a random page, and you'll find it. Even if the genre and lengths vary, I really tried to keep the pieces unified by that central idea. There are a few exceptions, I suppose. "This is All My Fault" and "Frosty Out There," for example, but with those pieces I just fell in love with the monsters, even if they weren't quite in the business of making other people monsters. What can you do? Not necessarily a good idea to be too matchy-matchy, as they might say on Project Runway. 

M: Are you a Project Runway fan?

KK: Huge. I think it's one of the most inspiring shows on television. I always wish Tim Gunn could come around and give me advice on what I'm doing wrong. He's amazing.

M: What about "Brains," the story of the couple in the car? I didn't quite get that one.

KK: Oh, ha, yeah … my political story? I liked the claustrophobic nature of it–that here are two people, splitting apart, but yet they're still contained by the car. I was also, yes, trying to mirror a bit of the polarization of our country with the disintegration of the couple, using the characters of George and Laura (who I started off thinking of as a nod to George and Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but ended thinking more of a twisted version of George and Laura Bush, hence the names) to reflect that.

M: Who are your influences?

KK: That should be obvious. I grew up forty miles north of Bangor, where Stephen King lives. I went to Bangor all the time. I had to go there every time I wanted to see  a movie in the theater. It was my backyard, and Stephen King felt like my hometown hero. When I decided I wanted to be a writer in third grade, I thought that meant I wanted to be like Stephen King. Huge fan of his. Also Clive Barker. His Books of Blood were an obvious influence, I think. Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Other Stories was also big, because it uses a lot of mixed length stories and crosses genres. I wanted my book to be a bit of a dark mirror to that one, like what might happen if The Lottery and Other Stories and The Books of Blood had a love child, that would be I Held My Breath as Long as I Could. I also really like Raymond Carver, John Irving, and The Wire. I love The Wire. I probably shouldn't say that, because it will probably expose "Grim Remains" as a fraud, but so be it. I'll sacrifice that story to say that The Wire is one of the best stories ever told, period.

M: Do you have issues with women? A lot of these stories feature characters who are angry at women, or who do bad things to the women in their lives.

KK: No. I don't.

M: Okay, can you elaborate?

KK: If I have to. I have a problem with people in general and myself in particular. I have issues with women insofar as I am a straight male who has had relationships that didn't work out and has strong feelings about the failure of those relationships. But if you're asking if I hate women, the answer is an unqualified no. I love women, especially the ones who are strong and smart and can kick my ass. Generally speaking, I'm far more critical of men, but even then I'd have to say that mostly I'm just at war constantly with pieces of myself.

M: Can you tell people anything about your upcoming projects?

KK: I have two novels to edit, Ed at Eleven and Daukherville. Expect to see Ed first. Other than that, I'll be writing a new novel, Suspended, this November as part of NaNoWriMo, because I think it's important to keep the creative juices flowing and to always be moving ahead. As far as the plot of these goes, Ed is a dark romance, Daukherville is an epic ghost story, and Suspended is a straight-up people-on-a-plane thriller that has nothing to do with snakes or terrorism.

M: Last but not least, is your middle initial K? Because …

KK: Ha ha ha. No, it's not. My middle name is Albert.

M: But wait, that means …

KK: That my initials spell kak. Or 'shit' in Africaans. Yes, I know. Thanks for asking.