Paul Tremblay's Blog, page 17

Mean Time podcast #3: Michael Cisco

Michael Cisco reads "There's No Light Between Floors." GO HERE FOR THE PODCASTIC FLAVOR!

"There's No Light Between Floors" is about a guy trapped in the rubble of a mysterious building that may or may not go into space, and elder gods may or may not be afoot. The story first appeared at Clarkesworld, is inspired by a snippet of a lyric from a Silkworm song, and features a scene that later made it into (and plays a key role in) The Little Sleep.

Next week, the award-winning Sarah Langan reads!

Michael Cisco is the author of The Divinity Student, The Tyrant, The San Veneficio Canon, The Traitor, and most recently The Narrator. He's a contributor to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, Leviathan III and IV, Phantom, and Album Zutique. In 1999, his debut work received the International Horror Writers Guild Award for best first novel. His nonfiction appears in reference books published by Chelsea House and the Gale Group. Awarded his PhD in English literature in 2003 (New York University), he is currently preparing his first critical work, Supernatural Embarrassment, for publication. He lives in New York City.

Michael's The Divinity Student and The Traitor are two of my favorite novels of the past ten plus years. He is, without question, the most dynamic live reader of fiction I've ever seen/heard. Seriously. Huge thank you to Michael for taking the time to read my story.

I first met Mr. Cisco at Readercon in 2004, I think. We played mafia together and lost horribly to Jonathan Lethem and his minions. Michael and I don't have minions quite powerful enough yet, but we're working on it.

Mean Time podcast #2: Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones reads "We Will Never Live in the Castle."  GO HERE FOR THE PODCASTICNESS.

Next week, it's IHG  award-winning author Michael Cisco's turn.

"We Will Never Live in the Castle" is the anchor/last story in my collection. It's novelette length and original to the collection: A once-awkward teen holes up in a kiddie-themed amusement park after the end of the world, and schemes to take Cinderella's Castle by force.

Stephen Graham Jones's new noir/weird/zombie chupacabra/awesome novel IT CAME FROM DEL RIO is out now, and a new short story collection of his, THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY, will be out any day now. Previous books include, LEDFEATHER, DEMON THEORY, and ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SINNERS.

Years ago, Laird Barron grabbed my by the shoulders, shook me, and said you have to read this short story "Raphael" by this guy Jones. A few days later, Jack Haringa put Stephen's DEMON THEORY in my lap. I read it. Loved it and then went out and read everything else of Stephen's I could find. He's one of my favorite authors working today. Besides having fresh/weird ideas and a distinctive voice, Stephen's work is always emotionally genuine.

Huge thanks to Stephen for participating in the podcasts. Especially for reading the longest story!

Publishing must die part 145, The Re-Bloodening

The ridiculous: I think, by now, most of you have heard of James Frey (the formerly-disgraced fraud who wrote a memoir A Million Little Pieces–an Oprah selection, by the way–that was later exposed as fiction) and his writers sweat shop, hoping to compose the next Twilight series. I guess one million monkeys and one million typewriters weren't available.

Author John Scalzi gives a nice rant/recap of Frey and MFA programs here.

The sublime: Coming to a kindle or e-reader near you…small publisher wants stories for their Zombie King Kong anthology! Only, you can't use the phrase "King Kong." And you can't reference Skull Island. And, well, let's directly quote:

What we want: Stories involving a giant zombie ape. Be creative; steer away from the King Kong films.

What we don't want: While the similarities to King Kong will be obvious, stories must not infringe upon the messy-as-hell copyright issues that surround the King Kong character, and all the other characters and settings that were created by Merian C. Cooper back in 1929. This means that names such as "Skull Island, Ann Darrow, Carl Denhan," and "King Kong," must not appear in your story.

I'm writing a story about a giant zombie ape who has a lack of self-esteem, doesn't like bananas, cries all the time because no one will take his vanity published memoir seriously. Meanwhile, there's a giant lizard called Lordzilla who has bad breath, dislikes walks on the beach, and spends his days writing one-star amazon reviews for books that are too expensive for his kindle. Zombie Ape and Lordzilla become fast friends, until the day Lordzilla gives Zombie Ape a three star review. Then they fight. Explosions! Someone puts the fight on youtube and Eli Roth makes a movie out of it. Then everyone in the world is happy and there are no problems or pain or suffering anywhere. This pax-zombie-ape last for 213 years.

The end?

My review of Mefisto at Spinetingler, plus bonus five facts.

SPINETINGLER mag is doing huge group review of BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY, one reviewer per story. I was invited to review Harlan Ellison's "Mefisto in Onyx."

"Ellison opens "Mefisto", arguably one of the last of his great stories, with a deceptively simple line: "Once. I only went to bed with her once." Nine words, and it sets up a hybrid hardboiled voice that is full of Ellison's trademark wit and rage, a voice that carries the story."

And over at suvudu, Five Facts about IN THE MEAN TIME were posted today. There's statistics and something about a manatee.

First Mean Time podcast released.

Have a listen!

\"In the Mean Time\" by Paul Tremblay, read by Paul Tremblay.

or

Download the MP3 at the CZP website.

As mentioned last week, this is the first of six free podcasts of Mean Time stories. Today's is the never before published story printed on the cover of the limited-edition MEAN TIME.

Next week: Stephen Graham Jones reads my "We Will Never Live in the Castle," a novelette original to my collection.

My wee, small political act this evening

In the Mean Time reviewed at Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult

Yay!

"Further proof that less is sometimes more, Paul Tremblay returns with a collection of shorts that excite the imagination with their potential. Not potential as in underdeveloped ability, because Tremblay has already proven himself an accomplished craftsman, but potential as in the expressing of possibility. Unfettered by the constraints of the novel, Tremblay is free to explore the mystery of vague ideas without rendering the work unfulfilling. The spaces between the words, where these stories live and breathe, represent the author at his most interesting, ensuring that In The Mean Time will resonate long after the last page has been read." (Joshua Chaplinsky)

Read the rest HERE.

Coming soon: Free Mean Time podcasts

This bit lifted from a recent CZP press release:

"In the Mean Time, Paul Tremblay's latest collection of short fiction. Though many of the selections take a quieter spin on the apocalypse and run rampant with paranoia with such stories as "The Strange Case of Nicholas Thomas" and "The Blog at the End of the World", Tremblay is still very interested in connecting with his audience. Not only does he blog actively about his work, CZP will also be releasing free podcasts of the stories to help promote their release. One story will be put out per week at a total of six stories with such readers as Sarah Langan, Michael Cisco, Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan, Mur Lafferty, and Paul Tremblay himself."

So yeah, those talented folks in bold each read a different story from ITMT. Next week we'll begin releasing the podcasts and we'll announce the reader/story then. I'm very grateful that those talent authors would take the time out to read and record one of my stories. Too bad I can't take them on the road with me….

 

Lake Mungo

I'm not quite sure when or why it happened, but it seems like every cable channel has a paranormal/ghost hunting type of show on heavy rotation now. Even Animal Planet has Lost Tapes and Haunted. I have to admit that I'm not sure of the animal connection to those shows. Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha must be rolling in their graves… I'll admit to watching the ghost hunting shows on occasion, and while I'm a world-class scardey cat, these shows don't bother me, scare me in the least. The best of these shows, for my money was MTVs Fear, where vacuous knuckleheads went to old creepy buildings, and its premise was new enough for me to achieve some popcorn-creepy moments. That said, these shows generally do not have an iota of creep factor for me because I do not believe in ghosts (he says in a well lit office), and the non-fiction, TV show format, with cheap production values and telegraphed plot lines, invites/begs for my snark and skepticism.

LAKE MUNGO is a faux-documentary about the grieving family of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer who drowns in Lake Mungo. Much of the story is told through interviews with her parents, her brother, a psychic and other locals. This isn't a cheap hand/jumpy-cam first person POV thing. It's actual documentary-style filmmaking, and the filmmakers know how to use the style. Sweeping shots of the wide, stretched out Australian spaces, big empty sky, acts as a reflection of the depth of grief the family struggles to understand. It's really a story about grief. There are heartbreaking moments where little pieces of the characters are revealed that are so odd and genuine (like a shot of her Dad driving home in reverse because he couldn't be bothered to call a tow truck or walk all the way home), if it were a real documentary, this sort of knowledge would feel voyeuristic, intrusive.

While Mungo is about grief, it's also a clever mystery. For a person who spends zero live screen time on screen, building the mystery of Alice (what happened to her, yeah, but more than that, the mystery of who she was) is a genuine achievement.

And, oh yeah, this movie is genuinely creepy and scary as hell.

Shortly after her death, her family starts to experience the familiar paranormal phenomena we all know about, even if we haven't been watching, um, Animal Planet. Her brother captures some odd images in photos and on video camera. But it gets and goes weirder from there. I really don't want to give away any of the story twists or scares: just know there were scenes I could barely watch. I have to admit to looking away from the screen during two particularly intense scenes, scenes that felt personal to me, like they'd lifted them right out of my own nightmares. I couldn't handle it. And the ending is quiet, dignified, and real, and I said aloud, "Oh no," to no one, because I was alone in my house watching it in the dark. (Yeah, bad move).

Unlike the ghost hunter shows (which are purported to be real real real) Lake Mungo is fiction. Lake Mungo scared and moved me more than all of those shows combined. And it's more than just the power of willingly giving yourself over to fiction. This little movie about grief and secrets is creepy at a downright cellular level.

If I'd seen the movie before making my top 74 horror movie list, Lake Mungo would've made my top ten. Easily.

(Special thanks goes out to Nadia Bulkin who made me watch this movie)

New interview up at The Velvet

The Velvet is an online community dedicated to authors Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, and Stephen Graham Jones, and dedicated to great writing/music/art in general. Easily on of my favorite haunts on the next.

Chris Deal and Jesse Lawrence just posted an interview with me. Cue the snippit!:

"I love having something to say, and believing that something is worth the usage paper/ink/pixels. It's kind of cool to think that I'm—in some infinitesimally small way—a participant in the centuries-long conversation that is the tradition of the story. And I like the free cars and million dollar homes that, of course, come with being a clinging-to-the-midlist writer!"