Paul Tremblay's Blog, page 5
June 12, 2015
THE FAMILIAR VOL 1, by Mark Danielewski.
Math warning! Then a slight review!
I gave the book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. It’s really 3.7564536 stars, an irrational number that I’ve rounded for your benefit. Remember an irrational number is a number with a decimal that never ends and never repeats. Or, a simpler way, perhaps, of remembering it, is that the number cannot be written as a fraction like rational numbers (2/3 is rational, so is -4 because that can be expressed at -4/1.). e, pi, square root of 2 are examples of irrational numbers. The real numbers are made up of both rational and irrational numbers. Despite our using rational numbers almost exclusively in our everyday math lives (yes, you do use them, I hear you snickering in the back row), the irrational numbers are dense in the real number system. What does that mean? Well, let’s imagine a real number line stretching from one corner of the universe to the other, with it conveniently wrapping around the earth once or twice, and I gave every person who ever lived a dart. Before perishing everyone gets a chance to throw the dart at the number line, which is comprised of both rational numbers (again, 2, 1, 0, -3, 2/3 etc) and irrational numbers. The probability that anyone would hit a rational number on that number line is 0. If you’re still with me, yeah 0. No tricks like the dart misses or bounces off like when you think you hit a bullseye but only hit the stupid metal circle enclosing the bullseye. Probability of 0, no statistical chance of hitting a rational number. Because…in the real number system there are no consecutive rational numbers, which implies that there are infinite irrationals between any two rationals, so that number line would essentially be those infinite irrationals between those two lonely rationals stuck somewhere at the edges of the (mostly) infinite universe. You know those rationals are out there somewhere, but you’ll never be able to hit them. Find them.
Reading THE FAMILIAR vol 1 is like dealing with and thinking about irrational numbers. You sense them there more than you know they’re there. You know there’s some grand, deeper meaning hidden in the seemingly random stretch of numbers that never repeat, but it’s just beyond your grasp.
House of Leaves is one of my favorite novels ever. Only Revolutions I couldn’t finish and thought the typographical trickery was just that. In THE FAMILIAR it works as there’s a wonderful sense of visual rhythm (as opposed to textual rhythm) within the book that’s genius.
The heart of the book are the Xanther sections. They are well done and compelling (although she’s a little precious and treated as the glass-figurine-little-girl (and the big emotional climax hinges on an everyday creature that made me say really? (and I said it out loud, like twice, in a lumpy space princess accent too))). Some of the other story threads are, frankly, an unreadable mess, but still entertaining.
There is more than enough there to keep me going. I do worry how, if this is to be a 27 volume THING, I can possibly keep up with this ever expanding irrational number.
June 2, 2015
June 2: Release day for A Head Full of Ghosts/Brookline Booksmith Fun
I know, I know, I’ve been endlessly blabbing on and on about the book, but A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS is a real thing now. Crazy, yeah? Yes. It is. Today I’m feeling thankful and incredibly, obnoxiously lucky to have so many amazing friends and loved ones and talented cohorts who’ve helped and supported me, even when I didn’t/don’t deserve it.
Last night the wonderful Brookline Booksmith hosted a reading/discussion with my good friend, the brilliant and sometimes angry Jack Haringa as interviewer/James Lipton.
Make with the pictures, already, and some poignant funny descriptive words!
Jack’s kind intro and fun questions. I only got 9 and 10 correct.
Here’s a goofy pic of me listening to the intro. Maybe thinking about food when Jack said “tantalizing”
Next up, a couple of pictures of the discussion. We were such happy discussers! I hold the mic with my left hand apparently. Who knew?
After the event a mob posse gaggle gathering group of revelers friends and family when down the street to the Fireplace and ate tantalizing appetizers. I personally completed a meat Olympiad: salmon, short rib, lamb, slider burger, chicken wing(s). You’ll notice my brother’s large head in one shot. If you look closely you’ll see my sister and her husband Steve; their house was the model/setting for the house in AHFoG. I thank them for letting me make their cute house creepy.
One final picture and a warning. This is my copy of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS. If I get the opportunity to sign your book, you’re going to sign mine as well. Fair is fair!
Here’s what the morning after a release party looks like. It ain’t pretty. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. Sorry, just coughed up something nasty. Me and ineffable evil shuffling to the laptop to obsessively read ever digital pixel that might be said about my book today to check the weather, some email, that kind of thing.
Thank you everyone who came out last night. Thank you to those sending along kind messages, and to those who may purchase the book. If you’ll allow me to get a little contemplative navel-gaze-y I admitted to the crowd (yes, crowd, there was a crowd: noun, a large number of people gathered together, typically in a disorganized or unruly way) last night that after my second novel was published and didn’t sell well at all, I allowed myself to sink into a self-pitying writing funk that lasted for longer than I care to admit. I only came out of it because of the support of friends and family. I’m eternally grateful to them all.
So lets end with the text of the acknowledgements pages from the book:
FIRST AND FOREMOST, thanks to Lisa, Cole, Emma, and the rest of my family who love, support, and put up with me. My wife, Lisa, went above and beyond this time around being a beta reader and her input was invaluable. Thanks to my sister Erin and brother-in-law Steve who let me fictionalize their house.
Huge thanks to this novel’s other beta reader, the talented John Mantooth. I think it was Louis Maistros who once said, “Being asked to read another writer’s rough draft is the literary equivalent of being asked to help a friend move a couch to a new place.” He’s so right, and I so appreciate the heavy lifting that John did with this book.
More huge thanks to my agent, Stephen “They’re coming to get you” Barbara, for his friendship, advice, and support. I’m so lucky to have him on my side.
A thousand and one thank-yous to my amazing editor, Jennifer Brehl. She helped make this the best book it could be. I’d never be able to fully explain how much her belief in me and this book means. (Everyone, put down the book and clap for Jen, please.)
Big thanks to Camille Collins, Pamela Jaffe, Ashley Marudas, Andrea Molitor, Kelly O’Connor, Caroline Perny, and everyone at William Morrow for their support, enthusiasm, and hard work. I’m so proud to be working alongside all these great people.
Thank you to two of my best friends and co-conspirators, John Langan and Laird Barron, for listening to me whine, agitate, complain, pontificate, and fret my way through this book, once a week by phone (and too occasionally in person).
Thank you to friends and colleagues who’ve supported, inspired, and helped keep me sane: Karen Brissette (the real one!), Ken Cornwell, Brett Cox, JoAnn Cox, Ellen Datlow, Kurt Dinan, Steve Eller, Steve Fisher, Andy Falkous and Future of the Left, Geoffrey Goodwin, Brett Gurewitz and Bad Religion, Page Hamilton, Jack Haringa, John Harvey, Stephen Graham Jones, Sandra Kasturi, Matt Kressel, Michael Lajoie, Sarah Langan, Jennifer Levesque, Kris Meyer, Stewart O’Nan, Brett Savory, Mark Haskell Smith, Simon Strantzas, Dave Zeltserman, and Your Pretty Name.
May 27, 2015
AHFoG gets a nice review in the New York Times
So A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS got a great mini-review in the New York Times. Hot damn!
May 7, 2015
A Head Full of Ghosts optioned by Focus Features!
So, this is exciting news, yeah? Huge thanks to Stephen Barbara, Steve Fisher, and Carly Norris for all they’ve done behind the scenes to get this going. I sort of don’t know what to say other than, wow and OMG and other joyously inarticulate utterings!
From Deadline:
movie from A Head Full Of Ghosts, the upcoming thriller novel by Paul Tremblay. William Morrow publishes the book next month. Focus prevailed in an auction that also had TriStar in hot pursuit. Deals are being closed for Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski to write the script and for Dan Dubiecki���sAllegiance Theater to produce with Team Downey, the shingle run by Robert Downey Jr and Susan Downey.”And mentioned in Variety too!!!!
April 22, 2015
Starred and Boxed Publisher’s Weekly Review! This Is Horror review! Kirkus review! Revieeeeews!
Reviews!
A Head Full of Ghosts got a starred and boxed review in Publisher’s Weekly. Clicky…
Also, the very cool site This Is Horror (UK) posted an in-depth review of AHFoG:
“The beauty of A Head Full of Ghosts is that there are a number of possible interpretations of the events and that the conclusions drawn by one reader may be very different to those drawn by another.…One thing is certain, though, A Head Full of Ghosts is a masterfully written book that will certainly appeal to horror fans, and which deserves to find a wider audience among lovers of thought-provoking fiction across the entire literary spectrum.”–Richard Cosgrove
Lastly, from Kirkus:
March 24, 2015
First 3 chapters of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS online, plus a giveaway!
William Morrow is giving away 10 advanced reader edition copies of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS between now an 4/26. All you have to do is follow the link to enter.
My publisher has also posted the first three chapters online. A sample! A taste! A teaser? Eh, go read ‘em if you want the early look.
“This must be so difficult for you, Meredith.”
Good luck and enjoy!
February 15, 2015
Snowy reads for the snowbound
File under: if you can’t beat them, join them. I’m joining the snow. There’s no sense fighting it anymore. With that in mind, here’s a small list of lesser-known or less-obvious snowy tales well worth checking out.
In no particular order:
DARK MATTER, Michelle Paver. I’m a sucker for creepy stories, or any stories really, set in the arctic or antarctic. Snow and ice? Check.��Beautiful and desolate isolation? Check.��Spooky quiet and shadows on the ice? Check!��I liked the epistolary approach and there are plenty of genuinely goose-bumpy moments. Mild complaints: the diary approach was ditched at the climax (cheating!) and the end was a bit rushed. But minor quibbles really. An excellent arctic ghost story.
PYM, Mat Johnson:�� Chris Jaynes is a professor of African American studies at a small white college, but is denied tenure because he won���t be the token black on the Diversity Committe and he wants to teach Edgar Allen Poe in an attempt to find the root of Whiteness. He finds a slave narrative that seems to prove Poe���s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is a fictionalized account of true events. Jaynes then takes a small, all African American crew down to Antartica to search for the lost island of Tsalal (a lost island of black people desrcibed by Poe in PYM). They get waylaid by Poe���s white Yeti-monsters instead! Part biting social and racial commentary, part satire/comedy, part adventure/horror story, part academic treatise, PYM is an utterly original novel. One so original, it shows there might just be some hope for big publishing. PYM is brilliant, brazen, fearless, angry, funny, weird, and totally unlike anything else you���ve read.
THE CREEP, John Arcudi, Jonathan Case: Poignant and haunting comic about a detective who suffers from a physical deformity that appears in mid-life.
YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE, YOUR CHILDREN ALL GONE, Stefan Kiesbye:��Gashlycrumb tinies crossed with Chuck Palahniuk/Craig Davidson. A novel of interconnected tales of monstrousness, depravity, desperation in a small, incestuous German town. Clinical though oddly beautiful narrative style. The best stories within the larger story were truly unsettling and creepy. While the shock end of each chapter grew a tad bit repetitious and the lack of distinction between the first person narrators was an issue, for a book about the non-supernatural gruesome/shock (of which there are plenty), the novel was impressively restrained with what it didn’t show and let linger in the imagination. One of the more disturbing books I’ve read in recent memory. This one has stuck with me.
AVAILABLE DARK, Elizabeth Hand:��Punk photographer Cass Neary�� of the brilliant Generation Loss (which you should go read now, right this second, if you haven’t done so already) is back. Neary dives headlong into the violent��underground world of Norwegian black metal when she���s hired to authenticate��macabre photos that a famous��fashion��photographer is selling to a mysterious bidder. Hand���s prose is impeccable, as always. The story is tight and fast. And for you horror types, with all the talk of gruesome murders,��old gods, and the near-apocalyptic landscape of Iceland, you can all but forget the cover calls it a ���crime��� novel.
ESSEX COUNTY, Jeff Lemire:��Essex County is a tiny community in Ontario, Canada (and it���s where The Nobody was set as well). Three main stories deal with family issues that span decades and generations. The first story is about a super-hero obsessed little boy (who wears a mask and cape, and is bullied) raised by a distant and gruff uncle, finds secret companionship with a ���slow��� local. The second is about an older man reliving his estranged relationship with his brother while being forced into a nursing home. The third focuses on the nurse who cares for the old man, how she copes with the secrets of the town���s past and present. Again, like The Nobody, desperation mixes with a quiet dignity, and the stories filled with genuine emotion. Impressive stuff.
ONE DAY THE ICE WILL REVEAL ALL ITS DEAD, Clare Dudman: ��Haunting account of a doomed Greenland exploration by German scientist Alfred Wegener. I love this book.
February 6, 2015
My Boskone schedule: Friday, February 13th to Sunday, February 15th.
Friday the 13th: When Sequels Run Amok
Friday 20:00 – 20:50, Harbor II (Westin)
On Friday, March 13, 2015, the 13th movie in the Friday the 13th franchise will be released. As a genre, horror movies seem prone to extended franchises. (Okay, soFriday the 13th falls far short of the 23 James Bond movies.) Still, on this ominous Friday the 13th, we pause to consider this likewise significant date and the release of the cursed-number movie and wonder when ��� and whether ��� enough is too much for this and other horror movie franchises?
Jack M. Haringa (M)��, Christopher Golden, Paul Tremblay��, Mallory O’Meara
Writing for Teens vs Adults
Friday 21:00 – 21:50, Harbor I (Westin)
With so much crossover, is there a difference anymore? And where does middle-grade fiction fit? Editors and authors discuss.
Carrie Vaughn (M), Melissa Marr, Hillary Monahan, Paul Tremblay, Jordan Hamessley
Great Horror for Teens and Tweens
Saturday 11:00 – 11:50, Burroughs (Westin)
Teen fiction is more than BFFs, family issues, and dystopias. A whole lot more. There is a world of dark and dangerous beings who walk the night and infest the pages of teen and tween horror. Panelists share the books that inspired them to love reading and writing horror. Does adult and teen horror differ? Is there a line that should or shouldn’t be crossed? What new stories are coming out that you should be reading?
John Langan (M), Christopher Golden, Jack M. Haringa, Sarah Langan, Paul G. Tremblay
Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem
Saturday 20:00 – 20:50, Burroughs (Westin)
Dark fiction and suspense are natural bedfellows. What is it about their synergy that works so well? How do you walk the line between mystery and suspense when there are monsters tearing their way through the plot? And how do dark fiction and horror help generate or amplify those nail-biting moments that make readers blaze through a story to see how it ends?
Leigh Perry (M), Dana Cameron, John Langan, Paul Tremblay
Casting Your Lot with Shirley Jackson
Sunday 14:00 – 14:50, Marina 4 (Westin)
From “The Lottery” to “The Haunting of Hill House, ” Shirley Jackson’s work has not only helped to shape the horror genre, but to inspire writers both inside and outside of the genre. Moreover, the New York Times describes Shirley Jackson as having two styles: “She could describe the delights and turmoils of ordinary domestic life with detached hilarity; and she could, with cryptic symbolism, write a tenebrous horror story in the Gothic mold in which abnormal behavior seemed perilously ordinary.” Is this an accurate summation of Jackson? What more is there to her work and her legacy? Does she continue to inspire and shape horror today?
F. Brett Cox (M), Laird Barron, Paul G. Tremblay, Jack M. Haringa
January 13, 2015
Anniversary of the great Molasses flood in the North End of Boston, 1919.
A truly bizarre and awful event in the history of Boston, with a molasses tank collapse that resulted in the death of 21 people. In A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS this event makes an important cameo as it helps to introduce the relationship of the two sisters (Merry and Marjorie) involved in the novel.
See a slideshow of photos here.
Stephen Puleo’s riveting book DARK TIDE is a fascinating account of the tragic event placed within context of the history/climate of the city at a time of epidemic (the flu) and concerns over terrorism by anarchists. Definitely worthy of shelf space in your home.
Dark Tide by Stephen Puleo
January 3, 2015
A Head Full of Ghosts ARE’s
A box of these beauties landed on New Year’s Eve. ARE stands for Advance Reader’s Edition; these are pre-publication copies sent out to reviewers and bookly type persons. Anyway, the timely arrival is hopefully an auspicious sign of things to come for GHOSTS in 2015. (Release day is June 2, 2015)
I kept these beauties up late on their night of arrival so they could see the ball drop. They were tired the next day but are dutifully keeping up with their new year’s resolutions…so far.
