Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 21
October 30, 2018
MAPS AND LEGENDS - 03
Third installment of my commentary on the influence map that I laid out for QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. The whole thing should wrap just in time for the book's launch on 12/11/18. Don't forget to pre-order. Pre-orders save lives!Here's the slice we're looking at today:
Earl Caroll TheatreI found this place on one of my many research trawls and while the architecture itself was striking, what really caught my attention was the neon sign on the exterior. It was a great example of simplicity in design. And when I started working in 3D programs to make neon designs as elements for covers and the like, I re-created the sign, which took a little doing. The way I looked at it finally was like cartooning. The more simple and open the shapes, the more that the viewer has an opportunity to identify with them. Of course, you can take that to extremes of abstraction, sure. But a successful neon design gives you enough to recognize the subject and engage with on that level ahead of taking in the whole piece. Sadly, the building is no longer a theatre today and hasn't been for some time (the last time being when Nickelodeon was using it as a studio theatre in the 90s.) The sign doesn't exist, either (though it is recreated at Universal City Walk.) Sharp-eyed viewers will note that I used it as my model/template in the series of neon portraits that I did of the primary characters of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS a little while ago.Rialto TheatreDon't know much about the Rialto Theatre's heyday. I do know that today the building hosts an Urban Outfitters. And say what you will about the store, at least they kept the beautiful theatre marquee intact and lit. The design reads solidly post-Deco but too early to mine any Googie/Atomic Age veins and is both beautiful and impressive when you approach it while walking along Broadway. If you look close, you can see signs of decay and grime here and there, which make the neon an even more striking contrast, glowing tubes with light so weird that even dirt and rust become maps of alien continents in miniature. The decay is there, even in the beauty, and maybe the two simply can't escape one another.THIEFMichael Mann's THIEF left a big impression on me as a kid. It was the kind of movie that my father would pull me aside to see on cable (that and THE GODFATHER stick out in particular.) He'd point it out as an example of a movie touching on hidden truths, that even the myth of the enigmatic loner between both the cops and the mob wasn't a romantic story, but the tale of a man would end up being forever alone. Every performance in this film is astonishing, with terse dialogue that I would love to say I've mastered. Unfortunately, I lapse into the circular (so did Chandler, so that's okay, I guess.) Even the way the city (Chicago in this case) was visualized, with apartment towers becoming impossibly aloof and distant monoliths and used car lots becoming imbued with a terrible sense of isolation and loneliness, those feelings hit hard and still stick.DaturaThe datura is better known as loco weed (or is that lupine – it's true, both have been given the name) or jimson weed is a beautiful green-purple foliage shrub that grew wild all over the Southern California of my youth (a much less settled place than it is now, sadly.) The plant blooms into elegant and graceful trumpet-shaped white flowers which are beautiful, but don't pick them unless you're wearing gloves. The plant itself carries a potent alkaloid in its leaves. Yes, people have used it to get high and have visions. This is not a good idea. At all. But the whole beautiful/poisonous/visionary relationship is one I've found intriguing, enough so to make several call-outs to it in QUEEN OF NO TOMROROWS. Sometime I might even get around to explaining why they've got the place they do with the characters. Sometime.Distress Neon SetIf memory serves, this is a crop of a picture that I took while walking along Sunset Boulevard, not far from the 101 back in 2015. That was one of the first times I'd gone to LA to do nothing more than see people and take pictures. It's a nice luxury to have, that kind of escape. Not sure this place is even a salon, but I took it as the inspiration for the haircut parlor Distress which is the setting of the first meeting between Cait and anyone from No Tomorrows in the novel. I really dug how this picture encapsulated the entire aesthetic from the angular type to the color choices to the battered industrial setting and even the black enameled security gate. Just a perfect way to pass along information on several valences at once.
Earl Caroll TheatreI found this place on one of my many research trawls and while the architecture itself was striking, what really caught my attention was the neon sign on the exterior. It was a great example of simplicity in design. And when I started working in 3D programs to make neon designs as elements for covers and the like, I re-created the sign, which took a little doing. The way I looked at it finally was like cartooning. The more simple and open the shapes, the more that the viewer has an opportunity to identify with them. Of course, you can take that to extremes of abstraction, sure. But a successful neon design gives you enough to recognize the subject and engage with on that level ahead of taking in the whole piece. Sadly, the building is no longer a theatre today and hasn't been for some time (the last time being when Nickelodeon was using it as a studio theatre in the 90s.) The sign doesn't exist, either (though it is recreated at Universal City Walk.) Sharp-eyed viewers will note that I used it as my model/template in the series of neon portraits that I did of the primary characters of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS a little while ago.Rialto TheatreDon't know much about the Rialto Theatre's heyday. I do know that today the building hosts an Urban Outfitters. And say what you will about the store, at least they kept the beautiful theatre marquee intact and lit. The design reads solidly post-Deco but too early to mine any Googie/Atomic Age veins and is both beautiful and impressive when you approach it while walking along Broadway. If you look close, you can see signs of decay and grime here and there, which make the neon an even more striking contrast, glowing tubes with light so weird that even dirt and rust become maps of alien continents in miniature. The decay is there, even in the beauty, and maybe the two simply can't escape one another.THIEFMichael Mann's THIEF left a big impression on me as a kid. It was the kind of movie that my father would pull me aside to see on cable (that and THE GODFATHER stick out in particular.) He'd point it out as an example of a movie touching on hidden truths, that even the myth of the enigmatic loner between both the cops and the mob wasn't a romantic story, but the tale of a man would end up being forever alone. Every performance in this film is astonishing, with terse dialogue that I would love to say I've mastered. Unfortunately, I lapse into the circular (so did Chandler, so that's okay, I guess.) Even the way the city (Chicago in this case) was visualized, with apartment towers becoming impossibly aloof and distant monoliths and used car lots becoming imbued with a terrible sense of isolation and loneliness, those feelings hit hard and still stick.DaturaThe datura is better known as loco weed (or is that lupine – it's true, both have been given the name) or jimson weed is a beautiful green-purple foliage shrub that grew wild all over the Southern California of my youth (a much less settled place than it is now, sadly.) The plant blooms into elegant and graceful trumpet-shaped white flowers which are beautiful, but don't pick them unless you're wearing gloves. The plant itself carries a potent alkaloid in its leaves. Yes, people have used it to get high and have visions. This is not a good idea. At all. But the whole beautiful/poisonous/visionary relationship is one I've found intriguing, enough so to make several call-outs to it in QUEEN OF NO TOMROROWS. Sometime I might even get around to explaining why they've got the place they do with the characters. Sometime.Distress Neon SetIf memory serves, this is a crop of a picture that I took while walking along Sunset Boulevard, not far from the 101 back in 2015. That was one of the first times I'd gone to LA to do nothing more than see people and take pictures. It's a nice luxury to have, that kind of escape. Not sure this place is even a salon, but I took it as the inspiration for the haircut parlor Distress which is the setting of the first meeting between Cait and anyone from No Tomorrows in the novel. I really dug how this picture encapsulated the entire aesthetic from the angular type to the color choices to the battered industrial setting and even the black enameled security gate. Just a perfect way to pass along information on several valences at once.
October 24, 2018
MAPS AND LEGENDS - 02
Right, part two of the influence map for QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. It's due out on 12/11 and you can still pre-order ahead of the rush here.
Old DressesI should have kept better notes, but I didn’t, sorry. My impression is that this was a dress I found when researching the Rancho era of California history. Short form: after the rise of the Missions (which were still important, but not the focus of life they once were) and before the Anglo takeover of California (remember, it was a Mexican state and then an independent state well before it became annexed by the US) the families and the Ranchos divided up and ruled California and the dons lived like nobility. Mostly because they were. Ariela fancies herself a Queen along those lines (though that title was never used in the period) so she dresses appropriately. I, unfortunately, didn't learn much about dressmaking and fashion for this, simply because I didn't want to get bogged down in details and wanted to keep things impressionistic. However, should the original plan come together and these books get presented as comics, you can bet that would change.Savage RepublicAh, one of my favorite bands of the period. Savage Republic started out as a noise outfit beaded up by Bruce Licher while he was a student at UCLA in the early eighties. They put out a handful of records, both self-released and on the Enigma label, up to something like 1988 or 1989 if memory serves. I never heard them until almost ten years after and immediately became obsessed with them. They combined industrial rhythms (using a dual-drummer/percussionist setup), slamming and primitive guitar and shouted vocals, at least on their earlier works. Their later albums became much more atmospheric, creating imagined geographies, regions and customs. As a designer, Bruce Licher placed an indelible stamp on the visual presence of the band and works to this day as a designer and print-maker in Bishop. As a brief aside, they were one of the bands that solidified my own guitar sound and approach in both The Roswell Incident and Identify 9.Eastern Columbia BuildingProbably most famous from the advertising and a brief scene in PREDATOR 2 and one of my favorite downtown LA landmarks, the Eastern Columbia is a beautiful terra-cotta-tiled tower near Eighth Street and Broadway. It's also a relic of another time, not just in terms of the Art Deco design and ornament, but back when architects weren't afraid of color as part of the spectacle. On sunny days, the blue tiles gleam like polished silver as the building reaches up to its apex. You can look at and refuse to believe that such a thing still persists to this day, but it does. Inconceivable in this day and age, yet here it stands.In Search OfI could write a book on this and maybe perhaps should. Of course the QUEST 4 program in the world of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is based on this, one of my favorite television shows of all time and truly a formative document that hit me at a formative time. Of course I was obsessed with UFOs and Bigfoots and all manner of mysterious goings-ons in the world as a kid. I still am, even if those memories are being tarnished by the conspiracy-theorist-approach of a certain arm of revanchist politics that we're not able to rid ourselves of because they've taken hold and been monetized and politicized in such a way as to be utterly nauseating. Still, the original document is an amazing combination of history and conjecture and wild-eyed speculation, all hosted by Leonard Nimoy who brought a sober worldliness to things, and gave weight to such lofty concepts as galactic panspermia. Not that it was all crazy moonbat subjects. IN SEARCH OF tracked down Nazi war criminals who fled to South America and tracked hurricanes as well as presenting the stories of regular, everyday people who brushed up against the unknown and were changed for the experience. The box set of this show is one of my most prized possessions. You can have it when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.SiouxsieAh, Siouxsie. The ideal. Would I recognize her without the war paint? Probably not. But it's about persona. It's about the howl and caterwaul and playfulness, the complexity and stubborn refusal to be relegated to just one corner of the world in persona and sound. I'm certainly more a fan of hers (and the Banshees) now than I was in the eighties. But I was a weird and introverted kid and Siouxsie's projected confidence if not dominance wasn't something I really got until much older. Do yourself a favor and go put on the track "Israel" right now.
Old DressesI should have kept better notes, but I didn’t, sorry. My impression is that this was a dress I found when researching the Rancho era of California history. Short form: after the rise of the Missions (which were still important, but not the focus of life they once were) and before the Anglo takeover of California (remember, it was a Mexican state and then an independent state well before it became annexed by the US) the families and the Ranchos divided up and ruled California and the dons lived like nobility. Mostly because they were. Ariela fancies herself a Queen along those lines (though that title was never used in the period) so she dresses appropriately. I, unfortunately, didn't learn much about dressmaking and fashion for this, simply because I didn't want to get bogged down in details and wanted to keep things impressionistic. However, should the original plan come together and these books get presented as comics, you can bet that would change.Savage RepublicAh, one of my favorite bands of the period. Savage Republic started out as a noise outfit beaded up by Bruce Licher while he was a student at UCLA in the early eighties. They put out a handful of records, both self-released and on the Enigma label, up to something like 1988 or 1989 if memory serves. I never heard them until almost ten years after and immediately became obsessed with them. They combined industrial rhythms (using a dual-drummer/percussionist setup), slamming and primitive guitar and shouted vocals, at least on their earlier works. Their later albums became much more atmospheric, creating imagined geographies, regions and customs. As a designer, Bruce Licher placed an indelible stamp on the visual presence of the band and works to this day as a designer and print-maker in Bishop. As a brief aside, they were one of the bands that solidified my own guitar sound and approach in both The Roswell Incident and Identify 9.Eastern Columbia BuildingProbably most famous from the advertising and a brief scene in PREDATOR 2 and one of my favorite downtown LA landmarks, the Eastern Columbia is a beautiful terra-cotta-tiled tower near Eighth Street and Broadway. It's also a relic of another time, not just in terms of the Art Deco design and ornament, but back when architects weren't afraid of color as part of the spectacle. On sunny days, the blue tiles gleam like polished silver as the building reaches up to its apex. You can look at and refuse to believe that such a thing still persists to this day, but it does. Inconceivable in this day and age, yet here it stands.In Search OfI could write a book on this and maybe perhaps should. Of course the QUEST 4 program in the world of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is based on this, one of my favorite television shows of all time and truly a formative document that hit me at a formative time. Of course I was obsessed with UFOs and Bigfoots and all manner of mysterious goings-ons in the world as a kid. I still am, even if those memories are being tarnished by the conspiracy-theorist-approach of a certain arm of revanchist politics that we're not able to rid ourselves of because they've taken hold and been monetized and politicized in such a way as to be utterly nauseating. Still, the original document is an amazing combination of history and conjecture and wild-eyed speculation, all hosted by Leonard Nimoy who brought a sober worldliness to things, and gave weight to such lofty concepts as galactic panspermia. Not that it was all crazy moonbat subjects. IN SEARCH OF tracked down Nazi war criminals who fled to South America and tracked hurricanes as well as presenting the stories of regular, everyday people who brushed up against the unknown and were changed for the experience. The box set of this show is one of my most prized possessions. You can have it when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.SiouxsieAh, Siouxsie. The ideal. Would I recognize her without the war paint? Probably not. But it's about persona. It's about the howl and caterwaul and playfulness, the complexity and stubborn refusal to be relegated to just one corner of the world in persona and sound. I'm certainly more a fan of hers (and the Banshees) now than I was in the eighties. But I was a weird and introverted kid and Siouxsie's projected confidence if not dominance wasn't something I really got until much older. Do yourself a favor and go put on the track "Israel" right now.
October 19, 2018
FULL BLEED: DOWN TO THE MEDICINE SHOW
First things first. I have a release date for QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. That being December 11, 2018. Pre-order now or wait until the last minute. Makes no nevermind to me. Now, onto our regularly scheduled content. Which I'm finding less and less satisfaction in writing these days.Digging out after the recent trip to Portland for the HP Lovecraft Film Festival and family stuff and my birthday all collapsing in on last week. Have gotten quite nearly nothing done, but that's about par for the course. Lots of little stuff that doesn't even add up to big stuff. Which is how books get done, really. Just keep tossing pages onto the pile until you can't anymore.But I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about the Film Fest and that experience. It's weird, since it was my first dedicated weird fiction sort of show, this odd genre/mode that I find myself in and making traction in after all these years of writing stuff and chucking it into the Howling Pit. It's not a path I'd have necessarily chosen, nor would I wish it on anyone. It's been long and inefficient and slow. But still, here I am, with a book being published by an actual entity not myself with my name on it and maybe even in bookstores to boot.So thanks first to Scott Gable of Broken Eye Books who asked if I'd write a longer piece for him, and that turned into QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, even if it didn't necessarily start that way. Don't worry, I won't turn this into a process post about how the book happened; that'll be later on when I need an infusion of that sweet, sweet content to get people to come back here. I was also Scott's guest (and featured attraction) at the Broken Eye Books table over at the Film Fest this year, so got to hang with him the whole weekend.Of course, it started rocky, with me marking down the wrong flight time for my reminder. Which meant that I got there and thought that I'd have a little more than an hour, which is still cutting it close. Instead, I looked at the flight time after the attendant mentioned that my bag was a late check in and maybe wouldn't make the destination. Then I swore a lot and ran to the security gate and the flight gate. Second time this year, too. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.I hadn't.But I made the plane, just barely. As did my luggage.Once there, I wandered the streets of downtown Portland for a bit, on my way to Powell's Books. Yeah, that's a dangerous place. I was able to at least keep it to just used books and to things I hadn't seen anywhere else, at that. Mostly research stuff. You never know where your next idea or indelible detail that sounds crazy but actually happened is going to come from, you know?Had a late lunch and got a lift back to my friend's place, and once again, thanks Jeff, for letting me crash and disrupt plans for the next few days.Portland was pleasantly cool after the long Sacramento summer, enough so that I didn't mind the rain that continued on Friday and into Saturday then all over again on Sunday. Really, kind of a nice change of pace, but I can see why that would wear a soul down after a long enough time. And coming back is always a little weird, as I used to visit my aunt there every summer from say 1976 to 1986 or so and while the place hasn't changed so much, it's changed a lot since then. Late wake-up on Friday and breakfast at Pine State Biscuits, which managed to keep me from thinking about food for the whole rest of the day. Make that breakfast count. Oh, and I mailed back about half the books I bought because there was no way I was going to make the weight limit on my flight out if I hadn't. Did a little work at the Helioscope Studio while waiting for the show to start up on Friday night. Planned out the next two long works, with the tentative titles of CINDY SAYS FOLLOW and THAT BLACK RADIANCE (more on those later.) Basic spines got worked out, but I'd been noodling on them for a little while now. Which is a problem with me. I'll think about things for far too long before committing anything to the page, virtual or not.The show itself was being held primarily at the Hollywood Theatre, a lovely old cinema in the Hollywood district of Portland (and walking distance from where I was staying.) I'm not a fan of the white on black lettering/marquee, but these aesthetic issues are minor when comparing not having a theatre like this in the neighborhood versus having one. If I lived there, I'd go to the Hollywood (and the other revival theatre over across town) a whole lot. And yes, the Hollywood was showing MANDY.Starting the day I left town. My luck.Now I mentioned that the show was "primarily" at the theatre. There they were showing the films and had a handful of vendors around the lobby and the like. The official dealer's room was across the street at a senior center. It also served as the primary panel room. Which was both good and bad. Please note that I had, overall, a very positive experience at the show. That said, putting the panel room in the dealer room means that business all but comes to a halt when someone is conducting a panel. Now, we can argue about how much business was lost over that time frame, if people would have been at the dealer room or at the panels were they somewhere else. But social niceties kept voices to a whisper, when words were even spoken at all.But hey, I got to catch a bunch of really cool programming this way. The ladies from Necronomidol (basically Babymetal plus Lovecraft, only done as a more traditional pop presentation) and their manager, as well as Chiaki Konaka talking about Cthulhu mythos fandom in Japan; director Richard Stanley (of the legendary HARDWARE, as well as DUST DEVIL and the 2000s-ish ISLAND OF LOST SOULS adaptation) talking about film and magic and Clark Ashton Smith and his upcoming adaptation of THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE; and Lee Moyer's Bad Cover Art panel were all highlights. Yes, that was a very long sentence, sorry. I'm glad I caught all these, but wouldn't mind if they had a dedicated panel room. Yes, given their resources, that's a tricky issue. You need a venue with multiple screens as well as meeting rooms and the like and unless you take over a convention center, that's tricky stuff.Back to the show. Copies of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS moved pretty well. I guess having the author on hand to sign things helps out. Weird, right? Surprisingly, there was a bit of interest in the books that I'd written which were not specifically mythos-related. Particularly in RAGNAROK SUMMER, which sold out (yeah, I only brought a couple copies, but now I have to make more.) Go figure. And I even managed to fool more than a few convention attendees into thinking that the flyer I'd made for "The Shadow Over Los Angeles" show flyer was a real-deal thing. I'll take that as a win.
Broken Eye's table was pretty busy when things were moving. And there was a definite ebb and flow to the crowd. When there were big features over across the street, things got quiet in the dealer room. Not a shock. And while the crowds were not huge, they were laser-focused on what they were interested in. Granted, I'm not going to convince any HPL purists to pick up QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. I'm not doing what he did. I'm not even trying to. Sure, the work owes a debt to him, but certainly not in style or construction or outlook. And while there were quite a few straight-edge weird fiction fans, there were lots of people who were open to anything in a similar vein, not simply replicating or trying to add to the Lovecraftian canon. I'm sure you all know my thoughts on that particular endeavor. If not, find me at a convention bar and ask me sometime. Short form: I'd rather do something new.One of the amazing things that I saw at the show and kind of regret not buying on the spot (I'll plead limited baggage room for one) was PROBLEM GLYPHS by Eliza Gauger (and anonymous glyph requesters). It's easier for you to go check out the website than it is for me to explain it other than visualization of avenues of attack in order to take back one's life. It's a gorgeous book, and the bold gold emboss on black fabric alone is a raid-boss-level design move. That one's going on the Christmas list for sure. All the books from Strix Publishing looked beautifully designed and constructed. Meant to get in touch with them to ask about their printer and the like, should I ever go ahead on some higher-end presentations of my own work sometime.The Word Horde crew was there as well, but I had to pull back simply because I'm swamped in new fiction as it is (and really should be reading for my new project instead.) Oh, I guess I can informally talk about that, but I'm not going to give out a whole lot of details. 
From Paul Koudounaris' HEAVENLY BODIES.The project name is SOLARCHY as of now. It may change, mostly because even I don't know how to pronounce it consistently in speech. It writes out just fine. The picture above? That's kind of the whole story in a single image, so go ahead and use that as a meditation target for your next session.SOLARCHY is a more traditional science fiction project, but with a lot of weird fictional elements and setting. It's an unnamed time from now, far-ish future, at least a millennium off at a guess. It's about a human society and their path towards re-unifying a scattered culture spread across the stars. Mostly it's about the disgraced court musician Merinna and the equally-disgraced Consolar Althule. It all spun out of a story that I'd contributed to an anthology in the last couple years, but I couldn't wrestle it down to the length they needed. So I'm instead going bigger. I'm fine with that. I don't have a press date or anything much else to say about that, other than I'm researching it and not what I thought I would be right about now. Having to be a little more heavily structured than I have been in the past and I'm kinda curious as to how that's going to play out.Honestly, a lot of the rest of a show is kind of a blur. You can't catch it all unless you're there. But I do know that I'll be planning on going back next year.
October 17, 2018
MAPS AND LEGENDS - 01
Okay, well that took longer than I thought, but we're finally getting into analyzing that influence map I put up a couple weeks ago, over here. Note that it says "one of six" and that's a filthy lie. I'm spreading it out over eight weeks or so.Which, coincidentally, is about how far out we are from the release of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. Remember you can still pre-order direct from the publisher right here. You'll also be able to get it from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but if you order it from there, you need to promise to leave an honest review. They help a lot. Probably too much, but this is the algorithmically-derived world in which we live now.On to the influence map. I'll be taking it one vertical row at a time, starting from the left. I'll reproduce it here.
Bill WrayYou might know Bill Wray as a comics artist, or perhaps as one of the artists who worked on both REN AND STIMPY and SAMURAI JACK. He's also a fine artist (no matter what you think of the distinction between "fine art" and anything else), specializing in landscapes around Southern California. His paintings make the ordinary extraordinary, even such mundane subjects as urban parking lots or refineries. That's one of the things that I've always aimed for in my writing, but pushed particularly hard in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, making the familiar into something like the fantastic. Sure, that's an old trick, as old as writing itself. But it seems to me that lots of writers try to ground in reality to the point where getting things to really fly becomes difficult.GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHTI first caught this film on Netflix a few years ago, not knowing exactly what to expect. And when I watched it, I instead found that someone had been taking pictures inside my brain. Okay, not exactly, but in terms of atmosphere and setting? Sure. Talk about making the mundane into the strange and weird. The streets and railroad pass-throughs of humble Bakersfield instead evoke cities half a world away. And sure, the cast has a lot to do with that, but the camera has even more to do with it. Huge spreading shadows of luminous blacks follow the titular girl as she moves through the night, not fearing it at all (and no surprise as to the reason for it.) Old BooksThat's not any particular old book, just something I came across and probably snagged for the paper texture to use in a later project. Let's not overlook the existential pleasures of old books, though. The smell and texture, the weight when you set them down on the table before you. Granted, these are pleasures borne of privilege or at the very least age (as I'm old enough to have gone to college in a time where there were still paper index cards and the digital card catalog was still a treacherous novelty) but it's still easy enough to experience this simply getting to a library or used bookstore (or combination video game/record/bookstore, which is a thing I see more and more of all the time now. Being that Cait, the main character of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is a forger of books, she first has to appreciate them. Hopefully some of that sense got conveyed, though I probably underwrote that aspect of things. Which is in keeping, as I tend to underwrite just about everything.Neon BridalCan't remember the name of the store, but it sits along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles (as do a number of the photos I took in this photoset.) I really dug the unearthly glow of the neon on dresses and glittering stones in the store window. Part of that whole making the familiar unfamiliar and trying to give it just a little bit of power from an unexpected source. It helps that Ariela, the Queen mentioned in the title of the book is very into dressing the role, though she wouldn't be caught dead in white.1946 MercuryBefitting one of her station, the Queen has one sweet ride. In the case of the book, it's a blood-red Mercury, kept in original condition with only minor customization (that I really didn't dwell on in the pages of the book.) Still, LA is the kind of place where you can see these beauties cruising down the street in the middle of the week. Gotta present. It's also a car that once got Ariela and Alondra into a lot of trouble, but that's a story for another time.
Bill WrayYou might know Bill Wray as a comics artist, or perhaps as one of the artists who worked on both REN AND STIMPY and SAMURAI JACK. He's also a fine artist (no matter what you think of the distinction between "fine art" and anything else), specializing in landscapes around Southern California. His paintings make the ordinary extraordinary, even such mundane subjects as urban parking lots or refineries. That's one of the things that I've always aimed for in my writing, but pushed particularly hard in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, making the familiar into something like the fantastic. Sure, that's an old trick, as old as writing itself. But it seems to me that lots of writers try to ground in reality to the point where getting things to really fly becomes difficult.GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHTI first caught this film on Netflix a few years ago, not knowing exactly what to expect. And when I watched it, I instead found that someone had been taking pictures inside my brain. Okay, not exactly, but in terms of atmosphere and setting? Sure. Talk about making the mundane into the strange and weird. The streets and railroad pass-throughs of humble Bakersfield instead evoke cities half a world away. And sure, the cast has a lot to do with that, but the camera has even more to do with it. Huge spreading shadows of luminous blacks follow the titular girl as she moves through the night, not fearing it at all (and no surprise as to the reason for it.) Old BooksThat's not any particular old book, just something I came across and probably snagged for the paper texture to use in a later project. Let's not overlook the existential pleasures of old books, though. The smell and texture, the weight when you set them down on the table before you. Granted, these are pleasures borne of privilege or at the very least age (as I'm old enough to have gone to college in a time where there were still paper index cards and the digital card catalog was still a treacherous novelty) but it's still easy enough to experience this simply getting to a library or used bookstore (or combination video game/record/bookstore, which is a thing I see more and more of all the time now. Being that Cait, the main character of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is a forger of books, she first has to appreciate them. Hopefully some of that sense got conveyed, though I probably underwrote that aspect of things. Which is in keeping, as I tend to underwrite just about everything.Neon BridalCan't remember the name of the store, but it sits along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles (as do a number of the photos I took in this photoset.) I really dug the unearthly glow of the neon on dresses and glittering stones in the store window. Part of that whole making the familiar unfamiliar and trying to give it just a little bit of power from an unexpected source. It helps that Ariela, the Queen mentioned in the title of the book is very into dressing the role, though she wouldn't be caught dead in white.1946 MercuryBefitting one of her station, the Queen has one sweet ride. In the case of the book, it's a blood-red Mercury, kept in original condition with only minor customization (that I really didn't dwell on in the pages of the book.) Still, LA is the kind of place where you can see these beauties cruising down the street in the middle of the week. Gotta present. It's also a car that once got Ariela and Alondra into a lot of trouble, but that's a story for another time.
September 19, 2018
FULL BLEED: HALF WAY UP, HALF WAY DOWN
Yeah, just pulling this title from "Only Fire" by You Drive. Giving it a listen this afternoon. Heck, you can too. That's the beauty of Bandcamp.https://youdrive.bandcamp.com/album/you-driveRecommended for fans of coldwave and maybe oh, I don't know, the Chromatics. Yep, that's me. Music influencer and thought leader. Kidding. I got called an influencer by a hopeful vendor at WorldCon and I wanted to march straight back to my hotel room and scream into a pillow for ten minutes, as I'd obviously failed in my attempts *not* to become such a thing. But hey, maybe getting paid thousands of dollars to endorse products while trading in anything like integrity is the way of the future.Again, just kidding. It's the way of the present.In convention travel news, I'll be attending the HP Lovecraft Film Festival/Cthulhu Con in Portland in the coming weeks. Never been to one of these, much less a Lovecraft/Cthulhu specific convention, so I'm interested to see what kind of crowds come out to these. As you've probably guessed, I'm not a "traditional" HPL fan. I mean, I acknowledge his importance to fantasy and horror writing, as well as science fiction (which he spent an awful lot of time writing and doesn't get a lot of credit for.) But I'm not reverential. Nor am I eager to tear him down just for the fact that he's there.It's not like QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is a straight-up weird horror/mythos book, either. While, there's certainly elements that are going to be comfortably familiar to weird horror readers, that's not all there by a long shot. But mixing in a second genre, in this case the crime novel, always upsets people who just want the one thing. This is what my daughter would call a power-move. She'd call it that, but it's not really right. See, the last time I did this sort of thing, it was a weird western series called STRANGEWAYS (v.1 - cowboys versus werewolves, v. 2 - cowboys versus vampires) which you can order your very own copies of right here. But selling it as one or the other thing, horror or western, just made people confused. Why not have it just be the one thing? Because I wanted to reach for something else is why. And boy did I get the sales to show it. Actually, I have no place to complain. It sold about as well as any original graphic novel by a self-publisher in the direct market can expect to. Not well, not horrible. Just that I printed too many.So yeah, split genres. 'Cause that's what I want to read. Something that isn't hidebound.So look for me if you're in Portland in a couple weeks. I'll make sure you get something nice for your troubles.What else is going on? Working out the plotting for CINDY SAYS, which is a much longer and more substantial work than even QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS (which itself is pretty short for a novel). So that's a lot of juggling and making sure there's enough going on to justify it even being there. Going to try something new with my writing process for this one, as well. I mean, QONT was short enough that I could keep most everything in my head at once, at least when I settled what it was. And with short stories, that's dead easy. Longer works require a lot more juggling.I'll also be hitting the promotional trail for QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS once I know the final street date for the book. Never done this much publicity (such as it is) for a book before so I'm sure it'll be interesting.Forgot to add here that I'll be writing a piece for The Means at Hand, a new site that talks pretty intelligently about crime fiction, as sprawling a subject as that is. Surprising no one, I'll be talking about magic as crime in, specifically, QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, but I might cast a bit of a wider net than that. My buddy Costa runs the site so I'm hoping he'll go easy on my normal parade of half-baked thinking and malapropisms.Also working out the details on something with the project name SOLARCHY. I hope I can announce something more than that maybe after the show.Other than that, it's the same 'ol, same 'ol. Watching TWILIGHT ZONE while doing laps on the elliptical, getting in grilling while it's still grilling weather (aw, who am I kidding? It's always grilling weather up here), trying to decide if I want to keep playing WORLD OF WARCRAFT or not. But I've been trying to answer that question for several years now.
MAPS AND LEGENDS - QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS (one of six)
Haven't done one of these in a long time, probably because I haven't written anything much longer than a short story over that period.What you see below is, well, you'll see it.
You can call it a mood board or influence map or any number of things. It's between aspirational and actual, I'll grant you. Just like any time you ask a writer who their influences are, you're going to get a list of favorite things (which may or may not show up as influences on their work.) This is a combination of a large number of pieces, as you can see (forty of them to be exact.) Now, are these all things that show up directly in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS? Sorta. Certainly the vibe of these things was what I was shooting for. Whether or not they actually came out is another thing, hence the aspirational versus actual. So click and expand, enjoy the full size image and I'll be talking about each of these images in turn. Probably horizontal row by row.Now if you want to guess about these things, note that ten of them are things I either designed or photographed myself, so you're not going to see them anywhere else. Some of these hints are pretty oblique as well, and some were chosen not because of an exact moment in the book, but because of the texture. (For instance, theres no William Wray paintings (as seen in the top left corner), but his landscapes really capture some of the atmosphere that I myself was fumbling to evoke in the book. I hope to get to tackling this first row this week, but there's other stuff to deal with first.Happy hunting.Oh, and this should be mostly spoiler free, so don't be afraid of following along. It's all in good fun.
You can call it a mood board or influence map or any number of things. It's between aspirational and actual, I'll grant you. Just like any time you ask a writer who their influences are, you're going to get a list of favorite things (which may or may not show up as influences on their work.) This is a combination of a large number of pieces, as you can see (forty of them to be exact.) Now, are these all things that show up directly in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS? Sorta. Certainly the vibe of these things was what I was shooting for. Whether or not they actually came out is another thing, hence the aspirational versus actual. So click and expand, enjoy the full size image and I'll be talking about each of these images in turn. Probably horizontal row by row.Now if you want to guess about these things, note that ten of them are things I either designed or photographed myself, so you're not going to see them anywhere else. Some of these hints are pretty oblique as well, and some were chosen not because of an exact moment in the book, but because of the texture. (For instance, theres no William Wray paintings (as seen in the top left corner), but his landscapes really capture some of the atmosphere that I myself was fumbling to evoke in the book. I hope to get to tackling this first row this week, but there's other stuff to deal with first.Happy hunting.Oh, and this should be mostly spoiler free, so don't be afraid of following along. It's all in good fun.
September 11, 2018
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: WHAT DID I TEACH YOU?
Originally posted in June of 2010. My love for this film has only grown since then. Reposting here as folks were talking the film up and I realized the version on my old site has been down for some time.
Oh, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, my love for you, it is not a healthy thing. Though the callous among my critics may accuse me of simple nostalgia, and in truth there is nostalgia there, that is not the whole story. That is not the whole of my love for you, o Manhattan island turned over to ruthless convicts and grimy ne’er do wells.The nostalgia trip works on some flicks, but ESCAPE shrugs that right off of its shining black zippers at the collarbone shirt. If anything, ESCAPE is just as visually arresting as it was some thirty years ago, where the US was staggering out of the seventies and into the eighties with a hangover and the bill collector screaming on the phone that you’re not only behind in the rent but that it’s all coming due right now. In that, it shares a great deal with the spate of near-future dystopias that populated sci-fi entertainment for the decade before and after. Whereas BLADE RUNNER became the visual template for cyberpunk and everything else, both lush and rich with decadence gone amok to decay, ESCAPE is starker, leaner, meaner. It’s the Stooges’ FUN HOUSE compared to SGT. PEPPER’S. No gentle, candy colored psychedelia, but all black leather and sweat and amphetamines. And mean.ESCAPE is mean to its core, nihilistic and subversive from beginning to end. It’s where the totalitarian state puts all of its refuse, all the square pegs who refused to have their corners filed off. ESCAPE was black helicopters and faceless riot cops with M-16s long before that was the fashion for the future America, before these paranoid fantasies were run on the six o’clock news on a nightly basis. Before the MOVE bombing and Ruby Ridge and Waco and all those other countercultural Alamos, ESCAPE tossed us into a concrete holding cell and burned our eyes with dazzling anamorphic lens flares, painful and prismatic. There’s no happy smiley-face fascism, so all you Banksys need not apply. No room for you. The only tagging here is empty black lines without either art or soul, fueled by directionless aggression and hate.I love you, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. I love the trash and the broken windows at your ground floors. I love how the CHUDs come out at night, moving aside manhole covers with scrapes like gravestones on the wet asphalt. I love how the inmates, the baddest of the bad and hardest of the hard, all give the Crazies a wide berth and gives the viewer some nice I AM LEGEND/NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD pursuit and evasion thrills. Where lesser directors would (and probably have) spent an entire movie building up a threat like these guys, John Carpenter just throws them out there and just as fast leaves them on the boulevard, shielding themselves from an alley-full of molotovs.I love your hippie radicals spouting nonsense right out of an SLA manifesto as they prepare to crash a jet, and not just any jet, but Air Force One, into the island. And yes, that’s an especially unsettling moment anytime after 2001, but even then, even twenty years before then, this is the kind of HOLY SHIT hook that producers work their entire lives for. But then, who’d have imagined that seeing the World Trade Center on the future Manhattan skyline would’ve ever marked an image as either history, fiction, or fervent wish fulfillment? Not us in the eighties, that’s for certain. Even shrouded in wood smoke and dirt and stenches fouler than that, we’re given the skyline as a monument, as spectacle. Though considered more closely, it’s a horrifying spectacle. It was easier for society to walk away from this place, this city, and throw it to the wolves, than to deal with the sicknesses that gnawed at it.Like I said, subversive. Subversive as any big-budget action movie that you care to name. Just watch the trailer, at about :40 in, you get to see what a CONTROL SITUATION looks like.Man, if that isn’t a quietly insouciant statement on authority structures, I don’t know what is. But that’s not all. Snake Plissken’s career, ex-war-hero and now ex-bank-robber says quite a lot too. He’s the scion of the state gone bad, reflecting the state’s corruption and ultimately made to do its dirty work. Or at least, so the state thinks.The President is an ineffectual nebbish, valuable not because of the authority he wields but because he holds vital information. He’s the lamb that others die for, but ultimately (nearly) valueless, at least until he gets a machine gun in his hand and droolingly, falteringly mows down his tormentor, the real power, The Duke of New York. In fact, the first time the audience (thinks) that they see the President inside the prison of Manhattan, he’s being held down, tied to a squalid sink in a reeking basement and being beaten methodically, mechanically. Later, he’s used for target practice. At the end, he goes from near-psychotic revenge-killer to vapid face of the nation, unable to answer the seriousness of the events surrounding him. The Duke (played by Isaac Hayes, rest his soul) knows exactly what and why he’s doing. But then, so does Plissken and all the other men (and women) of action.I love you, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, for giving Lee Van Cleef another great vehicle to show off his smoldering bad-assedness. He plays Col. Bob Hauk of the US Police Force, and you can tell he got his job by killing a long line of his predecessors. Again, critics will say that “he’s just playing Lee Van Cleef” but that’s exactly what a great character actor does. So stop whining. Even so, even knowing that Hauk has everything planned out and is going to go to any length to get his way, you know that Plissken, the outsider, is going to be a half-step ahead when it matters most. Hauk is a cop who gets driven to work in a stretch limo with wing antenna (which in 1981 meant mobile phone in the car and therefore total and consummate badass), looking rested and ready, like the phantom Nixon who never came back. His entrance out of that limo is outstanding in a movie full of great entrances.Which brings me to another thing that I love. The soundtrack. ESCAPE, like most of Carpenter’s other movies, featured a music track that he himself worked on. I’m not going to say that he’s the greatest composer ever, but he could do atmosphere. And with ESCAPE, he really hit a sweet spot that was somewhere between Kraftwerk and a kind of minimal biker-bar jukebox, all filtered through the raft of influences that was bubbling under the mainstream in 1980. It’s not fancy music by any stretch. It offers no crazed flourishes like Vangelis’ BLADE RUNNER virtuosity. Again, it’s lean and mean, fitting the look of the film perfectly.ESCAPE, I love your Ernest Borgnine as Cabby, sitting in the audience for deranged all-male revue with an equally deranged grin on his face as the tutu-clad convicts sing an off-key ode to the city. I love how he listens to the theme from AMERICAN BANDSTAND on a collection of grimy cassettes in his ironclad taxicab, the last one in the city, so far as I could tell. It’s like a ghost of the Manhattan that was, chunky 50s lines, squat and square, not unlike Borgnine himself. And somehow, Cabbie seems to have forgotten that he’s in one of the most dangerous places on earth, instead dispensing advice like “You really shouldn’t be out in this neighborhood at night, this is a bad neighborhood” while tossing flaming gasoline at aforementioned CHUDs, all with a smile on his face.Now if I’m blatantly nostalgic about something, it’s my love for the titles and graphics used in ESCAPE. There’s nothing that a little Fritz Quadrata and chunky square sans-serif brutalist type can’t fix. Yes, these are the information displays of the future as imagined in the past, so they end up saying a lot about the time they were designed, right? Yes, that’s pure 80s on that black backdrop with the hard-edged single-color graphics, and I love it.I love the nightmare future that isn’t caused by nuclear war or alien annihilation or ecological devastation, but by simple abandonment or careful social planning, depending on how you look at things. Aircraft fuselages in pieces, burning on the streets picked over by human scavengers. Spy technology that the inmates can’t use so they destroy it, because it’s the only thing they know how to do. Oil drills and pumps in the middle of the NY Public Library, valuing practical energy over esoteric knowledge. Family cars with crossed rebar instead of windows. A dazzling array of glasses on thugs’ faces, all of them broken or incomplete. The street using things, but not high-tech dressed up in grit and grime, instead feeling like these things were actually scrounged and cobbled together. The only glamour comes in on the totalitarian police side of things. They get the sexy gear, the shiny plastic, the oiled weapons. The cons? They eat that stuff for lunch.In terms of story, what isn’t there to love about ESCAPE? It manipulates simple absolutes. The worst place in the world. The shining beacon of freedom. The good guy gone bad. A ticking clock that won’t be denied. And inside it all, the secret that will keep the world in peace instead of burning in nuclear fire. And what happens to that secret? The “good guy” chucks it, knowing that the society he’d just saved (and his friends had paid for with their lives) was unsalvageable, irredeemable. Carpenter would revisit this point in ESCAPE FROM LOS ANGELES (which I haven’t seen in ages, but never felt like it had earned the kind of admiration that ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is given.) Revisit, but not surpass. I love ESCAPE because it’s a no-holds-barred (particularly not the nail-studded club to the back of the head) action movie with a brain and a stone-cold heart that doesn’t back down from the edge that it’s marched you out to.The greatest city in the United States is turned into a dumping ground for the worst of the worst. The President is being held hostage by a man who would release this torrent of human refuse back into the world. Our only hope for survival comes from a man who doesn’t give a damn until his life is dragged out on the line. The future is so dark that your shades are useless. Every cop in the US Police Force won’t make a difference, no matter how many helicopters and how many missiles they fire. It all comes down to two men fighting in the ring, as barbaric as barbaric gets.They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Luckily, they don’t have to. We already have an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And I love it. If I could, I’d drive it out in a Cadillac and show that it was right about humanity, about the future. I’d give it a tour of that part of LA, you know, south of downtown where cars drive along Townsend and pretend that there aren’t tents to either side of the road. I’d take it to the aircraft graveyards outside Pima. I’d give it photostreams of cities going feral and the walls being built to encyst them and keep the rest of the world clean. We’d dine the last bluefin wrenched out of the Pacific and I’d play XTRMNTR at top volume with the top down past the Carson Gas Works and breathe in the byproducts and the smog and the smell of algae baking in the riverbed.***
Oh, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, my love for you, it is not a healthy thing. Though the callous among my critics may accuse me of simple nostalgia, and in truth there is nostalgia there, that is not the whole story. That is not the whole of my love for you, o Manhattan island turned over to ruthless convicts and grimy ne’er do wells.The nostalgia trip works on some flicks, but ESCAPE shrugs that right off of its shining black zippers at the collarbone shirt. If anything, ESCAPE is just as visually arresting as it was some thirty years ago, where the US was staggering out of the seventies and into the eighties with a hangover and the bill collector screaming on the phone that you’re not only behind in the rent but that it’s all coming due right now. In that, it shares a great deal with the spate of near-future dystopias that populated sci-fi entertainment for the decade before and after. Whereas BLADE RUNNER became the visual template for cyberpunk and everything else, both lush and rich with decadence gone amok to decay, ESCAPE is starker, leaner, meaner. It’s the Stooges’ FUN HOUSE compared to SGT. PEPPER’S. No gentle, candy colored psychedelia, but all black leather and sweat and amphetamines. And mean.ESCAPE is mean to its core, nihilistic and subversive from beginning to end. It’s where the totalitarian state puts all of its refuse, all the square pegs who refused to have their corners filed off. ESCAPE was black helicopters and faceless riot cops with M-16s long before that was the fashion for the future America, before these paranoid fantasies were run on the six o’clock news on a nightly basis. Before the MOVE bombing and Ruby Ridge and Waco and all those other countercultural Alamos, ESCAPE tossed us into a concrete holding cell and burned our eyes with dazzling anamorphic lens flares, painful and prismatic. There’s no happy smiley-face fascism, so all you Banksys need not apply. No room for you. The only tagging here is empty black lines without either art or soul, fueled by directionless aggression and hate.I love you, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. I love the trash and the broken windows at your ground floors. I love how the CHUDs come out at night, moving aside manhole covers with scrapes like gravestones on the wet asphalt. I love how the inmates, the baddest of the bad and hardest of the hard, all give the Crazies a wide berth and gives the viewer some nice I AM LEGEND/NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD pursuit and evasion thrills. Where lesser directors would (and probably have) spent an entire movie building up a threat like these guys, John Carpenter just throws them out there and just as fast leaves them on the boulevard, shielding themselves from an alley-full of molotovs.I love your hippie radicals spouting nonsense right out of an SLA manifesto as they prepare to crash a jet, and not just any jet, but Air Force One, into the island. And yes, that’s an especially unsettling moment anytime after 2001, but even then, even twenty years before then, this is the kind of HOLY SHIT hook that producers work their entire lives for. But then, who’d have imagined that seeing the World Trade Center on the future Manhattan skyline would’ve ever marked an image as either history, fiction, or fervent wish fulfillment? Not us in the eighties, that’s for certain. Even shrouded in wood smoke and dirt and stenches fouler than that, we’re given the skyline as a monument, as spectacle. Though considered more closely, it’s a horrifying spectacle. It was easier for society to walk away from this place, this city, and throw it to the wolves, than to deal with the sicknesses that gnawed at it.Like I said, subversive. Subversive as any big-budget action movie that you care to name. Just watch the trailer, at about :40 in, you get to see what a CONTROL SITUATION looks like.Man, if that isn’t a quietly insouciant statement on authority structures, I don’t know what is. But that’s not all. Snake Plissken’s career, ex-war-hero and now ex-bank-robber says quite a lot too. He’s the scion of the state gone bad, reflecting the state’s corruption and ultimately made to do its dirty work. Or at least, so the state thinks.The President is an ineffectual nebbish, valuable not because of the authority he wields but because he holds vital information. He’s the lamb that others die for, but ultimately (nearly) valueless, at least until he gets a machine gun in his hand and droolingly, falteringly mows down his tormentor, the real power, The Duke of New York. In fact, the first time the audience (thinks) that they see the President inside the prison of Manhattan, he’s being held down, tied to a squalid sink in a reeking basement and being beaten methodically, mechanically. Later, he’s used for target practice. At the end, he goes from near-psychotic revenge-killer to vapid face of the nation, unable to answer the seriousness of the events surrounding him. The Duke (played by Isaac Hayes, rest his soul) knows exactly what and why he’s doing. But then, so does Plissken and all the other men (and women) of action.I love you, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, for giving Lee Van Cleef another great vehicle to show off his smoldering bad-assedness. He plays Col. Bob Hauk of the US Police Force, and you can tell he got his job by killing a long line of his predecessors. Again, critics will say that “he’s just playing Lee Van Cleef” but that’s exactly what a great character actor does. So stop whining. Even so, even knowing that Hauk has everything planned out and is going to go to any length to get his way, you know that Plissken, the outsider, is going to be a half-step ahead when it matters most. Hauk is a cop who gets driven to work in a stretch limo with wing antenna (which in 1981 meant mobile phone in the car and therefore total and consummate badass), looking rested and ready, like the phantom Nixon who never came back. His entrance out of that limo is outstanding in a movie full of great entrances.Which brings me to another thing that I love. The soundtrack. ESCAPE, like most of Carpenter’s other movies, featured a music track that he himself worked on. I’m not going to say that he’s the greatest composer ever, but he could do atmosphere. And with ESCAPE, he really hit a sweet spot that was somewhere between Kraftwerk and a kind of minimal biker-bar jukebox, all filtered through the raft of influences that was bubbling under the mainstream in 1980. It’s not fancy music by any stretch. It offers no crazed flourishes like Vangelis’ BLADE RUNNER virtuosity. Again, it’s lean and mean, fitting the look of the film perfectly.ESCAPE, I love your Ernest Borgnine as Cabby, sitting in the audience for deranged all-male revue with an equally deranged grin on his face as the tutu-clad convicts sing an off-key ode to the city. I love how he listens to the theme from AMERICAN BANDSTAND on a collection of grimy cassettes in his ironclad taxicab, the last one in the city, so far as I could tell. It’s like a ghost of the Manhattan that was, chunky 50s lines, squat and square, not unlike Borgnine himself. And somehow, Cabbie seems to have forgotten that he’s in one of the most dangerous places on earth, instead dispensing advice like “You really shouldn’t be out in this neighborhood at night, this is a bad neighborhood” while tossing flaming gasoline at aforementioned CHUDs, all with a smile on his face.Now if I’m blatantly nostalgic about something, it’s my love for the titles and graphics used in ESCAPE. There’s nothing that a little Fritz Quadrata and chunky square sans-serif brutalist type can’t fix. Yes, these are the information displays of the future as imagined in the past, so they end up saying a lot about the time they were designed, right? Yes, that’s pure 80s on that black backdrop with the hard-edged single-color graphics, and I love it.I love the nightmare future that isn’t caused by nuclear war or alien annihilation or ecological devastation, but by simple abandonment or careful social planning, depending on how you look at things. Aircraft fuselages in pieces, burning on the streets picked over by human scavengers. Spy technology that the inmates can’t use so they destroy it, because it’s the only thing they know how to do. Oil drills and pumps in the middle of the NY Public Library, valuing practical energy over esoteric knowledge. Family cars with crossed rebar instead of windows. A dazzling array of glasses on thugs’ faces, all of them broken or incomplete. The street using things, but not high-tech dressed up in grit and grime, instead feeling like these things were actually scrounged and cobbled together. The only glamour comes in on the totalitarian police side of things. They get the sexy gear, the shiny plastic, the oiled weapons. The cons? They eat that stuff for lunch.In terms of story, what isn’t there to love about ESCAPE? It manipulates simple absolutes. The worst place in the world. The shining beacon of freedom. The good guy gone bad. A ticking clock that won’t be denied. And inside it all, the secret that will keep the world in peace instead of burning in nuclear fire. And what happens to that secret? The “good guy” chucks it, knowing that the society he’d just saved (and his friends had paid for with their lives) was unsalvageable, irredeemable. Carpenter would revisit this point in ESCAPE FROM LOS ANGELES (which I haven’t seen in ages, but never felt like it had earned the kind of admiration that ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is given.) Revisit, but not surpass. I love ESCAPE because it’s a no-holds-barred (particularly not the nail-studded club to the back of the head) action movie with a brain and a stone-cold heart that doesn’t back down from the edge that it’s marched you out to.The greatest city in the United States is turned into a dumping ground for the worst of the worst. The President is being held hostage by a man who would release this torrent of human refuse back into the world. Our only hope for survival comes from a man who doesn’t give a damn until his life is dragged out on the line. The future is so dark that your shades are useless. Every cop in the US Police Force won’t make a difference, no matter how many helicopters and how many missiles they fire. It all comes down to two men fighting in the ring, as barbaric as barbaric gets.They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Luckily, they don’t have to. We already have an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And I love it. If I could, I’d drive it out in a Cadillac and show that it was right about humanity, about the future. I’d give it a tour of that part of LA, you know, south of downtown where cars drive along Townsend and pretend that there aren’t tents to either side of the road. I’d take it to the aircraft graveyards outside Pima. I’d give it photostreams of cities going feral and the walls being built to encyst them and keep the rest of the world clean. We’d dine the last bluefin wrenched out of the Pacific and I’d play XTRMNTR at top volume with the top down past the Carson Gas Works and breathe in the byproducts and the smog and the smell of algae baking in the riverbed.***
September 10, 2018
FULL BLEED: STAND UNTIL ACHING
Big week last week. Travelled up to the Rose City Comic show, actually worked it this year. Usually I'm up to just get myself out of the house and see people who I ordinarily only see as strings of text scrolling past so fast that you can hear it dopplering into the distance.Of course, I was there to help promote and sell QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, which was available in print for the first time there. Once again, let me pause to thank Scott Gable for not only thinking I could deliver a book worth supporting, but putting the needed cleanup work into things. And to Gabriel Hardman for his arresting cover.Spent most of my time at the show over at the Broken Eye Books booth (shared with Matthew Youngmark who I really hate because he came up with the easiest book in the world to pitch and I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it first. But that's okay, it's not a book I could have written and instead he did. Seriously THE "WONDERFUL" WIZARD OF FUTHERMUCKING OZ is pretty genius.)The only downside to this, despite the company, was a total lack of space to set out the goddamn beautiful promotional cards I'd made up, or to run the equally goddamn beautiful slide presentation I was going to run as an attractor. Nevermind that even when I did, not a single person paused to look at it. Probably because I was holding the iPad to my chest like some kind of deranged Teletubbie and I really should have thought things through better, I know.Hell, there wasn’t even room to have a third chair back there. Which had me on my feet on concrete for the vast majority of the show. I'm gonna be feeling that one for a bit. Luckily, I've been schooled in how to upgrade my footwear (thanks Ramon and Justin) so I'm going to change things up for the next show. Which looks like the HPL Film Festival in…Portland, in a couple three weeks. I should have just set up temporary residency there. I mean, my family doesn't need me holding things together or anything.Got a fair amount of interest in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, though I still need to refine the face-to-face pitch a bit. I finally got it down to "Crime/Weird horror, set in 1980s LA. Purple-haired (post) punk Cait MacReady, after forging occult texts for years, decides to write one of her own. Before she's even finished with the book, people start dying in pursuit of it." Not bad. I just didn't get that much chance to hand-sell it 'cause that was Scott's job as the publisher and he's got a whole bunch of other books to move. Anyways, I'll be ready when I'm flying solo.Which is a lot better than "An examination of the creative process as an outsider and manifestation of transaction-asynchronous faith events as well as a study of an under-examined time in popular culture between punk rock and hair metal mixed in with Lynchian horror." I'll save that for the college circuit when I hit it like the Chixculub meteor.Also, I'm a little bummed that nobody seems have to gotten my typographic jokes (yes, I lobbied hard for Albertus in the interior titling.) Oh well, there's still time. QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS officially goes on sale sometime in December (but pre-orders will go out considerably earlier). The date isn't set yet. I'll say the 16th, but also reserve the right to change it up.So yeah, moved some copies, and more surprisingly, sold a lot of books to people who didn't even know me. That's some crazy talk, I know. But let's have a shout-out to Joe Keatinge and Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein, who are friends and went out of their way to stop by and snag a copy.And yes, to everyone who asked, I'm working on a follow-on, though it's not been officially requested yet. I expect it will throw a lot of people, because it's pretty far from an actual sequel, though I guarantee it will include at least the three major characters from QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, but maybe not in the way that you'd think.Didn’t to walk around the show as much as I'd have liked, but I got to say hello to friends and hang out with the Helioscope Studio crew, who've always been super-great to me even though I'm not an actual comics artist. Picked up the newest volume of KAIJUMAX and a couple of Marvel Treasury Editions (AVENGERS for a buddy of mine and some Kirby THOR action – looking forward to digging into those as time allows.)Otherwise, enjoyed some bacon and peach pizza from Hot Lips (and even snuck in some DEMOLITION MAN and IRON MAN pinball action.) Had some pretty great carnitas Michoacán right by the Columbia river in Vancouver. Even got some Pine State biscuits (just barely worth the wait.) Also got a lot of play time in with a friend's new dog, which was a huge bonus.Didn't take any pictures. Only did a little work. Probably gonna have to pay the price for that later on, but I'll manage.
August 28, 2018
FULL BLEED: THIS BRIGHT MANIFEST
Summer is withering in place as we speak, barely able to push out an eighty-two degree day here, out in the foothills where I'm used to ninety for this time of year and the kids telling me that I really should be picking them up closer to school. Instead, it's shade that's a little too cool and sun that's perfect to walk in. I'm expecting a last thrashing heatwave, like a fish that's been hauled in but isn't off the hook just yet, flopping around the bottom of the boat until it just gives up from exhaustion.Being consumed by preparation for Rose City Comic Con coming up in a couple of weeks. Worldcon was just a couple before that. I really don't have much to report on that, other than listening to the folks who came up from all over Mexico to talk about the SF experience from their part of the world. You know in Mexico they don't really differentiate between SF and fantasy? It must be nice. Just call it all 'fantastic' and let readers figure it out for themselves. Because maintaining the borders between all other genres gets exhausting enough as it is. I've long given up on it, particularly since my instincts have me writing between them as it is.But then time to market books comes around and I have to tiptoe around things. All the stuff I'm writing now might have cosmic horror as background elements, but I wouldn't pretend to call it that. So I just try to make it individual and see where that gets me. (About a thirty percent response rate when writing to blogs/podcasts, if I'm being generous.)
Here's the front and back of the postcard I'm printing up in advance of Rose City, something to attract the eye and get people to come over to the Broken Eye Books table and maybe pick up a copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS for their trouble. Hey, a guy can dream, right? If anything, it'll be another piece of convention swag that gets recycled when you clean up your room. Maybe it'll get pinned into a wall and inspire someone. Maybe it's just a beautiful thing, you know? There's something to be said for that (and it takes a hell of a lot less time to make a virtual neon sculpture than it does to write a novella or novel.)But read that copy. You'd buy that, right?Of course you would. Even if it doesn't fall into anyone's categories, no matter how broad or narrow.As mentioned, I'll split my time at Rose City between the Broken Eye Books table (not sure where it's going to be) and walking around. Maybe I'll be able to sit in at an artist's alley table with one of my friends, but don't depend on that. My hope is that you'll be able to pick up your own copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS in paper ahead of the December release date (ebooks not available until then, either.) As for shows after that this year? Looks unlikely, but if anything moves, I'll let you all know here.Plotting out the next thing I plan on writing, which has the tentative title CINDY SAYS FOLLOW. That may or may not change. It also takes place in the same setting as QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, and yes, you'll see some familiar faces, but only in the peripheries. Of course, none of you have even read QUEEN so you'd just be confused if I talked about it so I won't. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of book it even is. I know. That's a dumb question to ask so early on in the process. Hell, I didn't know what QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS was until I got about two-thirds of the way through it. I mean, I knew what it was supposed to be, what I'd pitched it as. But that's not always what a thing is, you dig?All that said, I need to spend some more time and focus on it simply because I've done enough marketing and artwork/layout in the right now to make my head hurt. And more marketing awaits. I know. It's supposed to be fun and no. It's really not. I suspect I feel this way because I'm significantly older than the rest of my "just landing writing gigs" cohort. I'm just not embracing my brand identity hard enough. Not riding the wave onto the very far end of the long tail.Anyways, let's play out a last song for summer and turn it up loud.Open up to the welcome cool and dry that is fall, all leaves and dirt and harvest.
Here's the front and back of the postcard I'm printing up in advance of Rose City, something to attract the eye and get people to come over to the Broken Eye Books table and maybe pick up a copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS for their trouble. Hey, a guy can dream, right? If anything, it'll be another piece of convention swag that gets recycled when you clean up your room. Maybe it'll get pinned into a wall and inspire someone. Maybe it's just a beautiful thing, you know? There's something to be said for that (and it takes a hell of a lot less time to make a virtual neon sculpture than it does to write a novella or novel.)But read that copy. You'd buy that, right?Of course you would. Even if it doesn't fall into anyone's categories, no matter how broad or narrow.As mentioned, I'll split my time at Rose City between the Broken Eye Books table (not sure where it's going to be) and walking around. Maybe I'll be able to sit in at an artist's alley table with one of my friends, but don't depend on that. My hope is that you'll be able to pick up your own copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS in paper ahead of the December release date (ebooks not available until then, either.) As for shows after that this year? Looks unlikely, but if anything moves, I'll let you all know here.Plotting out the next thing I plan on writing, which has the tentative title CINDY SAYS FOLLOW. That may or may not change. It also takes place in the same setting as QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, and yes, you'll see some familiar faces, but only in the peripheries. Of course, none of you have even read QUEEN so you'd just be confused if I talked about it so I won't. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of book it even is. I know. That's a dumb question to ask so early on in the process. Hell, I didn't know what QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS was until I got about two-thirds of the way through it. I mean, I knew what it was supposed to be, what I'd pitched it as. But that's not always what a thing is, you dig?All that said, I need to spend some more time and focus on it simply because I've done enough marketing and artwork/layout in the right now to make my head hurt. And more marketing awaits. I know. It's supposed to be fun and no. It's really not. I suspect I feel this way because I'm significantly older than the rest of my "just landing writing gigs" cohort. I'm just not embracing my brand identity hard enough. Not riding the wave onto the very far end of the long tail.Anyways, let's play out a last song for summer and turn it up loud.Open up to the welcome cool and dry that is fall, all leaves and dirt and harvest.
August 15, 2018
FULL BLEED: MADE OF LIGHT LIKE THE REST OF US
Yeah, I know. I've been off for a little while. Late summer gets crazy. I know. it's not really late summer yet, but my kids just started back to school which means I can think about getting back into a sort of regular work schedule.Let's see. First big news is that THE QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS is due for a December release (but you can pre-order now.) Here's a flyer you can get from me at Worldcon if you can find me there, commemorating the event.
In theory, copies should be available for purhcase at the Rose City Comic Con in September. I'll be there, either way, wandering or at the Broken Eye Books table signing copies of QUEEN or TOMORROW'S CTHULHU. Hopefully can firm up plans on planned but not yet announced things there as well.I should be giving this stuff its own post and will be talking it up more as the date approaches. I might even talk about the promotion process and what I've come across in it. Someone will probably talk me out of that, though. It has, however, put me on uneasy footing with the genre that I'm supposed to be writing in, so maybe I can talk about this for a bit.See, most of my published work has been labeled "horror." I mean, squishy monsters and werewolves and vampires and bad things happening. What else is it supposed to be? Looking at what I'm coming across on horror-labeled blogs and the like, I'm not seeing much crossover at all. Ultimately, at least for me, horror is fantasy with a specific set of outcomes or vibes or what have you. Now sure, it's not nearly the same thing as something like your high fantasy epics, or even your grimdark fantasias (though I'd argue that grimdark wants to be horror, if not in outcome then in atmosphere.)But looking at my work, whether it's STRANGEWAYS or QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS or SMOKETOWN, and while there's elements of horror fiction in all of them, they're just that. Elements. I'm not particularly into extremity for its own or any other sake (so I'm not going to end up writing splatter, sorry). And, more fundamentally, I'm not really interested in reaching for the mega-downer ending, which ends up coloring the whole work no matter what comes before. So yeah, I don't have much of anything to prove in that regard. I don't want to write a book that you put down and say "Oh god, CRUSHING, bro."Look, life, plain ordinary everyday life is crushing. It's crushing in ways that you can't predict. Sometimes you can't even safely contemplate those ways without going insane. Only abstraction keeps you from running into traffic because it's crazy and just doesn't matter. That nothing is planned, it's all ad hoc. Yeah, thanks, I got the memo the first time. Even the "it's all a cosmic joke" thing doesn't really work for me. But then neither does calculated edgelord-ism."So what do you write, dude?"Excellent question that doesn't really matter. Genres matter for Amazon categories and bookstore shelves and marketing. Granted, I'm supposed to be marketing (and doing a damn fine job of it, huyck!) so this is something I should be concerned with. Maybe even tooling my output towards, right? You put me in a corner, point a knife at my gut and demand an answer and you'll probably get "Fantasy," said with a cold smile on my face. Hey, you asked, not me. So now I have to qualify it as "dark fantasy" because it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but I'm not likely to serve up an ending where DARKNESS REIGNS, WALLOW IN THE KNOWING OF THIS THING, MORTAL, THAT ALL YOU LOVE AND CARE FOR IS MEANINGLESSNESS CLINGING TO DUST MOTES IN THE VOID HAHAHAHA.Sure, I'll type that in caps to be funny. And yet, it's not a joke. There's a whole audience for that, a whole market for it. Just not my audience, not my market.I'd rather offer readers an experience, you know? An experience with ups and downs, loss and recovery, not everybody getting what they want but maybe what they need (just geez, never come out and say that in the text because come on, who needs that?). Put it in an intriguing setting, even if it's a place you've lived in all your life. Every place can be weird if you put it together right. But that doesn't necessarily mean lurking horror. Carcosa but wonderful, right?And this isn't to swing that pendulum all the way over to the Delerlethian "Oh, the Outer Gods are kind of our buddies and the Great Old Ones are eeeeeevil" and that whole limb grafted onto the mythos. Or hell, even bothering to have a codified mythos to adopt – geez, for forbidden and unknowable things, they're sure catalogued exhaustively. (He said, cradling his copy of PETERSEN'S FIELD GUIDE TO CTHULHU MONSTERS.) I mean, the heavy hitters in the mythos sure seem like anything but indifferent, right? Always getting in humanity's business, messing with things. I knew even giving them names was gonna be trouble. Then you get to defining and codifying and pretty soon you're down to plush Cthulhu sitting on your shelf.But hey, the Outer Gods are made of light like the rest of us. Doesn't make them your best pals. I mean, a hungry alligator will still eat you alive. A scorpion will still sting you if you piss it off. Plenty threating in nature already. Have you heard about gravity? It's a mother.Come on, though, even the concept of galactic squish monsters don't compare to, oh let's say cancer. Hell, in comparison, they're entertaining and thrilling. But that's what fiction's supposed to do. Yeah. Fiction.So circling back to where we started. I once said the difference between horror and SF (and fantasy that matter) was that horror was an actual destination in fiction. That's probably as close as I can nail it down. Horror is that down note, whether it be brought about by dread or violence, consumption by cosmic entities or a festered personality, by the resurrected dead or a five-year-old with a knife. So sure, read my work as horror if you like. If that's how you found it, great. I'm all for people enjoying things. Read it as urban fantasy (though you're going to have a hard time finding any of the Usual Suspects in it). Read it as magical realism. Read it as literary fiction (I double dog dare you.)But please, just read it as an experience.
Highway 62 on Goodreads
Simple repeater on Goodreads. Please for the love of all that is holy, read it on my site itself as Goodreads is incapable of even basic functionality.
Desert blacktop, too much caffeine, too little sl ...more
Desert blacktop, too much caffeine, too little sl ...more
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