Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 25

FULL BLEED: TOMBE DELLA CITTÁ

Just slap this on while you read. Trust me.

I sat down with my son last night to watch the new WALKING DEAD spin-off show, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD which is really not a good title, but what are you going to do? You’ve got to invoke the mother franchise or people might not know that this is another show on AMC following THE WALKING DEAD which is also about zombies is really another WALKING DEAD show? I mean, come on. You gotta lead the horses to water, right?

My issues with THE WALKING DEAD are...

FULL BLEED: BENIGN NEGLECT

Ready to put summer well behind me. The last several months have been asphalt on the tongue rough, and seemingly unending. When you’re in a grim situation and it seems like it’s always been that way and like it will ever be this way? That’s exhausting in a way that’s tough to describe.

That said, the heat’s breaking and the angle of the sun has swung back around leading to Fall. Feels like that corner’s been turned. Kids are back in school, though it still takes deadly force to get them up i...

FULL BLEED: WHERE DID I LEAVE THAT FIRE?

I didn’t come up with that phrase. Neko Case did. She’s a better writer than she’ll ever get credit for. At least I assume that. I don’t read record reviews or thinkpieces, though I’ve been known to read histories (oral and otherwise).

I mean, she wrote the line “I wanted so badly not to be me” and the first time I heard it, I got scared because I knew exactly what was meant by it because I was living in that feeling. I’d carved a little house in there, getting under the skin and hollowing i...

THE BLACK MASS VARIATIONS

So awhile ago, I wrote this story for an anthology that had one of those open calls that you hear about, but never seem to quite work out. I don’t get it. I mean, they wanted stories about the Apocalypse, and boy is this one ever.

I know. They wanted some good ‘ol misery-wallowing, which is something I don’t do very well.

This may not stay up forever, so read it while it’s here.

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THE BLACK MASS VARIATIONS

by Matt Maxwell

The world was perfectly deteriorated, every streak of weathering and...

No news

No update this week. Meant to, but things got deep into the suck.

If I posted one, it’d be pretty foul, so maybe it’s better that I don’t.

Perhaps after I get back from vacation. Be gone for ten days. A number of things might’ve changed by then, since a big project launches on the 28th (not writing, nope) and I should be hearing back on some stuff so, maybe then. But to be honest, the underlying things that drag aren’t likely to change for the positive.

BLACK PHASE

Been working up to this one for awhile. Been a hell of a last six weeks or so. Really been a pretty draining year up to this date. The turning of the solstice didn’t magically fix anything either (not that I expected it to — I’m a grownup.) See, there’s some things that don’t get fixed, no magic wand, no hand of God, no self-actualized inner Anima offering up the hidden wisdom until the right instant.

Some weights don’t get to be set aside so easily, no matter how much I’d like, we’d like, e...

SOME SAY THAT THIS YARN IS THE ONLY THING THAT HOLDS THIS MAN TOGETHER

And some say he was never here at all.

That’s a line from a Tom Waits song. He might’ve even written it. But then he said a there was a woman who was harder than Chinese algebra and I guess Stephen King heralded that as a great noir line from an author this year, 2015. So maybe it’s one of those things that doesn’t have an origin at all. It’s just there, y’know?

I’ve been late on updates, yeah, I know. I also know exactly how many of you are dying for them (hint – you don’t need algebra to g...

THE PRICE OF FAILURE

No, really. That’s a song title. Right here.

I’m often asked for writing advice, and I try to be respectful in my answers, though I bet I’m not good at that part. The hellish thing of it is that… Well, there’s several.

1) Folks think I’m a potential source of good information regarding their writing careers.
Obviously nobody asking me this has looked at my track record. Because, let’s be honest. My most-read piece is either something that doesn’t have my name (or much of my thumbprint) or m...

SIX-FINGERED HAND

I was gonna go with “Six Act Play” but the other one sounds so much cooler (and is a nice callout to one of my favorite DEFENDERS runs from when I was a kid.)

So let’s talk a little about structure. It’s a thing that I’ve been thinking about, trying to figure out how to structure the first SMOKETOWN storyline. See, since I’m planning on pitching this to an actual publishing house, I’ve got to think about playing in a familiar structural space. Granted, in STRANGEWAYS, this wasn’t so much of...

I NEVER HELD IT AT THE RIGHT ANGLE

I dance around telling the whole story sometimes. Nobody wants that, anyways. Chop it up, bite-size it, make it more easily digestible. That’s what I keep hearing. Doesn’t matter how clean my prose is, it’s always too oblique, too circular. Or perhaps it’s more like I don’t have the name to haul that weight around, dig? What is James Joyce if not oblique, the obliquest at times? Not that I’d have the grit to compare myself to him, mind you. That’s just an easy name drawn from the hat right h...