Juliet Escoria's Blog, page 24

nice blurbs

nice blurbs:

neatomosquitoshow:

BLACK CLOUD BY JULIET ESCORIA

Available April 23rd, 2014

"Reading the stories in Black Cloud is like getting punched in the throat; Juliet Escoria leaves you speechless. Her honesty teaches us that beauty can be found in violence, truth in pain, and life where we’ve always been afraid to look.” 
—Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature

“Juliet Escoria is like a gutter-punk Grace Paley.”
—Adam Wilson, author of Flatscreen

“This book is like Julia Child meets Michael Jackson.” 
—Mira Gonzalez, author of I will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together

“Black Cloud is one of the best things I’ve ever read… I want more literature to be like this: brutal, honest, dark, and incredibly real.”
—Beach Sloth

"I met Juliet Escoria outside a bar in New York. I was selling drawings before a reading. She asked how much for a drawing. I said anything, then she basically started challenging that, saying shit like ‘Really? So if I pay [x amount] that’s okay?’ She was looking at me without blinking the whole time. Pretty sure she called me a pussy as well, which is all really funny because I’d crack this little lady in half and throw her in the fucking garbage and think nothing of it. She paid me eight dollars for a drawing."
—Sam Pink, author of Witch Piss

“Juliet Escoria generally makes me feel uncomfortable all the time. She is a dreadful, mean, creepy bitch. When I’m around her, I am constantly seeking escape.”
—Kendra Grant Malone, author of Everything Is Quiet

“Juliet Escoria wants us to believe she is ‘white trash’ and a ‘wigger’ and an “Eminem fan’ but she once spelled Hailie’s name Hailey in an email to me so it’s pretty fucking clear she’s a poser.”
—Elizabeth Ellen, author of Fast Machine

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HTTP://COPINGMECHANISMS.NET/BLACKCLOUD

the muumuu of shame

neatomosquitoshow:

all writers should be forced to wear the muumuu of shame for their entire lives, as a continual reminder of the path that literature has taken them

look deep into the expressions on these writers’ faces & think hard about what you want to do with your life

LOOK AT THEM !!

https://www.facebook.com/juliet.escoria

WOOPSIE

WOOPSIE

advanced review copies are in existence. they are pretty.

advanced review copies are in existence. they are pretty.

alt lit gossip

alt lit gossip:

Dankland is spot on… excited for this.

altlitgossip:

Hi my name is Chris Dankland, I’m fancy and moderately well read

My head is made of smoke

I’ll be taking over the reins as managing editor for Alt Lit Gossip while Frank Hinton focuses on other projects

For the last year and a half I’ve been working on The Neato Mosquito Show – I still…

i forgot to post this cus i’ve been real bad at tumblr...

i forgot to post this cus i’ve been real bad at tumblr lately but beach sloth wrote it and fuck it made me feel good. 

beachsloth:

Black Cloud by Juliet Escoria

                “Black Cloud” is one of the best things I’ve ever read. Literature is distilled down to a life lived. I want more literature to be like this: brutal, honest, dark, and incredibly real like living it. Of course prior to reading this Juliet Escoria released a series of cryptic, dark transmissions. The videos are a definite welcome addition to the stories. Reading the entire collection in one sitting is highly recommended. Within each of the stories rests a particular rhythm that connects everything. Much of this is disconnection from surroundings, not sleeping, weird relationships, and lots of movement.

                 Emotion reigns supreme throughout the collection. Whatever attempts to leave this maelstrom are relatively futile. Safe harbors are the boring ones. A nice guy dives deep beneath the waves. Yet another one tries to prepare Juliet Escoria for a hurricane. Rather than spend time watching fires burn she decides ‘Nah’. Here the jerks are the fascinating one. Bad ones are fascinating with their glimpses into different worlds. One of the bad ones talks about New York City before it got clean expensive: back when it was wretched, filthy, and foul. More personality can be found among the wreckage than among the crystal clean. 

                Stabs at normalcy appear to be nothing but that. A glass casserole dish takes on a far greater heavier role providing sustenance in different forms. Lasagna may be nutritious and easily freezable. Nobody denies that. However there are other kinds of hungry, different sorts of emptiness to fill. The glass casserole dish serves many great purposes. It allows for time to get killed off, to transform itself into little blurs. Eventually the blurs become bad things the sorts of things that become a quiet bus coming from New Jersey or puffer fish trying to get their fill. 

                The best part is the others. They sit on the edges of Juliet Escoria’s stories. Some of them live in ratty motels and barely scrape by. Others still visit her world briefly. A few friends try to come by, friends like Zachary, who have been there and serve as a sort of guiding light. Yes they too have seen the darkness which makes it easier for them to appreciate the lighter moments. Some try to ask for forgiveness for what they did from years ago, how they tried to clean up, to be better. Unfortunately time can heal but only so much. Reconciliation is not an easy thing and it can take more than six years to make up for many more wasted ones. For at the end of the collection there is a heart stop, a realization that things can be beautiful liquid things never transforming into anything solid. Life is a permeable thing and “Black Clouds” celebrates life’s many forms.

oh yeah i made this

The Other Kind of Magic : The Remix by Juliet Escoria from Juliet Escoria on Vimeo.

VIDEO #7: CONFUSION

Story was originally published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn here.

Beach Sloth wrote about it here.

—-

To make the video, I took the story, cut the text, cut it again, and then cut that up using Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique (or, if you’d rather, William S. Burroughs’). The video was filmed here. I had a lot of fun making it; was super enjoyable to rip everything apart and put it back together again (both with the footage and the text). Scott McClanahan helped me with the filming, and that was nice too.

—-

Interesting to have made seven videos… I had originally, way back when, intended to do only three. I didn’t even know what I wanted those to look like— I knew I wanted to do a music video-feeling one for Mental Illness… (Video #1), and to talk about my experiences with psych meds and show me puking (Video #2). Video #3 was supposed to have a rap video type feel but it ended up turning into something Lynchian. 

Somewhere along the way of me sending out my book to various places, the three videos changed to twelve, one for each of the stories in Black Cloud. I think this was a mistake that someone else had said to someone else who was not me. When this came back to me, I thought “Haha, yeah right. That sounds hard as shit.” 

Then I decided to send my book to an agent who had contacted me long ago, back when I was supposedly writing a novel. I knew Black Cloud didn’t have “Big 5 Commercial Appeal”, but an agent sounded cool and who cares about being honest to agents, so I tried to sell it to her with that lie, and a few other tricks added in. She seemed to like the work, but rather honestly told me she had no idea how to market it. 

But typing that lie to that agent did something. Making 12 videos did sound hard as shit (I had zero experience with making/editing videos). But it also sounded fun. I’ve always liked making visual art, and had let it fall by the wayside when I decided to concentrate on writing. And… I don’t know. I’d always wanted to make music videos. I was seeing all this cool stuff happen around me on the internet, with macros and other visual mediums. And I’d never heard of anyone attempting to do anything like this before. 

The whole process, so far, has been really really fucking awesome and I’d like to encourage anyone who is thinking of doing something like it to go ahead and do it. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. That’s part of the fun. I’m figuring out how to work the software as I go, figuring out what kind of shots look cool. I rarely have known what a video was going to look like until I started making it. I’ve freaked out a couple times, thinking that I’d run out of ideas, but so far this has only been a temporary problem.

Five more to go. I’ve got an idea for the 8th one, but no clue what will happen for the 9th-12th. I’d love to collaborate more with people; that was one of the initial things that appealed to me about making videos — that I could work with other people, and I could talk to them and go outside. With the videos, I’ve been able to go out and do dumb shit like crawl in the sand and spit blood and it is a whole lot of fun. (Like, the Grunion Run video footage is especially funny to watch, because me and Sunny are giggling and giggling, in between trying to look scary.) I’ve got to have some sweet musical groups let me use their songs. But I’d like to push it further, let someone else’s ideas bleed into my own. (Not that Sunny & Scott, the two people who’ve helped me with the filming, didn’t give me ideas, because they did. But you know. I just am interested in more smooshing of other people’s ideas in general.)

For the record, I am not using any fancy equipment. I either use my iPhone or a point-and-shoot Canon. When I use the iPhone, I sometimes use the 8mm app, which costs $3.99. To edit, I switch back and forth (depending on what I’m doing) between Windows Live Movie Maker (free with my computer) and the free version of VideoPad Video Editor.

it's just syphilis

it’s january 9, 2014. on january 9, 2013, i woke up feeling pretty good, maybe a little too...

it’s january 9, 2014. 

on january 9, 2013, i woke up feeling pretty good, maybe a little too good. i went to the therapist, where i reported that the medication i’d started on 5 days before seemed to be working, but i was concerned that maybe it was working a bit too well. after therapy, i drove to work. i wept on the way. at work, i decided i needed to delete my facebook and my twitter and also that my novel sucked and i needed to stop writing it. i couldn’t eat all day and all day my heart was beating so fast. by the time it grew dark, i had figured out what this meant, but i also didn’t know what to do about it.

i got off work. i went to my friend’s house, someone i’ve known for most of my life. my mom met me there, with our new puppy, who was supposed to socialize with my friend’s dog. i started crying when i saw my friend. we sat there on the patio, my mother, my friend, our dogs, and myself, and the dogs barked at each other and i talked and talked and cried and cried and my mom and friend sat there looking very worried. they knew what this meant, but they didn’t know what to do about it.

at some point i started to feel like i was no longer in my body and was instead floating near the ceiling, watching someone who looked like me. this scared me. i told my mother i thought i  needed to go to the hospital, and she agreed.

on the way, i started to see things, lights and colors, and i kept on sobbing and then laughing and then sobbing again. at the ER, the women asked if i had been there before and i laughed, because i had, twice, both times for suicide attempts. i told her this. it seemed funny to me. she didn’t laugh.

they checked me out and found there was nothing physically wrong with me, so they gave me a high dose of ativan and a prescription for valium and made sure i wasn’t going to commit suicide and made sure my mom would babysit me all night and told me to get a referral from my psychiatrist for a mental hospital the next day. i stayed up all night. the valium put me back into my body again, but it didn’t do much else. that night and the next morning, and i sent a lot of texts and emails and made a lot of phone calls. i knew i shouldn’t be doing this but i just couldn’t stop myself. looking back, i’m really glad i had deleted my facebook and twitter.

—-

school started again on monday. a few days ago, i was going over my notes from when i last taught this specific english class, which was jan. 2013. the notes were ecstatic and lively but they made very little sense. it made me feel crazy. i got in the shower, and i started thinking about the emails and phone calls and texts i had made over those few days. i’d apologized for all of them. i think almost everyone understood and forgave me. i’m pretty sure one of them didn’t because she’s acted really strangely toward me ever since. i started thinking about her, and how much i hated her for not understanding, and for claiming that she understood when she clearly didn’t, and how much i hated myself for being insane and not being able to stop it, and how much i hated the doctor who put me on that medicine, and how much i hated the hospitals for sending me bills so complicated that it took several hours to figure out what was paid and what wasn’t and now it’s a year later and i still have creditors calling me and i’m not even sure why because i paid all those damn bills, I’m pretty sure at least, and and and it just became so overwhelming. it’s been a year now, and the whole thing still has such a grip on me. sometimes the grip alone makes me feel pathetic.

—-

i was in outpatient treatment for a total of three weeks. the doctors at the mental hospital took me off the shitty medicine that had made me go insane in the first place, and put me on something different that worked. the staff said i recovered very quickly. i felt proud of myself for being so good at getting sane again.

except i wasn’t sane, not yet. i thought i was, but i wasn’t. i did a bunch of dumb things for several months afterward. i had no impulse control. i had a lot of anxiety, and a lot of rage, and i couldn’t keep or remember appointments and i got lost even more than i normally do. i cried a lot. i’m also not sure if it was from the new medication — like maybe it was a side effect that my body just had to get used to? — or the anxiety, but i puked 1-3 times a week until around may. i think may is when i finally returned to normal. i think.

—-

an example of a dumb thing i did:

i was in new york in march. my friends and i were going to see a movie, but then we changed our minds and decided to get matching tattoos instead. i was texting my friend, my friend who wanted to be more than friends, but i wasn’t into him that way and he knew this. he kept asking me what i was going to get tattooed, and i kept saying i didn’t know (because i didn’t), and he kept telling me to get his initials. i decided i would get his initials added on to whatever tattoo my friends and i got, as a joke. i thought it was funny, to do something as a whim on top of a whim, the type of whim on top of a whim that was permanent, and that it didn’t matter if i got his initials tattooed on me because he was one of my favorite people, and i loved him very much, although it was “i love you as a person” type love, and what’s wrong with getting your friend’s initials as a tattoo?

i got the tattoo, and took a photo of it and sent it to him. he thought it was sharpie. i went back to my friend’s apartment, took off the bandage, and showed her the initials. she looked at me like i was insane. i didn’t really realize what i had done until then. i went into an anxiety/self-hate spiral, a bad one, which lasted for around four hours.

—-

except then a few months later, and the “i love you as a person” type love had turned into “i am in love with you” type love, and i wasn’t sure how it got that way. there was a love letter involved, a really amazing love letter. he also was a terrible drunk, and then he stopped being one, and that helped too. but i think it was mostly the tattoo. i think that if you get a tattoo of the initials of a person you love in a romantic way, then it works as a spell to make you stop loving each other. i think that if you get a tattoo of the initials of a person who loves you but you only love as a friend, then it works as a spell to make you love the person back.

—-

sometimes dumb decisions end up becoming not all that dumb after all. 

for instance, the novel that i gave up on while insane. it really was terrible. it really was the right thing to do. i threw the novel away and decided to make a collection of short stories instead. the novel was the type of thing that a big publisher would have eaten right up (that is, if it hadn’t sucked). the short story collection was too concepty and weird and short for a big publisher to ever touch it. the novel plodded along and was awful to write. the short story collection found itself completed in about three months. (actually, that’s a lie. i wrote 5 of the stories from 2010-2012. the other 7 i wrote over the course of three months.) i finished the story collection on june 19, 2013, at around 4am. i signed the contract on july 4, 2013, at around 4pm.

—-

so basically, yeah. this year has been a little intense. and these are only the big things. there’s also the small things. there’s also the fact that my dad crashed his plane, survived, and got the plane flying again. there’s also the fact that i quit smoking (i  quit smoking???). there’s also the fact that, for the first time in my life, i’m making “grown-up money.” there’s also the fact that my mom, my dad, my stepmom, my crazy aunt, her husband, and myself all had thanksgiving dinner together and it was fun and nice and warm. there’s also so many other things.

in 2014: my book comes out, and i plan to move somewhere far away and scary to be with someone i love. in 2014, i hope i don’t go crazy again. i hope people i know stop committing suicide and dying of drug overdoses, and i hope the families of the ones who did start to heal from it. i hope nobody crashes their plane, or their car. i hope my friends’ parents stop getting sick and dying. i hope my parents don’t get sick and die. i hope i stay a non-smoker. i hope i stay a nondrinker. i hope T stays alive and out of jail. i hope N beats his cancer and A does too, and I hope B is good to S. i  hope Z and L find some happiness and stability and don’t die. i hope the same for M. i hope i don’t lose my job over my book. i hope a whole lot of other things, but they’re the kind of things i won’t write in here, or anywhere, because i don’t want to write any bad spells.

A few things...

I interviewed Scott McClanahan about doing his last reading ever at The Fanzine.
I wrote about getting away with murder at Thought Catalog. (Comments section is pretty LOL)
A perfect stranger recommended my book at The Quietus.