Matt Phillips's Blog, page 4

You Got the Silent Treatment

Hi There:

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote. Truth is, I’ve been busy with family, the holidays, smoking meat, and drinking a whole bunch of red wine.

And last week, of course, it was back to the day job.

More than that, I’ve been in a writing stupor of sorts…contemplating my next project. I finished my latest crime novel—For Money and the Luck—in early December and I’ve moved onto editing. This is a slim crime novel that centers around four hustlers in San Diego, and I’m excited for how it adds to my crime oeuvre…I’ll start looking to place the novel with a publisher in the next couple months. Wish me luck. And money. And if you know any publishers interested in a modern, flash-bang crime drama—well, send ‘em my way. Or send me their way. You know what I mean…

But back to the stupor. What’s next? I grew up reading horror, and I’m leaning towards a horror novel as my next project. There’s a healthy indie readership in that genre, but I still have the noir element beckoning my imagination…Horror-noir, anybody? Would love to hear from folks about some of their favorite horror novels. Let me know if there’s anybody I should be reading right now.

Well, enough of that. How about some inspiration?

Dennis Hopper used to cruise around with a camera—check out some of his best shots. Super-cool.

For those of you disheartened by the modern world and under assault by the media barrage, I recommend Aldo Leopold’s great essay, “Goose Music.” You can find it in his seminal text. Read it. And then get yer ass outdoors. “No mechanistic theory, even bolstered by mutations, has ever quite answered for the colors of the cerulean warbler, or the vespers of the woodthrush, or the swansong, or—goose music.”

The Yellowstone prequel, 1883, is a hell of a western so far. Check it out. Starring the great Sam Elliott, people.

One of the poems I’ve committed to memory is this one by Tom Clark. It’s called, ‘Poem.’ Read it and sing.

And lastly, have a listen to the great James McMurtry.

Okay, that’s it.

Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

Noir for Christmas

Hey there—

I’m back. Five pounds heavier and wondering how much red wine one man can truly drink (a lot, I’ll wager). I hope you and yours had a phenomenal holiday.

Moving into December, I thought I’d give some Christmas noir suggestions. There are tons of lists like these going around, and I’m not certain mine will be super-unique, but I can’t assume you visit the internet places I visit, so…what the hell—here are my noir-ish Christmas suggestions. For you and yours…

Don’t call me selfish, but my “noir masterpiece” Know Me from Smoke just so happens to be set during the Christmas season here in San Diego. Comes complete with an MDMA experience at an Xmas shindig. Plus, you know, bad ass female protagonist. Read it and thank me later.

Noir for your ears? Try Dwight Yoakam’s album Come on Christmas. This one is lonesome and forlorn, but it’s Xmas moody and brilliant. So highly recommended I want to write this paragraph twice.

Read and Watch: The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (no relation) is a tremendous piece of small town noir. I found the book a crisp, modern page-turner. No surprise it was shortlisted for a bunch of crime writing awards. And, to boot, the film adaptation with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton is entertaining as all hell. Plus, it’s directed by the great, late comedic genius Harold Ramis.

Not quite noir, but worth a taste: Try any recipe for hot buttered rum—yeah, I said it. Here’s a recipe from Wine Enthusiast. I promise this has something to do with noir…I decided to try hot buttered rum after reading (or while reading) James Crumley’s great PI novel, The Final Country. There’s a few scenes in the novel when hot buttered rum pops up and the book is just too darn memorable and influential not to try at least one of the drinks imbibed by the curious cast of characters. Is this a suggestion for you to read some Crumley? Yes. Yes it is. It ain’t Christmas, but it’s sure as hell as good as it gets. Try it. And, yes, you can thank me later.

Alright, back to binging High Town for me…

Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

Noirvember Notes

Welcome to Noirvember.

Here are some noir-ish suggestions from your favorite neighborhood noir fiend…

Noir in cinema: A Bluebird in My Heart, directed by Jérémie Guez, is a noir masterpiece. It’s a character-driven, gritty noir story that follows an ex-con staying at a motel while trying to find a job and get back on his feet. He befriends the proprietor and her daughter and gets wrapped into a cycle of justified vengeance when the daughter is assaulted. Like all great noir stories, this one is truly about the people—who they are, what they believe in, their myriad faults, and how they see/enact justice. Technically, the film is well-directed, beautifully shot, and superbly acted. Roland Moller, as Danny, conveys the complexities of a man who is equally adept at fixing a restaurant dish washer or drywalling a room as he is at knowing how to love and respect others. And yet, he is still bound to the cycle of vengeance that rises from the criminal code and prison system. A must see for noir fans.

Noir in photographs: This might be an outdated suggestion for some readers, but when I want noir inspiration (to write or read), I’ll scope out the photojournalism of Weegee. It amazes me how artful his documentation remains—some of these pics aren’t for the faint of heart. Check ‘em out!

Noir for the ears: Old school suggestion here…How about a listen to Mink Deville’s album Cabretta? Is it noir? Hell, yes it is—this album is all about the streets. And it’s freaking beautiful. Not many singers out there can hold a candle to Willy DeVille. And he’s about as rock ’n’ roll as it gets.

Another one to watch: Hightown on Starz is back for a second season. The first season followed a brutal murder mystery, and gave us a stellar lead character in ‘fish cop’ Jackie Quiñones (paired with detective Ray Abruzzo). This one is everything a noir television series should be—and more. Highly recommended.

Okay. That’s it. Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

Wormholes for the Wild Ones

This issue, I want to keep it simple and give all you wild ones some wormholes.

The vibe is spooky, no doubt, but it is that time of year.

Here we go…

Written by a pal of mine: I’m about to dig into the new release from cult writer Anthony Neil Smith—it’s called The Butcher’s Prayer. If you haven’t read anything by this man…you should. Especially if you love noir and dark fiction.

What I’m working on: Almost finished with my latest crime novel. I may go with a bit of a title change—thinking of calling it Money and the Luck. What do you think? It’s either that or The Final Death of Sunday. Hell, I’ll probably change it a few more times…

Got me by the ear: John R. Miller’s debut album, Depreciated. This man is one hell of a songwriter—think John Prine meets Hiss Golden Messenger. My favorite track right now is Borrowed Time, but I reserve the right to change that, too. Check it out if you have the time!

Found on accident (kind of): Soft White Underbelly, a series of vérité interviews published on YouTube by photographer Mark Laita. He interviews everybody from pimps to drug addicts to college students. It’s an addictive series for those of us enthralled by the broad spectrum of the human condition.

Fun slasher flicks: If you’re looking for some fun Halloween films, have a look at the McG films The Babysitter and The Babysitter: Killer Queen. Both of these flicks are easy to find. Fun music and the requisite slasher characters—lots of gore, and plenty of bottled teenage inadequacy. Laugh out loud at times, too. If you don’t like blood…Maybe skip-em. But who doesn’t like blood? Especially this time of year?

Okay. That’s it. Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

Midnight Mass

Hey there—

Halloween is on the way. And that means it’s time for something spooky.

My go to films are The Lost Boys and Near Dark, both classics in my own personal film canon. I’ll still get to each of those films in the next few weeks, but this year I spent time watching something new—the miniseries Midnight Mass.

SPOILERS BELOW!

This one is a bit of a sleeper, but I can tell you—for a fact—that it’s a phenomenal piece of storytelling. The setup is a small island fishing town—Riley (Zach Gilford) returns home after a stint in prison for killing a young woman while drunk driving. Feels cliché to start, especially as Riley endures the requisite disdain from his father and the unsurprising doting from his mother. The ensemble is filled out by a muslim sheriff (‘Sharif’ to the town drunkard), an expectant mom on the lam from her abusive husband, the town physician, and a hyper-devout catholic school teacher.

Oh, right…This town is heavily catholic and Riley has—surprise—lost his faith.

During a storm, he sees—or thinks he sees—the town priest who is supposedly on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Odd, but more odd are the dead cats (hundreds or thousands) that wash up on the beach with no apparent cause of death…though they’re drained of blood. Confused yet? I know I was, but when the new priest—Father Paul (Hamish Linklater)—gives his first homily in the quaint catholic church, I was stricken by a compulsion to keep watching. Part of that was the brilliant charisma of Linklater’s performance. He’s both understated and surprisingly emotional as a priest—inevitably a man of faith, but starkly human and aware of the paradox that is one’s belief in God.

What at first seems a slow-moving character study becomes an intoxicating, supernatural horror story. Father Paul heals a young woman who was, years prior, paralyzed by an errant rifle shot from the town drunkard. And anybody else who has an ailment and attends mass (or prays with Father Paul)—from aching muscles to advanced dementia—finds a rapid healing visited upon their lives.

But this isn’t a ‘laying on of hands’ story at all—it takes a turn down bad ass lane when Father Paul confesses to God that he is lying about his identity. He, in fact, is the original town priest…But reverted to the prime of his youth after an encounter with a…bloodsucking angel in a Jerusalem tomb? Yes—that’s right…

This is about drinking blood.

But it’s so much more than that: What happens when good people, people who have done good their whole lives, are intoxicated by the pull of something that is evil, yet tied—however perversely—to their cherished belief system?

Father Paul resists zealotry at first, but even he—the man of God—is corrupted by his own need for blood. And his most devout followers are close behind him.

There’s a lot more to recap here, but instead you should watch the series.

I listed Hamish Linklater’s performance as one part of why I kept watching, but I never mentioned the second part—so here it is: This story is courageous because it’s willing to complicate the relationship between good and evil, to consider that one can do evil and be good. Or that one can be evil despite trying to be good. The distance between these two poles—so stark in so many other popular stories—closes to almost nothing in Midnight Mass. I’m not surprised that it takes a supernatural horror story to close this gap—it’s always the genre stories that are willing to examine reality in the most direct ways. Midnight Mass also does something else: It makes room for us—and its characters—to wonder about what comes after this world, this life…if anything.

That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s next?

If you happen to know…I’d love to hear it.

Okay. That’s it. Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

Thoughts on Serial Fiction

Hey there—

Below, I’ve written a short piece about serialized fiction. If you want to skip right to my suggestions for reading, watching, and listening (also for drinking!), go ahead and scroll down until you see the thin gray line—that stuff will start there.

Otherwise, here goes…

The other day I had an interesting conversation—on Twitter—with a couple other writers about a story in The Guardian: Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk to Serialise New Book on Substack. If you don’t know, Substack is an email newsletter tool available—for free—to writers and other users on the web. In fact, I’m sending you Roughneck Dispatch through Substack.

Substack’s plan is for Chuck to publish his next novel in regular, serialized installments via email newsletter. He’ll also include writing lessons, discussions of craft, and work from his writing students. This stuff is available via subscription model—$6 a month and round $40 total, according to the Guardian piece.

No doubt that if anybody can make this project a success, it’s Chuck Palahniuk. He’ll bring significant readership with him and, well, he’s a great writer. Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith, too, have signed on for similar projects with Substack.

On its face, this idea seems...interesting. And cool.

But I have questions about the economics of it.

Additional promised content aside, why would I pay $40 for a novel? Especially one I can’t hold in my hand? It seems like, based on his comments in the article, Chuck is attracted to the immediacy of the idea, as well as the editorial control. Both valid points of attraction and…I get that. But is it a sustainable model for readers to pay $40 for a complete work that sits in their inboxes? I’m not so sure…More than that, can serialized fiction work on a paid, subscription-based model?

Others made the point to me about serial fiction successes on platforms like WattPad, Royal Road and, of course, Kindle Vella. Some Royal Road writers, for instance, make thousands a month writing continuous stories. Loyal readers donate to these writers via PayPal or Patreon and, well, the model seems to work (for them). I have to be honest and say I’d dismissed WattPad after reviewing some of the stories there (four or five years ago, if I remember right). I just didn’t think they were well-written.

The genres, too, didn’t appeal to me. Stuff like LitRPG and Fantasy.

But was I being smug? Maybe. Probably.

The truth, I think, is that if a writer (or storyteller) can make money and please readers while writing any kind of story…that might be a good thing. The reader is the final judge of a work (I say that all the time, so I might as well believe it). Another point made to me was that these serial writers don’t care about prestige in publishing, literary awards, or even personal notoriety. Many write under pseudonyms or web handles, and their true identities are secondary to their online personas.

When I think deeply about this—it strikes me as brave. Can the writer hide behind the handle or persona? Yes. But the writer can also write in ways that—and this is clear to me—the ‘person’ might not be able to write. Beyond that, these stories eschew ‘genre’ as dictated by bookstores and the broader literary marketplace.

That, to me, is kind of bad ass.

Personally, I like to write in a (quasi) vacuum…I want the work to be authentic in that it’s my own creation. This gets complicated by editors and market considerations, but that’s how I think I’m working/writing. Serial writers often incorporate feedback or make edits based on reader comments—their stories are alive in revision for much longer (forever?), and susceptible to the hunger of readers in ways that a printed book isn’t. Is that bad? I’m not sure. Does it dictate how the art is made and what the art says or doesn’t say? I think it must to some extent.

Again, I don’t know if that’s bad or, worse, wrong somehow.

But all this got me thinking…Is there a way for a writer to do both things? To write books and other long-form projects in the traditional writer-is-his-own-person way, and yet to create a platform for serialized fictional work?

Maybe. Probably.

I’ll ask Chuck when he’s done.

Hell, maybe I’ll give it a shot myself.

If you have strong thoughts about this, I’d love to hear ‘em.

As you can see, I’m short on answers and long on wonder.

You wouldn’t find this without me (maybe): Nick Shoulders singing his original, “Rather Low.” Mullet included!

Got me by the ear: Warren-freaking-Zevon. Old school, I know. But I picked up a pristine used copy of Excitable Boy on vinyl…And there’s something about that voice coming at me through the speakers. Check out one of his Letterman performances of “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” He sings a bluesy number to start…

You know you want to watch: Sex Education on Netflix. It’s season three now and this teenage love story—that’s what it is, right?—is about the best written, best acted, and best directed show I’ve seen since…The latest season of Better Call Saul? Sex Education isn’t a crime story, but it is about teenage angst and what it means to be an outsider. I so highly-recommend it that I feel like you should pay me for convincing you to watch. Go on. Binge, people.

Read a book, dude: How about a graphic novel? Trashed by Derf Backderf is one of my favorites. Or for you noir aficionados…Check out Peepland by Christa Faust and Gary Phillips. Totally bad ass and devour-able. Set in Times Square back in the ‘80s porn days and full of action. Not to mention beautifully illustrated and inked.

Drink it up: Try one of my favorites if you’re a bourbon drinker…Rittenhouse Rye. Affordable and effortless to drink. I like it. A lot. Perfect while watching a black and white film or reading a noir novel.

Okay. That’s it. Until next time…

Remember to mend your fences and walk the line. And if you can help it, avoid working overtime.

XO

New Crime Fiction Anthology

Thrilled to be in this great crime fiction anthology with some total bad asses. Edited by the great Rusty Barnes. Pick it up and get your dose of noir and crime fiction.

https://amzn.to/2pokntK

“Quiet and the Darkness” by Matt Phillips

“Quiet and the Darkness” by Matt Phillips:

Got a #noir one in Retreats from Oblivion!

https://www.amazon.com/Know-Me-Smoke-......

https://www.amazon.com/Know-Me-Smoke-Matt-Phillips-ebook/dp/B07GDPD2CH?tag=smarturlebook-20

Stella Radney, longtime lounge singer, still has a bullet lodged in her hip from the night when a rain of gunshots killed her husband. That was twenty years ago and it’s a surprise when the unsolved murder is reopened after the district attorney discovers new evidence.

Royal Atkins is a convicted killer who just got out of prison on a legal technicality. At first, he’s thinking he’ll play it straight. Doesn’t take long before that plan turns to smoke—was it ever really an option?

When Stella and Royal meet one night, they’re drawn to each other. But Royal has a secret. How long before Stella discovers that the man she’s falling for isn’t who he seems?

A noir of gripping suspense and violence, Know Me from Smoke is a journey into the shadowy terrain of murder, lost love, and the heart’s lust for vengeance.

Noir: Where the nature of evil unravels

“For me, stories are a rehearsal. I’m running from something. Hell, make no mistake, we’re all running from something—death. The evil in our stories works like a straw man for death. How do we face evil in stories? We approach it head on. With a gun. With a sword. With a fistful of dirt. With the truth. We face evil down like we’re heroes. And this, I want to argue, is how we hope to face death.“

http://writersthread.com/writer41_wp/featured/noir-fiction-where-the-nature-of-evil-unravels/