Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 93

Haiti

The smacked and crumbled buildings, the people running or standing around dazed, the broken furniture lying in the street, the tweets direct from Haiti and from people with family there, hoping for any scrap of information ("19hr no sleep won't close my eyes until I hear something about my loveones in PORT-AU-PRINCE") -- it all looks so, so, so horribly familiar. This is the help link I trust most so far, as it was recommended by louismaistros , whose wife took religious training in Haiti and ...

The Monster of Florence

I'm reading The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, an account of the decades-long search for Italy's most famous serial killer. It's more interesting than Shake The Devil Off and not nearly as offensive (possibly only because I'm not from Florence), but if even a tenth of this tale is true, then poor fictional Rinaldo Pazzi's hunt for Il Mostro in Thomas Harris' Hannibal was a model of simplicity, elegance, and textbook police work compared to the real case. On the other ...

Comments Allowed (Or At Least Tolerated)

As part of my resolution to regrow some of the metaphorical skin I lost in 2009, I am finally, after all these years, opening this journal to comments from all registered LJ users. No anonymous comments, as I'm not actually a masochist. I'm also doing this partly because I spend a lot less time online than I used to and seldom get around checking my various communities for questions, but please be warned, I'm not particularly into talking about writing or (my) books these days. I can't promis...

Greta

Greta the Bread Loaf
Originally uploaded by funkyegret


Today there is another cat-shaped hole in my heart. When I die and they autopsy me, they'll surely wonder at the dozens of cat-shaped holes.

This morning we found our Greta dead behind the sofa. She was about 11, but she hadn't been sick, lethargic, anorexic, or any of the other things cats usually do to let you know they're in trouble, so I took her to the vet for a necropsy. It turned out that she had advanced cancer of the spleen, which D...

Shake The Devil Off

I can't believe I just paid $25 for Ethan Brown's new book Shake The Devil Off, an account of the 2006 "voodoo shop" murder/suicide, only to find out I apparently joined the media frenzy that savaged the reputations of the young murderer and his victim:

"After Katrina, Addie enthused to a reporter that 'we've been able to see the stars for the first time.' After she was murdered, Addie's remark about the stars brought a nasty rebuke from New Orleans novelist Poppy Z Brite, who wrote on her bl...

Epiphany

One year ago today, I and two other OLGC parishioners were arrested for praying in church.

Language Has Power

Going to get my crazy pills adjusted today. I've actually tried to stop using the word "crazy" on Twitter because I know there are people on my tweetstream who feel it is an "ableist" word and are hurt by it. I may or may not agree -- I consider myself fairly crazy at this point, and the word doesn't particularly hurt or offend me; nor does the word "lame," though it undeniably applies to me. Twitter, though, is more or less a conversation or series of conversations. In conversation, I think ...

Recent Dialogue

PZB: If only I had gunslinger's eyes, the color of faded blue denim.

CdB: Come on, now. [He knows this kind of talk usually precedes trouble.:]

Posting this mostly so EXTRA! EXTRA! BIG-ASS FREAKOUT! won't be the top entry anymore. I'm still having little-ass freakouts, and something will have to be done about the situation after all this holiday nonsense is over, but I have my ways of maintaining.

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The above is part of an entry restored fro...

Big Freakout, Dissected

So I guess I had a pretty massive freakout over the past couple of days. It's chronicled on Twitter, more or less. To me it seemed to start with a horrible dream I had Monday morning. In this nightmare I was making a real effort to reconnect with my characters, but I'd gotten the wrong ones, which were more or less the Cure. (Anybody with half an eye can see the Cure's influence on Lost Souls, or so I assume.) They had all gone down to Shell Beach and commandeered barges, a tugboat, and some ...

U.S. Out Of New Orleans?

I've just wasted the last hour notifying various file-sharing sites to remove illegally posted copies of my books. I'm not even going to say what I think about so-called fans who use these slimeball sites to steal work from writers, except this. I hate to give these sites any publicity at all, but I will say that other writers should check scribd.com and 4shared.com for stolen work.

A few days ago I tweeted the statement, "I think art about New Orleans, especially post-K, should be made by New...