Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 251

Me too

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Werewolves out in the World, Part IX

Nine of these already? I think so. I mean, I’m no expert professional seasoned counter or anything, and my roman-numeral-fu maybe isn’t operating at the absolute highest level, but still, here we are, I think. And? Here’s where we’ve been: one werewolf, two werewolves, three werewolves, four. Five werewolves, six werewolves, seven werewolves, and one more.  That’s the thing with werewolves. You think you’ve taken care of them all, and then one’s got your throat in its teeth, is staring you in the eye. But let’s stop with the words, get to images. Well, the images with me talking all over them, like: Dude. At first I thought my eyes were all deceived, but then I refreshed the browser, refreshed my head, checked was I awake, and yep: that’s Mongrels, sharing some page space with STNG.  Be still my beating heart:   Think this mag is the second place that month I showed up alongside Molly Tanzer. Here’s to more and more and always:   Sound effects? Always-always appreciated. Thank you, Ian:   Same here: how to read with a dustjacket on? Somewhere I’ve got a White’s Boots box stuffed to bursting with dustjackets. Used to be the first order of business, after getting a book: peel it from its jacket. But then I started having books come out, and I felt different about them somehow. Like, they weren’t just in the way, they were intrinsically cool. But I still have to take them off for reading. Not only do they get in the way, but they  . . . → → →

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Werewolves out in the World, Part VIII

For anybody just catching this broadcast on the digital shortwave, here’s installments one, two, three, four, five, six, and lucky number slevin. Also? It kind of makes me sad that I had to actually think to title this one—I mean, think to Roman-numeral it Not that “VIII” is hard, or should be, but, man, when I was in elementary, I so prided myself on Roman numerals being on instant-rolodex. And I just now had to thin if “8” went above five or under ten (to my way of thinking).  Guess I’m getting old. It happens, I suppose. Mongrels, though, it’s still young, it’s still out there biting the world: I believe there’ll be an interview coming soon, too, to go along with that write-up. Or: I did do a review. It’ll be live sooner or later. And, wow, big wow: not just to get the Buzzfeed write-up, but to be one of their five picks from May? Amazing-cool. Thank you thank you: And, here’s one of my editors wearing the RedBubble/trailer version of the Mongrels shirt, by Figbar Lonesome. Looks sharp, yes? So excellent. Mongrels in Austinland. I know Kareem, too, and, since I strongly suspect he only hangs out with cool people, then I’m glad that Mongrels is finding the cool people: This is the dream, pretty much. To spread a blanket over the world, and have there be an image of a werewolf on the top side of that blanket: I know there’s not that many Joneses in the world, or on Twitter—what I’m saying is  . . . → → →

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Werewolves out in the World, Part VII

Part 7 already? I mean, I did the first one of these kind of as a lark. And now I’ve got enough pics and screencaps after this one for an eights installment. Thank you all so much. Verymuch digging seeing Mongrels in ever tab on my browser—and in everybody’s lenses. Means everything. Times two. For anybody just tuning in, here’s fastlinks to what’s already happened: one, two, three, four, five, and six. And here’s some littermate Mongrels is showing up with for the first time—stuff I might need to look into myself: And, wow: to be included in a birthday haul. Thank you, thank you. And: Happy birthday! I completely agree with this sentiment: Luck to be in this spread of goodness—and, I’m right-now-this-very-moment (well, except for writing this) reading Hex. Highly recommended: Thank you—thus far, I think Ledfeather’s the one that’s gotten into the most classrooms. Werewolves are sleek and fast, though. Could be Mongrels catches up: Man, that’s precisely why I wrote it: a deep and abiding love of the werewolf. Glad for Mongrels to be finding the likeminded-hearted. Ah, the yellow book going across the ocean and then coming back. Like Darren? Later books will tell . . . Shh, don’t tell anybody, but I (may) have used this balloon-inflating trick before. Once. In a flash fiction that I can’t even remember where it ended up. Maybe I’m one of those writers who mines old stuff? Or, who doesn’t have new ideas, so just uses old ones? I don’t know. Also, I don’t for-sure  . . . → → →

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Mongrels @Buzzfeed Books

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Four Movies

Oh, man, don’t have time really even to mini-review all of these (edit: that’s a lie. I couldn’t help it). But they’re far and away the best stuff I’ve seen lately: This one—wow. Halfway between Tombstone and Unforgiven. Doc rides again. Unlike most westerns, though, this one’s got some real emotional punch. Thought this was just going to be a mindless romp, but, turns out? It’s probably now in my top five favorite zombies movies, ever. Seriously. This and Dead Set and Return of the Living Dead and Doghouse and 28 Days Later. So, so good. Shane Black’s still got it. This is kind of like a distillation of his other work. It’s got the buddy cop fun of Lethal Weapon, the same daughter from The Last Boy Scout, the LA feel of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And it’s just so fun. It never stops. Best theater-movie I’ve seen in a long while. Home invasion stuff, man. Why’s it hot right now? You’re Next is maybe my favorite of them, but this, the story, it’s just so beat out, so well-paced, and the individual sequences are just textbook. Really dug this one. Makes me realize that home-invasion stories, they really foreground the ‘rebirth’ part of the whole monomyth/hero’s cycle.

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Writers, Writing (and not)

Makes me half-nervous, making fun, as I know you see your own frailties best in others. But still—well, I don’t like coffee, or beer, or fine dining. But I’m sure I’m a poser in some way all the same: List of Things That Don’t Make You A Writer When I moved to Austin, I was surprised to learn that every guy and gal hanging out at a coffee shop was a novelist, every barista was sitting on a few truly outstanding, and unpublished, literary masterpieces, and everyone with a beard, a bike or a flowery skirt was either a great poet, the next…

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A Good Week for Novellas

Y’all been hearing the same thing I have? That we’re kind of easing into a novella-friendly space? Like: http://io9.gizmodo.com/tor-com-explai... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/bus...? And more and more, I’m sure. As for what constitutes a novella, a short novel, a novelette, a long story . . . who knows. I mean: editors know. There’s word-count thresholds. Granted, they maybe vary from house to house, from mag to mag, but they’re more or less not all that different from one another. Trying to think back to the FIRST novella I ever read, but, man, that’s lost in the mists of elementary school, I’d guess. There’s The Heart of Darkness, of course. And I’ve always dug how the three ‘pieces’ of Stein’s Three Lives hang together, and don’t. And A Canticle for Liebowitz, that’s pretty much three novellas threaded together, yes? Same way Ender’s Game started as a novella, so did Canticle. All this aside? There’s some good, good stuff happening. Here’s three of them I burned through the last two or three days:      What’s cool with the LaValle is how, instead of trying to impact HPL’s racism head-on, which would probably only serve to stand it up more, he supplants the whole Cthulhu mythos, like. In ways I won’t spoil. But, let me just say: HPL in here? He’s a pest, a hanger-on. He didn’t start this world. He only popularized it. And—like I really need to say this, when talking LaValle—there’s some legit-creepy stuff here, and some lines so nice I kind of want them tattooed on my inner  . . . → → →

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Fine Dining

This must by my first post about food, ever. Anyway, was just commenting on a friend’s pic of a some pie on Facebook—can’t link to it, but the Instagram’d version’s here—and realized that the reason I have yet to try keylime pie (that’s what the pie in question was), even though I promised myself to after it looked halfway-good in Million Dollar Baby/on Clint Eastwood’s fork is that new food terrifies me like little else. Seriously. Meaning: new restaurants? I’ll go, but there’ll be some kicking, some inside-screaming, and just hours or pre-dinner dread. I mean, it’s never as bad I imagine it’s going to be—there’s usually something nearly-recognizable on the menu (the other night? it was what I called rabbit hushpuppies, as that’s what they were)—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be better about this next time. I’m going to be just the same, actually. Here’s what I look for, every city I go to: That’s from . . . somewhere I was last week. Probably Texas. Anyway, anybody remember that episode of Married with Children, where Peggy or one of the Bundys wins a prize that means Mr. Jupiter—the healthiest dude in the land of Fox—comes and lives with them for a week? That’s always been a touchstone for me. I mean, the fact that Mr. Jupiter, living on the Bundy diet, he dies during that week. And this is what the Bundy household thrives on (this only works if you consider their lifestyle to be ‘thriving,’ of course). Example: I’m in high school,  . . . → → →

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Lake Access Only

Which is a slasher I wrote  . . . two years ago? I’d just reread The Virgin Suicides, and thought, Man, that was cool, sure—along with American Psycho, maybe the book of the nineties—but, wouldn’t it be cooler if that royal first-person delivery could be used to deliver something with a lot of people dying in gruesome ways? So: Lake Access Only. Which turned out cool. At least, I verymuch dig it. Yet to sub it anywhere, though, as it’s a weird one. Also? I may dig into it this summer, see if I can make it work as a screenplay instead. Which’ll require just completely ripping its innards out, and putting completely different innards in. But that’s how adapting goes. Anyway, LAO, its kind of central . . . I want to say ‘secret,’ but it’s more of a reveal, which of course the slasher is special-made to deliver right at the end. That reveal in LAO, I just found it on the shelf at Goodwill. Which is to say, had I found this sunglasses case before writing LAO, I probably wouldn’t have written it, as it was already in the world, and things that are already in the world aren’t really worth writing about.    Both makes my heart swell, seeing this, and also terrifies me, as now everyone who cruised that shelf at Goodwill, they can now go home, write Lake Access Only.

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