Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 257

Mongrels UK

Happening just after it does on this side of the water. Also: these are the first final copies I’ve seen. Very exciting.

Mongrels in Salt Lake City

Where I lived last fall. Click the image to go to the place: [ or click here ]

Canceled Shows I Still Carry a Torch For

And, two that “finished,” but maybe didn’t get to quite go their intended distance: Uncoincidentally? Deadwood and Hannibal are my two favorite things to ever happen to television. So it probably stands to reason that I’m A) going to want more, and B) going to suspect they didn’t get a fair shake.

Slasher TV

And lo it came to pass, that the slasher did migrate to the small screen. Well, what we used to call the small screen. But the home viewing experience isn’t what it was in 1988. Nowadays, the image-quality and sound are practically theater, right? But that’s not the reason for the move, I don’t think. My first suspicion as to why the slasher would find a home in our living rooms, it’s that everybody keeps saying we’re in a golden age of television. So, the slasher, needing eyes as it does, goes to where those eyes already are. Except that’s too easy an explanation. Could it be that the networks and their prudishness aren’t controlling the game anymore? The Walking Dead has made gore a family-friendly experience, and Hannibal’s seeded some real darkness all through the nightly schedule, to say nothing of all the Dexters out there on the harder cable. But I don’t quite accept that as the prime reason the slasher’s gone tv. Relaxed standards might be a part of it, but not the main part. What I really think it might be, it’s just that the nature of the slasher has always been ready-made for television adaptation—for serial viewing. The beats of the slasher are pretty much “body/body/body/body/body . . . reveal-then-twist,” right? With a lot of suspense sequences stringing it all together. Lots of stalking, lots of slasher-cam, lots of red herrings, and maybe an ill-advised party or three, to get everyone in the same room, mix things up all over again.  . . . → → →

Critical Companion

Coming Soon

Serious Poeming

Layli Longsoldier, killing it on the page. This is exactly how art can work. I would say how poetry can work, but, really, this feels bigger than just one form, one medium. As the poem talks about. Click here to go there, and then never leave, except to spread this poem more and farther: My big plan? That there’s a recording online of this getting read out loud. By her, by someone.

Al Jazeera Panel

Was live, and now it’s here. Good times, good panel, good hosting; we could have gone a couple hours I figure. And, we were all talking before things cued up, and I don’t think any of us are trying to pull JK Rowling down. I mean, all writers owe her for creating a whole generation of readers, yes? I know I was always there at midnight, waiting for the next Harry Potter, and I’ve kind of ceremoniously handed her books on to my kids. At the same time, though, in her “History of Magic in North America,” we/Natives may come off a bit like a fantasy creature. For some cultures, maybe this is cool, I don’t know. Problem for us, it’s that it’s been going on for a while now, and’s just one more way to invisible us, to lock us in the past, all that. Anyway, rather than policing every representation, maybe we should just see misrepresentation as an opportunity to educate, yeah? And, as for why Rowling’s catching all this grief from all over for this, for what’s really just a few paragraphs in four pages, it’s probably because her fiction goes so wide that people feel it’s not something they can shrug off, as it/she kind of informs reality. Anyway, me? When I first read it, I was kind of bummed, yeah, but, I mean, when there’s Redskins flags everywhere, when every third school has us as a mascot (I’ve taught at two of them, PhD’d at another), there’s levels of being bummed, too. So  . . . → → →

Publishers Weekly and Werewolves

Specifically, my werewolves:

Three More for the Shelf

Last three I read over the last . . . ten, twelve days? Something like that. I know, I know: how have I ever called myself a horror writer without having this one on my mental bookshelf? No excuse. It’s good, too. Most interesting, maybe, is the way Bloch starts so many of the chapters by kind of peeling up the last one, and then going through what went on over here in the story while that other chapter was happening. The effect, of course, it’s that we kind of a see the thing developing from a lot of angles, and come out feeling we know it pretty well. I don’t think I’d ever do it, or recommend someone do it, as it always feels like padding, like the writer’s nervous there’s not actually enough story here, so’s making sure to document every single footstep. But it works here. Also? I was able to pair this up with seeing on the big screen, in 35mm, which was about the coolest thing ever. How not to love the novel that puts one of my most cherished and dear songs up on a pedestal, and makes it key to the drama? But I don’t say what it is, just that it comes to suffuse the whole story. No, that’s the wrong word. It’s pulsing red line of magma tendriling up between the whole story. Were I blurbing it, here’s what I’d say: You’ll have ash on your fingertips by the last sooty page. Ash on your fingertips, an ember smoldering in your chest,  . . . → → →

Three for the Shelf

Meant to write this last weekend, when these were actually the last three books I’d read, but . . . I don’t exactly recall: something went on to keep me from doing that. However, I already can’t remember whatever book I read this week, so, kind of technically, these are still the last three books I read, each of which I very highly recommend: This is my favorite Paul Tremblay. Which—he’s got some good ones. The way this one ratchets the tension up then continually kicks your feet our from under you, it’s pretty riveting. The mark of a good novel for me is if I’m stealing time from the rest of my day in order to sneak a few more pages in. I stole a lot of time for this book. I want to give you a mashup—this book is book X via book Y, with some Z in there as well—but I’d rather you experience it pure, like I did. And then carry it with you into the rest of your life. I’ve yet to read an Adam Cesare novel that didn’t A) immediately reach up from the page, grab me by the Dennis Rodman lapels, and pull me facefirst into the story, or B) get me to fall head over heels for this world before I’m even a quarter of the way through the book. Seriously, Cesare’s got good narrative instincts, and he knows the horror genre—both fiction and film—as intimately as anyone out there. Talking this one in particular, one thing  . . . → → →