Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 259

Oops

tried to add The Faster, Redder Road to the menus, and it somehow broke all the secondary menus. I deleted it, but the breakage persists. So, either I’ll reinstall this WordPress or re-install the theme or nab a new theme, I suppose. And hopefully soon. But right now I’m writing a novel. Sorry for any inconvenience. In the interim, you can can click on ‘Posts’ (or, about anywhere) on the top_nav menu, then use the Search box to find the book pages and whatever else. Way unideal, I know. Anyway, hopefully fixed soonish. And I so liked this theme (well, except for how it sizes absolute instead of relative, but maybe that’s a thing for mobile, I don’t know . . .)

The Now Book

Not a ‘new’ book . . . yet. Just a book I’m writing right now. May never even finish it, who knows. As for when I started—tab, tab, tab—it looks like: And, not really keeping this as journal of this book or anything. I have done that once, with “Where the Camopede Roam,” but that was just a seventy-two hour commitment. This has already taken longer than that. Why I’m doing this, it’s . . . you know how when you teach fiction writing, you’re up there in front of the chalkboard saying this or that like it’s gospel, such that, when you come home to write, you kind of hear yourself saying ‘always do this,’ ‘never do that,’ and you feel kind of compelled to maybe consider following those rules, or at least giving them a test-drive? In the same way, in interviews I get asked a lot about how I write. Meaning, now, writing, I kind of find myself watching myself in a way I haven’t before. And, yeah, XJ Kennedy tells us that the goose that laid the golden egg died looking up its own arse (“if you would lay well, don’t watch”), but so far this isn’t slowing me down any. Got eighty of what feel like keeper pages so far. And, not like I have choice in the matter anyway. I can’t stop watching myself. So, here’s what I’ve figured out so far: RESEARCH: Which I don’t always do. But, for Mongrels, say (which’ll hopefully be on a shelf someday), I was  . . . → → →</a

Ello

I’m there now. Or, I’m here: https://ello.co/sgj I like the smiley face a lot more than the birdhouse, and I like the distinct non-blueness of the whole thing so far. Feels a lot like a Tumblr, really, but I got on Tumblr like fourteen years too late. G+, though, I’m still one of the holdouts who doesn’t understand why that didn’t become the new way (okay, because Google was spookily tracking every move of my mouse and selling it upstream)

Unbrokenfied Links

Took TWO HOURS yesterday to go through, clean up all the broken junk over in the navigation. And there was no small amount, either, sorry. Most were the result of other sites updating this or that, which changed the URL. Meaning, I only lost four or five stories, two or three interviews, and a couple of podcasts. So, all’s well. However, I would guess there’s still the occasional broken link in the posts. That kind of tending, I don’t think I’ve got the eyes nor the click-fingers for. So, if you find something in the archives needing attention, making me looking stupid, frustrating you because it’s SUPPOSED to work, maybe say it as a comment under this? I’ll get to it. And, what you’ll also find the deeper you go into the the archives—for the moment, anyway—is that a lot of the images are absolute-sized, not relative. This is because I gave them captions. Which seemed good and great at the time, but now, with this new theme that’s got a narrower area to slap the posts up . . . not so great. Meaning, when I post NOW, I keep having to go into the html like it’s 1996, and relative-size all the img tags. Kind of sucks. I’ve tried to address it with a few plugins, but they don’t seem to be keeping up with the WordPress updates very well, so I’m out here on my own saying “90%, 90%, 90%.” It’s not the worst thing, I don’t suppose. Next up: I need to  . . . → → →</a

Don’t Look (Behind You) Now

With slashers, I’ve always been in John Carpenter’s camp: these people aren’t getting punished for having sex, they’re getting killed while naked simply because that’s when they’re the most vulnerable, the least likely to be looking around the room. However, like Jim Rockford says, If fifty people tell you you’re drunk, then maybe it’s time to lie down, right? Meaning, when the slasher was busy getting codified back in the seventies (Black Christmas, Jaws, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, on up, to, say, Tourist Trap and Friday the 13th and Just Before Dawn and The Burning), this killed-for-having-sex dynamic wasn’t so much in play. But it soon would be. Just because everybody was saying it. And, really, I don’t know if  the critics started pushing that first—Clover & Co.—or if all the films trying to cash in on Halloween etc made it real. Or if that was just the talk around the popcorn machine, and soon it was real enough that Scream and Cherry Falls could even play with it some, invert it, hang it out to dry, throw it against the wall to see what sticks. However it happened, it quickly got to the point where killed-for-having-sex, that was considered de rigueur, pretty much, or a delimiting factor, anyway—see Behind the Mask: Leslie Vernon, say. If you don’t have some of that going on in your slasher, then how can you even call it a slasher? It’s not ideal, and it goes a long way towards re-inscribing America’s preoccupation with villainizing sex and thus custom-making  . . . → → →</a

Coming Home

For the weekend, anyway. And, I’m thinking this is my third time in the Midland Reporter-Telegram? I showed up once when I was about twelve, though I cannot begin to suspect what for. Oh, no: maybe it was for Old Settlers Days in Stanton. And maybe it was the news, not the paper. I was cutting cowchips with my knife, to win the big (throwing) contest. Which, I did, but not that year. Anyway, MRT is also the first place I was ever published. I was about twelve then as well. My little brother, over cereal before school, realized he was supposed to have written a myth for homework. Like, explaining where this or that came from. So I did it for him right quick, and he won some contest with it, and then it got published in the newspaper, under his name. But it’s my story. Or, ours, I guess. Anyway, here’s the most recent write-up, some thirty years after the other times (click for full-size/readable)

We Could Be Heroes

Wer

For a long time I’ve been in a Kirk/Picard situation with myself, regarding Ginger Snaps and The Howling: which do I like best? And, I know, what about An American Werewolf in London, Dog Soldiers, Bad Moon. They’re all good and vital, and contributed important stuff, but for me, it’s always come down to Ginger Snaps or The Howling. And I usually settle on The Howling, as it’s got a much stronger ending (much longer franchise tail as well). But now, man. No, not ‘man.’ Wer. This may be the werewolf movie we’ve all been waiting on. And, what’s odd about it? Ever since 1941, the transformation sequence has been key. Landis and Baker took that and drove it home better than anybody, and Hemlock Grove‘s still doing it, to excellent effect. But in Wer, there’s only two real transformations, and neither of them required any dayslong choreography of latex and air-bladders, and the cgi rendering didn’t take a whole wall of processing power. Wer, it’s kind of standing the movie werewolf on its head. As the title might suggest, its stripping all the extra off ‘werewolf,’ just giving us the real monster inside that word all along.* As for why the transformation sequence is so slight—not at all dissatisfying, just not the set-piece it’s always been—it’s not budget, necessarily, it’s that we don’t need to visually chart the ‘shift’ from man to wolf this time. From man to amalgamation of man and wolf, as if a wolf has been laid over the chassis of  . . . → → →</a

Society Isn’t Doomed

mix Buzzfeed‘s “23 Things that Prove Society is Doomed” with Salon‘s “War & Peace on the Subway: How Your iPhone is Saving Literature,” then angle it through my publicists’ rose-colored glasses, and you end up with something a lot  like: 1. Sitting together and reading still counts as socializing: ↳ Via quoteinvestigator.com, once upon a time. 2. It’s considered polite not to read over your date’s shoulder: ↳ Used to be via empoweredteensandparents.com. 3. Fill the steps between class and the bus stop with a book: ↳ I wonder if these kids know they’re in the original of this image from betabeat.com? 4. Books, for all the many time-outs and half-times of the sporting events you attend: ↳ Somebody here forgot their book . . . (Originally via umhoops.com).  5. “There’s such a glare in here, we’re all having to hold our phones at odd angles to see the pages of these books”: ↳ Used to be from picsofaznstakingpicsoffood.tumblr.com, but the internet broke because the URL was too long. 10. Sometimes chivalry is a race. She’s trying to gift him the book before he can buy it himself: ↳ Originally via 98kool.com, which has to be either a radio station or a cigarette. 11. Sure, Thomas Cole is good, but if you want zombies, you’re going to have crack a book open: ↳ Originally via carrotsbridgeshorizons.wordpress.com.  12. When you don’t know what to say, maybe a book can help: ↳ Used to be via saketvora.com. And no, I’m not getting paid for the product placement. Though I am now thirsty. 16. They’re reading so fast  . . . → → →</a

Godzilla: What if Smaug Were on OUR Side?

Wasn’t a clutch of eggs important last time around as well, for Godzilla? It’s cool. I mean, it shows Jurassic Park influence—’nature always finds a way’—but more than that, it suggests that in order for us to keep these science-fiction monsters believable, we’re having to apply biology to them. We’re giving them life cycles outside their brief, usually-tragic rampages. In the case of this Godzilla, though, it actually feels a little bit more like a course correction, of sorts. From Pacific Rim, I mean, whose kaiju had of course already starred in Cloverfield, The Mist, and on and back. But, as far as giant monsters go, we can’t get enough, really. What Pacific Rim did was just elide that fascination with the then- (and soon to be again) fad of giant robots — Transformers, Battleship. What this Godzilla is correcting, though, it’s locating the giant monsters here on Earth, instead of via an interdimensional portal to some place Thor should have cleaned up long ago. This is important because in Pacific Rim, the threat of aliens makes that an invasion story, one Adrien Veidt would have loved, as it catalyzes humanity into a single unit, erases the differences we bicker about, reminds us we’re in this together, gives us a common cause. I’m not saying this Godzilla doesn’t have that Independence Day blockbustery dynamic built in as well, but, whereas ‘aliens,’ at least to this Blackfeet, are always a big fancy metaphor for colonization (I don’t see any other way to watch Cowboys and Aliens), radiation  . . . → → →</a