Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 262

Looking at Demon Theory

I forget if I’ve properly updated or not, but: Demon Theory, the comic book. We’ve got pencils and temp-lettering in the can, are playing with cover stuff now (I’ve got a fake-o logo/title somewhere, but, it’s somewhere not on this particular computer), as you can see below. As for its eventual realness, as in buyableness: we’re just putting tentacles out to publishers now, and crossing what fingers we’ve got left. It’s a good time for a new horror comic, I think, with both Locke & Key and Hack/Slash sadly going/gone away. However, one thing I’ve found is that I don’t get to make those calls. I just write and write and write, and hope in-between, try to watch some Rockford Files when I can.

Monkey’s Paw

If only anybody were ever smart enough to call a lawyer and an English major before they made their three wishes, right? You’ve got to the get the wording just, just right, with all these exclusionary clauses, with all this over-specific verbiage to indicate exactly what you’re asking for. And bring an artist in as well, to go ahead and illustrate what you’re saying, to storyboard out the smallest most insignificant minutia of these wishes. Don’t worry about being too redundant or pedantic, either. You have to go that far. Because the wishgivers of the world, at least according to the stories, they will willfully misinterpret whatever you say. They’ll gleefully misinterpret it. It’s like—it’s like, sure, they’re bound by ‘laws’ to follow your instructions. But if you leave any wiggle room at all, then look out, you’re about to become a chalkboard on which they can carve a cute rhyming poem about how much it chafes being bound by these rules. Case in point: Another case in point: The Monkey’s Paw, a bloody retelling of that 1905 short story by WW Jacobs. Except, you probably remember it as happening over the course of a single day, yes?   Not feature-length. Here it is in short: a couple acquires a magic talisman that grants three wishes, one of which kills their son, one of which brings him back, one of which sends him away. So, it’s built for three acts, but, in the story at least, those acts are bam bam bam fast, and then  . . . → → →

Three Miles Past

A collection of three powerfully disturbing novellas by multiple award-winning author, Stephen Graham Jones. There are lines that probably shouldn’t be crossed, doors that should stay shut, thoughts that shouldn’t be considered. In these three novellas by Stephen Graham Jones, the dead talk, ancient evil opens its eyes, and that guy across the parking lot, he’s watching you, and has been for a while now. Lock the door, tell yourself it’s nothing, turn the radio up. It won’t matter. You’re already three miles past where you meant to stop.     Amazon |

Not for Nothing

The Town is Stanton, Texas, population 3,000. Your name is Nicholas Bruiseman, and you’re a disgraced homicide detective so down on your luck you’ve been forced to take a job as the live-in security guard for the town’s lone storage facility. At last, you can finally get on with the business of drinking yourself to a better state of mind, except the ghosts of childhood keep rising all around you. You might have been done with Stanton once upon a time, but Stanton’s hardly done with you. This is your new life—starting over with nothing in the town you grew up in, and trying to survive a case where there’s one dead body and an old high school yearbook full of suspects. Let the class reunion begin, and if you can get paid this time, even better. After all, you’re not doing this for nothing… Amazon

Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly

written with Paul Tremblay “And now the boy’s lost in the brightness somehow. The whole tree shakes. He’s up in the thickest part of the tree. I step back, looking up, and I keep going until I back into the kiddie pool, which takes me out behind my knees. My soccer calves are no help and I splash down butt-first into the water. No one is watching me, so no one laughs or asks if I’m okay. I’m not okay. There, he’s at the top. Definitely. Am I the only one who can—? The light branches bend under his weight, and then he just leaps forward, into the air, into nothing. There are screams all around, but he doesn’t fall, doesn’t plummet, doesn’t make a body imprint on the lawn like some cartoon character. He just hangs in the air like he’s getting his grip. And then he rises. The sun is behind him so he’s a shadow. He moves his arms and legs, but I can’t tell if it’s gaining him any sort of direction. He drifts away, up and to the left, and somersaults in the air a few times. Everyone is out in the yard. The kids laugh and wave. The adults grab and claw at each other, terrified. They try to herd the children away. And the kids, they only start crying because they want to watch. They want to see that other boy, that older one, the one floating away like a lost balloon.”

Floating Boy Meets the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly

written with Paul Tremblay “And now the boy’s lost in the brightness somehow. The whole tree shakes. He’s up in the thickest part of the tree. I step back, looking up, and I keep going until I back into the kiddie pool, which takes me out behind my knees. My soccer calves are no help and I splash down butt-first into the water. No one is watching me, so no one laughs or asks if I’m okay. I’m not okay. There, he’s at the top. Definitely. Am I the only one who can—? The light branches bend under his weight, and then he just leaps forward, into the air, into nothing. There are screams all around, but he doesn’t fall, doesn’t plummet, doesn’t make a body imprint on the lawn like some cartoon character. He just hangs in the air like he’s getting his grip. And then he rises. The sun is behind him so he’s a shadow. He moves his arms and legs, but I can’t tell if it’s gaining him any sort of direction. He drifts away, up and to the left, and somersaults in the air a few times. Everyone is out in the yard. The kids laugh and wave. The adults grab and claw at each other, terrified. They try to herd the children away. And the kids, they only start crying because they want to watch. They want to see that other boy, that older one, the one floating away like a lost balloon.”

Jamie Lee Curtis

Thanks to Jesse Lawrence for the heads-up on The Final Girls. Excited. ABC gave us HARPER’S ISLAND, yes? One of the best miniseries ever. And, this premise of a final girl support group is something I’ve been playing with for a while myself. So, this’ll either make it obsolete—which is great, I should have been faster—or it’ll show me what not to do (not hoping for this outcome at all). Anyway, looks like good people all around. Excited. Also, for those who missed it: The Last Final Girl (not my novel, but a write-up on Danielle Harris).

Demon Theory: the comic book

Kind of an update: we’ve got the first issue down, and temp-lettered. No colors or inks yet. Just starting to hit up publishers a little about it. There’s been one page of it posted at HorrorNews, and here’s a screengrab of another:

You’re Definitely Next

Once upon a time, a little movie called Scream asked What if the victims in the slasher knew the formula of the movie they were in? It started a revolution, a renaissance, one that finally made room for a Leslie Vernon to look at things from the slasher’s point-of-view, one that left room for Tucker & Dale to see what happens if the bad guys were the victims this time around. One that opened the door for Cabin in the Woods, which posed the question What if all these cliché conventions are part of something real, something vital for us all? Horror reshapes itself with questions, I’m saying. It’s always turning back on itself, trying to poke holes in the givens, see what its own gory insides might look like. Which brings us to You’re Next. A bit ago, I was saying The Conjuring was far and away the best wide-release horror of the year so far. And I feel like I was right, for then. This is a month later, though. And, while I don’t want to dethrone The Conjuring — still excellent, a clean span above the rest — man, You’re Next. Slashers are what I live for. Especially ones that are smart, that cut the genre off at the knees only to graft its stumps to stilts. The question You’re Next is doing that with is something a lot like: What if Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street had been her third-act self from the opening frames on? It changes everything. So much for  . . . → → →

Scared Straight: The Conjuring

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I keep thinking about these two kids who left the theater early. Say, ten minutes shy of the end, right when things were at their goriest, most sacrilegious frenzy. I mean, first and of course, eight- and ten-year-old girls shouldn’t be seeing The Conjuring. Boys either. I’m not even sure I was old enough to see The Conjuring, really. But I did stick it out all the same, and, because I stayed, I was processed through the horror. I saw the daylight at the end of the tunnel, and I moved toward it. Not those two girls. When their parent or sister or whoever it was finally got responsible and shepherded them out, it was only after they’d had all these images grafted onto their psyches forever. For them, now, this family’s still in that haunted house, the evil’s still out there, the nightmare’s never over. So, parents: if you take your kids to a horror movie for some insane reason, please, don’t wimp out three quarters of the way through? I don’t think that promotes restful sleep. Anyway, yes, The Conjuring. Yes yes yes The Conjuring.  It’s cool to watch the pendulum swing in horror, isn’t it? Last year’s breakout horror was Cabin in the Woods, which was crazy and fun and smart and aware of itself—it was every bit Scream’s inheritor, and put the slasher on everybody’s map again. This year, however, we’ve got The Conjuring dark-horsing The Lone Ranger, of all things. And, The Conjuring, while it definitely shares some stuff with  . . . → → →