Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 271

Done Got Booked

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by the guys over at Booked. I think we were supposed to go in the area of thirty, not more than forty minutes, so, you know, fifty two, that's us just completely exercising control, I think. but, I mean, we were talking about zombie and slashers and werewolves (a bit), about horror and hospitals, about writing and writers — how'd we ever find a stopping point, right? Right. And, I re-listened to make sure this was up to their usual standards (to make sure I hadn't wrecked the boat), and there's even stuff gone. This one suspicious seventeen or eighteen-minute bit, even . . . anyway, the real focus, it's not me, it's Warmed & Bound, and it's a series of excellent interviews/podcasts. I just try to skew things towards hockey masks and the like.        

Seven Spanish Angels

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Back in 2005 or so, I was under contract to write a sequel to All the Beautiful Sinners for Rugged Land — they're gone now, but they were hot for a while, and produced some gorgeous books, and, as far as I know, did the first ever serious book trailer, too (For Henry's List of Wrongs) — and it was supposed to be a sequel, this "Seven Spanish Angels," a title I was of course ripping off, but also, it was a title that I felt would keep me honest. Becuase, I mean, you don't abscond with something like that and then not treat it seriously, right? At least I couldn't. I remember when that song came out, I was twelve, and didn't have the record, of course, but could dial it in out in the parents' and uncles' trucks some lucky times, and I'd close my eyes and just be there in that song. It was the same as listening to Marty Robbins sing "El Paso," to me — and of course, six years before, I'd listened to "El Paso" probably ten thousand times on a cassette player by my 25mhz Compaq, writing The Fast Red Road. This was that again, for me. So, anyway, I turned in the first draft, and, I don't know, I don't think it was complete, but it was a good three hundred pages, I'd guess. And the editor — also the publisher of Rugged Land — Shawn Coyne, he read it in like twelve seconds (he can do  . . . → → →

The Last Werewolf

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Read it, dug it, wrote about it over at The Cult. And, yes, very soon here I need to be writing my own werewolf novel. I think I only have two werewolf stories published, but I talk about werewolves enough — and have been thinking about them forever, and trying to be one for longer — and I've got a werewolf novel all sketched out, with the best title ever. Well, says me.

Magazine of Bizarro Fiction

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got a story in here, with some very cool people, whom I'm about to paste across from guest editor Cameron Pierce's post: Feature Novella: The Obsese by Shirley Jackson Award-winner Nick Antosca. Imagine The Birds with obese people instead of birds and you'll have a slight idea of what this brilliant social satire is all about. Also featuring: Fiction by Stephen Graham Jones, Bradley Sands, Andersen Prunty, R.J. Sevin, Matty Byloos, J. David Osborne, Kirsten Alene, a collaborative story by Alan M. Clark and Jeremy Robert Johnson, and an exclusive excerpt from Sam Pink's forthcoming novel, The No Hellos Diet. Non-Fiction by Douglas Lain, Molly Tanzer, Patrick Wensink, J. David Osborne, and Caris O'Malley. The author spotlight this issue is on multi-talented bizarro favorite Andrew Goldfarb. click the pic to buy the mag:  

Warmed and Bound

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click the banner to go to the site. right-click the banner to steal it. all looking very cool, very likely.

A Big Bucket of Now

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Reading now: Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf. Will this werewolf be the only one to know regret? I'm only about a third through, but that's a third in hardly any hours, so I'll know soon. Anyway, completely digging it. Because, you know, it's about werewolves, but also because it's written so, so well. And, I mean, werewolves are fast, are perfect hunters—why wouldn't they also be able to just reel off perfect lines page after page, right? Also jammed through Donald Ray Pollock's Devil All the Time, which rocked, and I recommend especially if you dug Knockemstiff, or if you were all into Outer Dark except, when you read Serpent Box years and years later, the two got mixed up in your head. Devil All the Time belongs in that mix-up. Listening to: China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. My first Mieville—late to the party, I know, and no excuse, either. This guy can also seriously write, though I'll admit, what he was using to hook me into this world, it wasn't plot, it was is the world. Which I was very aware of, kept telling myself to get sick of, please, except . . . it's such an interesting world. So, yeah, loving it, finding myself just sitting around with earbuds to get some more. Watching: Since Star Trek TOS showed up on Netflix Instant, my son and I backed out of STNG (we were only three episodes in), are peeling back, seeing where and how it all started. And completely loving all these again.  . . . → → →

A Big Bucket of Now

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Reading now: Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf. Will this werewolf be the only one to know regret? I'm only about a third through, but that's a third in hardly any hours, so I'll know soon. Anyway, completely digging it. Because, you know, it's about werewolves, but also because it's written so, so well. And, I mean, werewolves are fast, are perfect hunters—why wouldn't they also be able to just reel off perfect lines page after page, right? Also jammed through Donald Ray Pollock's Devil All the Time, which rocked, and I recommend especially if you dug Knockemstiff, or if you were all into Outer Dark except, when you read Serpent Box years and years later, the two got mixed up in your head. Devil All the Time belongs in that mix-up. Listening to: China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. My first Mieville—late to the party, I know, and no excuse, either. This guy can also seriously write, though I'll admit, what he was using to hook me into this world, it wasn't plot, it was is the world. Which I was very aware of, kept telling myself to get sick of, please, except . . . it's such an interesting world. So, yeah, loving it, finding myself just sitting around with earbuds to get some more. Watching: Since Star Trek TOS showed up on Netflix Instant, my son and I backed out of STNG (we were only three episodes in), are peeling back, seeing where and how it all started. And completely loving all these again.  . . . → → →

Dirty Noir

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hey, first little bit of my 2014 novel Not For Nothing (Dzanc) is up over at the excellent Dirty Noir. Not For Nothing's second-person, small-town detective, and, for the first time, it's set in the town I mostly grew up in: Stanton, Texas. Was so cool going there again in fiction, on the page. Can't wait for everybody to see the rest of this one, but, for now, click here to go there.    

True Grit (the book, this time)

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Here's a bit of writing you don't see much of anymore: Stonehill was not in a quarrelsome mood that morning, indeed he was not snorting or blowing at all but rather in a sad, baffled state like that of some elderly lunatics I have known. Let me say quickly that the man was not crazy. My comparison is not a kind one and I would not use it except to emphasize his changed manner. Okay, first, "Elderly Lunatics I Have Known" would be a great title for just about anything. A poetry book on equine husbandry, a technical manual about the automobiles that never made it into production, whatever. More important, though, note the immediate 'self-correction' of "Let me say quickly that the man was not crazy." What this speaks of is either handwriting where paper and ink are at a premium, or typewriting, where you can't just backspace up a few words, say it right the first time. I can't imagine writing on anything but a computer, but still, I think the convenience and capabilities of word-processing have changed the way we correct ourselves through a story. You longer 'see' the corrections, I mean. But, in those corrections—this is where Mattie Ross lives, isn't it? Constantly having to bite her sharp tongue back? Also, this 'self-correction' serves to make True Grit a kind of textual artifact rather than a produced work of fiction, which in turn lends it a bit of legitimacy. It's a rhetorical device to get us to believe in these events.  . . . → → →

Drama in Real Life

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Some of you'll remember a bit ago, before the hack, the crash, the switch to another host, I posted a cool excerpt by Pablo D'Stair (which the hack/crash ate, refused to spit back up, and I couldn't figure how to get a remade version back in-line with the rest, which sucks, but that's not why I'm here, now, talking about Pablo).  Or some of you may have the installment of Predicate we did together, and which I'm still tangled up in in my head, in the best way. Or you may remember just a couple of weeks ago, Pablo talking about The Bird is Gone  for a Sri Lankan newspaper. Or—much more likely—you maybe know Pablo through his own work. Or maybe you went to kindergarten with him, or currently have him targeted in a lawsuit, or own some incriminating videotape of him. If so (the tape), then this probably won't interest you: his new "Why'd You Go and Do That?" series, where he gets confessions from people about shady activities then matches them with his own, and him and whoever (me, this time) then interrogate each other about this a bit, trying to keep things centered around fiction. It's cool, it's fun, it's here: click.