Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 275

Hair balladry

my first YouTube playlist.

e-booking: a summation

Just a rough list of the e-book issues I can think of. And, I should say up top here that I'm completely addicted to my Kindle, will often not read a book if it isn't offered digitally. So this isn't an attack on e-books (which — a lot of of those are taking the form of nostalgia, right? like when we went from cassettes to CDs?). At the same time, I see nothing wrong with the already-proven technology of the paper book. And, yes, a lot of times this pro/con argument, it's eviling up e-books in defense of brick & mortar bookstores, yes? So I discount most of those. I'm all for bookstores as well (though I far prefer/refer the ones that carry my books . . .), but I'm all for the on-line reatailers as well, or direct-purchasing from the press itself (makes them more money). Anyway, enough preamble: How e-books are changing publishing: 'print run' is no longer that useful a term book contracts don't hedge against returns as aggressively 'remainders' and warehousing aren't issues anymore advance reading copies work differently, at least for solely e-titles covers matter less, as most readers start you at page 1 (often even skipping the epigraph and TOC and dedication, which kind of sucks). though, as for the retailers' listings on the digital 'bookshelf,' yes, the cover matters there collectibility and signatures aren't so much an issue marginilia (your own scribbles in the book) are significantly ore difficult, thus, less instinctive footnotes more or less suck, digitially (a  . . . → → →

Parental Guide (RUBBER)

Sex & Nudity A woman is seen naked, from behind, but it's through two doors, and in the point-of-view of a killer tire, so it's not really anything you can do much with. Profanity Not excessive, and what's there's mostly from the 'spectators'—the embedded horror-movie audience meant to offer the same objections we would, or already are, thereby anticipating and perhaps deflating those objections (think the pirate contingent in the theater watching Spongebob, or the Woody-Allen-ish 'chorus' offering their commentary on the various goings-on, or even the narrator-cum-singer in Dead & Breakfast, etc.  Not at all an uncommon conceit, the problem only arising when/if the our stand-ins in the movie are only there to pad it out, or make it 'smart' and art-housy). However, those objections: a tire in a music montage? Specifically, a psychokinetic tire with malicious intent (and still a lot of tread) and a taste for blood and NASCAR getting the soft-focus, Baywatch kind of musical interlude? Violence & Gore A bottle is graphically decapitated in the opening scenes (the ' blood sacrifice' all true horror needs to properly begin), and various insects and small animals are similarly sacrificed, largely just to establish for us this killer tire's capabilities and proclivities, but, in the scorpion's death, say, the intent would also seem to be to show us that moviemakers have done their homework (it's updated Peckinpah). Once things move to town, though, the animals are safe, and all subsequent head explosions—the tire's main method, and not at all unpleasing—would seem to owe  . . . → → →

Couple of nice Del Rio mentions

by Adam Blomquist and J.S. Breukelaar

Good TV

Or: The subject line that comes to mind now that I just finished up the Deadwood series. Or: just to write dialogue like that once, ever. I mean, yeah, it's all kinds of fakey and staged and overblown, but it's that kind of fakey and staged and overblown and David Mamet-y that feels like playwrights had a pen involved. The lines Swearengen and Bullock and Tolliver and the rest would deliver every episode, they always had this cool Elizabethan kind of vibe to them, though always undercut by just massive, over-the-top (yes, historically inaccurate) profanity, so that what finally gets across is the suspicion that the Old West was a lot more eloquent than any of us would have guessed—and we like the past to feel golden and 'magic' like that, because then it allows us to live in the ruins of that glory. Or, really, what the sculpted, impossible-to-think-of-on-the-spot-like-that lines leave us with finally is the pleasant suspicion that none of these rapidfire conversations are this-is-recorded real, that what we're seeing and hearing here, it's all prettied-up distillations. It's dialogue, idealized, which is exactly what good fiction delivers. Is exactly the kind of tactic that can trick us into trusting a story, into believing the characters. And, those characters. My favorite of the lot by far is Richardson, Farnum's . . . I don't know, whatever he is: squire? Love that guy, and the way he prays. But of course the show's not built around Richardson. No, in Deadwood we never don't know that  . . . → → →

Anthologies (etc)

[ these are all links . . . ]

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Some movies just make you happy. Feast was this was for me. And Severance. And Leslie Vernon. And, though it's more over-the-top, Club Dread. Horror comedy's where it's at, I think, though there's a line, yeah; while I'll sign up any day of the week for a Decampitated viewing, I don't do so well at the Scary Movie series. I get all the references and jokes, sure, but it's always a very painful kind of humor, as what they're lampooning up there, it's what I love, it's the horror I hold so close to my heart. No, what I like best is when there's gore and comedy together. Dead-Alive kind of stuff, or Shaun, or Slither. Fido was even funny, and Scream's self-deprecating brand of humor is what set it off so well (and, rhetorically, made us believe it in the way we need to believe in horror)—unlike, say with Student Bodies, which is more about gags. Though Return to Horror High got it about right. Anyway, just dropping all these names because I want to add one more: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. That it didn't get wide release—or hasn't?—is completely beyond me. But then neither did Aah! Zombies!!, I guess, which is doing the same thing, just in another sub-genre: flipping perspective, re-allocating our sympathies. In Aah!, instead of seeing the zombie plague over the shoulders of a ragged band of survivors, we're with the zombies, who don't really have bad intent, are just misunderstood. Without giving too much away (I really want  . . . → → →

The Enterprise of Death

this one is just as strong as THE SAD TALE OF THE BROTHERS GROSSBART. best thing I've read so far this summer, by far, and I kind of doubt anything else is going to live up to it. and, I've had this copy Jesse gave me for I don't know how long long — too long — but kept putting it off, telling myself it was because I was arm-deep in the second BUNNYHEAD installment, that reading Jesse would shut me down there, and then telling myself it was nearly five hundred pages, was going to take some investment, but those are all fake excuses. really, it's two things: I was nervous that it wouldn't be as strong as GROSSBART, and I was doing that VANILLA SKY, pleasure-delaying thing. happily, my nervousness was way misfounded, and, yes, the book is a complete and absolute pleasure to read, and not just because of any stupid delaying. so, this is the imperative part: don't delay, crack it open now, lose yourself, then, at the end, wish it wasn't over. lots of books this size, they're that size because the writer didn't know where to stop, so just kept feeling ahead in the dark, hoping to latch onto some kind of useable end. that's not ENTERPRISE. not even close. the whole way through, it's intentional, never indulges itself, and, most importantly, never falls so in love with the characters or the setting that the story loses its thrust. however, yes, WE fall in love with the characters, with  . . . → → →

Some catch-up updates

which I'd posted individually, but they all died in the hack. So, to list: short-piece "Bone Choir" up at Rotten Leaves. Coachella interview's live "Blue Velvet Monster: on David Foster Wallace" is up at The Cult "What You Can Remember," an essay, is included in Llano Estacado: Island in the Sky. It Came from Del Rio is a Colorado Book Award Finalist I'm included/interviewed at ReadHorror I'm somewhat on LinkedIn now

Stoker Ceremony

will be streamed this Saturday night, here. I would say you'll maybe see me on-stage, but, yeah. it'll be one of the other nominees, I suspect. I'll try to do a good Faith Hill close-up/reaction thing, though. also, I bought a tuxedo jacket the other day at Goodwill. now just to figure how to make it work with my White's Boots.