Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 38
March 3, 2024
Site health: much better
Same theme—I need one with A) menus at the top, B) branching submenus, and C) a right panel/column—but everything’s moving much faster now. Upgraded my WordPress hosting stuff, cleaned up a lot of stuff behind the curtains, and . . . I can finally again do galleries, I think. A little test, just using random recent stuff:
Works, I think. Works differently than it used to, in that it auto-selects different image-sizes (thumbnail, “large,” all that), but it…
March 2, 2024
"What's it like, writing a trilogy?"
A question I got recently. My answer:
Horror trilogies are kind of a hat trick, aren’t they? Hard to pull off—no, hard to get away with. I mean, in horror, if too many of your characters make it through to the end, then . . . were the stakes really mortal enough? It’s your job as a horror writer to dream up people you want to hang out with, and then terrorize them, and, finally, bury them. This is great and fine for one-shots, but what about when you need some of those people to live, so there can be continuity going into book 2? The readers are going to figure out pretty fast if you’re rigging the dice rolls that save this or that person’s life over and over. So, first, you’ve got to stack the bodies up and keep stacking them up. Then you’ve got to push these ones that are maybe going to live through a serious meatgrinder. And along the way you have to show character growth for whoever your protagonist is—Jade Daniels for me—but not let that growth and development “complete” at the end of the first two installments. That’s the hard part, as growth is the prize they’re supposed to win for solving this book’s problem. It’s how stories are built. The way it works in a trilogy, though, is Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and it’s only on the very backside of Act 3, book 3, that you can finally gift them what they’ve been waiting and waiting for—which may very well be to join their friends and family in the ground, via a sacrifice that saves their world. Doing it this way can make it hit harder, but only if the meatgrinder that character’s been grinding through has been harsh enough, and only if you’ve been whispering between the lines in books 1 and 2 that there’s hope they’re finally going to get what they’ve been striving for. If everything turns out just perfectly, then, if the stars are just right in the night sky, if you’re holding your lips right for once . . . maybe you’ve got a trilogy.
I hope I’ve got one with The Angel of Indian Lake. A trilogy’s not just about three books in the same world, with the same people. It’s about change and growth, resolution and resonance. And, because this is Proofrock, it’s also about bodies floating facedown in the lake, wings of blood spreading out from them on top of the water, that we can feel our own hearts pulsing in.
It's on the shelves in three weeks.
Thanks for hanging out with Jade.
February 29, 2024
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February 28, 2024
First copy of Angel!
Can’t wait for y’all to hold it too. I mean, “read it,” “live it,” “feel it,” definitely. But it’s beautiful just to hold. It’s beautiful just as a textual artifact. Embossed matte cover, with spot-gloss. Such cool interior design—those claws! Couldn’t be more thrilled. On the shelves, or your mailboxes, very-very soon, here . . .
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February 23, 2024
Bram Stoker Award Finalist!
Such an honor for Don’t Fear the Reaper to have lucked its way onto this so-packed, amazing ballot. Just to be in the presence of great writers and books is the real win, yes? I’ve read all these, and they should each win:
https://www.thebramstokerawards.com/front-page/the-2023-bram-stoker-awards-final-ballot/…
February 17, 2024
Best Reads from Lately
(trying to do these more regularly, so they don’t get so loooong)
Some of the greatest movie artwork can come from the world of ALTERNATIVE MOVIE POSTERS. Here's a selection of our favourites and their creators…
— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) February 3, 2024
First up, Inception (2010) by Grzegorz Domaradzki
1/61 pic.twitter.com/KP77i0HYPR
A Brief Visual History of On-Screen Text Messages in Movies and TV
Chainsaw and Reaper stuff
REVIEW: Don’t Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy #2) by Stephen Graham Jones
http://davidagranoff.blogspot.com/2023/12/audiobook-review-dont-fear-reaper-by.html
http://deadm15.blogspot.com/2024/01/review-dont-fear-reaper.html
https://es.babelio.com/livres/Jones-Mi-corazon-es-una-motosierra/190…
Early Teenage Slasher:
2024’s New Horror Books
36 Exciting New Book Releases for 2024
https://www.audible.com/blog/article-most-anticipated-listens-2024
10 Upcoming Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024
https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-angel-of-indian-lake-1803129
https://www.instagram.com/tonyshorrorcorner/p/C1aXBP_rVgT/
https://katelynwrites.medium.com/book-review-stephen-graham-jones-the-angel-of-indian-lake-6005651…
