The Horror…the horror…
December 21, 2011
I didn’t do well with sleeping, last night. I woke up an hour after drifting off, switched on the TV, switched it off, switched it on again, switched it back off, and finally turned the fan up so high that I could hear the wind rushing past my ears. I often need cold temperatures to sleep, as if going into hibernation. Maybe my brain atrophies just enough to allow my inner worlds to recede into the ether. Maybe, I just need a good snuggle. Dunno.
I also had quite a bit on my mind with the holidays returning and the completion of principal photography for HorrorCon. Have I forgotten to get someone a gift? Have I forgotten to shoot something? There’s that gift card I wanted for a couple peripheral members of the family. There’s that stock photography I need to stand in place of something beyond the scope of my budget and time constraints. Will both or either suffice?
What the hell am I doing with Yellow Horse? Can it ever be more than a shingle? Its conceit is that a collection of quality products can shine light on one another as they become known, growing the brand, and filling the gaps caused by having not spent years of networking in the publishing and entertainment industries, industries that keep changing. What does it mean to place a book or market a film, anymore? What if a better than average film draws attention to a brilliant book, which in turn draws attention to an eerily adorable animated series. Can YHP&P be a golden pot of projects from which larger, more connected entertainment entities can mine?
Should I sell my condo at the shore? I love the inside, but I’m no longer wired for associations and their by-laws upon by-laws that seek to prevent all conflict with adults who cannot act responsibly with an intact intellect? How much longer can I allow a few dozen people to legislate my peace of mind? Mandatory annual inspections? Too many damn noses for too little whiffs of common sense, if you ask me.
Christ, I’ve got lots of driving to do in the next few weeks.
Then there are a few new projects I want to start. I think. I want to draft a sequel to HorrorCon that begins right where the original ends. I’ve got three book ideas, one a non-fictional account of the ten months it required to shoot the film. I think I want to call it My First Rodeo: A Year-Long Account of Indie Filmmaking. I also like Herding Cats: The Unlikely Capturing of HorrorCon the Film. Had thirty, terrifying days in the span of three months shooting a film in several busy, public spaces cooked my brain too much to focus on what would come after? Possibly. It could be that being “in over my head” had become what life feels like, which would explain my suicidal compulsion to complete two novels of fiction, with at least one in mind as a screen adaptation, all in the span of a year. The Thunders tells the story of a lonely, phobic writer who, while researching a little-known tribe of demon-battling Native Americans who used evil spirits to fend off imperialist settlers, follows too closely in their tracks. In doing so, he winds up caring for a desperate crush who he’s inadvertently helped fall into demonic possession. Another, The Unveiling, takes us back to the turn-of-the-20th Century when the Impressionists were making their mark on the art world and introduces us to a mysterious Picasso that may hold some important clues to a series of horrendous murders happening around Paris and New York.
And what about sWitch? Shouldn’t I adapt that one, too?
And I still haven’t experienced my “ahhh” moment, or that moment of blessed relief after a film’s final scene is wrapped. We shot it, I remember that. I remember a congratulatory hug from my leading man, and holding my leading lady while she expressed how things would be so “weird” from here on out. There would be no shoots to look forward to – or to fret over – in the foreseeable future. Then I remember packing up and the smack of bitterly cold air as I left the hotel. But I don’t remember feeling much of it. We wrapped very late after a very long day, so maybe that’s why I only rolled into a strange exhaustion and am now sitting here trying to piece it together a full ten days later.
There’s also still so much to do. I now have to prove that I knew what I was doing when I was forever pointing and instructing. Of course, I’m not sure I really did know. I went wholly on instinct, an instinct that I’d honed from nearly forty years of movie watching. At one point I was digesting three a day. It helped to lose weight when I was a wrestler. Instead of dreaming about food – any kind of food – I would enter the dreams of films. I did have my experience as an industrial video producer to help support some of my assumptions. Having been through some grueling shoots covering tens of thousands of square feet in a single day did teach me to move fast, yet carefully. How careful was I? I guess I’ll find out soon enough. One thing I’ve learned from my research is that, regardless of the name making the film, few have professed to know what they were doing when they were making it. That helps a little.
So, I find myself in a languorous sort of limbo. I’m tired, but my brain is busy. That seems to best describe my life up to this point. Oh…almost forgot the ticking bomb in the closet. That’s what I call the force that pushes me to finish these projects before some form of disease catches up with me. If one doesn’t in premature time, I’m thinking car crash. I’ve had my share, and a frayed nerve somewhere in my medulla feels I’m due. It’s troubling to drive, to be honest. I tap my finger whenever a car passes too close to the median stripe, or if a car rolls up too quickly at a cross road. There have been no fewer than three occasions in the last month where I’ve either had to lock up my brakes or swerve thanks to the thoughtless driving of others, and I sense the sickening moment is getting closer. Or is that just my mind, drafting another tale? How I loathe being between projects/tasks/opinions…holidays.
Have I mentioned all the driving I’ve got to do in the next few weeks?
And yet, I am happy. My kind of happy.
Now, off to locate two, 2-terabyte drives. I woke in a panic this morning realizing that a few of my shoots hadn’t been backed-up in triplicate.
Conventional Wisdom
March 23, 2011
There was a moment during the Monster Mania 17 shoot where I felt the sharp, sharp slap of folly. My stomach knotted and dropped to the floor, and I nearly cracked into the kind of hysterics brought on by the sudden realization that I had miscalculated my risk by too great a distance. The exact moment of which I write is captured forever in the picture you see above. In a way, it was freeing. The jig was up. My tip-toe dance on and around eggshells would finally devolve into a madcap snow angel on the hilariously hideous carpeting.
To be fair, I wouldn’t have been completely surprised. What I was trying to do looked clinically insane to those who hadn’t spent months and months carefully planning it, and I was told as much by one of my very own actors. It actually reaffirmed my faith in her good sense. Going into a live convention unannounced to the public and attempting to shoot a feature film with everyone and everything as my multi-million dollar backdrop is the kind of idea that usually withers into dust whilst nursing the hangover caused by the bender that brought it on. But like so many projects I’ve undertaken, it made perfect sense to me. All I had to do was execute the plan to perfection, which meant directing a crew of almost 40 people for three days to never put a foot wrong lest we be escorted out by the authorities. Easy.
Anyway, the moment in question involves a scene where my main character throws her car keys to a friend on the other side of her vendor table. This friend is in the process of shooting her for his documentary, which meant he had to read his lines from behind the person running the camera. The first take went fine. Said keys hit him square in the chest and he fumbled them to security. The second take, however, saw the keys go over his head and onto the vendor table behind him; a table run by some very nice people who had already spoken with me about blocking their traffic with my sound cart. We’d been there for too long a time, and their angelic patience was quickly running out. When I heard the keys hit, well…I did that.
The folks at Fortress Press, Inc. had woken up very early in the morning and loaded their car full of two $300 tables worth of merchandise and driven to Cherry Hill, NJ from Lemoyne, PA with the only expectation being a possibly challenging task of making back their money in three days of noisy convention atmosphere. Now, they had a friggin’ movie being shot in front of them. We all know how most people react to seeing a camera: they run. One serious complaint to the hotel staff and we were history. So what did they do? They let us do another take, with the assurance it was the last. It was, and we got what we needed.
I’ve written a film about a young woman suffering the awful repercussions of the black underbelly of human nature, and I’d been rewarded by human nature of a very different kind. Sure, I promised Fortress Press, Inc. a mention on the film’s website and in the final credits, but they didn’t have any more assurance that would be good for business than the sudden arrival of some half-decent, weekend weather. I was humbled, and continue to be as I work my way through this somewhat daunting process. The question remains, however, if being rescued by the good graces of others (who, frankly, must have also been intimidated by the notion of shutting us down) will bring us the kind of luck we’ll need to carry us through the production, or help create a monster that will put me in deep emotional and financial debt for the rest of my life.
You can’t turn back after one head slap, can you? We look to shoot again in mid April. And if you would, please check out our blog, Facebook, and Kickstarter page. We could use a little more good nature, and again we promise to give back in kind.
sWitch is ON!
September 14, 2010
Well, hello there, literary sport’s fans…(stretches)…been awhile, eh? That’s not to imply that I’ve been idle. Oh no, I’ve been very hard at work and some of it is actually paying off. Let’s do a quick run-down:
1) My novel sWitch is looking tone and fit and you will be able to order it forthwith. I have to say I’m thrilled with end product, thanks to the very accomplished design work of my Yellow Horse Publishing partner Lisa de Araujo, our super-talented staff editor Louise Woods, and trees. Why trees? Because without them, there’d be no paper and we’d be too busy wheezing to read. But since there are trees, lots of them, there’s a ton of fun info at the official website, and you may want to subscribe to our blog for even more frivolity–the dark kind, natch.
2) I’ve also posted a casting notice at Backstage NY for the Hi-def web series adaptation of my novella HorrorCon. For a project that only promises deferred pay, the response has been a little overwhelming. Sure, most actors are just trying to read for as many projects as they can, but I got some personal notes, too, and they were encouraging to say the least. The script is coming along swimmingly, too. I’m having a blast keeping in mind my limitations with location and such, which I always believed made for better writing. I hope to have a solid first draft ready to distribute in the next two weeks.
3) Let me say that, while this is the third project report, it’s by no means an indication of importance. Teapott Fables had a restful summer, but it’s back in full swing with my partner Teddy working up some gorgeous frames for an iPad book that will serve as the companion piece to the animation (which won’t be ready by Halloween, sadly). But the book technology allows for some magical enhancements, and it’s another Yellow Horse project that will help lift the imprint into the rarefied air of major publishing and production player.
4) My next novel is in the process of being outlined, and it’s another dark story with a colorful personality called The Fold. Not to give too much away, but it involves a Yellow Horse writer under contract and his experiences with dermisted beetles, a colonial journal, Indian spirits, and the writer’s very unlucky, lifetime crush. As a “non-fiction” horror story, it will deliver the scares that will make you question every little noise in your house. As a metaphor for dependent, yet loving relationships, it’ll take you on an exploration into the concepts of obsession, addiction, and the possibilities and limitations of selfless love. I’m such a romantic.
That’s all for now. I’ll be updating more regularly about the above and sundry now that our little sWitcheroo is able to fly on its own. There are many promotional activities ahead, however. Ain’t nobody knocking down our doors to get at our goods just yet. But as Barbara learned at that dark and hungry lake, the power of belief knows no bounds. Now, let’s dig The Black Angels.
Chin up…
March 12, 2010
Waiting on the proofs of your book is an excruciating, aggravating experience. I’ve got a few beta readers who are waiting on a copy, and if memory serves, my previous five copies arrived in under a week. This time around, it’s going on two for two. I’m about to find someone named Lulu and find some way to aggravate them back. Maybe I’ll disagree with everything they say for two minutes, or twice insult their shoes. Bah.
But I can’t stay grumpy for too long. You can’t keep your chin down if you’re looking at the stars, so allow me, if you will, to share:
1) The sWitch placeholder website is up, and there’s a blog (huge thanks to the wonderfully talented Lisa de Araujo for both) where you can bask in the darkward tone of the novel. There will also be character discussions there soon, but of course I can’t say exactly “when”. My proofs have yet to arrive, you see? Anyhow, if you’d like to become a fan, check out the Facebook page and don’t forget to say hello. There may also be cookies in it for you, so you don’t want to miss out.
2) My cooking/reality show Table 42 with Chef Darryl Harmon has a teaser trailer up, and so far response to it has been overwhelmingly positive. Shooting for the first episode will begin on March 24th. I’m excited, and I know my peeps are, too.
3) Teapott Fables has a placeholder site up, and I can tell you the real thing is going to be fantastic. Teddy‘s showed me some sketches, and all I can say is you’ll definitely “fancy a cuppa”.
4) Lastly, or fourthly I guess, I’m planning on adapting HorrorCon for the screen, with further plans to make it myself. I will be working on another book at that time, as well. Somewhere in between, I will slip into a lovely coma.
That’s the lot, I suppose. There’s some music being made, as well, but I’ll hold off on that until I’ve got something for you to hear. In the meantime, have a look at a talented, writer friend named Ryan Chin who we can expect great things from in the not-so-distant future.
Where I’ve Been
December 22, 2009
Hello, chaps and chappettes. Time for a year ending thingamapost to placehold my wordpress account before they kick me off for lolligagging. Truth be told––and those of you who know me already know this––I’ve been attacked by many projects at once. Those of you who really know me also know that I tend to check out from the world when embroiled in a number of creative adventures, and I’ve come to find that includes online worlds, as well. Sure, I supply my share of comments in this forum or that blog but when it comes to concentrating on reportage of the more personal variety, I tend to leave it go. The idea overwhelms me a bit, and I’m sure you’ll see why very soon.
Novels –– I’ve completed what really feels like a polished edit for sWitch. I’ve queried it around, gotten some positive feedback and some garden-variety rejections. Next up: get it to print so I can send it around in its complete form (I think of it as an art piece of sorts, so it has to be framed) and create a website for it. I’m thinking of using social networks to create a naughty buzz. I feel I’ve written something the likes of which you’re not likely to find at your local bookstore, and I’ve decided to make that an asset rather than an obstacle. You don’t get the chance to review your own work in a query, and to be honest it’s not really my style. Still, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that sWitch is challenging, smart, fun, scary and not afraid to push all of your dirty buttons. Who knows, if it becomes cultishly popular in the next year, maybe I’ll work up an illustrated coffee table version that will offend and delight your guests in equal measure. Or perhaps I’ll edit a trailer for the outrageous film it’s begging to be. My ultimate dream is for people to throw “sWitch Parties” where everyone dresses like a suburban square save a few sexy, paganistic touches and dances to lounge music while eating pentagram cookies. Can you dig it, man? Anyway, also coming soon is Square One –– a science fiction novel about the rediscovery of humankind by our own cybernetic creations centering on the most unlikely love story of all time against an all-too-familiar sounding rebellion. Notes are being taken with the first chapter not far off in the horizon.
Screenplays –– I’m still querying Shelf Life and am considering a few fledgling filmmakers to send it to. I’ve given some thought to making this one, as well. Since becoming pretty handy with my relatively new Canon XH A1s digital video camera, the idea to shoot something for a festival has greatly appealed. I write like a filmmaker, so why not take the next step? Ditto for Welcome to Cydonia, which needs making in a bad way. Cape May is still waiting, and you don’t keep an old girl like that waiting for long.
Other writing projects –– my animated vignette The Ballade of Haunted Hill will hopefully be completed sometime early in the new year thanks to the extraordinary efforts of my wonderfully talented collaborateur and sometime tea lady Teodora Parvanova (Soon to be Teodora Jones, which is probably the coolest name since Cleopatra Jones). She and I are also working on an animated TV series that we’ll be entering into a European animation contest. The story is based on an old Bulgarian Fable of sorts about an incorrigible young boy who finds his heart after losing his head in hell and it’s pretty rad in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way. And if you’re wondering, yes, finally getting my big break with an animated TV series after collaborating with a Bulgarian animator I met over the Internet by answering her “ad” for a writer is exactly how I envisioned my career path to go. All kidding aside, Teddy’s a delightful gem with a bright future and it’s been educational and fun to work with her. Whatever comes of our projects, I’m already proud as punch to have created what we have and hope to continue our partnership long into the future.
Music –– because there’s still a little time left between working, eating and sleeping, in addition to gigging and embarking on various projects with my band Surrounded By Idiots I’ve been putting my solo acoustic act together and am available for hire come the new year. It’s been an embarrassing amount of fun to get serious about––not only writing new songs and finding my identity as an acoustic artist––but honing my guitar skills. Most of my weekend is taken up playing and rehearsing and if you’re interested in learning more, head to my website and check out my artist list (which is constantly growing).
TV/Web Productions –– for the past few months I’ve been developing a cooking/reality show called “Table 42 with Chef Darryl Harmon” that takes place at The Water Works Restaurant in Philadelphia. Chef creates special dishes for a lucky couple who have been selected to dine at the famous “Table 42″ where over 300 wedding proposals have taken place as well as all sorts of other special moments. For more info on that, check out the website and look us up on Facebook. Shooting is scheduled to begin next month and we’re hoping to host a premier party at The Water Works for Valentine’s Day. Forks and fingers crossed we’re able to pull it off. So watch all spaces and keep an eye on your HDTV sets, as the table is set for us to be there, too.
And that, folks, is all the time I can afford to give you. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means you’re a few pegs down the list. Hey, at least you’re on the list, you ungrateful, time-stealing, bas–just keeding. Allow me to leave you with one of the most beautiful folk guitar performances I have ever seen and a song I hope to include in my repertoire. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Winchester singing Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding on Elvis Costello’s excellent Sundance Channel series “Spectacle“.
I agree, Neko. Have the best damn holiday ever, everyone. Peace to you all.
Pretty Scary, VERY Funny…
August 4, 2009
Huge THANKS go out to Heidi Martinuzzi, blog vixen extraordinaire behind the horror site Pretty Scary, for featuring me as Scary Stud of the Month for August. She’s hot and hilarious in equal measure, so if you have a few minutes, go check out her site and give her props. She prefers the bloody and frightening variety, but you may just want to keep them at the accolade level.
In other news, CAA rejected my query for Shelf Life without looking at it because they can’t legally do that sort of thing. Which means I need an agent to get an agent. Seriously, writing the screenplay and/or book is by far the easiest part of this business. Speaking of, I’ve sort of changed my mind about Square One and The Cull. I now see them as two books in a series of three. More on that later.
Thanks again, Heidi. Oh, and I hope my “fame” is extended a few days into September or you’ll be hearing from my agent. When I get one.
A Very Special Day
December 15, 2008
Hello, all. As you may have gleaned from the title of this post, today is a very special day for me. You see, some time ago I picked this day, December 15th, 2008, as my deadline for securing literary representation.
Most of my time leading up to this day was spent writing and filling my portfolio with “product”. In the beginning, I was bold and ambitious, drafting huge titles such as B.L.O.O.M., a five night miniseries about humankind being scanned into android containers in order to escape a self-destructing planet earth and continue the race in the unfriendly climates of outer space. I was sure it was better than anything being offered on the Sci-Fi channel at the time, and whether I was wrong or right remains a mystery. If one were to deduce from my success and the success of those scribes responsible for classic fare such as “Yeti” and “Mansquito”, I would have been proven quite wrong. As it was, I could only contact a small bunch of agents as many that might have found it interesting required I be represented already; a quandary I’ve yet to get my head around. Anyway, it was too much for anyone to accept for a new writer, or such was my conclusion. Maybe it was just bad. Who knows? But it remains in a drawer where it is likely to stay until human beings really do need to escape the planet–which, if I may borrow a little cynicism to cheer me up, could be soon from the looks of things.
After B.L.O.O.M., I began to pen wildly: big budget horror trilogy here, complex, semi-animated dark coming-of-age tale there. Getting smart–or so I thought–I eventually wrote a screenplay for something that I thought fit the budget of most of those producers one finds on Inktip.com (where I listed all of my titles for $50/ea). It was a small movie, but scary in a subtle, unsettling sort of way. It was, I thought, tightly scripted, yet loose enough to include a director’s touch. It pushed the moral envelope, as I’m wont to do, but I suffered great pains to reset the compass at the end in order to include a larger slice of American movie-going public. As Hollywood cranked out remake after remake, I dared them with my story of false redemption by the sea. I even made a video about it for a contest that I didn’t win. But no matter, some projects you believe in no matter how many signs seek to convince you otherwise.
And then I got a call.
It was an honest to goodness Hollywood agent. I’ll never forget it, as it was a dreary Sunday night and I was already heading for bed. It was damn near the greatest phone call I’d ever received at that time slot: she fawned over my style and craft; she loved the characters, right down to their clever little names; she got all my inside jokes and was picking Hollywood A-listers in her head for the roles. She even shared my interest in characters with skin color anomalies! And then, after two hours, my phone’s battery began to alert me that it was about to cut off. She said no worry, we would talk later. In a few days, I think she said.
Errr…no. It was never, actually. A few reassuring emails and another screenplay sent post-haste to her door later, the romance was over. I’m not sure if it was the second screenplay I sent her (complex, semi-animated, dark coming-of-age thing) or something entirely unrelated to me and my writing. People, as it turns out, are human. And humans have shit come up all the time. But instead of getting bitter, I took the little jolts of confidence that the original phone call sent through me and decided to write something new; something that seemed a surefire sale, but without compromising the subject matter and style inherent in my other “product”. This one would be something I could almost budget over the phone, and I even had a high concept teaser to go with it. “Lost in Transfusion” I called it, in an attempt to excite another to call with dreams of pushing an indie horror film that boasted an elegant, Sofia Coppola vibe but with a large toe in the vampire zeitgeist pool. It was set at a three-day horror convention in a hotel and everything (timelock!). Young girl with tragic past meets old author dude with a horrific solution. So excited was I–and undaunted by my rejection–that I started immediately penning a character sketch of the main character, Eliza.
Two months later I had a novella. Yeah, I wasn’t feeling burned about Hollywood at all. Noooo.
But you know what, I loved it when it was finished. Still do. And it got me to do my next book, which I’m buttoning-up just now. And it seems I’m starting back at the beginning when I was writing about subjects that you will not easily find on the Border’s front tables. In fact, just yesterday I took a stroll around the popular bookstore franchise and was a little hard-pressed to work out where this new story would fit. Horror was close, but not quite right. And up front next to the new offering from the guy who wrote The Kite Runner was a stretch too far, for sure. Where do the genre-benders go? Do we have a special club where we smoke cigarettes and say clever things until the wee hours? Is their a movement about, because I’d really like to know. At the moment I’m calling it “high-camp, dark fiction”. I could just as easily call it an “over-the-top thriller with horror elements”. A part of me would love to just slip a few next to a Martha Stewart cookbook, and see how it goes over. Anyway, the queries for this one are in production, and at least I get a chance to say there’s a message under all that romp. We’ll see, won’t we?
Anyway, today’s professional specialness is running a little low. I don’t think I’ll get that call, but I’m likely to get a few others. And what is always as sure as “shit on your shoe”, I’ll be writing and querying and pushing the boundaries as I see them until it’s time to go home. Because possibly worse than never becoming a serious author in my lifetime is becoming one writing stuff that betrays those early efforts where I was bold and undaunted by the industry, the economy, remake hysteria and being just another guy in the middle of nowhere who thinks he has something to say. I think I always want to be that guy.
It still wouldn’t hurt to get another Sunday phone call that doesn’t go where you think it might, though. But like so many journeys a writer takes, if he takes them for the right reasons, where you end up may prove well worth visiting.
Rest in peace, Ms. Page.
Frightday!
December 5, 2008
Or Friday, whatevah. Don’t get all up in my business.
Just kidding, it’s sort of why you’re here, so why not let you all in on what my Fridays are like:
I start work at 8am. Well, I get in around 7:30 cause I’m like that. I like the quiet, and I try to use it well. For the rest of the day I alternate between keeping my day job afloat, and stealing a few hours to continue work on sWitch, my latest novel. For those of you who don’t know, it’s about a square––almost retro 50′s style––family who are about to implode due to various cultural and dysfunctional pressures, originating both from within and without. When the mother (we’ll call her Barbara, cause it’s her name) inherits a dilapidated old home in the mountains, they drag their batty carcasses to it and things begin to change for them. Generally, they all get various wild hairs up their precious behinds, and Barbara introduces them to her latest project: Satanism! Hilarity ensues, as I’m sure you can believe.
Anyway, soon after they get some visitors who may or may not be escaped convicts and a crazy chick with some serious dermatological issues and straightaway they get to torturing our already tortured family. And boy, did they pick the wrong time to do it. The tables turn pretty quickly, and before you can say “bat shit insane” it becomes a little difficult to discern who the evil ones are.
The final third of the book involves a new challenge that sees them reaching even further back into their dark ancestry, discovering the secrets of the house, and developing new connections between the family members that are a complete departure from the lives they left down the hill. Talk about lapsed Catholics! Hopefully, it’s scary, twisted, wickedly funny and over-the-top in all the right ways.
Anyway, once I’m done working on that, I go home and crank up an excellent podcast from the folks at Rue Morgue. They’re a bunch of Toronto terrorhounds that publish a great horror magazine by the same name, and for those who like that kind of stuff, put down your copies of Fangoria and go check them out. I like Fango, but these people are both big and clever and I really can’t say enough good things about each one of their enterprises. Anyway, check out their podcast here and enjoy the ghoulishly great music they intersperse throughout the interviews and horror news. Great stuff.
Then I mix up some tunes. Lately it’s been some Psychobilly concoctions, and if you don’t know what that is, try going here first, and then once you’re done listening to a few of those shows, click on over to here. For those who don’t wanna check out those links cause you’re all “too good” for that kind of thing and whatnot, Psychobilly is generally considered to be the “official” soundtrack to all things horror. Now, others have their ideas, but for scary fun that’s both sexy, stylish and downright dance-able, you’d be hard pressed to disagree.
And that’s pretty much my routine. Sometimes I enjoy a Guinness or two (sometimes three, don’t judge!) during the proceedings and jamming a little on my piano or guitar, but I’m pretty much about the work and the cool jerk. After dipping back into the story a few more times until either my eyes fall out or the Guinness has affected my professionalism, I’m usually ready to call it a night. And you ain’t gonna hear me complainin’.
So check out those links if you get a chance, and hopefully next time I’ll have some more info on my very own podcast, plus a few links to some great radio dramas that I’ve been digging. ‘Til then, enjoy the weekend, and don’t be afraid of the dark!
Whatcha Watchin’?
November 3, 2008
I’ve been very busy writing and rewriting and traveling, so my entries have taken a hit to say the least. It’s given me time to decide how my “live writing experiment” has been going, and early reports suggest I’m still getting more hits for Emile Hirsch (there goes another one!) and freckles than for my chapters. After checking my blog stats for while I was inactive, I stayed pretty even in terms of visits. I would love to say that’s because people kept checking back as part of their routine, but there’s no real way of knowing. I was hoping to see some very low numbers, and I did, but then I’d get a spike that made me think that the numbers during the sWitch series was largely due to Speed Racer (Ding!) and fetish sexuality. Hmm…maybe there’s an idea in there, somewhere.
Despite a lack of offers to help promote my stories or a landslide in the sales of my last book, I have to say the experiment taught me a few things I wasn’t expecting, and that those things may turn out to be more valuable than I’d hoped.
For one, committing to publish three chapters a week forced me to write at least three chapters a week. As it was, I wrote ahead and was done a good three weeks prior to the final entry. That was a pleasant surprise, and despite a longer rewrite process to get it from “blogtastic” to “proseworthy”, I think my writing benefited greatly from the experience.
As I alluded to above, writing for a blog first gave me the freedom to stretch a little. My tone seemed more accessible, and my style adjusted to be more suited for shorter attention spans. I learned with HorrorCon that some people who derive their written entertainment from online sites and so forth don’t always like to dig in. They want it out there and up front, and they don’t like to wait for the goods. So, I gave them the goods, or at the very least tried to. But where I relied on a photo to get my readers going and a lot of “telling” rather than “showing”, when I went into revise mode I had to tweak things to fit the rules of the literary elders who would throw my manuscript away if I kept it the way it was. I did choose to keep the prologue-heavy, back story-dumping of my “Meet the Characters” entries, but I did not because I thought that was the only way to get their stories across, but rather because they were well-written, set the tone well and were fun. Fun, I decided, was something I wanted to survive the transition, and for now they stay.
Also, I found writing in more easily digestible chunks of 1,500 – 2,000 words a great way to maintain momentum in my narrative. At first I was a little wary that the story would feel shoe-horned or wedged into a style that was a little too monotonous, but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. Monotony comes from bad writing, not chapters of uniform length. And by “uniform” I mean varying between the word count I mentioned above. Sometimes it was below 1.5k, and a few times towards the end it poked its ambitious eyes above 2k. In rewriting, those numbers were invisible since I pasted the chapters into a doc one after the other, so I’m sure the uniformity issue is even less pronounced.
Lastly, I think my style was made to be even more pithy and direct. I always prided myself in capturing an image or feeling in a very short amount of time by trying to get to the essence quickly and as cleverly as I could. I’m not a writer who wants to paint a hyper-realistic portrait so that the reader is given all the info they need to see my vision, but rather I want to spark the reader’s own creative juices and make them do a little work. Again, the word is “fun” – as long as they’re being entertained, they’ll help move the story along. So by not wasting time hovering over every crack in the steps that lead to Hellhole’s front door, I floated a few interesting details about the sounds made when scaling its rickety heights and let my visitors fill in the rest as per their experiences. Also, I never really describe my main characters. I give you plenty of inner qualities by describing their circumstances or attitudes, and based on that information I hoped to bring them to life in your mind. If I told you that, because Ken Sr. was ruminating on the similarities between softball and and the Hadrogen Collider, he missed an important fly ball and was subsequently left out of an invitation to play golf with some of his teammates, I’m counting on the reader to conjure an image of a man, not in the best shape of his life and possibly less athletic and “cool” than he fancies himself to be. By doing that, I’m not relying on any literary archetypes, but allowing you to pluck someone from your own lives who may be something of an unusual character who falls a lot, but isn’t afraid to get back up despite making a bit of a fool of himself.
So all in all, I feel I know how Scott Norton writes and what my readers should come to expect from one of my books. I’m into dark fiction with a literary bent that is both heavy on voice (considered to be presentation fiction, as in “Catcher in the Rye”) and sharp on imaginative detail. You also get a heavy dose of humor with my stuff, but sometimes I’m just setting you up to be terrified. And it’s my brand of humor – a bit twisted but always character-based and heartening, kind of like a very sour cocktail with a little too much of the hard stuff hidden by the taste – not garden-variety, broad slapstick that wobbles on the surface like a cheap, department store raft. My rafts have holes, and they’re likely drifting to dark and revealing shores.
As a final note, I want to invite more participation to the blog. I want this place to be about readers and their lives as well. I want to know what people think about fiction and popular culture and, hell, pretty much anything. I’ll still offer my stories and anything else I can think of that might entertain you, but it would be pretty cool to get some conversations going. Because if I’ve learned anything about writing, you can’t do it worth a goddamn unless you’ve got the energy of other souls percolating your waters.
So I ask you, what are you watching on TV? What’s really surprising you? What’s letting you down, and why? Personally, I’ve been trawling for good movies and waiting anxiously for “Battlestar Galactica” to resume. I’m also planning on giving HBO’s “True Blood” another shot by starting from the top with On–Demand. And you can laugh, but reality TV is one of my guiltier pleasures, the brasher the better. I’m definitely going to check out “Estate of Panic“, where contestants win prizes by being tormented in a haunted house of sorts. Nice.
And thanks to all who did read sWitch. Knowing you were out there and chiming in now and again made all the difference. Next up, I’ve got a trilogy of short stories I want to do with the dominant theme being demonic possession. And I plan on seriously fucking with your heads, this time.
Rock and Roll Literature
October 13, 2008
Fuck it. If Scare Appallin’ can burn books and get away with it, I sure as hell can. But my burning book leaves no smoke. It just smokes the dinosaur brains of those who would try and silence anyone’s power and vision.
In fact, I aspire to write a hardbound, genre-bending tale that the Puck-Dropping Pageant Also Ran would push her secessionist weirdo of a husband into a snowdrift and trip over her snowmobile to burn. In other words, I want to burn a book from the inside out, using only words and ideas to do it.
And I don’t want anyone to be able to stand back and watch the words vanish into the Northern Lights, smug in the knowledge that they’ve rid another dissenting voice from the eyes, ears and minds of the world. I don’t want anyone to be able to say they discouraged anyone from writing the most explosive, challenging, and shocking piece of literature ever written. For those who would try, I want to shake the shit out of their rudimentary and self-righteous ganglion clusters. I want them to cry, or better yet, worse; hailing from Jersey as I do, leaving no witnesses gets me off. I want to write the censoring czars to death.
I’ve been off-handedly referring to my style as Rock and Roll Literature. What makes it different from, say, a hard R-rated graphic novel or comic serial in Heavy Metal or Epic magazine? Besides not having any illustrations, I dunno. Probably not much if you take some of the most irreverent and penetrating prose from any decade and explored it in the context of its time. I’m certainly not trying to place my writing in the same category as the important works of some of the world’s greatest literary minds, but let’s just say I want to write a pop/rock/punk word record that punches a hole in your rigaramole.
But I don’t want to just come at you extreme. I want it to have humor, depth, individual style, and clear purpose. Cause that’s where the impact is so strong that the hole out the back of your head is ten times the size as the one that enters your face. I say with my Jack-O-Lantern tongue sticking out that I don’t want to hurt you unless you try and piss on my candle to keep me quiet and shut my eyes. If you’re the kind that would try, then I will effort to shock you with my free-thinking soul, believe it.
Great rock records change the way we see things. First and foremost, I want my books to be lots of fun. But I’d also like to change the way you think about yourself and the world – even if it’s only in the smallest of ways. I want to blow your attention deficient eyedrums out with a fresh hell that will wake you and strip you of what you think you know, and titillate you in ways that may also terrify you. But most of all, I want to find new avenues to explore and get those who dare to be on the same page excited to read more.
Rock and Roll Literature. Burning down the shelves.
