| a trip to petsmart |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|10:07 pm] |
I was making a purchase. World's Best Cat Litter. I meant to have a witty one-liner prepared about how it's for the World's Best Cat, but I just didn't have it in me because I was too tired. And that's not how the packaging wants you to interpret the brand name anyway.
"I think I have one of your cards but not on me." Translation: I shop at the Mom and Pop down the street but they close earlier than you do.
"What's your number?"
I meant to give the old number but I got confused and either gave the new number or something fairly random in-between the two.
"Great," the guy says with a nod.
"What name's on the account?"
"They don't let us know. Afraid of employees stalking customers."
I half-smiled. "With a company this big, that's probably a good idea. It's sure to happen somewhere eventually."
"Definitely. It has been a major problem at this store."
I know the retail deadpan. I've seen masters as that game and I played it to the best of my ability for seven years.
This kid was not that. He was for real serious. |
|
|
| It's Kill Brian Keene In Your Blog Day |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|03:51 pm] |
What's the point? Why write books? I saw Jack Haringa this weekend, for real, and he didn't even seem happy to be alive. We keep typing and typing and nobody cares. I'm glad you blurbed Phantom though. That was a really nice thing to do before environmental devastation or nuclear annihilation or the abject poverty grind of writing take us out.
Do you have carpal tunnel yet? We go bald and get fat and don't even fit into our 80s hair band T-shirts and we keep writing dumber and dumber books for fewer and fewer readers. You extrapolate this out, Brian, and we're all going to be going door-to-door with a big sack of remainders at best. Do people even buy those limited hardcover editions of your blog anymore?
It would be so awesome if we had taken up real jobs like cooking or cabinet-making. Something that people actually wanted and could use rather than something that most people think is a stupid waste of time done by people who live in their parents' basements. Writing is one of the few things on Earth that is so intentionally sad and lonely. Most things that you practice by yourself in private are better suited for showing off in a social setting, even on a webcam in some cases. Instead, we do this scrivener thing. You put your heart into that book about the redneck guy with cancer and robbing banks or whatever it was and nobody noticed. I can't even remember the name and I thought that book was your best one. We're just cranking out product and even if we somehow wrestle away the means of production, we'll never quite nail down the means of distribution because of the economy of scale issues.
I'd say how you're so much more established because you're the "zombie guy," but it's pretty clear that you actually crested a little too soon on that one and now you're not even one of the top zombie guys anymore because you forgot to add Jane Austen or have a world war in the title. That must suck. You have to flip through the encyclopedias of myths and the undead and come up with something else that people might actually care about for more than a few seconds. Unicorns? Maybe you can hang on for a few more massmarket paperbacks before you tumble back into small presses that no one's ever heard of if you go big on unicorns. I mean, wow, man, Bruce Springsteen stole your title and no one even noticed.
I remember a blog entry or something you wrote about how you cared about Robert Howard's books more than a girlfriend and she called you on it and you realized she was right and that set you more firmly on this doomed path of typing for a living and you ditched her. You probably still had the mullet then. Almost any girlfriend is better than books. Part of the problem is that we came of age at the exact wrong time when writing horror looked cool and like something a person could do and actually make a living without having to wear a tie or go door-to-door selling beat up paperbacks like they were new-fangled vacuum cleaners. But one of the things you and I have in common is that we know that almost all of those people who "made it big" are now living in tiny apartments with gigantic piles of books that are worth less than two dollars a pop on eBay. If we're lucky, we'll keep from starving a little while longer, but it's never going to get any better than right now. Health insurance or a mortgage is a bad move when all you have to offer the world are pages and pages of the letters of the alphabet in different patterns.
Our idols are struggling and there's not much left of any worth to anyone that we can provide with our worthless stories. I keep hoping that videogames will want actual writers but it's pretty clear that nothing's going to pan out. Eventually we'll be living in homeless shelters scribbling into notebooks that no one will ever read because we'll have sold our computers to buy one last paperback at a thrift store.
Unless we just give up writing. Maybe that's the one thing that will make life better, but I doubt it. I think we're so stuck with the typing and the scribbling that we're just trapped in a downward spiral. Oh, a noose? Good call, man. I'll use it in a couple minutes, once you're done. Thanks!
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
This is a bit of a fundraiser for the amazing and impressive Shirley Jackson Awards, so please consider donating if you're not a writer and therefore have money.
|
|
|
| I have no idea why I read horror fiction. |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|11:51 pm] |
A friend emailed around a two question questionnaire about horror fiction.
I did a bad job of answering and now I'm sharing it with the world.
Why do you read horror fiction? I read horror fiction because I want to question what it means to be alive and what it means to be scared. One could argue that reality bores me and I want the frission (chilly tingle) of emotion that comes from seeing a world that's more interesting and addresses the boredom: "There must be more than this. Wouldn't it be cool if monsters ate the lame people?" But I think it's more than that. Death and deep mortal questions get shuffled aside in our society. I want to chip through our cultural denial and examine those things. Since most people have no interest in examining what we as humans hide as our deepest darkest secrets, I love to read books that examine those questions. Pick one horror story/novel more than twenty years old and one horror story/novel that is less than twenty year old that any aspiring horror writer simply must read or re-read right now. Briefly defend your choices to the death. If I had to pick one novel, ever, it would probably be Clive Barker's The Damnation Game. It is a dark, deranged, weird and uncomfortable book. I'm more of a short story person. To me, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti are the three most powerful voices in dark and weird fiction. I love many others but those are the big three. Regardless of the defending concept, if sacrificing my life somehow prevented their stories from being erased forever, I'm willing to die for those three. These are not well people. They're the best horror writers in English in human history that I know because they're voices of darkness. Probably Robert Aickman too. They, to me, are important because they demonstrate what the universe and life mean, without platitudes, varnish or trickery. |
|
|
| made up dialogue that serves no purpose |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|07:16 pm] |
"It's like that Meatloaf song where he says that he would do anything for love but then there's some one specific thing that he won't do. You wonder if it's hiding a body or some bizarre bedroom antic. You know he believes in the love but something has gone so far that there's a line that can't be crossed, some irrevocable boundary."
"I don't see how that applies."
"I believe people should be willing to die for books, just not that one." |
|
|
| two sides, one story, 1990 |
[Sep. 18th, 2009|08:25 pm] |
Paul Westerberg (The Replacements) and Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) sang a duet called "My Little Problem" on the album All Shook Down.
Johnette flew in from England and left abruptly right afterward.
"She went out for some cigarettes, got on a plane and went home. It must have been my breath." Paul Westerberg
"Paul called me to do 'Little Problem' and it was a lot of fun, really crazy and wild. Then he gave me all this shit about how I was the only woman to be on a Replacements album, like, 'Wow, lucky me!' I mean, please!" Johnette Napolitano
It's one of those dividing songs, I've seen it described as intentionally ruined by Johnette (Entertainment Weekly) and also as one of the best duets of its era. |
|
|
| overheard at trident bookstore on newbury |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|08:39 pm] |
"How much is it?"
*picks up a Vonnegut novel, waggles it at his friend so she can read the price on its back*
"Fifteen."
"It's not worth it," he tells her.
"Worth what?" she asks him, looking puzzled.
"To write the letter."
"What letter?"
"The letter to her mom that says you haven't been friends with her daughter for a while but that you loaned a book to the daughter before she went to rehab and you'd like it back. It's easier to just buy a new copy." |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Sep. 6th, 2009|11:50 pm] |
"For the past thirteen years, I've either sculpted, painted, drawn or written something every single day, with few exceptions. One belief that has come from this, and from which I cannot be shaken, is that the mind is a universe, and that what it creates in any given moment will be different from what it creates in any other. The possibilities are limitless and the only restrictions are those we place on ourselves."
Lisa Snellings |
|
|
| interview with me up at the ligotti website |
[Aug. 20th, 2009|04:08 pm] |
Hmm... I've done plenty of interviews from the opposite side and very few where someone else is trying to make me the subject.
I talk about why I hope the world ends.
I talk about books a lot (and a little about writing).
I discuss Top Chef and who would win the show Top Weird Fiction Writer.
It appears that I imply that I might've committed suicide during the interview.
(Which can't possibly be true because I did this interview with Phillip Stecco (aka G. S. Carnivals) months ago.)
I explain how it seems to have been objectively determined by a Harvard test that I am racist toward white people, but it is really that I hate everyone.
I say, "But then we run into that odd word, 'universal.' From the universal perspective, the most popular film of all time might be a shimmering smudge that makes a high-pitched grinding noise that wavers between two wormholes once or twice every five thousand years."
Perhaps I'm better suited at asking questions than answering them. |
|
|
| five things might make a post but they don't always make sense |
[Aug. 20th, 2009|01:32 pm] |
|
I believe that remaining blissfully unaffected it not a requirement for magick. Sometimes magick is painful and sometimes magick is messy. Sometimes magick means leaving claw or teeth marks on things as they are yanked from our grasp and sometimes magick means incinerating things with a blowtorch.
Happy Birthday to my favorite "Nazi apologist" (in the words of Thomas Ligotti), the "High Priest of Tentacles" (in the words of China Mieville) and the man whom Caitlin R. Kiernan described with, "Lovecraft seems to have had an ability to carry himself with dignity in the face of very demeaning circumstances and to see silver linings where I'd have only seen doom and futility."
Whenever I remember that I dislike "She Wants Revenge," they seem okay. Whenever I try to remember which songs I like, there aren't any. Yet if I haven't heard them in six months, I like whatever song I hear for at least half of it. I predict that they will someday do something that I adore. I saw them live and they were bad. Tool was like this for me. I liked their first ep and I love their most recent album through and through, but much in-between had a few good songs and noodling. But SWR needs more noodling. They need an electroclash period. Or was that "True Romance?" Ooh... I like that song. Wait... Why am I talking about bands that Placebo pwns?
I need to write more. Lots today. typey typey typey. What have I been reading? A dumb book about multiple personalities (When Rabbit Howls), a dumb book about psychics and the mysterious murder of her daughter (Lois Duncan). I never ever read books like that. I don't know how they got in my library. But I'm trying to speed up my reading speed and frequency and books that dumb only take an hour or two. The piles are very very scary right now. Michael Cisco's Secret Hours is really good. And Cthulhu Senyru (which I hope I spelled wrong but probably didn't). Kathe Koja. Chester Himes. Gustav Meyrink. T.E.D. Klien. Those are smarter books. Greer Gilman. Amy Fusselman. Ellen Kushner. Cioran. Polyphony 1-3. Piles scattered. I ordered four five-shelf bookcases late last night. They were cheap and from an evil conglomerate but I am drowning in books.
I forgot what five was for. I think universal health care is more important than lots of people do. I found the missing puzzle piece to the Van Gogh Starry Night magnet, which, incidentally, matches the Starry Night shower curtain. I am trying to be batty and I am succeeding. I have heard that a hurricane is coming. Five was supposed to be Top Chef spoilers done in a subtle way to be vague. Leave it to the one who is coming from the weirdest place to do the thing that is so odd that everyone wants to make them go away. The bad news about playing to a desperate audience is that they will convince you that you are much better than you are. If you cook like that, you have to be better when you crossover. The winner of Masters (a worse show until they found their groove by realizing that it had to be about the cooking and the food and not the human drama, partially because it was filmed in such a shorter timeframe) was a case of someone elevating a cuisine that had come to deserve being up against more classic stuff. Top Chef: Vegas reminded me that there are always a few who bring madness to the plate that is not inspired madness. Stranger still, because of my dietary choices, the loser's dish is the only one I would've eaten, though I am convinced it was the worst.
|
|
|
| Hello Local People: Shakespeare + Matt Cheney = New Hampshire |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|08:01 pm] |
If you are local and want to go see A Winter's Tale in New Hampshire (which Matt Cheney / The Mumpsimus is in), give a shout. It's a four-hour round trip and only going until Sunday, so I figured I'd spread the word and see if anyone was into it.
Love to all,
Geoffrey |
|
|
| the power of literature |
[Aug. 10th, 2009|04:28 pm] |
Ducking by the computer section of BJ's, a quick look to see how low specs and costs are trending:
Guy in Verizon Fios shirt: "We're giving away free laptops to people who sign up for Verizon."
Pause. Look guy up and down to process that a guy in a Verizon Fios shirt is talking at me in the middle of BJ's. All I want is cat food.
But I'm on a lot of coffee and the errands are going well...
*big smile from me*
"Thanks for telling me," I say.
"You interested?"
Math in my head as I confirm that it is either a lousy machine or a manipulatively lousy service that's way more than I need.
"No."
Here is where it veered.
"Do you like football?"
Long pause. Maybe I should've run. I deliberately acted surprised by his question with body language topspin. "No."
"What sports do you like?"
I've never had a good answer to this question. I tend to say, "Chess!" loudly as if it's the one true answer or, "Publishing...it's full-contact!"
(I guess if my life depended on it, I would say those weird competitions where people lift cars or other strength-based wrassling or that the Olympics occasionally interest me because watching curling feels anthropological. But the truth is that I hate sports, especially the jock mentality of fans somehow feeling involved in a team and all that.)
"None."
"No sports? What do you do?"
"I read a lot of books."
*guy starts walking away from me looking concerned*
"Alright, sir. You have a good day." |
|
|
| you will never dream (review of Mamatas's latest book) |
[Aug. 8th, 2009|04:29 pm] |
Review of Nick Mamatas's You Might Sleep...
It has been up for a week, but there's a new review I did of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nihilistic_kid's story collection up at Tor.com.
Short version: I love Nick's work because it's willing to be literary fiction (which is a genre no matter what anyone else tries to tell you) and the Speculative Fiction genres all at once and all over the place.
As much as I firmly believe that taxonomy for books is crucial for marketing and not good for much else, most of what I see coming out of the Speculative Fiction and literary fiction traditions makes it clear that there is a fence and that most authors have chosen one side of that fence or another. It's as if there's a sliding scale and they pick a place to stand and most of what they write comes from that spot, forevermore.
Sometimes it happens because people only read on one side or the other or only try to get published on one side or the other. Everyone should buy "Sleep" because it's both. It doesn't care that it has really long legs and is straddling a fence with one foot on each lawn. And then he moves. No, seriously, not like to California. He's unabashedly litfic and SF, simultaneously, and then he swerves on you and reconfigures the balance and it goes all weird and you might sleep but (as the subtitle seems to be) you will never dream... |
|
|
| open anthology, for short-shorts up to 25 words ($25) |
[Aug. 5th, 2009|11:47 pm] |
Hint fiction?
I'm not familiar other than that it's impressive that this person named Robert Swartwood managed to get Norton to pony up enough of a budget that he can buy short fiction at a dollar a word and up... It's smart all around.
"Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work."
Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.
Yes, linking to these guidelines means that I can submit three hint fictions instead of two...
Gary Braunbeck won a contest judged by Swartwood with his entry here.
All told, it's a faulty thesis as far as I can tell -- but an impressive example of how ingenuity can pay off. |
|
|
| Happy Release Day to The Red Tree! |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|03:01 pm] |
|
|
|
|
| Top Five Singers I Have Watched Perspire The Most |
[Jul. 20th, 2009|11:01 am] |
Honorable Mentions: Bowie went for broke one night and climbed on top of a piano, Jim Thirlwell tried hard but didn't sweat (I think this is because he is from an alien planet), when he still told people to call him Brian, Marilyn Manson slashed and burned himself but remained pale and clammy, Barbara Hunter (touring with Pigface) sprayed so much water from her mouth that it was hard to discern what was water going in and what was water coming out, and [one of the most embarassing shows to have gone to, it was a multi-bill thing with the Violent Femmes who were why I went] the guy from Train climbed so high up into the lighting scaffolding that I thought he was going to fall and die but he was buff and crazy enough that his hands didn't get slippery enough to kill him...
5. Tom Shear (Assemblage 23). He's a burly guy with a whole lot of power. The stage thumped as he ran around. I'd chatted with him for a while before the show, so he wasn't scary--but I'll never forget how loud he was when he stormed the stage and shouted, "C'mon!" Big dude who is half-Depeche Mode and half-stompy EBM. Many white towels to mop his face throughout the headlining set. I love how he worked the audience over like a backyard wrassler but had such deft and subtle production techniques.
4. Mike Patton (Tomahawk's first tour). Some was that he pounded water, most of it was that he caterwauled like a witch being burned at the stake. I remember him spitting saliva into a bucket hidden under a keyboard. I bet there was blood in it. I used to sing and shred my vocal cords and I always wondered how he could perform like that live night after night without hurting himself. Turns out he shreds his throat on album and uses safer technique live. He also compensated with pedals some...but hitting those notes, screaming so elegantly and pricisely, he was febrile enough that you could feel the heat radiating from him.
3. Todd Baechle (The Faint). A friend who had grown up with him turned me on to them before they got bigger. We went to a dive bar in Denver. About 7 of us. It was a local hangout bar. No one else came to see them. The band came in, looked around and got ready to leave. Then they saw Heather. They shrugged, set up faster than I've ever seen, barely even made sure everything was plugged in and then freaked out at the bar's staff for wanting to leave the lights on in the corner so the regulars could shoot pool. Todd started yelling, insisting on total darkness. They wouldn't turn off the Emergency Exit signs but he had black electrical tape that he used to cover lights that were bothering him. He was beet red before they even started and he hadn't stopped zooming around since they'd set the amps down when they walked in. Then they destroyed the world. I've seen plenty of extremely scary industrial shows but I've never been so worried that the building would just collapse. It was palsy and it was vengeance. Afterwards, I considered asking him if we should go to the hospital so he could get a transfusion. Instead I asked him if he wanted to sleep on my couch. I felt like I should just carry him home. Seven people. Yeah, he freaked out at the staff a litle, but he gave everything he had for seven people.
2. Ani Defranco. Instruments actually make it harder to sweat. You get pinned in place and you can't run as amok. Again, we're not talking sweating hard, we're talking "professional athlete I have never seen a musician sweat this much" level. She had an acoustic guitar that was wireless miked. The audience was 80-90% female back then. She had a radio hit with "Outta Me" and she didn't even bother to play it. All she did was jump up and down, scream and play that guitar. That was like fifteen years ago and I thought she would always be the title holder. Her entire body was soaked and her dreads were slicked to the side of her head. By only being partway electric (miked acoustic), she had to strike those strings and pound on the wood so accursedly hard. She was a puddle and she was a downpour.
1. Ronan Harris (VNV Nation). They've been ripped off by everyone from Seabound and more recent Covenant, even bands like The Knife and AFI. But going to see them at the Paradise last Friday night, I wasn't sure how they would alternate between the ballads and the industrial Teutonic stuff. Honestly, I've never seen an industrial party band before. He weighs a lot. And he kept up this wacky patter even during the songs. It was like Jonathan Winters singing for Nine Inch Nails. By the end of the show, his clothing was made of liquid. How he did that operatic thing while running from side to side on the small stage, never turning his back, running backwards half the time, I will never understand. This is obviously not a unique occurrence. By the second encore it was obvious that his entire outfit is designed to soak all the way through like construction gear or something. It was a relentless attack, his words popped and mist sprayed everywhere. When people stopped dancing, he yelled at them. When people started crashing into each other, he screamed even louder that they had to stop so no one would get hurt. Maybe that gorgeous voice is easy for him, but I thinkthe physicality of what he did would kill most other middle-aged fat men. I heard about a bizarre rider years ago that VNV Nation only allowed black towels in their dressing room. Now I understand. So much grotesque and festering sweat leaped from that operatic madman. The specially-designed clothing and black towels (that I presume were backstage) were to save the world from the unholy and clotted ichor that sprayed from his body. At one point, he brought the mic up to his mouth and I watched sweat start at his shoulder, run down his elbow and plop to the floor. Most eyedroppers are too small to catch how much sweat splashed to the floor in that single drop. |
|
|
| readercon: the full report |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|07:03 pm] |
My brain is mush.
True to pattern, I managed to see everyone without feeling like I had to attend a Science Fiction convention to do it.
If I know and love you, any nastiness was purely caused by sleep deprivation and I beseech forgiveness.
If you were annoying and I snarled, you deserved it and I wish you'd stayed home. |
|
|
| throwing out three ticket stubs |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|11:48 pm] |
Memories are weird.
Sunday, July 02, 2000 8pm is crossed out and 7 is handwritten Naropa University Summer Writing Program 2000 Presents
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
A personal hero. The first time I saw him read, like 96?, I ran over a squirrel on the way home from the 40 mile ride. I thought it was a puppy and was wrecked by it. The night had been great before that. This reading was much better because it didn't suck afterward. I went back the next day to try to find the owner and apologize and was so relieved when it was a squirrel. Ferlinghetti had more energy the first time. I presume Boulder's thin air and the Naropa whirlwind tuckered him out. I've always loved his poetry and he's an idol as a publisher and a bookseller. The first time I saw him there were a bunch of us in the front row. The second time, I was in the middle but knew practically everyone in the room.
9/30/03 CABIN FEVER $7.75 9:30p Natick 1-6
This was at the smelly theater that went under and became a Circuit City that went under. Strip mall suburbia depends on traffic patterns. Certain locations are cursed. Now it lies empty. The movie? Gag. I heard so much hype and I still think Eli Roth is hype. "Thanksgiving" is his strongest work. The peurile gender roles overwhelmed what could've been a strong film. Comedy doesn't play well for me. Eli Roth got David Lynch's coffee for an extended period and was supposedly very good at it. Lynch drinks a lot of coffee. Hostel was better, but still forced.
11/24/04 NATL TREAS $7.25 10:00p Carmike Cinemas
I have no real recollection other than that it was The Davinci Code only in convenient dumber form. I remember liking the female lead and the snarky sidekick for a few minutes. That "oh-kay, who wants to go down the creepy tunnel first?" line was the best part. It was not good. I've never read more than the first three pages of the Davinci Code. There are three awful sentences in a row. I used to perform them to other booksellers. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|02:06 am] |
|
I keep thinking, "Oh no. ReaderCon's in like two weeks, I'd better get organized."
I keep thinking I can get my inbox to zero if I forward them all to a different account.
I keep thinking I'll get up earlier if I go to bed sooner.
I keep thinking that the reason we're building prisons faster than schools is because we're building prisons faster than schools.
I keep thinking. Which is probably why I'm having trouble falling asleep.
I need to get my sleep cycle back on track because ReaderCon's in like two days. |
|
|
tired
chipper
determined
busy
curious
