Article on horror writers

Although this article starts out with the obnoxious subhead "Horror is back, but this time with attitude and a sense of character development" and says things like "And some of those younger writers are telling stories in a hipper way, moving away from the standard widow’s-peaked vampires, moon-howling werewolves, and decaying zombies", it's actually a pretty good article profiling the prominent members of the Horror Writers Association New England chapter. Among the authors profiled: Jon Merz, Holly Newstein, Rick Hautala and Christopher Golden. There's also a brief look at the horror fiction business.
(Link via Bookslut.)

Giant squid news

Well, I've nearly let a whole season of giant squid news get by me. So here is some quick links about giant squid and a few other creatures of the deep, enjoy.

• A giant squid that washed up in New Zealand in August has been confirmed as one of the largest ever found.


• Greenpeace is fighting to stop bottom trawling, a technique that uses nets to scour the bottoms of the ocean, destroying everything else in its path. Among the many species endangered by bottom trawling, according to Greenpeace: Giant Squid.


• There's some unusual behavior by squid (with pic) in the northwest. Imagine a beach covered in dead Humboldt squid.


• And most importantly, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University in New Haven has the opening of the exhibition "In Search of the Giant Squid." It's going to be at the museum until January and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the giant squid. At the exhibition, I learned of another fascinating cephalapod: the Vampire Squid:
  

  William Beebe (1926) described V. infernalis as "a very small but terrible octopus, black as night with ivory white jaws and blood red eyes". Despite this horrific description, V. infernalis is a rather docile animal, and most often hangs motionless in the water column, with only slight movements of the fins for balance.



• Not a cephalapod, but interesting nonetheless: scientists have managed to recreate an ancient sea spider, adding a link in the evolutionary chain. (with pic)


• My girlfriend won this awesome poster of "Monsters of the Deep" recently, but the film (or show?) it advertises seems to have completely disappeared. According to the seller, "The film is so rare that it is not even listed in the Internet Movie Database, but my Library of Congress book shows it to be from 1932." Anyone know anything about this film? The poster of a giant manta ray is just too cool.

Films and the story of your life

Edward Champion follows up a post by J-Fly and comes up with something for me to blog about. Here's the two step process and my answers:
STEP ONE: Name your five favorite films off the top of your head and write brief summary.

GODZILLA: A giant monster attacks Tokyo. Only one man has the ability to destroy it, but he refuses to bring his invention into the world because it will only cause more destruction. He eventually gives in, but only by killing himself and with it, the formula for the devastating weapon.
CITIZEN KANE: A man rebels against his rich guardian, starts a newspaper and becomes a rich tycoon. In the process, he loses the ideals he once stood for.
ROYAL TENENBAUMS: An absent patriarch returns to his family to stop his wife from remarrying. In the process, he learns what he has missed and decides to make it up to them.
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER: Serial killer hides behind the word of God and tries to get the secret of hidden money from two children. They escape downriver and are only saved by the kindness of a true Christian woman who takes in stray children.
STAR WARS TRILOGY: (OK, technically not one movie) Young Skywalker is thrown into adventure and finds religion. In the process, he redeems his father who has been turned to the dark side.

STEP TWO: "Chances are, those films will tell essentially the same story. And chances are, your films will tell that story too. Because that is your story."
So here's what I see the common theme to be: People sin in some way and must take responsibility for their actions, otherwise they are destroyed.

The Fortean Bureau Blog

The Fortean Bureau, a great place for speculative fiction online, now has The Fortean Bureau Blog. It's a collection of weird links. You know, the kind of thing I used to do when this blog was updated on a daily basis. Or, more recently, what Professor Hex does so well.
And speaking of The Fortean Bureau, they've started running a column by Nick Mamatas, called Please Kill Me. The second episode is about the kind of literary writer that would appeal to speculative fiction readers. Well worth your time.

Writing: Avoiding it and new gadgets for it

Rick Klaw has written a fun article on the strategies writers use to avoid writing. Jonathan Carroll uses the word pochkey for the way writers find paper clips and dirty dishes far more fascinating at the moment they need to write. I also like Jeffrey Ford's justification for avoiding writing:

All that brain bubbling, day dreaming, loafing, is part of the deal. Actually, it's an important part of the deal. Show me someone who can't squander time sitting in a graveyard, drinking MD 20/20, or engage in a contest against a kid to see who has the truer aim with a dart pistol, training your sights on a wind-up penguin, or teach a dog how to sing Jingle Bells, and I'll show you a potential failure at the writing game. When my wife catches me on the couch, napping, I tell her, "Hey, baby, I'm the hardest working man in town."

All this is even more interesting to me because I've gone ahead and signed up for another year of Nanowrimo. I'm also trying to write a few other things before October is finished.
To facilitate all this writing I want to do, I've picked up a new gadget. The Alphasmart Neo is basically a keyboard with a word processing program attached. It's smaller than a laptop and hooks up to your computer through a USB cable to download your writings.
The good thing about this is the Neo offers nothing other than writing tools. No Internet connection. No games. And I won't be locked down to one room. So now I'll have no excuse not to write. I ordered the Neo last night and am told the company usually delivers in a week. I'll write my thoughts on it after I receive it.

H.P. Lovecraft biography returns to print

Necronomicon Press is reprinting S.T. Joshi's "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life." The book is being released on Oct. 1. This is supposed to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft. Copies of the original go for at least $100 and many times much more. And Joshi is the preeminent Lovecraft scholar. You can see some of his writing on his Web site and he is featured at the Lovecraft section of The Modern Word.
If you're interested in Lovecraft, get this book now, before it sells out.

Faster pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Russ Meyer has died. Here is Roger Ebert's take on Meyers. Ebert, of course, wrote the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

Anne Rice speaks

Several people have linked to this around the Internet so I feel I should march along. Anne Rice has apparently gotten fed up with Amazon reviewers and has written her own review of "Blood Canticle." She strikes back at her critics.

Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn't appeal to you, fine. You don't enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I'll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I'm answering you, but for what it's worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses.

***

But I leave it to readers to discover how this complex and intricate novel establishes itself within a unique, if not unrivalled series of book. There are things to be said. And there is pleasure to be had. And readers will say wonderful things about Blood Canticle and they already are. There are readers out there and plenty of them who cherish the individuality of each of the chronicles which you so flippantly condemn.

The review has a "real name" badge next to it, which means that if this isn't the real Anne Rice, it's somebody who has a credit card in her name (or access to her computer.)
You know, I kind of want to make fun of her for this, but I feel kind of sad. She's got tons of money and a rather rabid following. She's got (what appears to be) a happy family. (Well, her husband died recently, could that have anything to do with this?) Why get this upset over the crazies at Amazon? Does it really drive you that nuts that a few people make nasty comments about you?
I enjoyed the first few Vampire Chronicles novels, but haven't read them in years. If this is any indication where Rice's mind is at, I don't think I need to read any more anyway. (But one never knows, there are plenty of good writers who are neurotic, dysfunctional or just crazy.) Ah well, it's all kind of sad.
Looking at the negative reviews, there are a lot of them and many of them are by anonymous reviewers. But there's enough bad reviews from people who do leave their names that maybe Anne should realize, perhaps there is a problem with the book?

Undead salmon heart

Here's an item from a TV station. On a fishing expedition, producer cuts up a salmon. Later they find the fish heart on the bottom of the boat and still beating. There's a video of it beating at the site. Weird.

Resistance is futile

This essay compares the Borg's cube spaceship to the Christian conception of heaven as it is spelled out in Revelations. When we go to heaven, we will be Borg. You will be assimilated.
(Link via Website @ the End of the Universe)

Observations from the bottom of the page

I just noticed this blog: One Million Footnotes. The writer makes footnotes to nonexistent pages. Half of the entries come out like haikus, the other half as just interesting prose sentences. It's the kind of thing you check in on once a month or so, just because it's intriguing. The writer has gotten through 200 footnotes from May to today, how long will it be before he makes a million?
Apparently this person, Geoff Huth, is a crazed blogger, having eight blogs on blogspot alone. This one he apparently considers his home page.

The day the laughter stopped

One of the truly great blogs is leaving this sphere. The Minor Fall, The Major Lift was one of the first blogs I started reading. And he was probably the funniest on his best days. I'll miss him/her/it. For others in mourning, Sarah of Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind has set up a Requiem for a Blogger, where everyone can share their thoughts on TMF,TML's passing.
This might be even more sad if Ed Champion hadn't retracted his own retirement.

Looking toward NaNoWriMo

Wow, signups for NaNoWriMo are less than a month away. And I still haven't decided if I'll participate this year. I'm leaning toward "yes." Last year was a bit of a downer for me. About 2,000 words into the novel I was unhappy with it, but felt I had to press on. So I ended up writing a 40,000 word novel and 10,000 word afterword (which is perfectly acceptable by Nanowrimo rules) , which left me somewhat unfulfilled.
If I do it this year, I'm going to come up with something that's not going to end on Nov. 30. My last two novels are both sitting in files in my computer and paper in my closet. This year, there will be revisions, there will be something more. I want to get something more out of it, even if it's just some better revision skills.
Are there any readers participating this year? Any advice? Anyone want to comment on how ridiculous the whole thing is and how I'm wasting my time? Feel free, that's what the button below is for.

More Mieville

RevolutionSF interviews China Mieville.

To be prosaically specific for a minute, the Iraq war wasn't kicking off when I first started writing [Iron Council], so the Tesh War stuff wasn't intended as a direct parallel. But of course as it went on, inevitably that metaphorical element starting resonating, so it's not surprising that readers feel that's partly what's being talked about. But it's not 'really about' the Iraq War. If I want to talk about that, I'll just fucking talk about it. It is both something which has certain metaphorical resonances, and also something which is absolutely and literally true in the world of this story. Allegory would be to betray that literalised uncanny that the fantastic genres do so well.

The Mumpsimus's doings

Matthew Cheney, sometimes known as The Mumpsimus, has a review of Richard Butner's "Horses Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories" at SF Site. Also, the description of Cheney at the bottom of the review helped lead me to fiction by Cheney called Getting a Date for Amelia at failbetter.com in their 2001 issue. Unlike Cheney's story "Prague," which can be found in the archives of Ideomancer, this is a realistic story about a boy and his retarded sister, Amelia. I'd like to see Cheney do more fiction, it's no surprise he has a talent for it.

Heiress won't go away

Paris Hilton has been signed up to do a new movie version of "The Great Gatsby." Oh dear God, Hilton is Daisy Buchanan in real life, it doesn't mean she can act like, well anything. It looks like there has already been four movie versions of the book. I've never seen any of them, and I don't think I'm about to start now.

End of the Century

Johnny Ramone has died.

Comic books and Connecticut

I missed this event: Heroes, Heartthrobs & Horrors at the Connecticut Historical Society. It's a show detailing the important role my humble state played in the comic book industry. That Web site includes some interesting articles on censorship and the various companies that were headquartered in Connecticut.
I remember growing up that Charlton Comics was in Derby, just a town away from where I lived. If I had known then what I know now about Charlton (mind you, I was probably about 10 when they closed their comics shop) I would have visited and tried to see what went on there. It amazes me that Steve Ditko worked there, mere miles from me.
Anyway, the exhibit ended Sept. 7, though the Society hoped to have a travelling exhibit made out of it. No word on that though. In the meantime, Sequential Tart did a nice article on how it was all created.

Kelly Link interview

At Return of the Reluctant, Bondgirl interviews Kelly Link. It's a fun little interview and a good introduction to her if you don't know her work. Link's collection "Stranger Things Happen" is terrific. I've been taking my time getting through it, reading a story here and there, now and then. In the interview, Link says she will have a second collection out by next summer. It will include a story called "Some Zombie Contingency Plans." I can't wait to see her take on zombies. In the meantime there's this:

Gwenda: So, what’s your zombie contingency plan?

Kelly: In all situations, I like to ask myself: What would Jackie Chan do? Not because I have any sort of Jackie Chan skills, but because it's soothing to contemplate an imaginary Jackie Chan in imaginary action, kicking imaginary ass, zombie or otherwise. More usefully, what Jackie Chan does is improvise, using objects at hand. So we have a pantry with a lot of different kinds of jam, and some Lyle's Golden Syrup, as well as a lot of heavy, tall bookshelves, and several interesting fireworks, such as The Titanic, and The Naughty Elephant. There's also a lawnmower in the garage, and I've seen Peter Jackson's Dead Alive at least five or six times.

So although I'm not wedded to any kind of plan, I'm prepared to improvise ferociously.

Link and her husband, Gavin Grant, have also co-edited the fantasy half of the 17th annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, which is a terrific book and something everyone should be buying every year.
I got to say, I love this trend of bloggers interviewing writers. Maud Newton and The Mumpsimus have done a few as have others. It seems the latest evolution in lit blogs.

UPDATE: Bondgirl is having a "interviewapaschmooza." She has followed up her Link interview with an interview with Scott Westerfeld.

Cthulhu arises

SOTA, a toy maker, will be making an action figure of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu. There's more pictures here. It looks pretty good. It's nicely hideous, having lots of tentacles and weird protrusions and whatnot. Definitely something I'd like to get. They are also talking about doing two other Lovecraft figures, but haven't decided what. I'd love to see a Deep One figure and I like the idea of making an H.P. Lovecraft figure. We'll see.