The Web Presence of Brian R. Hauser
This past Wednesday evening, Leeman Kessler had me on Ask Lovecraft After Dark, the sister program to Ask Lovecraft, to talk about Memento Mori, weird fiction, gaming, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, the new novel, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
My profound thanks to Leeman for having me on his program. It was a real pleasure to be able to talk with him about so many things that I love.
My only regret is that I missed the opportunity to call him Mr. Mayor!
Wow. Honestly, I did not expect that.
As I mentioned here before, my short screenplay, FLYPAPER, was a finalist in the screenplay competition at this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. I love submitting to this competition, because I think I can safely say that these are my people. We care about the same things. We want good things for each other. We love to see what everyone’s up to. It’s not a perfect community–if such a thing exists–but it’s most often lovely and supportive and surprising and above all welcoming. To make it as a finalist is a reminder that I am on the right track when it comes to doing my bit for weird cinema.
There was a lot for us to do in Portland this weekend. For me, the festival was half the joy and all of the anxiety of anticipation. The other half of the joy was getting to spend some time with some close friends of ours who have landed in the Rose City, one of whom was also having her birthday week. Happy Birthday, Katie!
Unfortunately, the weekend was a bit compressed for Christina and I due to work obligations. As a result, I was only able to catch two film blocks, one panel, and then give my own author reading, and attend the awards ceremony on Sunday evening. The best social time was Saturday morning, when I hung out with Sam Cowan and Mike Griffin behind the Word Horde table at the EOD Center across from the Hollywood Theater. The EOD Center is where about half the vendors and most of the literary and discussion portions of the fest take place. Saturday morning is a group author signing with donuts, bagels, and coffee (Carbload for Cthulhu!), and I was only too happy to spend the morning getting to know Sam and Mike better.
I missed out on the festival screenings of Richard Stanley’s new The Colour Out of Space with Nic Cage, and that is a real regret, even though I know I will get to see the film soon. However, I did see the Russian feature The Lost Island, and Shorts Block 6, which included several very good shorts, top among them being “In A Strange Town,” the proof of concept episode for a potential Thomas Ligotti series, and “The Cultist Nextdoor,” a comedic 1950s government PSA about the dangers of cultists in our midst.
My author reading was scheduled for Sunday afternoon in the EOD Center classroom, and this meant that the sun was beating in the shop windows in that small room. It was quite the toaster oven. There was a struggling box fan, but I think everyone who came in just decided that they would just grit their teeth and get through it. I was reminded of the line from Neil Innes as Raymond Scum (Monty Python), “I’ve suffered for my music, now it’s your turn.” The reading went well, I thought. I read a different portion of Memento Mori than I have before, and it seemed well-received. I was followed by Evan Peterson read from “The Chemical Bride,” and then John Shirley (co-screenwriter of The Crow) read a bit from one of the stories in Cellars. It was a grand time, and I think no one passed out!
After a pause to catch our breath, cool off, and fortify ourselves before 7pm, we headed back to the Hollywood Theater main auditorium for the festival awards ceremony. Brian and Gwen Callahan, the directors of the festival, were dressed in their Sunday best and helped on stage by Cthulhu, who was handing out awards and telling people where to stand (while remaining cosmically indifferent; it’s sort of amazing to watch).
The script award was the third announced, and Gwen explained how the jury had over one hundred scripts to read through and they ultimately settled on three as finalists. Holy smokes! I had no idea there were so few finalists this year. When I heard that, my anticipation spiked, because one in three is a lot more likely than, say, one in six. And then, a moment later, Gwen said my name and the name of the script. It was a pretty perfect moment. I allowed myself the WHOOP and the fist pump on the way up to the stage. I wasn’t really interested in keeping any of it inside. It was one of those moments that comes along so rarely, and I was committed to reveling in it.
And then I had the pleasure of standing on stage and congratulating Richard Stanley as he came up to get his award for Best Feature and then also his second award for Audience Choice! Perhaps not surprising, but totally cool. In fact, it feels great to shake hands with and applaud all of the filmmakers who worked so hard to make art that found its way into the festival. I also got to shake hands with and stand next to Victoria Price (daughter of Vincent!) who was awarded the Howie by the festival founder, Andrew Migliore.
After the ceremony, our party retired to the Moon and Sixpence for drinks and dinner before Christina and I needed to jump on the train to the airport for our red-eye flight. I missed out on drinks and conversations with Andrew and with Scott Glancy, and I would have liked to have spent a little more time with Ross Lockhart, but I have a feeling that I am really only just beginning the serious momentum of my involvement in this group. I have been coming to the HPLFF off and on since 2003 (when I DROVE there from Ohio), and I don’t see me getting tired of it any time soon.
I’m quite proud to announce that my short script, Flypaper, has been selected as a finalist in this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Screenplay Competition! The short is a nasty little piece of work, and I’m glad that the jury found something of interest in it. This is all the more true given the ever-increasing quality of the work submitted to this competition.
The HPLFF has long been my home festival. In the spirit of their tagline, it sometimes does feel like they are “the only festival that understands.” There are other fests now–more than there used to be–but these folks are my people. Many of them are the very same ones who were in Providence a few weeks ago for NecronomiCon, so it will be a treat to see them again so soon.
This is also the same festival where two years ago I pitched the idea for Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows to Ross Lockhart of Word Horde. And you all know how that turned out! This will also be the first time that I am coming to the festival as a published author within the community, and hopefully I’ll be able to be a part of the excellent literary events that are held there each year like the Saturday morning author signing and a number of great readings and panels.
I do want to say, for the record, that this is one more sturdy pillar in what has been an outstanding year for me as a writer. I was talking with Christina this morning, and she wisely noted how both in academia and in creative endeavors, the successes and the validation that come with them are often so few and far between. It can take years to see them develop and come to fruition, if they do at all. More often, they fall apart at some point, or set out into the world, never to be heard from again.
In all honesty, it is an honor just to be nominated in this instance. I can’t wait to see everyone in Portland next month. You can be sure I will write a wrap-up for you afterward.
Last weekend was NecronomiCon 2019 in Providence, RI. This was my first time attending, though I have been reading about it for years. Up until this past year, I always considered myself more of a filmmaker and film scholar of the weird, so this more literary-focused event couldn’t compete for time and funds alongside the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, The Outer Dark Symposium, and other academic conferences that were a bit more central to my pursuit of tenure and promotion as a professor of film. This is a new path, though, and conferences like NecronomiCon, NECon, and ReaderCon are likely to be much more central to my writing life going forward.
I know I am hardly alone among my fellow authors in saying that I am not particularly good at cons. I want very much to be part of the group, or what looks like a group from the outside, but I am not a natural extrovert. I want to sit in a corner or a bar or a cafe and talk shop with people. I want to go to room parties, but I worry that I don’t belong, that I’m intruding. This anxiety was much easier to believe whole-heartedly when my primary accomplishments were as a screenwriter of some minor merit. Being a finalist several times over and even winning an award or two doesn’t confer a lot of credibility, because screenplays that don’t become films are largely invisible as accomplishments. Like scholarly essays, only a tiny number of people have actually read them.
Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows has changed that for me, both in my mind and in the minds of others to some extent. As a fiction writer, I came to this conference with a novel freshly out of the gate from a well-known and widely respected press. I not only got to meet authors I’ve admired from afar for years, but several of them had read my book, and they like it! It’s just crazy. It’s gratifying and motivating and…just wonderful. I want people to enjoy that book, but in a lot of ways, these are the people for whom I wrote it. They are the readers who I already know have a taste for this sort of thing. Most if not all fiction is part of a conversation, and these folks are absolutely my interlocutors. To be seen and recognized as one of them, literally and figuratively, is a genuine homecoming.
I set out to challenge myself at this con by doing my best to speak with people, to make new friends, and to praise the authors of stories I have enjoyed to their faces. I was able to do that, and it felt good. It’s far easier to thank people honestly for their art than it is to make small talk. That’s a good step forward, but I will try to do more next time. And the next opportunity comes soon.
In early October, I will be at this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon in Portland, OR at the Hollywood Theater, where this year’s Guests of Honor include Victoria Price (Vincent’s daughter), Roger Corman, and Richard Stanley with his new adaptation of The Colour Out of Space, starring Nicholas Cage! WTF? The HPLFF is a fine opportunity to pass through the veil and finally see what the room parties are all about.*
In the meantime, I am fully engaged in the beginning of the new work in progress (WIP). This novel has been popping up now and again in my daily writing practice (30 minutes, every morning, long-hand), but it has been amorphous for months. I had enough of a concept for there to be a pitch (which I am mostly keeping to myself for the moment), but a more solid grasp of character and plot and the nature of the weird at the heart of it all remained elusive until this past week. Though there was no one crystalizing moment, I expect that the atmosphere of NecronomiCon helped to push me in the right direction. So now I have consolidated all of those daily notes and I can see the vague outline now. I start to know the people in this story. I can smell the fresh water of Lake Michigan and the murkier darkness that clings to the shore near the mouth of the river.
* Full Disclosure: I did actually go to a room party at the very first HPLFF I ever attended in 2003, but there was absinthe and pleather and I only remember flashes of it. Now that I think of it, it’s entirely possible that I never made it out of that room…
As promised, here is the second Lethal Chamber track from Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, courtesy of my insanely talented brother, Kurt Hauser. It’s called “Washington Scare.”
I love how this one starts a little slower and then breaks into the full, up-tempo, punk rock chaos.
Give it a listen and let me know what you think!
Though I’m not quite ready to give you details yet, I can say that the next project is underway. We undertook a big household move from northern New York state to central Pennsylvania over the past month, and we’re only just now reaching the point where we are surrounded by more order than chaos (at least inside our house). I’ve finally been able to devote more consistent mental space to moving that WIP along, and let me tell you, that feels good. In a couple of weeks, I think I’ll be able to start reporting word counts.
This Saturday I have my next reading. I’ll be at the Bucknell University Bookstore Barnes & Noble at 3pm reading from Memento Mori. Later in August, I’ll be at NecronomiCon in Providence, RI, and then in October, I will be at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthuchuCon. I’m lining up a couple more events immediately after that, and I will announce those here as soon as I can.
Last Wednesday was my first public reading from Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows. It was held at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California and hosted by Ross Lockhart, my publisher at Word Horde. I’ve done a lot of “readings” before in the form of academic conferences, so you might say that I have a particular set of skills. And yet, it’s different when you’re reading from your own novel, or reading your own poetry.
This reading came together fortuitously, because my partner and I were vacationing nearby with a couple of our friends. The four of us showed up at the book store after a nice dinner in Petaluma and were immediately greeted by Ross and shown around the store. I grew up with a mix of corporate (B. Dalton and Waldenbooks) and independent booksellers (Thackeray’s in Toledo, OH), and my heart has always been with the independents. Copperfield’s is obviously the kind of place that can engender that kind of love and loyalty. I would proudly shop there regularly, if we lived nearby. If you get a chance to stop in, I would highly recommend making sure you head into the basement (Copperfield’s Underground) for the used and rare book experience.
Right at 7:00pm, we gathered at the back of the shop, which was already set up with podium and table for the book signing that would come after. A few people were already seated, and a few more came and filled in seats as Ross introduced me and then I stepped up to the mic.
And it went well! Of course, I had hemmed and hawed for a while about what to read. A reading like this shoots for 10-15 minutes, which is maybe six or seven pages of this book. That makes it tricky. I chose an early scene from C.C. Waite’s memoir of Tina Mori, which only required a minimum of exposition to set up. I was sort of surprised that the piece read so well, but the audience was there for it and reacted just as I hoped they would.
The Q&A afterward was lively and interesting. It was a mix of people who had read the novel and those who had not, so we all did our best not to get into the weeds or spoil anything. Luckily, some great questions allowed me the opportunity to get philosophical and talk about the weird and the numinous and the symphony of horror and Robert W. Chambers. I was a happy author!
The book signing portion was a bit mind-boggling, honestly. It was a wonderful out of body experience that was simultaneously terrifying and glorious. Those excellent questions kept coming from the very thoughtful listeners and readers who had come that evening.
As I said, we were out there primarily because we were on vacation, so let me share the Alfred Hitchcock double feature section of our vacation from a couple days after the reading. First, we drove to Point Reyes Station and then headed up the coast to Bodega Bay, where The Birds takes place. We didn’t stop, but we did get out a little further on at Dillon Beach. There were actually more people on the sand that day than this photo seems to indicate, and the birds were not at all aggressive. Yet.
From Dillon Beach, we pressed on to the Armstrong Redwood Forest (reminiscent of the redwood scene from Vertigo), where I took this picture. I honestly don’t even know what’s going on here, but I love it and don’t feel a need to question it too closely. We made it out of the forest and eventually made it home to Lewisburg. Or did we?
Now that we’re home, we’re able to take advantage of a real treat here in Lewisburg. In the summers, the gorgeously restored art deco Campus Theater runs a free Hitchcock program. Tonight is Psycho, and you can bet we’ll be there.
I have something amazing to share with you, but it has to wait just a little bit longer. I know, I probably shouldn’t tease you like this. I can’t help it, though. You’ll see another post in a couple of days, and I guarantee you it will be worth the wait…
Memento Mori is a book I would not have written if we had not moved to Potsdam, New York in 2012. As I wrote in the real acknowledgments for the novel, the story came partially as a result of delving into Wes Craven’s history in Potsdam while he taught at Clarkson College of Technology, before he became a filmmaker. But it’s also true that the geography and architecture of the North Country were key to the development of the novel.
Many, many locations from the North Country found their way into Tina Mori’s tale. Potsdam became Red Stone, a reference to the Potsdam red sandstone that, along with timber, drove the early economy of the town. I want to share with you the inspirations for some of the locations in the novel. If you’ve read the book, I’m sure you have images of these places in your head, and I don’t want to displace those at all, so I hope you’ll take these in the spirit they are intended.
The impressive cemetery gatehouse where Tina and C.C. go to meet with Dr. Holly is actually the Bayside Cemetery gatehouse in Potsdam. It was built in 1901 entirely of local red sandstone from a design by Edgar Josselyn and currently is listed on the National Historic Register. I fell in love with this building the moment I saw it. Not long after we moved to town, Clarkson University took over a long-term lease of the building and started casting about for possible uses. I wanted very much for it to be used as housing for an artist-in-residence program, but admittedly this isn’t really Clarkson’s bag (it’s a well-regarded STEM school). The small rounded door to the right of the photo is the door through which Tina and C.C. enter the house.
The North Country has a lot of great places to visit, as long as you don’t mind road trips (90 minutes to Lake Placid, 90 minutes to Ottawa, two hours to Montreal, about three hours to Burlington, VT). On our way to Burlington, the bridge between New York and Vermont over Lake Champlain at Rouses Point sports a view of the early Federal fortification of Ft. Montgomery (or Fort Blunder) north of the bridge on the western shore. This is the fort where Tina and C.C. witness the ritual that becomes so key to the overall story. The fort is currently private property (it’s for sale, if you’re interested), so I haven’t been in it, and I think that actually adds to its mystique for me.
Tina Mori’s arc in the novel is bookended by two barn parties. At the first, she sees several films by Maya Deren that convince her that what she really wants to do is direct. The second, in the same barn, is where she premieres her masterpiece, The Dragon’s Teeth. The North Country is dotted with barns in various states of repair and use. You’ll find collapsed barns, rugged old barns mostly in use for occasional storage, and brand new barns (usually Amish) being put to their full range of uses. Barn parties are still a thing in St.Lawrence County, whether for weddings or Halloween parties or whatever. I got the idea for it in the novel from the party that was thrown after the successful screenings of the student film that Wes Craven helped to make at Clarkson in 1968. This isn’t that barn, but you get the idea.
Additionally, one of my astute readers has pointed out to me what he thought were fictional references to the Java Barn, a local music venue on the campus of St. Lawrence University. Though the echoes seem to be spot on, I had to admit that I had never heard of the Java Barn prior to him mentioning it. Synchronicity.
One of Tina’s films, The Stairs, takes place at Barnum Pond in the Adirondack Park, not far from Saranac Lake. Barnum pond is one of those pristinely gorgeous spots that came to characterize the Adirondacks for me. As you take a wide curve in NY State Route 30, the trees fall away and this lovely pond stretches away toward two low peaks beyond the western shore.
This last location is more of an inspiration. It doesn’t show up in a thinly veiled way, like these other locations. The Dilly Wagon was an early-1960s drive-in restaurant that was the creation of Charles Weinstein of Potsdam. The restaurant had two things that set it apart: its signature Dilly Sauce and its Conestoga wagon design. When I stumbled across this bit of Potsdam historical lore, it stuck with me. I have a soft spot for diners and drive-ins and these post-war hold-overs. However, instead of going with the wagon, I chose to create the Barnstormers aviation-themed restaurant where Tina gets a part-time job. It’s the same general idea, a gimmicky greasy spoon, though Barnstormers is an eat-in roadhouse.
Those are some of the locations in the novel inspired by real-life spots in Northern New York. Were they a whole lot different than you imagined them to be?
The Acknowledgments at the end of Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows are true, in the sense that they are true to the story, but they are not real. They are diegetic acknowledgments; they live within the fiction. Now that the book is out there in the world, I want to publish the actual Acknowledgments to calm my conscience and recognize the support of some amazing people.
This book would not have happened without Wes Craven, Ken Lyon, John Heneage, and Adam Paul. Adam founded the St. Lawrence International Film Festival in 2015 to bring some more cinematic culture to the St. Lawrence Valley. He approached me, as a film studies professor at Clarkson University, about hosting a screening of Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). In the late 1960s, Craven taught in my department after completing his masters at Johns Hopkins. It was there that Wes helped Ken and John make a 45-minute student film titled Pandora Experimentia with his own 16mm movie camera. This is the film that convinced Wes that he wanted to make movies professionally. The research I did into amateur/underground film, Wes Craven, and Potsdam, NY in the late-1960s (a lot of it fueled by long conversations with Ken) became the basis for the story that would grow into Memento Mori.
I’m very thankful to a wealth of friends who helped me hash out some of my ideas and who were willing to listen to elevator pitches and give me their feedback. Many thanks to Andy Vogel, Christen Taylor, Doug Swarts, Steven Stannish, Stephen Casper, Karen Buckle, Mariko McDonald, Elizabeth Smith, Felicity Palmer, Michael Goldenberg, Katie Comer, and Chris Lindemann.
I’m at the very least indirectly indebted to many currently working authors who deign to live some of their writerly lives on social media. Among these are Caitlín Kiernan, Laird Barron, Scott Nicolay, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Joseph S. Pulver Sr., Michael Griffin, Gemma Files, John Langan, Nick Mamatas, Molly Tanzer, Nathan Ballingrud, Nadia Bulkin, Chuck Wendig, and Jeff VanderMeer. Their presence in my digital life has been a continual source of advice, inspiration, and example. Though the words were rarely if ever directed at me, I was listening, and I am grateful.
Alongside social media, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon has been a creative touchstone for me since the first year I attended in 2003. Thanks here go out to the examples and inspirations of Andrew Migliore, Brian Callahan, Gwen Callahan, Aaron Vanek, and Adam Scott Glancy, who are so integral to my memories and experience of the HPLFF. This is also where I met Ross E. Lockhart of Word Horde in 2017, who took a chance on this book and guided it into the world. Thank you, Ross.
I’m grateful every day for my family: Russ and Patti, who taught me the value of books early on; Kurt, who is one of the most continually inspiring people I know; and Ellen, the best retired librarian/mother-in-law a man could ask for. I also share my writing space every day with tiny ninjas in furry suits. Over the course of this project–from notes to galley proofs–Random, Nibbler, and Madeleine Albright have each made their opinions known and reminded me of what is truly important (i.e., their food).
My most profound gratitude is reserved for Christina Xydias, my partner and sharer of ice cream. You make everything better.
Happy Memorial Day.
This is the day that I share a quiet toast with my partner, Christina, “to our brothers and sisters who’ve gone before us.” I am fortunate to be a veteran who is not surrounded by the ghosts of friends in uniform. Nevertheless, it remains important to me to make the time to acknowledge this day thoughtfully.
Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows officially drops tomorrow. This day has been long in coming, and I’m excited to be able to share this story with you. The initial round of print pre-orders went out last week, and I’ve received reports of them arriving in mailboxes as early as last Thursday. I hope you all enjoy it!
As promised, I’ll be using this space to introduce you to some of the background research and influences that went into Memento Mori. Today, I want to say a few things about The King in Yellow.
The King in Yellow is really a couple of different things. Let’s start with the fiction and work our way out toward (some kind of) reality. In Memento Mori, and in many stories by different authors over more than a hundred years, The King in Yellow is an infamous two-act play that usually appears in book form. Those who read the cursed play are doomed to succumb to an irreversible madness. They become haunted by the romantic Gothic figures of Camilla and Cassilda from the nightmare streets of Carcosa on the shores of the Lake of Hali. Their lives are invaded by the Tattered King, the Pallid Mask, and the Yellow Sign. The horrors in this world tend more toward the surreal and existentially grotesque than toward the monstrous and bloody.
In Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, this cursed play shows up as part of the story. Various characters have copies of it, and its malignant influence seeps throughout the book. In addition, the Yellow Sign, the Pallid Mask, and the king itself make appearances.
The play The King in Yellow comes from an 1895 collection of short stories by the American author Robert W. Chambers. This story collection is also called The King in Yellow, even though the play figures explicitly in only a small handful of the stories in that volume. Chambers is considered by many authors, critics, and readers more broadly to be one of the pillars of supernatural horror fiction, despite the fact that this reputation rests primarily on this small portion of only one of his many works of fiction. For his fans, however, these few stories are powerfully evocative.
One indication of how powerful these stories are is the number of genre authors who have extended their influence in new and different stories. In fact, Chambers himself found partial inspiration for The King in Yellow in Ambrose Bierce’s short stories “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” and “Haïta the Shepherd,” from which he takes the names Carcosa, Hali, and Hastur. Possibly the strongest boost to the afterlife of Chambers’s creation came from H.P. Lovecraft, who praised The King in Yellow in his own treatise Supernatural Horror in Literature. Lovecraft’s extended essay winds up exerting an enormous influence on the continuing visibility of the authors he praised, including Robert Chambers, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and Lord Dunsany. Lovecraft also used story elements from Chambers’s weird tales in several of his own stories and poems, effectively bringing these elements into what later becomes known as the Cthulhu mythos. This move is later strengthened by other authors more or less self-consciously writing from within that mythos, including August Derleth, Lin Carter, Charles Stross, Karl Edward Wagner, Alan Moore, and more (like me).
There are two more recent players in this chain of influence that deserve special mention. The first is Joseph S. Pulver Sr. He is the writer who, more than I think any other, has taken up the tattered mantle of The King in Yellow and made it his own. Far from engaging in pastiche, Joe’s stories and poems gather together inspiration from Chambers and others and then unleashes them in wholly new milieus and environments. His work as both author and editor has breathed new vitality into this corner of weird fiction.
Finally, I think I have to mention True Detective. Like many people who count themselves as at least occasional or tangential fans of Chambers’s weird fiction, I was tantalized by the hints at links to The King in Yellow sprinkled through the first season of HBO’s True Detective. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto has been up front about the influence (and has explicitly recommended Pulver’s work to fans). For many of these fans, that first season comes off as something of a disappointment in terms of its potential as weird fiction. Personally, I found it satisfyingly atmospheric and a worthy addition to a swirling cauldron of art that references these characters, places, and tropes in different ways.
There is your mini-primer to Robert W. Chambers and The King in Yellow. You’ll find a list of links below for further reading/viewing.
Christophe Thill’s Introduction to The King in Yellow at the Internet Archive (for a more detailed overview of the story elements and sources)
Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow (1895) at Project Gutenberg
H.P. Lovecraft on Chambers in Supernatural Horror in Literature (Chapter VIII, paragraphs 17 & 18, 1927)
A selection of relevant works written or edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.:
Like many a blog before it, and probably many to come, this blog represents a new beginning.
For the past two decades, I have primarily been an academic. I spent about eight years pursuing a Ph.D. in film studies at The Ohio State University before I was fortunate enough to become a professor, first at Union College in Schenectady, NY and then later on at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. I enjoy teaching, and I had good jobs that supported the work I was doing, whether that was traditional scholarly research or creative work like screenplays, films, or fiction.
Now, I’m setting out on a new phase of my professional life. My partner is pursuing a dream job in Pennsylvania, and I’m going with her. This comes precisely as my debut novel hits the shelves and some new, exciting, and scary opportunities open up. So, I have resigned my tenured position as an Associate Professor of Film in order to write full-time. I will still likely pick up some classes here and there, but I may never again hold a professorship.
Joseph Campbell wrote, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.” Freelancing is absolutely the cave I fear to enter. I have always pursued more stable and secure forms of employment, and contemporary professional writing is anything but that. I know it will be very different from my career up to now, but I also think I have finally honed the discipline and the self-awareness that will keep me on track, butt in the seat, every day.
Sure, this site is my artist/author landing page, but my plan is to keep things interesting for you here, too, by sharing tidbits of research from past work, works in progress, and other odd things that wash up now and then. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to follow here and on social media. (I’m more active on Facebook than Twitter, for now.)
