When we moved to central Pennsylvania last summer, there was a spare bedroom that we identified as my office. The whole house needed a fairly serious cosmetic make over, and I can’t tell you how excited I was to basically imagine my work space from the ground up.
Square one.
I know not everyone likes this green, or how much of it there is, but I love it. I feel comfortable surrounded by it. I worked like this for months, surrounded by stacked boxes, and having to shoo away one of our cats who wanted nothing more than to mark this room as hers.
Taking up carpet, padding, and tack strips.
The new green paint was there on the walls to encourage me to think about how the office would and could look, as soon as I got off my ass and did something about it. But, man, moving is exhausting in all sorts of different ways. But when I finally got around to transforming this room, I was so excited to see it come together.
New floor!
After months of various home improvement tasks, it was time to lay down new floors in my office and a couple other rooms. I had only done this sort of thing once before in a small hallway, but I think they turned out pretty nice. Way WAY better than the previous low-pile, deep padded, heavily trafficked carpet.
Piece by piece.
Here is all the furniture except for the bookshelves. The green is comforting to me, but the books…oh, the books.
Done! (basically)
This is the lived-in version with books, and rug, and various tid bits that have yet to find permanent homes.
Mission control.
The long Ikea desk is the centerpiece in terms of furniture. Being able to have a permanent typing desk right next to my iMac workstation is just heaven. I know it’s a portable typewriter, but working at the dining room table was a bit of a hassle for everyone involved. And for those of you wondering, that typewriter is not for show. I have written three book-length manuscripts on it. The printer also has a document feed scanner, so I can type for a day, scan the pages, and have both a PDF and a text file in minutes.
The most amazing Angel Heart (1987) print! There is so much detail in this image; I can stare at it for hours…
This print hangs right above my reading chair. I can’t begin to tell you how much joy this print brings me. It’s a brilliant piece of art that pays tribute to another brilliant piece of art.
It’s been almost a year, and the office is finally complete. In my experience, that is faster than I have ever been able to effectively organize and decorate a work space. I have already done plenty of work of which I am very proud in this room: a new novel draft, a short screenplay, a feature, a couple more treatments. I’m eager for the projects yet to come, too.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine, I saw a lot of sites commenting on pandemic films like Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011). In general, I would say that I am the kind of person who does not rush to films like these when real life is giving filmmakers notes. I am not knocking the impulse at all, I want to be clear. We all react in different ways at different times, and our film viewing serves different purposes. For instance, not everyone who enjoys horror films seeks them out for the same reasons (forever complicating those periodic essays on “Why Horror?”). Some folks are seeking rollercoaster thrills, some folks are habituating themselves to the idea of death and worst-case scenarios, some folks have an affinity to certain moods or themes or aesthetics that are commonly found in films grouped as horror, and the list of reasons goes on. I am simply not in the camp of people who rush to watch pandemic films in the middle of an actual pandemic.
I have been watching horror films, though, when I can. A lot of these are re-watches, dipping back into classics like Jacob’s Ladder (1990) and In the Mouth of Madness (1994) in order to jump start some thought processes and lubricate some gears, etc. In a lot of ways, these films are part of work, as enjoyable and wonderful and brilliant as they are.
And I guess that brings me to the question of art vs. entertainment. I’m not always interested in catering to that dichotomy. There are plenty of films that we might call artistic that I also find highly entertaining. The categories are certainly not exclusive.
(For a particularly apt intersection of art and entertainment in the here and now, let me direct you to The Isolation Boredom Series of recreated paintings and film stills by Greg Ivan Smith and Michael Fitzpatrick.)
But I think, in general, that my definition of entertainment includes some sense in which the object under discussion is not designed to make me uncomfortable. Laugh, cry, scream, yes. But it is not designed to upset me. Perhaps it is a singularly beautiful or astounding example of a genre, or more likely a tweak of a genre. Something that offers us the opportunity to see life or stories or ourselves in a new way. These examples of art are both beautiful and relatively safe.
But there is also the art that is designed to shake you, art that is made to upset the way you see the world, and it’s not interested in adding in a teaspoon of sugar. This art is challenging, and I’m definitely still up for that kind of challenge. That’s the kind of aesthetic experience that I want to have more of and not less. It’s not what I want all the time–sometimes I just want the popcorn–but I like to have those aesthetic experiences, even when they make me uncomfortable.
In that spirit, a couple of weeks after the quarantine began, Christina agreed that we would finally work our way through the two Criterion Collection boxed sets that we own. One is of Éric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales,” and the other is “Five Films” by John Cassavetes. When I announced this on Facebook, at least one person jokingly (?) warned us against a married couple watching these films together during such a psychologically stressful situation. I suppose it does have the ring of a clinical experiment about it.
Well, to the best of my knowledge, our marriage has survived this experiment intact. (Christina, feel free to chime in.) Was it difficult? Hell yes, it was difficult. Christina and I were both surprised to remember that we had only ever seen Rohmer’s Ma nuit chez Maud (1969) and Pauline à la plage (1983), the latter not being part of the “Six Moral Tales,” but rather the later “Comedies and Proverbs” series. Maud remains an engaging masterpiece, and we recall Pauline pretty fondly, too.
However, it turns out that the mid-century masculinity on display in the rest of the moral tales is not all that commendable. For those who haven’t seen them, the moral tales each follow a man who enters into or manufactures a situation in which they make a moral choice. That choice almost always has to do with whether or not to be faithful, either to an actual romantic commitment or to the idea of one (or to a related philosophical ideal). These films are intriguing human studies, and it’s also fascinating to watch French films from the 1960s and 1970s in their own right, but some of those humans can be difficult to stomach.
The real challenge came during the two weeks it took us to make it through the “Five Films” set of John Cassavetes’s films. Again, Christina and I had both seen Shadows (1959) before, and we both liked it a lot. It’s a tremendously rough film, but its energy and its milieu and its performances are so extraordinary that those rough edges become an inextricable part of the essence of the film. They don’t detract at all.
After Shadows, the films look ever-more professional, and the stories are more and more gut-wrenching. It’s a litany of trapped people treating other people horribly. Every one of the films is full of fantastic acting. A couple of them have genuinely funny moments (Opening Night in particular). And yet, the recurring motif is human calamity, intimate and domestic. There is no need for war or natural disaster here. Flawed people manage to evoke their very own crises, thank you very much. Individuals let other individuals down, and only very occasionally they don’t.
I think that’s where the line is for me at the moment. I understand how much collective action means right now in the real world. So often in apocalypse films, people band together and help each other until someone does something stupid or selfish, and then it all goes to shit. But these films are about the ways in which we are routinely stupid and selfish and hurtful, even or especially when we are French and know a lot of philosophy. I guess it’s just that this sort of human failure has only local effects, or it seems to (though it is usually also reflective of while also contributing to systemic ills). In the middle of a pandemic, I am forced to think at all times about the ways in which my mistakes and the mistakes of others, willful or otherwise, might have dire consequences. By comparison, Rohmer and Cassavetes seem quaint.
Last week I had the pleasure and good fortune to be interviewed by Anya Martin for The Outer Dark podcast. The Outer Dark is one of the best places to find great conversations about what is going on with the contemporary weird from the widest possible array of voices. Anta and her co-conspirator Scott Nicolay also organize the annual Outer Dark Symposium of the Greater Weird where weird artists and fans can gather face-to-face for readings and panels and meals and mind melding. I attended the San Jose symposium in 2018, and I am on the program for the next one that takes place this March in Atlanta.
The interview with me appears on Episode 064 of the podcast, which begins with some updates about the preparation for the symposium, as well as Gordon White’s insightful reviews of two new works in the field of the weird. The description on the Outer Dark page will give you some idea of just how rollicking and far-ranging our discussion was. I hope you enjoy!
It’s been a while since I shared anything with you, and for that I apologize! Things have been happening, but we all know how it can be during the holidays. Some of you may even remember that the major impetus for my sprint to complete the initial draft of my second novel was that I was set to begin a day job in mid-November, so that has been keeping me busy, as well. I wanted to pop out of winter obscurity to share a couple of things with you.
The cover of Final Grrrl #5 as envisioned by J Owen Schultz and his daughter, Peyton.
The first is a simply astounding piece of fan art. One of my “longest-serving friends,” J Owen Schultz, created this complete hard copy edition of Final Grrrl #5 from Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows. J enlisted the help of his daughter Peyton in completing a lot of the art that you can find within.
I would have loved if the published version of Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows had a fully graphic rendering of Billie Jacobs’s zine as well as a facsimile copy of Tina’s letter to C.C. at the end. I think that kind of design would enhance the reader’s experience. But it might be even better to have these versions coming from readers of the novel instead.
Just look at the care and creativity here!
This is just a sample, of course. You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m hoarding the rest for myself.
I’m excited to report that I just completed an interview with Anya Martin and The Outer Dark podcast (this is a link to the entire series; my interview will be up in a couple of days), and I will be sure to post it here and elsewhere when it is available. If you haven’t already looked into the Outer Dark, and you like weird fiction, I highly recommend that you dive in. They host discussions on the cutting edge of the contemporary weird. I attended their second symposium in San Jose in 2018, and I am on the program for this spring’s iteration in Atlanta.
I’ll also be posting soon about my new writing space. When we moved to central PA this summer, Christina and I both had the opportunity to carve out new spaces in which to work at home. Mine is very nearly complete, and I want to show it to you, mostly because I’m very proud of it. It’s already been the site of some very satisfying work, and I can’t wait for more.
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!
Ask Lovecraft After Dark, Wednesday, November 6, 2019.
The initial typescript draft of The Hermit, coming in at approximately 300 pages.
So, yeah.
I wrote here previously about planning to draft my next novel in seven weeks, writing 2,000 words a day, six days a week. And, well, that’s pretty much exactly what I did. Here it is. That’s all you get to see for now. Sorry. It looks hella nasty under that title page, and the more fastidious among you will agree that the title page looks none too prepossessing either. Nice stack, though, right?
I’m not going to lie; that was not easy. I had many MANY advantages going in, all of which I readily acknowledge. I had time. I had the support of my partner. I had my health. I had a solid idea and a super-sketch outline. And there wasn’t anyone out there, at any time in my life, telling me that I couldn’t do it or that no one wanted to read it (well, except maybe for that one First Sergeant, but fuck that guy). On one level, this novel draft comes to you courtesy of all of the privilege.
Even so, this step was a major one in terms of personal confidence and discipline. Aside from a couple of Weebles(TM), I had a smooth run through this story, which allowed me to learn a few things about my current process.
First, the most productive way for me to write is to have just enough of an idea to give me a general direction and then GO. I learn a tremendous amount about what should be on the page by putting a lot of stuff on it that will not stay there. I would write entire chapters, and sometimes in the middle of it I would already be aware of how a character or even a whole theme should change. I made those notes quickly (sometimes right in the manuscript) and then kept going. Momentum is all-important in the first-draft stage.
I can write A LOT fairly quickly, but I cannot write all day long. My sessions usually clocked in around two hours in the morning. Sometimes, especially if I was essentially writing a double, I would go longer, and sometimes I could write my day’s goal in less. Two hours was a safe average. I can also move the timing of the writing block, but I need to be clear-headed for it if I want to be that productive.
Finally, I reinforced what I already knew that my daily writing practice (30 minutes, by hand, every day, first thing) is essential to maintaining the momentum on the WIP. I need that space outside the manuscript to think and write ABOUT the manuscript.
From here, I will set the draft aside for a few days while I get ready to finish my home office. It’s still filled with boxes from our move. I will be putting in the new floor myself, and though home improvement projects always come with their share of frustrations, I’m looking forward to this one. This will be the first office that I will have done so much to craft myself. I mean, I didn’t build it, but we will have transformed it by the time all is said and done. Once that is done, I will read what I have several times, making all sorts of wild notes and generally deciding on a plan for what needs to be researched in greater detail before I come up with a plan for layering. More on that when we get there.
Astute readers will also note that the novel title no longer sensibly abbreviates as TPS, as I indicated in my initial post about it. The new title, The Hermit, is one that I am happier with. It is the first of a planned trilogy along with The Elephant and The Messenger.
Apologies, but no story details just yet. This draft is a Federation crew member in the middle of a dicey beam up, and this engineer has to focus all his attention on making sure they don’t arrive on the platform a steamy and gooey mess. Horrifying is fine, but I want to get it here in one piece before I go introducing you to it.
I’ll also use this opportunity to remind you that tomorrow night, Wednesday, November 6, at 9:00pm EDT, I will be Leeman Kessler’s guest on Ask Lovecraft After Dark. If you are or become a member of the Ask Lovecraft Appreciation Society Facebook group, you can watch it stream live and message us with questions. Otherwise, I will post the conversation here and elsewhere after the fact.
1976 Episode of “Well, Just You Wait!” featuring the Quarz Zenit 1x8C-2 Super 8 movie camera.
This popped up on my feed yesterday. It’s an episode of the Russian cartoon Well, Just You Wait!, but this one is essentially a commercial for the Quarz Zenit 1x8C-2 Super 8mm movie camera. This is the same camera that Tina Mori uses to shoot all of her films in Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows.
Terrifying in its implications. The award for Best Screenplay at the 2019 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival goes to my script FLYPAPER! (Photo Credit: Christina Xydias)
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.
This past week was the first of a seven-week sprint to a first draft of the new novel. An acronym for the working title is TPS, so I’m sure many of you will sympathize with my desire to call these blog posts “TPS reports” (and, hence, why you are seeing this on a Saturday).
I’ve set a fairly ambitious goal for myself on this project: 2,000 words per day. That’s eight, typed, double-spaced pages. At six days a week, if I stay on schedule, I will have an 80,000-word draft in just under seven weeks. It’s also possible that I will have angry neighbors. The weather in central PA is still gorgeous, and most days are open-window days. My neighbors are old enough to know what that sound is they’re hearing, but there’s no telling whether it fills them with wonder or annoys the shit out of them.
For all but one day this week I was able to sit my butt in the chair and work more or less uninterrupted. When I have good days like that, I usually complete the 2,000 words in two and half to three hours. Given the plan, that is half a chapter every day, so each week I get into a sort of day to day breathing routine: open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. And then a brief rest before I start again on Monday.
There was that one bad day, though. Wednesday. Fuck Wednesday. I eventually got my words in, but man they did not want to come out. But no, you know what, that’s not right. The problem was that on Wednesday the voices were too loud. Not the creative voices, the daemon, but the critical voices. The voices that cut and draw blood in the form of shame. The voices that very, very convincingly argue that there’s really no point in writing, because it’s all crap. The story doesn’t hang. I don’t know enough about these people or these events to write a single word, so maybe I just ought to stop until I can figure it out.
Nope. Not having it. 2,000 words or bust. I’ll know what I’m doing after I’ve done it.
Some of the writers reading this might find the numbers incredible, because some writers are having a solid writing day when they get out 50 or 100 or 200 words. On that score, let me assure you that I am a filthy, disgusting swooper. Kurt Vonnegut divided writers into swoopers and bashers.
“Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Vonnegut also ventures that most men are bashers and most women swoopers. Whatever, bruh. This is how I get shit done, and though I have not always embraced it, it has ever been thus. These drafts are so unwieldy and amorphous that it is completely fair game for me to write something like, “blah blah blah, and then the magic happens.” Laughable. But I keep on typing. When that draft is done and I come back to revise, I will have a much better idea about what “blah blah blah” means and to what in fact “the magic” refers. Sometimes I just don’t know, but I do know that the magic needs to be there. You expect the magic. You’ve come for the magic. It’s my job to deliver.
Now I know that this is how I work, but I still try to optimize. For instance, I will work on the concept of a script or book for months, building characters and getting a sense of the plot, before I ever actually sit down to write any prose. Normally, I will have something that looks like a plot outline, but rarely is it much more than a single sentence per chapter. It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s usually enough. When I do sit down, it’s like I am taking the idea of a car out for a drive. It generally doesn’t handle well; the steering may not even be connected to the wheels at all. And yet, I know how to drive, and I know (more or less) where I want to go. So sitting down and churning out 2,000 words inspired by a single sentence is both terrifying and freeing. I can kinda write anything. Why not? Why do this at all if I can’t just write whatever the hell I want sometimes? And yet, eventually, it does all need to come together and make sense (hopefully in an entertaining and/or fascinating way) to someone other than me.
But for this first draft? SWOOOOOOOP! SWOOOOOOOP! You get 2,000 words! You get 2,000 words! Everyone gets 2,000 words! Mostly because I have zero shame about each and every one of those words. Total shitbag, this draft. Couldn’t pass a PT test to save its life.
The truth is, I need this draft in order to know what I have to put in it and what I have to take out. I am, for whatever reason, not a writer who can figure all of this out cleanly before I sit down to write. If there is a way to cut that knot, I have not seen it for myself yet. I need to create the lump of clay. The blank page is not my lump of clay. The blank page is the workbench that doesn’t have any sculpting materials on it yet whatsoever.
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.
