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.
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…
In Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, Tina Mori steals a wind-up Super 8 film camera from a professor of Russian language and literature. This is the camera she uses to make all of her early films. But it’s not a cursed camera or anything like that. It’s a little weird maybe, but it’s certainly not supernatural.
The Soviet Union manufactured hundreds of thousands of these and other motion picture cameras. The first I ever owned was the 16mm Krasnogrosk K-3 motion picture kit, and the Super 8 Zenit 1x8C-2 and its kin are like younger siblings. Now I have four or five of them. Yes, I have a problem.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, these cameras have flooded secondary markets like eBay, where you can routinely find them for sale at bargain prices. These are quite often barely used if at all, especially if they are being sold from the Ukraine or Belarus. I imagine gigantic warehouses of 30-year-old camera kits just waiting to find homes with nostalgic hobbyists.
But I think nostalgia isn’t quite right, either. Kodak still manufactures Super 8 film (it is even bringing back a limited selection of discontinued film stocks, though not Kodachrome as yet), and they are famously attempting to reintroduce a hybrid Super 8/digital motion picture camera for today’s consumers.
There are also companies like Pro8mm, who not only sell Super 8 film and processing (including conversion to digital files for editing and output), but they also refurbish cameras into like new or better condition. There are also still film labs that process these smaller gauge formats, though certainly far, far fewer than in decades past.
While Kodak’s new camera is a hybrid of digital and analog technology, the Zenit Super 8 camera is almost entirely, doggedly, brutally analog (it does have a battery-powered internal light meter). While most of the Super 8 cameras that people bought in the U.S. and Western Europe and elsewhere had battery-powered motors and were made mostly of plastic, the Zenit is a lot of die cast metal and heavy composites. It’s weighty. To give you a better sense of it, here’s a short YouTube review of the 1x8S-2 (which is the version of the camera that was sold outside the USSR under the market name Kinoflex). The reviewer is German.
Aside from always delicate lenses, these cameras are virtually impossible to break during normal use. That’s certainly not the case with a lot of old Super 8 camera that you might have bought at the local department store or camera shop. And they can do everything except synchronized sound.
All of this tends to inspire romantic people like me (who wrote Memento Mori on a manual typewriter–no Delete key!). Why not make a movie with one of these? Many, many aspiring filmmakers still find their way to Super 8 as a filmmaking format either out of a retro sensibility, or an appreciation of film’s discipline over digital, or a sincere love of the small gauge film visual aesthetic. Of course, since each cartridge is only about three minutes of footage at normal speed, most of these films are short. In fact, there is an annual global competition called Straight8 that challenges filmmakers to make a short film in Super8 with all in-camera editing (go the page, check out some classic samples, ZOMG). That is, you don’t get to edit anything after the fact. You shoot each shot in order, send off the cartridge, and hope it all worked out! Here is Edgar Wright’s amazing Straight8, Forced Hilarity, which Wright introduces.
But others have been even more ambitious, if not more successful. Here is John Hand on trying to shoot in feature film on Super 8 in the 21st Century. Another guerrilla project, Buster, managed to do the Super 8 feature thing, as well.
All of these things, along with the decades-long history of home and amateur film enthusiasts that I have read about extensively, my own experiences growing up watching the Hauser family home movies on 8mm film (and inheriting many of them recently), and my more recent interest and research in the underground film scene contributed to the creation of Tina Mori’s obsession.
Next time, I’ll introduce you to that underground film world. But until then, do you have any memories of watching celluloid home movies? How is that experience, or your memories of that experience, different from the cellphone video that we see everywhere all the time now? I want to hear what you think.
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.
