Posts Tagged ‘fringe’

I…Am…So…Pissed…Off…Right…Now…

Cartman from South Park, you’re still my favorite. I spent the better part of this weekend quoting him, after watching the season finale of FRINGE. I love Fringe, and I loved Fringe’s season finale. I’m not pissed at it. I’m pissed that I have to wait until the fall for any more of it. Very. Very. Pissed.

And Anna Torv rocks my socks.

Fair warning, it’s going to get a little horn blowy below. As in, I have a small horn, and I’m going to be tooting it. For like eight sentences.

Here are some blurbs that have come in for Anna Dressed in Blood:

“I loved Cas! And the world he inhabits is terrifyingly vivid and utterly compelling. Get ready to sleep with the lights on because this book has teeth. Sharp ones.”–Stacey Kade, author of The Ghost and the Goth series

 “Anna Dressed in Blood is easily one of my favorite books of all time and is exactly what I’d hoped it would be: Gorgeous, brutal, heart-breaking, merciless, and cool as Hell. This is the kind of book I’ve been dying to read!”—Courtney Allison Moulton, author of Angelfire

And Melissa Marr said she read it and enjoyed it in an interview here. And as was previously announced, Anna was nominated for the ALA’s Quick Picks List for Reluctant Young Readers.

That’s it. And it’s awesome and I’m grateful and EXTREMELY relieved that these authors have read and enjoyed the book. I should also mention that I no longer feel like the book is something I wrote. Instead I feel like it’s a thing that I’m just incidentally involved in. It’s a weird feeling but I’m somehow okay with it.

I finished Courtney Allison Moulton’s ANGELFIRE last week, and it reminded me why I love and hate to start series before they’re completed. Now I have to wait for more story. And I’m no good at waiting. See above, Re: I Am So Pissed Off Right Now. And I’m halfway through Holly Black’s The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. So far my favorite is A Reversal of Fortune, because it made me long for a candy store, and also because I had a craving to re-read Stephen King’s O Henry-winning story, "The Man in the Black Suit", and it stilled that craving. Anyway, both of these books, highly recommended.

Next week, I think I’ll ball up and address the fear that I’ve lost the ability to write my next book. But I’m not up for it today. As luck would have it however, that fear never really goes away.

Last item of business: the other day I saw the first request for a fileshare of Anna Dressed in Blood. Okay, now I know this is going to happen, and I’m not going to get all Metallica on you and flip my shit. All I’ll say is this: Please don’t. I understand if you want to read it (and am really psyched about that, actually) and can’t afford it, or heck, just don’t want to spend the money, but do try other things first. Please request it at your local library. Because then you read it and also get to feel good about supporting your local library. Most of em can even get it to you via e-reader. Everybody wins. Over and out.

His Name is Random Task. (Writing as giving birth. Again?)

Random Task has nothing to do with this post. I haven’t even watched Austin Powers lately. But it’s hilarious. Oddjob becomes Random Task. I love it. Moving on.

You hear it over and over. People compare writing to giving birth. It’s a labor of love, yada yada yada, we’re all tired of it. I usually steer clear of the metaphor, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fairly accurate. Today, it strikes me as accurate in a way I never thought of. I’m waist-deep in The Girl From Hell, and the going is…by turns euphoric and gear-grindingly painful. At times like these, it’s tempting to say that it’s the most stubborn thing I’ve ever written, that it’s a breech-birth; it’s easy to hee hee hee and hoo hoo hoo and say nothing has been more difficult or bumpy. Yet, if I think about it, they were all like this. They all hit that point where I distinctly referred to them as breech-births. Even Secret Project S, which in retrospect feels like it ran like god damn bastards (Tremors) once it found its footing.

I’ve heard from those who have babies that you don’t remember the pain of the birth. After all, you’ve got a new shiny diaper-filler to show for all the huffing and puffing. So the struggle fades from memory and even moves into the realm of nostalgia. Such is the case for books. In a few months, I’ll bounce The Girl From Hell on my knee, and a few months after that I won’t even remember that I once wanted to shove an epidural through my fricken eyeball. Interesting, this human function of forgetting. I am continually fascinated by it. Which is why I want to read Angie Smibert’s Memento Nora, which has roots in that vein, and why I love Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In my literary work, it’s a perennial theme.

Sidenote: If you watched Fringe this week then you heard the coining of a new fantastic word: Vagenda. As in, "that femme fatale is trying to seduce him…and she’s got a definite vagenda." Let’s make that fly. Urban dictionary, activate!

You Better Check Yourself. Before You Wreck Yourself. (FRINGE IS BACK!)

Okay, so the quote is from an upcoming movie, which I normally don’t do. But eff it. Because it is Zach Galifianakis, whose last name is awesome, according to his grandfather, because it starts with a Gal, and ends with a kiss. I’ve had a fondness for this wacko since Out Cold. I’m glad his weirdness has gone mainstream. Now if only Bret and Jemaine would bring the Conchords back.

This post isn’t about Zach Galifianakis. And it’s barely about books. (There’ll be some bookie stuff at the bottom.) It’s about the return of Fox’s FRINGE tonight. Oh, I have gotten so into this show. The X-files shaped hole is almost healed. So in honor of the show’s return, I’m going a list of why FRINGE is kickass. We’ll call it the Fringe Fuckin Rocks My Socks list.

1. Joshua Jackson finally gets to do the only thing he’s good at, which is act like Pacey Witter, only this time he’s not bogged down by all that vapid, pseudo-introspective Dawson’s Creek whinaholic bullshit. (Wait, forgive me Joshua…you can also act like Charlie from the Mighty Ducks.)

2. Excellent cringeworthy weirdness, including hallucinatory butterflies with razor wings that will seriously cut you the eff up. And make you flail your way out a window. I thought things this wicked only showed up in Cracked.com articles.

3. Anna Torv gives us a heroine who isn’t overloaded with issues (despite any issues being completely justified), who is sensitive and human while still knowing how to beat down the badness with both mind and fists.

4. There is a cow in the lab named Jean. And they don’t experiment on her. Very often. They just milk her and pet her and stuff.

5. Alternate reality where zeppelins are still acceptable modes of transportation. No Hindenburg, no problem.

6. And finally, because it embraces the idea of possibility. Including the possibility that Walter will use the lab to whip up a batch of taffy just after using the same lab to do a really messy autopsy.

Okay, book stuff. Attended Lisa Desrochers’ reading for Personal Demons last night. Helen Landalf, author of the upcoming Broken Wings was also there. Lisa informed us that no one has yet burned a cross on her front yard, due to the blasphemy in Personal Demons. Which might just mean that Jon Stewart’s rally for moderates is working. Lisa is a cool chick and hardworking writer. She’ll be touring her butt off over the next years, so check her website for dates near you.

Also, I’ll be doing an interview with Toni Quest’s radio show to promote Sleepwalk Society on October 4th. Will post links before and after.
And I got bored and added Anna Dressed in Blood to the Goodreads site. Please do add it to your to-read list. But if you decide to bash it in a review before the book is even released, remember: You Better Check Yourself. Before You Wreck Yourself.

Hardcover? Me?

So there’s been some great news. Secret Project A, that sweet little thing I was working on for a portion of last year, that thing that took me by the seat of my pants and kept on fricking expanding, and just wouldn’t do as it was told…well, I guess it knew what it was doing, because it just sold in a two-book deal along with its sequel, which is yet to be written. Details on how this came to be shall follow once it is cut and dried. Strange expression. Cut and dried. Are we making beef jerky?

In ogni caso, I’ve just heard from my editor via an email sent to my agent that they plan to publish in hardcover first. Crazy. I’m going to be in hardcover? Or at least that is the plan? When I think hardcover I think of established authors who I love so much I can’t wait around for their newest work to come out in cheapie paperback. I think of Bret Easton Ellis. I think of Milan Kundera (though his work is not exactly hardback length these days).  I think of Anne Rice (not so much now, but once upon a time). And now, me? My little Secret Project A? The world spins in new directions.

For those of you who are yet unaware, writing is largely a process of waiting. Waiting for replies from agents. Waiting to be read by editors. Waiting waiting and more waiting with a side of waiting in beurre blanc sauce. Each of these types of waits is a separate kind of hell (with the exception of waiting on a contract, or waiting on an advance check…if you complain about that, I’ll happily hand you your ass), and it’s hard to say which wait is the worst. Waiting on getting agented, or waiting to see what an editor thinks of your work is bound to give you fresh ulcers, just like every time we put our tender, beating hearts on someone’s plate and are idiotic enough to hand them a pointy fork. But I’m going to make my case for the other wait, the creative wait. I’m talking about waiting for the next book to come around. For it to decide that yes, it wants to butt to the head of the line and be the thing on your mind, that it is awake enough, frisky enough to compel your fingers across the keyboard. This wait is filled with doubt, because what if it doesn’t come? What if there isn’t any more? Just where the hell do these be-frigged stories keep coming from anyway?

And so it goes with my new project, which used to be called Secret Project C, but that sucked, so will now be re-worked and re-named, Secret Project S. I want to write this novel. Really, I do. But what I begin today will be the fourth attempt at it, after three hideous false starts. Okay so they weren’t that hideous. But what they were was fundamentally wrong.   It took ages to see what this novel wanted to be. It took three times to find the right tense, the right voice, and what I hope is the right direction. If this isn’t it, I swear I’m going to beat this project like a red-headed stepchild.

Non-writing news: FOX’s Fringe is awesome. It’s starting to fill that X-files shaped hole that existed in my deepest soul, and let’s face it, we all wanted Pacey to be a whole lot more interesting and smart than he was on Dawson’s fricken Creek for all those years. Last night, Dylan and I completed the triumvirate of Wayne’s World, Wayne’s World 2, and So I Married an Axe Murderer. The Wayne’s movies are of course hilarious, but the first one gives a better feel for Aurora, Illinois, and I missed that in the second one. And watching Mike Myers in elderly makeup and a scottish accent making fun of the kid with a giant head is priceless in Axe Murderer. "That was a bit off-sides, wasn’t it? He’s going to cry himself to sleep on his enormous pillow." Priceless.