Endings are overrated; they are often the point when the writer bows to convention, and there is a lot more to a story than who gets the girl, or who dies. When I write fiction or drama, I know that my liking for a character is shown by my giving her a lot of page time and vivid scenes, however I may dispose of her by the end.
Posted 5444 days ago.
So far, so good: Monday, February 28th will see the online première of no. 12, “Innocency,” with installments appearing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through March 11th. The paper zine will premiere at some point during the fortnight, with no actual celebration going on anywhere to mark its (long-delayed) arrival. Pre-orders should be available in a week or two? Keep your eyes peeled.
“Changel” is next, and all too soon. —What am I in for, here?
Posted 5447 days ago.
Whenever I’m out by that side of the airport, I like to stop by Michaels and pick up a silk rose or two. I mean they aren’t really silk.
So as feared we only hit fifty percent of our announced targets in 2010: only three chapters completed, rather than the proposed six. —However, as only two chapters had been completed in 2009, this represents a fifty percent year-over-year increase in output (and 2009 itself represented a one-hundred percent increase). On the whole, we feel confident in once again proposing a target for 2011 of six chapters written and released, moving us considerably closer to our projected end-game.
To that end we should like to break with tradition and just this once point to the wall before shouldering our bat and taking up our stance to knock the leather clean off that mother. Herewith, then:
With the proviso that a plan is that which does not survive contact with the enemy; that this offer is not valid with any other discounts or special offers and is void where prohibited; that all rights are reserved, including but not limited to that of changing our ever-lovin’ et cetera—but real editors ship, dammit, and that I am not an editor nor do I even work with one matters not a whit.
In addition to the above I hope perhaps to announce some additional formats such as ebooks and audiobooks and suchlike, but: story comes first; the rest, as they say, is marketing, and alternate distribution channels.
Posted 5473 days ago.
Yr. humble correspondent having rather famously a dislike bordering nigh upon contempt for definitions (to say nothing of systems or processes) has nonetheless come as close as he might dare to laying out some of the particulars (neither necessary nor sufficient) that might well make up one view or aspect of the genre urban fantasy, with all applicable rights, privileges, and prerogatives reserved, including but most assuredly not limited to that of changing his ever-lovin’ mind at the slightest whim or pretext.
Posted 5494 days ago.
Gaddis
Well, this interior monologue you speak of is just too easy, obvious, boring, lazy, and I would agree right up to the last; I always cringe at the word behaviorism. But again it is very much this notion of what the reader is obliged to supply. We go back to McLuhan and his talk about hot and cool media. Television is the hot medium, to which one contributes nothing except a blank state, and the next day you say, What was that show we saw last night on television? It disappears because you put nothing into it. So nothing remains, as Gibbs remarks in JR. In this case it was my hope—for many readers it worked, for others it did not—that having made some effort they would not read too agonizedly slowly and carefully, trying to figure out who is talking and so forth. It was the flow that I wanted, for the readers to read and be swept along—to participate. And enjoy it. And occasionally chuckle, laugh along the way.
Interviewer
But if they read along like that, they may miss a lot.
Gaddis
This is a risk I take, but isn’t that what life is, after all? Missing something that’s right there before you?
— “William Gaddis, the Art of Fiction no. 101”
Posted 5536 days ago.
Between now, and 365 (and one-quarter) days from now, six chapters will have been done (God willing, and the creek don’t rise).
Well maybe God was willing but the creek she rose. Here it is more than a week into the penultimate month and I’ve managed but three dam’ chapters. I keep shipping water like I have been and four won’t be done by Auld Lang time.
I’ve written a paragraph? Of the next number? —But I’m not here to talk about that again. Mostly I think to acknowledge to the City of the City that no things did not go as was hoped, as was promised, that there is better to be done and perhaps next year to do it in. And to reaffirm with a swift kick to my own posterior the importance of sitting down and getting the words out.
No! Sleep! Till Christmas!
You’re a ghost
La la la, la la la la la la
I don’t know; maybe I need to use this end of things more. I’m wary of cluttering this space; there is a balance to be maintained, and while it is perhaps not so delicate as I sometimes fear still one ought not try to fix what probably isn’t broken and all that. The story is what it is and if I wanted to send a message I’d send a message and all that but still we live in the era where the author as such is a commodity as well and King Maw is never satisfied: Content! it bellows. More content! —But I don’t want to start talking more. Not here at least. I mean there’s nothing quite so rank as the smell of an author’s sweat as they try to make damn sure the reader got it. For whatever value of it.
I’m not sure why I suddenly switched subjects like that. There was a plan for this entry, wasn’t there? I don’t know. I just work here.
You’re a ghost
La la la, la la la la la la
Like she says: as soon as you say it out loud they will leave you. Not that I’m really worried about that, about my imaginary toads being gently deflated by tales told out of school. I think maybe I’m just aiming another swift kick: there’s other work to be done which might or might not just help the work hereabouts, and I’ve been dithering on that, too.
Oh but there I go again gesturing vaguely and smiling cryptically and getting up and walking away in a huff at the first pointed question leaving you to—what?
I did mention the Twitter thing somewhere along the way, didn’t I? If you were wondering about the sorts of things I mutter to myself when I’m distracted. Or maybe you weren’t? I don’t know.
I’m the bishop and I’ve come
To claim you with my iron drum
La la la, la la la
La la la la
Ah, forget it, Jake. It’s November.
Posted 5542 days ago.
Of course there are f--ries—just as there is Father Christmas. The trouble comes when you try to make them corporeal. They are fine poetic concepts taking us out of this at times too ugly real world.
Posted 5543 days ago.
Another way to think about these two depictions is to ask whether the universe of the story recognizes the existence of persons. I think magic is an indication that the universe recognizes certain people as individuals, as having special properties as an individual, whereas a story in which turning lead into gold is an industrial process is describing a completely impersonal universe. That type of impersonal universe is how science views the universe; it’s how we currently understand our universe to work. The difference between magic and science is at some level a difference between the universe responding to you in a personal way, and the universe being entirely impersonal.
Posted 5574 days ago.
I never saw the Moonday T-Hows. I have seen the T-Horse, though not in a good long while. And I’ve been to Share-It Square and I can walk down to Sunnyside, though it’s a bit of a hike. —Heck, I was at the city council meeting where Share-It Square got the official approvals and variances and all that other pesky whatnot.
But I never got to see the Moonday T-Hows.
The Next Thursday Teahouse is not by any stretch of the imagination the Moonday T-Hows. (It’s larger, for one thing, and somewhat more permanent; it probably cost about $300 to make, instead of $65.) Nor should my fictional Michael St. John Lake ever no matter how dark the alley be mistaken for the quite substantial Mark Lakeman. —There’s many places where the City of Roses isn’t Portland, and this is one of them, resemblances notwithstanding; Next Thursday comes from a very different place than Moonday, and will do very different things when it goes: they each play very different roles in the city-stories they’re part of. Remember to keep in mind what Mr. Ford said about magic, and always keep an eye on the Duke.
Still. Aren’t they both so pretty, the light streaming out through the reclaimed windows and the branch-framed plastic sheeting like that?
Anyway. A while back—thirteen years ago, oh my—I wrote an article for Anodyne magazine, which is a place to start if you want to see what the Moonday T-Hows did, here in the city of Portland.
Posted 5593 days ago.
Stepping in briefly to let you all know I’ll be tabling at the Tenth Annual Portland Zine Symposium this weekend (Saturday August 28 and Sunday August 29, 10 – 4) at the Peter W. Stott Main Gym at PSU, with copies of No. 10 and No. 11, plus Nos. 1 – 9 and also some badges and photos and other possible surprises and suchlike. Stop by! Say hi! Check out the glory and the majesty of DIY print culture! Get in out of the partly cloudy weather!
Posted 5619 days ago.
