The Blow

This was a long time ago. It was the first year of Portland's Time Based Arts Festival, I think, so call it maybe twelve or thirteen years ago. A friend invited me to one of the festival's after-parties. I went despite not knowing what time based art was. It seemed (and seems) that all art is time based. Anyway. The party took place in a warehouse space. It was jammed with people, a bar, free food and, at one end, a stage. I knew that there's be a show of some sort by a band called The Blow.

After a while, I girl came out. Blonde and tiny. She carried a boom box. She approached the mic and did her best to get the attention of the crowd. It took a while. Finally, when the majority of people had quieted down, she told us all that the band was running late and that they'd sent her out to entertain us until they were ready. She started to tell a rambling story about (I think) going on a drive with a boy and the conversation they'd had. After a while, she said that it might be better if she sang the next part. She bent over and pressed play on the boom box and began to sing.

It was at that moment that I figured out this girl was The Blow and that everything she had said and done from the very first moment had been part of her act. And I was smitten. I've been a fan of hers ever since through a number of incarnations. All because she played so expertly with my sense of expectation

I called her tiny earlier. Well, as the performance went on, she seemed to grow bigger and bigger with each new song. Honestly, I think I've only had one other musical experience that was like it. I felt like it reshaped me.

Right. What's this got to do with anything? I've been thinking about what I want to do with Zomburbia. You know, my debut YA novel which will be out from Kensington Books next year... I've had a couple of conversations lately about including a message in a story. Does Zomburbia have a message? Yep, and I hope I've sneaked it in in such a way that almost invisible. No matter how important your message, no one's going to get it if it isn't wrapped up in a good story. I hope that's what I've done. I hope I've crafted a novel that walks out on stage, presents itself as one thing – a good horror story – and is in truth something else as well.

Have I succeeded? How the hell should I know? I just wrote the thing. I'll have to wait until the book is out and see what people think of it to know how well I did.

By the way, as I write this, I'm listening to the new self-titled album by The Blow. It came out earlier this month, and it's excellent. I can't recommend it enough.

That's all for now.

Man, Myth and Magic

I originally wrote this post for Triptych, the web comic I created with Devon Devereaux. I liked it a lot and wanted to share it here just in case there are folks who aren't reading the comic. Though, I can't understand why you wouldn't be. Anyway, here's the post:

My first exposure to the occult came in the form of Richard Cavendish’s 24-volume Man, Myth and Magic. I still remember the shock I felt looking through those books for the first time. It was similar to the feeling I had the first time I looked at porn – though I knew it wasn’t technically illicit since my parents had it on a shelf I could easily access. It’s hard for me to imagine why those volumes were in the house. It must have been because of my mother. She had a passing interest in all things spiritual.Tarot decks were common in our house, and we had a Ouija board. So, I suppose that answers that.

I first discovered these books, collections of articles which appeared in Cavendish’s magazine of the same name, when I was six. I can still feel the cold concrete floor beneath me as I looked through the volumes. Every page seemed to bring an electric thrill as image after image flooded into my wee brain. At that age, of course, all I did was look at the pictures. Later I read the damned thing from beginning to end and would regularly re-read articles as I grew older. There were articles on demons, ritual scarification, witchcraft, cannibalism, and so much more. I encountered some 1,000 articles as I looked through those books. And I would only ever look at it in that room, I’d certainly never have taken it into the room where I slept. In those days, I was a true believer. Of everything. I’ve changed since then – nowadays I feel like I don’t believe in anything. I don’t know that I recommend either state.

There’s a feeling I’ve had a few times in my life as I experience a piece of art. I’ve tried to explain it at different times with varying degrees of success. Sometimes as I look at or read a piece of art, I feel something happening in my brain – I feel something inside me reconfiguring itself. Later in life, I began to feel that this was my body preparing itself to download new software. It was a physical manifestation of how art can change one’s perceptions. I’ve felt it looking at the art of Basil Wolverton, reading the Revelation of St. John, watching films like Altered States and Videodrome. And the first time I ever felt it was looking through those strange volumes of Man, Myth and Magic.

I think my parents sold those volumes when they moved from that house where I’d grown up. Even if they didn’t, that’s when I lost track of the books. In the years since then I’ve searched half-heartedly for them. I remember finding a complete set at least a decade ago. The bookstore was asking the ungodly sum of $200 and there was no Triptych.
way I could have afforded that at the time. I don’t even know if I’d want them again at this point. I’m sure that everything I found scary and thrilling and new about them would seem now, nearly 40 years on, creaky and silly. I think I’d rather keep my memories intact. Especially because those books have informed so much of what I have written and what I plan to write. They certainly inform everything I’m doing with

Someone on twitter quoted part of this. I liked it so much, I looked up the entire thing. I think it's sort of a lovely sentiment:

"But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?" -Mark Twain

Also, hello, again, Blogger.

Jess Nevins: Hero to the Nation!

Okay, maybe I'm overstating it a bit, but I like his stuff a lot.

Nevins first came to my attention as the man who obsessively annotated Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comics series, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The comic is crammed with more visual references and in-jokes than the casual reader could be expected to know. Nevins took it upon himself to identify them all. This is a feat I find both amazing and scary.

Nevins is, by profession, a research librarian and his affection for data is apparent in everything he does. In 2005 he wrote the exhaustive 1,200-page Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana wherein Nevins maps out the roots of modern Fantasy and science fiction. I still kick myself for not buying the book when I had a chance as it can now only be found used at usurious prices.

His latest project is a series of columns for the science fiction website, i09.com. He plans to trace the history of science fiction publishing starting at the turn of the last century with the rise of the pulps. For anyone interested in fantasy or science fiction, it makes for fascinating reading.

Nevins maintains a personal blog, a tumblr blog and his twitter feed (where, for example, he once expounded on trends in Mexican pulp magazines) is one of the things that makes me feel that service is worthwhile.

And now for today's numbers.

I thought I'd be taking the day off from my novel, but that wasn't to be. I seem to be unable to stop writing the freaking thing. It's a bit scary. To me, anyway. That being said, here are the numbers.

Daily word count: 1,165 (all on the novel -- no words for you, short story!)

Monthly word count: 17,498

Novel word count: 86,758

I wish someone had told me this a long time ago...

Uncle Ira Glass reveals the ugly truth. If you are engaged in any kind of creative endeavor, then you will spend a lot of your time making shit. And you have to go through that shitty phase before you get to the point where you are creating good stuff. Stuff of which you can be proud. Ira will tell you the long version. This is worth listening to: