ANNOTATED SHORT STORY "RAT BEAST"

Check this out

I annotated my short story "Rat Beast," the first story in The Girlfriend Game, on Rap Genius.

The annotations include my extremely effective method for preventing zits.

More writers should do this.

MOVIE & BOOK CONSUMPTION FROM 3/26/2013 - 4/30/2013

Movies watched
(only whole seasons of TV listed)

1. THE CRAFT
2. THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES
3. PHIL SPECTOR (partial)
4. DAMAGES (season 1)
5. PHILIP ROTH: UNMASKED
6. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
7. THE EVIL DEAD (1981)
8. SPRING BREAKERS
9. EVIL DEAD (2013)
10. SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
11. DRAGON EYES
12. SOMETHING BORROWED
13. THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (partial)
14. THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
15. HEIDI FLEISS: HOLLYWOOD MADAM
16. JACKIE BROWN
17. JAMES SALTER: A SPORT AND A PASTIME
18. THREE
19. BASIC INSTINCT
20. COCAINE COWBOYS
21. SERENITY
22. HEADHUNTERS 
23. SLEEPLESS NIGHT
24. THE CHASER
25. BUSTING
26. SHAUN OF THE DEAD
27. SLITHER
28. REYKJAVIK TO ROTTERDAM (partial)
29. ARBITRAGE
30. I SAW THE DEVIL
31. INTERNAL AFFAIRS
32. OBLIVION
33. ROLLING THUNDER

Books read

1. ALL THAT IS by James Salter
2. MEMORABLE DAYS by James Salter & Robert Phelps
3. THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly (partial)
4. GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block

MOVIE/BOOK CONSUMPTION FROM 2/23/2013 - 3/25/2013

Movies watched
(only whole seasons of TV listed; individual episodes of TV too numerous to list)

1. BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
2. DARK SKIES
3. REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
4. WAIT UNTIL DARK
5. STOKER
6. HOUSE OF CARDS (SEASON 1)
7. THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN
8. WILD AT HEART (part)
9. HYSTERIA
10. THE IMPOSTER
11. GREGORY CREWDSON: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
12. BAD TIMING
13. THAT'S MY BOY
14. DETOUR
15. FUNNY GAMES (ORIGINAL)
16. DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
17. FALLING SKIES (SEASONS 1& 2)
18. DRIVE
19. SPRING BREAKERS
20. OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
21. DOUBLE INDEMNITY
22. YOU'RE NEXT

Books read

1. TAIPEI by Tao Lin
2. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury
3. A SPORT AND A PASTIME by James Salter
4. SABBATH'S THEATRE by Philip Roth (partial)

MOVIE/BOOK CONSUMPTION FROM 1/23/2013 - 2/22/2013

Also this month, I wrote a piece for The Paris Review about THE BEST MOVIE OF 2012, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.

Tragically, I didn't have time to watch as many movies this month.

1. UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY
2. REALITY BITES
3. AT CLOSE RANGE
4. SIDEWAYS
5. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003 REMAKE)
6. THE BEACH
7. SWINGERS
8. AMOUR
9. ABCS OF DEATH
10. TOMBSTONE (2x)
11. GREMLINS
12. STEALING BEAUTY
13. FOXY BROWN
14. OVERNIGHT
15. TWIN PEAKS (SEASON 1)
16. LEAVING LAS VEGAS
17. CACHE
18. POINT BREAK
19. SIDE EFFFECTS
20. DREDD
21. HARLEY DAVIDSON & THE MARLBORO MAN
22. DUEL

Plus, I read the following books.

1. Son of Destruction   by Kit Reed
2. Gone Girl   by Gillian Flynn
3. The Open Curtain   by Brian Evenson
4. Tenth of December   by George Saunders

MOVIES I WATCHED BETWEEN 12-22-2012 AND 1-22-2013

I watched a lot of movies in the past month.  I was sick for part of it and just watching movie after movie.  I kept a list, with only minor annotations, which are included.

1. JCVD
2. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION
3. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING
4. RICOCHET
5. DETENTION
6. SEA OF LOVE
7. FROM BEYOND
8. BODY PARTS
9. THE TALL MAN
10. STATE OF GRACE
11. BRANDED
12. COMPLIANCE
13. DEXTER SEASON 1 (12 EPISODES)
14. DEXTER SEASON 2 (12 EPISODES)
15. HUNGER GAMES
    
16. EXPENDABLES 2
17. BATTLESHIP
    
18. BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW
19. JOHN DIES AT THE END
20. 50/50
21. 2 GUYS AND A GIRL
22. THE MIST
23. SHOWGIRLS
24. THOR
25. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT
26. KISS KISS BANG BANG
27. SHAMPOO
28. MANSON (1972 DOCUMENTARY)
29. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 
30. CHILD'S PLAY 2
31. MAMA
32. BACHELORETTE
33. BILLY ELLIOT
34. WHEN WILL I BE LOVED 
35. TRASH HUMPERS - I thought maybe a SPRING BREAKERS screener would materialize if I watched the whole thing.  creepy, maybe useful visual ideas
36. LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF
37. THE LINCOLN LAWYER
38. CHILD'S PLAY 3

Books I read during this time:

1. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
2. Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
3. House of Secrets by Ned Vizzini
4. My Pet Serial Killer by Michael Seidlinger

The Next Big Thing post: THE GIRLFRIEND GAME & THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL

cover by Bryan Coffelt, original photo by Nicole Michaelis

pre-order The Girlfriend Game here before January 27, 2013

Michael Seidlinger, author of MY PET SERIAL KILLER, tagged me in the "Next Big Thing" interview series, wherein authors answer a series of ten questions about their upcoming books and then tag other authors.  Cool, I'm in.  I have two books coming out in 2013, THE GIRLFRIEND GAME (short stories, Word Riot press, summer) and THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL (novella, Civil Coping Mechanisms, fall):

1) What is the title of your latest book?

I have two books coming out in 2013, THE GIRLFRIEND GAME (short stories, Word Riot press, summer) and THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL (novella, Civil Coping Mechanisms, fall)

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

THE GIRLFRIEND GAME is short stories so the ideas come from different places.  Many come directly from nightmares, like the story "Rat Beast," which was first published by Mud Luscious as a limited edition chapbook.  The title story, in which the narrator and his girlfriend play a game where she lets men flirt with her in bars and then he "steals" her from them (with disastrous consequences in the instance described in the story), was inspired by how a girlfriend and I would sometimes pretend in public that we didn't know each other and were meeting for the first time.

THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL, which is about a guard/executioner working alone in a private prison hidden in a residential building in Manhattan, also comes from a nightmare I had.  Many of the details are inspired by an office job I had in New York from 2005, right after I graduated from college, to 2009.  It is also influenced by the William Sleator novella SINGULARITY and the movie OLDBOY, which influenced the nightmare that inspired the book.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

THE GIRLFRIEND GAME: Various, because it's stories.  Maybe absurdist dread or melancholy pornography.

THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL: Psychological horror.


4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

For the title story in THE GIRLFRIEND GAME, I like an actor named Jeff Ward for the narrator.  He's good-looking but relatable and he can play a sympathetic fearfulness as well as convincing anger.  For the girlfriend, my friend Sophie Kargman, who is an actress.

For the narrator of THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL, maybe Damien Lewis from HOMELAND.  I don't know.  I don't really picture the character, I sort of see through his eyes.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

THE GIRLFRIEND GAME:  Weird shit happens in many different ways and places.

THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL:  A man hired to work as the executioner in a secret prison learns that the prison is not what he thinks it is.

6) Who published your book?

Word Riot Press and Civil Coping Mechanisms are the guilty parties here.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The first draft of THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL took about six weeks, and revisions happened off and on over the course of six months while I was working on TV stuff.

The short stories I've written over the last ten years.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
THE GIRLFRIEND GAME has stories that are inspired by or influenced by the stories of Alicia Erian, Harlan Ellison, and Ian McEwan.

THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL... I don't know, there's some William Sleator in there as I mentioned earlier... some of McEwan's THE CEMENT GARDEN... some of Rupert Thomson's THE BOOK OF REVELATION.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

In the case of THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL, depression.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL is weird.  I was not in a good place when I wrote it.  It has people and animals encased in huge blocks of lucite, kind of like this but bigger.  It also features a Shit Man and a hanging room and swallowed fingers.

THE GIRLFRIEND GAME tracks my life as a writer over about ten years.  I wrote some of those stories in college, maybe even in high school, and others in the last year or two.  I'm very proud of them.  It's interesting to read the older ones.  It's like someone else wrote them.  I wouldn't know how to write them today.

You can pre-order THE GIRLFRIEND GAME and support indie literature for the moment via Word Riot's Kickstarter page for the book.
 
Okay, now that I've done my questions I'm going to pass it on to the excellent young writer Ben Spivey.  Keep an eye out for his post in the coming days or weeks.

PARK CHAN-WOOK'S FIRST AMERICAN FILM: "STOKER"

OAHU

Almost finished filming our episode.  Episode two, "Blue on Blue" airs tonight.  Watch!

Leaving Hawaii soon.  It's been excellent.

HI / SALTER INTERVIEW

I'm in Hawaii right now, getting ready to shoot episode 106 of Last Resort, which promises to be pretty awesome.  The show premieres next Thursday night, Sept 27, 8 pm, on ABC.  (And you can watch the pilot online now, here.  Check it out.  Online and critical response has been great so far.)

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Meanwhile, check out this James Salter interview.  Beautiful.  And his next novel All That Is comes out next year but you can pre-order it now.

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