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.
brothercyst
Friday, May 10, 2013
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
MOVIE & BOOK CONSUMPTION FROM 3/26/2013 - 4/30/2013
Movies watched
(only whole seasons of TV listed)
- THE CRAFT
- THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES
- PHIL SPECTOR (partial)
- DAMAGES (season 1)
- PHILIP ROTH: UNMASKED
- A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
- THE EVIL DEAD (1981)
- SPRING BREAKERS
- EVIL DEAD (2013)
- SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
- DRAGON EYES
- SOMETHING BORROWED
- THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (partial)
- THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
- HEIDI FLEISS: HOLLYWOOD MADAM
- JACKIE BROWN
- JAMES SALTER: A SPORT AND A PASTIME
- THREE
- BASIC INSTINCT
- COCAINE COWBOYS
- SERENITY
- HEADHUNTERS
- SLEEPLESS NIGHT
- THE CHASER
- BUSTING
- SHAUN OF THE DEAD
- SLITHER
- REYKJAVIK TO ROTTERDAM (partial)
- ARBITRAGE
- I SAW THE DEVIL
- INTERNAL AFFAIRS
- OBLIVION
- ROLLING THUNDER
Books read
- ALL THAT IS by James Salter
- MEMORABLE DAYS by James Salter & Robert Phelps
- THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly (partial)
- GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
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)
Books read
(only whole seasons of TV listed; individual episodes of TV too numerous to list)
- BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
- DARK SKIES
- REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
- WAIT UNTIL DARK
- STOKER
- HOUSE OF CARDS (SEASON 1)
- THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN
- WILD AT HEART (part)
- HYSTERIA
- THE IMPOSTER
- GREGORY CREWDSON: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
- BAD TIMING
- THAT'S MY BOY
- DETOUR
- FUNNY GAMES (ORIGINAL)
- DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
- FALLING SKIES (SEASONS 1& 2)
- DRIVE
- SPRING BREAKERS
- OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
- DOUBLE INDEMNITY
- YOU'RE NEXT
Books read
- TAIPEI by Tao Lin
- THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury
- A SPORT AND A PASTIME by James Salter
- SABBATH'S THEATRE by Philip Roth (partial)
Sunday, February 24, 2013
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.
Plus, I read the following books.
Tragically, I didn't have time to watch as many movies this month.
- UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY
- REALITY BITES
- AT CLOSE RANGE
- SIDEWAYS
- THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003 REMAKE)
- THE BEACH
- SWINGERS
- AMOUR
- ABCS OF DEATH
- TOMBSTONE (2x)
- GREMLINS
- STEALING BEAUTY
- FOXY BROWN
- OVERNIGHT
- TWIN PEAKS (SEASON 1)
- LEAVING LAS VEGAS
- CACHE
- POINT BREAK
- SIDE EFFFECTS
- DREDD
- HARLEY DAVIDSON & THE MARLBORO MAN
- DUEL
Plus, I read the following books.
- Son of Destruction by Kit Reed
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson
- Tenth of December by George Saunders
Saturday, January 26, 2013
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.
- JCVD
- UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION
- UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING
- RICOCHET
- DETENTION
- SEA OF LOVE
- FROM BEYOND
- BODY PARTS
- THE TALL MAN
- STATE OF GRACE
- BRANDED
- COMPLIANCE
- DEXTER SEASON 1 (12 EPISODES)
- DEXTER SEASON 2 (12 EPISODES)
- HUNGER GAMES
- EXPENDABLES 2
- BATTLESHIP
- BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW
- JOHN DIES AT THE END
- 50/50
- 2 GUYS AND A GIRL
- THE MIST
- SHOWGIRLS
- THOR
- 30 DAYS OF NIGHT
- KISS KISS BANG BANG
- SHAMPOO
- MANSON (1972 DOCUMENTARY)
- SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
- CHILD'S PLAY 2
- MAMA
- BACHELORETTE
- BILLY ELLIOT
- WHEN WILL I BE LOVED
- TRASH HUMPERS - I thought maybe a SPRING BREAKERS screener would materialize if I watched the whole thing. creepy, maybe useful visual ideas
- LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF
- THE LINCOLN LAWYER
- CHILD'S PLAY 3
- Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
- Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
- House of Secrets by Ned Vizzini
- My Pet Serial Killer by Michael Seidlinger
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
The Next Big Thing post: THE GIRLFRIEND GAME & THE HANGMAN'S RITUAL
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| cover by Bryan Coffelt, original photo by Nicole Michaelis |
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.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Thursday, October 04, 2012
OAHU
Almost finished filming our episode. Episode two, "Blue on Blue" airs tonight. Watch!
Leaving Hawaii soon. It's been excellent.
Leaving Hawaii soon. It's been excellent.
Friday, September 21, 2012
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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Meanwhile, check out this James Salter interview. Beautiful. And his next novel All That Is
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Friday, August 03, 2012
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