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In honor of that little post-apocalyptic vixen (and with all due respect to Lady Diana, whom I really do adore), you can now snag a copy of The Lucid Dreaming at a discounted price that's even dreamier than a handful of Prolixin: Just click here and you can own a signed and limited copy (with the fabulous art of Zach McCain) for a crappy sixteen bucks (plus shipping).
While we're at it, you can grab a few other nice discounted deals at Horror Mall, too, in celebration of the prelims: Scott Edelman's The Hunger of Empty Vessels, John R. Little's The Gray Zone, Gene O'Neill's Doc Good's Travelling Show, and Steven E. Wedel's Little Graveyard on the Prairie are all excellent reads in the Long Fiction category, and of course don't get me started again on my vast affection for Michael Louis Calvillo's Novel contender As Fate Would Have It. These books are all worth slapping down some plastic for, both in terms of the writing and the design (witness the Black Quill Award nomination for As Fate Would Have It in the Cover Art and Design category).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go break up a bitchfight. That Spike, she fights dirty.
Yes, that's my hand. Holding my novel.
(Those of you who are owed copies...they're coming, I promise! This is actually the copy I ordered from Amazon - my full box hasn't arrived from the publisher yet.)
My mom recently gave me an old scrapbook, and this just fell out of it:
Yes, I made most of my junior high/high school extra money as a magician. My dad made this card for me, back in the days before computers, when it was all press-apply lettering and graphics cut out of magic catalogs. Gotta love the fluorescent lime-green color, too.
The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:
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Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal
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Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC):
1 The Castle of Los Angeles $14.00 1 $14.00
Shipped via UPS
(Yeah, I know...I ordered my own book from Amazon, when I've still got a case of copies coming from the publisher. It's geeky. It's vain. But I actually had some specific reasons for doing this before I start sending folks to Amazon, so it wasn't a total indulgence for my inner writing nerd.)
The book is called View From a Hill, and is by a gentleman named Mark Burgess. Since you've probably never heard of Mr. Burgess, I'll tell you: He was the lead singer, lyricist, and bass player for a rock band from the 1980s called The Chameleons (sometimes referred to as The Chameleons U.K., since there is apparently also an American band by that name). And since you've probably never heard of The Chameleons, I'll tell you: They were the single best band of the decade. Their unique sound has influenced nearly every British rock band since (and plenty of American bands as well), and twenty years after their prime, they remain my favorite band of all time.
The Chameleons only recorded three full studio albums during the '80s (plus one album from 2000, during a brief attempt at getting together again), and tracking down information about them was always somewhat difficult. One theme that has obsessed me for years in regards to The Chameleons has to do with the nature of collaboration; Burgess has had an interesting career since the band broke up in '87 and has produced some worthy solo music, but none of it has reached the brilliant level of his work with The Chams. How is it possible that the same man who was unquestionably the main force behind a band couldn't reach the same heights without them? During my theater days I even considered writing a full-length play about The Chams that would focus on that question and be somewhat surreal, but I realized I'd probably never be able to get all the rights I'd need, so I put the thought aside...but never fully.
Fortunately, Mark's book is candid and (at a whopping 772 pages!) very detailed. He discusses some of the unusual ways in which The Chams worked, and many of the ways in which they did NOT work. His relationship with one of the two guitarists (The Chams never had a traditional distinction between rhythm and lead guitar) was always troubled...and yet that relationship was at the heart of the band.
The biography has also left me pondering the comparisons to my own career. Part of the reason The Chams aren't better known has to do with simple bad luck (had their one-time manager Tony Fletcher not died, they might've gone on to be the British R.E.M.), but some of it also has to do with bad business - they were never in it for the money (in fact, Mark was set up to go into an engineering career, just as my school counselors insisted that I was to go into science, until - like Mark - I rebelled). They refused to play nice with major labels (Mark killed their deal with Geffen when he complained about an offensively sexist t-shirt made to promote another band), and wouldn't let major producers like Steve Lillywhite warp their sound. Well, I thought, that's not me...
...and then I remembered that I'd just told someone that if I was really smart I'd be churning out a zombie novel and making a quick five-digit advance.
Okay, so maybe it is me. A little, anyway.
Unfortunately Mark's book was published by a small British press and is very difficult to find (I won mine on ebay), but in the meantime...here's a Chameleons song that will give you some idea of their sound. This may be the ultimate song written on the subject of disillusionment...another reason I relate to Mr. Burgess ("It was maximum joy for the men they employed to hold you down/well, I hope now you know that this isn't the bliss that you thought you'd found").
Perfume Garden
(In the rare event that you are already a Chams fan, I highly recommend this video - it was produced by a fellow who worked with the band for years, and features many rare photos of the beautiful young Chameleons.)
The good adjectives are derived from the writing side of my life. I achieved one major goal in 2009, and that was to demonstrate to the world that I can write fiction longer than 5,000 words. Both the novella The Lucid Dreaming (thanks again to Roy and Liz and Cesar and Zach!) and the novelette "Diana and the Goong-si" (the latter from the Midnight Walk anthology) scored rave reviews and wonderful feedback. And I made my first novel sale by placing The Castle of Los Angeles with a press I'm really happy to be associated with, Gray Friar (where I'm in the company of fine writers like Conrad Williams and Nicholas Royle). I'm also thrilled that Gray Friar agreed to move Castle's release to 2010, so it didn't get lost in the year-end shuffle.
My four-year-long agent hunt came to an end in September, and signing with Bob Fleck for representation was certainly one of the year's triumphs.
I also kept up the short fiction end with my second appearance in Cemetery Dance, with a story ("The Devil Came to Mamie's on Hallowe'en") that I feel is one of my best. It was nice to see a review over at Dark Scribe echoing that sentiment. I'm also quite satisfied with "Joe and Abel in the Field of Rest" from the Steve Jones zombie book The Dead That Walk. Another story I wrote at Steve's request this year (for a hush-hush project - hopefully more details soon) proved to be the hardest piece of fiction I've ever written, but in the end I think it was worth it.
Non-fiction-wise, my fourth book with McFarland, Savage Detours: The Life and Work of Ann Savage, debuted rather quietly in December, suffering slightly from that end-of-year rush that Castle managed to avoid. I was also happy, though, to win my second Bram Stoker Award, this time in non-fiction, for A Hallowe'en Anthology.
And speaking of Stoker Awards...organizing the June event in Burbank ate my life for half the year. In the end, I was very pleased with how well it turned out, but I'm not sure I could do it again. The other wonderful thing to come out of the Stoker Weekend was the bond it created between my co-organizer John Little and I; being able to call John a close friend is one of the best non-writing things to emerge from 2009.
But otherwise...the year was frequently a nightmare for me personally.
My mother's health deteriorated a great deal, and has generated a lot of stress. I've always been very close to her, and always accepted that I would care for her one day...but her health has spiraled off in directions I never could have anticipated, and that have often left me feeling sucker-punched. Battling her retinue of doctors has been fun, and I've dealt with everything from ineffectual diagnoses to apathy to prescriptions that I thought veered perilously close to malpractice and even fraud. There's a chance for improvement in 2010, but at this point I am resigned to spending much of my future checking prescriptions and doctors and diet, and worrying about her. John Little isn't my only close new friend from 2009 - anxiety and I have become well acquainted on several levels.
And I seem to be surrounded by friends going through even worse crises. My God, no one should have to endure arguing with an insurance company about the surgery their 3-year-old son needs to live, and yet my good friends the Palisanos spent much of December doing just that (and have become models of patience and perseverance to me in the process). At least three friends have begun very messy divorces this year. And my day job has exploded into a run-as-fast-as-you-can gig, which frequently leaves me so exhausted at the end of eight hours that I can only stagger home and collapse. I see no end in sight; so much for all those reports about the death of the printed book.
2009 has left me tired and gloomy, but ready to fight the good fight in 2010. I still have a wonderful partner, three four-legged companions, a circle of friends to count on, and my hometown of L.A. I'm looking forward to exploring a new direction or two writing-wise in 2010, and hope the year will bring a few unexpected (good) surprises. I think it might.
There are many reasons for coming to despise this ridiculous holiday, and working with the public as a used bookseller certainly provides some of those reasons. And as curmudgeonly as this sounds, I swear it's true: People are getting dumber. This year I was asked some mind-numbingly retarded questions, often more than once, and for the most part I truly don't recall being asked these things at Christmas pasts:
"You get extra days off for Christmas, right?" (Both stupid AND downright mean.)
(After attempting to work through the obvious mob around the front counter to bring in four boxes of books for sale on the 23rd) "Why is today a bad day to bring in books?" (Heard this multiple times yesterday.)
"I'd like to get my boss a Jane Austen first edition for Christmas, so what do you have?" (You ARE taking out a second mortgage on your house, right?)
"I'd like to get him this book, but it's priced at $200 - could you go $50?" (We of course dicker on prices every day...but the expectations of how much we'll lower something are usually a tiny bit more realistic)
And this year's big winner in the Stupid Category:
"You should have a fireplace in here!" (This idiot at least had barely enough brains to figure it out on his own when I responded, "That would be a really, really bad idea...")
And you gotta figure that in a bookstore our clientele probably has a few more IQ points than the average American. We are a phenomenally stupid people.
Yeah, right. Merry F*#!in' Christmas. Kill me now.
- Mood:
grumpy
I fully expected to feel my life's essence being drained away, but, what to wondering eyes should appear, but Roxie the Vampire Slayer, making a deft sneak approach:
The Black One vanished promptly*. Roxie saved the day. Er, night. Whatever.
*=Vanished promptly up the stairs, that is...where both girls decided playing vampire-and-slayer was fun, but next time I think Roxie wants to be Willow. I'm afraid neither of them wants to play Bella and Emo-Fang, though.
When I was 20, this movie called Alien exploded onto movie screens, and changed the semiotics of science fiction movies forever. No longer did the future have to be clean and sterile-looking and full of spiffy stuff like lasers and benign robots; nope, Alien gave us a dirty, lived-in future that (astonishingly) put women in positions of authority, no longer relegated to the status of white-gowned princesses or scantily-clad lust objects (not that there's anything wrong with that from time to time, mind you...). 1979 was a huge transition year for me - I left college behind and started working in the film industry. Even though I started as a modelmaker in the special effects field (I had friends, you see), I knew I wanted to be a screenwriter. The only problem was...I'd never written a script.
So I did that stupid thing that a lot of newbie writers do: I took a ride on somebody else's creation, and I wrote my own sequel to Alien.
I was just barely smart enough to know it could never be much more than a practice run, at least, but I let friends read it, and some of those friends worked in the effects shop. I remember Douglas Trumbull walking by one day, asking what the script was, glancing at it and telling me to get it submitted. That kind of blew me away. Unfortunately I had no agent, and no one to submit it to. I was already working on my first original feature, a (surprise!) science fiction/horror screenplay called Spaces (which I never finished, and more's the pity - it wasn't at all a bad concept).
Flash forward a few years. I was dating an actor who was somewhat popular at the time. One day he met a lovely lady who was a fan...and who happened to be married to Ron Shusett, one of the producers of Alien (Ron went on to produce the O'Bannon-scripted films Dead and Buried and Total Recall). We went out a few times with Ron and his wife. Of course my screenplay came up. Ron actually agreed to read it.
And what's more is...he really liked it.
At the time, Dan was basically living on Ron's couch, so he read it, too. And liked it a lot. I didn't get to see Dan much, but there was talk of letting him take a pass on my script. For about five minutes, there was serious talk about optioning it.
Well, of course, you know what happened. There was a big rights fight over the first film; it went on for years, and - unfortunately for me - Ron came out on the losing side. The other guys got the rights to make the sequel, and some dude named Cameron wrote and directed it.
I stopped dating the actor, and fell out of touch with Ron and Dan. I ran into Dan a few times over the years, and he was always kind, but also seemed perpetually frail to me. I'm not hugely surprised by his early passing, although that makes it no less sad.
I'll always be grateful for the kind words and encouragement that he and Ron gave to a fledgling writer. I've had friends suggest that I discretely sneak a copy of my script online, but I'm not even sure I've still got one, frankly.
And that, my friends, is the story of Dan O'Bannon and the Alien sequel that never was.
I've no doubt that it has absolutely no chance whatsoever, but I do love the symbolism here - it's like I'm taking baby steps into a new genre. Even though I'm an Active member of the MWA and would like to venture more into the mystery area, I always feel like I'm somehow traveling overseas to a distant land where I don't speak the language or know the customs (although I like the food).
Fulfillment ratings.
You probably have no idea what I'm talking about; or, if you do know, are wondering why it's such a bad thing.
So, for those of you in the first group, let me explain: Most of the major used bookselling sites - Amazon, ABE, Alibris - require dealers who use their services to sell books to be able to fulfill at least 85%-90% of the orders that come in. If you can't meet these percentages, your listings can be suspended or your account terminated.
What this means is that you've listed your stock on the site, an order comes in, and if you can't come up with the book, you take a hit. Why wouldn't you be able to come up with the book? Sure, not a problem for someone who is essentially a hobbyist, picking up books at estate sales and thrift shops and storing them in the garage...but a BIG problem for an open, "brick-and-mortar" store, especially a busy one. The new books you list online are the same new books your customers in the store may be after. It's virtually impossible to remove books the instant you sell them; stop by Iliad any afternoon, watch every member of the staff running as fast as our legs can carry us, and you'll get the picture. It's not at all uncommon for us to get an online order in for a book we've sold hours or even minutes before to a walk-in customer.
So why is this bad for the entire field of used books? Because these sites (inexplicably) do NOT also utilize feedback rating systems, ala ebay. In other words, it doesn't matter that the book you get may not be what you ordered, or may not have been accurately described; all that counts in a fulfillment rating system is that you got some book.
At least 70% of the sellers on these big sites are these garage sellers. Some of them may have a small knowledge of books, but the majority wouldn't know a cracked hinge from a gauffered edge. I can't tell you how many times I've ordered a book for a customer at the store, and received a Book Club edition when the book was described as a first edition, or received something that was a beaten-up ex-library copy when I ordered a book in fine condition (curiously enough, I'd say it happens close to 70% of the time...hmmm...). Returns made directly to the dealer don't count against their sacred fulfillment ratings, and without feedback ratings you, the next potential buyer of a book from these amateurs, will probably get rooked the same way, possibly for a large amount of money. If you don't have an extensive knowledge of books, you may drop a large wad in the belief that Mom and Pop's 14th printing of Gone With the Wind is a true first.
At Iliad, I dropped a service today because we couldn't meet their fulfillment ratings requirements, and they had no interest in working with us; coincidentally, I also received an angry and accusatory e-mail from someone who naturally assumed that we were trying to rook him on a book he wanted to purchase, probably because he'd been scammed by other sellers. Bookseller discussion boards are full of stories of established bookstores giving up on online selling because of fulfillment ratings.
It's not bad enough that used booksellers - many of whom have decades of experience and training, and pursue their jobs with real passion - have to deal with rising real estate costs, competition from chains and online giants, and declining literacy rates; now we're also threatened by the very co-ops that should be helping us sell more books. The fine art of bookselling (which IS considered a real trade in many countries, one with its own unions and training programs and conferences) is being damaged from within by an almost industry-wide practice that elevates inexperience, apathy, ignorance, and possibly downright fraudulent practices. Maybe this doesn't matter to most book buyers, but to those of us who still value and collect books, it's positively catastrophic.
My second novel, The Castle of Los Angeles (which will be my first published novel in about a month), began life as a collision of two different interests: 1) the traditional Gothic novel; and 2) the Los Angeles artists' community known as The Brewery. In the first instance, I wanted to conduct a kind of literary experiment: to find out if all the tropes of the genuine Gothic novel could work in a contemporary tale. In the second, I had some theater buddies who'd opened a small theater in The Brewery, and I was fascinated by the idea that a theater could also be where you lived. Since Walpole's The Castle of Otranto is generally considered to be the first real Gothic novel, it seemed only fitting to call my book The Castle of Los Angeles. The Brewery became my Castle, and I unabashedly stole bits of history from both The Brewery and another famed Southern California edifice, Pasadena's old Vista del Arroyo Hotel (now the U.S. Court of Appeals). The novel was completed in 2007.
This week I discovered a book called Bunker Hill by famed Southern California illustrator Leo Politi. The book was a lovely recollection of some famed Los Angeles buildings of the past. Imagine my astonishment when, upon flipping it open, I came across a building called The Castle.
I read Politi's brief description of The Castle, then immediately searched online and found several amazing sites that provided more history and more photos. This real Castle (unlike mine) was originally constructed as a residence, albeit a massive one, with 20 rooms; built in the 19th century, it stood on Bunker Hill in downtown L.A. until 1968, when it was nearly demolished, but saved and moved to a new location...where it unfortunately stood for only a few months before being destroyed by arson.
But beyond those differences, I was amazed to find out how much this real Castle of Los Angeles had in common with its fictitious counterpart (there is a character in The Castle of Los Angeles who has chronicled the building's extensive history, and provides some of it to our heroine). Here's a comparison table I made up:
| THE REAL CASTLE | MY CASTLE |
| Built in mid 1880s | Built in 1885 |
| May have been built by the Armour meat packing family | Was built to function partly as meat packing plant |
| Changed ownership a lot up until 1919 | Changed ownership a lot in the 1920s |
| Eventually converted to a boarding house | Eventually converted to artists' lofts |
| Was famous for its Victorian architecture and prompted appearances in books and articles | Was famous for its Victorian architecture and prompted postcards and articles |
| Was reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of several suicides | Is reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of several victims of accidental death |
| Was slated for renovation by the city in 1968 | Was slated for renovation partly by the city in 1989 |
(Here, by the way, is one excellent page on the real Castle, and here's another which even includes a glorious photo of Politi sketching the Castle.)
I'm sorry I never got to see the real Castle. In the '60s my family was happily ensconced in the sunny suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley, and we would probably have had no reason to head into the Bunker Hill area of downtown (although we did often go to the downtown Chinatown - can you see the formation of another lifelong obsession there?).
And now, of course, I live in dread of some local history expert pointing a finger at me and saying, "You molested the memory of our beautiful Castle!" To which my response could only be, "No, really - it's the Brewery I set out to destroy."
A few minutes later Roxie the Genius joined me. As we were snuggling down, we suddenly heard Sylvia (my timid little black cat) meowing in the living room. It started with a few basic, low meows, only slightly unusual (since Sylvia never makes any sound)...
...and suddenly it sounded for all the world as if there was a small child in my living room jabbering loudly in its own small-child language. I mean, this lunatic noise was complete with vowels, consonants, inflections...It was utterly astonishing, and went on for about 30 seconds, during which time Roxie and I stared at each other in mute disbelief.
I got up then to see what could possibly have provoked this display, and of course Sylvia was seated placidly in the living room, giving herself her after-dinner bath, and looking at me with that "What?!" kind of expression. Utterly quiet. No sign of anything unusual, nothing outdoors, everything absolutely normal.
The only possible explanations are:
1) The thermometer was lying and my fever was much higher than a mere 99.6.
2) Sylvia was briefly possessed by the spirit of a very talkative child ghost.
3) There really was a child in here, and it's now living in secret in our kitchen cabinets.
4) Sylvia can talk, and forgot that one of the stupid humans was unexpectedly present in the other room.
I'm opting for #4. Now if I can just learn the language...
