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Two New Grant Morrison Interviews

September 22, 2005 /

Pop Thought interview Morrison on the craft of writing:

I wrote The Invisibles Vol 1 issue 23 on my living room couch, hallucinating, and dying of MRSA-related septicaemia, (those cranky descriptions of demons and the crystal crown biting into Mister Six’s head and the Gnostic Christ saying ‘I am not the God of your fathers…’ were scrawled notes from the delirious no-man’s land between life and giving up) and the following issue was written from a hospital ward, waiting to hear if the near-fatal staph aureus infection I’d contracted had spread to my heart. I was there for two weeks, working as often as I could between tests and treatment, with the intention of writing myself out of trouble (as a mad sidebar, after beating off the infection with the aid of antibiotics, I became inexplicably obsessed with eating raw carrots for the remainder of my stay in hospital – only to find out last week that staph aureus – ‘golden’ staphylococcus – gets its distinctive color from carotene. I must have been so stuffed to the fucking guts with carotene-pigmented bastards when the bacteria was swarming through me that I went into withdrawal for the stuff when the bugs were finally wiped out!).

And Silver Bullet interviews him about his current and future DC projects:

I’m armpit-deep in the “52” project which I’m plotting and writing along with Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Keith Giffen with JG Jones on covers, I see this project as the first ‘album’ from DCs first creative ‘super group’ and it’s been the most fun I’ve had in this business to date. I just got back from a series of incredible creative summits in New York and couldn’t believe the energy, imagination and refreshing lack of prima donna ego bullshit on show. “52” is being planned meticulously and written like a TV drama. Based on the material we’ve got so far, I think this project will break new ground for mainstream comics and I can’t imagine any other company being capable of anything like it right now, so it’s going to be very unique and absorbing read, squeezing down four years of continuity into one. It’s the first real, full-length ‘graphic novel’ about superheroes and is likely to change the way we think of what can be done with them.

Cell Phones Put to Novel Use

March 19, 2005 /

I love reading about this sort of stuff:

It’s especially effective for intensifying the thrills of a horror story, said Satoko Kajita, who oversees content development at Bandai Networks.

The Tokyo-based wireless service provider offers 150 books on its site, called Bunko Yomihodai, or All You Can Read Paperbacks. It began the service in 2003 and saw interest grow last year. There are now about 50,000 subscribers.

“It’s hard to understand unless you try it out,” Kajita said, adding that the handset’s backlight allows people to read with the lights off — a convenience that delights parents who like to read near sleeping infants.

Users can search by author, title and genre, and readers can write reviews, send fan mail to authors and request what they want to read, all from their phones.

Writers Alan Moore likes

February 18, 2005 /

From the recent the Craft interview with Alan Moore, here are a bunch of authors Moore thinks don’t get the respect they deserve:

Raymond Chandler
Clark Ashton Smith
Arthur Knacken Arthur Machen
Michael Moorcock
Jack Trevor Story
Gerald Kersh
David Lindsay (A Voyage to Arcturus)
William Hope Hodgson (House on the Borderland, The Night Land)

Alan Moore on writing and magick

February 16, 2005 /

New Alan Moore interview:

AM: I’ll give a brief recap in case we feel we missed anything. Magic and language are practically the same thing, they would at least have been regarded as such in our distant past. I think it is wisest and safest to treat them as if they are the same thing. This stuff that you are dealing with – words, language, writing – this is dangerous, it is magical, treat it as if it was radioactive. Don’t doubt that for a moment. As far as I know, the last figures I heard quoted, nine out of every ten writers will have mental problems at some point during their life. Sixty percent of that ninety percent – which I think works out at roughly fifty percent of all writers – will have their lives altered and affected – seriously affected – by those mental problems. I think what that translates to is – nine out of ten crack up, five out of ten go mad. It’s like, miners get black lung, writers go bonkers. This is a real occupational hazard. There’s plenty of ways to go bonkers, some of them a lot quieter, some more insidious than others – drink, heroin, there’s lots of other sorts of things – but this is dangerous – we’re dealing with the unreal. You’re dealing right on the borderline of fact and fiction, which is where our entire world happens. We’re living in a world of fact and we’ve got out heads full of fiction, the characters that we’ve invented for ourselves – we’re all writers, we all invent characters for ourselves, roles in this little play that we’re running in our head that we call our lives. With a writer, you’re dealing with the actual stuff of existence, you’re playing the God game. All the things that you will have to consider before you write a story are exactly the things God had to consider before he created the universe – plot, characters (laughter) and what’s it mean, what’s it about, what’s the theme here . . . motifs. A lot of them suns, they’ll do, we’ll put them everywhere – hey, snakes! These are easy . . . (laughter).

The Craft: An Interview with Alan Moore

(via LVX23 and NWD)

And another new interview with Moore here… haven’t had any time to check this one out yet.

(See also: Alan Moore dossier)

Haruki Murakami interview, book excerpt

October 11, 2004 /

Murakami is one of my favorite writers, and this is an excellent interview:

I think that it’s actually connected to “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.” I wanted to write a sequel 15 years ago, but I gave up. But I feel like “Kafka on the Shore” is connected to that book on a deeper level. Two parallel stories combine in the end. The structure is similar. And the theme of both books is a story of two different worlds, consciousness and unconsciousness. Most of us are living in those two worlds, one foot in one or the other, and all of us are living on the borderline. That’s my definition of human life. The title is about the borderline of land and sea, living and dead.

Via Jason.

The link for Kafka on the Shore dot com doesn’t work… anyone know another address?

I did find this excerpt from Kafka on the Shore on Google, though.

Transrealist Manifesto

August 18, 2004 /

Transrealist Manifsto by Rudy Rucker [PDF], thanks Sauceruney

Transrealist novel grows organically, like life itself. The author can only choose characters and setting, introduce this or that particular fantastic element, and aim for certain key scenes. Ideally, a Transrealist novel is written in obscurity, and without an outline. If the author knows precisely how his or her book will develop, then the reader will divine this. A predictable book is of no interest. Nevertheless, the book must be coherent. Granted, life does not often make sense. But people will not read a book which has no plot. And a book with no readers is not a fully effective work of art. A successful novel of any sort should drag the reader through it. How is it possible to write such a book without an outline? The analogy is to the drawing of a maze. In drawing a maze, one has a start (characters and setting) and certain goals (key scenes). A good maze forces the tracer past all the goals in a coherent way.

eBay fiction

June 8, 2004 /

Before I left for Europe, Brenden sent me this listing for a haunted wine cabinet on eBay. A few months ago I posted this ghost in a jar on Technoccult (the listing’s not online anymore, though).

I don’t remember what the jar sold for, but the wine cabinet sold for $280. I have no idea what it was worth. But it occurs to me that this sort of writing could be a new way to make money and find an audience in fiction. Taking an object, giving it an interesting backstory, and sell it on eBay. How much of this goes on?

And yes, I suppose the story could be true. I want to believe that there’s a John Constantine out there scouring eBay for magical objects as much as the next guy.

Espresso Stories

September 4, 2003 /

Via the always wonderful Creative Generalist: Espresso Stories tales you can swallow in a single gulp.

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