theCLog

The image of the undead bloodsucker has taken a hit in recent years.  The fact of the matter is, vampires aren’t scary anymore, and they’re not dangerous.  The vampire is lusted after, the Twilight series has all but defanged the vamp.

It came as a surprise to me back in 2005, when I discovered a writer by the name of Charlie Huston. Huston was in the beginning of an epic writing spree, – having published 10 novels since 2004 – with more on the horizon.  Having begun the Hank Thompson series with his debut, Caught Stealing, Huston proved to be a new voice in the world of noir, bringing a rough-hewed, blue collar, razor sharp, direct tone to his writing.

In 2005, his first in a The Joe Pitt Casebooks series, Already Dead, proved him also capable of handling the dried up corpse of the vampire archetype.  Coming out the same year as the first in the Twilight series, Already Dead put readers dead in the center of an original and unique take.  These vampires, or Vampyres as Huston calls them, are similar to the way vampires have been depicted in the past, but not entirely.  Yeah, they need blood, and sunlight kills them in an explosion of tumors, but garlic, holy water and crosses are no threat to them. (more…)

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It’s sitting on my shelf right now, watching me, taunting me (full disclosure: I’m not actually at home right now, but I can still fill it calling to me though the airwaves of the soul).  Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon, is by all accounts a monster of a novel.  The first edition hit the shelves at 1085 pages.  The audio book version was 54 hours long.  Yes, someone seriously sat there in front of the microphone for well over 54 hours, just reading.

This got me thinking. I love a book that keeps me enthralled for countless hours – one that I can spend days or weeks buried in. You’re caught up in the world, the characters, the story, and everything is so addicting that the last thing you want is for the book to end.  My first Thomas Pynchon novel, V., was dense with disparate stories that came together and featured characters that shouldn’t have anything to do with each other.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Berry, was also so perfect that I never wanted it to end (of course, my obsession with zeds probably had a thing or two to do with that).

Still, not every biblical length novel is what you would call good.  There are many examples of novels that are so long simply because the author had, as someone once said about Stephen King, “diarrhea of the typewriter.”  Sometimes the author can’t end the novel, sometimes they have the compulsion to write, and write, and write, until they have literally millions of words that not even the best editor in literature can trim down.

To note, I’m not talking about series’.  I’m looking for singular works, the big daddies of literature.  Sure, some of these could have been published in volumes, but instead exist as a semi-coherent whole.  So, while Stephen King’s The Dark Tower may be nearly 4,500 pages in total, it couldn’t be counted as a single entity.  Yeah, I know, there’s a lot of leeway here in what defines a single piece of literary work, but this is  the easiest way to go about things.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.  In what would ultimately prove to be Wallace’s opus, Infinite Jest is a daunting work of art at 1104 pages.  Futuristic, postmodern, colossal and full of biting satire, Infinite Jest is at times the story of a piece of film that gives the book its title. With copious footnotes that break up and reinforce the narrative, and high and low brow hanging in the very same sentence, this novel alone will keep Wallace’s legacy alive for many life times. (more…)

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Major Inversions, by Gordon Highland, CreateSpace, 276 pages

Drew Ballard is perhaps the least likely protagonist ever.  For one, he’s not all that likable, being a drug-dealing and abusing rent-a-cop with musical talent – he plays in a hair metal tribute act, The Down Boys,  a jazz fusion act called, Feu Jeune, and works as the jingle writer of choice for the Wilmington area.  He’s also a slacker despite his workload, with no real goals beside the next gig.  The only thing he wants to do with women is of the carnal desire.  He really shouldn’t be the center of such an engaging and intriguing novel.

Consider the opening line: “My earliest memory is shitting in the bathtub.”  Such an inauspicious line  births the main theme of the novel, that of creation.  The music, such as the wonderful chorus of jingle’s sprinkled through the novel (Grooves in the sand, innocence lost / A period in waiting, anxiety the cost), is the most obvious creation Drew gives us access to.  The whole of the novel, too, is Drew’s creation, his own story and how he wants to tell it.  He talks to the reader, admitting things are omitted or simply not as they really happened, though there is one reader in particular he is addressing.

The metafictional aspects of the novel are engaging, giving readers a layer to come back too once  finishing. It brings more and more to the forefront that you didn’t quite get through the initial reading.  With the format of a thriller, Highland undermines expectations, – pulling out the rug on subplots – but each thread he weaves is all in service to a great story.  This is one of those novels that will completely exceed your initial impressions, throwing you for a loop as the twists start.  Though he subtly foreshadows the ending near the beginning, you won’t see it coming.  Everything is important in this novel, as pointless as it may seem.  From his dealing and security guard day job to the music he creates and the people he meets – everything is working to the ultimate payoff.  To tell you too much would ruin a surprising read, and I want nothing to do with such sins.

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In this final piece of a four-part series titled iTunes and the Pen, authors Kevin Canty, Monica Drake, and Paul Eckert explain how they feel about listening to music while writing.

For other authors takes on the topic, check out the following:  For Part 1 of iTunes and the Pen, click here. For Part 2, click here. And for Part 3, click here.

Kevin Canty, whose most recent release is the collection Where the Money Went, describes himself as “a cork-lined-cell type writer.”  Canty says, “I love silence and solitude and the random play of my own thoughts.”  Because of his background as a guitarist, he can’t be in the same room with music without actually listening to it.  Still, he finds music helpful for getting his way into a story, often finding what he’s looking for in a pop, blues or jazz songs. Canty is the first to admit that most of his story titles come from songs.  “Nothing mysterious about this,” he says.  “I just stink at coming up with titles and somebody’s already done the work for you when they write the song. Why work when you can steal?”

When Monica Drake, whose debut Clown Girl was released on Hawthorne Books, first started writing she found inspiration in different musicians, from Tom Waits to Lou Reed, but certain artists with “associative leaps in lyrics, the rough, rugged riffs, the driving emotion,” as she says, would make her want write short stories. These artists include Liz Phair, Tom Verlaine and Television.  These days, however, Drake spends less time listening to music while writing. She says, “A lot of my time is surrounded by people talking, so when I manage to find writing time I like to sink into my own thoughts and have no music on at all. I’m writing in more compressed time periods, an hour here or there, and I like to focus.”

Paul Eckert, author of Ghostwriter Circus, was once working on a short story with the music of Godspeed You Black Emperor! playing along.  “I found my groove, and I was just writing away. And when the music started to build tension, the writing started to build tension. I didn’t realize what was happening until the climax when the song was loud and crazy and the tension I’d been building in the chapter started to explode all over the place. Now that I think about it, maybe that experience scared me away from writing to music,” Eckert says.  Since then, Eckert admits he rarely listens to music while he works.  “If I take three minutes to write two sentences, and I realize a three minute song just finished, it makes me aware of time,” he says. “Then a song may come on that I don’t like, so I have to spend time skipping to the song I want. Instrumental music is more open to interpretation, hence it can fit any mood and help me find my groove.”

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If you missed Part 1 of iTunes and the pen, click here. If you missed Part 2, click here.

Former storySouth editor and science fiction/fantasy author Jason Sanford often uses “spacey music” to inspire his work. “Sounds funny, but I find that music’s contemplative and expansive focus exactly what I need when I’m writing SF,” he says. Sometimes, though, he uses certain types of heavy metal (like Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album) and world music. He uses these aural tones to help with his process: “In all these cases, the music helps inspire the tone of my story. Or maybe I select the music based on the tone of my story. Not sure which is which.” Jason is like a lot of the other authors I’ve spoken with, in that he tries to avoid music with distinct lyrics. He explains, “The one thing I avoid with my writing music is anything with a heavy focus on lyrics, which interferes with the words I’m trying to write. If the lyrics are more ambient or tied into the overall background music, as with Ozzy Osbourne’s singing on the Black Sabbath album, that’s not a problem. But anything catchy that starts me singing along with the music is bad for writing.”

Karl Koweski, poet and writer of the “Observations of a Dumb Pollock” column at Zygote in My Coffee, is a mixed bag. “There are times when I don’t like to listen to music at all when I’m writing,” he says, “there are certain songs and artists I can listen to evoke certain memories and emotions.” He equates “Elvis Perkins in Dearland” to “falling in love.” “When I wanna write about my youth, it’s Iron Maiden or Dio,” he adds. Like many others, he finds that “Leonard Cohen is nice mood music to get in the spirit to write,” but he continues, “then a lot of time’s I’ll fade it out.” The times he doesn’t listen to music, it’s for “anything that’s dialogue heavy,” then “I’ll tune the music out.” He doesn’t think the music he listens to bleeds into his words, but he admits it can “throw off the cadence.” (more…)

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If you missed Part 1 of iTunes and the pen, click here.

Publisher Philip Morledge, has the same sort of fear of the quiet as I do. Morledge says, “I find silence terribly loud when trying to write so [I] will always have something on in the background.” He uses music as a motivational technique. “I also find music very inspirational when casting about the ether for ideas so the music has to be in some way related to what I am working on,” he says. However, he also admits that it can lead to problems sometimes “I end up thinking about different ideas than the one before me, which is never a good way to work.”

Gordon Highland, whose debut Major Inversions, is now available, says his background as a musician can be a problem for him, “music always exists in the foreground for me, and I have difficulty relegating it to the subconscious.” It would have to be instrumental, he believes, and more often than not, new to him. “It cannot be overly familiar, either, and I have to constantly feed on new material after just a few listens once I start picking up on the patterns and charting chord progressions and time signatures instead of auditioning the perfect verb,” he explains. Highland normally goes for something more abstract, like the post-rock genre, “stuff like Sigur Ros and God is an Astronaut.” Further, he uses music “where the rhythm isn’t so clearly defined, like string music or film scores. Sunshine, Mysterious Skin, and I Heart Huckabees are excellent.”

But, not everyone requires their music to be completely instrumental. Richard Thomas wrote his novel Disintegration to the album In Rainbows by Radiohead, and for a vampire short, Transmogrify, he used a song by The Cure as the starting point. Still, though, he uses instrumental music for the most part, saying, “I have a hard time with words, usually moody music, with no words, or music I know so well that I don’t even hear words anymore.”

(more…)

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So it came down to me, and that old foe: the blank screen. My word processor was up and I had plenty of ideas that needed to get on the screen and out of my head. A character was actually talking to me. He was hanging out in my kitchen, taking my food, and bugging the hell out of me so much, I need to trap him on paper, like a djinn.

I couldn’t, though. That’s a problem, of course, for some fool who thinks of himself as a writer. It was too quiet. The high pitch of silence was too much to take, so I turned on iTunes to remedy the problem. I put on some Dirty Three, its record titled, She Has No Strings Apollo. It is an evocative instrumental collection, a mix up of rock and chamber with no vocals to get in the way. Soon enough, that blank screen was filled up with words. And wouldn’t you know, it got me thinking: I need music there, for comfort, noise, a distraction while I write.

What about all those other authors out there, banging away on their keyboards, giving life to characters, and telling stories that resonate in the lives of their readers? Do they need music to work? Is it simply a background, or does it find a way into their words? It wasn’t really a surprise to find a lot of the writers I spoke with had similar, lyric-less requirements when it comes to their own writing habits.

Vincent Louis Carrella, author of Serpent Box, says he listens to mostly “jazz, early jazz – Coltrane, Miles, Monk etc.” when writing, but prior to sitting down, he will sometimes play some emotional music by “Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, maybe some Neil Young,” depending what he is working on. Turns out, and I noticed this while reading through Serpent Box, that Tom Waits was an influence. Carrella says, “I borrowed a lot of cadence and manner from Tom and his music definitely bleeds into my work. His rhythms of speech, his language, his instrumentation.” Carrella went on to talk about how certain songs were so influential, that he’d written whole stories around them. “I wrote one based on “Lay it Down” by the Cowboy Junkies and based on “Look Ma, I’m Only Dyin’,” by Bob Dylan,” he says.

Similar to Carrella, author Drew McCoy, whose story, “How to be Loved”, has been turned into the short film, Jack and Jen, by T5G productions, listens to a lot of music right before he sits down at the computer. “I’ll listen to Amos Lee and his voice, that southern feel of his voice and the cords bleeds into my writing,” he says. “I wish I could listen to music while I write, but I just find myself nodding along to the beat or mouthing the words, and then everything on the page just gets all screwed up.” (more…)

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Religion is one of those topics you just don’t talk about in everyday conversation.  Religion, politics and sex, you talk about that at work or with folks you don’t know too well, and a basic conversation at the water cooler could get a bit too heated.  Not everyone has religious beliefs, but everyone has thoughts on it.  Some go to church every Sunday, some only on the major holidays, some many times a week and some not at all.  The fact that most every culture has a religious belief or two inherent, well, that says something about the topic.

Now, considering the overwhelming amount of religious creeds out there, I can’t very well take a look at every single one.  I could do my research, taking a look at the literary impact of the three main monotheistic creeds, then touch on Buddhism or Scientology or Neo-Paganism, but that wouldn’t do anything for you,  and besides, that would be a lot of research.  I’d rather take a look at some books that say something about religion in our individual lives.  What is the role of religion?  What does it do for us, on a day by day basis?  Looking at mostly Judeo-Christian beliefs in fiction, I think you could find several great books, besides the obvious (The Divine Comedy), that tell you more about the role of religion in general.

Of course, I’m not going to use this as a way to evangelize you.  Me and my religion, well, I’m a little confused on the topic.  Besides, what’s the point?  You believe what you will.  These books are simply there to give you something think on.

1. Serpent Box by Vincent Louis Carrella (496 pages, Harper Perennial). An amazing and powerful debut, Serpent Box tells the tail of Jacob Flint, a young boy, born in a curious manner.  The son of a Holiness preacher, Jacob is both blessed and cursed.  Deformed but able to heal men, speak to God, and handle snakes and poison, Serpent Box looks at a faith that views God as here, touching our daily lives, keeping us safe, if we have the faith required.  Lyrical and beautiful, this book takes a look at an oft-derided faith, but more looks at what it takes to have faith in the modern world.

2. Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn (240 pages, Algonquin Books). The eight stories in Aaron Gwyn’s debut short story collection all take place in Perser, Oklahoma, a small town where the Pentecostal church is the center of life.  Looking at many aspects of faith, Gwyn explores how faith can help and destroy individual lives.  Brilliantly done, these stories will each stick with you and give you lots to think about.  Both Dog on the Cross and Serpent Box mine the territory of Flannery O’Connor, looking at the old, Southern religion. (more…)

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Dan Brown has a new novel coming out this September. The Lost Symbol will see the return of the intrepid and heroic Harvard professor, Robert Langden, who is set to uncover a conspiracy, set in the heart of Washington, and will probably find a likable character introduced in the first few chapters to be the bad guy of novel. Instead of Opus Dei or the Illuminati, the big bad group is the Freemasons, those old guys who apparently secretly rule the world. Like the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, the Lizard People and any other number of groups meant to represent someone the conspiracy theorist secretly doesn’t like but can’t, in a PC society, actually talk bad about without looking like a complete, racist nut job.

Conspiracy theories are fun, man. Just go to AboveTopSecret.com and take a look at what is the current tool the Man is using to control and take over the world. Apparently, the upcoming census is a way for the government to figure out how many camps they need to set up for the political opposition. And there was a solar storm predicted by a crop circle – only it wasn’t – but facts don’t get in the way of a good conspiracy.

This world is a complicated place, and it is human nature to look for patterns in the chaos. Hell, look at the ghost of Michael Jackson or his face on a tree stump. People need to be able to look at the world and try to make something out of it, and the complex form of modern international politics can take on the appearance of gibberish to all but the most highly trained political scientist. It is easy for the activities of any number of politicians and business leaders to take on a shadowy veneer. So, of course, Coke comes out with “new” Coke to boast sales of the cola and the British Royal Family killed Princess Diana because of her relationship with a *gasp* Muslim. Businesses make mistakes and people, even the widely beloved, die.

That in mind, if you’re in the mood for something in the conspiracy-vein before the latest contrived blockbuster hits the shelves, here’s a few for you.

1. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (640 pages, Mariner Books). The so-called thinking man’s Da Vinci Code, Foucault’s Pendulum is a dense, highly literate tale of a scholarly joke gone awry. Touching on the Knights Templar, the Gnostics, Freemasons, Illuminati, Elders of Zion, and even a Cthulhu cult all have something to do with this read. (more…)

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Literature is one of those lovely abstractions. It’s right there, on the paper or computer screen or papyrus, but is essentially a collection of symbols we put meaning into. There is no literature, to be nihilistic about it, there is only what we think there is. Still, people make money writing, and people will always buy books, be them first printings or Kindle editions or trade paperbacks you pick up for a buck at a yard sale. So, with that in mind, here’s a list of books you should pick up.

• Face, by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press, 160 pages.)
Poetry, yeah, even more subjective than regular literature. What is poetry? Why should you care about poetry? Why should you care about this fellow’s poetry? Well, because … duh. Sherman Alexie is a literary giant: author of four novels, three collections of short stories, and, now, thirteen collections of poetry. Alexie, a member of the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene tribes, is one of the preeminent Native American writers, but more than that, like Stephen Graham Jones, he’s an amazing writer who happens to be Native American. (more…)

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