Spitting Pink.

Loves,

I've been aloof! My bad. Let me tell you, college gets needy. It's like a puppy that's sick so it needs extra attention in addition to all the attention it already needs. And I'm a cat person. A healthy cat person. Anyway, between writing 15 page papers I've been squeezing in some writing that matters. You know, the stuff that I plan on birthing a career from. CHRIST ALIVE. Well, some folks are liking it because I got published again :)

You can read the very quick piece of flash fiction over on the website for RiverLit Magazine: http://riverlit.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/spitting-out-the-pink/

Hollaween.

Hey Loves,

I haven't posted in a fat ass minute. I was playing ghost to get into Halloween. Is that allowed? Is that an excuse? I don't think so. It's okay if you don't think so. Listen, college is annoying. I've got fifteen page papers and exams and hookah parties to get through. That last one really isn't an excuse.

ANYWAY, guess what's coming up? Halloween. Guess who's favorite holiday is Christmas and not Halloween. Mine. Last year I had a rough holiday. Freshman in college. Halloween. Liquor. Do the math, babes. Actually I take that back. Read between the lines, babes. I don't want anyone doing any math on my blog. I got white girl wasted. So this year I'm keeping it real chill. My mom shipped me up enough candy to make me lust after my 1500 calorie diet. You might think gorging on M&Ms (pretzel, peanut butter, and peanut) and Almond Joys and 100 Grands and Twix and blah blah blah would be great. And it is at first. Then you wake up the next day strewn in chocolate laced cellophane and wonder how you got to be there.

Now that that tradition is out of the way, I'm looking to do something festive, but thinning. Guess what has zero calories? Reading. Guess what this blog's supposed to be about? Reading. Guess what I wanna do this Hollaween? READ. So far I've got Stephen King's Pet Sematary and The Shining. Looking forward to curling      in the crisp and getting creeped.

Stephen King is the... well... king... of creep for me. I think it's because he creates such real characters and then puts them in such situations that make readers feel as if a close friend or even themselves are in the midst of all the horror. I think IT is my favorite. Great, sprawling read with unforgettable characters and a setting real enough for a map.

So what's the scariest book you've ever read? What do you do on Hollaween?

Thanks for reading,
Nick

Follow Friday Number I Can't Remember

Loves,

It's that time of week again!

Q. What book that hasn't been turned into a movie (yet) would you most like to see make it to the big screen, and who would you like cast as your favorite character?

Oh this is a hard one. I really enjoy the translation from book to movie as I think stories often lend themselves to several mediums. That's also why I'd rather a story stray from what happens in a book when adapted as long as the changes build a better film. A film should be a good film before fretting being a good adaptation. Sometimes it works out like with The Virgin Suicides and No Country for Old Men and Winter's Bone. Other times not so much as in that Foxfire mess from the 90s. I hear they're remaking it now so here's to hoping they'll do right this time around.

I'd love to see Blood Meridian become a film,  but I don't know if there's enough corn syrup in all of Hollywood to meet the book's bloodshed. I'd love to see Looking for Alaska hit the big screen. I think Elle Fanning would be great in a Lolita adaptation. 

So lemme know what you think. What adaptations work and what ones don't?

Thanks for reading,

Nick

P.S.: Upcoming adaptation that looks like it gonna rawk:

What Love is Mainstream?

Loves,

So there was this recent lashing out in the publishing industry when a writer started yakking about an agent/editor/someone important I don't remember who and this isn't the Wall Street Journal, it's my blog so go find out the concrete details yourself that said his novel would work better if he "straightened" out his characters as in make the homosexual relationship heterosexual.

OH GIRL, NO YOU DIDN'T.

Well, this caused a bit of a riff-raff. Twitter started the #yesgayya tag and agents took to blogs to give their two cents and gays took to their blogs and readers took to their blogs and sometimes some or all of the above were the same thing and they took to their blogs. I'm just taking to my blog now, because I had to plot a 15 page literary analysis on Blood Meridian and Go Down, Moses. I HIGHLY recommend Blood Meridian although I do warn that it will make more violent than you may have thought yourself capable.

This news story sucks if it is true, but what sucks even more is that we might not be able to blame the agent/editor/don't get me rambling again that stated it. It must be understood that the book market is not an art gallery. It's a business. Sorry if I offended art galleries, but I just finished plotting a 15 page literary analysis  so my metaphors are wavering. Books need to make money. Gay doesn't equate money. I can think of very few books surrounding gay culture that made a big impression on the market. At Swim, Two Boys comes to mind, but  that was a colossal endeavor into the literary novel more so than a YA love story. Don't get me wrong, the genre has seen success with The Vast Fields of Ordinary, Boy Meets Boy, Will Greyson Will Greyson, but in comparison to all the heaping mounds of heterosexual YA love stories...

I think this is sad that I have to admit to a niche. That's what gay fiction is, especially YA gay fiction. It resonates with a certain audience and there are places for it, but unfortunately they're usually places more indie and small. Not that there's a problem with that. I'd disintegrate if an indie press was like LET'S PUBLISH YOUR MANUSCRIPT, but I do wish all love stories could appeal to the mainstream.

So how do you guys feel about all this? Let me know in the comments and let me know about any good gay titles you've read. My favorite is Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim, as most of you probably already know.

Thanks for reading,
Nick

The Revenge of Follow Friday

Hey Loves,

Missed a few weeks. BUT I'M BACK.

What imaginary book world would you like to make a reality?

Can I be a total cliche? You know what's coming. Yeah, I don't even have to say it. I kinda feel stupid for saying it, because I'm sure so many are going to say it. Harry Potter Verse would be a nice place to exist, alright? Owls, magic, a school that teaches you defense against the dark arts instead of geometry? That's swell and a half. I haven't really read a whole lot of other books that take place in fantastical worlds, so I'm just going to be that guy. I mean what else am I going to say? I wish I lived on the scalp strew deserts of Blood Meridian? No.

Thanks for reading AND FOLLOWING,
Nick

Stranger than Fiction?

Loves,

Never was I a big memoir guy. After the Million Little Pieces/Angry Oprah charade, I shied from the genre. Something about it struck me selfish or self-indulgent. So I was kinda like WTF when I went to the Boarder's closing sale (60-80% off muddafuckaz!) and hit up the so-called biography section. They were cleared out of all the Augusten Burroughs titles, which have been recommended to be by everyone I know and I really need to finally run with some scissors. I also looked for Prozac Nation, because Elizabeth Wurtzel amuses me on twitter, but they were out of that too. Yeah, there's a reason they were 60-80% off.

GIRLBOMB. It kind of jumped off the shelf. Last of the copies, a thin little book that Entertainment Weekly compared to Girl, Interrupted on the cover. It details the true story of a chick sick of her abusive home life so she stomps out of her house and just keeps stomping, presumably into a story worthy of publication. I was intrigued. It was $4. I'll let you know how it goes.

I dug Girl, Interrupted, but only read it, because the movie makes me cry every time I watch it. I liked The Bell Jar too, which while technically is a novel, was based largely on Sylvia Plath's life and was born long before the category of "memoir," when suffering the human existence didn't allow you a "biography." Biographies used to be for dead presidents. Now they're for whoever's in office/lost the last election and they're more "autobiography" than "biography," but really it's still "biography," because I don't belive Sarah Palin wrote a book. And now biographies are also for those who have withstood suffering, those who tread.

I read another book recently, Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water which was about a girl becoming a woman through rampant sex, drug abuse, and art. Only wrong. It wasn't really about that, it was more about becoming. I read savaged my way through the book on a fifty-two thousand hour car ride to Toronto. Dare I say I drowned in it? Please? I did.

 "Out of the sad sack of sad shit that was my life, I made a wordhouse." 
 - Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

Not only did the book fever me, but (here comes another water metaphor) the rush broke down that dam I had constructed for "memoir." So come on, Girlbomb. Come on, Burroughs. Come on, Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prision, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, and Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir. I wanna read em all. I get it now that we write about our suffering not to show off our wounds, but to understand them.

But maybe I'm just hoping someday I can write a memoir. I'm currently being ordered to wear that infamous Lindsay Lohan accessory, so maybe just maybe. I'm too in it right now to understand it though. Maybe someday. Maybe maybe maybe.

So what do you think? Memoirs: yay or nay. Tell me in the comments!

What the Faulk Did I Get Myself Into?

Loves,

Sorry if it has been a minute. This week has been spent moving back to cowledge and acquimating to my crazy schedule. I'm taking two 300 level writing classes and a 400 level American Literature class. I kinda love it, but it's like Twilight love, because it's all forbidden and wrong and sparkly.

I'm reading Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner right now. Get the blog title now? Aren't I hilarious? Laugh. Anyway, I originally thought the story might surround some brassy southern gal demanding pleasure from her lover, Moses. I thought wrong. At first, I didn't really know what it was about. The language is stream rushing Niagara waters of conscious, so it's easy reading for drowning. I slogged through though and now, I'm almost awed. I get it. I'm a swimmer in Faulkner rapids. Ain't that great? I got a job at the library where they pay to not sell fried chicken, sit in front of a computer, occasionally check-out/in books, and do my homework. Today I read a chunk of this book and sometimes language just hits me in the gut. There's a scene where young Ike gives himself in to wilderness. He abandons compass and riffle. The giving in was so well presented that I felt like I was finally letting loose to something as well. Almost choked up. Good one, Mr. Faulkner.

You know how I get about B&W photographs of Southern Gothic authors so here ya go:

WHAT A CLASSY GUY! I feel a new blog button coming along?

So what about you? Ever start reading a book, get totally lost, but push through and ultimately gel with the style? I wanna know so lemme know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,
Nick