by Carnell
Look
Out He's Got a Knife!
The
first time I saw David J. Schow speak was at Fangoria
Weekend of Horrors. He was a guest there scheduled
to give out one of their Chainsaw Awards. As fate
would have it, Brandon Lee won the Best Actor award
for his role in THE CROW. Being a friend of Brandon's,
David accepted the award for the late actor and,
in an emotionally charged speech, expressed his (and
our) dismay at the thought of Miramax/Dimension's
plans to go ahead with a sequel to the film. During
his short speech, the author stated his thoughts
so eloquently that the entire room was left in hushed
silence as he stalked off the stage. As first impressions
go, this was one of the best. David J. Schow is a
gifted, outspoken, viciously original writer who
expresses himself first and considers the political
ramifications of his statements later. He neither
caters to public opinion nor does he bend to the
sheep-like mentality displayed by other writers in
the horror field.
My
kinda guy...
What
is your educational background and what drew you
to writing as a profession?
I'm a
university drop-out. Three semesters and gone. I always
wanted to write, so I wrote; the trick was getting
people to pay money for what was getting written anyway.
The irony of my brief fling with higher education is
that, today, I get paid to lecture at universities
about writing -- I get paid more for one night than
my original scholarship/grant had been to go to school
for an entire semester, in the first place. Plus lodging
and meals.
Do
you recommend that anyone who has the desire to write
should just get on with it and forego the getting
of, say, a degree in English or literature?
An English
degree might help you counter certain deficiencies
of grammar which haunt me to this day. Otherwise, I'd
forego writing classes and workshops, in college or
anywhere else. By the time people with whom I'd gone
to college acquired their degrees, I had sold both
fiction and nonfiction professionally. My "diploma" was
a check and an acceptance letter that I treasure still;
how do you feel about your diplomas? A literature degree
might help you read, but it certainly won't help you
write, and shouldn't you be reading without professional
help? When I see how many writers have to make ends
meet by teaching writing, it depresses me. What do
you do with a workshop story? Curry the approval of
an instructor whom you essentially pay to critique
at your material, then, if you're lucky and you dare,
submit it to an editor. I say cut directly to the editor,
since the editor is the person with the power to buy
your story or book, and the rest is just coddling,
salve for your ego that costs you money. Don't worry
about joining clubs, or ferreting out "tricks" or shortcuts.
Don't even listen to me. Just write.
Do
you believe that Horror. as a genre, is dead?
Dead?
No. How could it be? Horror has been with us since
before the written word, before literature, and before
schools of criticism that try to declare something
as broad and fundamental as horror dead. Horror can
easily weather a market slump because it's primal,
it transcends genre. It teaches us our shape.
If you
say, "Gee, sci-fi's in a slump," people know immediately
what you mean. If you say speculative fiction is in
decline, they'll look at you like you're nuts. As opposed
to what other kind of fiction? The horror version of
sci-fi is HOO-ROR -- dark, fantastical literature rendered
down into a consumer category. By its stench you shall
know it: good vs. evil parables that function as advertisements
for one outmoded religion or another. Xerographic bullshit
in which families with possessed children move into
new digs in sinister New England towns, above old Indian
burial grounds, and awaken ancient naughtiness. Virtually
any novel that begins with a prologue set in another
century. Or copycat writing by people whose entire
prep is slasher movies and the Stephen King Library.
Say it loud: HOO-ROR. Then shoot it in the head. Aim
for the wallet.
You've
said that "every writer of any worth writes for an
imaginary group of about ten readers in his or her
head - that coterie who will understand every layer
of story at whatever depth you care to veneer the
writing." My question is, do you think that most
writers feel this way? Are these ten people the type
that you would ever invite to your house for dinner?
As for
other writers, you'd have to ask them. But make no
mistake -- writing is still primarily an act of ego,
upon which you gild other considerations as you go.
You need a strong ego to armor yourself against constant
rejection of your work and of you as a writer (not
to mention you as a human being) so among those ten
imaginary people in your head are folks you invent
for the purposes of testing your work. Attacking it,
to see if it holds water in ways that matter to you.
But would you want to sit at a table with ten people
picking apart every nuance of your work? No again.
That's why they're strictly imaginary. Besides, if
they were real, I'd never give them my street address,
and even if I did, it's really hard to find my house.
Are
you ever completely pleased with a story once you
decide to let it go so it can be published?
About
50%. Copyedit and proofs can craze you, because the
urge to tinker is always there and you've got to learn
to lock the lid down and get on with the next job.
I do believe that once a story is published, you shouldn't
mess with it except to amend an outright factual error,
or scotch something that will irritate you for the
rest of time because it rings sourly. Other than obvious
corrections, you've just got to learn to leave it alone.
When I was on the brink of my first story collection,
I rewrote some of the stories front-to-back. That's
not a good idea. Stories are of their time. Should
I go back to a story ten years from now and cycle in
replacement slang? Make the characters hew to some
future concept of political correctness? Or incorrectness?
If they're infinitely malleable, why bother committing
to any single version at all? That's where your story
morphs into a video game, and it's a potential pitfall
of word processing -- all changes are equally easy.
That, to me, confuses typesetting with writing. If
you want to make a change in fiction, it should be
a change you are willing to work to achieve. And if
you know that, then the ease of word processing becomes
an advantage and not a hazard.
Now I'll
contradict myself, proving that there is no one answer
for anything. Necronomicon Press will publish (in April
1997) a chapbook version of a short story that has
already appeared in Dark Terrors 2. The chapbook version
is slightly expanded. After I sold it to Dark Terrors,
I "wrote on it" some more. I wanted a US version of
a new story that I could hand to people who ask what
I've been doing lately -- one that didn't force them
to cough up the scratch for an entire imported anthology.
It's the same story, but different. The chapbook version
has extra stuff.
How
were you brought on board the first CROW film?
I was
called by Ed Pressman in late 1991 to do a page-one
rewrite (ie., a new draft from scratch) when a first
draft and revisions by John Shirley failed to help
Pressman secure a studio or production funds.
I know
that over the course of filming THE CROW, you became
friends with Brandon Lee, Can you take us through
your version of the accident and the subsequent emotional
upheaval that occurred as a result of it?
It's time
to stop carping on the accident, which, as I answer
this question, was four years ago. People still sidle
up to you in that faux-intimate way and purr, "So what
really happened ... ?"
What really
happened was that there was a hideous accident on-set.
I was there and saw it happen, and there's not a day
that passes in which it doesn't cross my mind.
The most
emotional moment I can recall came not when Brandon
died, not even at the memorial service later in California,
but on the flight back from North Carolina after production
was suspended. Tabloid reporters were sneaking onto
the backlot and nailing crew members in restaurants.
There were a couple of fistfights. It was a siege atmosphere.
Some of us stayed in town a few days longer than others
because immediately after the accident it was like
the evacuation of Saigon. But we finally left. I was
flying back with Alex McDowell, the production designer,
and Ken Arlidge, one of the cameramen; both friends.
We're all sunk into our seats, just wishing the plane
would never touch down, that it would keep going until
it got someplace where there were no people, no "entertainment
magazines," no bullshit on the news. And before the
in-flight movie, trailers come on, and sure enough,
one of the previews is for DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY.
And the whole first class cabin comes alive with: "Isn't
that the guy who just got killed? Wasn't he murdered?
Wasn't he cursed?" I hope, in your life, you never
feel the way we all felt at that moment. What we saw
around us was not curiosity or sympathy, but a rat-eyed
lust for gossip, tongue-clucking disapproval and the
kind of ambient smugness that says people who have
the arrogance to make movies richly deserve whatever
disaster befalls them.
I pretty
much gave up funerals and wakes after Brandon's service,
for reasons having mostly to do with the ghouls who
show up to be seen grieving, the 'coffin riders.' There
are better ways to honor the dead. I've said this before:
Movies are like war in that war can be hell. You're
frequently in some far-flung location where you have
to bring in all your own supplies and keep from going
nuts. Sometimes there is glory, sometimes there are
casualties. But unless you've been there and done it,
you have no idea what it is like no matter how many
dumb movie magazines you read.
I know
a lot of changes had to occur in the film after Brandon's
death, What were some of them and do you agree with
the direction the film ultimately went in?
It was
the same direction it had been going when principal
photography started, only now it gained the resonance
of Brandon's death. Shitcanning the entire film would
have been more cost-effective to the money guys, and
Alex Proyas did not want to continue until a couple
of the actors encouraged the idea that the only thing
more depressing than burying Brandon would be to bury
Brandon and the movie, which had a chance of standing
as legacy. Whether you like the movie or not is irrelevant;
put yourself in our position. Once the decision was
made to complete the film, three quarters of our original
crew put themselves on hold or worked for next to nothing
just to be there. Going back gained an almost spiritual
urgency. And the final shot of the production was the
giant, flaming Crow outline, which seemed like a nice
closure until we realized we had to reshoot the disinterment
scene from point of view inside the grave. That chilled
our freakin' self-satisfied closure, but good.
I knew
a lot of people would go to see the film out of morbid
nosiness. But that's an opening weekend sort of thing;
it burns sometimes hot, always fast. I had no idea
people would obsessively come back and watch it over
and over. There are, today, at least 20 CROW websites.
Think of some of the other films that came out in 1994
-- are people still talking about SCHINDLER'S LIST,
or TRUE LIES, or FORREST GUMP? Good or bad, they were
forgotten as soon as they won some trophies and got
shoved aside to make room for the next blockbuster,
and ... and here people are still talking about THE
CROW.
I miss
little things -- looks, lines, or explanations for
why some strange-seeming things were there. In the
first cut we had, some things were better. I'll give
you an example of a microscopic one: In the pawnshop
scene when Eric says, "I'm looking for something in
an engagement ring," we originally had the camera on
Brandon when he said, "Gold." He had the perfect expression;
it was a good moment. But in the interests of tightening,
we now see a reaction shot of Gideon when Eric says "gold," and
the moment is missed, and the scene gains nothing apart
from being speedier by a quarter second.
The Reznor
song is rhythmed to the action better in the first
cut. The bad guys aremore individualized. You get to
see Funboy totally out of his mind on drugs, basing
like a demon, then licking the needle he uses to shoot
up Darla. The heart-to-heart scene in Albrecht's apartment
had room to breathe. The infamous liquor store robbery
by 12 year olds was intact. While we were shooting
that scene, the news let us know that a couple of 13
years olds had tried to boost, at gunpoint, a convenience
market somewhere in New England. The rough cut, incidentally,
was temp-tracked to This Mortal Coil and Gabriel's
score to THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, in case you
hadn't guessed.
One of
the most obviously reworked scenes surprisingly works
very well - the scene where Sarah speaks to the empty
apartment, which was originally dialogue between her
and Eric as Eric sits at the fireplace burning all
the remnants of his past life. We just removed Eric's
lines and played it straight for the most part. It's
a bit more obscure, but it works a hundred times better.
What
is your opinion of the franchisement that has occurred
with THE CROW?
Ed Pressman
took on THE CROW as a franchise from the beginning;
he said so in a dozen interviews. Brandon was signed
to star in three CROW movies. So all this mawkish card-shuffling
about what the "mythology" really means is bullshit.
Now it's more about selling collector's cards, and
Slurpee cups, and tchotchkes nobody with a brain needs.
None of this junk would move without the emotional
connection to Brandon. That's commerce. This is, after
all, America. So far, I've turned down writing two
CROW sequels and a TV show. That's my choice. The only
way I would ever have been willing to tackle a sequel
would be if Alex had returned to direct one; then,
sure, I'd throw in with him. But I don't have to; he
doesn't have to. I've since written two other features
for Alex.
They
are?
Final
drafts on DIAL M FOR MONSTER (by Proyas and Brendan
Young), a really grotesque comedy featuring aliens
and Mexican wrestlers, and BOOK OF DREAMS (by Proyas),
a surreal pastiche of dream worlds presented as a declassified
documentary. Dreams is partially shot already.
What
in your opinion happened between your script and
the finished product of LEATHERFACE?
We lost
a key producer in the very early stages of the project.
Jeff Burr, the director, had to swing in on a vine
at the eleventh hour with no prep and no down time
from his previous feature. And Jeff was not part of
the rewrite process -- so, with the replacement producer,
you have three plans all pulling against each other.
Were
you happy with the way the film came out?
In that
I got a full production gig on the first feature screenplay
I ever wrote, I'm happy that it came out at all. Does
the movie represent the script? Not really. But I'm
past indicting anybody; basically no one is completely
happy with the final version as released. The workprint
has enjoyed some popularity as a bootleg item, but
it's no closer to the script than the release version.
Think of it as a foothold; you try to do better with
each job, until the next script and the movie made
from it ultimately converge. Insofar as that arc, I
am getting a little closer to satisfaction on each
new project. On the other hand, I heard that the draft
I wrote of FREDDY VS. JASON for New Line -- as the
fifth writer in a chain of eight or nine so far --
has been redrafted into a straight comedy. In some
cases, you just accept the credit and move on.
Given
that Hollywood is such a difficult environment to
work in and one that is prone to the raping of any
writer's vision, what lures you to continue work
there?
There's
no place on Earth you can get paid better just for
making shit up. I've heard Hollywood is a sewer, a
destroyer of talent, all my life and it just isn't
true. You have to understand ground rules, guilds,
what titles mean and how expert liars can function
without malice. You have to learn how not to take certain
spiky things personally, and be reasonably user-friendly
to people who consider themselves "more normal" than
you ... but what wage jobs exist in the world where
you don't feel you've blown opportunities, could have
done better, or have to put up with assholes now and
then? The dynamics of the deal are like armor you wear
into battle. If you return from the field alive, you
win. It's the Filmaking-is-Hell scenario again. Some
writers are conscientious objectors. Some are just
grunts. Some are like Patton.
The people
who still want to believe in what Michael Crichton
calls "the 'They Killed My Baby' tradition of writerly
whining" in regard to the movie industry should read
the book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, by John
Gregory Dunne, which is the real deal about the ups
and downs of spending eight years to make a movie --
not the envious, fantasy jerkoff that is the mainstay
of movie crapzines, which are written by outsiders,
for outsiders. The bottom line of working in Hollywood
is that the pleasure is equal to the pain, and both
can be considerable, but neither is guaranteed. Movies
are the artistic medium of this century that reaches
the greatest audience, so there's your motivation.
And believe it or don't, but it is possible to use
the system as much as the system uses you, and if you
understand that, then the whole process can be fantastic.
Out
of curiosity, what do you consider to be examples
of great film making? What are your Top Ten films?
I don't
have a list, but a pretty good barometer of a "top" film
is any film that profoundly changes the way films are
done after it. Take Alien as a perfect example -- it
changed everything. I knew everything there was to
know about that film before it came out. I'd read every
draft of the script and interviewed a lot of the principal
cast and crew in 1978. And the first time I saw it
complete and assembled, it still blew me away... and
pretenders are still trying to imitate it nearly 20
years later. Its progenitor was really CREATURE FROM
THE BLACK LAGOON, a movie I could watch a couple of
times a year for the rest of my life, and probably
will. Some recent odds and ends:
My favorite
horror movie of 1994 was THE ROAD TO WELVILLE; I've
seen it maybe 20 times. Of 1996, FARGO, which I saw
on Academy Award night (in 1996), which is the best
night of the year to go to the movies -- it's the only
way you can avoid all the Oscar bullshit.
SEVEN
- or SE7EN - impressed me. In these days of politically-correct
sweetness and light, we need more dark movies. I just
wish they'd kept the original ending but the reason
the ending got changed was thanks to focus group screening
polls, which have outlived their usefulness by a couple
of decades at least. You spend a year or two on a film
and some nitwit who got a free pass has the power to
change your ending? Fuck that.
Cronenberg's
CRASH is a great example of a movie that's important
even if it is flawed. It's important because it is
a film chock-full of automobile accidents and sex -
neither of which are designed to appeal to the prurient
interests of a 17-year-old. And it is important because
it stands as an artistic work in spite of the Family
Values Nazis and their insectile ratings systems.
Is
it possible for one of your stories or books to ever
get a fair treatment on film?
If it
worked for Michael Crichton and J.G. Ballard, it can
happen for me, sure. Has it? It hasn't really had a
chance yet. I don't write my fiction while selling
the movie rights in my head; nor do I particularly
write film work for any other medium. Keep in mind
that all of my produced film work has been as a hired
gun for material that did not originate with me. Chainsaw
III was a sequel. THE CROW was based on a comic book.
The Showtime OUTER LIMITS I wrote was an original,
but it was severely compromised before the first draft
was even finished, then butchered by a hack, so by
the time it actually got near a camera, it was a crippled,
hopeless thing. I'm working on two features right now
for which all the basic ingredients were supplied.
My job is to mix the ingredients palatably. To turn
one-liners into characters, and log lines into a coherent
story. I hope. As for specs, who cares? As Larry Cohen
said, "Every asshole in Hollywood has got a spec script
in his back pocket." Really titanic assholes have one
in each back pocket. Nothing counts unless you get
paid for it. As ground rules go, it's a pretty simple
proposition, really.
Would
you ever want to see The Shaft or The Kill Riff be
made into a motion picture? Would you want to write
the script for them?
The Shaft
might be fun to distill. I'm afraid The Kill Riff would
date at lightspeed no matter what the prevailing musical
fashion is. By the time a movie could be written, shot
and released, it'd look as outmoded as Phantom of the
Paradise does now.
Who
would your choice of directors be?
Val Lewton,
but unfortunately, he's dead. I'm kidding. Not about
the dead part. Never mind...
Do
you think that anthologies are a good way for readers
to be introduced to new writers?
Not a
good way, but absolutely the best way. That's why I
made sure there were a couple of "first sales" in Silver
Scream. Mark Alan Arnold was an editor, but nobody
knew him as a writer until "Pilgrims to the Cathedral
of Sleaze," which title I forced him to shorten. Tobe
Hooper got a kick out of getting book credit. Mick
Garris' first published short story sale was to Silver
Scream - "A Life in the Cinema," the story he fondly
calls "the cocksucking zombie baby story." Anyone who
thinks Mick is a creampuff, based on some of his film
work, should read his short fiction, which is hard
to find, but which will knock your dick in the dirt.
Do
you ever get tired of being referred to as the "Father
of Splatterpunk?"
Nope.
It's out of my hands. I think the curse of life is
that you don't get to choose the thing that makes you
immortal -- if anything at all. Your worst novel becomes
a popular classic. Your most mediocre song is a hit.
Nobody uses your chewiest quotes, and the dumbest thing
you ever said gets used as a bloc excerpt. The worst
photo of you ever taken is the most reprinted. I just
shudder to think what the Mother of Splatterpunk might
be like. Think of the children!
In
the realm of horror fiction, who do you think is
out there plying their craft and doing it well? Who
do you read?
Sometimes
I get so fed up I say, "I don't read horror anymore," which
isn't strictly true, and is bad, besides, to dismiss
it that way is to automatically corral it into t he
kind of cut-and-dried "genre" I hate. It's still the
best when it comes at you unheralded, without the "horror" label
plastered all over it, because it has a better chance
to surprise you. There's a plot twist a third of the
way through John Farris' Sacrifice that knocked me
flat and left me gasping; there's another key revelation
of that sort in Wildwood. I like Farris. Sometimes
he seems to be the only adult out there writing scary
stories for the mainstream. I just discovered William
Browning Spencer. I enjoy Thomas Ligotti and Michael
Blumlein. I devoured the new, "lost" Shirley Jackson
collection, and am prodigiously reading every volume
of North Atlantic's ten-volume Theodore Sturgeon omnibus
as the books come out. I have a decided taste for the
erotically-charged stuff produced by the Reform School
Riot Grrls of horror -- where's my list? -- Poppy Brite,
Christa Faust, Kathe Koja, Lucy Taylor, Caitlin Kiernan,
Nancy Kilpatrick in her "Amarantha Knight" incarnation
(the fact that Christa is my wife has absolutely no
bearing on my appreciation of her fiction). If Richard
Christian Matheson ever finishes his second collection,
I'll read it - probably in an afternoon. Joe Lansdale
is an automatic must-read, although I could live quite
happily in the absence of any more Hap and Leonard
novels, which is what he's been concentrating on recently.
Doug Winter needs to finish his damned debut novel
so I can read it. Tim Lucas, who wrote Throat Sprockets,
has just finished his second novel, titled The Only
Criminal. I'm there. I wish Rod Whitaker -- Trevanian
-- would write another novel; it's been nearly 14 years.
I don't know if he died or just switched pseudonyms
again.
It's not
just the writers you read now, but the writers you
consistently return to. Robert Bloch taught an important
lesson when he told me that late in life he'd decided
not to keep books in his house unless he had read them
twice. We must not forget Fritz Leiber, or for that
matter, Joseph Payne Brennan, or Gerald Kersh. Right
now, in England, Stephen Jones is assembling Karl Edward
Wagner's final collection under the title Exorcism & Ecstasies.
Karl's first collection, In a Lonely Place, was one
of those books that just picked me up and shook me.
And that's
just in so-called "horror." Good thing you didn't ask
me about anything else scary ...
What
made you decide to embark on such a daunting task
as writing your Outer Limits Companion?
I had
no choice. It was either go all the way ... or don't
go.
How
long did that book take to pull together?
It was
over ten years from first interview to publication
of the first edition, which was in 1986. To get to
the book version, the publishing world had to be lubed
up with an eight-part series in Twilight Zone Magazine.
Then I redid a "bullet version" of the TZ piece for
people who could no longer find the book. And I am
just now putting the finishing touches on a heavily-revised
second edition, for GNP/ Crescendo. This is not the
old book with a surplus catch-up chapter tacked on.
Every page has added text and corrections. New photos.
New layout. Larger format. Higher price. I just hope
I can get it out the door this year.
What
prompted you to agree to write your column for Fango
and why did you to cease doing it?
I started
out writing columns, and I like editorial writing.
Nonfiction writing. "Raving & Drooling" -- the
title -- was cooked up about 12 years ago when a friend
and I decided to write, for Fangoria, a pseudonymous
column that just arbitrarily ripped the shit out of
all comers, indiscriminately. It was satirically intended.
It was supposed to be like punk writing. "Raving & Drooling" was
also intended as a riddle -- the first person to place
the reference correctly would get a free subscription
to Fangoria. That idea died the death it basically
deserved.
Ever since
I did the two-part Chainsaw III "set diary" for Fangoria,
Tony Timpone periodically asked if I'd do a column.
Virtually every horror magazine in business in 1990
asked me for a regular column at one time or another.
I quickly calculated that I could spend all my writing
time cranking out columns and make very abysmal money
indeed. I took Tony up on the standing offer in 1992
based on two things: My need to write nonfiction, and
Fangoria's readership -- 250,000, which blew any and
all similar competition into the mud. I wrote 40 columns
totaling about 80,000 words of text. That's a novel.
I stopped
because you could never get far enough ahead on deadlines,
and my short story output was eroding. Stories go out
into the world and get reprinted, resold, anthologized
and collected if you're lucky; people keep reading
them. Readers read columns once and that's it. I've
said that I wrote the Fango column as a two-page spread
so people could read it at the newsstand if they resented
the cover price of the magazine. Except for the fact
that Fangoria is prohibited from printing the f-word,
I was never censored or restricted in any way. Tony
gave me complete freedom to ramble on about whatever
I wanted. Early on, he did change two column titles,
both for the better. I think he could sense when I
wasn't inspired, there; I always have trouble with
titles.
Presently
there's interest in collecting the columns in book
form. Tony has graciously told me the door's open at
Fangoria any time I want to continue. I put the column
down, the deadlines evaporated, and I quickly finished
seven or eight new stories, two of them novelettes,
all of which should be out by the time this interview
is read by paying customers.
What
is the present situation with the anthology you're
editing, Look Out He's Got a Knife.
It's not
an anthology, but a collection of my own stories, and
it bit the dust basically when a small press did, and
got subsumed into a larger new collection with the
provisional title Crypt Orchids - another term I got
from Bob Bloch, by the way. If the fates are with me,
it should be out sometime in 1997.
Can
you tell me a little about how you and Christa Faust
met. fell in love and got married?
We met
in New York City, in Linda Marotta's apartment, and
spent lots of time walking around the city in the dead
of night. The "love" part was totally out of our control;
it overwhelmed us.
Christa
hauled stakes for Los Angeles to live with me and promptly
got physically attacked by an ex of mine; Christa made
like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens when she blows the
parasite out of theairlock... then she and I had a
very nice dinner with friends. About a year later,
we got officially married three times, the first time
in a helicopter at the stroke of midnight. For us.
The second time was for family, and the third, for
friends on Hallowe'en.
What
can we expect to see from David J. Schow in the near
future?
Ever since
writing movies became my "day job," I've learned not
to curse in-work projects by talking much about them.
The most perfect assembly can go horribly wrong at
the last minute, and in the most annoying way. Anybody
who hasn't by now read a recent short story of mine
hasn't been reading anthologies. Novel #3 is still
on hold. The totally-revamped Outer Limits Companion
will be out, I hope, this year.
If you're
after new stories, check out Dark Terrors 2 (ed. Stephen
Jones), Love in Vein 2 (ed. Poppy Brite), Lethal Kisses
(ed. Ellen Datlow), Rage Magazine #7 (the Valentine's
Day 1997 issue), and the new issue of Midnight Graffiti.
Let me
know what you think of Doug Winter's gigantic new concept
anthology, which will be called Revelations in America
(May 1997), but Millennium everywhere else.
Things
I just kicked out the door: A 2000-word piece on Karl
for the aforementioned Exorcism & Ecstasies, and
an Introduction for Volume 3 of the Prima Books series
of Outer Limits novelizations edited by Debbie Notkin.
One day, suddenly, you check and realize you've got
a whole file drawer full of odds-and-ends writing like
these. It's all to drive bibliographers crazy. |
Director Alex Proyas with Brandon Lee in
the first (unused) test makeup for THE CROW. (Photo by
DJS; Copyright ©David J. Schow, 1993. All Rights Reserved.
Used by Permission.)
DJS and the dazzling Christa Faust costumed
as "executive extras," on location in the ballroom of the
Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, for an appearance
in the Mick Garris-directed version of THE SHINING. (Photo
by Frank Darabont.) |
