Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Jeffrey Vernon Matucha interview

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area and a refugee of the Punk/Metal/New Wave/My-God-what-did-we-do-last-night? daze of the 1980's and early 90's. Born in Palo Alto, raised in Berkeley, and lost in San Francisco on more occasions than I can remember, the stories of the Concrete Jungle can be just as ridiculous and bizarre as they can be intense and tragic, and that's what I try to bring to the fore with my writing.


Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

Late last year I published two books at more or less the same time: my short story compilation Short Songs: Tales From the Punk Side, and book five of my Skye Wright series called Requiem Descent. I really did work on both books at the same time, which is a new one for me. Publishing them around the same time was planned!

Short Songs features supporting characters from my Skye Wright series. They were becoming so complex and characters in their own right that they needed stories of their own.

Requiem Descent is the continuation of Skye Wright adventures, in which the weight of the rock and roll world threatens to crush her spirit to the point of her near self-destruction. It’s the fifth book in the Skye Wright series, and could be read on its own, but it’s best to start with book one, The Rise and fall of Skye Wright.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I write literary fiction about crazy punks doing crazy punk things, which means lots of wild stories about clubs and parties and messed up musicians trying to keep a band together. I try to shed light on alternative scenes for the muggles, for those people who’ve never experienced the underground scenes of alt music, fashion, and art.

But I also do my best to portray the subject of addiction and recovery in a realistic way. There’s so much misinformation about those subjects, especially in mainstream media. I also emphasize the struggles of the poor, the working poor, and the working class. I really emphasize that in my short story South Berkeley, one of the stories from my collection Short Songs, featuring my character Gust the gutter punk.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

My mother taught me to read at a very early age. She had me reading James Thurber by the time I was five! I was, by far, the best reader in my first grade class. I was fascinated and entranced by stories. I knew at a very early age that I wanted to become a writer or a filmmaker, to create my own stories.

What my very young self didn’t know was that the life ahead of me was going to provide the inspiration and material for those stories: dealing with life trauma, diving into the off-the-hook underground scene of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the burden of drugs and alcohol would shape my life in a way that my child self could not have possibly imagined.

What inspires you to write? 

I was a wild clubber in the San Francisco Bay Area when I was in my teens and twenties. Back then the volume on everything was up: The punk scene, the metal scene, the gay scene, the Goth scene… I got caught up in the club and bar life and found myself getting deep into the drug scenes. Basically if someone were to make a movie about my young life, John Waters would have to direct it! I just have too many stories to tell.

I would also say that my characters inspire me to keep writing. When you start out you think you’re going to be a puppet master, manipulating the lives of these people you created. Turns out they come to life in ways you never expected. She would do things that simply baffled me. I still don’t know why Skye Wright had to punch that flight jacket girl in the nose at the Gail Burp show. “Don’t hit her. Don’t hit… Damn. She hit her.” 

As an example, Skye Wright’s band The Dynamite Chicks wrote a song called “Atomic Bomb Betty,” about a wild and sexy punk that everyone’s in love with, even though she has more red flags than a Chinese military parade. In the series, they even have an artist draw a rendition of Atomic Bomb Betty and are thinking of making her a band mascot, a la’ The Circle Jerks mosher. Yes, that’s where my writing is at: my fictional characters are writing their own fictional characters!

It took me a long time to really find out what motivates my character Skye Wright, as I kept creating stories for her and her back story became more complex. I tell people that I don’t really write her anymore. I just watch what she does and report back.

Which of your works has meant the most to you?

I really think my best writing is the first two books of my Skye Wright series, the first book The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright and book two, The Return of the Dynamite Chicks. The first two books of the series is really one long story divided into two books, and when I came up with the story I knew exactly how it was going to go. I not only really brought my character Skye to life, but created a whole host of dynamic supporting characters.

But my personal favorite is my novel Stella Maris. It’s Skye’s story right before the Rise and Fall series. It’s a very Bay Area and Berkeley kind of story, featuring one character inspired by my mother. 

It’s also the one work of mine I wish my mother had been around to read. Only a few hours after I completed the manuscript for my editor, back in September of 2021, my step-father called me to tell me my mother had suddenly passed on. 

My mother not only read all of my earlier books, she helped me edit them. She’s the only person I know who’s definitely read my first four novels.

Later on this year I plan to go to her final resting place and read Stella Maris to her. I know she would have loved it.

(Also, yes, I know Cormac McCarthy also wrote a book called Stella Maris. But my Stella Maris came out first, before his!)

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

I can’t honestly say I would do over any of my older works. My very first book, Gutter Folklore, is very tongue-in-cheek. It has some really outrageous and silly scenes. In fact, I’ve gone through it recently because I was reformatting it. I know a lot of writers are tempted to redo and rewrite their earlier works, and I can’t say I didn’t change anything, but I wanted to make sure I retained the original spirit and story of my earlier work. 

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Some of my favorite classical writers include Dostoyevsky and Richard Wright. Especially Richard Wright. He’s probably my favorite novelist. I also got caught up in Dorothy Parker and the aforementioned James Thurber when I was quite young. Later on I got into Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, Ann Petry, and Charles Bukowski.

I know many writers who have tried to write like Hunter S Thompson, including myself, but unless you’re Hunter S Thompson, you cannot write like him. He’s definitely a huge inspiration

These days I’ve been really inspired by writers I’ve gotten to know personally, writers like CE Hoffman and Simon Warwick Beresford, and Dani Dassler who also writes punk novels. Dani and I have become really good friends! They’re writing really inspires me. A key scene in my drug rehab book A Long Slow Aftermath was inspired by Dani Dassler’s novel PR. 

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

The two biggest problems I have with my work is time and marketing. I don’t have as much time as I would like to work on my stories. I have a backlog of ideas and projects I want to develop, but that damnable day job keeps getting in the way. My dream is to become a full-time author, to be successful enough to just work on my art.

Which comes to marketing. As an indie author I have to summon up my own personal Herb Tarlek and do all the hustling myself, usually on social media. It’s just such a different animal. Really, writing my stories is so much easier than getting them around!

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

I’m working on a novella and my friend Shelly Johnson gave it a wonderful beta read. She even edited it! I’ve also learned a lot from my friend CE Hoffman who is one of my marketing gurus. 

And so many of my friends have bought my books and left reviews and even more. I found out I was nominated for Best Local Author in the Reno News and Review newspaper. I initially had no idea until a friend mentioned it to me! Turns out my friend Kim Rochelle, a very talented actor friend of mine, nominated me! 

And like I said before, my writing friends inspire me just with their material. They’re scary good writers and reading their works inspire me and my stories. A key scene in my novel A Long Slow Aftermath, about a man adjusting to life after a drug rehab, was directly inspired by a scene from Dani Dassler’s novel PR, where my character Preston takes his blind friend Toshi to her very first punk show!

What does literary success look like to you? 

I want to get my writing out there. I want to get my stories and novels into the hands of more readers. I’ve talked to several writers about this, and some of them have encouraged me to be realistic, to stop having daydreams about going viral and just enjoy expressing myself.

I don’t compromise on my writing. I write what I feel is raw and real. I’m not trying to write pop stories to hit the charts, but I still want to see my work take off. Some people have counseled me to be realistic, to take solace in small victories such as just expressing myself and enjoying what sales I do have.


Personally, I’m not interested in being realistic. That’s just too depressing. I’m going to hang onto my delusions and keep plugging my writing, while I daydream about signing the deal for the Netflix miniseries!

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?  

I’m about to publish a novella entitled Trieste. It’s based on a true story about life surprises and unexpected family relations coming out of the blue. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out!

For more information, visit: 

https://needlepictures.com/tbd/

Saturday, February 15, 2025

[Link] What's at Stake? Here's How You Find Out.

by Becca Puglisi

Stakes are a crucial part of your story because they define what will happen if the protagonist fails. To build reader empathy, you need this piece in place because when the reader sees what’s at stake, and they recognize why it matters to the character, the story becomes important. It matters. 

Stakes also create tension when the reader realizes what’s on the line. So when the stakes are referenced early on, readers are more likely to be drawn in and root for the character’s success.

But that empathy connection only happens if the reader can see what’s at stake. And that can only happen if the author knows what’s on the line. Sometimes, it’s obvious. What are the consequences if Sheriff Brody doesn’t catch the shark in Jaws? Death and dismemberment. In the original Inside Out, if all of Riley’s emotions aren’t acknowledged and won’t work together, her identity is at risk. 

But other times, it’s harder to identify what’s at stake in a story. So I’d like to share a simple method for figuring that out.

Read the full article: https://writersinthestormblog.com/2024/10/whats-at-stake-heres-how-you-find-out/

Friday, February 14, 2025

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION PROUDLY PRESENTS MYSTERY MEN (& WOMEN) VOL 10

Airship 27 Production is thrilled to present four brand new pulp stories featuring some of the most bizarre and fantastic characters ever imagined.

Skymarshal – A brand new aviation hero takes to the sky curtesy of award-winning writer Teel James Glenn. In this debut adventure he takes on fliers from prehistoric times.

The Black Wraith – Jonathan W. Sweet’s beautiful but deadly masked warrior returns in a gripping tale. A mysterious brute is butchering petty criminals in the back alleys of the city and the police suspect the black-clad avenger.

Walking Deadman – When a convicted mobster is sentenced to death by electric chair, he miraculously survives only to discover his body has been rejuvenated. All from the mind of writer Carson Demmans.

The Ghoul – Harding McFadden & Eleanor Hawkins offer up another tale starring the special investigative team lead by Marvin “Ghoul” MacCormac. Their mission; find missing children in a small town and rescue them.

Award-winning Art Director Rob Davis provides the art for both the great black and white interior illustrations and the gorgeous color cover. “Our fans love this series,” says Airship 27 Managing Editor Ron Fortier. “And we’re happy to bring them more.”

Once again, gloves are off, as Airship 27 presents four truly amazing pulp yarns.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now from Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

DEI and the Teaching of American Literature

For the record, as a lit/comp teacher, I integrate writing from all racial/cultural lines possible within a given unit. For example, for the founding documents section, we not only look at the DeclarationConstitution, and Bill of Rights, we also read selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl so students can see how the US failed to actually implement life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promises to those who weren't white, male, or land owners. 

In our unit on the Individual and Society, we examine writing from Booker T. Washington, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, and Walt Whitman, along with an extended study of American Born Chinese (the graphic novel). 

In our unit on Power, Protest, and Change, we look at the literature that confronted inequity and led to changing status and rights for women, workers, and African-Americans. This includes works by Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Langston Hughes, Upton Sinclair, and an extended study of Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram... Or Autobiography as Pulp Fiction

by Stuart Hopen

We never learn the narrator’s actual name; which is not to say the narrator is unnamed. In fact, he has many names and many identities. The narrator’s “good name” as that term is used under the local parlance, is Lindsay, but that came from a counterfeit passport. The Indian locals call him “Linbaba,” or “Mr. Penis.” He will acquire other names in the course of the novel, including the title of the novel itself, which means “man of God’s Peace.” 

The narrator’s s real name might be the author’s, for the book’s jacket touts many similarities between the fictional narrator and Gregory David Roberts. Both author and his fictionalized alter ego were driven by despair over a bitter divorce and child custody award to seek solace in heroin addiction, which led to crime, prison, escape, and then flight to a slum in India. 

Even though almost all fiction contains varying degrees of autobiography, and vice versa, a close identification between author and fictitious character carries many risks. One can’t help but snicker at the photos of Ian Fleming, gun in hand, on the James Bond book covers, or Mickey Spillane naming his tough-guy hero after himself. Falsified autobiography is a class of literary pariah unto itself, for anger follows the discovery that one has been successfully fooled, notwithstanding the way that achieving the same end is lauded as a virtue in a work explicitly labeled as fiction. Perhaps with the aim of avoiding the kind of scrutiny and controversy that befell Henri Charrière, the author of Papillion, another highly embellished, ostensibly autobiographical work about prison and escape, the author of Shantaram delivers an exculpatory disclaimer—this is fiction. But there an implicit disclaimer to disclaimer. It is kind of a con job, but it is a brilliant con job. 

Roberts grabs his reader by the labels, and demands attention with his superb opening paragraph, a near perfect fusion of narrative hook, character arc, and thematic summation:

Saturday, February 8, 2025

[Link] How to Portray Time and Memory in Stories

by Anita Felicelli

Time is a tremendously elastic concept, but if you think about it, almost all stories implicitly deal with time: They relate a temporal sequence of moments or events, rather than describing a single moment. But the relationship between time and stories is even more profound than that, I think. 

The author Joy Williams has observed, “What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time….”

The origins of my short story collection How We Know Our Time Travelers, which is about the oceanic “horror and incomprehensibility of time,” was my sense, after becoming a parent and learning to accept suffering serious illnesses, that time would not work the way I expected it would when I was younger, and instead would remain terrifyingly mysterious and slippery throughout the rest of my life. I could not quite grasp time when I thought about the concept too hard, and yet it was, perhaps, the hugest motivating force in my life. 

There was no linear progression, as many traditional children’s novels had taught—rather, there were layers of time, and within my single body were selves I was barely acquainted with any longer, and yet, given the right circumstances, I’d feel myself returned along the tides of memory to these points of time in which I’d existed as another self: The young storyteller who wrote about girls who couldn’t find their way home; the teenager who painted weird, surreal images on wood and casually gave them away to friends; a young college student drunk on newfound freedom and power; the baby lawyer who acted like a compassionate sixty year old while withering away; the newlywed who finally embraced the unpredictability of a life in books after years of trying on suits and predicting legal outcomes; the excited new mother, and, then, the older mother with illnesses coming to terms with decisions already made, moments that couldn’t be retrieved—and the heartache that followed.

Strangely, I became aware, in the course of thinking about my own ending, that my body also contained within in a range of futures—different places where the train might jump the track, distinct last stations. The body as a vehicle for past and future time travel. As I came to conceive of it in my book, time travel was an ordinary phenomenon that happened daily in the mind, even when least expected, triggered by sense memory and uncanny resemblances. While working on How We Know Our Time Travelers, I drew on the intuition that time allows every moment to coexist with other moments.

In the title story, for instance, a middle-aged artist holds an open studio at which she meets a young man who deeply, overwhelmingly reminds her of her now jaded and cynical gallerist husband, and who she comes to believe is her husband journeying forward in time to meet her. The story moves from her uncertainty about the empirical reality of who she’s seeing—to an alarming but slightly erotic certainty about the young man, whoever he is. With subtle shifts in sentence construction and word choice, I tried to frame the emotional reality of the story to create the feeling she has traveled back, or he has traveled into her present. But there is also the interpretation that she is insane. 

Read the full article: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/how-to-portray-time-and-memory-in-stories

Friday, February 7, 2025

Lynda Cordova releases Poems for a Life Worth Living

Lynda Cordova was born in the San Joaquin Valley in California but moved to Arizona with her parents when she was six weeks old. When she was five years old, her family returned to the San Joaquin Valley, where she lived until finishing high school.

Lynda knew that she wanted to write from her early childhood, and began writing while in high school.

After finishing college and serving in the military, Lynda returned to the San Joaquin Valley to be closer to her family.

Her first book, Family Time Poems is a sample of poems she has written over the last several years. She is currently working on a series of fairy tale novellas for children and those who are young at heart. She continues to write poetry and is working on other writing projects as well, including her first fantasy novel intended for teens and adults.

In her "spare time" Lynda enjoys reading, listening to music as well as playing the viola, singing and spending time with friends and family.

https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Worth-Living-Lynda-Cordova-ebook/dp/B00TTHC5IU 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Slicing the Pie: Art. Craft. Technique. Style.


Hey, writer types! For the next (next-next, actually) roundtable, let's talk about art, craft, technique, and style. For some these four words may be synonyms. For others, they may be different ways of slicing the same pie. For still others, they may have start differences between them. If you're familiar with my basic interview questions, you'll remember this one: "Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Let's all discuss that together, shall we?

What does art, craft, technique, and style mean to you? 

Paul Landri: Writing is absolutely an art. However much like cooking, if you don't have a technique for the dish, you'll find people spitting out your food into their napkins or feeding it to the dog.

I don't think I have a particular style, but if you read my work you'll see the influence of the old Del Rey Star Wars Novels are pervasive throughout my books. I cut my teeth on those books when I was in the 7th grade and that style of writing comes out a lot even after all these years and countless other novels I've read that have influenced my writing.

I'm very conversational in tone, as I am sure you can read here. I find it allows the reader ease of access. I feel like you can be verbose but only as long as your still engaging the reader and drawing them in.

Sheela Chattopadhyay: I would rank writing as both an art and a science, rather than keeping the continuum as a straight line. It's more of a circle with each moment of writing blending both art and science together in different proportions as needed. This is from my experience in other types of writing and communications over the years in different disciplines.

Bobby Nash: Art is the part that comes out of me naturally, I think. It’s the raw, creative part. Craft is the work. I work on getting better at my craft. Technique is how I handle the craft. These are the tricks and learned odds 'n ends. Style is how I merge art, craft, and technique.

Or I could be completely wrong. This is honestly the most thought I’ve put into these definitions ever.

Ef Deal: Dead honest here: I don't really know how to address the question so far as distinctions. I will say that craft deals with structure. Art deals with the methods you use to evoke a mood: the use of language and poetic devices, for example. Style has a lot to do with your own voice as you select your words. I have no idea how to define technique in this sense. Does it mean one's approach to crafting a story? Plotter or Pantser? No clue.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Bobby Nash on Moonstone's Paladins!

Tell us a bit about Paladins, please.


I wrote a novel for Moonstone Books called PaladinsPaladins is a team-up story featuring several pulp characters, old and new. In the best heroic tradition, the characters find themselves facing a common foe and team-up to save the world. When the call came in from Joe Gentile at Moonstone Books to work on this, there was already some of the parts in place, including the title. The Night Marcher is a new character being introduced so I was introduced to her. I did not create her but enjoyed fleshing out her world. Domino Lady came on board when I did. She and I make a good team, and I’m always thrilled to write Domino Lady.

In Paladins, a mysterious villain seeks items of rare power. This brings the villain and his followers/henchmen into contact with lord of the jungle, Ki-Gor, his wife, Helene Vaughn, Ravenwood: The Stepson of Mystery, The Night Marcher, Judgment’s sidekick, Nelu Qui, and The Domino Lady. Eventually, their stories converge with explosive results.

How does this one continue the themes you revisit in your work or is it something in a different vein?


Good vs. evil is a theme I revisit often.

Saturday, February 1, 2025

[Link] Writing as Resistance

by Tim Waggoner

You’re a writer.

You live in a world that has problems – a lot of them – but you’ve always seen glimmers of light in the darkness, and they’ve encouraged you to keep writing, even if you sometimes wondered what the point was.

Then November 5, 2024 happened in America, and now you’re looking at January 20, 2025 careening toward us like an out-of-control freight train, and you see the famous line from Dante’s The Divine Comedy flash across your mind like the blazing letters on a Times Square jumbotron – “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” You’re well aware people sometimes quote that line as a joke, but you don’t feel much like laughing right now.

And you may not feel much like writing, either.

Dreaming dreams then translating them into words on a page (or screen) for others to read might seem like a ridiculous activity in the face of what’s coming, and I get that. But there are good – maybe even vital – reasons for you to keep writing.

Let’s talk about some of them.

But first…

Read the full article: https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2024/11/writing-as-resistance.html