Site closed
After careful consideration, I’ve decided to stop updating this blog – at least for a while. I may come back to it after the holidays. Here are the reasons why:
- Pressing deadlines: I’ve got some high profile publicity work that I’ll be busy with at least through January. I’ve also got a few regular writing gigs that I need to focus on. I’m also interested in increasing the amount of writing on assignment I do for other content providers.
- Changing priorities: I’m becoming more interested in creating things these days. I’d like to sculpt, draw and paint more, and also maybe learn a few crafts. Plus, I’d like to do some creative nonfiction writing and maybe try to write a story or two.
All of this being said, you’ll probably see more of me, but just not here. I’ll be writing for publication, and of course you’ll see me here and there planning or promoting this or that book title. I still love the genre, but I think that my time and energy can be more constructively spent in other ways.
I’m going to leave the site up here as an archive, and in the meantime, if you’re interested in having me contribute reviews, essays or other material to your blog or publication, feel free to reach out at com Dot gmail At mattormeg
In which we discuss “Brundlefield”
For some godforsaken reason I got it into my head to conceptualize a mashup between David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” and the “Garfield” comic strip. Here’s a transcript between me and “Ravenbait” another Twitter user:
mattstaggs: Quick! Imagine a cross-over between the “Garfield” comic strip and David Cronenberg’s “The Fly”. GO!
ravenbait: Brundlefield vomiting forth upon his lasagne…
mattstaggs: Hey, @ravenbait what about a scene were Garfield’s tail falls off and he puts it in his medicine cabinet?
ravenbait: Or tries to convince Jon to get into the pod with him? Gets into an arm-wrestling match with Jon’s girlfriend & breaks her arm?
ravenbait: Finds really, thick black hairs on his paw and cuts them off? Dribbles his teeth into his catfood?
Links and things
Nick Hornby: not as predictable as you might think
Interview with 9 producer Tim Burton
JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer to get comic-book biographies
Why Heckling The President During a Joint Session of Congress is Not the Smartest Thing You Can Do
A hazing ritual: The bad review
Tor.com Publishes Its First Book
McSweeney’s: A Subtextual Reading of Your High-School French Textbook
MORE AFTER THE JUMP
Saying goodbye to a pet
I had to put my oldest cat, Booka, to sleep today. I knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier to do. She was 16 years old, a beautiful calico with whom I had practically grown from a kid to a man. She’s been with us from move to move, place to place.
Snip: “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks” by Ethan Gilsdorf
RELEASED FROM CAGES OF IDENTITY
“Geeks are a tolerant people. They take in ‘the other,’ the misfit toys, and not simply because no one else would sit with them at the cafeteria table. They have felt the sting of not being included. They know what it is like to not feel cool. Thus, it didn’t surprise me to learn during my quest that gamers and costumers—particularly LARPers or medieval reenactment groups like the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)—accept gays, lesbians cross-dressers, and transgendered folk without hesitation.
Populated with cross-bred elves and dwarves, fantasy realms make people feel not quite so freakish, releasing them from their cages of identity. Playing half- or non-human characters can be an exploration of their freak side, a new door into themselves…”
pp. 56-57, Chapter Four, “Into the Dungeon Again”
Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, by Ethan Gilsdorf.
Get “God’s Middle Finger” by Richard Grant
Richard Grant’s new book “God’s Middle Finger” explores the lawless expanse of the Sierra Madre mountain range, where narco-traffickers and murderers live with relative impunity alongside loincloth wearing Indians, rattlesnakes and venemous scorpions. Grant, a British writer with an “unfortunate obsession” with the region decides to travel the range for a year, a tip that ends with him being hunted by night like a wild animal by AK-47 toting “Mexican hillbillies”.
It’s out in trade paperback now. Get it.
Links and Things
What Book Should Omnivoracious Pair with Stone Brewing’s Latest Vertical Epic Ale?
Ernest Hemingway’s “Suicidal” U-Boat War
Ask a Book Question: #75 (Murakami and Books to Read in Japan)
The Bat Segundo Show: Dick Cavett
Private school library gets rid of all books
How To Promote a Book on Teacher’s Salary
Jovanka Vuckovic Speaks at The HP Lovecraft Film Fest 2008
The Black Death: A Personal History
Why are we still reading Dickens?
MORE AFTER THE JUMP
