This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:
May 14 Andrew Foley: I was going through my news
articles and I cut out "Writer sees Cowboys and Aliens in reel life" by
Andrea Sands on Aug. 2, 2011
in the Edmonton Journal.
It profiles Andrew Foley who is a 41 yr old freelance writer
and he co-wrote the original graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens that has been
turned into a movie. He has a book
called Done to Death.
He says: “It’s not too often that someone from Edmonton
produces something that gets this kind of level of worldwide recognition.”
I tried to look up the article and provide the link, but it
wasn’t there.
Justin Cronin: I cut out this short article “Vamping
around with Justin Cronin” by Mark Medley on Jun. 20, 2010. He
wrote a vampire trilogy starting in 2010.
It’s called The Passage.
Here are a few excerpts of the article:
The Passage: Cronin blends elements of horror,
science fiction, magic realism and fantasy into the novel. The author says he
was "trying to write a book that was outside categories by being in all
categories simultaneously."
"I took all the vampire novels and stories of my youth
and said, 'OK, let's go do my version of it,' " he says. "Let's
suppose all the lore out there, everything from Dark Shadows to Bram Stoker --
there's kind of a vampire myth in almost every culture, in one way or another.
It's ubiquitous -- let's suppose that the reason for all myths is that there's
something that happened. There's a real thing in the world. ... What would that
thing be?"
"There's a tendency in publishing to view you as a
certain kind of writer. You write a certain book and basically everybody
expects you to write that kind of book forever," explains Cronin, whose
two previous books were more literary endeavours, included 2002's Mary and
O'Neil, which won the Pen/Hemingway Award.
"We sent it out under a pseudonym because I basically
wanted anybody who encountered the manuscript to have absolutely no
preconceptions at all. None. ... I think it gave the book a truly uncorrupted
reading."
"I felt like I really found what I was meant to do."
http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/archives/story.html?id=1965b0b2-0ec0-48b4-9af5-b390fa0c0220
I then cut out this National Post article “When a serious novelist takes on the monsters” by Josh Visser on Oct. 2012. The Twelve is the second book to the trilogy. Here are the excerpts:
The Twelve:
The Passage told the story of a secret government plot to use a jungle virus to create a breed of super soldiers, using death-row inmates as test subjects.
The Twelve, as the always-tricky middle chapter of a trilogy, commits itself fully to world-building, expanding on its predecessor, but at the same time tells its own story without simply rehashing the past.
As well, several seemingly minor characters from the first book — a pedophile employed the U.S. government to clean the virals’ cages, for instance — are given significant backstories we didn’t necessarily know we wanted.
Eventually, the narrative shifts to Peter Jaxon, the “Everyman” soldier who provides the series’ moral compass; Alicia, who has become Buffy the Vampire Slayer thanks to a dose of the super-soldier serum; and, of course, Amy, the 100-year-old girl who may hold the key to everlasting life.
Considering the movie rights to The Passage have been sold to Ridley Scott’s production company, it’s hard not to notice the great effort and visual flair Cronin has put into his set pieces.
There are also more than a coincidental number of coincidences.
But at its core, The Twelve remains a remarkably frightening and tense novel. Between the genuinely terrifying monsters — soulless predators that literally rip humans limb from limb; no pretty boy Twilight antics here — or his willingness to kill off beloved characters, there is little room left on the page to breath.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/19/book-review-the-twelve-by-justin-cronin/
Novel article: I cut out this National Post article “They killed the novel, again” by Harry Mount in 2010. I couldn’t find the link to the article so I will have to type a few excerpts up:
Columnist Lee Siegal says: “Non- fiction is now the place that attracts all the good writers.”
“…Everyone is encouraged to be a writer, and writing is considered a sacred art.”
“So the Web should be a wake-up call to novelists- to try to be funnier, sadder, or more interesting.”
Siegal says most modern novelists are: “more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers.”
“Beryl Bainbridge, who died this week, recently told a friend of min, suffering from writer’s block, ‘Oh, it’s easy. You just listen to what people say, and then you write it down. You think of a story, and then you write it down.’
She was being self-deprecating for comic effect; not many people could do the writing down stuff as well as her. But, if someone does do it well enough, people will still want to go on reading novels. Forever.”
Charles Kaufman: I cut out this National Post blurb “Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s idiosyncratic writing advice” on Oct. 8, 2011:
How do you tell a story? Charlie Kaufman, the mind behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, recently gave a speech on that subject for the British Film Institute. Some extracts:
“Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It’s not the same thing…You find out which part of the story works, which part to embellish, which to jettison.
You fashion it. Your goal is to be entertaining. This is true for a story told at a dinner party, and it’s true for stories told through movies. Don’t let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include. As an experiment, write a non-story. It will have a chance of being different.”
May 15 Forced to Fight: I found this movie a long
time ago. Imdb.com says:
“Blackmailed back into the arena by a ruthless crime boss, a
former underground fighting legend must survive a gauntlet of savage matches
where losing just one fight... means losing it all.”
I saw the trailer and it looks pretty good.
https://studios.amazon.com/storybuilder
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