A movie called Predators came out this weekend, involving a species of vicious aliens who drop a bunch of humans onto a “game preserve” jungle planet to hunt them.  On the same day, I published a story called “Predator Bait,” involving shlubby men who try to hook up with young girls on the internet.  I now realize both pieces could be improved by combining them, so that Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishbourne et al have to survive on a hostile jungle planet while fleeing shlubby men who want to molest them.

Just listened to Samuel “Chip” Delaney (of Hogg and Dhalgren) read a long, amiable, detail-rich story about a fellow who likes eat his own excrement and semen.  Feel sort of fatalistic, for some reason.

Peter Straub, a few minutes ago (paraphrased from memory): “Literary writers working with a surreal or supernatural concept tend to be content to just describe it in detail.  A genre writer is more likely to feel compelled to turn it into a story, which may succeed brilliantly or fail miserably, but has more potential to be a satisfactory turn.”

Around this time last year, random people told me about Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg and seemed shocked that I never heard of it, much less read it.  So I bought it and read it, and it’s amazing.  Now the book the universe is telling me about is The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton.  On the list it goes.

1. At Examiner, an interview with Vanessa Place on L.A., Stein, La Medusa, etc.
2. At Flatmancrooked, an interview with Brian Evenson on nihilism, Kafka, film, etc.

Today I find myself at Readercon.  Surrounded by ravenous readers of genre literature.  These are my people, or some of them at least.  I love story.  I just got off a panel called “The Unknowable Character” (I think).  John Crowley said, “I don’t mean to channel Rumsfeld, but when it comes to unknowable characters, there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and each is useful to a writer.”  (I’m paraphrasing from memory.)