I have a new article up at online literary zine Red Fez. Check it out here. For the occasion I even dressed up as one of the characters:
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I made a trailer to celebrate the release of my first book! I hope you check it out and get a laugh out of it. I'm trying to cure the world one bro joke at a time and having fun with it. It's official. My first book has been released! You can get it in both print and Kindle editions. Check out what Weirdpunk editor Sam Richard called "the weirdo surreal Saturday morning cartoon your parents never let you watch." You can get it here. Book trailer coming soon.
THIS IS A HORROR BOOK will cast a chaos magick spell upon the world with an official release date of Jan. 1, 2019! Get a jump on the mayhem by pre-ordering your copy now! Before I drop the links, check out the cover by artist Joel Amat Guell: From kung fu sorcerers to killer bunnies to creepy Internet users at your local library, THIS IS A HORROR BOOK has all the horrors of this world and beyond. Click here to order from CLASH Books and here to order from Amazon.
Help me out, good people. Spread the horror! --Charles Austin Muir and the CLASH BOOKS librarian Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. I would probably still be bad about posting anything if I didn't have two books coming out through small presses soon.
In the off chance we met at Willamette Writers Conference last weekend, I would like to say first that it was a pleasure to see you. I'll bet I learned way more talking to you than you did from me if you went to my horror writing class or the panels I sat on. I'm haunted a little bit by things I said that may have conveyed ideas I didn't intend. The big one that comes to mind is that in two different craft focus groups I said, "I write what I want to write which is probably why I'm not writing full time." What I meant was, "I'm really laid back about what I do. I love getting paid, and it would be awesome to have an agent, and to have my day job center around writing and doing writing business stuff, but for the most part I just fart around with what interests me and see where I can land it." I haven't been a go-getter in the money-making aspects of the industry. But that does not mean that full-time writers who are also good businesspeople are not writing what they want to write. Maybe I should have just said, "Some of you have very sensible concerns about your careers. Please keep in mind I'm an underachiever." Then again, that doesn't do justice to some of the publishers I've worked with. I'm sure I said other things I could have worded better, but that's the one that nags at me. Anyway, if we met at the conference last weekend, I hope we can connect sometime again. Now go make enough money to write full time if that's what motivates you. Grey Matter Press has created a gorgeous website for the release of its anthology PEEL BACK THE SKIN. The website features teasers for each story and an author's gallery (hover over each picture and you can read a short bio). Check it out:
http://peelbacktheskin.greymatterpress.com/ Also, for no reason except as maybe a Throwback Thursday, here is a picture of me in what was to be a creepy video short that never materialized. I do kind of look like I peeled back the skin, I guess. This was in 2013 at my brother's studio in Seattle. A few pics. First, that time a couple weeks ago when we went to a geekfest at the Aladdin Theater celebrating The Gilmore Girls. Cool thing, Keiko Agena, who played Lane Kim in the show, was in the audience. I guess she recently landed a role in Grimm. And for anyone who has wanted to read David Foster Wallace but isn't sure where to start, here is a tip from the staff at Powell's Books. I'm thinking of starting with Oblivion, and even that looks like intellectual boot camp. Here is a hole in front of our house. For no reason at all it makes me think of Stephen King shouting, "Meteor shit!" in Creepshow. The reason for the hole is we had our water main replaced over the weekend. Waiting for a city inspector to approve the job (and hopefully shout "Meteor shit!" first). And here is the cover to PEEL BACK THE SKIN, a horror anthology from Grey Matter Press. Each story will examine the notion of the human being as monster. The lineup is a sort of Dream Team of bestselling and award-winning authors, including Ray Garton, Lucy Taylor, Yvonne Navarro, Jonathan Maberry, Tim Lebbon, and -- the inclusion of which thrills the geek in me -- Graham Masterton, who has written a ton of horror fiction including The Manitou. I loved both the book and film adaptation starring Tony Curtis and Michael Ansara. That's just a sample of the super-accomplished people in this book. The reason I post this is that I'm in it. PEEL BACK THE SKIN will include my long-ish short story, "Party Monster." Watch for it in June.
Two passages:
"On and on, my unknown attacker and I rolled violently down the corridor. My pistol that I had gripped so tightly before suddenly escaped my right hand. Madly, I struggled to get the pistol. My limbs ached because of the many attempts I made to dislodge my clinging foe. Finally, I reached it. As my attacker's face neared mine, I pulled the trigger. My attacker fell, rigid as ice. Blood gushed out from where I shot him." -- Charles Austin Muir "I was grading exams one night when I thought I heard a door slam above me. This was followed by three closely spaced thuds that induced a sour feeling in my stomach. I had heard those sounds before, when one of my students had fainted in class. Flashing on the incident, and realizing there was no door upstairs where the noises had come, I rose from my desk and began pacing, tracking the rhythm and course of new movement above me. It was identical to what I had heard upon breaking into the tenement—the sound of a body dragging itself across the floor." -- Charles Austin Muir The first passage is from "To Kill the Colossus," a short story I wrote in fifth grade. The second is from "Thanatos Park," a short story I wrote 31 years later. Originally I was going to blog about how I sometimes re-read pieces from childhood as a writing warm-up. Something about internally hearing my young voice reminds me I actually do improve over time and helps me see what I'm working on in a new way. But looking at both passages just now, I see they are more similar in tone and feel and structure than I thought they'd be. Backfire! Even so, at least I'm still writing about monsters. I'm still writing about what scares me. Now where the hell is my pistol... Warning: This post contains no sharks, Sasquatches, sadomasochists, satirized celebrities, Battle Cats, Reptilians, horny robots, sentient vaginas, voodoo prostitutes, giant tongues, morbidly obese ninjas or gun-toting unicorns. This post may bore you to death. This post may make you wonder what pathetic circumstances might drive a man, a Gen Xer who is usually too busy being mad about something to ponder his quieter obsessions, to switch emotional gears and confess that...
I am a fan of The Gilmore Girls. You may love the show, you may hate it, you may have never heard of it. I used to make fun of it when it originally played on network TV. I thought Lorelai and Rory should just cut through all the sexual tension and kiss. I suppose I thought it was my man's duty to indulge such musings. But last year -- seven years after the show ended -- I got hooked. In about three months I got through all seven seasons. Late at night I would start wherever I left off on Netflix and power through a few episodes. I can't handle violence or assholery right before bed. I won't watch stressful shows like Breaking Bad. But The Gilmore Girls was my jam. I loved the repartee between Lorelai and Rory. I loved the oddball, peppy little town of Stars Hollow. I wanted to live in Stars Hollow myself. I wanted to Matrix myself into the town square. I wanted to walk the streets among all the happy people zipping by on bikes or on foot. Stars Hollow was end-of-the-line chic, like the town of Willoughby in that episode of The Twilight Zone, only for people who didn't care to jump off trains in a snow storm. Nothing really bad happened in Stars Hollow. As Rory put it, there was no "seedy underbelly" to the town. No one would ever shoot up Miss Patty's dance school or the little social room where people watched movies like Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. The closest thing to a hipster in Stars Hollow was the town troubadour. Months after I finished the show's final season, I wondered if I'd gone through a weird phase. But when I started watching Season One again a few weeks ago, I found I still love The Gilmore Girls. I still want to live in Stars Hollow. I want to be the guy in back of Luke's Diner smiling stupidly at his grilled cheese sandwich while Lorelai and Rory toss off movie references and exchange witty banter at the speed of a Howard Hawks film. Hell, maybe I would jump off a train to live in Stars Hollow. Not sure what that says about me. I'm not like the guy in The Twilight Zone with his horrible wife and his ulcer. Maybe I'm just an imaginary people-person. Maybe I just dig Lauren Graham. The show returns to Netflix with new episodes next year, but that's not why I'm telling you all this. Before The Gilmore Girls, I was obsessed with Perry Mason, the old courtroom drama starring Raymond Burr. I wanted to live in the world of Mason like I wanted to live in the world of the Gilmores. I wanted to alter crime scenes with Mason and Drake like I wanted to boo Taylor Doose at Stars Hollow town-hall meetings. I wanted to swallow the red pill and wake up in Mason's office with a roll of cash and a flimsy excuse for why I didn't kill someone. Instead I tried several times to write about a guy who Matrixes into the Perry Mason show and turns Mason's world into Hell. Finally, late last year, I hit upon a new concept that became my short story, "Party Monster." I wrote the first draft last December between shifts as a seasonal driver helper for UPS. I worked under a wide range of influences, from late-night conversations with a friend to occult rituals to Joseph Campbell to Chuck Palahniuk. "Party Monster" grew from a tale of extreme delusional escapism to one of powerful mystical transformation. A few months later it was accepted by Grey Matter Press for PEELING BACK THE SKIN, a collection of short horror fiction exploring the theme of humans as monsters. I'm excited to share details about the book's upcoming release. Which means I'm kind of on the fence right now about train-jumping for afterlife status in Stars Hollow. Unless, of course, the face of Jesus is served on Luke's grilled cheese sandwiches -- that might be worth it. Welcome to my blog. I think this will be a good thing. When I got out of college (English degree), I was so self-conscious about language that I couldn't write. I broke that spell when I found Natalie Goldberg's Zen how-to, Writing Down the Bones. I got to where I could write full-on prose again and even started getting stories published. Goldberg's "timed writing practice" became a way to take a break from the pressure I put on myself, a sort of intermittent writer's self-care. Now I had the foundation again, and wrote Goldberg-style to maintain. But lately I've found something lacking in writing for either artistic stability or the marketplace with no mode in between. Like, maybe I want to play with something but don't want to practice Goldberg's mantras or think about publication. It's just how my mind works. When a friend of mine, Christoph Paul, published his book Social Media for Anti-socials (it's excellent; if you're an artist and neither famous nor social media-savvy, get it), it finally clicked for me: A blog is the missing link. Here is where you can play between the poles of Zen and word-hustling. So here is where I plan to dump my experiments, opinions and random thoughts. I'll post about whatever comes to mind, from writing to health & fitness to art to Star Trek. I'd even like to post book reviews and interviews with other artists. Who knows, it might be fun. To paraphrase Ice Cube, I push words like weight. I push actual weight in my garage, so it only makes sense to make this blog my word garage. Thanks for dropping by my word garage. Come back any time. PS - Here's a #TBT. From 2010. I'd just finished a fat-loss diet and took this selfie. In a Star Trek salt sucker mask. The nerd version of Buffalo Bill's dance in Silence of the Lambs. Live long and prosper.
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AuthorWriter of dark and weird-ass fiction. Keeper of weird-ass dogs. Archives
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