Friday 2/8/19
A (now updated) page in this journal to help me remain organized and focused to tasks at hand.
Short stories already written that need to be placed:
"That Night"
"Mission Brick Candy"
"Qui Qui Ri Qui"
"Pillow Drift"
"Jesus H. Christ"
"Funny Lines TK"
"Nacho Cheese"
"Invisible Man on Second"
"The World of the Lawn"
"Floor It A.C."
"The Effect of Gravity Upon the Tub"
"Cheer Pack"
"The Last Field" (This had been accepted by both Harper's and The Atlantic; Harper's editor fired, Atlantic reneged;)
"Jaw Bones"
"The Doon Well"
"An Incident in Cathedral Romance"
"Yellow Hammers"
"EAP and Abe"
"The Taste of Smoke"
"The Ghosts of the Alley, the Ghosts on the Wall"
"Train Days"
Short stories to write:
"Prayers that are Simple"
"Camear"
"Orange Needles"
"Done Eden"
"First Eye"
"The Five Basic Food Groups"
"Context Tree"
"Freezy Freakies"
"Dunedin"
"Curtain Bags"
"The Woman Who Listened to Orson Welles"
"Stop My Heart"
"Where It's Going, Not Where It's Been"
"Other People Exist"
"The Harrowing of Culver Street"
"Float Glass"
"Dennis from the Kitchen with Hadley"
"The King of Ting"
"Hair from Eyes"
"Desensitivity Training"
(Remember: colors, plane, stories from news cycle--fraud shooting survivor, e.g.--that go beyond news cycle, concerts, KM, EG, neighbor, poly-erotica stories, KSM house)
Book about to come out:
Buried on the Beaches: Cape Stories for Hooked Hearts and Driftwood Souls (May 2019); update website--News tab, Books Tab, rotating cover images, blog--accordingly
Books completed to sell:
Cheer Pack: Stories (includes stories from Harper's, VQR, Commentary, Glimmer Train, Post Road)
If You [ ]: Fantasy, Fabula, Fuckery, Hope
Glue God: Essays (and tips) for Repairing a Broken Self
How Brightly It Glistens: Excursions in Art, Music, Literature, Film, and the Writing Life
Magazine commitments:
The Washington Post--A Confederacy of Dunces, writer suicide
The Washington Post--how we talk and write in the same ten phrases
The Washington Post--Keats for Valentine's Day
The Smart Set--nightmare piece
The American Interest--Night of the Living Dead essay
The American Interest--What is black music?
JazzTimes--Jimmy Blanton feature
JazzTimes--Anthony Braxton piece
The Daily Beast--ballet piece
The Daily Beast--Stendhal for Valentine's Day
Salmagundi--Roma
The Daily Beast--Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus for Easter
The Daily Beast--Martin Goldsmith's Detour novel (1939)
Op-eds:
Why writers needed
Sham of awards
slaughter G.O.A.T.
Personal essay:
"You're Up, You're Down, You're Up" (about Monument)
Sell:
Anonymity op-ed (in "abeyance" at WSJ)
Maupassant essay
"Riding the Mare" (essay on nightmares)
Book proposals to finish:
Same Band You've Never Known: An Alternative Musical History of the Beatles
All Given, All Gotten: The Beatles, Abbey Road, and the Power of Goodbye
Commissioned books to finish:
Scrooge (release fall 2019)
33 1/3 Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club (release 2020 or 2021)
Book rundown of current and future projects:
The Freeze Tag Sessions--novel about piano prodigy/genius who does not wish to be one
Musings with Franklin--entirely new form of novel, told entirely in conversation between Writer, who believes he is dead and in hell, Bartender, and pervy guy from the suburbs who dresses up as Ben Franklin; invention of new mode of literature
Run It Again--novel involving Van Gogh's ghost, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Lennon high on acid in the summer of 1967
Death Boy--YA novel
Story collection including the "summer five" from 2018--"Funny Lines TK," "Nacho Cheese," "Invisible Man on Second," "The World of the Lawn," "Floor It A.C."--plus works from above lists like the "fall 2018/winter 2018 five"; so much to choose from--two collections are probably close to existing at present
Many Moments More: A Story about the Art of Endurance (memoir)
A Kiss Always Tasted: Embracing (and Restoring) Billie Holiday in a World Gone Wrong
The Chord that Cracked the Universe: How the Who Explained the Meaning of Life in Four Albums
Silas Beaverton: The Beaver Who Tried to Dam the Ocean (children's book)
Murray the Moray Eel (children's book)
Padraig and Lorcan story collection + Padraig and Lorcan novel
Story collection with each work having something to do with the Beatles (Garston Blood Baths, fans en route to show in Middle West, boys who tape BBC episodes, Hamburg neighbor, groupie, a parallel scene/story from July 6, 1957, Lennon's school teacher, tribute band, etc.)
Volume examining the various forms of 1984 in cinema, television, theatre, radio, and how Orwell's original work has been made manifest in our society
Ride Your Enemy's Horse. Volume detailing singular journey in publishing, exposing all
The Thanatos Principle: How Final Works by Great Artists Teach Us to Live Better in a Dying World
Story collection where each story is first person, first told by someone in the story, then told a second time, by someone else also in the story. His/Hers/Theirs.
Book on A Hard Day's Night, the film.
Book on Dylan's complete 1965-1966 sessions
Some Orson Welles book. TBD.
Book on the phenomenon of comebacks.
Fire Living: The Lost Art of Finding and Growing Your Passions. Not self-help--I detest the term--but instructive, via examples, lessons imparted from examples, conversational--Skrunk and White prose, Fleming-style. Honestly help people and guide them, and help them find their way in this lost art. Chapters from own life, but not "insider baseball"--each branches out wide to things--ideas, anecdotes, offshoots--beyond putative subject matter: hockey, ghost stories, Orson Welles, Cape Cod/the sea, alcohol, the Stone Roses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Christmas, The Office (British version), Carlton Fisk. For example, Fisk chapter isn't really about boyhood idol; it moves into other things, because a passion for something is really about things beyond that thing. That's why they can enrich us so. People have lost the ability to be passionate now. They pretend to be passionate about the same two or three things jammed into everyone's faces--politics, for instance. But that's simply what is stuck in front of their mugs. It's not true passion. You need true passion to really be alive.
Collection of my music writings. Parcel this out over the years. First is ready to come out now. Do the same for books devoted exclusively to film writings, sports writings, Beatles writings. When all is said and done, there could be a dozen or more different kinds of these.
Facebook posts, which were written, from post one, as a kind of live blogged journal, rather than a participation in the sociological cancer that is social media. It was the shorter entry version of this MMM journal.
Complete editions of my letters. There are currently a couple million.
This Many Moments More journal, which has been written as a series of books. Thus far there are two full books' worth, and the third volume is well under way. About seventy entries make a book, in terms of length. Now, we could also make each year a book, but that will be a very big book. Could it be a single-volume book? Frankly, I am composing much more in these pages than Thoreau and Pepys did in their journals. That's good, in a way--these pages are a lot better. They are a unique document in that they 1. Show this age better than anything else does 2. Open up my mind to the world 3. Chart this quest/journey from the position I have been put in, to where I will get to, that being the artist who changes this world more than any ever has. People will be able to go back and read what was happening day in, day out, in close to real time. There has been nothing like this. These journals will still be written after everything else in this entry, and the concomitant success, audience, and money, has come to pass. I will still be taking to these pages. Those entries will be different in some ways, of course. But I will remain the same person and artist--only a better one, as I get better as both each day.
Television/film projects:
• Movie adaptation of "Pillow Drift"; ninety-five minute horror film unlike any horror film, also not a horror film, but scarier than any film has been; also more beautiful and touching; would break banks and viewing records; very easy to extend parts of short story, going into different time periods, for adaptation; probably first project like this to do once past blacklist/harbor blockade; if in the hands right now of a no-talent fraud who had backing of the system, it would be easy to greenlight and would bring in quick millions; it's unique, it's too good not to, it's too surprising, too gripping, too terrifying, too heartrending, too primed to start debates and conversations and theories; perfect for Netflix
• Six-part series adaption of Sloane's To Walk the Night; you can set this in the 1930s, as in the book, or you can set it in the present day; that's a mise-en-scene call; I like the period details of the 1930s as I set up scenes in the viewfinder of my mind's eye; when properly, tellingly done--that is, those details become part of the storytelling--ala Downton Abbey, people really connect; zero problem that characters aren't getting texts, though you could also do this that way
• Twelve-part original series Can't See Likes (woman online dating, different identities, different things to different people, overlap of lives of those people, tying into themes of age of pretending, playing parts, not connecting; funny--she's a third with a couple, on a date with a priest, all kinds of characters and organically--this all taking place mostly in the same region--we end up in their lives as well, some of them know each other, etc.--but makes larger points)
• Adaptation of stories in Dark March for late Friday/Saturday night HBO or Showtime sort of show, half hour to forty minute episodes; each story an episode; this would be a good starting point, that time slot, that kind of gig, in progression to bigger, primetime-ier things; this would have a multi-demo following, a core audience; horror fans, fans of the weird, stoners, book lovers, the romantic, Emo people, college kids, and, dare I say it, hipsters
• Too Much Christmas; film about a man who is shattered, becomes lost in Christmas excess (eventually year round), meets others in what is tantamount to a subculture; the battle not to completely give in in life, dealing with the blurring of the line between reality and delusion, getting out of bed and feeling like the bed will never be left again; knowing you are at an edge that if you go over it you might never come out, that that could be your last moment of even knowing that "out" exists; shot through with humor. Even hilarity. But human, deep pain.
• three-part miniseries for Canadian market on 1987 Canada Cup; Keenan, Gretzky, Lemieux, Messier, Fuhr (very funny character; can do a lot with humor here), soon-to-defect Soviet players; their side is crucial to story, also history of Soviet players and early deaths; the 1980s are always a rich decade for setting; conceivably the richest
