Check out my blog on vintage sleaze paperbacks! Great cover scans and mini-reviews of some classic pop culture classics of the late 1950s and 1960s.
The Watermelon — Out in July, Yo!
May 26, 2009 - Leave a Response
The distruibutor has the film I wrote — the film based on my screenplay, that is — The Watermelon, listed on its site.
Street date: July 7, 2009.
You can rent from Netfix or Blockbuster, but that’s not the same as having your very own copy to have and to hold.
Comfort and Motion as Olympia Press New Traveller’s Companion #143
May 22, 2009 - Leave a Response
Order from Amazon or publisher, Olympia Press…
Reprint of an older novel I wrote in 1998-9, The Comfort of Women (Blue Moon, 2001). A long excerpt appears in The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (Carroll and Graf, 2000; Running Press, 2007); it was once an ebook from a Canadian publisher, garnering me a much needed $600 at the time (1999). It was in my omnibus edition, The Garden of Love (Blue Moon, 2004). I have excerpted chapters and re-fashioned them as short stories for a number of anthologies for $50-100 a pop. Now this edition, under its original intended title. The book is meant as an answer to Bukowski’s classic novel, Women, with a similar first paragraph.
Always good when a book you wrote a decade ago keeps bringing in revenue, albeit small portions, but money nonetheless. That’s what your books are supposed to do for you, right? Like The Dress, which has brought me funds from a movie option and foreign rights…would be nice to one day have a book that will always take care of you and heirs, the way Hemingway or Steinbook’s, or Henry Miller’s, books do…
Publications Update This Week
May 15, 2009 - Leave a Response
Essay, “Tijuana and Tramadol, in new issue of Life Writing.
Short story, “Cyclops,” in the new issue of New Yorkl Tyrant.
Essay, “Anthropology of the Memorial,” and review of Cancer and Death accepted/copy-edited/soon to appear at FQS.
Working on copy-edit and index of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study. Should be out in June.
Star Trek: A Post-structural Critique out next week in print from Borgo Press, available right now at MobiPocket.
Essay, “What’s Beneath the Floorboards: Three Competing Meta-Voices in the Footnotes of House of Leaves” accepted by Critique.
Story, “What Happened Now,” accepted by Georgia Review.
Cover for Star Trek book
May 13, 2009 - Leave a Response
Here is the cover for Star Trek: A Post-structural Critique of the Original Series, which should be available from Amazm, BN.com, etc., and the publisher’s website next week.
William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study
May 11, 2009 - 2 Responses
Have been proofing galleys and creating index for my critical book on William T. Vollmann. It goes to the printer May 30 and should be published early July by McFarland and Co., which has contracted three other books from me: an anthology I am editing, First Person Scoiology (2010), a book on women in Raymond Carver’s work (2010), and an interpretive biography of Carver (2011-12).
Star Trek: A Post-structural Critique
May 11, 2009 - Leave a Response
No, this is not the cover…or is it?
Wayne State Univ. Press was not satisfied with the revision of my short monograph for their TV Milestones Series, so instead of going back again and having the book pushed to 2011, I pulled it, and Borgo Press agreed it was ready for publication, and should have it out this month. Will I miss some library sales? Probably. But it will be found by those interested.
Look for it soon on the publisher’s site or Amazon, etc.
In this unique monograph, Michael Hemmingson looks beyond the original 1960s Star Trek as mere televisual milestone – the only series to last just three seasons yet creating a franchise worth billions of dollars –and considers the socio-anthropological impact it has had on our culture, language, and science. Star Trek is fiction that moves off the TV screen and into the communal psyche, influencing advances in technology (flip-out cell phones, automatic doors, talking computers), the creation of an artificial language (Klingon taught in universities), and the formation of fan tribes who emulate the cultures within the Star Trek universe.
Hemmingson also examines the socio-economic factors of Star Trek as the biggest consumer phenomenon in the entertainment market: die-hard fans spend a great deal of money to acquire the collectable items, from model ships, replica tri-corders, and first edition books. These fans also dress up as Star Trek characters, and live their lives more inside the fictional universe than reality. Is this a good thing, at the end of the day?
Finally, Hemmingson also critiques the Federation’s narrow-minded gaze of utopia, where the galaxy revolves around San Francisco and humankind’s hegemony over other races, often—at the hands of Captain James T. Kirk—forcing alien societies and cultures to accept Federation dogma and earth-based morals. Kirk destroys the religions, social structure, computer gods, and cultural beliefs of many aliens and humanoids, all in the name of galactic democracy and the Federation’s desire for colonial expansion.
Bill: A Short Novel (told in tweets)
May 4, 2009 - Leave a Response
My short novel, BILL: A SHORT NOVEL, a novel told in tweets, has started @ Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/Bill_a_novel
Sign up for the adventures of Bill, a doctor with a loose prescription pad in Hollywood, Calif.
