Christopher Moore's Blog

Race you to the bridge!

I was just walking down the street in the Union Square area of town — doing my marketing, when this guy started singing opera at me.

“Dude,” he sang, “There is some bad shit going down in Chinatown today. Aliens, I’m telling you, they are infiltrating the festival of the Harvest Moon.”

“Aliens?” I axed.

“Fucking Aliens!” he sang, vocce’ profundo which means really loud..

“They’ve started with the kids, recruiting them against their will.”

And it was pretty obvious that the Opera guy was onto something,

So I headed up the street, past the Bank of the Orient, where the tellers use a much different set of computers than I’m used to.

Once I was in Chinatown, I could immediately see that people were scared, because they had resorted to the ancient Chinese custom of hiding behind their food.

Some more successfully than others.

The Princesses were especially on edge, and had hired extra security against the Aliens, as well as the usual threat of White Devils.

Several princesses from festivals past, thought they had spotted one of the aliens down by the Two Dragon Massage Parlor.

Actually, it was this guy, who had reported something hugging his face a couple of weeks ago, then, after eating one of the festival’s moon cakes, the alien larvae popped out of his chest.

People were terrified, and began to suspect that there were, indeed, Aliens among them.

“No, Dude, I’m not shitting you, there’s like a couple of them right behind you.”

Agent Hong spotted one down by the chicken feet concession and immediately called Headquarters.

“No, they look very human, but there are subtle differences,” he said.

And even as people realized that there was a danger, the aliens were already measuring the children for their nourishment pods.

And the frightened people turned to their faith, heading for the church on Columbus Street, where a wedding had evidently failed to go off…

Brother William was trying to calm them, while explaining that Jesus didn’t really save you from Aliens,

“You see, your soul is like this blue balloon,” said the Brother, “And everybody has one. Then, when you die–”

Disgusted with the Catholic mysticism, Brian decided to seek his own Buddah nature, which just happened to be chillin’ about two feet behind him.

It was no use, and the Aliens knew that they had us on the run.

But we found that even in Chinatown we could come together with common goals.

And by the end of the day, the Aliens fell to our mastery of avian disease.

And once again, things were normal, and you could get an affordable Chinese kid even if you were Chinese.

And everyone vowed that they would always remember. “Remember? Dude, look at the picture, there was this big fucking wall…”

And that was what it was like today in Chinatown…

The end.

Hey kids. I’m in San Francisco researching the next book, the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends. Here’s a few pics.

Into the Golden Gate

Hey kids!

As you probably know, The Stupidest Angel is nominated for the best fantasy/horror novel of the year. Please, please, please stop by the following web site and vote. You’ll have to go through about four catagory screens to get to Angel, but I’d sure appreciate it.

http://www.quillsliteracy.org/nominatingvoting.html

And remember, as they say in Chicago, Vote early and often.

Your homework today kids is to cast the following parts for a movie of the Stupidest Angel. Post your answers in the Blog Comments Please. (All or any suggestions are welcome if you don’t want to do the whole cast.)

Theo Crowe

Molly Michon

Gabe Fenton

Valerie Riordan

Dale Pearson

Lena Marquez

Mavis Sand

Tucker Case

Raziel

Here we go. Everything you need to know for anything, in yet another installment of AXE the AUTHORGUY!!!!

Hillary writes:

Hey AG:

A duel to the death. You can have two of the following items with you and nothing else. Which would you choose and why:

a cardboard tube a sponge a spork a skunk an old shoe a slinky or this guy from Willow: ANS: I considered this for a long time, then decided on a spork. I even put it in the new book. The exchange goes thus: “What are you going to do with that spork?” “Well, if we run into any bad guys, I’m going to spork the fuck out of them.”

Jaandlu askes:

AG, Pie or cobbler? Why?

ANS: Pie. Because I like the crust. I grew up with Bisquick cobbler, and while it is certainly a respectable way to defy the laws of physics and pack two pounds of carbs into a one pound package, it always felt like the crust was trying to be a biscuit. Like if it were not constrained by special fruit energy fields, it would mutate into something with ham gravy on it. Pie crust is good though.

Y askes:

Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side?

ANS: I can only think of two, and that line is from one of them. Maybe you need to get a radio or something. J

JennyO Axes: Hey, AG, what do you do once you finish a book? Do you just collapse for a week, have a party, what?

Well, now I’m going on five days since I finished the new one, and the immediate change in my routine was that I went kayaking one day, I went to Home Depot one day and bought concrete, and I’m feeling very guilty about having done nothing today, despite the fact that it’s a gorgeous day here. Generally I come out of a book with a huge to-do list that I have to catch up on. This week I’ve done the twelve hour fast thing for three nights so I could go get my cholesterol tested in the morning, and for one reason or another, it hasn’t worked out. (Once I forgot my papers when I went to the doctor and twice I had a peanut butter toast at midnight and blew the whole thing off.) I know, I should have my doctor check to see if I have a pulse when I get there, just to see if someone this boring gets one. _________________

Freaky Mojo writes:

Hey AG,

Your main female characters always are *very strong women*.

Is this because your main exposure is to these types of women (growing up and/or in current life)?

You prefer strong – self-sufficient women (it appeals to you)?

Or its easier to construct self-sufficient (if not testosterone loaded) strong women from a guy’s perspective than to delve to the bottom-most depths of femininity (which is even a scary place for most women)?

Also, you consistently give them an achillies heel that directly relates to their romantic interest. I like this a lot because it is SO true to reality. Did you do this to prove the point that strong women can be consistently turned to moosh by their love/sexual interests? Or is it because your leading men are often a little goofy, somewhat off-center and need to have a means in which to get the girl? (BTW it is true – we love goofballs)

ANS:

I write women characters who I would like to meet. Generally they’re self-determined and outspoken, but also truly women. They also tend to be smart asses, which is simply fun, and very sexy, I think. The goal in creating characters of that sort is simple – I figure if I like spending time with these quirky, outspoken, self-determined women, so will the reader. Mind you, this goes for female villains as well. You may not want to hang out with them, but they should be fun to watch and listen to.

Like all my characters, my women characters tend to be composites of people I’ve met, or people I’ve read about. If I write a romantic Achilles heal into my gals, it’s because I’ve seen that so many times among real women. (What was the book? Smart Women, Stupid Choices?) Plus, I think that women tend to relate to that part of the characters.

As for what’s easier to construct – that really speaks to the type of book I write. I think it takes a more ponderous, nuance-prone writer to portray the in workings of anyone’s mind, including the female mind. And I can’t claim to understand what it is to be a woman, a mother, a daughter, a wife – any role defined by a woman’s biology and character. I think that it would require a writer who applies the bulk of his or her imagination to the subtleties of personality. I tend to apply my imagination to finding funny stuff, and revealing what character I can through that.

It really comes down to what one likes to write and what one is good at. I tend to be good at writing funny material, so I create characters that can be foils for that skill. I did a reading recently with Sue Miller, who writes very dark books about women and their inner and outer personal conflicts (forgive me if that’s an oversimplification.) I was very impressed with Sue’s ability to put that material on the page and make it viable and entertaining, but I couldn’t spend ten minutes in that headspace. Which is not to say I want my characters to be simple, but that I have more of the action happening externally, as what’s driving the story, rather than the conflict within the character’s heads.

It may also be a Mars/Venus thing. My females tend to be proactive toward their problems, which not only helps move the story, but is the way that guys (like me) look at things.

For example: Woman says. “I feel bad about yesterday.” Nother woman says: “Awe,you poor thing. Tell me about it in mind-numbing detail.” Guy says: “That was yesterday. Now it’s today. Cheer the fuck up. See, all better.”

I think we can see two different ways of addressing a problem. That may be what happens in fiction as well.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. -Truman Capote

I still have no idea what that quote means, but I love it. I finished A Dirty Job tonight about about 7:30.

For those of you playing the home game, it’s 115,000 words, 417 pages, 27 Chapters long. That makes it my second longest book after Lamb, but then, I may cut it quite a bit on editing. We’ll see.

I wrote five thousand words today, which is normally about ten days work for me. So, I’m a little tired. I know tomorrow I have to start going through it, finding broken stuff and fixing it, but right now I feel as if I just finished my ninth book.

So, now, even if I get hit by a bus, you guys will have a new AG book to read in April. As usual, I have no sense of whether it’s any good or even if it works. All I know is that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Carry on.

You guys. I’m on the home stretch of the new book, so I know the Blog entries have been few and far between, but I’ll pick up soon.

In the mean time, I’ve noticed that a fair amount of my e-mail has been eaten by my spam filter. While most of this is actually spam, some of the reader mail is being caught too. I really, really try to answer all my mail, so if you didn’t get an answer to a note you wrote me, that’s probably what happened.

I really don’t have time to go through the spam file every day, especially when under a deadline like this (and what’s the point of a spam filter if you’re looking at the crap every day anyway), but someone hipped me to the fact that if you send a note without something in the subject line, it has a much better chance of getting caught. So, just a hint –if you’re sending an e-mail, not just to me, but to a friend or colleague, put something in the subject line, and try to avoid phrases like 20% off or free Vicodin in your subject.

Sorry if I’ve missed your letters. Try again.

Carry on.

Well, my children, it’s been some time since I’ve answered your questions. I may have missed some, and some are just too silly for me to mess with, but here’s the latest batch.

And as an update, I am seventeen days from having to turn the new book in to New York, and I have miles to go before I sleep. So, here we go…

Xanthia writes:

This question has been gnawing on my skull for a while and I was hoping you would answer it. Is the demon Catch an allegory for alcoholism and addiction in general?

For example: when he feeds he increases in size (and strength I suppose) just like booze, do it just once and it’s out of control. And the fact that it always stays with you except that nobody can see it.

ANS: No, I think if Catch is an allegory for anything it is rage. He has his roots in my frustration as a kid being pulled over all the time by cops and having my car searched for no reason. I started to wish I had a big monster that was hiding under the seat, so I could say, “Don’t look under the seat, there’s a big monster under there.”

Addiction is obviously a theme that I explore in my first and other books, but Catch is all about rage and power.

Lescaster writes:

If first novels are autobiographical who were you in your first book?

ANS: Robert, the alcoholic who gets dumped by his wife.

Also from Lescaster:

What kind of car do you drive? Motorcycle?

ANS: I drive a Nissan Pick-up. Not tricked out or anything, it just makes sense for the island. I’ve never had good luck with motorcycles, having laid down the first two or three I ever rode, so I’ve stayed away from them. Also, my father was a highway patrolman, and hearing stories nightly around the dinner table about the parts of motorcyclists he had to help scrape off of guardrails and other vehicles sort of soured me on the whole idea.

Kimcookie writes:

Hey author guy, I tried to use “lamb” for a term paper. it was for my “bible as literature” class, and I really wanted to use “lamb”–my teacher thought it was so cool, too–but comparing the “dumbfucks” sermon to the original is harder than you’d think. did do a book report on “island” in high school, though. so, Q: did you ever write any really weird or bogus school things that you actually pulled off?

ANS: Yes. When I was in my first semester at Brooks Institute of Photography, we were supposed to do a photo essay of “life on a city block”. They assigned us a block of Santa Barbara and gave us a week to shoot it. I ended up with a block that included a strip of highway 101 where a lot of hitchhikers congregated. Long story short, my photos were really weak, but I tied them all together with this essay that used all sorts of terms from cultural anthropology, and made it seem that I was illustrating anthro concepts instead of actually taking crap pictures. It saved my grade. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to bluff my way past the next level of the course.

Also from Kimcookie:

hey author guy, My nosy friends can’t decide which brain-crush makes me the biggest nerd: Jeff corwin, the animal planet guy (not that crocodile douche); the author guy; or my Shakespeare professor. Of course, that’s not even counting Conan O’Brien or Jon Stewart, or Gabe Fenton. so secondary question: is nerd attraction an evolutionary step toward bigger brains, or lower sun and Mountain Dew tolerance?

ANS: Well, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, nerd attraction assures that your offspring will have the mental tools to excel in a modern society. Obviously, the strongest among us is no longer guaranteed success, but the smarter has an awfully good chance. I actually write about this in the new book, but you’ll have to wait for the full thesis. For now, I’d say that what makes you the biggest nerd is your use of the phrase, “not that crocodile douche”, but don’t let that bother you. Girl nerds have their own weapons of mass attraction.

KatarinaNavane axes:

Is The Goo the basis for the Atlantis myth?

ANS: Yes, Plato swiped it from me. That olive-oil smelling bastard!

Burning Stickman asks several questions:

1) I am new to the group, and I smoke while I write. This has proven a problem when I am faced with the fact that I can only post on this site while naked. Not to say that I won’t forbear the ashy crotch, but after the second stack of books caught on fire, and the subsequent trips to the emergency room, I have used a chair. Is this permissible? I will still observe the nudity rule of course.

ANS: Okay, that’s not a question. You have issues with fire control, not nudity. Try putting one of the books on your lap as a shield.

2) Would cats also refer to their owners as ‘food guy’?

ANS: They would if they acknowledged their existence at all. I think my cats view me as, “the guy who is keeping our food from us” any time I am actually not feeding them. I’m fairly convinced that they would murder me in my sleep if they could figure out a modus operandi.

3) Doesn’t Xander get the shit end of the stick most of the time?

ANS: Wrong web page.

Cathy asks:

So, how did the conference go?

ANS: Cathy refers to the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference. It went well, I think. I wasn’t happy with the keynote I gave, simply because I felt that it was rough. I hadn’t given a speech at a writers conference in about ten years, and I didn’t really have any rhythm to the material. I did a reading at the Jackson Public Library which went very well, I thought – and I usually completely suck at readings. I shared the ticket with Sue Miller, whose books are very serious and explore some very uncomfortable subjects, but that was the most satisfying part of it all – because we were both able to coexist and the audience seemed to enjoy both our work.

I’m not sure how the conference went for the students. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them, and in my off time from speaking and such, I was actually trying to work on the new book.

Blowing up innocent people is wrong.

No exceptions.