Christopher Moore's Blog

Well, Lamb lost the best paperback of the year to The Secret Life of Bees, which I totally expected. I didn’t, however, expect The Da Vinci Code to win book of the year, and I probably shouldn’t have shouted, are you all fucking idiots? at the banquet.

I did get to meet Chuck Palahniuk and chatted with Ridley Pearson for a while, which was nice. Didn’t get to meet Dave Barry, which I had really hoped for, but I was talking to readers and Dave sneaked out.

The best part of the evening for me, however, was when Louise Erdich, who I had never met, came walking by me at a party and said under her breath: “You shoud have won.”

Louise is a hero of mine, and I couldnt’ have asked for a nicer compliment. I was verklempt, which, as you guys know, I seldom am. She has that amazing bearing and grace, that self-assured coolness that allows everyone to be who they are without affecting who she is — well, I turned to Charlee and said, “That’s what an author ought to be like. She and Alice Walker shoudl give a seminar.”

So there you are. Great, great booksellers — too many to mention, but it’s great to be around a whole convention center full of people who love books and reading.

Again, it’s late, and I have an early morning. There are some tour pictures on the web page under “Fluke Paperback Tour.”

Drive Thru Please….

Bill Clinton spoke at the opening of BEA tonight in Chicago. After leaving Kauai at 10PM and flying all night to arrive at the hotel in Chicago around three PM the next day, we were wiped out, but there was no way we were going to miss Bill. A cab ride and some line standing later, we took our seats…

He spoke before about 3000 people. He was, as you already know, funny, and bright, and well-informed, and charming, and twenty-minutes late. He spoke for an hour without notes, except for looking down to get the names of the people he wanted to thank. He talked about putting the book together, and had some very funny anecdotes about dealing with his editor.

In the end, he said basically this: “You all, you have nothing to worry about. Things have been as devisive and partisan as this in this country before. In fact, when the country was being established, the things that Adams wrote about Jefferson would boil the hair off a dog. But every time this country has faced this great devisiveness, partisanship, the country has always chosen to focus on those things that would unite us, to focus on those things that bring us together, not that set us apart.”

And for the first time since the 2000 election, I felt hopeful for this country.

The guy sitting next to me, a very famous author, said, “I don’t care, I would buy that guy two Monicas if he’d take the job back again.” Which cracked me up, because the guy sitting next to me was also an ex-minister.

Later we went to dinner with some friends at a small hotel restaurant, and Larry Flynt came in with his wife and some friends.

Now I’m crapping out on you guys to let the jet-lag wash over me.

Tomorrow I have to go lose an award. I’ve been practicing my “I’m just happy to be nominated face.”

Night all.

Here’s the new cover. The book will be small-format hardcover and Wm. Morrow is going to price it at $14.95. Stocking stuffer?

Hey kids. Because I won’t be touring for The Stupidest Angel when it comes out, and because it’s sort of idea as a gift book, I wanted everyone to have a chance to give signed copies. To acomodate me, Wm Morrow has printed up these adhesive bookplates, which I’ll be sending out when the book comes out. (Maybe do the Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope thingy?)

Anyway, the bookplate is about the size of a mailing labl and the border goes all the way around. This isn’t the best scan, but I’m pressed for time as I have to fly out tomorrow to Chicago.

Remember in the 70s, when the first Superman movie was coming out, and the posters and ads all were saying, “You will believe that a man can fly”? Well, we watched it, and it was a little better than the old black and white TV shows with the overweight, middle-aged superman who was obviously lying on a barstool while they rear-projected clouds going behind him, but we didn’t believe a man could fly. That really wasn’t what it was about anyway. I mean, if you wanted to fly, you could get in a 747 and fly. Flying wasn’t really that big a deal. Falling, now there’s something that will get your attention. From the time Harold Lloyd hung off the hands of that giant clock over New York gravity has been the driving device in action movies. Why? Because we’re all afraid of falling. We’ve all fallen short distances: off our bikes, off a stepladder, off our barstool, and gravity pretty much showed us that gravity was something we should be afraid of. But not any more.

It’s like this:When movies were first invented, and someone had the bright idea of exhibiting them to the public, the stories were full of people going from place to place. If a guy went to the drug store, you saw him go to the drug store, you saw him moving because they could show you him moving. Eventually things settled down and people just started telling stories again, and the scenes made the story move, but not necessarily in a kinetic way. Well, I think we’re in a similar place with computer generated graphics. The guys who do CG have realized that they are no longer bound by the rules of the physical world, they no longer have to obey the laws of physics – anyone and anything can fly now, and look completely real doing it, and it’s just a swell way to fill up that big-ass screen, to have people flying from one side to the other, and they are so excited about being able to do it, they are doing it to death.

I’ve just returned from watching the movie Van Helsing, and in Van Helsing, everyone can fly, supernaturally endowed or not, gravity just doesn’t seem to have any effect on anyone. Within ten minutes of the movie opening, Hugh Jackman falls from the Cathedral at Notre Dame twice, and remains quite unharmed due to some distinctively cartoon physics and clever rope work, five minutes later Kate Beckensale is dropped first about fifty feet onto a three-story building, then falls off the building, swings, face-first into a tree, falls thirty-feet down the tree, hitting every branch on the way down, then is swept into the sky by a vampire and dropped through the roof of a second building, falls through three floors, then gets up, brushes herself off, and proceeds to run up the wall and do a back-flip that takes her a good twelve feet off the floor. Nice vertical leap. Kate and Hugh, by the way, although very well conditioned, are human characters. Don’t even get me started with the flying vampires, the mini-vampires with the three-foot wingspan taking off into the sky with full-grown humans in tow…

As I said, everyone, more or less, can fly. And no one, regardless of good or bad guy, seems to sustain injury from a fall, regardless of the distance.

Now I’m buying that Van Helsing is a sort of James Bond for the Vatican. I’m buying that Dracula has financed Dr. Frankenstein so that he can bring his creepy little gargoyle children to life with that old Frankenstein fire. And I’m even buying that somehow werewolves figure into the story for some reason other than we get to watch them change. I’m buying all this stuff, despite the fact that Dracula looks a lot like a singer from a bad 80s Goth band – think Robert Smith only less masculine – Give Robert Smith some Boy George hair and you’re there, and despite that they have Kate Beckensale dressed in Prince’s outfit from the Purple Rain tour, and that somehow, through the magic of make-up, they have managed to make one of the most beautiful women in the business look like a Russian truck-stop hooker, I’m buying it all. But when the physics go completely awry, when big heavy things don’t behave like big heavy things, when everyone in the movie can spontaneously swing on improvised, mile-long cables and hit their mark perfectly, well hell, what’s the use? It just becomes stupid.

I don’t know whether to blame Superman, or Crouching Tiger, or Spiderman, but somewhere we forgot that just because you can do something on film, doesn’t mean that you should do something on film. And I’m talking to you guys who are doing the bestiality porn as well, by the way. Just because you like armadillos and pink vinyl does not mean that you need to share your passion.) I’ve recently watched The Hulk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Hellboy, and all of these have suffered from the same “screw the physics let’s fill up the screen with shit happening” flaw. And all left me a little exhausted, and completely unengaged. The dialogue, when there was dialogue, was simply a seque to the next gravity-defying feat. And the thing is, I know these guys in CG work their asses off to get the physics right. That is, to get hair to move like hair, to blend the motion and perspective of the characters and their environments. In other words, they aren’t making mistakes on the execution basis, it’s on the conceptual basis. Consequently, we end up watching a very elaborate and shiny roadrunner cartoon. ( Half-way through Van Helsing I was expecting an anvil to fall on Hugh Jackman or for Kate Beckensale to strap on some Acme Rocket Shoes.) Frankly, the whole experience just tires me out, and I’m not the least bit concerned about any of the characters. (Although, once again, the Frankenstein monster turns out to be the most sympathetic character, and he’s stitched together from cold-cuts.) I wanted, I so wanted to like this movie. Instead I found myself wanting some comedy or drama or something besides motion.

Don’t believe me? Who played the kid in Terminator 3? Don’t remember do you? How about that twenty-minute fight scene between Keanu and thousands of Agent Smiths in Matrix 2. Could you have gotten the idea from say, the first thirty or so seconds of unlimited Smiths and invulnerable Neo? That’s all I’m saying. I’m hoping that the movies will mature past the sense of motion for motion’s sake, the same way that the elaborate Buzby Berkely musicals of the 30s, with their giant wedding cakes full of dancers in top hats and tails, or swimming pools full of synchronized thighs, gave way to musical storytelling like South Pacific and The King and I. Let’s hope. I’m exhausted.

Oh yeah, I also bought a new power drill today. I dropped the old one on the concrete floor in the garage and it broke. BECAUSE IN REALITY, GRAVITY HURTS

Sent out the tour announcement letter today. The readers mailing list is getting to be pretty big. In the thousands, although I don’t know how many thousands because it’s all in some kind of indeciferable Ken-rune that you can’t read.

There are the predictable “Hey, why aren’t you coming to my town?” response letters, but that’s okay. It’s good to know that people want to hear me ramble aimlessly. And if I get enough requests from one area, I’ll let the publisher know that I have an audience there.

Looks like there will be advanced readers editons of the Stupidest Angel in time for BEA. That’s going to be nice for the booksellers that are there. They’ll also have adhesive bookplates to go the Angel, so even though I’m not touring for that book, people will be able to give signed copies as gifts.

Finalizing travel and promo schedules. I set into minor packiing panic mode about this time — knowing that I’m going to be living out of a carry-on for a month, with a pretty wide variety of climates.

My Hawaiian flip flops and board shorts uniform is not going to cut it. My leather jacket molded and is entirely sea-foam green now, so I hope it’s not cold in San Francisco. I learned from Neal Gaiman that a leather jacket is the overall armor for all climates. Neal even maintains that they hold in the air conditioning when you are moving from car to building in hot climates, but I suspect that in that regard, he is lying like the feckless author-scum that he is. So, I shall sally forth, sans moldy-green climate armor, and brave the swings and barrows of outrageous weather….

(Hey, is sally forth a cartoon character? Can one sally forth in a manly way? I’m not even sure that I know how to sally.)

The Fluke paperback tour kicks off in two weeks. I’ll start in Chicago, at the BEA, which, if you don’t know, is the biggest book event in the US. Lamb is nominated for an award by Booksense 76, which is sort of the trade journal of the Independent Booksellers of America. There’ll be a luncheon with about 1000 booksellers, and about 100 authors.

I hadn’t really expected to tour for a couple of years after the hardcover tour for Fluke, and this will be my first tour that comes out of Hawaii, which changes the logistics a little. I’m a little thrown about preparation. For one, I haven’t worn a pair of long pants since I’ve come to the island. Since this is a summer tour, I’m wondering if I can get by with shorts and flip flops for most of the tour. I know that sounds ridiculous, but you have to travel light, usually with a single carry on, which means that at some point during the tour you’re going to be sending a pair of sweat socks out with the valet to be dry-cleaned for about $12. What I’m saying, is you have to pack carefully. And given that between events I’ll be in San Francisco in June, which can be frightfully cold — well, it’s goofy.

Meanwhile, I’ll try to figure out what to talk about.