We Almost Get to Run a Blind Item
I visited Poppy Z. Brite’s blog last night, and caught the tail end of a story that started about two weeks ago, when a hotshot (and self-styled “controversial”) filmmaker demanded her involvement in his proposed adaptation of her decade-old Exquisite Corpse. “I wrote back and said I had no interest in any involvement with the project beyond possibly reading/commenting on a script draft or two and mentioning it on my website,” she reported, especially since (as she explained the next day) “I just feel no emotional connection with that novel anymore.”
Still, once the production company agreed it didn’t absolutely need her for interviews and photo shoots, Brite was prepared to take the option money and pay her bills. But now, it turns out, “apparently the Most Extreme Director of Our Time read my post about the Exquisite Corpse movie and stomped off in a huff,” leaving her to wonder: “Does it ever seem to you that the people striving the hardest to offend are often the most easily offended themselves?” Now since she never named the director, I’d sort of assumed that she was referring to a certain enfant terrible who’s been known to wish cancer on critics who pan his flicks, but in rereading the posts, she did mention the production company by name (Frightflix), which makes it a virtual lock she’s talking about Nick Palumbo, the auteur behind modern classics like Murder-Set-Pieces and Nutbag.
16 August 2005 | uncategorized |
Note the Responsibility-Taking Active Voice
While I was busy doing research, the SB,TB crew put up an interview with Gayle Wilson, the Romance Writers of America president-elect, although Wilson makes it plain “she is answering for herself, and not as a spokesperson for the RWA” when she says things like “I believe that one of the biggest problems this year has been our failure to communicate promptly and appropriately with our members…We have… made mistakes. We regret them, and we have learned from them. I know that simply saying that will not reassure outraged members, but I hope that by our future actions we can restore the trust that was damaged this year.”
It’s very exciting, though, to see the RWA’s incoming leader state unequivocally that “the organization doesn’t define the genre; the genre defines the organization. And the genre is vibrant and growing and evolving.”
15 August 2005 | uncategorized |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
