Author Archives: Bryan Hilson

Guest Post: Tuesday Before Thanksgiving

Hey folks, Tuesday Before Thanksgiving here. Nice to meet you. Wanna start by giving a shout-out to this blog for providing me a platform from which to speak my truth. Much gratitude to the staff for making me feel welcome, it’s been great hanging with everybody. (Todd B.–sorry again for eating your Cheesecake Factory leftovers. I think what happened is the piece of tape with your name on it wilted in the fridge and fell off.)

For those of you disappointed that I’m not Black Friday or (eye-roll) the “big” day itself, all I can say is you’re lucky this isn’t a blog post by Day Before Thanksgiving. First of all, the guy is usually too bombed-out to even find his nose with a flyswatter let alone string a few coherent sentences together. Secondly, when he is halfway-sentient he’s about as charming as stuffing your turkey with the unresolved emotions from a childhood trauma. Cigarette butts regurgitated by a diseased pigeon are more convivial. Not great company, folks.

And by the way all you Black Friday fans, BF isn’t the only day this week associated with a positive color. Tuesday Before Thanksgiving is all about the tan. Because tan goes with everything. Because people who are tan are awesome. Because tanned-leather goods are still a prized commodity. AND because a tan car interior is soothing to a mother-in-law’s fragile nerves isn’t that right, Dolores?

Get abstract with me for a second. Would you rather be buddies with a day that forces you to camp out in line for hours for some ridiculous toy your kid’s going to abandon by New Year’s, or do you want to ride the TBT train to rocking a pair of clean pleat khakis that DO NOT WRINKLE no matter how many roundhouse kicks you execute? Just saying. Team Tan Tuesday Before Thanksgiving.

Is that not enough to get my name on the fricking calendar?

Fricking Fine.

Because guess what? I’m also the last day legally that you can bail on hosting Thanksgiving without being sued. Look it up and then shut it all down and don’t come out of your room until you’ve watched every episode in the FHU.*

…….

Okay, I’m not gonna lie, you probably aren’t salvaging those relationships after doing that, which, hey-hey-hey, also makes me the most honest day of this week. Bonus tip: With the money saved on legal fees you can buy yourself an amazing tanning bed that will make all the bad feelings go away.

……..

Can’t lie to you again, probably not gonna work……………didn’t for me.

Oh, nice job, Tuesday, why’d you have to go and tear the scab off that wound? Bet you’d like to call Saturday After, huh? Eat a tub of ice cream together? Well, you blew up that bridge, didn’t you?

Folks, I can’t do this, I, I’m sorry—-wow, this is awkward.

I gotta go.

________________________________________________________________________

*Full House Universe

Halloween To-Do List

Photo by Allan Warren
  1. Ghoul a little insane
  2. Rattle all available chains
  3. STAY AWAY FROM VLAD’S WOLFSBANE
  4. Possess a plumber to unclog the drain
  5. Brunch with Marion Crane
  6. Tiptoe through the bloodstains
  7. Happy hour on the ghost train
  8. Spook 26A from the wing of a plane
  9. Tuck into a dinner of human brains
  10. No, doctor, it cannot be explained…

Are You Prepared For That Big Rewrite?

Drawing by Vincent van Gogh

Okay, so you’ve written a few drafts of your novel and you’ve gotten feedback from trusted sources, and slowly but surely it dawns on you that the story needs to go in a brand-new direction, whether through substantial changes to the characters or the plot or both.

Do. Not. Panic.

Friends, I too have been there, and over time have developed a list of key To-Do’s before embarking on any kind of large-scale revision. If you’re contemplating your own massive rewrite, this could be just the thing to boost your confidence and help you stay the course.

No. 1 Sever all ties with family and friends. The book is now your [spouse/significant other/BFF]. Hail Book!

No. 2. If you have a job, quit immediately. The tension that arises over how you’re going to pay your bills will feed directly into addressing your writers group notes about your narrative lacking conflict.

No. 3 Practice the art of insomnia. [Alternatively, replace your mattress with a bed of nails]

No. 4 Set the room temperature to touchy/reliably grouchy.

No. 5 Keep several chickens and/or goats at or near your writing space for weekly sacrifices to Book. Hail Book!

No. 6 Plastic surgery to replace your ears with noise-canceling headphones.

No. 7 Get comfortable with adult diapers. [See also: eliminating bran from your diet; See also: Google results for “eating antispasmodics like they’re Wild Berry Skittles”]

No. 8 Begin each morning burying your phone. Note: Also begin each morning drawing a map to location of said buried phone to avoid costly delay to revision due to nervous breakdown.

No. 9 Do not read a passage from your favorite book for inspiration. You don’t have a favorite book that isn’t Book. What’re you doing? Hail Book!

No. 10 Put together a writing playlist that’s basically one indefinite song with your own voice screaming over industrial EDM, “Are you done yet?!” “Are you done yet?!” “ARE YOU DONE YET?!”

Opening Lines To Unwritten Books

Photo by Evan Amos

Hell is when you’re picturing your grandmother French-kissing her Pomeranian and you still get a boner in gym class.

Yeah, when Mr. Jones was a kid he killed a kid, but the little girl who spoke to me with her mind wouldn’t trust anyone else to save her.

Beth-Ann Monroe was all ready with her comeback for when she got caught: If you idiots had just given me the job in the first place, I’d be selling your cars not stealing them. 

Cute Little Puppy’s secret desire is to trap Farmer Wyatt inside a barn fire.

Am I bad person if I’d rather eat a bacon-wrapped razor blade on a dare than tell them the truth about what Jenna Quincy and I built in her basement?

Cute Little Puppy (rewrite 1): Cute Little Puppy’s secret desire is to be a franchise owner of an Assassins-For-Hire.

“Dude, check it out, that vampire left his wooden fangs in my neck!”

Ideally, happily ever after was forging a close personal friendship with Jake Jackson’s naked abs for the rest of eternity, but right now she’d settle for being spared the growing saliva in the corners of Mr. Dacker’s mouth as he rehashed the Pythagorean theorem.

Cute Little Puppy (rewrite 2): Cute Little Puppy’s more immediate goal is to monetize his abilities as an internet troll.

Forgive me if you’re a woodfairy reading this, but you dusted little bastards are delicious.

Giving the anti-vaxxers their own prom was the second worst idea ever, just behind me teaming up with Nurse Jimmy to crash it.

I can’t be the only You Tube star whose ex-best friend killed someone to make it happen.          

Like beauty, the difference between right and wrong is often in the eye of the beholder who doesn’t confuse his cough syrup for cherry soda.

Cute Little Puppy (the last rewrite): Cute Little Puppy’s making a new bucket list, now that its doctor found a malignant cyst.

I’m just saying, if I’d known my parents were AI sleeper agents hellbent on destroying everything I love about human civilization, there’s no way I give up on that third meatball sub.  

Reader in Residence

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve asked myself, “Goodness, Bryan, couldn’t you just live in a bookstore,” I’d finally be able to afford that immersion therapy to get over my fear of nickels.

Well, I am pleased to announce that this is no longer a hypothetical musing. What started as a surprise weekend trip to Portland, Oregon has turned into (surprise!) a bid to establish residency inside Powell’s, the legendary independent bookstore. There it is, right down there.

All photos by Carolyn Kraft

And there I am, just prior to never leaving the store again.

Who needs the outdoors?

Now, don’t worry about me, I’ve got all my basic needs covered.

I take my breakfast in the Blue Room
And my lunch in the cafe
Snack time in the Rose Room!
Dinner at the window in the Gold Room

And for the times I start to lose faith in my mission, a little inspiration….

Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way…

And just an FYI, I always brush between meals.

I think someone else tried establishing residency here–whatever happened to that guy?


Okay, well, wish me luck! According to Oregon law I only have 364 more days before I’m declared a legal resident of the store. I also could be making that up completely.

No joke, though, I am bushed after all that eating! Guess I’ll bed down right here in the Pearl Room. Good night for now.

Who hasn’t dreamed of sleeping under an SQL guidebook?

Ed. Note: Feel free to send cards, pleas for reason, and bail money to Powell’s City of Books, Attn: Guy Doing His Best To Keep Portland Weird, Blue Room, 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland, OR 97209.  

Daily Aphorisms

Monday: If at first you try and don’t succeed, your mother has kept your childhood bedroom exactly the way it was all these years, you know, with your old lip cream dispenser and everything, so you have that at least.

Tuesday: A bird in the hand is worth twenty-two in twenty-two hands after you’re stuck in the cloning machine overnight.

Wednesday: When life gives you lemons, drink the lemonade like the other cult members and then make “Dr. Mike” your Power of Attorney.

Thursday: If you don’t stand for something, you’ll never get off this ski lift.

Friday: There is no “I” in liar.

Saturday: Don’t count your chickens before Charlie counts his. Seriously, let him count his chickens and ring his bell, and when he goes down to the river to wash his bags, you can count yours.

Sunday: Hindsight is 20-times more likely to RSVP early for your Game of Thrones watch party and then text you every day asking when it is.  

Bonus Aphorism: Dance like no one can believe your partner is holding up so well after being knocked unconscious five songs ago.

2018 Predictions Recap

Those of you who read my blog regularly already know that I hit on all three of my predictions for 2018.

Those of you who heretofore have been getting your news from trashy, unreliable sources, here’s a quick and trustworthy recap:

  1. Dexter Jessup did in fact lose a knuckle in the elevator at the Bank of the Illusory Savings building, only to be reunited with it six weeks later when delivering a self-righteous speech to Taylor Dane’s brunch guests waiting for their Belgian waffles.
  2. Mayonnaise did in fact save a life. It’s the only reason Markus Casper isn’t still stuck between a prospector’s ghost and a very hard place.
  3. And on June 24th, gargoyles did in fact take over a Stuckey’s in Dublin, Ohio and set a franchise record for most customers mauled and PB& Bacon shakes sold.

What’s in store for the rest of 2019? Well, shoot, since I went 3-for-3 last year I’ve decided not to tempt fate and will instead buy a lottery ticket and win $500 million and retire with the wife to a state of mind where no “Ivy League” doctor is going to refuse to replace my legs with pogo sticks.

It’s going to be an incredible year, everyone, welcome aboard!

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: WordPress has done away with the “Add an Image” button in this current version, 5.0.3. Looks like it’s just going to be text and imagination going forward. For this post, please picture a human knuckle, Dublin, Ohio, and a cassette tape of Taylor Dane’s Tell It To My Heart slathered in mayonnaise.]

David Lynch – Room to Dream

My mistake, I suppose, was expecting a conventional book tour interview.

This was David Lynch after all, the guy who’s given us the Lady in the Radiator, Frank Booth, and those miniature demonic grandparents who slip under apartment doors.

The setting was perfect. It’s hard to beat the cavernous decadence of The Theatre at Ace Hotel, originally built in 1927, the “former flagship movie house of United Artists.”

But then the lights went down and the evening started with all 8 episodes of Dumbland, Lynch’s crudely drawn and animated web series about a brutish mouth-breather (literally), his traumatized wife, and their hyperactive son in the suburbs. This is David Lynch’s suburbs, however, so a neighbor is a man with a removable arm who has sex with ducks, ants do a song-and-dance number calling attention to the main character being a “dumbturd,” and another character has the stick caught in his mouth removed by way of his eye sockets. It’s funny in a punishing way. To me, the series is more a testament to Lynch’s genius with sound design, which he employs to great unsettling effect.

Still, my heart sank a little because these events don’t usually run very long and the “Dumbland” screening ate up over half an hour.  I was not encouraged, then, when Kristine McKenna, moderator and co-author of Lynch’s new hybrid memoir-biography, said she wasn’t going to ask him anything about the book. Instead, she had a few questions about “Summer,” as in the season, the first day of which is when this talk took place.

Okay, all right, I could go with this. Lynch is too interesting a person not to have something intriguing to share. He doesn’t like summer vacations. His ideal day is waking up refreshed, having a cup of coffee, doing some meditation, and then getting to work on a project, which can mean a painting, a film, or just daydreaming. He compared phones to sugar, meaning they’re as hard to give up as a “bag of really good cookies.”

That portion lasted about 10 minutes and then it was time for audience questions, which were submitted prior to the start of the program. Most of them concerned Twin Peaks, with one question prompting him to tell the story of how the pivotal character of Bob was inspired by set dresser/actor Frank Silva being in the “wrong” place at the right time. Another got him to reveal that he’d written and abandoned a film adaptation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. An inquiry into his recurring dreams had him describing one where he’s in the desert watching his approaching father become distorted by the waves of heat coming off the sand, and not knowing whether this was his “good” father or his “bad” father. Later in the dream he’s hiding at the very top of a marble structure listening to the footsteps below, presumably one of the fathers looking for him. The best question was “How do you keep your hair up?” Smiling slyly, Lynch replied, “I have a heart-to-heart talk with it every morning.”

Good stuff, I thought, but then it was all over, six audience questions answered in 20 minutes. And the long, long, long line for the book signing still awaited……which I admit I abandoned.

Sure, I was disappointed. Not so disappointed I was going to cut off someone’s ear so Kyle Maclachlan could find it in a field later. No.

But look, I love Lynch’s movies and how his mind works. He’s a master of mood, of atmosphere, of residing very comfortably in that often discomfiting zone between dreaming and waking life. I do find him inspiring and an influence on my writing. I just wanted more time with the guy.

Hey, at least I have the book, Room to Dream, which I must say is pretty impressive in its depth and breadth. We’re cautioned that answers to the puzzles that are Lynch’s art do not reside here, but that’s fine, I’m not looking for answers. I just find him, the work, and his creative process fascinating and stimulating. If books are where I have to go to access that as well as the perspectives of his family members and creative collaborators, there are worse places to look. I mean, imagine being inside Kenneth McMillan’s Baron Harkonnen fat suit.

 

What I Heard At The LA Times Festival Of Books!

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

It is a blessing the doctors were able to replace my ears in time for this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I’ll never fall asleep in a lawn care store again, let me tell you.

Anywho, this past weekend the LATFOB was held once again at the glamorous USC campus and was a treasure trove for authors and readers alike. I checked it out on both Saturday and Sunday, and the gauze was just breathable enough to let in many an insight and observation, as well as several nuggets of wisdom. Here is a smattering of what I heard:

“Authors are the brand, not the publishers.”

“The intimacy between book and reader is part of every aspect of the industry.”

“An editor’s job is to connect the writer and the reader. Editors are sometimes guilty of not thinking about that.”

“Staying respectful is very hard to do on the internet.”

“Before Amazon, it was Barnes & Noble and Borders as the behemoths [accused of] crushing the industry, and now it’s like ‘please Barnes & Noble, please stick around!’ ”

“Someone told me that you’re only allowed one dream sequence in your career, and I’ve just blown my load in this new book.”

“I don’t remember my dreams, but for some reason people always tell me theirs…so I steal them.”

“Anyone who looks at the world, if you’re not writing horror stories, what are you doing?”

“I push back against the label ‘literary’ horror. It sounds like, ‘we like you but not your friend.’ ”

[Regarding writing] “There is no way you can escape the work.”

“Elevators are the physical manifestation of a traumatized mind.”

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

“Every story should start a chapter late and end a chapter early.”

“A fellow writer once described my book as this beautiful bonbon that when you bite into it oozes puss and maggots.”

[Regarding technology] “We tend to believe that we can make it, but not always should we make it.”

“Young people don’t have the opportunity to be bored anymore.”

“I believe there is a creative energy that connects our hearts to each other.”

“I have a blood splatter library.”

“As a Nigerian-American, you have four career options: Doctor, lawyer, engineer, disgrace to the family.”

“It is the insecurity of our parents that stifles our children.”

“Listening keeps my writing fresh.”

“You find out at 15 that you don’t have much control over what happens to you. But you do have control over how you react to it.”

“Excellence is a habit.”

 

WHO SAID THIS STUFF: Carolyn Kellogg; Betty Amster; Peter Ginna; Glory Edim; Ginna; Carmen Maria Machado; Victor LaValle; Ben Loory; LaValle; Jason Reynolds; Reynolds; Reynolds; Dhonielle Clayton; Marie Lu; Reynolds; Laurie Halse Anderson; Emily Carroll; Tochi Onyebuchi; Reynolds; Renee Watson; Anderson; Reynolds