Poppy Z. Brite (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} docbrite) wrote,@ 2005-07-17 02:35:00 |
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Oh, and ...
(5:39 PM Melbourne time)
... here's the text of my GoH speech, more or less:
A little-known fact about me is that I can build almost any kind of vehicle. Plenty of people know that I was helped early in my writing career by the famous curmudgeon and speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison, but what not many people know is that I was building him a limousine. While I was putting the finishing touches on it, I decided to hit him with an idea.
"Harlan," I said, "you know how you can go into any corner deli and order a cup of coffee for fifty cents?" (This was lo these many years ago in 1991.) "Well, what if we opened a chain of fancy coffee emporiums, put a bunch of flavored syrups and whipped cream in the coffee, called it Tall and Grande and Venti, and charged four dollars a cup for it? We could call it … Farducks."
Harlan looked at me with those big innocent blue eyes of his and said, "Brite, you're a fucking moron."
Well, I didn't take it personally; I just finished building his limousine and went on my merry way. My career thrived in spite of Ellison's refusal to sponsor an idea that would have bankrolled God knows how many horror novels.
A few years later, I was building a helicopter for Neil Gaiman. Tall guy, leather jacket -- you may have seen him slinking around here this weekend. Knowing he was more easygoing than Harlan, I decided to let him in on my latest inspiration.
"Neil," I said, "did you ever notice that people don't like drinking out of water fountains? You have to bend down even if you're short, and you get a crick in your neck, and half the time some slob has spit his gum in the drain, and the whole thing just seems vaguely unsanitary. What if we put that same water in bottles and charged money for it? We could say it came from restorative Fijian springs and things. I bet we could get one-fifty, two bucks a bottle. Hell, you add a little food coloring, you could even call it a Sports Drink."
Being English, Neil was too polite to call me a moron. He just sort of peered down his nose at me and said, "Er … do you have any idea when my helicopter might be finished?"
So that brings us up to the year 2000, when I was building a private jet for my agent. By that time I'd gone through some changes in my personal life and my work. "Richard," I said (my agent's name was Richard), "what would you think if I gave up the extreme-gothy-erotic horror thing and wrote a series of novels about the restaurant life in New Orleans?"
"Terrible idea!" he said. "You'll ruin your career. I'd never be able to sell such a thing. Nobody wants to see the Queen of Extreme Gothy Erotic Horror writing food novels."
So I fired him. Didn't finish building his jet, either.
Not everything in this story I've just told you is 100% true, but it does have a moral: if you have an idea that drives you, an idea whose time has come, the best thing you can do is forge ahead with it even if someone tells you it's the worst idea they've ever heard. Had I tried to keep writing horror fiction of the sort I was known for at the beginning of my career, it would have rung false and horror, because I was no longer the person who wrote Lost Souls and Drawing Blood and Exquisite Corpse. Contrary to some rumors, I'm not ashamed of having written those books; nor do I wish to distance myself from my career as a horror writer. I'm proud of having been one. I still love reading horror and plan to keep a toe in the genre via a short story here and there, anyway. I do want to let people know what I'm doing now, bookwise, and see if they'll give it a chance, and of course I hope they'll like it as well as they did the old stuff. Maybe even better.
The story I'd like to read to you today is sort of midway between my horror and not-horror work. There are dark elements to it, but I feel that it takes place in a more realistic and maybe more hopeful world than the older work.
And then I read "The Heart of New Orleans."
(5:39 PM Melbourne time)
... here's the text of my GoH speech, more or less:
A little-known fact about me is that I can build almost any kind of vehicle. Plenty of people know that I was helped early in my writing career by the famous curmudgeon and speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison, but what not many people know is that I was building him a limousine. While I was putting the finishing touches on it, I decided to hit him with an idea.
"Harlan," I said, "you know how you can go into any corner deli and order a cup of coffee for fifty cents?" (This was lo these many years ago in 1991.) "Well, what if we opened a chain of fancy coffee emporiums, put a bunch of flavored syrups and whipped cream in the coffee, called it Tall and Grande and Venti, and charged four dollars a cup for it? We could call it … Farducks."
Harlan looked at me with those big innocent blue eyes of his and said, "Brite, you're a fucking moron."
Well, I didn't take it personally; I just finished building his limousine and went on my merry way. My career thrived in spite of Ellison's refusal to sponsor an idea that would have bankrolled God knows how many horror novels.
A few years later, I was building a helicopter for Neil Gaiman. Tall guy, leather jacket -- you may have seen him slinking around here this weekend. Knowing he was more easygoing than Harlan, I decided to let him in on my latest inspiration.
"Neil," I said, "did you ever notice that people don't like drinking out of water fountains? You have to bend down even if you're short, and you get a crick in your neck, and half the time some slob has spit his gum in the drain, and the whole thing just seems vaguely unsanitary. What if we put that same water in bottles and charged money for it? We could say it came from restorative Fijian springs and things. I bet we could get one-fifty, two bucks a bottle. Hell, you add a little food coloring, you could even call it a Sports Drink."
Being English, Neil was too polite to call me a moron. He just sort of peered down his nose at me and said, "Er … do you have any idea when my helicopter might be finished?"
So that brings us up to the year 2000, when I was building a private jet for my agent. By that time I'd gone through some changes in my personal life and my work. "Richard," I said (my agent's name was Richard), "what would you think if I gave up the extreme-gothy-erotic horror thing and wrote a series of novels about the restaurant life in New Orleans?"
"Terrible idea!" he said. "You'll ruin your career. I'd never be able to sell such a thing. Nobody wants to see the Queen of Extreme Gothy Erotic Horror writing food novels."
So I fired him. Didn't finish building his jet, either.
Not everything in this story I've just told you is 100% true, but it does have a moral: if you have an idea that drives you, an idea whose time has come, the best thing you can do is forge ahead with it even if someone tells you it's the worst idea they've ever heard. Had I tried to keep writing horror fiction of the sort I was known for at the beginning of my career, it would have rung false and horror, because I was no longer the person who wrote Lost Souls and Drawing Blood and Exquisite Corpse. Contrary to some rumors, I'm not ashamed of having written those books; nor do I wish to distance myself from my career as a horror writer. I'm proud of having been one. I still love reading horror and plan to keep a toe in the genre via a short story here and there, anyway. I do want to let people know what I'm doing now, bookwise, and see if they'll give it a chance, and of course I hope they'll like it as well as they did the old stuff. Maybe even better.
The story I'd like to read to you today is sort of midway between my horror and not-horror work. There are dark elements to it, but I feel that it takes place in a more realistic and maybe more hopeful world than the older work.
And then I read "The Heart of New Orleans."
