Hit the jump

Well, clearly I haven't been able to attend this blog as much as I would have liked to. So goes the Net. If you've come to this site looking for information on my two novels - 6 Sick Hipsters and Very Mercenary - check out the links below. I update those more frequently. Hope to see you there.

Rayo Casablanca home
6 Sick Hipsters
Very Mercenary

Throat Sprockets

Tim Lucas has a great post about the cult following around his brilliant first novel, Throat Sprockets.

Outsider Writers Collective Interview

A new interview here - complete with menacing photo.

Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart

Karin Dreijer Andersson's (of The Knife) solo album will be released stateside in March but you can download it, uh, tomorrow.

The Wal Mart Spread

Fitting that it's a sickly green.

Allan Guthrie love

Brilliant crime novelist Allan Guthrie spreads some early Very Mercenary love over at Book Spot Central.

He writes, "Very Mercenary by Rayo Casablanca (Kensington, US, spring ’09) This was the most fun I had reading a book all last year. Very Mercenary reads as if Joe Canrahan (director/screenwriter of Smokin’ Aces), Chuck Palahniuk and Philip Dick got together to write a novel with the remit that they had to really let their hair down this time."

Nice! Check out his other '08 favs here.

Cut from 6 Sick Hipsters #1

Here's the first of several passages/pages edited from early drafts of 6 Sick Hipsters. The one below is a personal favorite:

"Wolfgang Brown had a squirrel problem.

The frizz-tailed rodents that darted in front of his '89 Honda hatchback did not scramble back to the greenbelt; they stood frozen before his car to be ground to asphalt. It was as though the squirrels were sacrificing themselves. He imagined them lined up, beady eyes trailing after passing cars. Walnut sized hearts pounding. Them ready to jump, spring forward with some chattering cry like fuzzy martyrs. The hatchback was an altar for holocaust. Their deaths seemed so instinctual that it could be nothing less than religious.

Devout Christians found the Virgin in a pancake. They saw her veiled in a roadside shrubbery. Her smiling in a smear of oil on a pane of glass. Perhaps the squirrels saw an imperfection on Wolfgang’s car that demanded worship? Wolfgang had carefully examined the manifold on the hatchback. He checked out the tires. The bumper. Even the windshield. But he could not find any scrapes, tears, bumps, scratches, or splotches that might suggest, in a squirrel’s eye, an object of adoration.

They squirrels simply died and Wolfgang had no idea why.

In order to reduce the casualties, he took what he called “urban” routes to work. Santavista High was only a few miles south of his apartment complex but Wolfgang drove a five mile loop north before coming back down just so he could take Interstate 75 and avoid the neighborhoods and greenbelts where the faithful awaited the coming of their Japanese rear-wheel drive messiah. It actually worked out better that way. Taking I-75 brought Wolfgang through Fruitville and afforded him a chance to meet up with Tony on Mondays before school began."

© 2005-2008 Rayo Casablanca

King Shot - Jodo talks

Here's a new interview with Jodorowsky re: his feature (produced by David Lynch), King Shot.

Cinebomb #8: Jeu de Massacre

Alain Jessua's 1967 pop-art masterpiece, Jeu de Massacre (trans: Killing Game, aka Comic Book Hero), concerns a husband-wife cartoonist team (Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claudia Auger) invited to a playboy's mansion where said playboy (Michel Duchaussoy) enacts the comic strips they create. When the cartoonists kill off one of the characters in their strip, Duchaussoy plots revenge. Not only is the film chock-a-block with op-art by Guy Peellaert but the insanely catchy soundtrack is by The Alan Bown Set.

Hear some of it here:


See some of it here:

Sneak

Stunt Rock

Greatest movie ever? Judge for yourself here.

Skhizein trailer

French language short film, Skhizein, is about a man struck by a meteor. The aftereffect is quite odd: He's now displaced 91 centimeters to the side of where he really is. Very clever. Here's to hoping it turns up outside France.

Watch it here

Very Mercenary cover

Here it is (click on the image for higher res). Once again, designer Kristine Mills-Noble (who I had the pleasure of meeting in '06) has done a bang up job.

Copyedit fog

Finished the latest copyediting round for my next book,Very Mercenary. The way it works is this: I get a package (FedEX) with the manuscript (ms, not bound) and an editorial note. Depending on when I've submitted the manuscript and how long it's taken to do the bulk of the "major" editing, I have a few days to a week to turn the copyedited ms around. Not much. Many sleepless nights. The copyedits range from typos and minor grammar changes to plot holes (Weren't his ears missing?). Went well this time but many beers are needed for a full recovery.

Heavy rotation

The Faint - The Geeks Were Right

On headphone/car rotation for nigh on two weeks. With . . .


Underworld - Beautiful Burnout

This is what makes my day . . .

From a personal ad in Seattle's alt weekly rag, The Stranger. Seriously, my heart's aglow.

Second Skin NYC

Last week - well, the 5th - I attended the NYC premier of Second Skin at the ACE Festival with Chris and my agent, Jessica. It was fantastic meeting Victor and Juan Carlos in the flesh after so many long, detailed phone and email conversations. Great seeing the doc a second time and with a sold out audience. Lots of gamers there to heckle their on-screen compatriots ("What the fuck is he doing in the Valley of Trails?!").

It seems as though every time I talk to Victor something new and thrilling has come up for Second Skin, whether it's the NYTimes or Dr. Phil (see blog for details). Wonderful to see the film getting the press it deserves. The future is wide-open for Pure West and every write up and positive review just hammers it home.

Victor and I met up at Vinyl in Hell's Kitchen for a marathon dinner session. We talked a ton about adapting 6 Sick Hipsters (he even showed me his copious notes) and I was thrilled with the myriad ideas Victor has come up with. He and Juan Carlos are really thinking outside the box - not only in terms of scripting but promotion as well. They have a lot of big, very exciting ideas. Here's Victor on a tentative timeline (from the Second Skin blog): "I'm hoping (fingers crossed here) to have the script hammered out in the next 6-9 months, as Second Skin is getting released globally- by then I'm sure Juan will have started storyboarding it, and we can start presenting the package... at which point hopefully Peter and Chris can join us on the production side."

Pure West has a new website with a page on 6 Sick Hipsters pre-production here. Explore the site and check out some of their short films and the trailer for Second Skin.

Zombie Zombie - This Road Until Death Sets You Free

From Second Skin to Sick Hipsters

Here we go! My novel has been optioned by Pure West Films and I couldn't be more excited. Not only are these guys excellent filmmakers but they are excellent people.


The Pineiro Brothers - Juan Carlos, director, and Victor, producer/writer - are currently riding the wave of critical success generated by their first film, the award-wining documentary Second Skin. The film delves into the world of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like World of Warcraft and Second Life. While I'm not much of a gamer, I was instantly caught up in the lives of the people who play these games obsessively. From star struck lovers who have never physically met to a man hopelessly addicted and suicidal, Second Skin literally gets under the skin of MMORPG gamers. It's fast paced, funny without being condescending, and beautifully realized. You can watch the trailer for Second Skin and learn more about it here. Even more importantly, you can enjoy the film in a theatre near you this fall.

Victor is currently at work adapting the novel and I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have him working on this. Not only does he really "get" 6 Sick Hipsters but he's made it his own. All the references (even some of the more obscure ones) are within his startling scope of pop culture/geek knowledge. The man is like a long-lost twin. We talk frequently and each and every discussion makes me giddy with excitement at the prospects of this movie. I will be attending the NYC premier of Second Skin Sept. 5th and will have photos and the like to share from our first "official" meet up.

I should mention that we're talking indie film here. That means tricky but it also means loads of freedom. I know writers who've had big studio films made of their books that turned out, well, disastrously. Sure, they got paid loads but the resulting flick was not only rated PG-13 (when the novel was a hard R) but it was changed from a drama to a comedy. Ouch. While I would love to retire to a mansion in Florida with Hollywood winnings, I'm much happier knowing that 6 Sick Hipsters is in good hands. Victor and Juan Carlos not only want to keep me involved, they want to stay true to the novel. What more could I ask for?

This blog will become (in addition to news about forthcoming novels - Very Mercenary *hint*hint) home to my "production process" diaries. Stay tuned, the fun is just beginning.

Another hint

Here's another hint regarding the identity of the mysterious "---" who've optioned 6 Sick Hipsters. We're planning on coordinating our announcement of the deal to parlay some press. Hang tight.


uploaded to Flickr by mhuang 8.4.08