the gunslinger's bible

odd ends7marginalia

Heads up velvet orange mosh pit. I am soon migrating all of the sometimes Rachel stories to the velvet side stack. Followed after by jack fell and… not to give anybody extra reading or friggin homework. I know, same. The must read list is an ever ballooning beast but I’d point to two things. Sometimes Rachel is the novella I was writing the summer of 1994 against backdrop of the events within the story spaceclock yellow story and the madhouse that was the unraveling of the last of the beat novelists and poets and core faculty of the Jack Kerouac school MFA program. Dead rabbit holes abound. The algebra being the Rachel chapter titled nude, descending is me writing at 25 or six. Spaceclock yellow is me thirty years later going the full astral into the skull of that maniac in 1994. The nude, descending chapter is relatively or for the most remains same as the draft within MFA manuscript. I was coming into my 27 club or go big flow with debut novel state. There are surely any number of easter eggs for the deep velvet but also seemed useful to point out without going into the various Jungian implications of my shall we say close relationship with narrator Jack, there should be any number of evolutions in style and voice what have you. There are things that I was doing in those days that are far more intensive and meticulous than I tend to have patience for now, the line breaks and obsession with blank space on the page and more. I am technically speaking and in nearly all quantifiable metrics a massively better more expansive more whatever writer now. I am better by a mile. I am obi wan of Velvet. I can and do sling the phantom fire and of late, I’m in the pocket. I also tend to go full throttle stream of consciousness and find myself needing to say fuck man reel that shit back. Down. But when I flip open the big Rachel manuscript to have at look at the Orange Theory or the Violence Necessary and not essays I must give a nod to the will christopher baer who wrote the Rachel stories by candlelight in the wee hours and hunted midget porn assholes by day was no slouch. The cool hand luke version of self is the gunslinger I’d least like to fuck with today, which gives me something to ponder for future iteration of self and what the 87 yr old version will be like on the page.

Next installment of gunslinger and all of the how to and how not of dialogue fragged bits of endless snow and art of dialogue thrown high and low into subnotes are being corralled subdued polished to drop into 35 stack in next day or two.

I have so many miles of pages and so do you all.

peace.

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the Rachel stories form the novella forty-five to fifty thousand words, set in unspecific french quarter, middle ‘90s. Seven chapters originally, adjusted to five for stack. Rachel moves on to events the short story The Velvet, first major pub in the Nerve erotica noir anthology of 1999. Rachel the novella was the anchor of the thirteen stories featuring the ever shifting Jack, youngest of the brothers Fell. Cowboy and Valentine Fell are the primary heroes/villains of the novel Godspeed which was the book that essentially broke me. Collapsed my internal wave function or.. the observer observing the observer observing the observed lost his mind because the behemoth was ever more ever more everything. Any number of major conflicting events such as the film studio who had the film rights to Judas and had just purchased my script for KMJ and were in talks to write scripts for Dreadful and Hell’s Half. All good things some not then suddenly Mythic was suddenly suing the indy comic book press who were already well along the development of graphic novel. Boiled to to control of the intellectual property rights to the use and likeness and future… goddamn action figures. Cease and desist mayhem back and forth, I was in the eye of storm. Everything went to limbo and within a year I vanished from the Velvet and the Cult sites to work the psych ward. Eleven year loop.

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The Rachel stories part one through 7 though may trim to five chapters, resume with the Velvet and continue for four more aka the Waco One Mile series.. please take your time, the paywall will stay down for say rest of summer.

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I was telling Editor other day that I have enough unpublished half essays false start story frags, the director’s cut fallout from half ventured then retreated fourth Phineas book, the Rachel and Velvet and Seizure series plus the fuck honestly I don’t know actually up to 200 thousand words of the Godspeed wreckage especially if the roughly five hundred handwritten in no particular order notebook pages which I am grappling with on the side.. I have above and below enough shit to post every day for next year. Two years. This is one reason or primary for splitting Involuntary into separate strands Velvet proper for all fiction and Rule35 for the workshop material old and new, the Gunslinger Bible etc. I am of two minds always but have numerous back and forth urges to just upload all of the every fucking bit of it to stack and just. say have at.

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just in case yeah. bolt of blue. hand of god. whatever. also trust that the oft mentioned cowboy kid now same age as I when Rachel series and first chapters of Judas, and is himself midway into what from the shiny jagged bits bobs sounds. well, say you tucked the basketball diaries kafka’s metamorphosis and dermaphoria into blender and hit swirl. The kid is a trip. sometimes more everything than me, sometimes so uncannily eerily just like me such that his dear mother, the M who indeed did look very very much like Pocohantas if you made the disney version into a taller say 5’9 very cool stony at times analytical as fuck cool bad bitch with a phD in Biochem fro UC Davis and who appears in abstract but as self in the spaceclock yellow piece, not thrilled shall we say.. anyway the kid has access to all of the endless the splinter of my three universes. fiction realms. The cowboy kid’s favorite quote to chuck at me in certain contexts, from the second or third year after we split, brutal and vicious as fuck moments there, more on my Let Rise the Matriarchy aka the patientweaver stack under construction. And yeah I do have thoughts about writers and the whole living with other humans conundrum, but will slip that rabbit hole for now.

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My hope or primary focus at present, beyond finishing Jack Fell into straylight yellow and eyeballing the vast godspeed wreckage, is to eventually make Rule35 paywalled after say the end of Aug or Sept, or long enough for all of you to may pick up a bit of buzz after it makes rounds, I have no fuck clue. as with that one, this first chapter of Rachel has I think 8 or 9 likes. not to say fuck all about.. check rant about like buttons in general, as with amazon reviews etc I personally tend to think fuck, like what you like, I resist the dopamine bullshit anyway but have also not ventured into the stack analytics as such because well. Gunslinger’s Bible and so on and these days, myself I regard the icky bitty hearts as more measurement of engagement.

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if I for instance read a fellow stackers stuff and like it well enough to read to the end, heart. if I think it’s hot shit must read, restack with most wicked pull.. if I find it to be level up from wicked, comment, push to followers elsewhere like iG stories aka my only elsewhere, and we will by then have surely had some bit of exchange in DMs or notes. told someone Bard or velvet kid darkly pirate as fuck pablo and orange Voldemort, tank girl Zani the assassin priya iceman et al hmm maddie rune something ominously velvet and up back to my hotel 9 dark wick ninjas the Editor, edith bow, CJ Kpete and wrong dimension… and whoever surely I’m forgetting but will give shout out in notes when names pop to mind, all of you and all of the above, this makes you family. velvet collective. this is law, this is canon. ask o.g. velvet folk like Cleveneger and Evelyn and Andrea , motelshiren, matthew vaughn (Bowery) Steve Hollyman (Lairies, the fuck are you waiting on there) craig pookie walwork (human tenderloin, same) pookie was his original handle in the ‘5-’07 early Velvet forum days. likewise manda joon, who penned the so far most jawdropping of the hotel 9 stories as yet unseen on stack but soon. ask any of them that shit is forever how I’m wired. Stephen Jones and I went.. fuck fifteen long years between live talk in the real during the Eleven Year Loop (see stack) and picked up mid conversation last year. Likewise the Velvet Warm and Bound anthology contributors, the original velvet, and Logan Frost aka Chance, writer/ editor of o.g. Velvet, Kareem Badr.. some of these names you likely know, some you may want to visit in the ether.

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Likewise all of my Kerouac school family, bil brown, Gavin Pate (one of the hundred) Karin Rathert, Darrin D of Emergency Horse, Stillwell and the esteemed Laird Hunt (the novel Impossibly and numerous others) who for goodly stretches of 94 and 95 was my closest friend most respected rival and… bruh. If you think the Editor or self are fierce in the autopsy, Hunt was the goddamn Doc Holliday of that kerouac scene. if you brought less than your full game to workshop and Hunt was on one.. if familiar with the Secret History (and if not what the capital F we should talk) but close your eyes and see Henry at Bunny’s graveside cold dark deep with inner calm and rage at once drop handful of black earth onto coffin in most eerie quiet time stretched moment.. that is Laird Hunt in my mind. Not sure where or if he’s still teaching, he was at Naropa for some years, but if you ever see his name in bookstore or at summer writing program, go. read that dude. talk to Hunt, the novelist slash brother of velvet who I would most want to make sure to get a good night’s sleep and do some proper stretching before fucking with in print knifework. Jones too he’s a freak of nature but like Clevenger and mad Wookie Editor (shhh he keeps this close, way more potentially dangerous in the real, that Emil O) anyway they are all well, teddy bears. They have the fire the fury within and mad chops for sure, but Clev and Jones are more reserved than this particular lad of the original Velvet three.

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In many ways lucky I am. Lucky to have been born at just right tear drop moment in time to not only come to peak and full pure raw writing strength during same four or five year window mid ‘90s as all of the Kerouac family but also... without getting diverted into music, Kurt and Courtney and that entire cohort from Chris Cornell Fiona Apple to PJ Harvey Tupac the Pixies.. all of them, all same age roughly as me and Clevenger, all peaking at same time. Likewise all of the five or seven filmmakers currently relevant/ genius, same thing. Fincher. Nolan. PT Anderson. Darren Arronovsky. All of their most important break through movies from Seven to Fight Club Requiem for Dream, Magnolia, Memento, The Matrix. Likewise the generation of actors who made those characters so fucking unforgettable. The same cohort of artists in that time frame were in sweet spot between and dropping their debut shit, the stuff that made their name mean anything.. All of the above and all the writers I’m about to mention, all of it all of them, were peaking same time frame, 94 to 99 or 2000. Also all of it . but in my world my realm.. off top of mind the writers whose first novels appeared in same narrow window particularly those who I either met via same editor same anthology same local hood of mid late ‘90s, Tartt with Secret History, Garland the Beach, Darcey with suicide blonde, Charlie Huston (the shotgun rule) Fight Club, the Handbook and dozens more all of us on heels of Ellis, whose American Psycho, Rules of Attraction.. I was in some sort of back forth with a friend recently who is… 42, hazy cusp of X millenial, at point in rise and fall, out of my mouth came in full Wolverine growl (pretty sure it was the growl sparked psych ward handle) as the kid or sister aka dad’s scary as fuck dark voice when they were small though same growl gets more of an eye roll now unless.. there are still the moments, the dips to black. But I am three years sober. I have nothing to lose but time, heartbeat love of family. I will in next week or so endeavor to post random short videos just talking when all the lectures of workshops past flood my inner velvet and the impossible memory I’ve found to half curse half godsend becomes too much at once for weary old yellow bastard.. then again told Clevenger one thing that paradoxically has me and him too in our current perhaps leanest meanest writing fighting weight and form, neither of us got famous. We both had nice enough paydays along the way, Judas kept me and kin at peace moneywise for at most five or seven years but even then always in writer’s ongoing hell the feast or famine or when the next check may show, six weeks six months or years and we are both at point now of not broke but never more comfortable than three months from it and so we are still and never not hungry, as I keep saying. Daylight burns. Time is not our friend at present for any number of reasons but primarily the ai fuckery. clearly. I may drop off site for a few days to let some of all of the above or below.. this shit is always or 99 of 100 pure one draft on fly off cuff. same with more of the fiction than some know or would want to know

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I have all and every intention to see all of you read wide and far and if you have a first novel brewing I will we shall and will see that published. in physical analog realm where books still fucking matter to somebody out there. One Shot Amigo is soon to press. blind lifeguard the surfer noir, then likely indelicate incident Wasteland Letters, if when CJ is ready to throw down that is a mad beautiful monster of a manuscript and I worry sometimes it will do to CJ what Godspeed did to me.

this is the blood circle. the velvet. trust blind blind trust but know that I don’t fuck around, ever. If I say I have your back you can blink sleepwalk wander into traffic what the fuck ever seven years from now, I got you. The velvet mechanic or grim reaper 34 the phantom gunslinger I am all of them they are me.. when I catch fire like this it does get. ask the Editor. Not after disappearing ghosting the velvet family for eleven actual years.

I am on a mission. Daylight burns.

seven.