the absence of chemical warfare | astronomy | fiction | what the insides of things look like | alien life forms | caves | junkyards | slashers | words | memories | semiotics | sunglasses that don't get lost | the color red | coins from 1972 | old trucks | consciousness | time-travel | Captain James T. Kirk
Music
Bruce Springsteen | Waylon Jennings | Bob Seger | Mulehead | The Gourds | Ween | 16 Horsepower | Steely Dan | Guns N' Roses | Hank III | Drive-by Truckers | John Cougar | Thin Lizzie | Janis Martin | George Thorogood | Billy Joel | Earl Thomas Conley | Unce Tupelo | CCR | Jerry Reed | The Silver Jews | Hector Faceplant | Whitesnake | Bonnie Tyler | Bob Dylan | Rob Zombie | Elton John | Steve Earle | Son Volt | KISS | Bonnie Prince Billie | Tom Waits | ZZ Top | Heart | Boz Scags | Frank Zappa | CSNY | Nitty Gritty Dirt Band | Kid Rock | Tom Petty | Dan Seals | The Outlaws | Pink Floyd | Lynyrd Skynyrd | .38 Special | CDB | Bad Company | Supertramp | Sheena Easton | Rod Stewart | The Band | STP | Great White | Def Leppard | Poison | Motley Crue | Metallica | Three Dog Night | Cream | Foreigner | Elvis
Movies
Halloween | Lost Highway | Henry Fool | Buffalo 66 | Session 9 | Doc Hollywood | The Adventures of Ford Fairlane | Jacob's Ladder | The Usual Suspects | Carnival of Souls | Fight Club | Naked Gun | Return to Horror High | Donnie Darko | Beavis & Butthead Do America | Dogville | Jaws | Twelve Monkeys | Princess Mononoke | Se7en | Tenebrea | Terminator | Terminator 2 | Club Dread | Princess Bride | Texas Chainsaw Massacre | Rhustler's Rhapsody | Run Lola Run | April Fool's Day | The Howling | What About Bob | Smokey & the Bandit | The Haunting of Hill House | Snatch | Footloose | Hoosiers | Psycho | Supertroopers | Tombstone | Trainspotting | Wait Until Dark | Deathtrap | The Game | Conan the Barbarian | Valentine's Day | Dead & Breakfast | Alien | Layer | Friday the 13th | The Mothman Prophecies | Hostel | Blazing Saddles | Grease | Hoosiers | Death & the Maiden | Eric the Red | Black Christmas | American Pie | The Serpent and the Rainbow | Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels | Leap of Faith | Nightwatch/Daywatch | The Lord of Illusions | Nightmare on Elm Street | The Mistress | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Get Shorty | Peeping Tom | Scream
Television
X-Files | Star Trek | STNG| Futurama | News Radio | Brisco County, Jr. | Taken | Amazing Stories | The Outer Limits | The Twilight Zone | The Highlander | Magnum pi | Simon & Simon | Home Improvement | Seinfeld | King of the Hill | Carnivale | Desperado | Headbangers' Ball | Spongebob Squarepants | The Lone Gunmen | Prey | Dark Angel | The Kindred | Pop-up Video | The Crocodile Hunter | Enterprise | Voyager | Twin Peaks | 21 Jumpstreet | Spenser for Hire | Firefly | House | 24 | Lost | Invasion | Avatar | Matlock | McGyver | The Simpsons | Friday the 13th: the Series | Tales from the Crypt | Sledgehammer
Books
Don Quixote | Moby Dick | Ghost Town (Coover) | Catch-22 | White Hotel | Deliverance | Valis | Ubik | Maze of Death | The Virgin Suicides | Love Medicine | Winter in the Blood | Childhood: an Autobiography of a Place | American Psycho | V. | Gravity's Rainbow | The Crying of Lot 49 | Infinite Jest | The Things They Carried | The Damnation Game | It | The Stand | Firestarter | The Bourne Identity | CJ Box's Joe Pickett Series | anything by Hammet | Ender's Game | Sirens of Titan | Hell's Half Acre | Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series | Solaris | The Virgin Suicides | The Illuminatus! trilogy | The Icewind Dake trilogy | The Wayfarer's Redemption trilogy | The Einstein Intersection | Jubal Sacket | Stinger | The Watchmen | The Maxx | Grendel (Matt Wagner's, not John Gardner's) | Shadowlands | Contortionist's Handbook | Confederacy of Dunces | The Sot-weed Factor | The Lats Voyage of Somebody the Sailor | Giles Goat-boy | The Magus | A Maggot (Fowles) | Holes | Reservation Blues | Darkness in St Louis Bearheart: the Heirship Chronicles | The Shining | The Outlaws | Embers | Lolita | Pale Fire | The Last Picture Show | Lonesome Dove | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Love in the Time of Cholera | Salvation on Sand Mountain | Equus | The Satanic Verses | the Harry Potter series | The Earthsea series | The Hainish Chronicles | The Martian Chronicles | Flight to Canada | Black no More | Blood Meridian | Trainspotting | Dracula | Going Native | To Kill a Mockingbird | Odd Thomas | Motherless Brooklyn | Riddley Walker | Neuromancer | Snow Crash | Cryptonomicon | The Ambassadors | Everything is Illuminated | Plane Geometry and Other Affairs of the Heart | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | The Grapes of Wrath | Time's Arrow | If On a Winter's Night a Traveler | Summerland | Libra | The Book of Daniel | Lord Jim | Heart of Darkness | Lord of the Barnyard | House of Leaves | Book of Lazarus | A Clockwork Orange | Triggering Town | Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Lestat / Queen of the Damned | The Wolfen | Frankenstein | Gulliver's Travels | On the Track of Unknown Animals | Calvin & Hobbes | The Far Side | Lord of the Barnyard | The Name of the Rose | The Brothers Karamazov | Crime and Punishment | Bridge to Terabithia | The Fire Eaters | Presumed Innocent | A Simple Plan | The Haunting of Hill House | On the Road | 60 Stories | Pnin | [about 6000 more . . . ]
Heroes
[ see 'Who I Wouldn't Mind Meeting,' above and to the right ]
..
An AIM avatar, if you want (it's animated, but it takes a bit to see it move):
About Stephen:
I don't know: I grew up in Texas, live here still. Have never seen a whale, either from a distance or up close. I write more than's healthy, maybe. Have somehow made it across thirty-six years already. Not very good at video games, but fair at basketball. I would like to use the word 'pleniform' someday, and not in reference to an intake manifold. Sometimes I wish I were born five hundred years ago, so I could see things before fences and roads, but then, other times, I'll pull into a convenience store, push a button for 44 ounces of fizzing dr pepper, and man, I'm glad to be here, now. I've jumped off more tall things than I probably ever should have. I spend a lot of time being scared of things, and have what feels like the wrong idea that, if I can watch and read enough horror, and write enough of the bad stuff down, that it won't get to me anymore. I once ran a long way in front of a lot of dogs in the nighttime, and finally had to spend the night on top of the first roof I got to. I've had snake venom in me, for whatever that's worth. Have had a spider lay an egg in me too, when I fell asleep in the pen with my steer. Have stood in a melting field of snow and felt the ground shake under me and known that this is it, the world's ending, only to have a wall of horses come pounding up over the rise in their winter coats, their eyes wild, tails matted with slush. Have seen bad things happen too. Love to read theoretical physics, but can't quite follow the math. Dream that someday, in the Star Trek future I'm holding my breath for, some jumpsuited guy or girl might carry one of my books onto a grimy interstellar ship, and then leave it in some backwater port an impossible number of light years away, for another traveler to find, and maybe read, nod to him or herself that yeah, that's it all right.
Right now, I guess, my main plan is to get another pair of White's Boots, though, by hook or crook or whatever. I keep waiting for either of my other pairs to finally wear out, but, I don't know: it's not a thing White's Boots seem very good at, wearing out. With jeans--Carhartt's, say, which I've got way too many of--not wearing out's a good thing. And I always thought it would be with boots. And maybe it is. That doesn't stop me from wanting more, though.
Anyway, the facts, the stuff maybe not already bullet-pointed in these boxes all around here: I write fiction. Five books published so far:
The Fast Red Road--A Plainsong
All the Beautiful Sinners
The Bird is Gone: a .."text-decoration:strikethrough;">Manifesto
Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories
Demon Theory
More info &etc at demontheory.net, I suppose. And, I'll see if I can't get pics of the covers up here somehow:
Who I'd like to meet:
Fiction Sample
HANSOM IS I was the first one to start painting eyes on the back of my horse's blinders. Soon enough Tedlow's gelding was wearing sunglasses, though, then Martinov's dun was sporting a stovepipe hat, and when Dominguez ordered that custom Spanish bit with the hole bored into it for a cigar (off-center, of course), I just held my hands up and turned around in my seat. On the back of my newly-shaved head, though, was a greasepaint smile, a pair of eyes, a nose that had been hard to get right in my series of five a.m. mirrors, but worth it, too. I tell my passengers that I'm a ventriloquist, talking without my lips, see, then stare lidlessly right at them for the rest of the ride, daring them to push me farther. By the end of the day, Martinov has two dummy arms spidering out of his side, holding the reins for him while he points to landmarks, and Tedlow's killed himself, his horse running wide-nostrilled through the streets, and then the magnesium horse shoes Domingez ordered finally come special delivery, and her Wally's hooves spark with each step like he's walking on fire, like we all are, and I feel the back of my scalp contract in a smile, because we have the whole world before us, and then when a pair of hands cup over my eyes it just feels so right that I let the reins go slack and follow my horse into the night, both of us blind with wonder.
Just adding a little twist to this game. The owner of Doorways, at the end of each week, will win a free copy of the current issue. The owner at the end of each month will win a year subscription. I will check at midnight Midnight May the 12th to see who the first winner is.
Let the buying begin...
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"Unconventional is a wonderful story full of heart, humor, and what it means to truly be successful. An A+ novel for the keeper shelf. " - Gemma Halliday, award-winning author