brianrayfiction.com Blog

Friday night I headed to Atlanta for the Decatur Bookfest, with a short stop in Salisbury where I sat looking intellectual and hopeful as possible as Salisbarians (?) wandered through their local bookstore’s new digs. (They moved across the street.) One woman I met had gone to UNCG back when it was the women’s college. She said “your book was so horrific,” although whether that was good or bad seemed unclear. Nonetheless I said, “Thank you!” and signed her copy. The only other person who came to my table was a young kid, about ten. When he approached, I thought better of trying to sell him a copy. I thought maybe he liked the art on the cover or wanted to know what it was like to be a professional writer. But instead he asked, “Do you guys have movie monster books? Where are they?” I said we certainly did and that Through the Pale Door had tons of movie monsters.

Around nine I was on the road to Decatur. Rolled up into that joint around 1 am and stood anxiously at the reception desk with my bags, feeling a little like Raul Duke in Fear and Loathing as the woman clicked the same button over and over while muttering she didn’t understand why the system wouldn’t check me into my room. There was no way of explaining the terror I felt. I was pouring sweat. My blood is too thick for this climate. “But we must have that suite,” I said. “Yes, we must have it! So what’s the score here? What’s next?” A poet and teacher from Greensboro I ran into later said the hotel had overbooked and that he’d had to stay with friends. How close I came to the same dismal fate, we can only guess.

Around four am, some jerk pulled the fire alarm and a hundred traveling authors drug themselves downstairs in boxers and bath robes. The thing about hotel fires is that nobody seems worried about burning alive; we care more about how much sleep we’ll loose waiting for the fire department to ride out and inspect a gigantic hotel to conclude indeed no fire was transpiring. To our luck, as soon as we’d gathered into our pool of skepticism and dry jokes, a fire fighter waved us back inside. I had the distinct pleasure of riding up to the third floor with Robert Olen Butler, who seemed quite pissed but that’s just my impression. “What I want to know is how they figured that out so fast,” he said. A day later, I also had the distinct pleasure of seeing him ask someone for directions to some place. I wanted to stop him right there on the street and slap him on the shoulder. “Boy, remember that night some jerk pulled the fire alarm? Oh, man, that was a wild ride, wasn’t it, Robert? By the way, do you like darkly funny Gothic novels? I just happen to have written one.” I can only imagine how he’d have responded.

My favorite panel on Saturday: George Singleton and Daniel Wallace. Both funny guys, although Wallace admits that he has to research his jokes, whereas Singleton is naturally funny. Wallace also said he sort of hated Singleton before they met. Why? Because Singleton published in all the journals he wanted to be in. “And so I saw the space that George was taking up in those magazines as my space.” But I’m going to one-up Wallace and say that I hate Wallace and Singleton because combined they’re taking up my space in magazines like Oxford American, etc. No, not really. But I hope to make that joke in about, eh, five years. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Saturday night, watched an amazing film called The American Astronaut. Imagine Tarantino and Joss Whedon and, say, Fellini directing a science fiction grunge musical set in Outer Space where women actually do live on Venus and seeing a woman’s breasts can make you famous, as with “the boy who once saw a woman’s breast” can attest to. Shot in B&W, it’s one of the most beautiful and funny films I’ve seen. And yet nobody seems to know about it, including me until recently. But I order you all to order it off Netflix. Now.

On to the main event. Me, reading. When I arrived at the church where my event would take place, I gazed out at the sea of 200 or so people and thought, “My God, these people have come to see me. I must give them a show they’ll never forget.” Then I was reminded I’d be reading with Jack Riggs and Philip Lee Williams and said to myself, “Oh…” (Not really.) We had a great time. I was surprised by how kind everyone was. And I had no idea that Riggs had shot the first two Guns ‘n Roses music videos. Just wait until my mom hears this. Seriously, dude. My mom got me started on that band – and, hey, 20 years later I religiously listen to Chinese Democracy every night and pray to the lord that “this time, I’ll enjoy it.” Ah, Axel, what happened? There’s another blog post entirely.

Now here I am in Greensboro, typing away at novel #2 and pumping myself up for some Heidegger. Feels good to blog again after three days off. And I hear that Governor Blago has a memoir out. So, fellows, you can guess what’s coming down the pipe.