Category: General News

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The Cover!

Below, I give you the cover design for the Canadian and US edition of The Demonologist.  The texture and colour and striking simplicity articulates the book so lusciously, I’m in debt to its designers, Jackie Seow and Esther Paradelo, at Simon & Schuster, for such great work.

What’s also cool about it is that the hardcover will feature a cut-out of one of the o’s, which will have an eye looking out from within.  If you pull the flap back, you will see that the eye belongs to a girl – Tess, the protagonist’s daughter – cast against a classically hellish landscape.  I’m planning on blowing that one up as a poster and putting it on the office wall.  It’ll do the same job that those sappy “INSPIRATION” posters do for others.

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When Will THE DEMONOLOGIST Be Born?

There may yet be some changes to come, but it seems that the pub dates for The Demonologist are firming up.  Currently, Simon & Schuster is planning to publish on March 5, 2013, simultaneously in Canada and the US.  And Orion has set the novel for May 2, 2013 in the UK.  Still a ways off, in normal human anticipation-of-future-events terms, but right around the corner in publishing terms.  Certainly close enough to pre-order the book from your favourite bookstore so that it’s waiting for you, with a devilish grin, when it arrives hot off the press…

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Breaking and Entering

The late Canadian director, Andrew Hull, died far too young.

Years ago, he optioned a story of mine for adaptation.  Before he passed in 2010, he was almost finished shooting the film, a poetic interpretation of “Breaking and Entering,” from Kiss Me, my first published book.  The film has been completed now by his partner, Shaan Syed, and the Estate of Andrew Hull.

Doubly moving for these circumstances of loss.

Breaking and Entering – A Short Film by Andrew Hull

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Over/Under

While we of the critical classes (critical masses?) have long played the parlour game of constantly assessing the worth of cultural thingies, the rise of the blog-arena has not just “democratized” the means of declaring something genius or crap, it has established an overwhelmingly dominant method for making such judgments.  More and more, we base our reception of a book or movie or art show (or, seamlessly, a restaurant or vacuum cleaner or phone) against the perceived body of other receptions.  Does it meet the hype?  Was it as good as Rotten Tomatoes said it was supposed to be?  Did you like it as much as that woman at the Times?  Was it overrated or underrated?

We don’t judge anymore.  We compare judgments.

Increasingly, nuanced justifications of our evaluations are rare as sushi in Swift Current.  Instead, we make our assessments according to a two-step formula:  1) What does the Machine think of it?, and 2) Do we like it more or less than the Machine?  In the name of attempting to position ourselves outside the dominant opinion-making machinery (you know, the people who aren’t you and your two or three super-smart closest friends, the zombie-like hordes of numbskulls who do what the marketing departments tell them to do), we can reassure ourselves that we’re better than that, we haven’t been tricked, we’re of our own minds.  I thought The Avengers was way over-rated.  See?  Nobody can tell me what to think!

The problem with making Over/Under the only game in Culture Town is that it relies on a fallacy of the “mainstream” (and how we can choose to be “outside” it).  How a given work is assessed by the rest of the world is a moving target, and depends on where you look and for how long.  But what’s even more limiting is that saying a thing is over- or underrated just doesn’t say very much.  Reacting to reactions divorces us from our experience of the work itself, leaving us as falsely rebellious voters casting our ballot in order to alter a snapshot poll result instead of expressing a belief of our own.

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A Tale of Two Trailers

I’m no expert.  Which, in the blogosphere, entitles me to an expert opinion.

The field of study today is movie trailers.  Specifically, how this increasingly decisive aspect of the moviegoing process can be done skilfully – even artfully – and how it can also make you want to stick chopsticks in your eyes.  I have selected, for the purposes of comparison, two upcoming, mainstream, popcorn Hollywood flicks (so as not to apples vs. oranges things with, say, Transformers vs. There Will Be Blood).

The first is for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus which is, according to the protestations of its producers, not an Alien prequel.  (Side Note:  Why bother denying the obvious fact that it is an Alien prequel?  Especially when the movie looks as promisingly awesome as it does?)

Prometheus trailer

Now compare to Chernobyl Diaries, a new horror movie from the people that brought us Paranormal Activity (I’m a fan, BTW), about a group of young “extreme tourists” who get stranded in…Chernobyl.

Chernobyl Diaries trailer

Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair.  Or on the other hand, maybe it was.

Yes, Prometheus likely had ten times the budget of Chernobyl Diaries.  But that’s still no excuse for a trailer (presumably composed of the movie’s best bits) showcasing an idiotic premise (“Screw Moscow!  Let’s hit Chernobyl and get cancer instantly!”), laughable dialogue (“I’m not leaving without my brother!” etc., etc.) and worst kind of horror movie cliche after worst kind of horror movie cliche (the false shock at the pond, the van that won’t start, the dragged-off girl, the camera held by someone suffering the DTs).  As a horror fan, this sort of thing breaks my heart.  I’m not kidding.  It.  Breaks.  My.  Heart.

But there’s still Prometheus to look forward to…

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The Demonologist Finds a Home in North America

More great news I can now share!  (I don’t know what I could possibly post next week.  “Dog craps on rug…AGAIN!”  Or maybe “Toronto author proves that cure for common cold remains elusive”).

Anyway, it’s been announced in Publishers Weekly today that my forthcoming novel, The Demonologist, has a new publisher for all of North America in Simon & Schuster.  The Demonologist is something of a creative departure for me – or perhaps more an escalation – and so it feels right for it to have a new home.  I’m inspired by the brainstorms I’ve already had with my editor at S&S, Sarah Knight, and hope this is the beginning of a long, happy marriage.  Like Fonda and Hepburn in On Golden Pond.  Or something.

Here’s the piece in today’s Publishers Weekly:

The Demonologist – Publishers Weekly

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Twitter Rudeness

I have been a terrible host.  Here I am, posting once-in-a-while blogs and stuff all this time and I haven’t bothered to invite you to Twitter.  Yes, I’m there too.  And I try my best to offer a daily bit of my brain to distract or amuse or confound.  Is Twitter about anything else?

Please, come on by.  I’m at @andrewpyper  And I’ve made punch!

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Good Things Come to Those Who Wait…and Wait…

Twelve years after its initial publication, the French translation of my first novel, Lost Girls (published by L’Archipel), has been given * * * 1/2 stars (out of four) in La Presse.

It’s quite unusual for a book to do anything after more than a decade other than show up in the FREE! box at somebody’s yard sale (if you’re lucky).  So I am enormously grateful to L’Archipel for bringing the novel to readers in France and Quebec alike.  I feel like I’ve been born again…though without all the bible thumping and swearing off booze.

LOST GIRLS reviewed in La Presse

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Genre Blab – The Genre Traveler podcast

Carma Spence runs a very cool blog and site called The Genre Traveler (www.thegenretraveler.com) where, among other things, she posts podcasts with writers who till the fields of genre of all sorts.  She looked me up and the result is a wide-ranging conversation about fear in literature, the excitement of initial ideas, and the inadequacy of “good writing” as the distinction between so-called genre and literary fiction.

Carma did some expert editing, too, as I sound more coherent than I recall.  And we must have done the interview after my afternoon coffee:  I can hear the caffeine in my voice.

Genre Traveler Podcast – Pyper