Yes, I am.

Before it slips my mind, SLEEPLESS has been released in paperback.

Also on the agenda, the pilot for ALL SIGNS OF DEATH was shot, edited, submitted and passed on by HBO. In simple terms this means there will be no profit generating TV series based on one of my book premiering on a pay cable channel near you.

There are obvious negatives to this end, most of them revolve around money (though, in all honesty, I had a tremendous amount of fun in the process and would have liked to have had more), the positives are more subtle, but, seeing as they revolve around family and not having a boss, they are also highly prized.

I was shocked to discover that I was interested in adapting MYSTIC ARTS, and even more surprised to discover that the idea of working on a TV show in a day to day manner became appealing. Would have been nice to take a crack at that, but I still feel very much as if I walked into the casino, pushed my bet well beyond the point of sanity, and walked out with a great deal of the house’s filth lucre in my pocket. Plus I got comped a suite and tickets to a great show.

Speaking of great shows, the pilot itself was pretty damn good. Whenever you endeavor to do something very complicated in a very short period of time with somewhat limited resources there are going to be compromises and mistakes that you just have to deal with. I think both were minimized beyond any reasonable expectation. Someday the hunger for content may induce someone to create an archive of pilots that never went to series. Short of that, I don’t think too many people are going to get to see the ALL SIGNS OF DEATH pilot. I consider that a damn shame. Probably my one real regret from not putting this thing on the air is that folks will miss out on Ben Whishaw as Web Goodhue. The cast was pretty fucking great top to bottom, but Mr. Whishaw was remarkable.

Other stuff:

My launch run on WOLVERINE THE BEST THERE IS began last month. Issue #2 should be in shops this week or next. It’s weird and over the top. Fun, I hope. Juan Jose Ryp’s artwork is the star. Worth it just for the pictures.
I did a two issue Bullseye story called PERFECT GAME. I think both issues are out now.

I’m tinkering with more TV. Again, this is a shock to me. But I did have an obscene amount of fun. And there’s a saying about striking and hot iron and some other stuff. Make hay while you can, people.

Most working hours are occupied with the next/new novel. This will be my first for Mulholland Books. Don’t expect to see anything until 2012.

I did a short story for MH recently. HERE.

This website continues to feel like a bone in the throat to me. Something distracting and irritating. In needs to be serviced or replaced. Time and ideas are at issue. Still figuring that one out.

I expect to de more of my brief updates via Twitter. It just works so well for that crap. Easy, no distractions. So for the time being the best way to keep up with little bits of news will be to follow CharlieHuston. I know that’s less than ideal or desirable for many people, but stuff changes.

“And I wonder,” said Tegs, “Do we all come out the other side the same shape?”
Beller laughed through his nose.
“It’s a machine, you asshole. It stamps and cuts. We all come out the same shape, but it ain’t the one we had when we go in.”
“So I’ll be different.”
Beller raised his hand, fingers replaced by twitching chromed wires, bundles of them, a handful of spiders’ legs.
“Shit and ain’t we all when it’s done with us.”
Tegs stepped into the machine.
What came out the other side cut to a new shape.

Don’t blow up.

-c

I’ve written another essay for the Mulholland Books site. Find it HERE.

So it turns out that getting involved in TV production is rather like falling into a black hole.

Nothing can escape, not light, not even time.

Everything is sucked into the vortex of reality actively collapsing into fiction.

Time stands still, races ahead, and becomes fluidic.

“On the day.”

Everything will happen “on the day.”

Any problems that surface in pre-production are either problems that must be solved days ago or they are problems that can be solved “on the day.”

The “day,” however, never seems to arrive. Or, rather, it arrives and then recedes into the future again. It can come days from now, or minutes, seconds, anytime.

“We’ll deal with that on the day.”
“I’m holding back right now, but on the day I’ll let go and makeup may need to touch me up.”
“Is that the light we’ll have on the day?”

Every day of production is the day, every moment is a potential day.

Meanwhile, time telescoped, images I created as words, the black marks on paper thing, become physicalized. Imaginary people walk past me in clothing I dreamt for them once, years ago. A bus with a bullet hole in one window, blood dripping from the crack glass, drives by. Less than half a mile from my front door, yellow signs appear, directing crew to a location from page 126 of one of my books. In a downtown flophouse, a young man in a blue Tyvek coverall edges through the meticulously created apartment of a fictionally dead hoarder.

The storytelling part of me, so much of it drawn from places I barely recognize as me, walks and talks and occupies physical space.

A blood mortar sprays red-dyed banana and clumps of hair at a wall in a PCH beach house.

Is this me?

Are these the stories I’ve been telling?

Jesus, why didn’t anyone tell me it was like this?

Production irises shut, natural forces take over, everyone is hurdled into the gravity wells of their real lives.

The list of things I never expected to happen in my life is getting longer, and stranger.

Never know for sure.

Figure it on the day.

-c

My new publisher, Mulholland Books, has a website.

I have an essay running on that site today.

More importantly, some folks with names like Lawrence Block, Joe R. Landsdale, Don Winslow and Nick Tosches have original essays and/or interviews on that site.

read on,

-c

PS

Yes, I’ve been quiet.
The HBO pilot based on MYSTIC ARTS is in pre-production, cameras roll tomorrow, and I’m unlikely to have much time to add anything here in the next few weeks while it is shooting.

Go outside and play.

Due to some recent douche-baggery, I’ve had to remove my email address from the contact page.

If you’ve emailed me before, that address still works and you’re welcome, as always, to email me again.

If you’re trying to drop me a line for the first time, I apologize.

For the time being I’m keeping below the horizon until I figure out a system for douche bag avoidance. Once I have a system in place I’ll be available for email again.

In the meantime, email you mom, she misses you.

-c

My pilot project for HBO based on THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ALL SIGNS OF DEATH has been greenlit.

The pilot will be shot later this summer, directed by my executive producer Alan Ball, but with no guarantees that there will be a series to follow. Which is normal.

(Hollywood Hint For Beginners #178: There are never ever guarantees.)

I am, obviously, pleased.

Details at Deadline Hollywood.

And then you’re somewhere else working with brand new people and wondering how the hell that happened.

The obvious companion to my previous post, what happens when you come to a new publisher?

I haven’t a fucking clue.

I’ve never done this before.

But my books have a new home. A very new home. They will be residing at Little Brown’s brand new imprint MULHOLLAND BOOKS.

Spearheaded by my new editor John Schoenfelder, Mulholland will specialize in thrillers of all genres. This makes it a natural home for me as I’ll have the freedom to move about and try some new things.

I’m now working on what will be my first Mulholland book, but it won’t see the light of day for over a year. An international espionage thriller (or my version of one), it will have a feel similar to SLEEPLESS, though i do have plans to get hardboiled again as soon as possible.

New publishing home. New people. New book.

And me still trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

Go slow,

-c

What you want is to have everything work out the first time.

Life could be miraculously easy if every time you tried to make something happen the way you wanted it to happen it would actually just happen fucking brilliantly.

Could get tedious, but I doubt it.

And, news flash, seems that’s not the way it happens.

For several years now many good people at Ballantine, Random House, and Del Rey have worked very hard to get my books into the hands of more people. They have, time and again, expressed their belief that they were coming up short on the full potential readership for the oddnessess I write. They have invested no end of time and effort and creativity as they have sought new ways to present my books and communicate to readers what was inside them and why they should be opening them up to take a look. None of those efforts have been wasted.

Nonetheless, I am moving to a new publisher.

After eleven books published within the Random House family, I simply feel that I want to find out what happens when I work outside that comfort zone, and how the talents and perceptions of a new team might change the scope of my readership.

It’s awkward to talk about wanting more readers. It seems both greedy and disrespectful. Jesus, it is both those thing, no matter how one colors it.

But it is also true.

Because I came to writing an an alternate career, my first several books were written very much by the seat of my pants. But after your swing around like that for a few years, you start wanting to get your feet on the ground. More time and effort and forethought goes into the work. And, aside from the business considerations involved in growing an audience, you just plain want to know that as many people as possible are reading what you have worked very hard to create.

Yes, I find writing in and of itself satisfying. Yes, the most enjoyable part of being a writer is the actual writing. But books are to be read. The tree will still make sound with now one there to hear it fall, but I do want witnesses. As many as possible.

Greedy boy that I am.

Eleven books, even though published over a short span of time, is a fucking lot. And sometimes, no matter how hard you try and apply yourself to a problem, you just can’t crack the code with the tools at hand.

Random House has excellent tools, excellent people wielding them, but as hard as we all worked together, we have not been able to crack a code that we all feel exists. Telling the people who essentially gave you your first job, who again and again expressed faith in your work and invited you to expand and create what pleases you is a hard thing.

And possible very stupid.

It is entirely possible that there is no greater readership for me. That the work Random House et al have done on my behalf already tapped the full number of folks out there who are interested in my shit.

Time will tell.

Hi, I’m Charlie Huston, and this is my website.

These days I’m finding that I need to stay focused on my writing in a manner that does not allow me to spend any time composing random thoughts or essays that I feel are worth the time it would take for me to write them down or for you to read them. I’m also of the opinion that this site, from its name to its esthetic, no longer speak to what I am writing or anything I might have to say here.

It’s also just plain tired and packed with dead links and other suck.

When time allows I will launch a new site.

Not knowing when time will allow, I have not yet dragged this one to the ditch to put a bullet in its head.

If anything interesting is happening with my work, I’ll note it here.

In the meantime, I’ve started up a new story thing on TWITTER. You can follow me and it by clicking right HERE.

I dropped a load of tweets today (totally contrary to the point of Twitter, and profoundly annoying to people who really use the thing, I know) and I will follow up mostly daily until I find the end of the thing.

Thanks for stopping by. Sorry there’s not much action in the joint these days.

Don’t blow up,

-c

And then there were yellow flowers all over the tree outside my office window.

Which is a nice thing to look at in the month of March, but also a garish reminder of just how long it has been since I popped over here and wrote something.

Oh, website, cruel mistress, why do you plague me so?

Why have I ignored you so long?

Many reasons.

The updates:

Recently published titles are MY DEAD BODY, the last Joe Pitt Casebook; SLEEPLESS, a crime story set in a speculative immediate future; and DEATHLOK, an SF adventure comic based on the original Rich Buckler and Doug Moench creation.

My TV projects are both in limbo territory.
The action cop show that I’m not at liberty to discuss was passed over for a pilot shoot, but was not killed outright. Which means that my co-creator and I will do some extra work on the script and get a last gasp shot at a pickup in June/July.
The HBO show based on MYSTIC ARTS is currently in third draft. HBO works on an open development schedule, which means that shows get developed until they are either ready or dead. That said, a writer’s contract dictates how many drafts they can be asked to deliver. There’s not much more to be done on this one before a decision will have to be made. But there is also no rush. The script is in a good place, but I’ve no idea which way the axe will fall. Or when.

I have a couple things pending at Marvel. A two shot mini I scripted a while back is just about out of art and should get announced soon. It’s an evergreen villain story about a guy who never misses him mark
The 12 issue run on a major Marvel title that I have hinted at for some time now is close to having an artist. Yeah! This is going to be another one of those things where issue one doesn’t see the light of day until over well over a year after I wrote issue twelve. Last I heard it was slated to start this fall.

There has been some movie action, but nothing too exciting. CAUGHT STEALING has been optioned again, but the production company holding the option is delaying any kind of announcement until they have a more complete package. This option is based on a screenplay I wrote, and is fronted by an actor who plans on playing Henry Thompson.

The option on the Joe Pitt books expired and I’m back in possession or film and TV rights and thinking about whether or not I want to do anything about that. In any case, don’t expect a Joe Pitt movie any time this decade.

And then there are these crazy book things that people keep talking about.
I’m researching and taking notes for my next novel. Sometime quite soon I’ll be getting serious and start writing page one. I’m doing far more prep than I ever have before. Some of it is active prep, and lots of it is just me not writing. Me not writing involves a lot of me working on other projects, or, ideally, me spending time with my family. But the story is wanting to come out, and I don’t think I can stay away from it much longer.
I’m thinking of this next one as something as a companion to SLEEPLESS. Not set in the same world, but on a similar scale, and written in a similar style. After this one I plan on getting back into a lean noir mode. There’s no strategy to it, just me feeling out what the next story is.

And, yes, I’m still debating the future of this site.
Some kind of radical change is going to be required, but I need a little free mental space to decide what that change will be. In the meantime, I’ll continue to be more absent than present.

Thanks for checking in,

-c

Great blog name: My Year in Crime

I like libraries and librarians.

Some photojournalism from Mark M. Hancock who shot me at my Legacy Books appearance in Plano TX HERE.

These pics are best captioned by my editor Mark Tavani -
Photographer: “Charlie, give me painfully serious. Good, good. Now give me tattooed but still idealistic. Yes! Now, reach out to that audience. Be one with them. Take them into your creative process. Now you’re a scared little boy. Scared little boy! Now make nice nice with the reading public. Oh, you’re a natural.”

SLEEPLESS reviewed by Smith Galtney in Las Vegas Weekly HERE.

Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times says that SLEEPLESS is

“…a traditional police procedural neatly tucked into a stunningly original work of speculative fiction.”

And, really, who am I to disagree with her?

The review is third in Ms. Stasio’s lineup this week, so scroll a bit after the link.

You can find me answering a few questions from Ed Zintron of The Huffington Post over HERE.

Over on Newsarama there’s a seven page preview of DEAHLOK #4.
It’s the middle issue of a seven issue run, but you can get a pretty good idea of the whole damn thing from these pages.
I haven’t spent any time pimping this title, for which I’m a bit bummed. I’ve been too busy to do much pimping at all, but I really like the way this story turned out and I’d have liked to have gotten behind it a little more.
So, for what it’s worth at this late date, DEATHLOK is out there demolishing for a few more months.

SLEEPLESS reviewed by Alan Cheuse on NPR’s All Things Considered right HERE.

Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column review of SLEEPLESS at bookotron.com is HERE.

The second half of my interview with Keith Rawson at BSC is HERE.