Conversations in the Book Trade

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Winter in Two Cities

Winter in two cities: Toronto and Seoul

#winterweather #canadianwinter #koreanwinter #한국겨울 #캐나다

Full video at YouTube:

https://youtube.com/shorts/SPNPyz1PPBQ?feature=share

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Outtakes from The Business Army

Pages and artwork from two versions of my historical novel about an attempt to engineer a fascist coup in 1930s America.

The novel comes in two versions: as a conventional text-only manuscript, and as an illustrated screenplay novel with “storyboard roughs” and “stills” based on archival photos. I’ve seen (and, once, produced) a lot of graphic novels in my time. But I’ve never seen an approach like this. Not sure why. It’s an idea that borrows from the brilliance of whoever invented the original screenplay format, yet it avoids one of the biggest pitfalls of movie production: the incredible pressure to make a profit and recover production costs, and therefore make “crowd pleasing” fictions.

The novel itself is based on real people and events, and tells the story of General Smedley Butler — a Marine who became a vocal critic of militarism and American imperialism — and his cat and mouse relationship with Gerald MacGuire, a small time bond salesman all too willing to act as an agent for much more powerful individuals.

If curious, more here: https://www.eclectica.org/v23n2/harvor.html

Here: The Business Army, part one

https://youtu.be/g2stGjrxL1Y

And here: The Business Army- Part One A - sep 10 12

https://youtu.be/7etqXWttH_,

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Outtakes from Baram Writer

Outtakes from a Baram Writer project

The word baram is a transliteration of 바람, or wind.

The project started twelve years ago, with a very crude moviepoem rendered in MovieMaker on a wheezy second hand laptop. (If curious: Baram Writer

https://youtu.be/oPHzuqDuAec )

It’s been through several versions since then, the most recent here: Baram Writer (new version)

https://youtu.be/Oc9PS6vXd40 )

I’m trying to capture “fugitive sensations” in the project; the sorts of thoughts and emotions one has while walking with loved one in nature, and experiencing a mix of happiness and anxiety, the latter a recognized of the worlds “objective” — that is, savage — nature.

The photos and settings of this extended project are changing: the one in the foreground is a spot near Lake Ontario that has personal significance after the deaths of my brother, mother in law, father, maternal aunt, and mother. What is the connection between the living and the dead? Memory, obviously. But there seems to be something more too, and the austere seasons of autumn and winter connect rather directly to that something.

BARAM WRITER

EXT. SEOUL. WINTER. LATE AFTERNOON.

It’s a greyish day, and Mats feels a mixture of coldness and clammy, wet mildness through his clothing.

Then the temperature starts to drop…

Wind blows through trees, rustles dead leaves, makes branches sway in a creaking, slow dervish.

VO [male]: The wind has its own tone, its own feeling. It’s like … coldness, thinness.

It’s like hunger.

The wind has a body. The wind is someone.