Clive Barker – The Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories Show:
Maria Alexander –
The Way of Pen and Sword

“The samurai believed that to be a complete person, you had to study the sword, but you also had to study the pen. They called it Bun Bu Ryo Do, the way of pen and sword. You were complete if you were a writer and a warrior, and I’ve really embraced that in my life.”

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Maria Alexander joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, her intern/protege relationships with Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman, and the art of shinkendo swordplay and what George R.R. Martin gets wrong about swords. Also, we learn what happens when Lovecraftian pastiche goes wrong, how Maria realized that even geniuses have to write drafts, how her parents took syncretism to new heights, how Mr. Wicker made its way from short story to screenplay to first novel, how she deals with severe carpal tunnel syndrome, and what her love of swords has taught her about editing her work! Give it a listen!

“My mother believed everything she saw on ‘In Search Of . . .’, so our household was very imaginative.”

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About our Guest

Maria Alexander writes pretty much every damned thing and gets paid to do it. She’s a produced screenwriter and playwright, published games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, interactive theatre designer, prolific fiction writer, snarkiologist and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as in acclaimed anthologies alongside legends such as David Morrell and Heather Graham. Her second poetry collection – At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent, the Damned and the Absinthe-Minded – was nominated for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award. And she was a winner of the 2004 AOL Time-Warner “Time to Rhyme” poetry contest. When she’s not wielding a katana at her local shinkendo dojo, she’s being outrageously spooky or writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats, a pervasive sense of doom, and a purse called Trog. Her new novel is Mr. Wicker (Raw Dog Screaming Press).

Credits: This episode’s music is Ironside (Excerpt), Battle Without Honor or Humanity, The Chase, and Woo Hoo from the Kill Bill soundtrack. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Alexander’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Ms. Alexander by me.

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 27 –
Sex, Crime, and Other Arbitrary Genre Labels

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“The emotions are what interest me in writing erotica, rather than the hydraulics. . . . Essex House showed me that you could write erotica without pandering to the lowest common denominator”

Maxim Jakubowski has had an amazing multi-decade, multi-genre career as a writer, editor, translator and publisher. During Book Expo America in New York, we sat down to talk about how he feels about being The King of the Erotic Thriller, the silliness of genre labels, the perils of having a bad book habit (but not a “bad-book habit”), the story of publishing the first The Mammoth Book of Erotica, how e-books have amplified Sturgeon’s Law, how he managed to make a killing off the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, and more!

“As a publisher, you have to accept that it’s a business. And genre was always accepted as solid, an area where you don’t lose money: crime, fantasy, science fiction, horror, thrillers.”

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

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About our Guest

Maxim Jakubowski worked for many years in book publishing as an editor (including titles by William Golding, Peter Ackroyd, Oliver Stone, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ustinov, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Paul Ableman, Sophie Grigson, Marc Behm, and Cornell Woolrich) and launched the Murder One Bookshop, which he owned and ran for over 20 years. He now writes, edits and translates full-time in London. He was born in London and educated in France, and his books have been translated into many languages. From an early age, he was always fascinated by popular culture and his writing and editing has criss-crossed all areas, from science fiction & fantasy to thrillers and, inevitably, erotica.

He conceived one of the genre’s first major contemporary anthologies, The Mammoth Book of Erotica, which has been followed by 18 more volumes, as well as four books devoted to erotic photography. In addition to more than 80 collections in other genres, Maxim has also edited the Sex in the City series, and run the Eros Plus and Neon lists, alongside such crime imprints as Black Box Thrillers, Blue Murder and Maxcrime.

Credits: This episode’s music is Song for Bob by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The conversation was recorded in Mr. Jakubowski’s hotel room in Manhattan on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded at home on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photos of Maxim Jakubowski by me.

Tag: Clive Barker

Podcast – The Way of Pen and Sword

Podcast: Sex, Crime, and Other Arbitrary Genre Labels