Interview Update: January
1998
Q: Mark V. Ziesing will be publishing a new collection of your
short fiction. So, Shirley, why this new collection?
Q: What kind of title is Black Butterflies anyway?
A: They flutter around my house. They are caused by stories
that I didn't
write down, which, after awhile, gestate into butterflies which fly
out
my open mouth as I sleep. then they follow me, torment me, with tiny
voices and tiny blades, and I can only quiet them by writing them
down.
Q: And it has an odd subtitle: A Flock on the Dark
Side...
A: It's a play on words -- an allusion to Lou Reed's A
Walk on the Wild Side.
Q: There is interest in re-publishing Eclipse and
Cellars. Why authorize re-releases of these books?
A: Oh let's get real: I love anything I've written to be
re-released, but am especially enthusiastic about these books. They
are two of my strongest novels, and both are more timely now than when
originally released. The world situation is devolving, by
inexorable degrees, into something like much of the Eclipse
scenario; Cellars is really about selfishness and greed
reaching a peak, acted out in horror terms, and about our hidden guilt
coming up to gnaw at us -- as a society, as people.
Q: Do you have any lyrics on the new BÖC album due out
next year?
A: I wrote most of the lyrics on the album, which is to be
called Heaven Forbid and is due out in the spring. (Most people
know the Blue Öyster Cult from their classic hits Don't Fear
The Reaper, Burning For You, and Godzilla.) The songs I
wrote include for the new album are The Power Underneath Despair,
The
Cold Grey Light of Dawn, Live for Me, and The Man with the X
Ray Eyes --
which we've shown to one of the producers of the remake of the
movie of the same name, that is planned by Tim Burton. They're
interested in -- but it's a long way till we can feel sure it'll be in
the movie. The song was inspired by the original Ray Milland film.
Q:: Let's update the screenwriting...
A: My script Primal Scream has been renamed (not by
me) Twists Of Terror (unless they've come to their senses) and
WILL air on Showtime or The
Movie Channel sometime in the next few months. As for some of the
other
productions...Ohhhh, things get very close to being made and then they
often lose their center, and fall apart. They're like a house of
cards,
at first, most productions. However I've just revised my script
Mindclone which is based on a story William Gibson and I came
up with
and I feel strongly that it may go; and the teen-succubus story Her
Hunger is still in the works; my adaptation of Stinger,
with Jeff Most (who produced The Crow,) is at a new studio now,
but the deal isn't closed. There will be a The Crow TV show,
but as it's based in Canada (as many shows are -- costing me lots of
work), they have a tax break deal with the Canadian government that
requires them to use Canadian writers and
I'm not one of those...I'm talking to another producer about a new SF
show for the SciFi channel; other producers are working on my show
Last
Resort -- but as for becoming produced realities -- we'll see. It
almost
takes a Svengali, a Rasputin, a couple of Mussolinis, and a Caeser or
two, working harmoniously together to get a TV show produced. (But, of
course, later
they all sue one another.)
©1998 Paula Guran
Original Interview: January
1996
Interview Update: December
1996
Interview Update: January
1999
A:Because I think it's my best work. That is, I think
one of the things
I've done best in recent years are stories like this: dark stories
about
the real world and dark stories about the surreal world -- which is
why it's
separated into two parts, This World and That World.
Because, also, my
New Noir collection got a lot of favorable critical attention
and reviews, and people
liked it, and this is a similar thing but much, much bigger.
