Sunday, October 27, 2019

"The Remaking"

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the storytelling session “The Pumpkin Pie Show” and the author of rest area, nothing untoward, and the Tribe trilogy.

He is co-author of the middle grade novel Wendell and Wild, with Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick.

In the world of comics, Chapman’s work includes Lazaretto, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, and Edge of Spiderverse, among others.

He also writes for the screen, including The Boy (SXSW 2015), Henley (Sundance 2012), and Late Bloomer (Sundance 2005).

Chapman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Remaking, and reported the following:
Page 69 isn’t so bad! I was pleasantly surprised to find out what part of the novel the page landed on… though I’d have to imagine it would make absolutely no sense to someone who read it cold. I imagine it would be like leaping onto a roller-coaster, just as its about to tip over that first massive peak, but without any of the buildup. But it’s very representative of the book.

I wrote the novel in such a way where I wanted it to read like an incantation. There’s a rhythmic, almost cyclical style to the writing. The sentences themselves break down, swirl and repeat, and stretch across the page. The repetition is the point—where, if you were to read it out loud, it would nearly sound like a song. This happens whenever there’s something intense happening to our main protagonist Amber and her mental state… Here she’s beginning to panic and the text emulates that. Or I wanted it to.

We’re in the midst of a movie being filmed and this is take… two? Three? Poor Amber has to hit her mark and say her lines, but something a little… oh, phantasmal, is given her a bit of a psychic line reading? No spoilers!
Visit Clay McLeod Chapman's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Remaking.

--Marshal Zeringue