Best of the Book Beat 2008-2010

Somehow I have read over 150 books in the last three years.  As it may be my last serious attempt to read 50 books a year (which takes a lot more concentration than you might think), here is my highly subjective list of my favorites since 2008:


Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 

Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

The City and The City by China Mieville

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin

On the Book Beat 2010

For three years running I have managed to make my goal of reading 50 books a year; so I guess I have that one knocked down and perhaps it's time to try some new challenge (although I will continue to keep counting on this blog).  I did vow to read a little smarter this year, though I still read a mountain of trash and pulp.  But I read some really good books, and here are my favorites:

1.  The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

2.  The Keep by Jennifer Egan

3.  The City and The City by China Mieville

4.  Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

5.  The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie


6.  Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks

7.  Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

8.  Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick

9.  Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

10.  The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

As always, happy reading!

Who Draws The Crowd and Plays So Loud

Showing off my axe skills to thunderous boos on my new Wii, the first game system of my own since my beloved Atari (and even that one I shared with my brother).  I have been playing this game with the family for several straight days (which seemed like half an hour) and I think it might catch on with people--it's called "Guitar Hero."  It's no "Asteroids" but it might have some staying power.  Happy Holidays!

Santa's Helpers

Wrapping presents and watching movies on Roku.  Happy Holidays, everyone!

Sketchy Heroes

When I did my first 24 Hour Comic, Bad Eggs, I used an online random superhero name generator to come up with these characters, then quickly sketched what I thought they would look like.  Some of them show up in Bad Eggs, The Vow, and other places.

More Sketchy Comics

A frank depiction of what it was like to play Marvel SAGA RPG with me and my friends some years ago.  I used to doodle little sequences and write various quips people spouted off as we went, and if I am reading this account correctly Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Iron Man face off against the Hulk, Ultron, and Loki.

From the Sketchbook

So I was watching "Dateline NBC" and they had a show all about Real Life Super Heroes and people who supposedly had super powers.  They had a guy that liked to glide, a guy who liked to climb buildings, two women who wanted to be mermaids, a smart guy, a person with great cold resistance and a person with a lot of running endurance.  I wondered what that would look like as a superhero team so I doodled this up and got my answer:  pretty lame.

From Rome With Love

The annual Thanksgiving edition of Axis and Allies played with my son and brother.  This is the new Axis and Allies: Europe 1940 Deluxe edition and comes recommended.  I rather whimsically decided to play Italy and found myself dominating the Mediterranean and then helping my German allies repel the invasion of France.  After four hours we declared a stalemate.

And Glowed Like Burnin’ Coal

People keep tagging me on these Facebook memes and this one caught my fancy so I thought I would try it.  It is supposed to be a list of the 15 most influential writers in your life, off the top of your head.  Here we go:

1.        E.M. Dalton—my wife has published short fiction and poetry, so how can I not list her as the most influential writer in my life?  We have been together since I was 20 and just celebrated our 23rd Anniversary.  I think it is one of the great injustices of the world that I have been paid more to write piranha and frankenstein and bigfoot movies than she has to write fiction that could influence the human condition.

2.       Robert Heinlein—I am afraid to go back and reread these books but as a kid I read and reread his novels, like Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Rocket Ship Galileo especially.

3.       Mickey Spillane—my fevered teen years were spent discovering these, especially loving My Gun Is Quick and Kiss Me Deadly and Vengeance is Mine.

4.       Joseph Heller—solely based on Catch-22 which I reread often as a teen and probably most influenced my writing now.

5.       Cornell Woolrich—wrote haunting noir like Rendezvous in Black and The Bride Wore Black and was the sole ripoff/influence for my senior Honors Thesis at Ball State University, Deadlines, and my first attempt at an adult short story, Dead Wong.

6.       John Lennon and Paul McCartney—especially Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Let It Be and Abbey Road.

7.       Chester B. Himes—I found him as an adult and loved his political, allegorical noir and would someday like to write something as good as The Heat's On or The Real Cool Killers.

8.       David Gilmour and Roger Waters—especially Wish You Were Here, Meddle and The Final Cut.

9.       Bob Dylan—especially Blood on the Tracks and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

10.   Philip K. Dick—a raging genius who when great is untouchable;  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and A Scanner Darkly and Clans of the Alphane Moon and The Man in the High Castle and Martian Time-Slip just the tip of the iceberg.

11.   Joe Bob Briggs—in the early 80s I saw his funny movie reviews in a college newspaper that we used to  receive in the newsroom when I worked at the Ball State Daily News—I think it was The Daily Texan--and had no idea who he was (for the longest time I thought he was a student—this is before the internet), but immediately tried to emulate his writing style.

12.   Michael Tolkin—when I was trying to learn screenwriting I read a lot of bound screenplays that I checked out from the library, and really was influenced by the commentaries that he included; much later in life I blogged about this and was surprised to get a nice email from Michael Tolkin, and I have never forgotten him reaching out to me.

13.   Samuel R. Delany—I am coming to him later in life but only wish I could write as imaginatively as him;  Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand I think is a great novel that I wish I wrote but Nova ain’t slouching either.

14.   Roger Ebert—when I was a kid I actually thought he was at the local PBS station in Muncie, Indiana; I worked there later and never saw him around.  He is only growing in influence with his writing.

15.   Haven Kimmel—I have to end where I began, with a writer I actually know, my wife’s best friend growing up and the first friend of hers I met when we married.  She is a bestselling author who, strangely and possibly to her own detriment, has always cheered on my humble screenwriting career.

There’s fifteen, and if I did this again tomorrow I might juggle it a bit and include Terrence Rafferty, William Goldman, and Steve Gerber, but this is awful close.

To Telepath Messages Through the Vast Unknown

Following up on my last post, I know there is no way I am going to hit 50,000 words on NaNoWriMo this year, nor am I even close; but I have had fun working on some writing again with Johnny Demonseed, and I have already done well in the Nerd Olympics this year.

For the third surprising year in a row I have met the challenge of reading 50 books in a year and this time I finished with a month to spare.  I think I'm going with The Boy Detective Fails as my favorite book that I read in 2010, and that's not just because I happened to meet Joe Meno in a small, spooky town called New Harmony down in southern Indiana and got to ask him what the hell he was thinking during the writing of this strange, magical work. 

I also liked The City and The City by China Mieville, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, The Keep by Jennifer Egan, Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick, Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks, and London Boulevard by Ken Bruen, to name a few.

On my second try I managed to visit six ballparks this summer, beating my old, inadvertent record of visiting five in one summer.  When I concentrated last year I only hit four so I decided to zen it out again this year and ended up at six. 

I went to my hometown Richmond Riverrats in Richmond, Indiana a few times; saw the Evansville Otters in the ballpark featured in A League of Their Own on a very hot summer day; saw the Dayton Dragons for a friend's birthday, probably now one of my favorite ballparks; went to see the Reds with my dad and got a Chris Sabo bobblehead but also got walloped in the eye either with a fist or a foul ball, I'm still not sure which; caught the Durham Bulls for the second time with friends and ate great Carolina barbecue; and, on the last day of the season, went to see the Indianapolis Indians with my wife and daughter, who surprised me by asking if I wanted to go and break my record at my other favorite ballpark, which they were happy to join me at if I would buy the beer.

But writing again must have put something in the karma bank because I have spent the weekend helping judge the United Kingdom's National Student Film Association's Screenwriting Competition.  It was very flattering to be asked, but I felt sorry for these poor youths who obviously got turned down by every legitimate screenwriter on the European continent and thus were forced to forage in America's Heartland for another judge.  But it was cool for once and probably for only to be mentioned in the same breath as BFI and BAFTA.

Until later I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Mugen Punch

So I have more or less been in self-imposed exile from screenwriting and associated activities for a while.

I took all of 2006 off when I changed jobs and cities and then promised my new boss I would take six months off when I changed careers again in April 2009.  But I haven't started back up again.  Since then I have turned down three or four screenwriting jobs and numerous offers to take up review writing again; though I could not turn down my old friends in Palatine Illinois and judged the new Blue Whiskey Film Festival this summer.

I have to say that being hired to write 20 screenplays in 10 years has a nice round ring to it.  And I wish that a few old friends like John Polonia and Ivan Rogers were still on the trail with me.

I've been thinking for a while that there was a new model coming and I think it is still emerging.  As the neterrati like to say, free is the new black.  How that will work for writers, actors, directors, and so on to make money I'm not sure.

I used to like saying that a lot of my career was in the long tail, and now it seems like the long tail will be part of that new model.

I keep thinking it might be time to get a recharge by doing some different kinds of writing.  Conveniently, there's NaNoWriMo.

I last tried National Novel Writing Month way back in 2004.  You can click here and follow my adventures for the entire eight days I tried it before throwing in the towel.  I'm contemplating giving it another stab this year, if nothing else than to maybe get the machine running again.  As longtime fans of my blog know, I have been a fan of Nerd Extreme Sports, having done a 24 Hour Zine and two 24 Hour Comics, Bad Eggs and The Liberator.  And I made my goal of visiting six ballparks this summer, so who knows?

Until then I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Polonia Day Redux

The lunatics at the Cult of Polonia, the Polonia Brothers Fan Club, declare today (the filmmaking twins' birthday) a national holiday.  Head prophet Tim Shrum usually bakes a cake in honor of the day, and naturally I have had a special fondness for two of them that  happened to be based on scripts I had written for them.  And people say that my screenplays are hard to swallow!

I think Polonia Day has been dimmed somewhat in recent years by John Polonia's untimely passing. I might suggest renting Monster Movie on DVD and watching the tribute to John as part of the extras, in which I was glad to be asked to have a small part.

Of course I am partial to the movies I worked on-- Among Us and The Da Vinci Curse/Dead Knight/Army of Wolves favorite among them--but the movies that I had nothing to do with that I enjoy include Dweller, The House That Screamed 2, and the original cult classic Feeders.

Check out the party here!

Go Engineers!

A pal from Worcester Polytechnic Institute sent me this nice t-shirt.  WPI has campus-wide role-playing gaming and once hosted a sci-fi convention.  Had I known this school existed when I was looking for colleges, I could have gone there and been among my people and perhaps been Homecoming king, except I think you also have to be smart.  Now I will have to settle on being its president one day.

From My Screenwriting Journal

I was looking for some of my old homemade comics and was surprised to find a screenwriting journal that I kept for a few years before starting this blog.  Here is an entry marked January 21, 2002.

Yesterday I made a more or less impromptu trip to Indy to meet with Ivan Rogers in a brainstorming session on "The Payback Man."  We just chatted for a little while and then got into a real idea session, moving all around, writing in my notebook, adding to the synopsis on Ivan's PC, and on and on, bolstered by Diet Coke and then wine.


After a few hours Ivan asked if I liked BBQ.  So off we went to Ivan's old downtown neighborhood, and a legendary spot called BBQ Heaven.  And was it.  Just past the bulletproof glass were steaming trays of ribs, collared greens, cornbread, macaroni and cheese, sweet-potato pie, and plenty of white bread to sop it up.


Then Ivan took me next door to a shuttered and dark VFW.  We went around back and Ivan hit a little buzzer.  There was an eye at the peephole, then we were in--a little backroom after-hours place, awash in Aretha and James Brown, everybody dressed in Sunday best and dancing, everything you wanted to drink at the bar as long as it is a shot and a beer.

We stayed for a few minutes and then Ivan said, "This place should be in the movie."  And I think it should be.

Remembering Ivan Rogers

I found out last week that an old friend, filmmaker Ivan Rogers, passed away.  He was a private person and wanted to go out without any ceremony, but somebody did update his IMDB profile and I'm sure he would have liked that.

For my part, I knew Ivan for more than twenty years.  I was a young associate producer at WIPB, a PBS station in Muncie, Indiana, when one day Ivan showed up to appear on a minority public affairs program the station produced.  I later learned he was in the area working on pre-production for "Caged Women 2."  I ended up running studio camera on the show and after asked if he would meet me for coffee so that I could pick his brain about filmmaking. 

I had heard of Ivan and knew that throughout the 80s, Ivan had been writing, directing, and starring in his own theatrically-released action movies (and sometimes distributing them) as well as appearing in other people's films.  At the time he was the only person I knew who had even brushed against the hem of Hollywood.

He was very gracious and spent a few hours with me, and surprised me by keeping in touch later.  I began to hatch a plan to write a screenplay for him, and set out in the evenings to write it out longhand.  It was an old-school action movie called "Grindhouse" that I later sent to Ivan, and he was kind enough to loan me MovieMagic Screenwriter so that I could learn properly formatting.

After I sold my first screenplay I bought MovieMagic Screenwriter for myself, and until this summer used the mower I also spent some of this first money on. The freezer I used the remainder on is still running.

Surprisingly, Ivan was always interested in this very first script, and over the last ten years I rewrote it several times for him and others under various titles, including "Red Puzzle," "Heat of the Lash," and "Hands Down."  Ivan asked me to send this script to a friend of his just a month or two ago. He always liked it, but we could never get it done.

However, we did work on several projects together.  When Ivan was in post-production for "Forgive Me Father" he was having trouble getting the editing done.  He had transferred the 35mm to SVHS, then was going to use the open edge numbers on the SVHS edit to cut the film.  I was a pretty good cut bench editor at the time and so I offered to cut one scene for him.  He ended up liking that scene and ultimately I ended up cutting about 40 minutes of action scenes for the film.  I basically never saw any of the characters alive until I went to the premiere at the Hollywood  Bar and Filmworks in Indianapolis.

In lieu of pay, I asked Ivan to help me shop some scripts.  Although this did not result in selling any of my own scripts, Ivan was good to his word and got me set up to work on another project called "Player in the Game."  Although this movie never got made, it did appear in the listings in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which I believe ultimately led to all of the rest of the work I have done since.

Several years later I worked through about ten drafts of "The Payback Man" with Ivan before he went another direction with it, but we continued to keep in touch.  Even as his health began failing in the last few years he had a lot of plans and ideas.

Ivan acted in other people's bigger movies and was involved in larger scale projects to leverage his own movies that he controlled from top to bottom. Not everybody liked Ivan's movies, but he did what a lot of people just talk about doing. And he gave a young unknown a few hours of his time over coffee many years ago, which has led to a long writing career.

Glitter on the Hallway

Biltmore House, 100 degree day, Asheville North Carolina.  People love to flock to this shack but it kind of got the socialist up in me.  Stuff like you find out that they had one of the first private bowling alleys, and by the way some servant dude had to hang around behind and stand the pins back up every time.  Good Carolina BBQ served in the converted stable, though.

Live from Blue Whiskey

My brother Eric and I making another journey to beloved Palatine Illinois, this time for the first Blue Whiskey Independent Film Fest.  Lots of good films in store.

Filmmakers' Breakfast at the BWIFF

Billy's Pancake House and the Filmmaker's Breakfast, a great tradition reignited in Palatine.  The legendary Meat Lovers Skillet is always offered up as a challenge, and has over the years broken many a strong man and woman.  This year a young couple took it on together and are splitting a double bypass later.

Dinner Bell at the BWIFF

Dinner break at the Blue Whiskey Film Festival at a local microbrewery.  I have said before, you'll never go hungry in Palatine.

Live from BWIFF

Super-talented young filmmaker Matt Meindl and I got to meet up again at the BWIFF.  He always hunches over a little so I don't look so short.

Getting Spunky at the BWIFF

No trip to Palatine is complete without taking the uninitiated to Spunky Dunkers, a legendary 24-hour donut place where you can meet a lot of interesting people in the middle of the night (some pictured here).

Awards at the BWIFF

I saw a lot of top-shelf work at the Blue Whiskey Film Festival, so it was a tough night of judging after a twelve-hour day of screening Saturday.  Best of Fest went to a really crazy neo-noir called The Scenesters but Annabelle and Bear and Driver's Ed Mutiny also grabbed multiple awards.  Above is a guy who drove all the way from Detroit and, not knowing better, wanted me in his picture.

SPACE Men

Finally got done reading a great, and great big, stash of stuff I picked up at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo a while back.  I went with my trusty sidekick and actual cartoonist Tom Cherry for the second time together, my third overall. 

I would have to say I like the new venue even better, and the show has continued to grow.  I talked to several artists whose work is breaking into the mainstream but continue to return to SPACE as it is where they got started.  It's a good sign.  And there are plenty of young guns still coming up through the ranks.

I'm a longtime fan of John Porcellino's King Cat, and was glad to pick up new stuff from him there.  I have been a fan of Indiana cartoonist Pam Bliss for many years and enjoy talking to her and seeing her work.  Some new stuff I enjoyed--for art or storytelling or both--included Blue Wraith, Silver Comics, Imitari Project, Haunted House Heroes, Ten Gallon Tomb Raiders, Cragmore, and Gulatta.

Far and away the find of the show was Jim Rugg's lunatic Afrodisiac, a pitch-perfect send-up of 70s comics of all stripes.  Tom picked this up for me and is now my new BFF.

Next year I think Tom and I are going to try to have our own table there, where I will attempt to draw another 24 Hour Comic, I think. 

Even sooner you can catch me at the Blue Whiskey Film Festival in beloved Palatine, Illinois, where I will be a festival judge.  I always enjoyed visiting during Microcinema Fest there and shockingly haven't seemed to wear out my welcome yet.

Until later I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Ruff and Reddy

I wish I could say this was a fake picture, but I was taking a little nap on the floor on Father's Day and Bonnie sidled up next to me for some snoozing as well.  My wife was responsible for this blackmail photo.  Sweet Dreams and Happy Father's Day!

You Are Number Six

Two labyrinths in New Harmony, Indiana.  Spookiest place I have been in since I visited Salem Massachusetts a few summers ago.  I really can't put my finger on it except to say that the whole place kind of reminds me The Village from the classic show "The Prisoner," although I think the food and coffee is better here.