End of the Year Stuff

Since writers live to be accepted (who wnats to be rejected), here are my Christmas acceptances --


1. Book contract from State Univ. of New York Press for The Anthropology of Pornography, to be published in their Postmodern Culture Series. This is an ethnography of sex workers in Los Angeles only, a study of the sub-culture in L.A., as an athropologist would study any culture, partially participant-observer. It starts off with my own experiences as being a cameraman for people like Al Borda, Max Hardcore, Captain Bob, etc., and the people I met, talked with, became friends with,



and then leads to interviews with various people who work as talent and directors in the biz (and what they do outside the biz in real life). The book is not finished and will nneed vetting by peer review, so I don't expect this book to come out until late 2009 or even early 2010.

2. Agreemets with Borgo Press to publish two more collections of erotic stories, the short novel Seven Women (previously only available in a special edition from Bookspan's Venus Book Club) and a collection of essays called Auto/Ethnographies -- Sex, Death, Love, and Independent Filmmaking.





3. Essay, "Like the Portholes in a Jules Verne Submaries - Footnotes in the Novels of Paul Auster, Nicholson Baker, and Mark Z. Danielewski" in the journal Problems in Lietrary Genres from the Univ of Lodz in Poland.


It was accepted the same day that Critqiue turned it down the seconmd time (the revision). I have to change the referncing style for their journal, which uses a British-based style guide.

4. I'll add this as it is most likley going to happen -- talkling with McFarland & Co, about Carver's Women - Role, Place, and Identity of the Feminine in the Short Stories of Raymond Carver. They loved the proposala and just need to see a chapter.

5. Need to revise a review esay on Vollmann's new book, Riding Toward Everywhere, for Modern Language Studies.

Meanwhile, The Watermelon is stll in the last legs of post-production. LightSong Films is trying to get together some quick investor funds to film my campty horror low budget Hardboiled Zoimbie Detective (origianlly pubished in Dybukk Press' Badass Horror as a novella) while dealing with financing, with Hand Picked Films, for Statons. And Debbie is still dealing wth financing for Mommy vs. the Evil Bank Robbers. Right now, I feel very distant and aliented from the whole film financing process and Hollywood in general.

I have set some end of the year goals -- wrap in the Star Trek critical monography by Xmas (or at least New Year's) and have the new novel, The Agent, ready for the agent when NY publishing opens back up for business in January.

Oh -- and the Carver biography is still out there, so with all the New Yorker stuff on Carver lately, will hoepfully have an offer in when things open back up there on the East Coast.

My 44th published book, a collection of sordid, nasty, literary tales of human interaction, titled How to Have an Affair and Other Instructions, is now available from Wildside Press.

Makes a good Xmas gift! Order today -
http://www.wildsidebooks.com//How-to-Have-an-Affair-and-Other-Instructions-by-Michael-Hemmingson-trade-pb_p_316-2134.html#

Notes from Dec. 1 07

The Watermelon did not get selected for Sundance. It passed some initial steps, but not the final. The producers are bummed, I think. I am used to rejection and I'd lie if I said it doesn't bother me, but it does just a litte. It was a long shot and they did not submit the best cut -- at least not where the film is at now. There are plenty of other festivals, many, and a great deal of very good movies never got into Sundance -- e.g., Edmond, its first screening was at the Silverlake Film Festival, which is local centric and new.

So now I am waiting to hear from the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and the Sloan regrading Antarctica. I shold know by mid-month.

I have made it to consideration rounds for a Guggenheim Fellowship -- at least, I know they sent out recommendation forms to my agent, Larry McCaffery, LightSong Films and...somewhere else...another long shot but I am mid-career, I beleive, which is what the Guggenheim is for, although a few people have told me that they usually turn you down the first year and give it to you the next time you apply (I think SSI does the same thing).

I have a lot of book ms. and book proposals out there -- my main interest is fidning homes for the Carver biography and Zona Norte.

No new screenplays in my head, or none that I feel an urgent need to write, but I am thinking of going back and rewriting two that I have not been marketing because they have plot problems, Priority Male (rom com) and Fifty Bucks (thriller/crime). Will, the lead in The Watermelon who acted at The Fritz back in 1995, showed Fifty Bucks to a producer he knows at Lakeshore Entertainment -- the guy said he was ready to option it from age one, until he got to page 50 and felt it came apart. We've been trying to set up a meeting for him to give me notes on where he'd like to see the story go, but I have some ideas on how the fix pages 51-110, so may do that.


Priority Male just needs a new Act III. The Act III I have now is kind of like Blazing Saddles, but only Mel Brooks can do mel Brooks.

What else...before the year is up, I will attempt to finish the first draft of the Star Trek critical monograph, finish the last chapter of Judas Payne and turn it into Borgo Press, get the outlines and opening chapters to The Agent (novel) and Now I Know What Happened to Me (auto/ethnography)out there, and manybe have my book of essays ready to go, which is called Promises Made to Heaven...Broken.