Zen Mind Fiction Workshop Returns in September. 
If you missed the summer session, this is your chance
to take our fastest on-ramp to craft proficiency.

Dear Cult Writer of the Future,

You may recall the letter I wrote to you in late June.  This letter challenged you to let go of excuses and to escape the gravity well of inertia and self-doubt--all those forces that have prevented you, so far, from a new level of success and satisfaction as a writer.

It's part of our mission here at Chuck-Palahniuk dot Net to help readers become writers and writers become authors.  We know you have it in you.  I can say that with confidence, because you're the sort of bright and talented person who visits and reads this Web site in the first place.  When you're not visiting us, you sometimes read and appreciate... gasp...  books!  While others remain lost in video games or television shows, you're already prone to a  form of entertainment that engages your mind and imagination in a different way, calling for a deeper participation and a lasting response.

We're moving distinctly into the homestretch now with our Anthology Project. The stories linked below are top selections from October, 2009 (yes, we're a little behind). Be sure to read Chuck's commentaries, as each set of notes contains illuminating lessons in the writer's craft.

Face Space by Brandon Tietz

Control by Chris Smith

Paper by Gayle Gossett

Dumb Muscle by Gus Moreno

Dyer by Richard Thomas

Congratulations to all the winners!

If you'd like to participate in our ground-breaking workshop, read exclusive How To craft essays from Chuck and just network and meet other writers,

Join Our Writer's Workshop

Onanist. Pervert. Peeping tom. Glue huffer. Panty sniffer. Homeless drifter. John. By his own admission, James Ellroy has been each of these things; he wears it like a badge of honor. In his mind, as a child, he was a murderer. As an adult- a dedicated son and a devoted husband. But what a lot of people don't realize, is that above all else, he always has, and always will be, a man whose life is ruled by women.

In fact, past allegations of misogyny are almost laughable in light of his obsession with woman and their approval. It is a pursuit that consumes him. The Hilliker Curse is a document of this relentless need, painting him as a man whose existence revolves around the women in his life, as well as the women who might be in his future. 

It is all unabashedly Freudian. In the wake of his parent's divorce, young Ellroy, brimming with equal parts hatred and lust, "summons" his mother dead in an imaginary act of vengeance. Little does he know that in three months time, his wish will be fulfilled. In a crime that parallels the famed murder of Elizabeth Short, his mother's lifeless body is found by the police.

Buy The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women from Amazon.com

written for ChuckPalahniuk.net by Joshua Chaplinsky

Truth is stranger than fiction, at least for those blessed with interesting lives. The rest of us have no choice but to live vicariously through their stories. In the case of bestselling cult author Chuck Palahniuk, the embellishment of his exploits by fans has made it hard to tell exactly where reality ends and the storytelling begins. There are those who would have us believe he entered this world kicking and screaming, brandishing a pen, when in fact he comes from much more humble (albeit interesting) beginnings.

Born February 21, 1962, Charles Michael Palahniuk spent his early childhood living out of a mobile home in Burbank, Washington. His parents, Carol and Fred Palahniuk, separated and divorced when he was fourteen, leaving Chuck and his siblings to spend much of their time on their maternal grandparent’s cattle ranch.

This is pretty spectacular.  It's by an artist named Dave MacDowell.  To check out more of his work, visit:

The Acryllic Paintings of Dave MacDowell

He's also got a store on that site where you can buy prints.

Props to @omfgthelife on Twitter for pointing this one out.

by Craig Clevenger

NIGHT OF THE LIVING SYNTAX: DISEMBODIED ACTION

Stories are about people doing shit. Yeah, take a minute to let that soak in. Feel free to quote me, too. Allow me to elaborate: a story has somebody who wants something, goes for it and gets cock-blocked. Our hero, let’s call him “Somebody” (because I’m creative like that), then redoubles his effort with a Plan B. Each new attempt means greater and greater effort on Somebody’s part, with greater risk each time, and greater consequences with each action. The cycle repeats itself up to the climax, where at which point the consequences are the most significant.

Pardon the sarcastic recap of the craft, but the notion of character volition is one of the guiding principles in this piece. Your protagonist must have a desire; your protagonist must also behave willfully to bring about that desire. This goes for the action hero who desires to rescue the hostages from the fortified building and willfully takes the appropriate action to do so; it also goes for the daughter working up the nerve to face her estranged mother who’s on her deathbed.

Even if your protagonist is a perennial couch potato, that character’s desire to do nothing is an act of will. He or she consciously chooses to ignore the phone or take a shower; to watch television instead of scan the classifieds for a job. As lazy as he or she is, they are still choosing one set of behaviors over another; the laziness is not choosing them. If it is, you may be writing about a character with serious depression, in which case he or she has different sets of choices—likewise a battle of will—waiting ahead.

Some stories are driven by protagonists who start a chain of events by their own hand, others by protagonists who are reacting to the circumstances and events around them. In every case, your protagonist wants something and takes measures to get it. If your protagonist has no will, your reader finds another book. Critical in establishing your character’s will is putting as much conscious action within your character’s scope of behavior as possible.

How's this for an endorsement!?  imjustinescolon , one of our site members, just showed us how much she loves the Invisible Monsters Tshirt Kevin Tong designed for us... by having it tattooed on her thigh!

If you like the design, but aren't ready to tattoo it on ya just yet, you can Buy The Shirt Here.

I don't know about everyone else, but I had Ian McEwan's Atonement pegged as a lady book from a mile away. I'd never read the novel, but I'd seen the movie trailer and it had manipulative tearjerker written all over it. Hence- lady book. Whether I was right or wrong, this impression was the reason I initially had little interest in Solar. But then I read a post on IO9 calling it one of the year's best science fiction novels and I became intrigued. I love me a good, literary sci-fi novel, so I set about acquiring a copy.

Turns out, Solar isn't much of a science fiction novel at all. It is a book with science at its core, but the story is grounded firmly in reality. This reality is inhabited by Michael Beard, an aging Nobel prizewinner clinging to the faded glory of his one big breakthrough. He is a self-centered cheat whose career is kick-started by the death of a sycophantic colleague who happens to be his wife's lover. Based on the dead man's research (which in turn is based on Beard's own prize-winning breakthrough) Beard develops a method of artificial photosynthesis to produce clean, inexpensive energy.

Buy Solar from Amazon.com

This is one of the better trailer spoofs I've ever seen. Imagine a version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris was all in Cameron's mind... sort of like someone else we know.

This was inspired by an article SlashFilm ran last year.

Video Props: ClassyHands

Our favorite affiliate, St. Helen's Book Shop, is the best place to not only order Chuck Palahniuk books online, but to also have them personally signed and inscribed to you by the man himself!  (yes, Chuck visits the store quite frequently to fulfill online inscription requests).  Usually our promotions for St. Helen's Book Shop have to do with a new novel, but this time, Chuck is signing copies of an anthology of short stories edited by Neil Gaiman!  The anthology features a short story Chuck read on tour in the past called The Loser.

Here are the details from St. Helen's themselves.  (and hurry, they only have 100 of these!)

*****