What’s next

From the LA Times, John Carpenter on living.

I had to stop making movies for a bit. I had to have some space. You know, I am closer to the end than I was. I think about that now. I think about nothingness; what’s next.

Time's Cady Lang on Julia Fox:

As she enters adolescence, she finds salvation in a heady mix of sex, drugs, and reckless behavior, a formula that brings her both ample adventure and devastation as she comes of age in downtown New York.

I had Fox's picture on my desktop while I was blocking out Blue Hotel. Her defiant quality was something I worked into the main character. Nymag.com's Elizabeth Nicholas puts her finger on what makes Fox's memoir different:

Each of these stories is the kind of harrowing event that could easily become a person’s entire personality. For artists or writers, this can translate into gravitas and the sense of having not only moved on but triumphed. But in her book, Fox refuses to play the good survivor’s game of switching off entire parts of herself... She makes no apologies nor does she make a song and dance of what she was thinking. She is not your survivor.

A new edition of my novella Aurélie is out on the usual digital platforms. The story is still one of my favourites. I always hoped it would come out as a bleak little post-modern noir like a Manchette. There's still time, I guess.