The more I think about writing (and film-making and television), the more and more I become convinced that the sole job of a story is to create and sustain a shared, temporary dream. I explored some of this in my essay on creating a mood board in the first issue of Welcome to the Hammer Party : (I’ve also adapted her concept of shitty first drafts into my mantra first you make it, then you make it good ). On one of them I just wrote the phrase “a vivid and sustained dream.” I think I got that phrase from Bird By Bird, one of the few genuinely good books about writing.

I wrote the first chapter of the novel on Marmont stationary, and I wrote myself three notes on Chateau Marmont notepads. The Chateau is the hippest no-tell hotel in the world, and the bungalows are where the real dirt has gone down ever since Errol Flynn pretty much invented fucking there back in the day. It also led me to spend more time thinking about these things, thus the below thoughts:Īs I talk about in the above-mentioned interview with Eli, in January of 2020 I checked into a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in order to start writing my new novel EVERYBODY KNOWS. It was a long talk about process in which we covered some of the stuff I’ve already talked about in this newsletter. I also talked with Eli Cranor as a part of his terrific Shop Talk series. She let me rant about his movie Sullivan’s Travels, which, were I made dictator of Hollywood, I would force people to watch over and over again until the word “prestige” is abolished from our vocabulary. In other news, I sat down last month with my good friend Jen Johans to talk about the great Preston Sturges. My hope is that LAST KING will be published in the US after I find a home for EVERYBODY KNOWS. It’s an epic LA crime story - I hesitate to say more right now - and I’m extremely excited for it to hit the world. Meanwhile, I’m putting the final touches on my next novel, EVERYBODY KNOWS, with hopes of taking it to market in the next few months. It has yet to be described as a “laff-riot.” He is an outcast from his outlaw family who comes home just as their way of life is threatened both by the reunified Aryan Steel gang and the ever-growing California wildfires. He is now returning to the Inland Empire for the first time since he was a child.

Set in the aftermath of SHE RIDES SHOTGUN, it’s a rather apocalyptic crime novel about a young man named Luke who has never recovered from witnessing his father commit a horrific crime when Luke was only seven years old. Some news first: my novel THE LAST KING OF CALIFORNIA will be published in the UK by Simon & Schuster, looking at a May 2022 release date.

She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper