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Word of the Day
The Ghostwriter
William Hope ghost photo, via BuzzFeed
“Ghostwriting for high-net-worth individuals is not about words. It’s about power, risk, identity, and control—usually at moments when those things feel newly unstable.” — from my newsletter, The Fixer Code
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I'm So Happy
What I'm (Looking Forward to) Reading: Water Over Thunder
I’m eager to read this new book by the late photographer Larry Sultan: Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings.
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New Year, New You
As a writer, an editor, and a strategist, I help writers and authors, publishers and filmmakers, and CEOs and founders craft their stories. From ghostwriting and editing books to consulting on film and television projects to advising business leaders on content strategy and media relations, I work with clients to bring their plans from conception to delivery. My client roster includes New York Times-bestselling authors, Academy Award-winning directors, and tech entrepreneurs. Let’s get started. Got questions? Email me here.
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Let's Get Started
As a writer, an editor, and a strategist, I help writers and authors, publishers and filmmakers, and CEOs and founders craft their stories. From ghostwriting and editing books to consulting on film and television projects to advising business leaders on content strategy and media relations, I work with clients to bring their plans from conception to delivery. My client roster includes New York Times-bestselling authors, Academy Award-winning directors, and tech entrepreneurs.
Writing: Ghostwrite books, newsletters, and leadership articles. Develop press releases, marketing copy, and brand books. Name products, create social media campaigns, and seed viral content.
Editing: Edit short-form, long-form, and book-length nonfiction, memoir, self-help, leadership, and fiction. Developmental editor, line-editor, and fact-checker. Work with authors and publishers.
Strategy: Create content strategy plans for media, tech, and entertainment companies. Advise CEOs, founders, and venture capitalists on public relations strategies. Executive consultant.
Clients: Playboy, Forbes, Warner Bros., and more.
Questions? Get in touch.
How Short Stories Are Made
Palm trees, Burbank, Calif., 2024 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
I wrote a short story about a sexagenarian who discovers an adult movie is being filmed in the house behind his. More recently, I was interviewed about it. When that interview gets published online, I’ll share the link.
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Topical Matters
I’m happy to share that a new short story I wrote, “Topical Matters,” has been published on failbetter. This story was inspired by a visit I paid to an adult movie set last year. The story line involves a sexagenarian in the San Fernando Valley who discovers that an adult movie is being filmed in the house behind his house.
Here’s how it begins:
“Stuart should have known something would happen on that day when he opened the door in the morning to retrieve the newspaper and noticed a religious tract had been left on the porch. He bent over, winced from the pain in his back, and scooped up the pamphlet. What is the Mark of the BEAST, read the cover. All the words were white except for the last word that was an alarming red. From the stormy sky behind the message, a bolt of lightning reached down to strike a building that was half the Vatican and half the U.S. Capitol.”
Read the rest here.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #25: What Doesn't Kill You
A still from a stag film
This is part 25 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
One of the books I’m writing is a nonfiction book about the adult movie industry. Here are a few things about it:
The title. The working title of this book is When Pornographers Were Kings: A History of America’s Most Notorious Business. The main part of the title is a nod to When We Were Kings, the 1996 Academy Award-winning documentary directed by Leon Gast. The film focuses on The Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 heavyweight championship boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali that was held in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). The book’s subtitle, through its use of “A,” points to the fact that this is but one take on a complex, ever-evolving, largely misunderstood, and often vilified business.
The cover. Because this book is a work in progress, there is no cover at this time. If it were up to me, the cover would feature a photograph from the late photographer Larry Sultan’s The Valley series. This photo of actress Sharon Wild sitting on a mattress is my favorite. Sultan, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, shot adult actors on adult movie sets from 1997 to 2003. There’s a video from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art about this incredible project here. And there’s a book which you can buy second-hand for several hundred dollars.
The epigraph. If you’re not aware, an epigraph is a quote that appears at the beginning of a book. The epigraph I’ve chosen is from feminist theorist Camille Paglia’s 1994 essay collection Vamps & Tramps: New Essays: “Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.” I love this quote, how it points to the value in seeing, really seeing, not just looking at, pornography. If you do that, you can learn a great deal about what drives people on a base, libidinal level.
The structure. The structure of this book is straightforward and simple. It is comprised of three parts. Each part is made up of seven chapters. There are a total of 21 chapters in the book. The first part of the book is occupied with the history of the business, including my personal relationship to it, including the first time I found myself (word choice of “found myself” intentional) on an adult movie set. The second part of the book is geared towards examining the mechanics of production in the manufacturing of adult content. And the third part of the book zooms in for a closer look at the key players and how they navigate this space.
The length. When it’s finished the book will be somewhere between 300 and 400 pages long. Each chapter is around 5,000 words in length, so the final manuscript will run approximately 100,000 words. In other words, this book will be my doorstop. I mean, it’s not William Gass’s 1995 novel The Tunnel, which I read some years ago and runs over 650 pages, but it’ll have some heft to it. This seems fitting since I’ve been writing about this subject for nearly three decades.
The theory. What is my take on pornography? What is my theory of pornography? What is my opinion on pornography? Historically, I have sought to evade these sorts of approaches to this provocative topic. I mean, do you really care what my take is? Aren’t you only really interested in yours? Please, let me get out of the way and allow you to do that. I’ve long compared my relationship to writing about the porn business as I’m Virgil to the reader’s Dante in Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth century narrative poem Inferno from his three-part The Divine Comedy. (That means porn is hell, but that’s another conversation.) Want to see how I do this? Read my 2009 long-form investigation of the Great Recession’s impact on the adult movie business: “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”
The pictures. It is highly unlikely this book will contain any images. No photos, no pie charts, no graphs, no drawings, no movie stills. I believe using imagery would detract from the story I’m trying to tell, locate the narrative within a time period that’s limiting, and run the risk of creating a situation in which the reader’s scopophilia supersedes their capacity for intellectual insight. I mean, if you want to see porn, go watch a porn movie.
The breadth. There will be a great deal of breadth in this book. The story will range from stag movies to the Golden Age of Porn to the rise of online porn. Stylistically, it will interweave narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, and reported memoir. The characters will include producers, directors, crew, performers, writers, and theorists. In addition, I’ll take a look at the future of pornography, how smut might look, feel, and be delivered at a future date. Speaking of which, the other day I came across a story on AVN.com about this masturbation device in the shape of a brain. My mind is blown.
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Everything He Knows About Self-publishing
Kevin Kelly has an exhaustive post on everything you’d ever want to know about book publishing. (via Kottke)
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Fuck You, Pay Me #24: A New Book and Other Things
A pink curtain at an art gallery, Los Angeles, Calif., 2024 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This is part 24 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
July proved to be another busy month. Highlights include the announcement of my next book, an audition I’m doing for a well-known podcast, the latest from my newsletter, an upcoming public performance, and how my novel set in the San Fernando Valley’s adult movie industry is coming along. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The book
This month I was really delighted to share the news of my next book. It’s part of Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 books series. If you’re not familiar with the beloved series, each book focuses on a single album. My book will focus on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. I also wrote a bit about the process of pitching the book in my newsletter.
To be perfectly honest, when I proposed doing this book earlier this year, I didn’t think my proposal would be selected. Now that it has been, I’m really excited to be doing it. I spent a lot of time over the years listening to hip-hop so I hope I have something to add there, and I am a big fan of all things West Coast.
As I wrote in my book proposal:
“In the San Francisco Bay Area, I had come of age listening to hip-hop—from The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ to Kurtis Blow’s ‘The Breaks,’ from Public Enemy’s ‘Bring the Noise’ to Gang Starr’s ‘Mass Appeal,’ from the Bay Area’s own Too $hort’s ‘Life is… Too Short’ to 2Pac’s ‘If My Homie Calls’—but this was something different.”
The audition
In other news, a couple months ago, I pitched a story to a popular podcast. The story had to do with one of the most extreme, out-there things I had seen as a journalist writing about the adult movie industry. While I had written about the subject in the past, I hadn’t told the full story of what I’d seen.
Once again, when I pitched this story, I wasn’t sure it would be picked. The subject matter is so beyond the pale, but this podcast has a history of doing stories that sit at the extreme end. When I got the email saying they were interested in a 10-minute audition of what the story might sound like, I went for it.
Actually, I really went down the rabbit hole. I re-researched everything I had created about this specific topic, reading stories, researching online, digging up old photos I’d taken that I hadn’t seen in several decades. I probably spend too much time feeling like my interests are too freaky for most people to be able to tolerate, but it felt validating to have someone else interested in hearing about it.
I’ll share what happens after I submit my audition.
The newsletter
This month over in my newsletter, I wrote about various things: my novel, my penchant for taking photos of people’s feet on adult movie sets, what a map of Porn Valley might look like. Over time I’ve learned with this newsletter to write about what interests me, and not worry about the rest. I read something someone wrote somewhere which is basically that newsletters are blog posts with an email function. That caused something for me to click. After all, I certainly know how to blog.
Upcoming subjects I’m thinking about writing about in my newsletter: an adult industry-related event taking place in L.A. soon, what happens when porn stars die, an idea I have for a group art gallery show that would pull back the curtain on the adult business.
Got a suggestion for what you’d like to read about in my newsletter? Email me here.
The stories
A few months ago, I started performing publicly again. First, I read an excerpt from a short story that I wrote that will be published in an online literary magazine later this fall at a bookstore in Echo Park. Next up, I read an essay I wrote about being a human lab rat at a basement bar in Atwater Village. This Sunday, I’ll be sharing a story about what I learned from hanging around adult movie sets as a journalist at Revealed at The Glendale Room.
I’m not sure why I’m doing these public storytelling experiments. So far I’ve learned my fiction is better read than read out loud, being entertaining is better than being boring, and I’m not sure I can tell a good story if I’m not reading something off a page. I guess I will find out! I tend to like to throw myself into new situations and see what happens. If I fail, no one will give a shit or remember.
Or so I like to think.
The novel
This morning, I finished writing the sixth chapter of my novel. I’m pretty proud of myself. Writing a novel isn’t easy. What a slog! What a test of endurance and will! I've reached the halfway point. There are only six chapters left.
Each chapter of this book takes place in a different city or community in the San Fernando Valley. The entire story takes place in a single day. The main character works in the adult movie business. Sometimes when I get stuck, I drive to the place where that chapter takes place. Inevitably, I get inspired.
What a joy and a pleasure and a gift to live in the Valley.
To quote Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now:
“When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now. Waiting for a mission. Getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.”
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Novel-in-Progress: 25,000 Words
At 25,000+ words, I’m nearly halfway through my novel-in-progress, which is set in the adult movie industry.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #23: When to Say Yes and When to Say No
This is part 23 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was June. Here are a few things on my radar.
Just Say No This month I found myself in the midst of negotiating a publishing contract. The money was so-so, but the real issue was the dramatic rights. If you’re not aware, dramatic rights have to do with who has the right to turn the property that you’ve written into a movie, television series, or the like. Statistically, the odds are slim that your written property will be turned into a movie, television series, or the like, but they’re not zero. You’ll see a range of guesstimates about how likely it is that your intellectually property will be optioned, but whatever the number is, it is surely less than 1%. That said, never say never, and these days, when content is everywhere, it’s important that you retain as many rights as you can. Let’s just say Netflix or Scorsese or some producer comes inquiring about turning your words into a movie or TV show or some other sort of project like that. Do you want to be the one who has to say, oh, yes, well, actually I gave that away for a pittance? No, you do not. In fact, when I was a younger writer, dramatic rights were not on the table, or at least not so often. Somewhere around, say, the 2010s, publishers began attempting to make a land grab for these rights, and certain writers, let’s say, millennials, gave them away because they just wanted to be published. Nowadays, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is trying to steal your dramatic rights. But if your project is optioned and turned into a movie or TV show, you may make more money with that than you ever did with the word-based version. So keep your dramatic rights. I ended up passing on their offer. Which is a bummer. For them, mostly.
Get Money Last month, I wrote about how a TV show had reached out to me about using some of my photographs as part of a set that they were creating for the third season of this show, which airs on one of the streaming networks. After some negotiation, we settled on a fee. A friend of mine had advised me that this network was sometimes slow in paying, so I had a clause added to the agreement that payment was due upon receipt. A couple weeks later, I was paid, but by that time the individuals who had worked with me were no longer working on the show. Which is to say, make sure you don’t just get getting paid in writing, make sure you get in writing when you will be paid, or you might end up chasing payment forever.
Be a Star Recently, I’ve gotten into telling stories in public forums. Last month, I read an excerpt from a short story I wrote at a bookstore. Last weekend, I read an essay adapted from my memoir at a basement club that hosts performances. Next week, I’m going to perform a story I wrote based on dating in Los Angeles at a bigger event. Why am I doing this? I’m not really sure. While I’ve been on TV many times, and read my work many times, and been part of an improv group, performing is a scary thing. But I thought it was important to keep pushing myself, trying new things, telling stories in new ways. Besides, this is Los Angeles. You never know who’ll be in the audience, where it might lead, how your story might land.
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Daddy-O
In my Instagram Stories for Father’s Day, I posted a few links to my late father and his work, including his New York Times obituary, my favorite thing he ever wrote, his Rothko biography, Hilton Kramer’s New York Times Book Review review of my father’s Rothko biography, and my father’s Rothko biography research archive at the Getty Research Institute. It’s been almost 30 years since my father died, and I’ll miss him forever.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #22: May the Work Be With You
Pink-haired mannequin, Hollywood, Calif. | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This is part 22 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
May was a busy month for me. Among other things, I published a short story I wrote 30 years ago for the first time online, I visited the grave site of one of my heroes, I checked out the freaks at an art gallery show, I saw a correlation between pornography and Cronenberg, I overshared in my newsletter, a TV show asked if they could use my photos, one of my photos was accepted to be in a group art show later this year, I was part of a variety show in a hipster enclave, I read a few books, and I worked on my novel.
REVISITING “THE APARTMENT” — I published a short story I wrote around 30 years ago, “The Apartment,” on my website. The story was first published in an anthology, Chick Lit 2: No Chick Vics, and is about a man and a woman and what it’s like when your entire relationship is built on secrets and passive-aggressive actions. Here’s an excerpt: “Her fingers were moving around and he could now see her in the hall through his own peephole and she was undoing her pants with her other hand.” I made the illustration by taking a photo of my own peephole, adding an eyeball in Instagram Stories, and taking a screen shot of that. Read it here.
GOODNIGHT, MR. LYNCH — I was heartbroken when David Lynch, who is one of my favorite directors, died in January. So much so that I didn’t visit the makeshift memorial at Bob’s Big Boy that was spontaneously created for him. When I learned that his cremains had been buried at Hollywood Forever, I decided to make the pilgrimage. I brought wonderfully fragrant lilies and a card that stated how much he and his work meant to me. In February, I started doing Transcendental Meditation through the David Lynch Foundation, which has changed my life. So his influence lives on.
FREAKS & FRIENDS — I like art, and one of my favorite galleries in Los Angeles is David Zwirner. This month, I checked out Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited. The show was terrific. When I was a kid, I acquired a copy of the 1972 monograph, which includes the same images as in the Zwirner show. As a young person, I was dazzled by her work. The subjects were bizarre and freakish, too big and too exposed, doubles of one another or clearly troubled. I’m sure her eye shaped my own and what I understood a creative person could be: a fearless woman who considered those from whom others looked away. The show is up until June 21. Give it a look if you’re in town.
PULP | PORN — The other day I was re-watching Eastern Promises, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. In one shot, I noticed a striking similarity to the look of a young blonde curled on herself and on her side to the cover of Pulp’s This Is Hardcore. The former was released in 2007. The latter was released 1998. The first was Cronenberg’s vision. The second was Peter Saville’s and John Currin’s vision. To compare and contrast the two, I made a diptych of the images side by side. What do you think? Was Cronenberg influenced by Saville and Currin? Who knows. I’d love to know. If you know, let me know.
IT’S GIVING TMI — In my newsletter, I wrote about the time I visited the most exclusive sex club in the world and what that had to do with my mother. A snippet from my experience at the one-percent sex cub in a downtown Los Angeles penthouse: “I drifted between the rooms. In a bedroom I noticed the walls were covered in a type of luxurious fabric or leather. A three-way was entangled on the bed. A half-circle of onlookers stood around the threesome, ogling. I went to the window. The red, glowing neon sign on a nearby building promised JESUS SAVES.” Subscribe.
TV IS CALLING — Recently I got an email from a woman who was interested in using some of my photos in a television show. She wanted to see a certain number of them with a specific theme. I emailed those to her. After that, the show’s art director selected another grouping from those I’d sent. The photos will be used as part of a set on the show. Of course, I was paid for the use of my photos. I’ll share more when the next season airs.
NOT-A-PHOTOGRAPHER — Speaking of my photography, I saw online that a photographer I like was putting together a group art show. I sent her one of the photos from my ongoing L.A. Sex documentary photography project for consideration. She liked the image and will be including it in the show. I believe this is the first time one of my photos will be displayed and (hopefully) sold in this way, so I’m excited about that. I’ll have more information when the group show is announced.
READING IN HIGHLAND PARK — Have you heard of Space Stories? It’s a variety show at The Pop-Hop books co-op in Highland Park. I wanted to be involved, so I sent in a fictional short story I wrote (that will be published in an unrelated online magazine this fall). I was picked to be part of the show. I hadn’t read my fiction in public in awhile, but it was a lovely time, with an appreciative, engaged crowd. I wish Los Angeles had more literary events, as there’s a writerly population here that needs it. The next time you’re in Highland Park, visit The Pop-Hop. They do lots of neat stuff.
BOOK REVIEWS — This year I decided to only read books with pictures. This month I read seven books. One didn’t have pictures, but I made an exception because it was David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish. The book is a collection of musings, reflections, and insights into the Lynchian process. One of the short vignettes is “The Box and The Key,” and the entirety of it is: “I don’t have a clue what those are.” If you don’t get the reference, you should watch Muholland Drive. More of my short book reviews: Books I Read.
A NOVEL IDEA — I’m writing a novel set in Porn Valley. The book takes place over the course of a single day. Its focus is a man who is involved in the adult movie business. This project is based on my nearly 30 years of writing about the porn industry. I guess you could say this novel is my Ulysses, or put another way the San Fernando Valley is my Yoknapatawpha County. The narrative winds its way through many of the diverse cities and communities within the Valley, from Burbank to Panorama City, Sherman Oaks to Tarzana, Chatsworth to [redacted]. I’m looking forward to sharing it.
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It's Real and It's Not
Adult movie set, Canoga Park, Calif., 2009 (Photo credit: Susannah Breslin)
In my latest newsletter, I wrote about writing a short story about the adult movie industry. Read and subscribe.
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Susie Bright Master Class: Substack for Writers
I’m really looking forward to taking Susie Bright’s Master Class: Substack for Writers Seminar 2: Substack for Veteran Writers. Susie’s been a huge hero of mine for decades, and I can’t wait to learn more from her.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #21: How to Write a Novel About Porn Valley
This is part 21 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
Currently, I’m writing a novel set in Porn Valley. For the sake of this post, let’s call it Untitled Porn Valley Novel. (In fact, the book has a title, but let’s deem it untitled for this post.) Since finding myself on an adult movie set for the first time nearly three decades ago, I’ve been searching for the best way to tell this story about this curious place. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.
Immerse yourself in your subject. I haven’t lived in Los Angeles the entire time I’ve been writing about the adult industry, but I’ve lived here quite a bit. Initially, I lived in Los Feliz, which is on the east side of Los Angeles, not in the San Fernando Valley. Now, I live in the Valley, which is more of an embed. When I’m writing something in the novel and I get stuck, I can drive to where that section takes place and get inspired. The novel is twelve chapters, and each chapter takes place in a different part of the Valley over the course of a single day. That said, the Porn Valley I’ve created is a work of fiction. It’s my Yoknapatawpha County.
See what you haven’t seen. As a journalist writing about the porn industry, I’ve seen a lot of things. Suffice to say, when Martin Amis described the porn business as a “rough trade,” he was not incorrect. Sometimes, the manufacturing of pornography is a space in which things get extreme. (Take, for example, “500 Men. 1 Woman. Get in Line.”) I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. So what am I to do with these scenes in my mind? These real-life experiences have shaped my work as a novelist. As a reporter, I bear witness. As a fiction writer, I recreate what I have seen anew. The process is alchemical. Something gets transformed.
Write it in pieces. The only way I was able to move through the manuscript productively was to write it in 500-word chunks. Each of the twelve chapters is approximately 5,000 words, and each chapter has 10 sections of approximately 500 words. Instead of “writing a novel,” I’m meeting a word goal. Attaining these smaller word goals was the way to write a book-length work. Maybe that method works for you, or maybe it doesn’t. But it works for me. Ultimately, I may merge those 10 sections in the chapter into one continuous whole for the chapter. Or I may not. That’s a question for revision, not for creating.
Do a bad job. As a perfectionist, I can get stuck on getting things right. The bar is set high, and I can get bogged down in trying to meet it. People always say to write a messy first draft; the idea of doing that makes me want to claw out my eyes. It’s almost intolerable. Eventually, though, I was able to realize that some chapters would be tighter than others, and some chapters would be more exploratory than others. Take it from Robert Frost: “the best way out is always through.” Or John Swartzwelder: “Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible.” Or William Faulkner: “The main thing is—is to get it down.”
Become someone else. I tried to write this novel in many different ways, and I could never quite get it right. For years, the main character eluded me. Then I wrote a short story about a character I fell in love with, and I realized that this person was the main character in my novel. This time around, the main character in my novel is a man, and that works for me. For as long as I am writing my novel, I am someone else: who is the opposite of me and very much me, who is totally lost and hoping to be found, who is wrestling with their demons and seeking transcendence. In reality, he’s my doppelgänger, but in the world of fantasy, he’s all mine.
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