17 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "East side mural, lighter"
I snapped this pic last weekend in East LA. I had a really great time reading at David Rocklin's amazing Roar Shack series at 826LA. I also had a wonderful meal beforehand at Triniti with a girlfriend.
20 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Burbank Public Library 📚"
A shot I took of some public art in front of the library in Burbank, in The Valley.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
27 Likes, 4 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "🐍"
There's a house in the San Fernando Valley that's not far from where I live, and the owner has filled the foliage growing in the section of dirt between the sidewalk and the curb with a collection of curious things. There are inspirational signs, small gnomes, a happy Buddha. I don't know who owns the house or what the purpose of this collection is. Suffice to say, the snake that's hanging in the tree is striking.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
My friend Matt Young's memoir, Eat the Apple, which has been called "the Iliad of the Iraq War," is on sale tomorrow. It's an amazing book that I was lucky enough to read while he was working on it. Today, the NYT proclaimed it "inventive, unsparing, irreverent and consistently entertaining," and NPR says it's "brilliant and barbed." I strongly recommend you read it. You will love it.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
Image via The Museum of the San Fernando Valley
If you're interested in hearing me read a short story about a male porn star who has a problem with his penis, I'm reading in the Roar Shack series at 826LA in the Echo Park neighborhood of LA on March 11. The reading starts at 4PM. This story is from a collection of short stories I'm working on that all take place in and around the adult industry in the San Fernando Valley.
Roar Shack Reading Series presents "The Way Up" on Sunday, March 11 2018 at 826LA in Echo Park! Join us as we welcome a superlative lineup of lit talent: Wendy Labinger, Dig Wayne, Poetic Nubia, Emanuel Bergmann, Susannah Breslin and Erica Garza! All this plus the world famous Live Write. You don't want to be left out, do you? I mean, didn't we all get enough of that in high school?
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
Image via Twitter
Awhile back, a screen grab from an article I wrote on my Forbes blog was circulated on social media. The original story was "A Porn Star's Widower Delivers a Moving Speech at the Oscars of Porn." The portion of that piece that was widely disseminated focused on the fundamental challenge presented to women who work in adult. While everybody watches them, no one truly sees them. This tension -- between being visible and invisible -- is a fraught place in which to live.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
15 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "That porn star @therealdelladane ⚡️"
Not long ago, I went to a strip club in the San Fernando Valley where porn stars and strippers were engaged in cage fighting. I expected it to be something like the WWE, but in reality it was a bit more like the UFC. I spoke to several of the fighters -- all women -- and it occurred to me that maybe fighting wasn't so different from stripping or performing in the adult business. It's about pushing yourself to extremes, taking your body to its limits, and enjoying the spectacle.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
Art by Chris Bishop
I re-read this piece today for a related book project I'm working on and found it interesting to consider some eight years after having written it. I sought to illuminate the ways in which the Great Recession and other factors had impacted the adult movie industry, and I did so, I think, albeit a bit oddly and indirectly. Every so often I re-read that piece and wonder what it's about. Memory? Humanity? Desire? Whatever it is, the last thing it's about is porn and the economy.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
12 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: ""I'm not in the business. I am the business." - Blade Runner #bladerunner #ennishouse"
I made a quick detour up to the Ennis House today, in the hills above Los Feliz. This is the house where Deckard lived in "Blade Runner." Oh, and it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It's one of my favorite residential homes in the world. I used to live nearby and would walk by it regularly. Before they stopped doing so, I went on a tour of the place. It is truly extraordinary. For a time, it appeared that it would fall into ruin, but billionaire Ron Burkle bought it, and he saved it. It's still standing.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
On March 11, I'll be reading at 826LA. Details to be announced. This is the second reading I've done since moving back to LA last fall. I've been reading a series of short stories that I've been writing, which are based in the San Fernando Valley, where I live, and focus on the adult industry and those who work in it. At the last reading, I read a story about a woman who makes silicone vaginas for a living. At this one, I'll be reading a story about a day in the life of a male porn star.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
Not long ago, I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed by Ken Reid, host of "TV Guidance Counselor," a podcast in which he interviews people about a copy of TV Guide. I picked the issue from Ken's collection that featured the ladies of "Charlie's Angels" on the cover from 1976. You can listen to the episode here or here. We talked about Farrah Fawcett, the presidential possible pee tape, and what it's like when a lot of kids are watching TV alone, but kind of together.
Here's what we discussed:
Ken and Susannah discuss being tall, Berklee, the odd isolation of neighborhoods, being anti-establishment, intellectualism, Charlie’s Angels, hair goals, Farrah Fawcett, Jaqueline Smith, The Shazam Isis Hour, the original Saturday Night Live Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Dolly Parton’s sisters, brunette as protest, The Jeffersons, Holmes and Yo-Yo, having four Real Dolls, how empathy can motivate you to do odd things, sex contracts, 20 years of covering the adult entertainment business, big budget pornography on Entertainment Tonight, sex robots, being a latch key kid, The 3:30 Movie, made for TV horror flicks, being on panel shows, Politically Incorrect, stand up comedy, being a control freak, The Post Feminist Playground, Jenna Jameson, The Mitchell Brothers, Roberta Findley, the false safety of parody, Star Trek, being in love with William Shatner, racist nerds, the varied experience exposure of television, Black Mirror, old man talk, hating progress, virtual reality, eXistenz, Little House on the Prairie, the horrifying mime episode, Monroe’s assault on Too Close for Comfort, Johnny Cash, Variety Shows, Cherry 2000, Happy Days, Lavern and Shirley, Jackie Brown, The Golden Age, the long slow death of physical media, sad warehouses, looking for humanity, obscenity trials, the hunt for the most extreme, the President and the Porn Star, Japanese weirdness, pee pee tapes, connections made to be broken vs lack of connection made to be made, why Ken would never have Donald Trump on the show, being fueled by spite, what the hell the point of TV Guidance Counselor is, being sad to find out how lonely you were as a kid, but feeling happy when you realize you were alone together with a lot of other kids.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
23 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "comic-in-progress ❤️💦💯"
I drafted an outline for a comic the other day. It had to do with Porn Valley. I made it on some index cards I had lying around. I used to make comics. You can read one of them, "My, My American Bukkake, Too," on Artbomb. I made that one using photos I took on a porn set, which I ran through a Photoshop process called Stamp, then messed with them to make them how I liked. I should probably do a third one.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
Image credit: Yael Malka
Awhile back, a friend of mine told me that a publication was looking for a writer to do a story on financial domination. Financial domination is a very curious thing. I wrote a story about it, and I have to say, I'm not sure I understand it. Why would a man give a woman thousands of dollars to tell him that he was worthless? It defies the capacity of my brain to comprehend. In any case, I talked to a handful of women who've done it about the who, what, why, where, when, and how's.
From "The Hustle of Financial Domination":
You can call her Goddess Haven—although, on Twitter, her handle is @Haven_TheGreat—and if you’re what’s known in the curious world of financial domination as a “pay pig,” you’re going to have to offer her a “tribute,” if you want her to even acknowledge that you exist.
In “findom,” as it’s known, it’s all about the money. Or, as Haven puts it in her Twitter profile: “Pay first, learn about me later.”
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
The future world I'm foretelling in my novel-in-progress is coming true. Meet deepfakes, if you haven't already. Videos of female celebrities' faces transposed onto the moving bodies of porn stars in homemade, app-enabled content clips. Truly. Fucking. Bizarre. Sometimes it's the lack of the Frankenstein quality that's what's freaky. Sometimes it's the disconcerting placement of an ill-placed face not seamless situated across another's body. As my novel wonders, speculatively: What does this mish-mash do to the entities from which they were taken? When your expression, your limbs, your breath is combined with another's, will it change you?
I thought Christopher Trout did such a nice job with this video in which he encounters an animated RealDoll. Usually, stories of this sort, especially when told by men, are very wink-wink, nudge-nudge, ham-ham. But this is serious, smart, and insightful. Great stuff. Hope to see more explorations of how science and technology are changing mating, dating, and relating like this.
The other book that I got at the bookstore in the art deco theater is The Soul of an Octopus. I bought it because I'd read author Sy Montgomery's "Deep Intellect" at some point. It's truly a phenomenal piece. It contains sentences like "Athena [an octopus] rises up from her lair like steam from a pot." There's a really lovely scene in which Montgomery feeds an octopus -- rich with details and what could only be described as sensuality. The tale has a surprising ending, but the question it spawns -- in this case: "What is it like to be an octopus?" -- is what launches the rest of the book. This is what's known as the inciting incident. The story is the answer.
0 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "What I'm reading 📖 #whatimreading"
I don't care much for most science writing. I can be stiff, unwieldy, heavy, dead. Oftentimes, it looks more backwards than forwards, or it looks so far forwards so as to leave the reader unmoored, or it's so preoccupied with some micro-entity that the bigger picture is lost. But when you find yourself in a bookstore -- a Barnes & Noble, no less -- that's housed in a 1930s Art Deco theater in the San Fernando Valley, what are you going to do ... not buy something? I bought a copy of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 and a copy of Sy Montgomery's The Soul of An Octopus. I didn't have high hopes; the anthology was edited by Hope Jahren, whose science memoir Lab Girl I deeply disliked. Jahren exhibits the problem most scientists-as-writers have; they can analyze, but they cannot express. I figured if I liked one piece in the collection, that would suffice. As it turned out, I liked two: one that I'd read previously and one that I hadn't. If you haven't read Elizabeth Kolbert's "Greenland Is Melting," do. (In the anthology, it's entitled "A Song of Ice.") It's the kind of science writing I like: person goes off on adventure to discover something astonishing, told in a somewhat outsider way, with a bit of head shaking disconcert at the great unknowability of the world. The one I hadn't read previously that I liked was David Epstein's "The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene." Everything in the story is as it shouldn't be: the scientist isn't a scientist, the story itself arises from happenstance, and the scientific advance far out sprints its convoluted, humble start. So much science writing seems like snobbery, like an exercise in exclusion, like an homage to the superiority of the author. But the good ones, it seems to me, are probably what people tell you science writing shouldn't be: subjective, inexplicable, magical. They make it less esoteric, more human.
I'm reading one of my short stories this evening at Vermin on the Mount in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Come see me and others tonight!
Image via Thrillist
On my Forbes blog, I did a fun roundup of the year in vice. For some reason, Memphis was a standout for me. Was it the fried chicken, the strip club money wars, the faded grandeur of Graceland? Looking back, it's hard to say, but sometimes you find joy in unlikely places, and in this case that was Bluff City.
