Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

There was a time when all I wanted to do was write for television. Not local access television (I checked that off the list long ago, and wrote a four part series of articles on this very blog about it), but actual commercial television. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember-I have crudely illustrated stories about Godzilla from when I was eight years old to prove it-and being able to create something that would air nationwide, and having a budget with which to produce this, was an extremely tantalizing prospect. I even went so far as to write an official “Steel & Marsilio” pilot in case I managed to make some inroads with Comedy Central or some such thing. In order to progress with this goal, I moved to Los Angeles, one of the great epicenters of television production. This move was ill-fated from the beginning. I had been unemployed for a few months before I moved, and assumed I would be able to find a job in L.A. before my money ran out. Not a television jo

I wrote this many years ago for my Myspace blog. I am reprinting it here since it is not particularly easy to access Myspace blogs these days, and my Scary Stories Power Rankings post has gotten me so much traffic that I feel this is something people may be interested in.    Today I am going to voice a complaint I have held within for several years. That's not entirely true; I have complained about it to others, but it is an obscure and perhaps inconsequential complaint that I doubt anyone remembers. Specifically, I would like to complain about the drop in quality between the audio book version of the first volume of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , and the latter two volumes, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . Yep, when I said “specifically,” I meant it. It doesn't get any more specific than this, folks. The quality of the books themselves is outstanding; I dare say I wouldn't be the person I am