tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071089113865297072024-03-13T21:54:58.036-07:00Invisible PonyLinks to A.C. Koch's writing and photographyA.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-73452071553353097272020-10-09T13:48:00.004-07:002020-10-09T13:48:54.390-07:00Fiction Award!<p> Some personal news: a short story of mine about a father-daughter road trip, YOUNG AMERICANS, was just chosen by author and contest judge Karen Dionne to win first place in the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction at Philadelphia Stories! I'm astounded at this news, and honored to have my work included in the <a href="https://philadelphiastories.org/article/young-americans-first-place-winner-of-the-marguerite-mcglinn-prize-for-fiction/">latest issue of Philadelphia Stories</a>. I'm also excited to be invited to give a public reading of my work at the Push to Publish conference taking place (virtually) on October 10, 2020. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAu7SLu9g9GOrNEAJBv_kuSwacEUFMHCEhMoqCGrPtRJd2z8PUkPhmLwvmmahTQn6sErDJGEjb5USO_G7uN0EYGSMsibLW7lN5r8urKDkdztN8a0Ukgn0EdQQFOzJw1RLMXcAhS2gXH8/s843/Philadelphia+Stories+cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="651" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAu7SLu9g9GOrNEAJBv_kuSwacEUFMHCEhMoqCGrPtRJd2z8PUkPhmLwvmmahTQn6sErDJGEjb5USO_G7uN0EYGSMsibLW7lN5r8urKDkdztN8a0Ukgn0EdQQFOzJw1RLMXcAhS2gXH8/s320/Philadelphia+Stories+cover.JPG" /></a></div><br /><p>While I've made a living as a lecturer and public speaker for decades, it will be the first time I have the honor of reading my own fiction to a real audience. Nerves! Many thanks to Karen Dionne (whose novel THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER is a masterpiece of tension and finely-spun detail) and to the many good people at Philadelphia Stories for their faith in my work. Onward!</p>A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-40864916603601341242020-07-23T13:17:00.002-07:002020-07-23T13:21:07.426-07:00Movie Review - The Sunlit NightThe opening shot of <i>The Sunlit Night</i> confronts the viewer with the direct gaze of three unimpressed critics. They hum and cluck and shake their heads, and end up saying unkind things about a splashy abstract painting. The artist, Frances (Jenny Slate), absorbs their derision with stoicism. The painting, shown straight-on in all its vibrant color and depth and gesture, looks beautiful and evocative, which ends up providing an apt metaphor for the film itself: gently quirky and hinting at great depths.<br />
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Directed by David Wnendt from a screenplay by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight (based on her own novel), <i>The Sunlit Night</i> skips through the set-up with charming economy. One moment Frances is cavorting with a hunk in a sun-drenched pool and the next moment she's trudging onto a commuter bus, still dripping in her swimsuit with tears on her cheeks. Her boyfriend dumped her, her younger sister's getting married and her parents are getting separated. Lying awake in the bunkbeds they're both too old for, the sister asks a question that will shadow Frances for the rest of the story: "Do you think that love can last?"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XCjcQk8CRMCIFFisUGkDWtxab7o38-X2rptSvui2QsWT3c92GAZm1TQkABXpVS-hPByZgtZkvjN_phXwhZtJCDzBPU3TbNHnBsLIRZ7ZOsELxnAmJde2udNeTyaHa_SCUGWXMIp-BtY/s1600/Sunlit+Night.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XCjcQk8CRMCIFFisUGkDWtxab7o38-X2rptSvui2QsWT3c92GAZm1TQkABXpVS-hPByZgtZkvjN_phXwhZtJCDzBPU3TbNHnBsLIRZ7ZOsELxnAmJde2udNeTyaHa_SCUGWXMIp-BtY/s320/Sunlit+Night.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The beginning of the answer takes Frances to Norway, where she lands a gig working as an assistant for a reclusive artist. His project: paint an entire barn yellow, every inch of it. Frances doesn't bat an eye. She's chatty and nervous and eager to please, and he's moody and not at all interested in making her feel welcome. The rom-com alerts begin to sound, but this isn't that kind of story. There's no budding romance with the rugged Scandinavian genius, but there is a gradual arc toward camaraderie and mutual respect, with is Frances' first clue about the answer to her sister's question.</div>
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Yasha (Alex Sharp), a young man she glimpses trudging along the side of the road in a black suit, offers another kind of answer. He turns out to be a fellow refugee from New York City, in Norway to give his dead father a Viking funeral. (Zach Galifianakis plays a small role as a Viking impersonator from Cincinnati, and Gillian Anderson appears as Yasha's icy mother.) Cross-cutting scenes develop the budding friendship between Frances and Yasha, but he's too steeped in grief to be available for romance. He tells her how he worked his whole life as a baker's apprentice to his father, and Frances absorbs that idea. After all, she's been painting someone else's barn yellow for twelve hours a day, and neglecting her own work. Once she spots a woman at the grocery store who reminds her of a Renaissance portrait, Frances is inspired to paint again.<br />
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Here's where the lasting love is. Frances might never find the right romantic partner, but she has everything she needs to be the artist she is. The scenes of Frances in the act of painting exude a sense of focus and power. Her style, like the film itself, has a soft and intimate vibe, attuned to details and textures with buttery light and velvety shadows. The yellow barn turns out to be something much more interesting than what it sounded like initially, and the same can be said for her Norwegian sojourn. Her new paintings are naked and bold, and she stands before her critics with a new confidence. She's already found her lasting love.<br />
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A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-50826391155817702722020-05-14T07:54:00.003-07:002020-05-14T07:59:48.205-07:00In Praise of Yacht RockAs a child of late-'70s/early-'80s radio saturation, my love of Yacht Rock is deep and true. In fact, that genre label didn't exist at the time, as far as I knew. What I remember is dialing the hi-fi tuner on a lazy summer evening and stumbling across a cascade of celestial light in the form of the sax riff in "Baker Street." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Why were people going on about Mozart and Beethoven when this brilliance was happening in popular music? A lot of my favorites from those years--Steely Dan, Bertie Higgins, Michael MacDonald, Toto--would later get bunched together and labeled Yacht Rock, but to me they were just gorgeous melodies which shimmered.<br />
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Listening back on the music now, that quality still stands out, along with unmistakably brilliant musicianship. And sure, today you might be likely to hear one of those numbers when you're staring at the ceiling in the dentist's office, but that should make the experience better, not worse. The New Wave music that followed Yacht Rock seemed to share a lot of that smooth DNA, so artists like Sade and Spandau Ballet and even The Smiths sounded like close relatives even if the mood and messages had changed with the times. I almost want to say that no genre of music deserves derision, since genre itself is a false construct. True, some stuff is truly repugnant--looking at you, Country Rap and Hick Hop--but Yacht Rock will always sound like a magical summer evening to me.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-4410639729341374962020-05-06T15:47:00.001-07:002020-05-06T15:48:27.085-07:00Movie Review: The Science of Sleep<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7Q0N26o2MUktebiKSsNxJb_jkBN2YeGNlm9PxEWFcZwi0AkFcnbUB58cf4vzvFjblCv2zLntWvZ8-tExhaO_Jcmwj3KDYtvdoDZY7fkWxMSAzUwGbqp7HKq0zEYLXYFtYhqcfwfvb-k/s1600/Science+of+Sleep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="351" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7Q0N26o2MUktebiKSsNxJb_jkBN2YeGNlm9PxEWFcZwi0AkFcnbUB58cf4vzvFjblCv2zLntWvZ8-tExhaO_Jcmwj3KDYtvdoDZY7fkWxMSAzUwGbqp7HKq0zEYLXYFtYhqcfwfvb-k/s320/Science+of+Sleep.jpg" width="224" /></a>Don't bother wearing socks when you watch <i>The Science of Sleep</i>, because this movie will charm them right off. The story careens between dreams and reality with head-spinning gusto. One moment, Gael Garcia Bernal is talking to the camera in a television studio made entirely from cardboard (even the cameras), and the next moment he's stumbling down a Parisian sidewalk in a half-awake daze. Reality is no less strange than the dreamworld, and there might be a deeper meaning a-brew there, but the movie doesn't put any pressure on itself to actually, you know, make sense. It's like <i>Inception</i> as a sweet-natured but prickly romantic comedy, populated not by shadowy corporate dream-pirates but by awkward young lovers who can't figure out if their connection is real or imaginary. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the perfect foil for Garcia Bernal, with her standoffishness and vulnerability bristling against his naivety and obnoxiousness. They seem at once perfect for one another and bound for disaster as they circle around flirtations and arguments--all of it feeding back and distorting in ultra-vivid, cardboard-and-green-screen dreams. Written and directed by Michel Gondry, <i>The Science of Sleep</i> is itself a dream you don't want to wake up from, and when you do, you have no chance of explaining it to anyone in a way that will make sense.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-78984861500675049862020-03-06T13:56:00.001-08:002020-03-06T13:56:16.746-08:00Movie Review - Guns AkimboHere's my review on <a href="https://spectrumculture.com/" target="_blank">Spectrum Culture</a> for <a href="https://spectrumculture.com/2020/03/01/guns-akimbo-review/" target="_blank">Guns Akimbo</a>, an ultra-violent video game fantasia starring Daniel Radcliffe.<br />
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Daniel Radcliffe has made some interesting choices for roles post-Harry Potter. His performance as a magical corpse in {Swiss Army Man} made that one of the strangest and most enjoyable movies of 2016, and he established his horror chops in {The Woman in Black}(2012). In {Guns Akimbo}, Radcliffe draws on all the charm, physicality, and intensity that served him well in those earlier roles, but the story isn't smart enough to give him much to do with an underwritten character.<br />
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Miles (Radcliffe) is a sad-eyed schlub with an unrewarding tech job and an ex-girlfriend (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) who won't text him back. He spends his downtime getting drunk, playing video games, and rage-posting online. When he insults the wrong dude, he draws the attention of a sinister band of real-world psychos, known as Skizm, who livestream shoot-outs between modern-day gladiators on the streets of an unnamed city. They abduct Miles and knock him out, and when he wakes up he's got two semi-automatic pistols with extended magazines bolted to his hands. Not even the Swiss Army Man included the live ammo feature.<br />
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Exploring the aftermath of this absurd set-up is where Radcliffe shines. With his hair-triggered handguns, his attempts to check his phone or pull up his pants become hair-raising moments. These scenes inspire genuine laughs, as when he prevails upon a homeless person to help him eat a soggy hot dog he finds in the gutter. ("You don't have a vegetarian option, do you?") In a bathrobe and boxers, with fuzzy bear claw slippers, Miles flees through the streets as his gladiatorial opponent, Nix (Samara Weaving), pursues him beneath the constant eye of Skizm's live-streaming drones.<br />
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Written and directed by Jason Lei Howden, the movie's irony rests on the premise of video game violence extending into real life. A recurring montage of rapt viewers seeks to drive home the point that we're all desensitized witnesses to violence in any form. Yet the movie undermines that irony by slaughtering characters in a dizzying blur of head-shots and viscera, just like any first-person shooter game. On-screen graphics add to the sense of cartoony dislocation. At times it feels like John Wick stumbled into {Scott Pilgrim vs. the World}(2010) and started slaughtering everyone. If real-world violence is as swift and cinematic as video game gore, what difference does it make that it's supposedly happening to real people?<br />
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As extreme as the circumstances are, the stakes seem low for Miles. The bad guys kidnap his ex-girlfriend to motivate him to play their game, but his own survival feels less urgent. Even if he wins this hellish contest, it won't seem like much of a victory to go back to his old life. So why should we care about Miles? The answer is--because he's Daniel Radcliffe. His shambly charm goes a long way towards making Miles likable, and gives you a reason to keep watching when all your instincts might be telling you to turn off your screen and go back to the real world.<br />
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Note: After writing this review, it came out that the director was some kind of hysterical troll who got his Twitter account suspended for cyber-bullying reviewers and POC who criticized his movies. The episode underscores my reaction to the film. To put a finer point on my review: the movie, like the director, is garbage, and not even Harry Potter can save it.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-40413667228515832602020-03-06T13:41:00.001-08:002020-03-06T13:46:56.557-08:00Movie Review - Corpus ChristiI started a side hustle as a film critic for <a href="https://spectrumculture.com/" target="_blank">Spectrum Culture</a>. Yay popcorn! Here's my first published review, for Poland's Academy Award nominated feature, <a href="https://spectrumculture.com/2020/02/18/corpus-christi-review/" target="_blank">CORPUS CHRISTI</a>. It's a tense and lovely thriller...<br />
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Who among us hasn't, at one time, felt like an imposter, about to be busted for occupying a role we shouldn't be in? The power of the enchanting Polish film {Corpus Christi} lies in the tension between past mistakes and present circumstances as a young man tries to leave behind a criminal history for a spiritual life. The better he plays the role of a gifted priest, the more he arouses suspicions that he doesn't really belong where he is.<br />
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Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) is a young man in a juvenile detention facility who is drawn to the priesthood. We see him participating in gang violence along with fellow convicts, but he also serves as a wide-eyed and sweet-voiced acolyte to the facility's priest (Lukasz Simlat), who seems to see potential for Daniel's redemption. Alas, Daniel’s violent past will prevent him from ever being ordained himself, but the priest assures him that there are many other ways to live a good life.<br />
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Daniel, however, seems to feel a calling. Upon his release, he reports to a work assignment at a saw mill, only to be drawn to the sight of a church spire in a town across the valley. With a priest's tunic and collar as a disguise, he manages to ingratiate himself with the ailing parish priest (Zdzislaw Wardejn). Daniel's deception initially involves only lies of omission, until the moment when the priest asks which seminary Daniel attended in Warsaw. His lie in response seems to register in the priest's eyes, but Daniel's earnestness convinces him to give the young man a chance.<br />
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Bielenia's nuanced performance captures Daniel's yearning for acceptance as well as his unease that the deception can't go on forever. He's a man caught between two worlds which both feel like home to him. In the church, he's soft-spoken and dignified in his layered vestments, improvising simple and poetic homilies that make the parishioners' eyes shine with admiration. In his downtime, he cranks electronic music on his smartphone while smoking cigarettes and busting dance moves in his tracksuit like any bro at the club. His youthful and down-to-earth persona enchants some of the townspeople, while others are wary of his subversion of tradition and decorum.<br />
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Other fish-out-of-water stories tend to verge into the comical, from Billy Wilder’s classic screwball comedy {Some Like It Hot} (1959) to Woody Allen’s sci-fi satire {Sleeper} (1973), both of which play their protagonist’s dislocation for laughs and zany misunderstandings. The mood in {Corpus Christi} however, sticks to the somber end of the spectrum, heightened by long, contemplative shots of quiet village streets and dim rooms adorned only with crucifixes. Scenes unfold at a languid pace that reflects the setting and intensifies the suspense—you know that a breaking point is coming, but you don’t know how or when. Daniel, always watchful with a frosty blue stare, seems to know that he’s going to get caught, but in the meantime he plays his role with an earnestness and inspiration that seems to elude other priests.<br />
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Directed by Jan Komasa from a script by Mateusz Pacewicz, {Corpus Christi} (nominated for an Academy Award this year for International Feature) presents an image of a priest as an inspired and charismatic figure, childlike, who helps his flock find grace through acts of forgiveness and redemption. His example helps the townspeople deal with a local tragedy by repairing fractured relationships. This approach draws the ire of entrenched institutions who are suspicious of his motives, and of his past. "You might have power," Daniel tells the mayor, "but I'm the one who's right." The mayor, an imposing businessman who's onto Daniel's deception, twists that notion on its head: "You might be right," he says with the flick of a cigarette, "but I'm the one who has power."<br />
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It's a clever bit of dialogue, and it sums up Daniel's situation, torn between the worldly and the spiritual. As elements from his past begin to catch up with him, he knows his time is short. His climactic homily to his flock eloquently captures the spirit of the film's title without uttering a word. The story's coda suggests that Daniel might be living in a closed loop that he will never be able to break out of. If you impersonate a Christ-like figure, the film suggests, you might end up as bloodied as the man on the crucifix.<br />
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A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-20065671051917301282020-03-06T09:30:00.002-08:002020-03-06T09:38:23.610-08:00Love and Death Under the Rain<br />
Years ago, I intended to write a novel about the unraveling of a relationship between two freakishly talented artists who can't help loving each other's minds even as their hearts pull away, but I lacked the stamina to take on such an ambitious project. I turned it into a short story instead, with snapshot scenes to capture the feeling of different chapters. <a href="https://www.csn.edu/sites/default/files/documents/sample_loveanddeath_0.pdf" target="_blank">Love and Death Under the Rain</a> is the result. Originally written around 2003, I condensed the story in revision to focus more on the female protagonist's experience. Harriet Silka channels her anger and sadness into her art, with strange and unexpected results.<br />
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A revised version of this story was published in <a href="https://www.csn.edu/redrockreview" target="_blank">Red Rock Review</a> in Fall, 2019.<br />
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<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-52502102669329147352020-02-09T15:09:00.001-08:002020-02-09T15:18:35.715-08:00Pain and Glory: movie review<h2>
<b>Almodóvar's Still Got the Mojo</b></h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggqVlpeTQBokIzDH0HSQcQtkKGgZ-l1rSV7U3hQlouhvQXAfuA-jyYUQQqxeouhmKEFJNSiXdST1gHuYIt3sTfVC3YRS7-Bmqo-vabi53c7dIokEygM57kDfGrlcKLBXj97U3gPa9uoPU/s1600/Pain+and+Glory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="650" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggqVlpeTQBokIzDH0HSQcQtkKGgZ-l1rSV7U3hQlouhvQXAfuA-jyYUQQqxeouhmKEFJNSiXdST1gHuYIt3sTfVC3YRS7-Bmqo-vabi53c7dIokEygM57kDfGrlcKLBXj97U3gPa9uoPU/s400/Pain+and+Glory.jpg" width="400" /></a><b></b></div>
No one puts exuberance on the screen quite like Pedro Almodóvar. Since his earliest studio films in the 1980s, his signature style has involved saturated color, elaborate compositions, and vivacious performances. In his latest film, Pain and Glory, the Spanish director brings his familiar panache to a contemplative and melancholy story that feels like a very personal account of the terrors of getting older. Can we still be the innocent souls we once were?<br />
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Centered on a celebrated but aging director of candy-colored art films, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) could be a dopplegänger of Almodóvar himself with his burst of grey hair and colorful clothes. Salvador is sad-eyed and whispery even in the midst of his artful surroundings and gorgeous leather coats, and he quickly makes clear why: his physical ailments are so overpowering that he's lost the connection to his creativity. His back aches, he can't sleep, and his throat is so constricted that taking a sip of water is enough to set off a coughing jag that will halt all conversation. With so much pain in his body, there seems to be no room for expression in his soul.<br />
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And yet, we know that soul must still brim with it. An early scene shows an idyllic glimpse of his childhood as he hung on his mother's back when she washed clothes by the river while singing flamenco melodies with the other village women. Scenes from Salvador's childhood give us glimpses of the days when he lived in a village of whitewashed caves with his mostly absent father and his doting but domineering mother (Penelope Cruz). These scenes feel like crystallized memories, centering on moments of insight, desire, and refuge for the bookish boy. Crosscut with the present-day Salvador, the childhood memories emphasize the gulf between the inspiration that once moved him and the emptiness of his current world.<br />
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Of course, we want Salvador to get his mojo back, but Almodóvar hasn't given us a simple redemption story. Various incidents get Salvador engaging with the world again, from reconnecting with an old actor friend to acquiring an amateur heroin habit that seems to both relieve his pain and provide a connection to evocative childhood memories. An encounter with a long-lost lover proves tender and edifying, but none of it seems to be a magic key to chasing away his funk. There's no secret door out of depression, the film seems to say, other than just getting through each day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hKn3_3v318QrsBjoR3R-Gr6gKOOKMULXfwPzbeCJ3lbgxuNXycSBSgqWeCPEFiRk5m6Ph0CshTgzKrpf3c-46OIfm1pLOXCIDzSqLAgcv2NHEFfVGJBrnt_xwMtJri7s7o8YIpxpOjY/s1600/Pain+and+Glory2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="928" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hKn3_3v318QrsBjoR3R-Gr6gKOOKMULXfwPzbeCJ3lbgxuNXycSBSgqWeCPEFiRk5m6Ph0CshTgzKrpf3c-46OIfm1pLOXCIDzSqLAgcv2NHEFfVGJBrnt_xwMtJri7s7o8YIpxpOjY/s400/Pain+and+Glory2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Asier Etxeandia, Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas</td></tr>
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Antonio Banderas, in some of Almodóvar's earlier films, was a golden Adonis with matinée idol looks and the kind of sex appeal that rocketed him to Hollywood stardom in the '90s. Now in his late fifties, Banderas gives a restrained but focused performance that makes great use of his whisper-purr of a voice and soulful eyes to communicate Salvador's malaise. Despite his slow, stiff-backed walk and coughing spasms, Banderas's vitality suggests that Salvador's main problem may lie less in his body than in his mind. If he can just clear his head enough to fix his attention on the right idea, he might be able to make another film.<br />
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I hope Pedro Almodóvar makes many more films, and that his creative evolution continues to mine his inimitable style for more introspective films like this one. Yet a final, poignant scene offers what could be an apt coda for Almodóvar's entire career, transmuting the colors and emotions of youthful memories into cinema. The pain will always be there, he seems to be saying, but through art we can turn it into something like glory.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-70868224264969099182020-01-17T11:28:00.002-08:002020-01-17T11:30:06.553-08:00Little Paw in Infinite WorldsA stand-alone excerpt from my novel-in-progress was just published in <a href="https://www.infiniteworldsmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Infinite Worlds Magazine</a>, and I couldn't be happier with how great this publication looks. The issue is gorgeous, with slick, full-color, full-page bleed images of work from contemporary sci-fi and fantasy illustrations by an international roster of artists. I'm honored to have my work included. It's especially amazing to see the image that the artist Johan Aberg came up with to accompany my story. Details elements drawn from the text appear in the image: the raggedy teddy bear floating in space outside the porthole; the dying woman huffing oxygen through a tube; the interior of the greenhouse module with its instrument panel. It's a rush to see my work on the page, illustrated so beautifully. It's not available online so order a copy of this outstanding literary and art journal from the <a href="https://www.infiniteworldsmagazine.com/store/infinite-worlds-2" target="_blank">website's store</a> today!<br />
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<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-29672687623586817292019-12-19T09:41:00.002-08:002019-12-19T09:41:12.004-08:00Book Review: November Road, by Lou Berney<span id="docs-internal-guid-7becaa7f-7fff-5d3f-5d2f-c78f94e14553"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While watching Martin Scorcese’s 15-hour epic The Irishman, I kept wishing that I was watching the (as-yet-unmade) film of Lou Berney’s <a href="https://www.tatteredcover.com/book/9780062663856" target="_blank">November Road</a>. The two stories share the setting and macho posturing of 1960s-era mafiosos, but Berney’s story is far more personal and engaging. The story unwinds in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, 1963. We come to understand that our protagonist was a small cog in the wheels of the mafia machine that killed the president, and he himself is only beginning to understand what he has been a part of. When he realizes that everyone involved is getting whacked, he has to get out of town fast. With a killer on his tail, he stumbles upon a young divorcée and her two little girls. First he ingratiates himself, then he starts falling in love. The little family is a perfect cover for him--but he’s putting everyone at risk just by sticking around. If they can get to JFK, they can certainly get to him. </span></span><br />
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An old friend, Dave Medicus, puts out a fantastic podcast about books, The Inside Flap. Here's the episode where he <a href="https://theinsideflap.com/2019/11/03/ep-48-author-lou-berney-and-more/?fbclid=IwAR2MdzGX-2ok40bIHljfADPT6g7PidwVXhULC4rOrpbD6aIc2FZt2m6Qzy4" target="_blank">interviews Lou Berney</a> and finds out what the biggest rush of the author's life has been. (It has something to do with Stephen King.)</div>
A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-28016891408650017312019-12-14T19:22:00.001-08:002019-12-14T19:37:22.372-08:002019 Publications Round-upIn 2019, I received 96 rejections from literary magazines. These eight stories were accepted:<br />
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<li><i>Always Running</i> (<a href="https://www.staindmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Stain'd</a>)</li>
<li><i><a href="https://www.suspectpress.com/2019/04/22/cities-of-the-future/" target="_blank">Cities of the Future</a></i> (Suspect Press)</li>
<li><i>Satellite Presence</i> (<a href="https://www.retreatwest.co.uk/" target="_blank">Retreat West</a>)</li>
<li><i><a href="https://frictionlit.org/running-bear/" target="_blank">Running Bear</a></i> (F(r)iction)</li>
<li><i>Circle of Blazers</i> (<a href="https://chaleurmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Chaleur</a>)</li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.theghoststory.com/cloudscape" target="_blank">Cloudscape</a></i> (The Ghost Story)</li>
<li><i>Love and Death Under the Rain</i> (<a href="https://www.csn.edu/redrockreview" target="_blank">Red Rock Review</a>)</li>
<li><i>Little Paw</i> (<a href="https://www.infiniteworldsmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Infinite Worlds</a>)</li>
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While I'm proud of all these publications, I'm not really sure what the point is in continually polishing my work and sending it out into the world. Despite eight successes, I'm still wearing the same shirts and driving the same car and going to bed at the same time every night. Rejection hasn't wrecked me, but acceptance hasn't affected me much, either. Some of the above publications are beautiful to hold in my hands--<a href="https://frictionlit.org/" target="_blank">F(r)iction</a> in particular is a gorgeous magazine--and I'm honored to have my work find a place in all their pages. And yet--so what? A few people, here and there, have presumably read my stories, but their reactions are unknown to me beyond a few thumbs-up on social media. Do they make it through to the last line? Do their eyes go still as they make some inner connection? Or do they skim a few paragraphs and move on? </div>
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But it's worth remembering that I'm not really writing for that unknowable audience. I'm writing for a few close friends, and for myself, and I'd keep doing it even if I never get another acceptance. Although it would be nice to be able to splurge on some new shirts at some point. Bring it on, 2020. </div>
<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-91256331614545368692019-11-23T09:22:00.002-08:002019-11-24T13:48:22.765-08:00Notes on Social Media Cleanse<div style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I did a Facebook blackout for a week, and ended up completely forgetting about the place—it was wonderful!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">As a writer/musician, it’s not realistic for me to delete my account and walk away permanently—90% of the Indiegogo fundraising we did for our Firstimers debut album came from our heroic FB contacts. In the future, I hope to be able to entice some my social media friends into reading my novel, if it ever gets published. I know some brilliant people on FB, whose opinions I value, and <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">I don’t want to lose those connections.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">But walking away for a week felt great. The first hour was the hardest, when my thumb automatically opened the FB app on my phone several times like some kind of Pavlovian ingrained behavior. So I shifted the app onto another screen, buried among unused apps, and immediately forgot about it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">After a few days, I started getting a lot of FB emails: So-and-so posted a picture, somebody else replied to an event, whatever—which tells me that the algorithm noticed that I was inactive and wanted to pull me back in. That felt like a tiny victory. The best part is, when the week was finally over, I forgot to log back in. The app was no longer in its usual place, and my thumb had broken the habit of tapping it. I’m a few days late with this summary because of that. For those of you struggling with (a) the addictive nature of Facebook, and/or (b) the collusion of Facebook with white supremacy, right wing politics, and conspiracy-mongering, I highly recommend a week-long cleanse. You can come back, we’ll still be there. Where else can we go?</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/andrew.koch.142" target="_blank">A.C. Koch on Facebook</a></div>
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A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-6070551560394745422019-11-10T15:37:00.000-08:002019-11-11T12:07:19.422-08:00RUNNING BEARWhat is the future of humanity? Can we survive our current dangerous flirtations with climate change and nuclear war? Do we even deserve to?<br />
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<a href="https://frictionlit.org/running-bear/" target="_blank">RUNNING BEAR</a> tells the story of an ambitious project to design a mission capable of transporting a thousand highly-skilled humans to colonize another solar system, carrying along an Archive of everything that makes humanity worth saving--art, literature, cinema, poetry, and of course, science.<br />
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The story takes place over three interwoven time frames: Oscar Running Bear and his team of astronauts and scientists as they make their final preparations in the BioDome in the Nevada desert before ascending into orbit; Oscar's first conversations with the eccentric billionaire who's bankrolling the mission; and Oscar's troubled childhood on the Navajo reservation where he grew up. These three timelines collide in a bleak ending that seems to snuff out all hope for the mission and for humanity--and yet a few threads of hope remain.<br />
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<a href="https://frictionlit.org/running-bear/" target="_blank">RUNNING BEAR</a> was awarded F(r)iction Magazine's Short Story Award in the spring of 2019, and has just been published online in issue #14--the Survival Issue. If you like what you read, rejoice: the story doesn't end here. In fact, this is just the opening chapter in a longer and more involved story, also titled RUNNING BEAR, which carries the story of the mission (and some of the same characters) much farther into the universe.<br />
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Art by Enrica Angiolni</div>
A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-17014584856982663702019-11-02T16:49:00.001-07:002019-11-02T16:49:55.489-07:00Le Singe<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/imo22mh33Ec" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />
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Le Singe (2012)<br /><br />
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Il ne faut jamais voir le singe dans les yeux--jamais!<br /><br />
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Filmed with Gavin Dunnet's spooky-ass postcard. Seriously--don't look at it.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-86215796081360996802019-11-02T16:46:00.001-07:002019-11-02T16:46:28.454-07:00Night Shift<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0iuWA4vNVT8" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />
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Night Shift (2010)<br /><br />
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'Twas a spooky night, and 'tdidn't end well.<br /><br />
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Filmed with NickA.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-83327739874995530462019-11-02T16:40:00.001-07:002019-11-02T17:12:13.732-07:00Ezmoot's Wild Kingdom<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wIlW-BwsIiY" width="480"></iframe><br />
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Ezmoöt's Wild Kingdom (1999)<br />
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Sometimes the only thing keeping you sane is your non-stop monologue about the majestic dances of the moths in your window.<br />
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Filmed on location in Zacatecas, Mexico with Laura Grey in the spring of 1998. Not that many moths were harmed in the making of this motion picture.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-62608725978117243452019-11-02T16:33:00.001-07:002019-11-02T16:33:09.074-07:00ZYPREXIA!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CzWSpb1T2oU" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />
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Zyprexia! (2015)<br /><br />
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When talking to yourself, it's important to remember which one of you is imaginary.A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-55895330054932654192019-11-02T16:29:00.001-07:002019-11-02T16:29:07.169-07:00How to Drink Whiskey<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9PadnUBBDZA" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />
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How to Drink Whiskey (2014)<br /><br />
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It's pretty simple, really.<br /><br />
But you're going to need both eyeglasses *and* sunglasses. This is non-negotiable.<br /><br />
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<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-25704141966563513042019-11-02T16:22:00.001-07:002019-11-02T16:22:46.944-07:00The Kessel Run<br /><br />
Pata and I made this video with a fully functional Millennium Falcon in Zacatecas around 2005.<br /><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fmE08S3u-DA" width="459"></iframe>A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-56640897674463600282019-10-24T22:43:00.001-07:002019-10-24T22:43:33.588-07:00Yasuko Across Time and SpacePerpignan is an ancient city in the south of France. I lived there for a few months in the late summer/early fall of 1993, when my friend Layla Martinez du Chabot lent me her apartment at 4 Rue A. Simon in the center of the city while she traveled in Spain with her boyfriend and her dog. I spent my time there on a recurring circuit every day: morning espresso at the Cafe du Centre-ville, then a walk through the old quarter's medieval streets, then an afternoon and evening in the apartment playing songs and writing stories. Every single day, without fail.<br />
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One of those walks through the old quarter took me by the ancient palace of the Majorcan kings. A rough-voiced guitar player busking in the entrance made an impression on me. This story imagines the rest of that story.<br />
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YASUKO ACROSS TIME AND SPACE appeared in <a href="https://andromedaspaceways.com/product/asm-71/" target="_blank">Andromeda Spaceways</a> #71 in 2018. It's behind a paywall, but like all walls, it isn't very hard to get over.<br />
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<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-61207947636285905182019-10-24T22:28:00.001-07:002019-10-24T22:28:28.538-07:00Satellite Presence<br />
Many years ago, I rode the Boulder-to-Denver bus, and happened to run into an old acquaintance. Rich Meyers had been the lead singer of Boulder's most accursed punk-rock band, Bunny Genghis. This night, he had an RTD balloon tied around his wrist, and he sent it bobbing behind the heads of random commuters in the seats in front of us. Their hair stood on end to meet the static attraction of the balloon, but they remained unaware of the power that was being wielded just behind them. "My satellite presence," Rich said in his tobacco'd growl.<br />
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Many years later, this story came out of that. Satellite Presence was awarded third place in <a href="https://www.retreatwest.co.uk/2018-prize-winners/" target="_blank">Retreat West's 2018 fiction prize</a> by judge Paul McVeigh, who called it, "Quirky and funny. I especially enjoyed the sci-fi-fantasy mystery of it which reminded me of The Twilight Zone shows I loved and learned so much from."<br />
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<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-19171811723968957272019-10-24T21:27:00.001-07:002019-10-24T21:39:49.688-07:00AgashiI lived in Pusan, South Korea, in 1995-1996, teaching English as a foreign language at a franchise language institute called David English House. Near the end of that year I spent about a week in Hong Kong and Macau. Years later, I wrote this story as a way to explore and recapture some of the sensory richness of those experiences. I think all the Hong Kong cinema I'd soaked up in the meantime bled into the story as well: intrigue, double-crosses, secret villains and unexpected heroes.<br />
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Early drafts of this story didn't work, because I kept trying to engineer an ending that satisfied the protagonist. A critique by <a href="http://ianchristopherhooper.com/index.html" target="_blank">Ian Hooper</a> got me thinking about it in a new way: "What if <i>Krasner</i> is the real hero, and the protagonist is just a craven side-kick who gets shot at the end of the first act?" That struck me as a brilliant way to re-cast the roles. Not long after that, the first draft of the story got an honorable mention in Night Train's fiction contest, and the contest judge <a href="https://stevealmondjoy.org/" target="_blank">Steve Almond</a> sent me an email with a very kind and valuable critique. He also noted a weakness in the ending, and suggested some ways to let the protagonist's faults catch up with him. Armed with these suggestions, I recast the ending to pull the rug out from under the protagonist's feet, and I think the result is a more satisfying and surprising story. If a chapter two existed, I don't think the protagonist would survive it--but Krasner surely would, and so would the agashi.<br />
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<a href="https://www.carvezine.com/story/2007-winter-koch" target="_blank">Agashi</a> won first place in the Raymond Carver Short Story Award in 2007, and was published in <a href="https://www.carvezine.com/home" target="_blank">Carve Magazine</a>, as well as in their year-end anthology.<br />
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Here's a song I wrote later, circling around the same theme: <a href="https://chefandre.bandcamp.com/track/sad-agashi-song" target="_blank">Sad Agashi Song</a>A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-65372790373828734392019-10-24T18:20:00.003-07:002019-10-24T20:59:14.117-07:00Dark as a Dungeon in the HeartThe night of 9/11, I couldn't sleep. There was a metal plate on the street a couple of blocks over, and every time a car clanked over it, my eyes shot open and my heart spiked. There was so much violence and sadness in the world.<br />
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This story started brewing that night. I was trying to boil the earth-spanning horror down to human scale, as a way of dealing with it. I wanted to connect it to music, which was my own refuge at the time, and I'd been listening to a lot of bluegrass thanks to time spent with my dear friend <a href="https://chefandre.bandcamp.com/album/molly-universe-vol-1" target="_blank">Molly</a>--one of the great songwriters of all time. The title of the story, <a href="https://www.thewoventalepress.net/2018/06/23/literary-spotlight-a-c-koch/" target="_blank">Dark as a Dungeon in the Heart</a>, comes from the chorus of a traditional <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FPmSLzsbdM" target="_blank">bluegrass number</a> that Molly played. A song that romanticizes the coal mine: "Where the rain never falls, and the sun never shines / it's as dark as a dungeon in the heart of the mine."<br />
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The character I chose to hang this story on ended up being a musician. Her alcoholism and family dynamics became stand-ins for the helplessness and angst of 9/11. Originally, I planned for the grounding of airliners to be the reason why she had to drive cross country instead of fly, but I eventually decided against pegging the time period. The urge to drive sprang from her character instead, her desire to fix her life before it got out of control.<br />
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Skeptical readers may feel that the story traffics in too much Appalachian cliché, with porch-side hootenannies and grinning hillbillies. But I've spent some time around Molly's hometown in southern Ohio, and I've been to those whiskey-and-banjos hootenannies. It's real, and it's magical.<br />
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<a href="https://www.thewoventalepress.net/" target="_blank">Woven Tale Press</a> published this version of the story in Summer, 2018.<br />
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Photo Credit: Denise An (Instagram @mysterious_substance)<br />
<br />A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-70910743275694069472019-10-18T19:44:00.002-07:002019-10-24T22:46:26.662-07:0013 Questions with A.C. Koch<a href="https://coffinbell.com/" target="_blank">Coffin Bell</a> is a journal of "dark literature." In the spring of 2019, they published my story <a href="https://coffinbell.com/?s=yacht+rock" target="_blank">Yacht Rock</a>, about a guy who realizes that the background muzak is actually foretelling important events in his life. When he learns to read these signals, he transforms from a love-sick loner into an international gigolo/assassin. I guess that qualifies as "dark."<br />
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Anyway, Coffin Bell followed up with a request to do an interview, and sent me 13 questions to ponder. I'd never done something like that before, so it was fun to come up with answers to their strange and unexpected questions. Have a peek here: <a href="https://coffinbell.com/13-questions-with-a-c-koch/" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">13 Questions with A.C. Koch</a><br />
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Photo credit (and reflecto-spectre in the image): Denise AnA.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-607108911386529707.post-30105880624343817212019-10-12T13:47:00.001-07:002019-10-20T16:32:16.703-07:00Running BearRUNNING BEAR is a story about a brave group of scientists and astronauts who are planning the greatest endeavor in human history: an intergenerational starship to colonize another solar system. The only thing that could stop them is World War III--but those clouds on the horizon are starting to look like bad news.<br />
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Here are a few choice lines:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"A half dozen of those points of light were not stars at all. They described high arcs across the sky, tracing parabolas that carried them from the other side of the world to this side, to end it. Their movements were all but invisible against the backdrop of galaxies..."</span><br />
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This story is the opening chapter in the novel project I've been working on since 2014, and it sets out the premise that underpins the whole book. As a stand-alone short story, Running Bear was selected as the first prize winner in F(r)iction's Short Story Contest this year, and published in <a href="https://frictionlit.org/magazine/the-survival-issue/" target="_blank">issue #14</a>. It's a gorgeous magazine, available across North America at <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/" target="_blank">Barnes & Noble</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ICTION-MAGAZINE-SURVIVAL-ISSUE-SUMMER/dp/B07YXC3JX5/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=f%28r%29iction&qid=1570909259&sr=8-5" target="_blank">Amazon</a>, and at the <a href="https://www.tatteredcover.com/" target="_blank">Tattered Cover</a> here in Denver.<br />
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A.C. Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03616358045441116790noreply@blogger.com0