Chuck Palahniuk's Blog

When historians look back on our generation's most prolific writers of fiction, names like Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, and Kurt Vonnegut will be at the top. But another name for that list is our own Chuck Palahniuk. Where I believe Chuck has those other names beat, is in the many different formats of writing he dips his toes into.  Besides novels, Chuck has also dabbled in journalism, tour guides, and short stories. Though where he reigns supreme is in the craft essay. Many years ago, Chuck took over this site and its existing writers workshop with the posting of a new craft essay every month. The essays were designed to teach writers his craft, while also handing out a homework assignment. Writers in our workshop utilized the tools Chuck taught and applied them to their own stories. And after years of this, the best of these stories were honed down to an anthology (Burnt Tongues: Stories, due out this August).

Now, in 2014, Chuck has returned with a new series of craft essays, the first of which is available today. These essays will have no certain timeline or schedule. We don't know for sure when Chuck will submit them, nor how many there will be. We also don't have any current plans to release another anthology here. But here's what we can tell you: the stories will be hosted at our sister-site LitReactor.com. They will be available there initially for Premium Members only. One month later, they will be "unlocked" and made available to all, for free. So if you want them right when they post, simply join LitReactor's prememium membership. This membership not only grants you full access to all 36 of Chuck's previous craft essays, but also allows you to submit your own writing to their ground-breaking writers workshop.

For now,  here's a teaser of Chuck's first new essay "Consider This: Coping." If you want to read the full essay, simply join LitReactor today. If you're already a member there, follow the link at the bottom for the complete essay.

Let’s start with a secret about Suzy Vitello.

In her own mind, she’s really three people.  One person is Suzy who exists in the present moment.  Another is the Suzy who existed three days earlier.  The last person is the Suzy who will exist three days in the future.

In any immediate crisis, she can choose to be either the past or the future Suzy.  Three days earlier, the crisis didn’t exist.  Three days from now, the crisis will be lessened or resolved.  This gives her perspective and prevents her from reacting too brashly in the moment.  Stressful events come and go, but Suzy – she reminds herself – is eternal.  Being three people gives her stability.  Like a three-legged stool.  It’s a wonderful coping strategy.

She explained this concept of herself to me decades ago, in the early 1990’s in Tom Spanbauer’s writing workshop.  There, she also just so happened to be writing a novel about a young woman who was subject to schizophrenic episodes where two seemingly alter egos offered her advice.  Twenty years later, her novel is still forthcoming.

Suzy’s coping strategy has always stayed with me.  At this moment I’m at home, trapped by a snowstorm, miles from anyone.  I have enough wood to heat the house for two more days, and the prediction is for warmer weather by then.  Rather than fret about my solitary confinement – without even a dog – I imagine myself three days in either the past or the future.  Three days ago, I was eating lunch with an editor from Dark Horse Comics.  Three days from now I will be at UPS mailing 50 bloody severed (fake) hands to a bookstore in Seattle.

Suzy has given me something that a good book/story should always give to a reader:  A concept… a strategy… a way to cope.

It’s not difficult to imagine that Suzy’s concept led to me creating the Tyler Durden alter ego in Fight Club.  Beyond fractured personalities, let’s consider two other ways in which characters can react to the unbearable crisis of the moment.

Read the full essay here.

While Chuck's next novel Beautiful You won't be released until October of this year, a couple months earlier another project he's been heavily involved with-- a passion project, if you were-- will become available. Burnt Tongues: Stories is an anthology of transgressive fiction written by... well... you. The fans. Constructed over many years, these stories were a part of Chuck's online writers workshop. While the workshop shut its doors a few years back, for a long time it thrived on this website, with Chuck reading and critiquing the best works each month. He'd then provide craft essays and homework assignments for up and coming writers so that they could be improved. By the end of the entire process, Chuck painstakingly whittled this list of hundreds of submitted stories over the years, down to the 20 best. And those 20 best comprise Burnt Tongues: Stories, an anthology co-edited by Chuck, Richard Thomas, and myself.

You can pre-order this amazing collection right now, if you like.

But if you're looking for a teaser first, the wonderful folks at Medallion Press have decided to let us make Chuck's wonderful introduction to the anthology available online, for free. It might sound hyperbolic to say this, but I count this introduction as one of the finest and most moving things Chuck has ever written. 

Read Chuck Palahniuk's introduction to >Burnt Tongues: Stories.

While Chuck's next novel Beautiful You won't be released until October of this year, a couple months earlier another project he's been heavily involved with-- a passion project, if you were-- will become available. Burnt Tongues: Stories is an anthology of transgressive fiction written by... well... you. The fans. Constructed over many years, these stories were a part of Chuck's online writers workshop. While the workshop shut its doors a few years back, for a long time it thrived on this website, with Chuck reading and critiquing the best works each month. He'd then provide craft essays and homework assignments for up and coming writers so that they could be improved. By the end of the entire process, Chuck painstakingly whittled this list of hundreds of submitted stories over the years, down to the 20 best. And those 20 best comprise Burnt Tongues: Stories, an anthology co-edited by Chuck, Richard Thomas, and myself.

You can pre-order this amazing collection right now, if you like.

But if you're looking for a teaser first, the wonderful folks at Medallion Press have decided to let us make Chuck's wonderful introduction to the anthology available online, for free. It might sound hyperbolic to say this, but I count this introduction as one of the finest and most moving things Chuck has ever written. 

Read Chuck Palahniuk's introduction to Burnt Tongues: Stories.

In his recent interview with VICE Magazine, Chuck talked about where the inspiration for his upcoming novel Beautiful You came from:

When I was little I was asked to get something from my parents closet, a pair of shoes or something. And I came away with these books that were called things like Girl on Girl Ranch Studsand Gestapo Pussy Ranch. They had these lurid covers, these really suggestive titles. I started reading them and they made no sense whatsoever. I couldn't understand anything that was happening in them but that's one of the things that made them so compelling. I finally took them to my mother and said, “What are these books about?” She was furious because apparently they were my fathers. But at the same time she was reading books, harlequin romances, that made no sense either. Their euphemisms were completely alien to me.

I thought, “What if you could write a kind of Marques de Sade pornography, really brutal stuff, but write it in the euphemisms of Barbara Cartland, so that you can depict these fantastically over the top things in soft focus ways.” It makes it really funny. Poorly written erotica is laugh-out-loud funny. That's next years book, Beautiful You. There's always the next thing.

Read more details about Beautiful You here.

In a recent email exchange, Chuck casually dropped me this update about the upcoming Fight Club graphic novel sequel:

The graphic novel "script" for the Fight Club sequel has gone off to the writer Matt Fraction and to an unnamed publisher for review.  Matt writes his own series, called "Sex Criminals" and does very well.  He's been my go-to advisor about format and other considerations of graphic scripts.  I'll be choosing an illustrator based on their response to the script.  The sequel will consist of seven issues, totally more than 210 pages.  Fingers crossed.  - Chuck

Wonder what publisher will get it.  Also, seven issues! Stay tuned for more!

This is one of those things where I wonder why it took someone so long to do it.  And now that I see it, it's pretty awesome.  This video was edited by Richard Trammell who initially posted it on Reddit. Commentors there are now begging Richard to re-edit the entire film like this. There's even been passionate suggestions to start a Kickstarter to fund the effort. Even Gawker got in on the action.

Direct link for the video here. If you dig what you see, give Richard a 'Like.' And if you really want to see a Kickstarter for this, let Richard know!

Big props go to @JodyCollins for being the first to make us aware of this.

Peter Rugh from VICE meets up with Chuck Palahniuk to sit down for a great interview, discussing how the town has changed since the release of Fugitives & Refugees.

Chuck Palahniuk is Keeping Portland Strange

It's been a loooooooong time coming, but today I can happily and proudly announce that Burnt Tongues: Stories is currently available for pre-order. Burnt Tongues is the long-awaited anthology of short stories edited by myself, Richard Thomas, and of course, Chuck Palahniuk. The stories all started on this website's writer's workshop over seven years ago, and from the hard work of dozens and dozens of people, you can now read them all in one beautiful anthology (with cover art by Jay Shaw!).  

Pre-order 'Burnt Tongues' from Amazon.com here!

If you want to support new and upcoming voices in transgressive fiction, this collection is a must-have. Here's the official description our wonderful publishers, Medallion Press, put together:

Transgressive fiction authors write stories some are afraid to tell. Stories with taboo subjects, unique voices, shocking images—nothing safe or dry.

Burnt Tongues is a collection of transgressive stories selected by a rigorous nomination and vetting process and hand-selected by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, as the best of The Cult workshop.

These stories run the gamut from horrific and fantastic to humorous and touching, but each leaves a lasting impression.

Some may say even a scar.

The book has a tentative release date of August 12th, 2014, but you can and should order it today!

Most of these you probably know already, but it's cool to see them all in one place (with animated gifs!)

25 Things You Didn't Know About The Movie "Fight Club":

http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-movie-fight-c

As if he wasn't prolific enough with writing novels, Chuck gave us a slew of new short stories and fiction in 2013. First we had 'Phoenix,' an Amazon Kindle Single which dropped in February.  Then in May, he gave us his modern/female answer to 'Guts' with 'Cannibal,' for Playboy Magazine.  And then, most recently, we got 'Zombie,' also for Playboy Magazine, a story that had grown hipster men sobbing at readings during the Doomed world tour.

Now, just in time for the holidays, we have Chuck's very first Christmas story, written exclusively for BlackBook Magazine.

Read 'How the Jew Saved Christmas' here!

Read it and let us know what you thought in the comments below.