Bradford Tatum's Blog: The Monster's Muse

Soon I will be sponsoring a give way for my new book "Georgie Bumfitt and the Voyage of the Jenny Pen" and I thought I might take the time to say a few words about it. This book is a bit of a departure for me. There are no dead wives imbuing ten year-olds with inspirational absences, no male prostitutes, no sullen dead girls of a manifestly cinematic and Teutonic bent. This book is different because it’s for kids. And the kid-like. In fact I wrote it when my daughter was quite young. And while other girls her age wanted to hear about princesses and ballerinas (which is ironic because she’s kind of become both) my daughter wanted to hear about pirates. And mermaids. And magic. And friendship and loyalty and American history and legends. Well maybe not so much that last stuff, but I thought I’d throw that in. That’s not say there’s not a Pirate Queen in hot pink pantaloons, or a swashbuckling pirate dad, or zombies of the Confederate dead, or Sasquatch, or a whole bevy of American tall tales and myths. There are. But at its heart, "Georgie Bumfitt and the Voyage of the Jenny Pen" is an adventure story--a coming of age, coming into ones own story that spans not only the whole country, but a big chunk of America’s history as well. But mostly it’s about the magic of coming into one’s own hidden power, a common magic I have found, when the world begins to make some kind of sense and realize we are more powerful and wonderful than we ever imagined. I loved writing this book, loved reading it chapter by chapter at bedtimes and watching my daughter’s eyes grow wide over an ever wider smile. I hope you might want to do the same.

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Please check out the above blog post on the Rondo Award winning site Frankensteinia

I just recently added a new title to my author's page and I thought I might say a few words about it. This new book THE IMMACULATE TRYST OF GRANDPA KINGFISH was the first novel I ever wrote. (I began it when I was nineteen). I wrote it off and on over a course of several years, finishing it more that a decade ago. It was my first foray into long form, my first try at what Mailer calls "a marriage". It is based on a screenplay I wrote that won some awards and then found itself mired in development purgatory. But there was something in the themes, in the duel trajectories of the main characters, in its the frank and sometimes fumbling preoccupation with sex and commerce and consequent reconciliation with ideas about friendship and finding one's place that stayed with me. Borges describes the baroque as a "style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities." And I think this book would qualify for that definition. I put all I had at the time into it. I didn't curb. I didn't judge. I just let the muses sing and for all its shiny bits and flubs I find it still compelling.
To write well you have to read even better. And I was coming out from under a fairly profound and varied tutelage ripe with admonitions of fearlessness and truth and how nothing must be forbidden as a subject for the artist. And that gloss is there, the sheen of the good student working to find himself, working to please. But a first anything I think should be allowed its first intention, its first blush. Like tattoos or travel stickers, we sometimes need stigmas of where we have been. If only to acknowledge fully where we are going.

I don't know about you, but around here Halloween is damn near a holy day, just shy of rivaling Christmas in anticipation. We have to wait for it, here in the low desert of Hollywood. But eventually the air turns cool in the shadow of the studios and the evenings begin to shorten and blush amber and orange, veiled in wisps of woodsmoke and still faceless pumpkins. But the dead have begun to stir, the memories to quicken and soon, very soon, All Hallows Eve will come once again to the boulevards and backlots of Los Angeles. Beginning October first I will be giving away thirteen lucky copies of my book THE MONSTER'S MUSE. Each copy will be signed. Each copy will come with it's own hand made book mark. I hope you can join me in celebrating this Halloween. After all, the dead have so few opportunities of coming through...

The Electric Chair 2D 003: The Unholy (episode) Three

Actor/author Bradford Tatum joins Midnight Corey to talk about his work, his novel The Monster’s Muse, and finally Lon Chaney.


Click here to watch.

You can now purchase The Monster's Muse from iTunes to read with iBooks or other apps on your Apple devices.

You can pick up a digital copy of The Monster's Muse for your Nooks at the Barnes and Noble website here.

Now available on eBay!

The figure is made of cold cast poly-urethane from 17 inches high, 8 inches at the shoulders. Hand rubbed and applied gold leaf finish.

The Weekly Horror Movie Podcast 022: Probing Eyes is now online.

From Horror Palace: We’re honored to welcome actor/writer Bradford Tatum and Fright Rags owner Ben Scrivens onto the show this week! The regular gang — Midnight Corey, BillChete, Dr. Shock, and Craig “Terror” Tovey — review The Lodger (1944) with Bradford, and Halloween (1978) with Ben.

As usual, the show is about much more than the reviews, as Bradford Tatum is a horror golden era expert, and has a lot of great stories to share. His newest book, The Monster’s Muse: Memories of Golden Era Hollywood Horror, is an amazing read and available for the Kindle. Pick it up!

I recently was asked to do a pod cast/ movie review for Horror Palace, an online horror magazine. I had a lot of fun and suggested we review the 1944 (?) thriller THE LODGER with Laird Gregar. It was a film none of the hosts had seen and it was very cool turing them on to it. I was also able to speak pretty extensively about my book THE MONSTER'S MUSE.

The pod cast goes live this Sunday, March 25th.