Before movies, before trashy TV, before first-hand observation of psychotic behavior in trailer parks, malls and mansions, books were my passport into exciting new worlds.  Here are some influences, favorites and all-time classics you might enjoy... --- Xian"

EARLY DAMAGE

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS by JACQUELINE SUSANN

I had been to see a re-release of the movie at a drive-in with my parents when I was three, but had sadly slept through everything but a trailer for The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant.  As I got a little older, I learned this was not a horror tale of supernaturally animated dolls, but a scandalous,sexy show-biz expose.  So when I discovered a ratty paperback copy in the attic above our garage in Pittsfield, Maine, during third grade, I knew it was a must-read.  Wisely and uncharacteristically guessing Dad would have a shit-fit if he saw me with it, I stuck it under an old chair and slipped off to savor it from cover-to-cover over several weekends.  I especially loved the Neely O'Hara sanitarium sequence.  I remember at the time thinking to myself  "I'm only eight-- I can't possibly understand everything that's going on in this."  Re-reading it in college proved me completely wrong.

ROSEMARY'S BABY by IRA LEVIN

The Stepford Wives was strictly off-limits to me, per Dad, but for some reason this was okay.  Probably because I had seen the film on the Sunday Night Movie.  The effortless weaving of wry humor with mounting creepy paranoia made a big impression on me and I read this over and over and over. I still remember the repressed ugly witch librarian Mrs. Emerson freaking out when I initially checked it out from the Pittsfield Public Library and how pissy she got when my parents said it was okay for me to read adult books.

CARRIE, 'SALEM'S LOT, THE SHINING, NIGHT SHIFT, THE STAND and THE DEAD ZONE by STEPHEN KING 

 I remember spotting the first paperback edition of Carrie on the drugstore rack two years or so before the movie came out and wanting to read it.  But it really shot to the top of my list when the film was released.  My parents resisted but I was so obsessed they finally gave in and let me at both.  Soon after, I discovered Stephen King was teaching a writing class at the University of Maine at Orono where my dad was doing grad work.  My father encouraged me to write to him and a few weeks later I was invited to his office hours, paperbacks in tow  for autographs.  This was truly a magical day for me-- I'm not sure what Stephen King thought of this 11-year-old maniac who knew Carrie, The Shining and most of the short stories in Night Shift by heart, but we spent a coulpe hours talking about his work and horror in general.  A few days later he mailed me a Lovecraft paperback and a copy of 'Salem's Lot, which immediately vanished from the banned list.  My parents even started reading King's books.  I stayed in touch with him for the next several years-- my grandmother got each new book signed for me-- and visited him at his Victorian mansion in Bangor once.  I have no idea if he remembers me or has any idea that we share a publisher, but he was great to me and inspired a strong belief to pursue your interests no matter how trashy, weird or fucked-up the general public finds them.  Starting with the tired Firestarter, King's brilliance became sporadic, but his gift for compelling characters, sharp dialogue and scenes and images of horror chillingly woven into the fabric of humdrum modern life contributed to some all-time classics. I still love these novels-- Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Dead Zone , Different Seasons (the first three novellas, all made into very average films-- Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, the deliciously depraved Apt Pupil and The Body), Misery, Pet Sematary, Eyes of the Dragon, Dolores Claiborne and The Green Mile.

TRASHY HORROR NOVELS

 In addition to gruesome deaths, monsters and general mayhem, horror books frequently featured graphic, kinky, perverted , yummy sex!  John Saul hopped on the Stephen King train and churned out a string of hacky funfests, usually focusing on tormented kiddies:  Punish the Sinners, Suffer the Children, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury and When the Wind Blows.  Jeffrey Konvitz's The Sentinel was an appealingly packaged ripoff of every trendy supernatural success and was instantly banned when my father got a load of the lesbian masturbation scene.  I read it at the library instead then brazenly purchased a copy a couple years later.  Truly horrible, but not as bad as the sequel, the demented The Guardian  (no relation to the 1990 William Friedkin movie).  The Howling by Gary Brandner, a really hacky, sex-packed werewolf bestseller that was made into a cool movie and spawned a lousy, Brandner-penned sequel and many unwatchable movie sequels.

VAMPIRELLA novels by RON GOULART  

Six supernatural-themed adventures starring the gorgeous blood-drinking super-heroine Vampirella, last survivor of the planet Drakulon.  Based on the gory, nudity-friendly black-and-white comic mags, these books were fairly tame but packed more than enough punch for this fourth-grader.  I bought the first three-- Bloodstalk, On Alien Wings and Deadwalk-- in quick succession and read them to tatters.  Strangely, my dad was not thrilled by my fascination with this scantily clad hottie and bought the books back from me, saying he was going to donate them to the junior high library.  Tempted by the ten bucks he was offering, I gullibly sold them and then found out they'd been shit-canned.  A year later, three more were issued.  By then Vampirella was off the banned list, and so I was allowed to purchase and keep Blood Wedding, Deathgame and Snakegod.  I recently reassembled the whole set via eBay and they're pretty fuckin great.

FAVORITE BOOKS & AUTHORS

PLAINCLOTHES NAKED by JERRY STAHL

I was a huge fan of both PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, his stunning, hilarious autobiography, and PERV, his stunning, hilarious first novel..... but this wild, nasty, riveting, stunning, hilarious neo-noir is the best yet-- it makes Quentin Tarantino look like Randal Kleiser.  Spyder Games fans may choose to envision the busty nurse heroine as Shawn Batten.... I did!  I really hope to be able to collaborate with Jerry on a TV project very soon.

JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE 

Recommended to me by then-idol John Waters, this genius killed himself before his mother discovered the masterpiece A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and had it published.  Of course it went on to win a Pulitzer but it was too late... Toole was dead and now the millions of us in his thrall have to make due by reading and re-reading his hilarious epic satire about an obese, cantankerous self-proclaimed genius named Ignatius J. Reilly who clashes with a modern world (it's set in Sixties New Orleans but is really timeless) populated by an unforgettable collection of freaks, losers and wackos.  It's easy to imagine Waters Superstars in key roles-- how about Edith Massey as Ignatius's clueless mother and Mink Stole as evil barkeep Lana Lee?  Toole's short novel THE NEON BIBLE is very different, but flawlessly crafted in the Truman Capote/Flannery O'Connor mold.

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, MYRON  by GORE VIDAL

THE BOYS ON THE ROCK by JOHN FOX 

The only novel by AIDS casualty Fox-- it's a slim, clever, heartbreakingly vivid, touching-yourself-on-the-airplane sexy story of a 16-year-old swim team hunk with a monster crush on a collegiate Italian stud in 1968.  I have never read a better evocation of first love and will confess right here and now that I tried as hard as possible to duplicate Fox's chatty-but-overwrought, pop-culture-friendly style for Glamourpuss, then claim it as my own.  Did I succeed?  You be the judge!

HUBERT SELBY, JR.

Another John Waters referral.  To plunge into the twisted, emotionally raw hell of the characters in his two undisputed masterworks LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (amazingly both made into excellent movies) is to experience first-hand a dozen brands of fucked-up!  His stream-of-consciousness style, unflinching graphic detail and miserable cast of degenerates make Hubie a tough sell-- but if you can take it, he's a stunning talent.  Also worth a peek, the much more obscure in every way THE DEMON and THE ROOM.

JAMES ROBERT BAKER 

Another dead genius, Baker committed suicide in 1997.  An acid-tongued California faggot with an almost pathological hatred of Orange County right-wingers, his magnum opus was a bitter, brilliant Hollywood satire called BOY WONDER, the fictional biography of Spielberg-On-Crack wunderkind producer Shark Trager. Also out-of-print but worth hunting down-- FUEL-INJECTED DREAMS, a Malibu Gothic about a deeply sick Phil Spector-ish music producer.

Baker's overtly gay novels were all variations on a theme-- sexually charged lovers on the run from the law-- and the Freedom Ring West Hollywood "Guppie" establishment Baker loathed.  TIM AND PETE is more political, ADRENALINE (originally published under the pseudonym James Dillinger) more porno. TESTOSTERONE was released posthumously.    I will always be sorry I didn't discover Baker sooner, so I could have told him how fucking awesome he was.

HOLLYWOOD WIVES by JACKIE COLLINS

Every aspiring writer of hardcore glitzy trash should study this Baked Alaska of modern soap lit-- it's flaming, elaborately constructed, and as much as you want to, you'll be unable to devour it in one setting.  Jackie "exposes" the sex and power struggles of the Bev Hills set with short chapters, shorter paragraphs and a lovably vapid cast of 20 major characters who all get exactly what they deserve in one of the most ingeniously whipped-up climaxes you'll ever moan through.  Jackie's written lots of books, full of sentences like "She was some horny piece of ass, and someday she would be all his." and "He was a fat old man, with liquid booze-filled eyes and the walk of a pregnant cat."  I also recommend: The Love Killers, American Star, Lady Boss, Lovers and Gamblers, Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge.

CRY TO HEAVEN by ANNE RICE

Like everyone else in the 80's, I gave Annie a try and enjoyed Interview with the Vampire and parts of Lestat before becoming disillusioned with the increasingly leaden plotting and brain-numbingly baroque prose of her endless stream of bestsellers.  Then I discovered Cry to Heaven, an overheated gem about hot-blooded castrati wreaking bi-sexy havoc in the Italy of yesteryear. Fast and kinky and gorgeous.  Speaking of kink, if there's any doubt that Anne's a gay guy in a woman's body, check out the action in the steamy, XXX-rated SLEEPING BEAUTY trilogy she wrote under the name "A. N. Roquelaure".  Everyone's beautiful, bi and into bondage, and in one scene the heroine is slathered with fresh butter and orally pleasured by a fluffy white cat.

JUDITH GOULD

The nortoriously reclusive Gould has sold millions and millions of fat juicy paperbacks to horny housewives and jaded beach-goers, but she's never attained the mega-fame of a Sidney Sheldon or Judith Krantz.  Too bad, cuz at her best, she kicks both their tired liposucked butts.  SINS, about a little French girl who escapes the Nazis and goes on to become a filthy rich queen of international fashion, became a Joan Collins miniseries, minus the surplus of explicit sex, lovingly rendered in almost clinical detail-- a Gould specialty.  FOREVER, not to be confused with the Judy Blume teen sensation, is an unbelievably convoluted massive luxury overdose of murder and globe-hopping forbidden love.  My personal fave is NEVER TOO RICH, in which a feisty street urchin becomes a supermodel against a backdrop of champagne-guzzling Manhattan society whores, graphic gay sex and Brian DePalma-esque serial slashings.  Here's a sample from TEXAS BORN:  "You know where that tongue hasn't been yet?" he asked with deliberate cruelty.... She stared at him in sudden loathing, then nodded.  "But you've got to like doing it", he said softly.  "You've got to promise me you'll enjoy it." ... But later, when he lowered his bared buttocks down into her face, she had to struggle to keep from being sick.... As she vomited, Jenny realized for the first time just how much she had come to despise her husband."  Stock up before your next cross-country flight!

HONORABLE MENTION

Whores of Lost Atlantis by Charles Busch

Fag Hag by Robert Rodi

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Pizza Face by Ken Siman

Twins by Bari Wood & Jack Geasland

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn 

The Wanderers and Blood Brothers by Richard Price

Kinflicks by Lisa Alther

The Ghost In The Closet by Mabel Maney

Blackbird by Larry Duplechan

NONFICTION

Lovely Me by Barbara Seaman

This tell-all biography of Jacqueline Susann is much better than Once Is Not Enough

Shock Value and Crackpot by John Waters

Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger

Naked by David Sedaris

Private Parts and Miss America by Howard Stern

Men in Love by Nancy Friday

Discovered at the age of twelve, this red-hot catalogue of sexual fantasies kept me going for --okay, IT STILL TURNS ME ON, DAMMIT!

L.A. Bizarro by Anthony R. Lovett and Matt Maranian

Ordeal by Linda Lovelace

Impossible-to-swallow expose of the Deep Throat actress's forced entry to porno stardom--but I really want to believe she taught Sammy Davis, Jr. to give blow jobs in a movie theatre.  Don't you?