Been hearing the name Poppy Z. Brite for a dog's age, but somehow never got 'round to actually reading anything by her. Link to Bruce Sterling's blog over at Die Puny Humans brought up an entry on her, um, getting "thrown off and banned from a Poppy Brite fan website," which impressed me enough to finally look up her site (that first link up there), and have a look at her LiveJournal, where the full version of the whole banning story really must be read to be disbelieved. And she contributed a story to the Matrix site, which either brings us full circle or is a total non-sequitur, depending on if you consider the blog as a whole as a text, or if each individual entry constitutes. . .
Ok, I'm bored. Does it show?
Off to read.
I've read several of Poppy's novels, and they were all good. LOST SOULS and DRAWING BLOOD have a lot of characters in common in her fictional town of Missing Mile NC. EXQUISITE CORPSE has a lot of Dahmerisms, as its the story of love between serial killers set in New Orleans. If you want a good place to start, her short story "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" is I think her best work. If you try that story and don't like it, you probably won't like much of her work. I'm guessing you probably would like it.