The Douglas Fir

The Douglas Fir can be read on my personal Substack here

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'Kristen Hovers At The Edge': Excerpt from 'I Know How To Live': The Life of Kristen Pfaff via 3AM Magazine

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This is the first chapter from  ‘I Know How To Live’: The Life of Kristen Pfaff  by Guy Mankowski  (with an afterword by Jason Pfaff). It’s 1993, and a teeming English summer afternoon. A crowd sways in front of the stage. The singer wears a guitar over her grey trench coat. Smoke flows through her hair as she waves her lit cigarette at the crowd. A man in the crowd shouts, with contempt, ‘she’s dyed her hair!’ There’s a woman next to her in a black miniskirt, carrying a black bass with the confidence of one who treats it as an appendage. The black hair that obscures her face is somehow more convincing than that of the singer, who doesn’t look at her. The singer strums, her singing inaudible at first and the woman to her right winds her mike stand, plectrum in her mouth. There’s a sense of growing conviction about her. Ear-splitting feedback. A sense of occasion, the clenched body language of a band determined to prove themselves to this huge crowd at The Phoenix Festival...
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Kristen Pfaff biography: representation for it, my TEDx talk, its first chapter and who has become a part of it...

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Now being at the point where the first chapter of this book is finally out in the world it is remarkable to think I was first inspired to write a book about Kristen Pfaff from Hole when I read her mother Janet's book about her daughter's life (available  here ) and it contained excerpts from Kristen's diary. An entry in which she describes as a young girl having a conversation with the sea was perhaps the most beautiful piece of writing I've read and it probably began all this work. I have been working on it with Jason Pfaff after I got in touch with him. Jason gives his side of how we decided to work together on  this  podcast. One reason the book has taken longer to write than anyone might have expected is revelations about Pfaff from people who knew her are still being offered to me. However much I know about Kristen the more news about the book comes out the more people come to Jason and me to talk and open up about their recollections of her. Jason Pfaff and I h...
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An aspiring author emailed me for some advice and I thought my reply *might* be of use to some...

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(Like a lot of people, being asked for some advice and being asked various questions about getting published went to my head and I spoke to the person who got in touch like I knew it all. I'm aware I don't and that more successful writers can probably offer him better advice. But in the hope this helps some here's my emailed reply-)   'Hi- not at all, you weren’t rambling and you ask the pertinent questions. You’ve caught me on a rather stressful day as I’m in negotiations with a film company about the content of one of my books- actually a lot more tricky than it sounds with no money readily in sight- but I’ll advise what I can and you can perhaps return to me further down the line on another better day if you like.  I’d be interested to know the name of your friends partner. I ask this because (and the same is true of me) in this field a lot of people tend to dish out advice as if they can advise on how to crack it when it’s a moving landscape with one person’s perspe...
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