is both a movie and a novel. The movie is an hour and fifteen minutes of video, animation and music, designed and created by d.n. stuefloten...now available on DVD from Amazon.com's Create Space (movie). and from Amazon itself. The novel, with 161 images, has finally been published, and is also available at Create Space (novel) and from Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

D.N. Stuefloten is the author of eleven novels, four of which have been published by the literary press Fiction Collective Two. The Washington Post compared his work to that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Marguerite Duras, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Small Press Magazine called Maya "...a distrubing collage of mixed visions with psychedlic qualities." David Seed, writing in Review of Contemporary Fiction, said "Maya weaves impressively tense and disturbing variations on the theme of violence in the American imagination." Stuefloten's work is more European in style than American, and is often highly charged with eroticism, usually with fetishistic undertones. He has spent most of his life wandering around the world, living in Borneo, Australia, Africa, and Central America. He currently resides in southern California, with his wife, the Mexican poet and mosaic artist, Jaqcqueline Lizarraga de Stuefloten. More of their work can be seen at dnstuefloten.com. His new novel/movie, a work in progress, is visible at EvidenceOfALostCity.com.

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MARCH 23: AND NOW, THE HAG E-BOOK
I've spent the last couple weeks formatting the HAG novel as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle Reader. It has now been accepted and is on line at the Kindle store. My next step: to make it available for the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Sony reader too....

MARCH 11, 2010: THE NOVEL, AT LAST
The HAG novel was started years ago, and I fussed over it for a long time before turning my attention to the movie version. Over the last year I've gone over the thousands of words I wrote, revised them, added a final chapter, and then 161 photos. It is now, at long last, available as a book, at Amazon's Create Space. I'm currently working on a version for the Kindle and other ebook readers, and hope to have that available in another month or so.

FEBRUARY 1, 2010: THE PDF VERSION OF THE HAG NOVEL
I've been working for some months on the novel version of HAG--writing the last chapter, collecting the photos to illustrate it, then organizing everything in a .pdf program in preparation for publication. It will be published both as a paperback novel, which will be available at Amazon, and as an e-book, for the Kindle and other e-book readers. It contains 161 photos and 25,000 words. You can see examples on The Novel page--and for a limited time, you can download the entire .pdf version onto your computer, free, and read it there. You can use the .pdf on most of the e-e-book readers, too, although later it will be available in their native versions. Download the .pdf here. This is a kind of test of the format, and I'd be pleased if you could write your response on the download page: there's a box there for comments. HAG is an odd little novel, and I am curious about how people will react to it.

I believe that the future of publishing lies in the e-book formats. Physical books will always be delightful to hold, and I hope will never entirely leave us. But digital publication saves a lot of trees, is much cheaper to produce, and as the format develops will allow not just photography and graphics but also video interspersed with the words. The rather bastardized "vook" format gives links to video, which you need to view elsewhere, but soon we will be able to read the text on these Kindles and see the video right there, nestled between paragraphs. One can argue that video and words are uneasy companions: each distracts from the other. Images and words are processed in different parts of the brain. But I suspect this uneasiness will pass. Our brains are flexible, adaptable organs. And the nature of books, or vooks, or whatever they may be called, are going to evolve into curious and new forms. I am eager to continue experimenting with these new forms.

MARCH 24: THEY HATED IT
A couple weeks ago I gave copies of HAG to two men who have worked in the movie industry, one as a sound editor and the other as a scriptwriter. I shall call them Doug and Dave, or perhaps Bubby and Bobby. Gino and Gandolfo? No, let us not get fanciful, Doug and Dave are fine enough. Doug, the sound editor, I'd talked to a few times before, and Dave the writer I'd only just met. Doug reacted to HAG with some irritation, but remained rational. It's not a movie, he said. Nothing happens! There was no story! That wasnt quite true, I told him. There was a story, but it was mostly implied rather than stated. I asked if he had seen "Last Year at Marienbad," the Resnais film, one of my favorites. He'd never heard of it, nor of Resnais, which startled me. How could someone in the film industry be ignorant of Resnais? Nothing, I told him, happens in that film either, at least nothing in the usual American way, no obvious plot, just a shifting maze of entangled subterfuges. The power of the movie, I argued, was greater by not being overt. Doug and I parted amicably, with him suggesting I take up a different profession.

Dave, on the other hand, was nearly hysterical. He called on the phone. It is hard to give a precis of his complaints, but it seemed to have something to do with scantily clad women, with meaninglessness, plotlessness, and old men masturbating in hidden rooms. HAG was the most awful thing he'd ever seen. As he grew more vociferous, I could hear, in the background, his wife shouting at him, egging him on. She hated it too, he assured me. Well, he ranted on for almost half an hour, finally ending with the recommendation that I take a pistol, stick it in my mouth, and put myself out of my misery. A week later a couple of messages appeared at YouTube, added to two of my videos. It was Dave again, I am sure. But now I can quote him:

Biggest lump of crap EVER made!
"HAG" is not a movie, but a 90 minute exorcise [sic] in narcissism, self-indulgence and misogyny. The ENTIRE "film" is semi-clad women slinking about in lingerie, while the "director" spouts meaningless dribble about how dank and stinky women are. Most people flush when they vomit and crap; they don't put it on the screen.

And:

This "film" is an endless parade of semi-clad women grinding against floors and walls, over and over and over and over again, with no plot or story whatsoever, apart from the "director's" endless monologue about how worthless and cruel women are.
I'd rather see my granddaughtor [sic] doing animal porn, than see her in a brown lump like "HAG"

I've seen angry reactions to my work before, of course. Dave's reaction seems extreme—even flattering—but I remember an agent who once wrote me a two and a half page letter essentially saying: Novels like this should not be written, and if they are written, they should never be published! And of course a U.S. congressman got so incensed over one of my books that he forced the NEA to withdraw a $30,000 grant to my publisher. Such reactions seem extraordinary to me, but I like to think of them as testimonies to the power of art.

You can see Dave's comments at these YouTube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdCsUs-AZQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91hV7E5brY

(Addendum: I see he has erased the comments at the first video, but as of this writing, the second is still there.)

FEB. 13: THE HAG NOVEL
HAG actually began life as a novel. I wrote hundreds of pages over a period of a few years, trying to make it work. The other day I pulled them out, and saw within these pages the kernal of a story—so I did some editing, chopping, altering, and am now putting together the novel. Filled, of course, with illustrations—like these—

You can see more of this work, as the layout of the book progresses, at THE NOVEL.

JAN. 26: VIDEO UPLOADS
I've started my second phase of publicizing the HAG: uploading videos to various internet sites. So far I've tossed three at YouTube, and a couple at Spike TV, with more to come. Each carries the address of this site, so I hope viewers will wander here for a more extended look.

JAN. 12, 2009: A NEW YEAR
It has taken me a while to shrug off the past year, and all the year-end celebrations. But at last I've started some more work with my new novel, Evidence of a Lost City, and have posted some images and short videos on its site.

Meanwhile, at Artifacts, I have been working on a Flash presentation for the Photos page. It is almost done, and I expect to upload it in another week or so. Then I will begin a new look for the Novels page. I've got some interesting ideas for its construction: a kind of 3d world, where different doorways and windows open onto different novels. We shall see how possible this will be.....

DEC. 2, TUESDAY: IT'S LIVE!
I've now approved the DVD for sale...finally. You can order it at Create Space, the publishing subsidiary of Amazon. So please browse through this site, checking it out, and if youre interested, grab a copy...and let me know what you think: don@hagmovie.com.

Nov. 25, TUESDAY: THE HAG PROOF
The DVD proof of HAG arrived today:

I need to test it, make sure everything works, give the ok, and then proceed to—well, sell it....

NOV. 4, TUESDAY. THE HAG IS OFF...
...off in the mail, at last. I'll be getting the proof copy in a couple weeks, I think. Then I'll see how it does in the marketplace...and meanwhile, I can resume work on my personal website, ArtifactsMagazine, and on my new novel, Evidence of a Lost City.

Oct. 21. WAITING FOR THE HAG
I've done several versions now of the DVD, and finally have one that works without flaw. Now I am designing the disk illustration and the cover insert. This is what the disk will look like--

And the front and back cover--

Oct. 6. Life keeps interfering. Our TV suddenly broke down, and I couldnt finish testing the new DVD of HAG. However we have now purchased a new, 32" digital HDTV, and now I can see how the old lady looks in full wide-screen splendor. A first, quick check suggests the new DVD is fine, but I need another day or two to go through it....

Sept. 22. I've just finished cutting the first DVD of the complete HAG—she's all there, every piece of her, every grimace and haughty sneer, plus the final extras. In testing the disk, I've found a couple of minor bugs, an incorrect link for one chapter, the wrong menu coming up for another. I'll be fixing these issues this week, cutting another DVD, testing it again. If it all works properly, I'll be sending it off to Amazon for publication by early next week. I'll then be able, at last, to switch my attention to Evidence of a Lost City, my new novel and movie....

So what is the HAG? who is the HAG? Browse through this, her personal website, to learn more....

...and visit my own website, http://dnstuefloten.com
and my new movie/novel, http://evidenceofalostcity.com