Sebastian Corbascio

I was born and raised in Oakland Ca, and showed a very early affinity towards writing fiction- plays, short stories, novellas- and was thus a horrific student. My forty five minute play was acted and performed at a student festival at my middle school, and I was suspended at the time. The kids in acting class rehearsed my play, and I was allowed to come to school, see my play being performed and then whisked back home to continue being suspended. My fellow students did a great job. I recall being very happy with the outcome. No grand metaphors about the craft here, just facts, and kind of bizarre upon reflection. My headmaster, a stern man with sadistic tendencies, which as far as I know didn't slant towards the sexual, whizzed by me up the stairs, whilst saying "Mr. Corbascio, I understand you wrote an excellent play." At the top landing he peered down over the bannister at me and said "Let try and do the same with your homework." He was a Scot from Aberdeen. He recalled World War Two with what I recollect, a fondness. He fired the best teacher I ever had. Typical.

I got into making films because as an art form, there is none more expensive or frustrating. It appealed to my personality right away. My first film shoot which I PA'd was with Lind Blair and Troy Donahue. Any one who was there remembers it as fondly as I do. I recall being disappointed I couldn't act as a zombie extra because my head was too large to fit into the latex mask.

I made a ton of films, most of them disastrous, some OK, some fill me with pride. Those I like, and those that were popular are an inverse equation. The Devil and Alexa Jones is my favorite of all my films. No one who dwelt outside the criminal underground understood the ending. Cops, bangers, dealers, gangsters' molls, and attorneys got it immediately. The rest had to ask me to explain.

I was working on a beginner's volume about film noir and I interviewed a very well thought of publisher. He was giving, insightful, super-knowledgable, generous with his time, and a blast to talk to. Without a prompt, before concluding our meeting said "I want to see your manuscript." He knew I had one, or thought he did. I pulled Sarah Luger out of my ass. I turned it in, she got kicked to the curb.

Another well thought of publisher hated it even more. He liked all my other work, and in an email said "Yeah, we can keep being cyberfriends, but never mention Sarah Luger ever again."

I self-published it, and it took off "…doing the quarter mile in under fifteen minutes." Getting a book reviewed takes about eight months or so. Indie mags are inundated with material by hopefuls, and you're just another one of them. Someone picked up Sarah Luger out of the pile. They wrote a review, my first in print, that Sarah Luger "…is a worthy addition to the crime fiction genre." There are pics of me opening Broken Pencil magazine, not knowing what the review would be, reading it aloud, and at all, for the first time. My younger brother was so excited and showed it to everyone at his work, he forgot to email me back about how excited he was. I thought he had disowned me.

From there, nothing happened. It took months to redesign the art. We had help from a guy who did cover art for mystery writers in Canada, and just came out with a graphic novel. Buy two when you get a chance (email me for deets). Everyone hates the cover except me, my best friend from high school, and Miranada Corcoran, American Lit lecturer at University College Cork, Ireland- "On a paratextual level, the book possesses a clear warning sign. The cover features the motionless visage of a beautiful young woman: her skin is milky white; her pink lips, though immobile, are almost smiling. Yet, despite this superficial evocation of beautiful Dead Girls such as Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer or John Everett Millais’s “Ophelia”, the eponymous Sarah Luger is no mere cadaver, a posthumous mystery to be solved." Having my ass whipped with two years of Latin, I figured out what "paratextual" meant with out having to look it up. Eff you, haters! Ars Gratia Artis!

After Miss Corcorans' review in Diabolique magazine, chums from many eras dialed in with their congratulations. "You have arrived!" "Sarah lives!.""Awesome, sweet review, dude!" to which I replied "You remember not too long ago I couldn't get arrested in this town? Well, now I can get arrested." -Sebastian Corbascio 2020, Los Angeles, CA.