Chuck Palahniuk's next book will be "Pygmy". It's not due in stores until May 5, 2009. But you can pre-order it today on Amazon.

Pre-Order "Pygmy" On Amazon Today!

For those that don't know, here is summary of "Pygmy", right from Chuck:

I've just finished the first draft of a novel called "Pygmy," a dark comedy about terrorism and racism. The lead character is a 13-year-old foreign exchange student sent to live with a suburban, white, middle-class family. Oh, and they're Christians. The visit is for six months, and he's one of a dozen similar kids, all shipped to America to live with typical families.

The secret truth is that Pygmy is a terrorist, trained since infancy in martial arts, chemistry and radical hatred of the United States. He has six months to build a prize-winning project for the National Science Fair. If he succeeds, he and his project will go to Washington, D.C. for the finals competition -- where the project will explode, killing millions.

So far, Gerry Howard says it's the best book I've done. Fingers crossed for luck.

Chuck's new novel "Pygmy" is now being typeset. This means we have to get Chuck the winning contestant's name of the Choke Movie Contest, so he can include it as a character in the book. So consider this a last call for submissions.

If you participated in last weekend's contest and have pictures of you and friends holding you CHOKE movie ticket stubs, send them to: chokecontest@chuckpalahniuk.net.

I'm going to allow the weekend for people to send in photos. But the photos must be from last weekend. On Monday, the person who submits photos with the most people will win.

Apologies for posting this one late, but Chuck has something special for you today that I think you're all going to agree was worth the wait. For years now, fans have loved and coveted these essays Chuck provides the site, on how to improve your writing. But there's one aspect of his lessons that people have wished for the most:

For the next three essays I'll be presenting three drafts of a short story I'm writing for a Dark Delicacies anthology. Folks have been asking for this kind of in-progress demonstration. The first draft will be a day or two past Oct. 1st, but each draft will describe my process and choices -- and the finished, polished version will be out in the actual book.

Read Chuck's October Essay, A Story from Scratch, Act One

UPDATE: The emails have started coming in, so this is just an update to ask all of you now to send in pictures you took if you participated in this weekend's Choke contest. You can email them to me at: chokecontest@chuckpalahniuk.net. Want to get a character named after you in Chuck Palahniuk's next book? All you have to do is get as many people as you possibly can to go see CHOKE this weekend. Is this for real? You damn well bet it is. Clark Gregg and I got on the phone yesterday and decided that we needed to hit the ball out of the park this weekend with the box office numbers on CHOKE. You see, Hollywood does math a lot differently than you and I do. And we are, right now, in one of the most crowded seasons for the movie market. Last weekend, CHOKE opened against an $80 million dollar movie produced by Stephen Speilberg on a night when most of America was watching Barack Obama debate John McCain on almost every news channel on TV. And this weekend, CHOKE enters its second weekend on the three days when, according to Variety, "A whopping seven wide releases" hit the theaters, making it one of the worst bottlenecks for new releases in recent memory. What does this mean for CHOKE? It means if CHOKE doesn't at least crack the top ten in this upcoming weekend's box office, it's chances for being around much longer are slim. What's sad is, CHOKE is competing against movies that opened up in over four times as many theaters. But it's still averaging better than most on a per theater basis! Why? Because it's a great film! And it's one that needs our support! And dammit, that's what we're gonna do!

Chuck Palahniuk is in the new October issue of Paste magazine:

When a young Chuck Palahniuk pitched his novel Invisible Monsters to publishers, it was rejected because it was too disturbing. His response was to fill his next novel, Fight Club, with even more disturbing and violent events and dub himself a writer of “transgressional fiction.” One of his favorite stories for live readings is the short story “Guts,” from his collection Haunted, because the accounts of masturbation that met a violent end caused several of his audience members to actually faint. His worlds are shocking, but his readers eat it up not simply because they like blood and guts—his stories aim to shock like a defibrillator, to wake you up from the mundane and remind you that while terrible things can always be around the corner, you might just be able to withstand them....

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2008/09/catching-up-with-chuck-pal...

Just like the news title says: We Need Everyone To See CHOKE This Weekend! If you planned on seeing it during the week, or even waiting to next weekend, or a couple weekends after that... don't.

We need you to see CHOKE this weekend. Now even. As soon as you're done with reading this, grab some friends, get your ticket, and head to the nearest theater showing it. (listings here)

The opening box office numbers for CHOKE might not mean much to you... but in the long-run, they'll mean a ton to the future life of other Chuck Palahniuk adaptations. 'Fight Club' was a box office failure, and did not make back, domestically, what it cost to make the film. As a result, we had to wait over eight years for our next Palahniuk adaptation.

So let's not let that happen again. Let's all make sure CHOKE hits a homerun this weekend. I'm sure that, with the Presidential Debate on last night, they took a hit in their Friday numbers. So let's make up for that today and tomorrow.

I know I'm talking to thousands of you here. And every one of you can make a difference. But it has to be THIS weekend.

Go see CHOKE now. Consider this a homework assignment from Chuck Palahniuk... the real Tyler Durden.

The day is here. CHOKE is now playing in theaters nationwide. For a list of US & Canadian theater locations, check out this thread. (the Canadian list is lower in the thread) For movie reviews and showtimes, check out Rotten Tomatoes page here. I want to congratulate Clark Gregg and his crew on such a long journey to get this film made. It's taken him over five years to see this project to fruition. So let us all now celebrate by going out and enjoying the hell out of this film. I've set this thread up so people can post their mini-reviews of CHOKE. I'd also like to hear about your experience going to the theater, meeting other Chuck fans, and even see some pictures!

Sitting down with the director of 'Choke'

Interview by Dennis Widmyer

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of sitting down with writer, director and actor Clark Gregg. I had expressed interest on the site in interviewing Gregg, and not even minutes later, the wonderful reps at Fox Searchlight were contacting me about it.

For those of you that don't know, Clark Gregg is the writer/director of 'Choke', the new film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's bestselling novel, due to hit theaters this Friday, September 26th. He is a longtime actor who has appeared in such TV and movies as 'In Good Company', 'Iron Man' and the hit show 'The New Adventures of Old Christine'.

His journey to get 'Choke' to the big screen is a long and unique one. Clark was nice enough to take me out for lunch where we sat down for this interview.

So I got a very cool email yesterday. Ryan Fujitani, who works for one of the best sites online, Rotten Tomatoes, contacted me with a very cool feature. It seems they have a “5 Favorites” column on their site, in which they ask certain celebrities what their 5 Favorite movies are, and why. And guess who they got to cough up his list?

Check out Chuck Palahniuk's Five Favorite Films!

Jenni Miller, a senior editor with Premiere.com, was at the press day for CHOKE in NYC and had a chance to interview Chuck Palahniuk.

Check out the full interview here:

http://www.premiere.com/article.asp?section_id=39&article_id=4711

Enjoy!