Being in my 20s, I was looking to shock people. Now I’ve come to be at peace with myself more and I don’t just want to freak someone out. – Poet Bucky Sinister in this week’s Bay Guardian, on the publication of his new book, Get Up: A 12-Step Guide for Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos. Bucky reads at Litquake during the Lit Crawl on October 11, at 8:30 pm at Dog-Eared Books.

Forbes released a list of the ten highest-paid writers in the world this week. J.K. Rowling clocks in with an annual $300 million payout. Not bad at all. That’s enough to bail out the entire budget deficit of Connecticut, or, say, produce the next Transformers sequel. San Francisco stalwart Danielle Steel arrives in fifth place, earning just $30 million last year, or roughly the cost of one rich computer geek pretending to be an astronaut and flying up to the space station.

Nobody really knows for sure where writing a book may take you. A teaching gig, a fellowship, perhaps some magazine articles. Or, hey – how about writing and producing a movie about a giant 3,000-pound feral pig with a taste for blood? After his bestselling novel Boonville, Robert Mailer Anderson spent the last two years working on his “psycho-hog biker film” Pig Hunt, set amidst Boonville’s NorCal pot-hillbilly terrain. The film premiered to gushing reviews a few months ago at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, and San Francisco eagerly awaits its own screening. Porchlight Storytelling audiences also know Robert for his amazing tale-spinning abilities as well, and he will appear tomorrow at Litquake’s opening night “Suckered,” at the Herbst Theatre.

And just in time for tonight’s V.P. debate, a dose of poetry from Sarah Palin.