They were three funny, gradually more-upsetting true stories about experiments with masturbation gone wrong. Two had happened to friends, and the last had happened to a man I'd met while attending sex addict support groups to research my fourth novel. No, this week, my writer friends just laughed, and I told them how the three-act story of 'Guts' was based on three true anecdotes. Later, her therapist would ask for a copy of that story to help with her psychoanalysis. This was better than the Tuesday before, when my story called 'Exodus' sent a friend into my bathroom where she cried behind the locked door for the rest of the evening. No one scribbled helpful notes in the margin of their copy. At moments, the room had the silence of total shocked attention. No one fainted, in fact my friends laughed. My goal was to create horror around very ordinary things: carrots, candles, swimming pools. Each week, I would read another of the short stories I planned to include in a novel to be called Haunted. This was on a Tuesday night, in the writers workshop where my friends and I have shared our work since 1991. No one fainted the first time I read the short story, 'Guts.' He is also the author of a profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction.

Chuck Palahniuk's six previous novels are Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Lullaby, and Diary.

Guts chuck palahniuk