About Matt Schild
After resisting developing a personal website since the mid-’90s, Mr. Schild1 figures that thanks to content bloggers, article spinners and AI-generated pages, one more garbage site on the internet isn’t really going to make a difference now.
Mr. Schild is the author of the Amazon-bestselling novel, The Completely Unverified True Story of a Reality Television Superstar. Published by Headlong into Harm Press in 2020, the story centers on a semi-unwilling participant in unscripted television lured back onto the small screen because of financial troubles. Some folks find it quite funny. Some folks, despite the book plainly having the words “a novel” on its cover while being sold from the fiction section, still managed to confuse it with a memoir2, a state of affairs that is actually about as funny as anything Mr. Schild wrote.
Before enjoying the lavish lifestyle of a small-press author that’s universally envied, Mr. Schild was an arts and entertainment writer. You might have known him from his days as editor/co-founder of Aversion a web publication focused on independent music and culture that, to Mr. Schild’s astonishment, published from 1999-2010. Maybe you wrote some hate mail about a bad review of your favorite band or some throwaway wise crack in a news roundup. Some of the publication’s best interviews were collected in Aversion Therapy.
Before the editorial world cratered under the weight of the 21st century, Mr. Schild was also a freelance contributor to many publications, ranging from the then-cool A.V. Club and the still-cool Three Imaginary Girls, to head-scratchers like Military Times, a few Village Voice-owned weeklies, a barrage of failed music rags and, God forgive him, even TV Guide in a moment of weakness 3.
1 At this point in time, it’s extremely unlikely Matt will be the writer or subject of a New York Times piece, so we’re adopting the Gray Lady’s stilted use of honorifics before surnames. 2 Need a second clue? There’s also the fact that the author’s name and main character’s names aren’t the same. 3 It’s kind of like that porno Cameron Diaz made. Regrettable, but it seemed like easy money at the time.