(Squidpunk promotional video above; new website here; scroll down for advance blurbs, etc.)

Ann and I are thrilled to announce a new antho for 2009, through Jacob Weisman’s Tachyon Publications: SQUIDPUNK! You’ll note I mentioned this before here, and now, because of the excellent sales of New Weird and Steampunk, readers are going to get it! A rich diversity of fiction from the likes of Stephen Baxter, Michael Moorcock, Sarah Monette, Paul Witcover, Jay Lake, John Scalzi, Cat Rambo, Matt Staggs, Elizabeth Hand, and many, many more (we’re still compiling the contents).

But we really have to thank Jill Roberts, managing editor at Tachyon for this opportunity, though. She’s wanted to do a Squidpunk anthology for several years, but the timing just wasn’t right.

Henry Kaiser contributed guitar images to the video above, while Danny Fontaine and the Horns of Fury contributed music. There’s also a new website (which you should really check out; thanks Luis!), and here’s the cover (design by Luis Rodrigues and guitar by Henry Kaiser):

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(Photo by Ellen Datlow)

In support of the short story, and specifically those talented writers who are currently “bookless,” which is to say those writers who are at that stage of their career where a collection or novel is a year or more away, I’m doing a new feature called Conversations with the Bookless, of which this is the latest installment. (See also: Kelly Barnhill, Paul Jessup, Rachel Swirsky, Nathan Ballingrud, and [conducted by Rick Klaw] Paul O. Miles, Scott A. Cupp, and Chris Nakashima-Brown) The fact is, if you don’t have a book out, it’s harder to get attention and it’s harder for reader attention to crystalize around you. I hope these interviews introduce readers to some of the great talent that, in the coming years, will be amazingly and bountifully bookful.

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You know, sometimes you start a blog feature, like posting photos of the books you receive each day, and you think, This isn’t going lead to weird hamster photos, a post on author poses, and then end with you sending a sekret hamster to an unsuspecting author…

creating a bloody confrontation with Felix Gilman…

And yet, it does.

So, god bless you, Scott Sigler, whose novel Infected comes out April 1st. You do the work of the angels.

(Check out Gilman’s Thunderer–highly recommended. No hamsters.)

Ann and I are guests of I-CON in Stonybrook, New York, this coming weekend. Here’s our combined schedule. If any blog readers are going to be there, we’d love to meet you.

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Yep, they sure are.

If you apply, hope you’re used to communicating via smoke signals and signs given to you in the texture of rocks and the passing of the seasons.

Jeff

LATE ADDITION: NYTBR totally gets one of my favorite books of 2007, The Stone Gods. If you can’t see the poetry in this book and the brilliance I kinda want to take away your birthday… ;)

OF The Blog of the Fallen Reviews The Situation

Caleb Wilson has been digesting the last Thomas Pynchon novel one hundred pages at a time.

Revolution SF reviews The New Weird.

SF Wire on The New Weird

Cat toupees, giant stuffed squid, and more (thanks, Meg!)

The Faith Between Us on NPR

Finally, I’ve added links to additional recent commentary on reviews and reviewing to this post.

Animated opinions!

Today

Me: “Oh–and I’m going to have to have you film me throwing a squid.”
Ann: “You got it.”

No hesitation. Just, “You got it,” although in a kind of overly enthusiastic tone that might’ve indicated “you crazy.”

Flashback to a year or so ago, 1am in the morning.

Me (nudging Ann): I need to find a monkey puppet tomorrow.
Ann: “You got it.”

The Nines is the kind of movie where to review it and include too much summary…is to destroy it. This isn’t because it’s an O’Henry story, but more because of the building emotional content of the film. It’s structured in three parts with the same actors in different roles. The first part shows a drug-rehab actor under house arrest. The second shows a TV writer trying to get his vision made into a series. The third shows some version of that TV series, with a family hiking in the mountains.

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Speaking of book reviews, you may remember my unusual post about Criminal Paradise, a new crime novel that’s so cynical and so yucky in a scene involving the narrator taking advantage of a woman…that I recommended avoiding it. (I also had to wonder just how out to lunch the author’s editor was in reading that particular section during the editing stage.) Well, Paul Goat Allen, writing in The Chicago Tribune, has similar feelings about it.

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