Ann here, just posting briefly to say thanks to Michelle Richmond for such great guest blogging. Next week, Fabio Fernandes!

I also wanted show off the cover of the Czech edition of The New Weird, pictured above. The first foreign edition of anything with my name on it. I’m very excited. Laser Books (Martin Sust, editor) is the publisher. And, here is the cover art for the pirates antho, design still forthcoming:

Also note that the International Horror Guild Award finalists have been announced. I’m a judge and can tell you we worked very hard in coming up with this list.

In other news, Shared Worlds is happy to announce that Will Hindmarch will be joining the guest lecturers (including Tobias Buckell and Ekaterina Sedia). For those readers not familiar with Will, he is a Chicago-born freelance writer and designer with experience on more than fifty books as an author, developer, or graphic designer. In 2007, Will co-founded the gameplay-and-story outfit, Gameplaywright.net, with Jeff Tidball. He is also a proud contributor to the book, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, available from MIT Press. Will’s writing has appeared in The Escapist, Atlanta magazine, Everywhere magazine and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In 2007, he was a judge for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. In 2004, he and his wife moved to Atlanta, sight-unseen, like carpetbaggers, so he could become a professional lunatic for White Wolf Game Studio, serving as the developer of the flagship World of Darkness Storytelling Game, Vampire: The Requiem.

In connection with Shared Worlds, workshop director Jeremy Jones interviewed Jeff, mostly about Steampunk.

Finally, just so you know Jeff’s still alive, here are some photos he took recently to chronicle his recent activities. (He heads off to Shared Worlds Saturday and I get some well-earned peace…Remember that he and Buckell are reading at Malaprops on July 31.) Some of these photos may be cryptic. I’m happy to provide context if you have questions… (Also, thanks to Matt Staggs for many, many things.)

Here–thanks Hannes!