Paul Di Filippo

Posted by Matt Staggs

First of all, I’d like to thank my friend Jeff for giving me the opportunity to step into the Ecstatic Days limelight for a few days, and secondly, thanks to all of you for your very kind welcome.

I’d like to start things off with a brief conversation I had with one of my favorite authors and all-around cool human beings, Paul Di Filippo, about his new book Cosmocopia. Illustrated by Jim Woodring, this novel – complete with a box and a jigsaw puzzle (!) – will be available from Payseur & Schmidt very soon.

Would you mind introducing yourself to my readers?

Not at all! My name is Paul Di Filippo, aged 53, native Rhode Islander still resident in Providence, author of some 25 books, whose career began either in 1977, 1982, 1985 or 1995, depending on which benchmark one uses. Partnered with Deborah Newton for the past 33 years. Faithful devotee of the cocker spaniel breed.

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I’m very pleased to introduce my good friend Matt Staggs as this week’s guest blogger on Ecstatic Days. A publicist specializing in book and author publicity, Matt Staggs has worked with established authors like Thomas M. Disch and Nancy A. Kress, as well as talented up-and-comers like fantasist Paul Jessup and horror author Z.A. Recht. In 2008 he launched Deep Eight LLC, a boutique publicity agency utilizing the best publicity practices from the worlds of traditional media and evolving social technologies.

Here ya go: news you didn’t know you needed. Please use the comments to tell me your news!

- Black Clock #9, the political issue, is now out, with fiction by yours truly, and other contributors that include Rick Moody, Brian Evenson, Jonathan Lethem, Steve Erickson, Janet Sarbanes, etc. I’m very excited about this one. My story shows John McCain, George W Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton in a series of alternate universes. Something terrible comes out of McCain’s head…

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Chant’e, one of the students–really hard worker (and who owes me for moving her refrigerator from the dorm to her mom’s car the last day!)

Shared Worlds at Wofford College (Spartanburg, SC) was a great experience: two weeks of helping about 20 teens from as far away as Japan build unique settings and then write fiction in them. Along the way, guests like Kathy Sedia, Tobias Buckell, and Will Hindmarch dropped by to do workshops and answer the students’ questions. Director Jeremy Jones was working 24-7 behind the scenes to make it all happen, and managed to pull it off seamlessly. Not to mention the great work of everyone involved, including the management/ admin from Boyce Lawton on down, the two teachers, Christine Dinkins and Steve Zides, the resident director Shanna Hughes, the TAs Stephyn, Zach, and Ben, and the RAs Ellen and Katherine.

You’ll hear more about the camp soon on Amazon.com’s book blog, io9, and at Tor.com, but for now I’d just like to direct you to my (admittedly amateurish) photos from the two weeks, which include alien baby photos that’ll eventually be posted here. I’d also like to say that these kids worked their butts off the entire time and just did a phenomenal job. I really love the fact that this was also kind of like a teen think tank because the problem-solving went well beyond the idea of a writing workshop.

Thanks also to SF Signal and io9 for their support, as well as Dot Lin at Tor and Sean Wallace for free books for the students, and the artists (John Picacio, Heidi Estey, Bruce Jensen, and Catherine Cheek) who contributed to the “artifacts” aspect of the camp. (On the first day, each student got an artifact, most of them from our house, and had to incorporate it into their world in some way.)

Stephyn and Zach, two of the teaching assistants

Here’re a couple of videos from Wofford about the camp:

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Just a quick post to remind loyal readers that Secret Live is still available from Ziesing, from Amazon, and elsewhere. It’s a gorgeous little book:

Reviewers please note: Sean Wallace at Prime (prime at prime-books.net) is still sending out some review copies. Query him quickly as he will run out soon, at which point a PDF is the only option.

Evil Monkey: So you’ve been less silent this week. Still working on the novel.

Jeff: Yeah, I am, but had some other deadline stuff, post-Shared Worlds, to take care of. How’ve you been?

Evil Monkey: Obsessively surfing the intertubes. Scratching myself. Jumping people in dark alleys.

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Well, my blogging week here came to an end. Thank you for reading and participating. If you ever feel like catching up with me, I have a website, which links to my promotional blog and my email — feel free to drop me a note, especially if it’s about perfume in fiction. A more personal (and fairly lazy) blog is at Live Journal.

Here’s a good
interview with me, where I blather about my most recent book.

And that’s it. Thank you for your thoughts and comments, and many thanks to Jeff for letting me visit.

Like many others, I use online chats to stay in touch with the friends who are too distant for frequent visits. Below is a slightly edited transcript of one such session with my friend who chose to remain anonymous, so I will just call her Genevieve V. Conversation started with the subject of movies that make us cry. And like every conversation of things dramatic, it quickly turned to Futurama.

Genevieve (talking about the movie version of V): also, the music rocked. I cried, dude, just because of the music. You play sad music and show me the Care Bears on top, I’ll still cry. Pavlovian.

Me: I know what you mean; for me, it’s dead/dying/sad animals, and I KNOW I’m being manipulated and yet, can’t help it. There’s a Futurama episode Chris doesn’t let me watch anymore because I always cry for hours afterwards.

Genevieve: OH GOD. Just thinking about it I want to cry. “Jurassic Bark.” Uncontrollable sobs.

Me: I KNOW!!!! And they used the music from “Cherbourg Umbrellas”. Which is like an added layer of Pavlovian sobbing.

Genevieve: It’s PAINFUL.

Me: On the other hand, I am totally using this conversation as fodder for my guest-blogging stint.

Genevieve: “Crying like a tiny child: a primer.”

Me: “Cartoon animals: they will rip your heart out and stomp on it.”

So, what unlikely things make you cry? Movies, books, TV, Futurama episodes?

As one perceptive reader (Jame) figured out from my very first post here, I am now about to complain about the following line from Journey:

“Smell of wine and cheap perfume”

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My apologies for breaking in here for a second, but…

Readers of this blog may remember my post about a remarkable novel by Jesse Bullington. Jesse had had trouble getting an agent, so I not only wrote about the book, I also reproduced an excerpt. As a result, Jesse got an agent–Sally Harding–and now that agent has gotten him a publisher. The Brothers Grossbart has been picked up by Orbit Books.

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