Just a little aside re creating cool stuff and realizing a vision: People who start out saying “no” and “no, that can’t be done” and “no, that’s too ambitious” when you start talking about a creative process (perhaps even before you’ve finished explaining)…those people are already entering a downward spiral of lowered expectations. Don’t be one of those people. (Which is not to say if Evil Monkey wants to partner with you making a perpetual motion machine you ought to take Evil up on his offer.)

It’ll sound like a motivational poster, but almost anything is possible if you have the practical knowledge or tools to support your vision–and you will it to happen.

- Say yes to three creative opportunities that scare the crap out of you this year and you will experience tremendous personal growth.

- Take one area you’re weak in and make it a strength through practice and force of will.

They’ve apparently just found George W. Bush’s AWOL soul:

Via Enter Zee Octopoid

The New Art scene, I must say, got old fast. A kind of tunnel vision soon set in whereby a painting was either New Art or Not New Art. Those works identified as Not New Art were dismissed as unimportant or somehow of lesser ambition. I admit to participating in this mindset, although for the ethically pure reason that I wanted my gallery to make money. So I would do my best to label whatever I had hanging there as “New Art,” from the most experimental mixing of media to the most hackneyed scene of houseboats floating idyllic down the River Moth.

“That’s an ironic New Art statement,” I would say of the hackneyed houseboats, mentally genuflecting before the latest potential customer. “In the context of New Art, this painting serves as a condemnation of itself. In the strongest possible terms.”

I have to say I loved the stupidity of it all—there is nothing more refreshing than playing an illogical game where you understand all the rules, no matter how nonsensical they might be. I became adept at selling New Art and promoting New Art and, more importantly, applying labels.

But, ultimately, this sense of play around the term New Art became our downfall. You become what you pretend to be, for one thing. I could pretend I was pretending all I wanted, but eventually I began to believe it all at some subconscious level.

More importantly, while everyone’s attention was on the New Art, real innovation was occurring outside of our inbred, self-congratulatory little circle. Real imagination meshed with real genius of technique was bypassing and surpassing the New Art altogether, sometimes with a chuckle and a condescending nod. This was the era during which Hail Jorgins first displayed his huge “living canvases,” complete with cages for small animals to peep out from. Sarah Frayden began to create her shadow sculptures, too. But neither of these qualified as New Art, in part because the galleries they showed in had no connection to the New Art.

By the time we realized New Art was Old Art, the only one who had the option of escaping the death of the term was the only one who had never uttered the words in the first place: Martin Lake.

I was left with a long line of has-beens who, squinting, had emerged from their tunnel of tunnel vision to realize that far from being on the frontier, they’d been in a backwater, as obsolete as the first generation of motored vehicles the factories had trundled out fifty years ago.

This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series–the Guardian’s book site of the week and mentioned on the Penguin blog. (Their latest post comments on the first 20.) From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan
by Marco Polo

Memorable Line
“The reason for killing the bearded men was that the Cathayans are naturally beardless, whereas the Tartars, Saracens, and Christians wear beards.”

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I just posted the secret New Year’s resolutions of the detectives featured in new novels by Charlie Huston, Paul Tremblay, John Meaney, and Jedediah Berry. A little teaser:

Huston: Get the decomposed dead guy smell out of my favorite jeans.
Tremblay: I will steal my mother’s clown pants. That is not code for anything with a deeper meaning. No one likes a clown.
Meaney: I will not be disturbed by the strange ideas of other zombies.
Berry: Leave a few typos uncorrected. A report with typos is a report with character, Detective Sivart always says.

As for Finch, making his debut much later this year, here’re his resolutions:

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My introduction to the limited edition of The Unblemished, from Earthling Publications…

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series–the Guardian’s book site of the week and mentioned on the Penguin blog. (Their latest post comments on the first 20.) From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

Revelation and the Book of Job
by ??

Memorable Line
“And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of the prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”

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Let’s see if this works. If it does I will be able to simul-podcast all short blog posts using a talking squirrel.

So click here and see if you get a squirrel podcast of my sleep emails from this post. Let me know.

Gavin Grant reports that Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror is no more, although it might be revived in the future, and that Ellen Datlow will move on to edit two horror year’s bests for Night Shade Books. The anthology’s sales had been dipping over the last few years, and packaging-wise no real attempt was made to change a formula that clearly wasn’t pulling in as many readers as in the past. Nor, frankly, was the promotional effort for the anthology that good. I think the proliferation of other year’s bests and the easy access of readers to short fiction online may have also hurt the series.

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Some free nonfiction while I’m cleaning out my files: my afterword to Moorcock’s Wizardry and Wild Romance, MonkeyBrain Books edition from 2004…

“Believe me, pards, we’re living in an age of myths and miracles.”
– from King of the City by Michael Moorcock

If you’ve read Wizardry & Wild Romance before turning to this afterword, you will have already recognized the book’s many virtues. Primary among these, Moorcock, more than most writers I know, achieves a balance between heart and head. In Wizardry, Moorcock’s passion is matched by a good humor (including barbs that are somehow generous enough to make the point without being sarcastic), and the examples and analysis to back up his assertions. His passion becomes our passion, so that even when (or if) we disagree with his conclusions or his slant on a particular author or book, it is difficult not to agree while reading.

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