Awash in the Weird
There’s a tumor made of pages exploding out of my ribcage. There’s a tickertape parade ravishing my skull. When I speak, all kinds of odd words come out of my mouth, handwritten in black ink on a long, narrow strip of vellum. Where’s the beak doctor when you need him/her?
Don’t expect too much around these here parts for awhile–just fits and starts. We’re awash in weird reading for the Compendium of Weird Fiction and a typical day revolves around work on the Steampunk Bible interwoven with weird reading. Things begin to swirl together. Some stories never leave you alone. Others fade. Ann comes home and reads what I’ve thought was great and finds some of it crap, and I squint at it again and most of the time agree. It’s a lurching progress, and it’s a love-hate process.
Ligotti and Kiernan were the worst. Too many possibles. Relief, in a way, that some Lovecraft is too dated, some too long, and some too minor.
Looking for that feel–the feel of the weird, which isn’t your standard ghost story or post modern or fantasy with an edge of darkness, but something palpable, something where you’re already not where you think you are, and you’re probably not coming back.
Oh crap. The cat just did a hairball. That’ll bring you back.
4 comments on “Awash in the Weird”
Must be difficult working on not one, but two holy texts at the same time. Looking forward to both!
Even the cat is trying to contribute.Nothing weirder than a hairball, when you find one in the porch and you’ve never seen one before.Except maybe the ones produced by owls, with little bones sticking out.
Do you find yourself making connections between stories that have no reason to be connected to each other?your brain trying to make sense of it all?
LOL. Yeah, that’s true.
I think the biggest stressor is in the permissions phase–trying to be fair without blowing the budget. And knowing that no anthologist gets every story they want. It’s a little excruciating.
jeff
Maybe you could keep a list of the ones that “got away” as a future project.
Then you don’t have to suffer about them.
Like a wishlist.For later.The Vandermeer director’s cut of anthologies.
Or a better title.
I always liked “Pandemonium”.
By the way, you are a bad influence.I have forsaken some perfectly good characters to write squid tales.
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