Jeff VanderMeer

As you might imagine, even though we tried hard we wound up acquiring more books while out on the West Coast. Two favorite authors, both picked up at the Tachyon home offices in San Fran (they have a laser gun now and really interesting process flows on post-it notes). The Goldstein doesn’t come out until June—it looks really interesting.

—Michael Blumlein
—The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein

The FOGCon book room, expertly run by Keyan Bowes, had many wonderful dealer tables, but the one that I must confess made my heart flutter a little was PM Press. They’ve got marvelous lines of left-wing nonfiction and, more recently, fiction that includes a lot of edgy or surreal SF/fantasy. I didn’t mean to bring home a cockroach killer, but who the heck could pass up such a fine-looking William Morris bio?! On the right is Crucified Dreams, which looks to be a very cool dark noir/horror antho, from Tachyon.

—Crucified Dreams edited by Joe R. Lansdale
—William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

Our Beloved Saint of Practical Ass-Kicking, Nick Mamatas, has a new novel out, also from PM, in a spiffy cover. We kept looking for him at FOGCon and except for when he was right in front of us for a panel we were doing, we saw neither the hide nor the hair. As for From Girl to Goddess, I was intrigued initially because the author was at FOGCon, and because she was so nice and upbeat and knowledgeable. Then I started skimming, and I was hooked. It’s a nice antidote to Joseph Campbell.

—Sensation by Nick Mamatas
—From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend by Valerie Estelle Frankel

The Angela Carter is an advance reader’s copy from 1980—with marginalia scribbled in it!—that Jacob Weisman from Tachyon kindly gifted me with…as I am still smarting, two years later, from bookstore browsing with him and his strategic positioning (read: luck) led him to a cache of similar advance copies of Carter’s books before I found them. Enigmatic Pilot I snuck in there from review copies because it looks really interesting and I’ve got an Amazon spotlight feature on it going up later this week.

—Angela Carter
—Enigmatic Pilot by Kris Saknussemm

The Raw Dog-ians were kind enough to give me a copy of D. Harlan Wilson’s Codename Prague, which looks pretty darn weird and compelling. The Dogs of Raw were lovely the entire weekend at FOGCon, them and their Guide Dogs and Monstrous Creatures. The Real Cost of Prisons Ann picked up from PM Press during a frenzy of buying.

—Codename Prague by D. Harlan Wilson
—The Real Cost Of Prisons Comix

More PM Press goodness, bought by Ann. You got yer Banksy, yer Vegan deserts, and yer Imagining Change, all from one source!

—Banksy Locations and Tours: A Collection of Graffiti Locations and Photographs in London, England (PM Press)
—Lickin’ The Beaters: Low Fat Vegan Desserts (PM Press)
—Re:Imagining Change: How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World

The PM Press goodness just won’t stop! The Signal journal on the left Ann picked up, and the novel on the right just looked so interesting and bizarre that I had to take a chance and pick it up.

—Signal: 01: A Journal of International Political Graphics
—Songs of the Dead by Derrick Jensen

A cartoonist was flaunting his wares in the FOGCon dealer’s room as well, and we wound up buying a selection of his handmades.

Steven Schwartz, who was on the FOGCon organizing committee, also has a specialty press that produces beautiful one-sheets. (Steven also gave us a great idea for promoting Cheeky Frawg e-books.)

Oh yeah–and FOGCon was invaded by a ton of these Monstrous Creatures. The book is now officially available at Amazon, btw.

—Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy through Essays, Articles and Reviews