Uri Kurlianchik is raising money for his story cycle about the “holy land,” using IndieGoGo. Looks to be an interesting project. Go check it out and donate!

Part 1 of the web comic version of my story The Situation, with art by Eric Orchard, is now up on Tor.com! Go read it, and come back tomorrow and Friday for the concluding chapters.

A special thank you to editor Liz Gorinsky, who evidenced amazing patience and kindness while we worked on this thing.

You can read the story the comic is based on at GeekDad.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is now available a a North American ebook from all major retailers, including Amazon.com. The North American print version comes out in May. The publisher is Tor, and our editor there is Liz Gorinsky. The anthology, which is almost 1,200 pages and includes over 750,000 words of weird fiction, including a couple of short novels, is already being taught at several universities. Here’s some of the UK praise for the antho….

‘The definitive collection of weird fiction… its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkably different and yet share the same theme’?–?Times Literary Supplement

‘Studded with literary gems, it’s a hefty, diligently assembled survey of a genre that manages to be at once unsettling, disorientating and bracing in its variety.’ – James Lovegrove, Financial Times

‘It’s a tremendous experience to go through its 1,126 pages… there are so many delights in this that any reader will find something truly memorable’ – Scotland on Sunday

‘Readers eager to explore a world beyond the ordinary need look no further’ – Time Out

‘An anthology of writing so powerful it will leave your reality utterly shredded…Give yourself to the weird! Open the pages of the new gospel of The Weird.’ – Guardian.co.uk

Our new site/magazine Weirdfictionreview.com is made possible by the research we did for The Weird, and you can find this antho-related content there, in addition to over 90 other posts about weird fiction, including lots of stories, essays, and interviews.

Uncanny paragraphs from The Weird

A Century of First Lines from the stories in The Weird

The Weird table of contents, also reproduced below the cut. Please note that for the North American e-book only the Buzzatti stories has been dropped and J. Robert Lennon’s “Portal” (2010) added.

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If you head on over to our Weirdfictionreview.com, you’ll find the first official publication of the new John Curran Davis translation of Polish genius Bruno Schulz’s “The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” as well as a wonderful, fascinating interview with the translator about Schulz. We’re also running an intro to Schulz’s life and work, and my own short editorial on the “unfilmability” of Schulz. We will continue to bring you “firsts” at WFR.com, just as we did when we brought you Jean Ray fiction and several of the other pieces we’ve run. Go check it out.

This morning we’re also running a feature on Julio Cortazar…not too shabby…

Ann and I will be conducting workshops, lecturing, and meeting with the students at Trinity Prep School in Orlando as part of their visiting writer series in early February.

On January 9th we’ll be doing a reading/presentation that’s open to the general public. I’ll probably read from my novel-in-progress, “Borne” and Ann will present a powerpoint of great images and insight from various editorial projects. Might even be some Steampunk Bible bling and special surprises. Kathmandu Books will be supplying the books for sale.

The event is February 9, a Thursday, starting at 7pm at Trinity Prep School, in the Kelly Kranze Room, 5700 Trinity Prep Lane, Winter Park, Florida. For directions, visit http://www.trinityprep.org

Looking forward to meeting the students, seeing old friends, and meeting some of our readers.

Woodchuck Groundhog target paper—the blank side–is great for writing longhand. The grain of the paper is just right to catch and hold the pen and the ink without being either too smooth or too rough. The pads hinge on the right, so it’s also perfect for left-handers like myself.

The Squirrel target paper appears identical, but isn’t as classy.

Enjoy your Friday!

(This image of the editor at a burnt-out desk in a quarry may not accurately portray his critique style…)

I’m extending my critique service for a bit. Just email me at vanderworld at hotmail.com for details. In addition to my writing career, I have 25 years of experience as an editor and have won several awards for it, including the World Fantasy Award. I’ve also taught workshops all over the world, worked for publishers, run a publishing company, been an agent, etc. Stories, novellas, and novels in just about every category (no Westerns) welcome. The unique rate system and form-fitting approach to your particular manuscript are meant to give the most useful feedback.

You can also now buy a critique for the writer in your life–for no extra charge I will send a hand-written card, illustrated, with certificate for critique. A few people have asked for this, and it’s gone over well, so I’ve decided to offer it publicly.

As you may know, we fund a lot of fiction translations and other efforts with a risky rate of return. Critique work helps to offset the risk. Thanks!

Since the early 1990s, my wife Ann and I have edited or co-edited more than sixteen anthologies containing somewhere shy of three millions words of fiction. Some of those anthologies have collected original fiction, but about half have been reprint anthologies, including the massive 750,000-word The Weird, our most recent effort. Based on these projects, we would suggest that writers think carefully about their wills and their literary estates. This same thought should apply to representation while living, if the writer does not directly control reprint rights to stories, or is not the person an anthologist must contact to acquire those rights. The following thoughts are also offered in the context that about 75 percent of the time, negotiations are conducted in a professional and timely manner.

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SOPA would reduce us to entertainment like this. Is that what you want?

After 25-plus years in the book world, I will admit I don’t know as much as I should, I suppose. In a way, I don’t want to have Things I Know, because the terrain shifts and you spend some portion of your time adjusting to the current even as you try also think strategically about how you can find the space and opportunity to create what’s most personal to you—and make it a success career-wise.

But I do know a few things from simply being immersed in this world for so long. They tend to apply generally, and I make no claims for them being unique…I just know I sometimes need to remember even what might seem very basic, especially at the start of a new year.

—If you survive and your enemy survives, then over time, your enemy may well become your friend, or at least your cordial colleague. Because so many writers, reviewers, editors tend to fall away over the years, there is a kind of respect that you build up with those in the field who you may have been at odds with, and they with you the longer you’re both around. Don’t under-estimate this effect, and recognize that the reason you may have butted heads in the first place (and survived) is because you share personality traits and other commonalities not at first apparent. I also find that sometimes there is a false impression of intent—for example, a writer who for 10 years thought I hated his writing, even though this was not the case.

—Holding a grudge is counterproductive and has a ripple effect. I know writers who still won’t talk to someone else because of a perceived insult from 20 years ago. The grudge has not only closed them off from a potential friend or a former close friend but also influenced their dealings with others perceived as allies of the other party. I can’t pretend to understand this behavior—there are only four people on my sh*tlist after 25 years and all four did things comparable to putting babies on spikes, but for anything below that threshold…forgiveness is something that can be difficult because it requires swallowing your pride, but it’s important—again, in part because of the ripple effect (even inadvertent punishment of others is wrong) and because people aren’t just one thing. More than once, I’ve found, for example, that crapulous behavior occurred during a time of great stress that the other party wasn’t willing to admit. (Misunderstandings seem to have gotten worse because of the internet, as well.)

—Buying into a personal mythology of hierarchical status can harm your career. It’s one thing to expect respect for your work and experience. It’s quite another to expect demonstrations of your status or to make pronouncements like “I will not attend any conventions at which I am not a guest of honor.” Such pronouncements or ideas are, ironically enough, more likely in writers who have achieved some cult status, whereby they receive daily affirmation from a small but devoted group of fans, which distorts their view of themselves over time. This is also a way of closing off communication and connection, and it winds up harming you. (Excluded from this, of course, are commercial superstars who receive so many invites that there’s no time to do anything else!)

—Buying into the idea of achieving mastery harms your writing. Mastery is an illusion because writing is multi-directional. You can reasonably assume you will over time, if you’re a good writer, achieve “mastery” in certain areas, types of stories, techniques…but even though it could be argued there are a finite number of stories to tell, there are an infinite number of combinations of elements and approaches to create a story. Generally, if a writer thinks they’ve achieved mastery, they’ve simply achieved some success within one area of fiction, which may or may not even signify “mastery” of some element anyway. The point being that every writer eventually enters a decaying orbit, and satisfaction with one’s mastery of writing is one sign of that process reaching its end stages. At the very least, a plateau may have been reached. (For some, there’s no harm in this–some writers basically tell the same story their entire lives, and throughout their careers they are simply seeking to tell that story more and more perfectly.)

—Fear and taking the short-term view will harm not just your career but your creativity. Conversely, taking chances while keeping the long-term in mind will often reward you. But the important thing here is beating the fear. Even writing itself is often about beating the fear–evading the fear that comes with the editorial mind-set, which can rob you of the confidence to write. In the broader sense, it’s fear that makes us not push outside of our comfort zones. It’s fear that tells us we’re not worthy of an opportunity. It’s fear that tells us this new thing isn’t something we can actually accomplish. Jumping in with both feet while being aware of the long-term effects of what you’re doing is so important. Saying yes is so important. As important? Don’t fall into patterns of paranoia and bitterness. Something is always going to go wrong in your career. There’s no getting around that. You can lose yourself in circles of why that turn your world into a place where you only see the negative. This just feeds the fear more, and gives you more excuses to not do something.

—Friendship is more important than career advancement. Even beyond the obvious reasons why you shouldn’t screw over your friends, the practical, cynical truth is that very few things that seem important at the time will turn out to be important over time. (I’m not someone who screws over friends anyway—it’s more that I get so busy, I wind up not having time for old friends as much as I should.)

—Friendship is not as important as doing the right thing. As in most fields, writers tend to be friends with fellow writers and editors, among others connected to the book field. You’re not doing your friend any favors by sugar-coating a critique, favoring them without due cause in a reviewing or during awards season, or any other situation, etc.

—Paying it forward and being open with information is important for the long-term health of the book culture. It’s a myth that anyone makes it on their own. You may make it despite the odds, but you still had help along the way—people sympathetic to what you wanted to do. The most positive thing you can do is return is help other people when you can. The impulse to hoard information or to not be of use usually comes from the impression that you yourself may be ill-served by doing so. But in actual fact, this is rarely so. The connectivity and communication you engage in usually results in all kinds of creative collaborations and opportunities over time. And I don’t mean in a cynical “you owe me way,” but just naturally as a result of being willing to be open.

—A sense of humor and an appreciation of the absurd are a huge plus. Without a sense of humor, I’m not sure how a writer survives, given that humor is so important to taking a long-view approach (time plus tragedy equals humor). A healthy appreciation for the absurd is an additional survival attribute that helps to put things in perspective.