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.

(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!

Our Weirdfictionreview.com has come back from the holidays with a vengeance, with a full slate of great nonfiction, and a long story from Tanith Lee posting Wednesday. Here’s what you can read today:

—An exclusive interview with Lucius Shepard about weird fiction
—Sonya Taaffe on a weirdly surreal Dr. Seuss movie
—Our own ruminations on a couple of odd films
—Elwin Cotman on the urban hells of a Japanese anime creator
—Edward Gauvin on a great mid-century weird fabulist

As ever, we’re featuring some great images on the main page’s image slider. And if you were gone over the holidays, check out the archives, which include Sarban, Thomas Ligotti, Reza Negarestani, and much more.

Aeron Alfrey‘s great art for Ligotti’s “The Red Tower”…

(Detail from The Situation…)

I am just now getting back up to speed, and still battling some intense tooth pain that I hope will be resolved soon, but there is some 2012 news to report…

–The Finnish Literature Exchange has awarded our Cheeky Frawg imprint two substantial translation grants: one for Jyrki Vainonen’s collection The Explorer & Other Stories and the other for Leena Krohn’s novel Datura. We plan to publish both in the fall of this year. Other Cheeky Frawg news will follow, but we have also reached agreement to do an ebook version of Jess Nevin’s The Encyclopedia of Victoriana.

–The graphic novel version of my story “The Situation” is now complete, with the art by Eric Orchard, and will run on the Tor.com site later this month (I believe).

–Pod Castle will be recording my story “The Cage” for audio posting later this year.

–Ann and I will be teaching at Trinity Prep in Orlando in February, and will also have a bookstore event to be announced. In addition, we will be guests of honor at the Victoria Steampunk Convention being held in April.

–We will also be attending the ICFA conference in Orlando–Ann is on two panels and I am on a panel and have a reading. We also hope to meet with many academics about our work on the massive The Weird anthology and also on the topic of translations, in addition to beginning to move toward Weirdfictionreview.com accepting unsolicited critical papers for posting.

–Ann will soon announce two new anthologies she will be editing, and we are jointly editing a feminist SF/F antho, with more details on that shortly. I will have new book projects to announce in another month or so.

That’s all I have to report for now. Please feel free to use the comments thread to tell me what you’ve been up to!

(Thanks to Jeremy Zerfoss for the WFR holiday e-card.)

I would just like to wish everyone happy holidays, and thank you for reading both here and at Weird Fiction Review (where we just published our last, very exciting, posts for the year.)

It’s been a long year, but a productive one, and it has been enriched by knowing so many creative, talented, wonderful people.

This blog will be on hiatus until January 9. In the meantime, feel free to use this thread to tell me what you’re up to.

Also check out Omnivoracious.com, where some of my pre-scheduled posts, including overlooked books from 2011, will run over the holidays.

Much Love,

JeffV

Shared Worlds, the teen SF/F writing camp I help run along with Jeremy L.C. Jones out of Wofford College, South Carolina, has several announcements!

First off, our 2012 guest writers will include: Julianna Baggott, Tobias Buckell, Will Hindmarch, Karin Lowachee, and Naomi Novik. Ann VanderMeer will be our visiting editor guest. I will also be attending as an instructor.

Second, we’re now open for registration for the 2012 camp, to be held July 22 through August 4.

Third, we now have a dedicated donation page. Donations help offset expenses, allow us to offer more need-based scholarships, and are tax-deductible.

Fourth, a PDF of the Shared Worlds student writing book from 2011, designed by Jeremy Zerfoss, is now available on the SW website. If you download it, please consider making a donation to Shared Worlds! Thanks to Prime Books, who will be helping provide the print version in the next month or so.

Many thanks to Amazon.com for a grant that help ensure Shared Worlds continues to thrive. Thanks for donations from, among others, Warren Lapine and Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman. (Donate! You’ll feel good!)

Below the cut, find more on our guest writers for 2012…

(more…)

(more great jeremy zerfoss art…)

As we enter the final two weeks of content-posting for Weirdfictionreview.com for 2011 (we’re on vacation after Dec. 20), you’ll find a lot of wonderful material going live.

This week, for example, we just posted the following:

—A Holiday Book Gift Guide for the Weirdie in your life

—An appreciation of Leonora Carrington’s story by S.J. Chambers
—Episode #7 of Leah Thomas’s amazing web comic “Reading the Weird,” based on Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life,” along with posting the Bixby story itself.

—Edward Gauvin’s Weird Questionnaire (fascinating stuff!)

—Kathe Koja’s surreal short story “The Neglected Garden”.
—Leopoldo Lugones’ 1906 short story “The Bloat Toad”, along with Larry Nolen’s short essay on translating the piece.

—An interview with Deadfall Hotel author Steve Rasnic Tem

So, go visit Weirdfictionreview.com, and enjoy! Thursday we’ll have a mini-update before our grand finale December 19.

(Visit Weirdfictionreview.com for tons of awesome weird content only tangentially connected to this antho.)

The massive UK edition of THE WEIRD: A COMPENDIUM OF STRANGE AND DARK STORIES, which has devoured our lives for so long, has been chugging along and appears to be a favorite holiday gift for many–now available for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk, in addition to the print version. (Table of contents of this 750,000-word, almost 1,200-page century-covering antho, with 116 stories can be found here if you’ve missed it.) Everyone from Stephen King and Angela Carter to Jamaica Kincaid and Shirley Jackson, Julio Cortazar to Kelly Link, with seven translations specially commissioned for the antho.

In addition to a hilarious shout-out at the Guardian online, a great review in the Financial Times, four stars from Time Out London, and being SF Books book of the month (you can vote for the antho in their annual poll), here are some quotes from other reviews:

“The definitive collection of weird fiction, 110 stories from the early 1900s to the present…a massive undertaking, and its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkably different and yet share a theme: the phenomenal world is merely a shadow and the numinous is an inscrutable, sometimes hostile, reality.” – The Times Literary Supplement

“[An] incredible anthology…a tremendous experience going through its 1,126 pages. There are so many delights that any reader will find something truly memorable.” – Scotland on Sunday

“A behemoth filled with stories of genre-bending strangeness.” – Easy Living

Story-by-story reviews have been started by Maureen Kincaid Speller and finished by Des Lewis. Here are also links to two interviews:

Radio 1, Ireland

GavReads

Finally, we’re happy to announce that Liza Gorinsky at Tor Books has acquired the North American rights to The Weird. The anthology will appear in a trade paperback format with a short-run of hardcovers as as an add-on, both in May 2012. The ebook will be available by February. A small contents change to the North American ebook: the Buzzati story will not be included but J. Robert Lennon’s “The Portal” from Weird Tales will be added. The print version will remain the same as the UK edition.

Here’s the cover of the North American edition:

(Feel free to re-post this image!)

We have launched a new website for Cheeky Frawg Books! Does it sell our ebooks? Yes! But very…cheekily. It’s an interactive and mysterious experience you won’t want to miss. Free content, hidden treasures, singing fish, the animated Myster Odd video, and, of course, the full catalogue of Cheeky Frawg ebooks, including Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month and the ODD? anthology, featuring Jeffrey Ford, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Amos Tutuola, Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson, and many more. Thanks for spreading the word!

Cheeky Frawg specializes in quality, self-aware e-books. We hand-craft every e-book on a letterpress using only the best, most perfectly formed 00000s and 111111s. Forthcoming titles include the legendary The Encyclopedia of Victoriana by Jess Nevins, It Came From the North: Finnish Weird, Jagganath by Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck and Don’t Pay Bad for Bad by iconic Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola.

Note: A percentage of direct sales of Cheeky Frawg ebooks in December will go to aid iconic fantasy editor, artist, and writer Terri Windling, who is suffering from financial woes.

Direct link to catalogue

Direct link to ODD?

HUGE THANKS to those who made this possible: Website created by Danny Fontaine; Design and images by Gregory Bossert; Book designs and the Cheeky Frawg logo by Jeremy Zerfoss.