It’s been a banner year for VanderMeer projects that look beautiful and read beautiful, so we thought we’d put together a little Totally Self-Serving Yet Glorious Gift Guide as a reminder for those of you searching around for something cool to give your friends, loved ones, or even people you hate this holiday season. Best of all, these are sumptuous gifts, but also relatively inexpensive.

THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
(HarperVoyager, Ann & Jeff, eds.) – Published in an oversized hardcover printed on the boards with slightly raised lettering and containing over 70 unique illustrations from the likes of Mike Mignola, John Coulthart, Greg Broadmore, Yishan-Li, Jan Svankmajer, China Mieville, and Myrtle Von Damitz III, this would be a collector’s item for the art alone. But it also contains original fiction from an absolute plethora of fantasy’s greatest writers, including: Jeffrey Ford, Holly Black, Lev Grossman, Naomi Novik, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, China Mieville, Amal El-Mohtar, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Charles Yu, N.K. Jemisin, Helen Oyeyemi, Ted Chiang, Cherie Priest, Carrie Vaughn, and more than 50 others. It’s a treasury of modern fantasy, recently receiving raves from SF Site and Pop Matters. Also check out the io9 slideshow for more images or read Kiernan’s story from the anthology on Weirdfictionreview.com.

THE STEAMPUNK BIBLE
(Abrams Image, Jeff with S.J. Chambers) – A sumptuous hardcover with raised lettering on the boards-printed cover that evokes Jules Verne, and containing a lively mix of over 200 full-color images and text on everything from Steampunk fashion to literature, making, and more. Featured on the CBS Morning Show in November and profiled in the LA Times, this awesome coffee table book is perfect eye candy but also provides an essential overview of this retro-futuristic movement. Featuring Forevertron Park, the Steampunk Treehouse, the Island of Machines in France, a Steampunk wedding or two, Weta Workshop rayguns, and a Jake von Slatt project. It also includes short essays from Catherynne M. Valente and Jess Nevins, and interviews with Sean Orlando, Scott Westerfeld, and HUMANWINE, among others. The Bible recently made best-of holiday gift lists from MTV and the SyFy Channel and has been spotlighted in the New York Times, Wired.com, and the Wall Street Journal.

THE WEIRD: A COMPENDIUM OF STRANGE AND DARK STORIES (Atlantic/Corvus, Ann & Jeff) – How can you go wrong with 750,000-words of reprinted weird/uncanny fiction covering one hundred years and taking up almost 1,200 pages in an oversized trade paperback? (The two-column format actually reads beautifully.) Authors featured include Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Alfred Kubin, Tanith Lee, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, Leonora Carrington, Mervyn Peake, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kelly Link, Haruki Murakami, Ben Okri, Jamaica Kincaid, Jean Ray, Michael Chabon, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Octavia E. Butler, Thomas Ligotti, Angela Carter, Daphne du Maurier, Robert Bloch, and many more–116 stories in all (full TOC here). Sporting a foreweird by Michael Moorcock and afterweird by China Mieville. As featured on the Irish radio show Arena, in the Guardian Online, the Scotsman, and more. (Available for US/Canada readers through the Book Depository.)

ODD? (Cheeky Frawg, Ann & Jeff) – A kind of e-book companion to The Weird, ODD? this new anthology series is devoted to eclectic fiction, usually with a fantastical, horrific, magic realist, or surrealist approach. As the subtitle of “Is it odd or are you too normal?” suggests, “odd” is a truly subjective evaluation. One person’s “what the heck?!” is another person’s “eh—saw that yesterday.” Each volume will contain reprints (some of them not available otherwise except in expensive limited editions), previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories. Authors in volume 1 include Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford, Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson, translations by Gio Clairval, Brian Evenson, and Larry Nolen, Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck, and many more. Oh, it’s odd all right. You can buy it from the usual suspects, or click here for subscription and Oddkin information, as well as the full table of contents.

Also:

THE KOSHER GUIDE TO IMAGINARY ANIMALS
(Tachyon/Cheeky Frawg) – A perfect little gift book also available as an ebook, from 2010. You know you want it. It’s silly, it’s insane, it’s beautiful. More info on the website, including reviews.

And, from the author, limited edition, numbered and signed copies of both Secret Lives, a series of humorous short fictions by Jeff, and The Three Quests of the Wizard Sarnod, a lovely little hardcover designed by the amazing John Coulthart, containing the extended version of Jeff’s Jack Vance Dying Earth story. Inquire at vanderworld at hotmail.com for details and indicate what country is being shipped to. These copies come fully personalized with an illustration from Jeff, as so desired, and can be gift wrapped and sent directly as presents. (And a limited number of copies of Jeff’s novel Finch complete with the Murder by Death Finch CD are available, too.)

Next week: We unveil our new Cheeky Frawg site, with a full range of selections for the aficionado of the electronic form, free electronic holiday wrapping, and more…In the meantime, you can peruse our page with buying links here.

My wife Ann VanderMeer, co-editor of The Weird, our 750,000-word, nearly 1,200-page anthology of weird fiction covering 100 years, will be in Amsterdam soon and is doing an event at the American Book Center. It’s Thursday, December 8, starting at 18:30. My understanding is that she’ll be saying a few words about The Weird, answering questions, and signing books. If you’re in the city that week, consider stopping by. This is the only European event for the book, and there’s more information at the ABC site.

And don’t forget—we’ve posted this week’s content on Weirdfictionreview.com, including an essay by China Mieville, fiction by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and more!

In other news, SF Book News has chosen The Weird as their book of the month for December. Also, it’s available for Kindle now to non-North American readers.

First off, our Thanksgiving did involve birds, but not turkeys, as chronicled by the mighty Sir Tessa, whose quest for bears ended in turmoil involving Fred, the Beagle, and some talons.

Second, I just reviewed the Crichton/Preston novel Micro for the LA Times. In a nutshell…lifeless with some exceptional descriptions of miniature things made big. You can find pulse-pounding thriller entertainment elsewhere that’s much better.

Third, we posted the fifth week of Weirdfictionreview, including fiction from Caitlin R. Kiernan, an essay by China Mieville, interview with Liz Williams, and Leah Thomas’s web comic. Go check it out, including this blog post which details some great press for our The Weird anthology.

Fourth, no, this blog is not in hibernation, and I’m not in hibernation. We’re just working on a lot of stuff, including a very cool Cheeky Frawg website, more content for WFR.com, a little something I’m writing called The Book Murderer, and some short story assignments and more book reviews. I’ll resume my serial novel The Journals of Doctor Mormeck shortly and some other posts for this blog will appear.

As noted down-stream, I am taking on critique work right now, too.

Our friend Dominik Petr just finished a piece based on my mosaic novel City of Saints & Madmen, for a showing at Gallery Nemesis in Prague (December). It’s pretty darn cool. Previously, he’d done material for Veniss Underground.

Over at Weirdfictionreview, We’ve posted episode #4 of Leah Thomas’s intriguing web comic on Reading The Weird, which has become two mysterious characters’ epic quest across weird fiction. This latest installment is one of my favorites, as the story arc begins to become darker. That the series features the axolotl from Cortazar’s famous story is great, too.

Leah Thomas’s interview about the comic and her reading as a kid is really wonderful, too.

Meanwhile, we just did an interview for Ireland-based radio program Arena that will run next week, about The Weird compendium, and features have appeared at the Guardian online and the Financial Times, with more to come.

I’ll be freed up for taking on more fiction critiques to commence December 1st. If you’re interested, contact me at vanderworld at hotmail.com for rates and more information. I’m equally at home with stories as with novels, and I also am experienced with all types of fiction except Westerns, so…

The full critique service provides you with handwritten specific comments on the manuscript itself and an email of comments that apply not only to your story or novel but also your writing in general. Usually, I provide a summation and then also a break-down into elements like Characterization, Dialogue, Setting, etc. My goal is not to get repeat business because I give you something comprehensive that carries forward into your future fiction.

For those coming here for the first time, I’m a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and writer who has edited several critically acclaimed anthologies and made the year’s best lists of Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and more. I’ve taught several times at the Clarion Writers Workshops, once at Odyssey and at the Hugo House, Brisbane Writers Festival and other international events, and done mainstream literary workshops as well as focused on fantastical fiction.

Just a bit of official news: Ann and I are now represented by Sally Harding from the Cooke Agency. I’m happy to forward any inquiries about book rights or new projects to her, but the international rights division can be contacted at rights at cookeinternational.com and the Cooke Agency’s general email is agents at cookeagency.ca. We’ve known Sally for awhile, referred writers to her, and we are happy to be represented by her. (Also thrilled that her clients include Karen Lord and Jesse Bullington.)

With The Weird anthology having taken up all of our time, we’ve been between projects, but I can say that Ann is beginning preliminary work on two anthologies she will be editing solo, we’re sending out the bestiary antho soon (mentioned on this blog in the past), and we are together working on the ultimate, huge time travel fiction anthology, mostly reprints. In terms of my own fiction, I’m continuing on the Journals of Doctor Mormeck, finishing up Borne, and beginning to collaborate with Karin Lowachee on another project.

In addition, The Situation web comic with Eric Orchard is in the final stages of lettering, and will go up on the Tor.com website soonish. My other project with Eric, Bellysnatcher, is about one-third completed, and is based on a notebook of paintings and drawings he sent me. I also expect art from Richard A. Kirk in the next few months to start on Fungicide: New Tales of Ambergris.

Wonderbook: The Essential Illustrated Guide to Writing Fantastical Fiction, for Abrams Image, is now scheduled for spring 2013, giving me a little more time to finish it off. John Coulthart is the designer on that project.

Meanwhile, Weirdfictionreview.com has turned out to be a big success and will be a nexus for our other efforts over the coming years. This week we’ve already posted work by Leena Krohn and the latest episode of the web comic. Tomorrow, Michal Ajvaz, with Kafka on Wednesday.

As Ann and I go forward, we are eager to balance and realistically pursue our various passions, which basically take three forms: to be of use in preserving the history of fantastical fiction and adding to a general understanding of it, especially the weirder stuff, to continue to write the fiction that is most personal to me in conjunction with Ann’s love for finding and publishing great fiction, and to be of use to the future of this kind of fiction through efforts like the Shared Worlds SF/F teen writing workshop.

Obviously, this is all a lot of work and a lot of things to keep balanced, and we’re indebted to the wonderful people who have been willing to help us with much of it. This has made it a lot easier to make various efforts a reality, and we’ll be specifically mentioning people soon.

One casuality of other projects, however, has been the Last Drink Bird Head service awards, which we simply were not able to get off the ground this year. We promise to find the resources to resurrect it next year.

Over at Weirdfictionreview.com we’re running a little weekend contest. Go check it out and give us your choice for where you’d like to go to school…

Meanwhile, Des Lewis and Maureen Kincaid-Speller continue their explorations of The Weird compendium.

Next week I’ll return with more of my serialized novel, The Journals of Doctor Mormeck and news about the US publication of The Weird (next year).

Check out the latest entries posted at Weirdfictionreview.com today, including an extensive interview with weird fiction legend Thomas Ligotti and one of his favorite “under-rated” classics by Jean Ferry in our fiction section.

We’ve also got a post on some heroic readings-in-progress, story by story. As we say there, although there is a lot of coverage forthcoming for The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories in the UK is November 10 (Book Depository has free shipping to the US), in the meantime a couple of intrepid reviewers have already begun to tackle The Beast, story by story: D.F. Lewis and Maureen Kincaid-Speller. This is an act of extreme heroism, as far as we are concerned, no matter what their reactions to the anthology over all and we applaud them for it. Here are the relevant links to their read-throughs:

D.F. Lewis’s “Real-Time Reviews”
(he also coined the term “srednidipity while reading The Weird)

–Post introducing the anthology and covering the stories by Alfred Kubin, F. Marion Crawford, Algernon Blackwood, Saki, and M.R. James.

–Post covering stories by Lord Dunsany, Gustav Meyrink, Georg Heym, Hans Heinz Ewers, Rabindranath Tagore, Luigi Ugolini, A. Merritt, Ry?nosuke Akutagawa, and Francis Stevens thus far, with the post being updated as Lewis finishes each new story.

(Corvus’s page and Book Depository listing with free shipping to the US.)

As you may know from prior entries on this blog, Ann VanderMeer and I launched Weirdfictionreview.com this past week with a great selection of interviews, features, comics, fiction, and art. Week two is no different. Here’s a run-down of what we posted today and, under the cut, previews from the rest of the week…

Excerpt from China Mieville’s Afterword to The Weird compendium:
“These are strange aeons. These texts, dead and/or not, burrow, and we cannot predict everything they will infect or eat their path through. But certainly your brain, and they will eat the books you read from today on, too. That is how the Weird recruits….This is a worm farm. These stories are worms.”

Reading the Weird, Leah Thomas’s original web comic, episode 2:
“The point is it was awful. He liked attributing deep meaning to my brothers’ lazy idiocy.”

Webcomic Creator Leah Thomas Interview, talking about Sandkings, Scary Stories, and More:
“Is there any family that isn’t weird? My parents are both full-time social workers, so ‘weird’ doesn’t really exist for them anymore. In any case, I am grateful that they raised me on a steady stream of strange.”

Classic Algernon Blackwood story “The Willows”:
“But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.”

Coming up Tuesday through Thursday of this week:

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