It’s been ages since I had the opportunity to attend ReaderCon, but I’m going this year (after teaching at Stone Coast). I’ll be there from the afternoon on Friday through Sunday afternoon. Looking forward to meeting a lot of cool people and having a lot of fun. Meanwhile, here’s my schedule—below. I’m thrilled to be paired with Chip and Gemma, and the panels are exciting; this is one of the few times the panel topics fascinated me. And to get to discuss Tutuola’s work is a real thrill, too. You’ll also note a first: my first reading of an excerpt from my brand-new novel…See you there!

5:30 PM VT Reading. Jeff VanderMeer. Jeff VanderMeer reads from his new novel Annihilation, about an expedition sent into the mysterious Area X (also known as the Southern Reach) and what befalls them.

7:00 PM G The Literature of Estrangement. Christopher Brown, Lila Garrott (leader), Greer Gilman, Anil Menon, Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Witcover. In a 2011 interview in The Guardian concerning the paucity of SF and fantasy texts among Booker nominees (and, we might add, Pulitzers or National Book Awards in the U.S.), China Miéville suggested repositioning the debate as not between the realistic and the fantastic, but between “the literature of recognition versus that of estrangement,” though he admitted that “the distinction maps only imperfectly across the generic divide” and that “all fiction contains elements of both drives.” Is this a more useful set of terms for discussing the familiar schism? Does it reveal literary alignments in an inventive new way? Or is it simply cutting the same cake at a different angle?

9:00 PM RI Readercon Classic Fiction Book Club: The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Michael Cisco, Sarah Smith, John H. Stevens, Michael Swanwick (leader), Jeff VanderMeer. The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a classic of world literature, a vivid, exhilarating, and linguistically breathtaking tale of a fantastic quest. The novel is based on Yoruba folktales, but Amos Tutuola makes them uniquely his own. In a 1997 obituary for Tutuola in The Independent, Alastair Niven wrote: “Tutuola was a born story-teller, taking traditional oral material and re-imagining it inimitably. In this way he was, though very different in method and craft, the Grimm or Perrault of Nigerian story-telling, refashioning old tales in a unique way which made them speak across cultures.” Now, 60 years after it was first released, The Palm-Wine Drinkard stands as the best sort of classic: one that remains a pleasure to read, but that opens up new readings with each encounter.

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My WONDERBOOK: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction for Abrams Image is well on its way to being finalized, with publication set for 2013. This will be the first creative writing guide that doesn’t just supplement text with images, but replaces text with image. In fact, its 300 pages will include over 175 diagrams, illustrations, and photographs. The diagrams will be radically different from what you find in most writing books, and the integration of the text with image will also be something you haven’t seen before.

The cover above is a rough, but close to being final—it’s by Jeremy Zerfoss, who is doing the majority of the art, and the design of the book. The image below is an example of one of the ways in which this approach can be useful in teaching creative writing. Writer and filmmaker Gregory Bossert is planning to create an animated tutorial around the prologue fish.

The main text will include chapters on Inspiration, Elements of Story, Beginnings & Endings, Writing & Revision, The Bleeding Edge, and a special chapter on writing exercises that I think will blow most people’s minds visually—and will set out all of the things my wife and I do in our workshops and masterclasses. Elements like Characterization will be woven into the discussion in all of the chapters, since separating out the people from the story seems pointless to me.

In addition, the book will feature short essays on a variety of writing-related subjects by Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman, Karen Joy Fowler, Lauren Beukes, Charles Yu, Karin Lowachee, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Moorcock, and several others, as well as a long exclusive discussion about craft with George R.R. Martin. A comprehensive list of over 700 essential non-realist novels is just one item of interest in the appendices. The format of the book will allow annotations and asides in the margins for additional value.

Another unique aspect of the book is that it makes no distinctions between artificial boundaries between mainstream and genre, and it takes as its foundation fantastical literature. Which is to say, Wonderbook will be of use to any beginning or intermediate writer, but assumes a default of the fantastical. On facebook awhile back I indicated I was trying to create a new visual language for teaching creative writing. In retrospect, that was a grandiose claim. But I do think we have accomplished something special regardless.

Just a short note about ongoing projects. Because of our focus on the feminist spec fic anthology (see blog entry below), we’re pushing Odd back to the fall/winter and will be in touch with subscribers about a restructured schedule by Sept/October. Leviathan 5 is being pushed into 2013-14 on Chizine’s schedule for similar reasons. The feminist spec fic antho is hundreds of hours of work for an honorarium, Odd is a start-up, and Leviathan would be more work for free. The honest truth is that we can only absorb the time/money loss of one gratis or start-up project at a time, so we hope you’ll understand these delays. The feminist spec fic anthology was a wonderful opportunity, but we have to surround it with paying projects.

We’ve also just come off the busiest two years of our lives, with The Weird and other books, and I’m just getting back into my own writing. So all of this factors into the decision. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks for your patience.

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer are pleased to announce a call for submissions for a new anthology on Feminist Speculative Literature.  This project will be published by PM Press under the guidance and co-publishing arrangement with Jef Smith of GeekRadical and is scheduled to be released in May 2013.  The anthology will emphasize women’s speculative fiction from the 1970s onward, looking to explore women’s rights as well as gender/race/class/etc. from as many perspectives as possible.  Although we already have stories and writers in mind we also know that we can’t see everything so are asking for submissions as well as suggestions. If in doubt, send it.

We will read submissions between June 15, 2012 and August 5, 2012. Any English-language story (or translation into English) previously published since 1970 on a website or in a print publication is eligible for consideration. Looking for reprints only (standard reprint rates apply).  Prefer works under 10,000 words.  Willing to look at all kinds of Feminist Speculative fiction, but mainly interested in work that pushes the boundaries, that is truly unique to the genre.

Submissions up to 10,000 words should be sent in a Word or RTF document attachment to femspecfic at hotmail.com. Please cut-and-paste the first three paragraphs into the body of your email and include prior publication information, but no need to include any biographical information about yourself. If you prefer, use snail mail by sending your work to POB 38190, Tallahassee, FL 32315, USA. Snail mail submissions should be marked on the outside of the envelope as for Feminist Spec Fic consideration. No SASE is required if you prefer email response. All submissions will be responded to no later than August 15, 2012; please do not query about a submission prior to that date. Those sending in their suggestions—thanks so much, and thanks for understanding that we will not have time to reply.

Payment will be on publication, at standard reprint rates of one to two cents per word, against a share of any royalties from the North American or foreign editions, as well as one contributor copy.

(Ann here: if you post questions as comments, I will do my best to answer in the comments as soon as possible – thx!)

UPDATE – Please limit the number of unique submissions per writer to 3 stories.  If you plan to send more than one, make sure we see the top, best 3 stories that fit this theme, thanks!

I’ve got a slew of deadlines between now and the middle of July. At least for the next month, possibly longer, I’ll be off the internet for the most part and only checking email in the evenings. You can still find material by me on Weirdfictionreview.com and Omnivoracious, the Amazon book blog, during this time—as well as reviews forthcoming at the Guardian and the LA Times, among others.

In this day and age, for me, dropping out and just working out of the house 24-7 is the only way to achieve the level of concentration needed. That includes stocking up on the right food! Yes, that’s right—as pictured above, including lots of antioxidents, lots of protein and complex carbs since it means a more sedentary lifestyle for a bit. Also food that doesn’t require any preparation and can be doled out in small portions so I can eat just a little bit six times a day and thus keep the right energy level throughout the whole day–and work the whole day without stopping. Also making sure the home gym is in working order in case I don’t get to the gym. I’m not particularly interested in coming out the other side and finding I’m less healthy. It’s a bit of a siege mentality, and may seem faintly ridiculous, but it’s necessary.

In other news, I am going to be teaching at Stonecoast in Maine (July 12), going to ReaderCon (July 13-15), and helping run the Shared Worlds writing camp (July 23-Aug 4), which will include public readings.

Since I’ll be dormant here, feel free to use the comments thread to tell me what you’re up to or to tell us about any new books. Just note that full URLs often trip up the spam filter here.

If I don’t respond promptly to email, please contact Ann. Don’t contact me via facebook email as I won’t be checking it.

Ann and I are thrilled to announce that not only did the kickstarter for the Feminist SF Anthology hit its $12,000 goal for full funding, but went over $15,000. The extra money will help in areas like funding translations and adding pages to the book. Thanks SO MUCH to Jef Smith for proposing this project to us and to everyone who contributed or helped signal boost. In the end, the contributions averaged out to about $31 per person—a true group effort. And every little bit helped.

Personally, I feel very proud of our community and as we now move on to the hard part—selecting stories—we very much feel a responsibility to do the best possible job we can on this project. It’ll be a tough job—we were just talking the other day about how the book could be 500,000 words and not include all of the great stuff we love. Winnowing it down is going to be excruciating and painful.

Ann will be reading unsolicited reprint submissions starting in mid-June (more on that next week) and I will be using part of July for research, traveling north to visit some private libraries. (This travel is not on the kickstarter’s dime.)

Again, thanks to everyone—you’re all incredible, awesome people. We really feel a little choked up right now over the support for this project, and we’re looking forward to getting to work.

Right, so I’ll make this short and sweet. Ann and I will be at BookExpo America in NYC next week promoting The Weird compendium from Tor Books. Media requests can be sent to our publicist at Tor, Alexis Nixon, or send ‘em to us at vanderworld at hotmail.com and we’ll forward them to Alexis.

Our schedule:

12:00pm, June 5, Tuesday—SF/F & The Mainstream Panel on the Uptown Stage, with John Scalzi and Walter Mosley (moderated by Ryan Britt)

11:30am to 12:30pm, June 6, Wednesday—Table 21, Main Autographing Area, autographing!

In addition, there’s a strong probability that we’re going to show up at both of the awesome events listed below. We’re not involved in them, but we’d like to support them…and given our limited time in New York City and other stuff we’ve got to do at BEA, it’ll be really the only time we can see friends. So join us, friends!

June 4, 7pm, Monday—Bookrageous BEA Bash with Brian Slattery, Lev Grossman, etc. Info here.

June 5, 7pm, Tuesday—NYRSF Reading with N.K. Jemisin and Ekaterina Sedia, guest curated by K. Tempest Bradford. Info here.

(Splash page for “Komodo” in Arc 1.2–art by Lydia Wong)

I posted here earlier about having had a novelette accepted by Arc Magazine, the awesome new glossy SF periodical being published by New Scientist in the UK. Well, it’s out now in Arc 1.2: Post Human Conditions–along with an amazing piece of art by Lydia Wong. Also in this issue of Arc, fiction by Nick Harkaway and features by Anne Gallaway, Frederick Pohl, and Regina Peldszus, among much other cool stuff. The first issue had fiction by Margaret Atwood and a lovely piece about China M. visiting squid and octopi at a marine lab. There’s ordering information here for electronic and print versions, and their blog entry about “Komodo” here.

I’m fairly excited about this story—it’s my longest published piece of fiction since my novel Finch came out in 2009–and I think Arc’s amazing look-and-feel is just what SF needs. It’s a stunningly beautiful magazine and I can’t wait to see what they get up to in the future. Always difficult to have the full sense of a magazine until you’ve read three or four issues.

Here’s the beginning of “Komodo”…

Child, standing there in your flower dress considering me with those wide dark eyes while the mariachi band plays out in the courtyard…I’m going to tell you a story. It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand me—they can, and they need to trust me, need to know I’m telling them this for a reason. But I need you, too, because every tale requires an audience, and you’re mine. So I hope you’ll stay awhile. It won’t take long. I don’t have long, anyway.

It starts in a strange place, I’ll admit, inside of a giant green plastic alien head. I was all dressed up. I was on my way to a party. Let’s say the party celebrated something like the Day of the Dead, and that I was in a hurry to get there not even because of looking forward to the party but to the after party. The after party is always where it’s at—if you can get an invite.

Just a note that the Huffington Post has run a slideshow featuring our list of 13 of the weirdest stories written in the past century, from our anthology The Weird. It’s an impossible task, but I think everything on the list, from Leena Krohn to Amos Tutuola, Kelly Link to Clive Barker…is pretty darn weird.

This week our anthology The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is officially on sale. All this week we’re posting original content over at Weirdfictionreview.com, including an exclusive interview with the son of Amos Tutuola, fiction from Tutuola, an interview with Kathe Koja, Georg Heym’s iconic poetic short-short “The Dissection” and an essay on Heym by Gio Clairval, among other features. However, ever since the site debuted in November, we’ve been posting content related to the anthology, so check out the archives.

How You Can Help!

If you like weird fiction and want to support huge honkin’ anthologies full of weird fiction, here are some of the things you can do to help. Note: The Weird is a May featured pick of Amazon, Kirkus, Powell’s, and io9!

—Buy the book. It’s currently selling for a good price for an oversized hardcover. Buy it for friends. Buy it for family. From your preferred seller:

Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Powell’sIndiebound

—Review the book. Blog, review site, or on a sandwich board in front of your local bookstore. Any mention, especially noting whatever you really liked about the book, helps immensely.

—Review it on Amazon. Go to the Amazon sales page for the book and tell other readers what you liked about it. A quick and easy way to help get the word out and create interest.

—Make sure local booksellers carry it. The anthology seems to have a strong presence in bookstores, but you can always encourage booksellers who aren’t stocking it. You can even tell them it’s by the same people that brought them the Steampunk anthologies.

—Request it from your local library. Making sure your local library knows about the anthology not only increases library orders but allows multiple people to enjoy the book.

—Spread the word through twitter and facebook. Tell people about the anthology through social media, using one of the links above to bookseller sites or link to one of these Weirdfictionreview.com posts:

The Weird’s table of contents
More information about The Weird
—Come to the events. Ann and I will be at BEA in June, I’ll be at Stonecoast in Maine and at ReaderCon in July, and we’ll also both be doing some events in the Carolinas in late July (to be announced). We’ll have details on the events shortly.

More Info on the Anthology

I think by now, if you’ve followed this blog, you know the idea behind The Weird, but in case you missed it…

THE WEIRD: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Tor Books (North American edition)
Foreword: Michael Moorcock
Introduction by the Editors
Afterword: China Mieville

Starred Reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist

Over one hundred years of weird fiction collected in a single volume of over 750,000 words, from around 1908 through 2010. Strands of The Weird represented include classic US/UK weird tales, the Belgian School of the Weird, Japanese weird, Latin American weird, Nigerian weird, weird SF, Feminist weird, weird ritual, general international weird, and offshoots of the weird originating with Surrealism, Symbolism, and the Decadent movement. The publishers believe this is the largest volume of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book.

‘The definitive collection of weird fiction… its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkable different and yet share the same theme’ TLS

‘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

‘Massive…and indispensible.’ The Guardian