Ann here, just posting briefly to say thanks to Michelle Richmond for such great guest blogging. Next week, Fabio Fernandes!

I also wanted show off the cover of the Czech edition of The New Weird, pictured above. The first foreign edition of anything with my name on it. I’m very excited. Laser Books (Martin Sust, editor) is the publisher. And, here is the cover art for the pirates antho, design still forthcoming:

Also note that the International Horror Guild Award finalists have been announced. I’m a judge and can tell you we worked very hard in coming up with this list.

In other news, Shared Worlds is happy to announce that Will Hindmarch will be joining the guest lecturers (including Tobias Buckell and Ekaterina Sedia). For those readers not familiar with Will, he is a Chicago-born freelance writer and designer with experience on more than fifty books as an author, developer, or graphic designer. In 2007, Will co-founded the gameplay-and-story outfit, Gameplaywright.net, with Jeff Tidball. He is also a proud contributor to the book, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, available from MIT Press. Will’s writing has appeared in The Escapist, Atlanta magazine, Everywhere magazine and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In 2007, he was a judge for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. In 2004, he and his wife moved to Atlanta, sight-unseen, like carpetbaggers, so he could become a professional lunatic for White Wolf Game Studio, serving as the developer of the flagship World of Darkness Storytelling Game, Vampire: The Requiem.

In connection with Shared Worlds, workshop director Jeremy Jones interviewed Jeff, mostly about Steampunk.

Finally, just so you know Jeff’s still alive, here are some photos he took recently to chronicle his recent activities. (He heads off to Shared Worlds Saturday and I get some well-earned peace…Remember that he and Buckell are reading at Malaprops on July 31.) Some of these photos may be cryptic. I’m happy to provide context if you have questions… (Also, thanks to Matt Staggs for many, many things.)

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(John Twelve Hawks [?] letter makes my Bulletin Board of the Miscellaneous)

Well, actually, I write now not to damn John Twelve Hawks, but to praise him. Some amongst you may remember that this past week I down-graded John Twelve Hawks to Eleven Turkeys and then, eventually One Sparrow–because of his reluctance to shed his pen name and come forth into the light.

Now, I have received the following missive, supposedly from John Twelve Hawks, and I find that, assuming the letter is indeed from him, I must praise him unreservedly for having a great and devious sense of humor.

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Many books to talk about in what will be my last books received piece for at least a week or two. First off, the Meg Gardiner novels pictured above. I really love this series, and so I bought the mass markets in the bookstore even though I have advance reader copies. Very nice packaging, too.

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For a couple of years now Kate Bernheimer, in addition to all of the other wonderful editing and writing she does, has been working on Fairy Tale Review, which she founded and now helms. Contributors have included Donna Tartt, Marina Warner, Rikki Ducornet, Stacey Levine, and many more. It’s a elegant production and always thought-provoking. I have to admit that I go through phases where I get tired of folklore and re-told folktales, but each issue of The Fairy Tale Review has been near perfect, and I read each one from cover to cover.

Very impressed with Valley of Day-Glo.

Excerpt:
Absurdist fictions tread a fine line. If they try too hard to present three-dimensional characters, they lose the pacing and quickness needed to pull off such a difficult task. If they, on the other hand, make too much fun of their characters or present characters that are too flat, the absurdity isn’t grounded in anything real. As important, good absurdism must be self-deprecating in a sense and must treat every human institution with similar suspicion. Finally, a great absurdist novel relies on fresh, uncliched images and should be, at times, biting rather than comfortable.

I loved all three of these books, as should be clear from the feature. Swamps, caves, and shorelines–how the heck can you go wrong?! I’m adding all three to my rec list on the right.

Excerpt:
But, for me at least, there’s another pleasure that comes from reading Walking the Wrack Line, and it’s selfishly personal. I’m one of those readers who also likes mucking about in tidal pools and searching the beach for seaweed, driftwood, and exotic creatures washed up far from home. On that level, Hurd’s book also has great appeal. Because nothing in Walking the Wrack Line seems false; instead, it’s as if someone had had the same experience, and knew the best way to get it down in prose.

Other than listing someone other than Ann VanderMeer as the fiction editor, a great review by Sam Taimano of the 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales at the SF Revue. “Creature” is, as noted, an exceptional first published story.

Excerpt:
The fiction begin with a beautiful, lyric tale from Tanith Lee, “The Heart of Ice”. Nirsen is thrown out of his town, falsely accused of rape. He awakens to find himself out on the cold and snow but finds his way to the palace of the Ice Maiden. He spends the winter there and emerges deeply changed. Next we have the first published story by Ramsey Shehadeh, “Creature”. An amorphous beast with psychic powers approaches a town. He encounters a poor, little girl who is looking for her mother. There are those that would harm the girl and he becomes her protector. Shehadeh has written a touching, very compassionate story and I will be looking forward to more from him.

I’m over John Twelve Hawks, unless he personally comes to my house and reveals his identity. For every day he doesn’t, I’m down-grading him:

July 2-12:
John Eleven Turkeys
John Ten Rheas
John Nine Guinea Fowl
John Eight Geese
John Seven Vultures
John Six Kiwis
John Five Finches
John Four Mockingbirds
John Three Seagulls
John Two Pigeons
John One Sparrow

And more detail on the graphic novels:

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Ursula Pflug reviews The New Weirdon IRofSF. Nice, eccentric, and nuanced review. Lots of other cool content, too. You have to sign up to get a login and password.

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Here’s my interview with Jack O’Connell on Amazon. A pretty comprehensive interview, with detailed intel on his magnificent rustbelt imaginary city. Please spread this far and wide if you’re an O’Connell fan.

Excerpt:
Basically, and over time, Quinsigamond became my supreme noir machine, the eternally dark and unknowable American metropolis. A nefarious, urban, capitalist hive where cycles of mystery, violence, manipulation, degradation, fear, loathing and meaninglessness play out repeatedly. Quinsigamond is the enormous, shadowy, chaotic, violent city that you have seen in so many films: It is Alphaville. It is Chinatown. It is Gotham City, Sin City, the Naked City. It is the Asphalt Jungle, the Nightmare Alley, the Shock Corridor and the Street of No Return.