Madras Press, run by Sumanth Prabhaker, is one of my two favorite new publishers (the second being the Dorothy Project). Madras produces these absolutely perfect little editions of stories in book form. In the case of the one above, a special edition of Kelly Link’s great story “Stone Animals” with illustrations by, among others, Lev Grossman, Daniel Handler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Laura Miller, and Audrey Niffenegger. Wow. It’s a gem.

As with all Madras Press editions, including the three pictured directly below, the proceeds go to charities, a different one for each book. Go check out their website and buy, buy, buy!

Also in the mail today—it was a truly bountiful day—were lit mags, a novel by a new writer, from Small Beer, a Small Beer collection by Nancy Kress (one of my Clarion instructors), nonfiction by Michael Moorcock, a novel by Matt Bell, and an intriguing-looking novel from Angry Robot, all pictured below the cut.

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Going to start posting brief quotes from research for various projects, stuff I find either interesting, provocative, or nuts…

Excerpt:

“I should like to say a few words anent one or two point which P. Schuyler Miller raises in his interesting letter in the June Wonder Stories…Personally, I cannot see that science fiction is, as he puts it, ‘unfortunately limited’ in its range of expression. At least, I do not think that a type of literature so avowedly imaginative would benefit materially by invading, as so much modern fiction has done, the field of clinical analysis and sex-physiology. That sort of thing has been done ad infinitum and ad nauseum by non-imaginative writers, such as are favored by the professional ‘intelligentsia’ of our sex-demented republic; and one of the most refreshing things about science fiction, and fantastic fiction in general, is the avoidance of such triteness.”

–Discovered in “On Garbage-Mongering,” from Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays of Clark Ashton Smith (edited by Charles K. Wolfe), reprinted therein from WONDER STORIES, “The Reader Speaks” column, August 1932, p. 281.

(looking for the weird)

I’ve been a bit silent on the blog the last couple of weeks, mostly because I’ve been struck by a novel idea that’s working through my thoughts quite a bit, and onto the page as well. One of the pivotal images is of the main character leaning on a sea wall made of coquina in a seaside city somewhat like a larger St. Augustine, Florida. It’s the character’s safe place, in a sense, where a sense of calm settles over him and an idea that came to me when Tessa Kum was visiting us and we took a ghost tour in St. Augustine that included the old fort. It’s from there that the character became more than satirical or a cardboard cut-out to prove a point.

The sea wall is a potent image for me, too, because the ocean and the beach have always had a powerful effect on me, and leaning on the sea wall, looking out over the marsh flats and the water of the bay is as calming for me as for the character. It gives me an affinity for the character, a way in to understanding by transference of my own emotion to the character, and then, in a sense, back again.

Standing there that night, too, I was thinking of the ways in which I’m in transition. There is before Ambergris (the setting of my three main novels) and after Ambergris, and there is also before The Weird and after The Weird, in terms of anthologies edited. On the other side of this sea wall there’s another and different world. It may share similarities to the old world, but only a few, I think.

Today, we went to a different part of Florida, Apalachicola, with our friend Cat Sparks, and had a lovely time on the coast, enjoying an oyster festival, a walk around the shops, and then a meal by the beach. The coastline along the way is beautiful but often also with a sense of starkness or desolation, in part due to the enduring signs of wreckage from hurricanes. Whole towns here have become unpopulated and been returned to the vegetation. The ruins of old time attractions made irrelevant by Disney are also hidden here and there. Wildlife is in abundance, thriving due to a unique ecosystem and quite frankly the recession, which killed the murderous real estate deals that might have threatened them. It’s called the “forgotten coast” but it’s not really forgotten, it’s just more mysterious and in some ways more full of life than other places in Florida.

There was no sea wall, but it felt as if there were in a strange way, and in talking about writing and publishing and editing, about finding commonalities with people and about, really, the idea of being passionate and engaged in what you do, I’m seeing more and more clearly the course for new novels, more outreach, more teaching, and more work with translations.

I’ll be posting sporadically for the next week, because we are definitely in transition, with new projects in the works but not yet at the point where they can be announced, and a lot of fiction to write.

(Ann’s photo of me and Cat Sparks on the coast today.)

Omnivoracious just posted my interview with Murakami, which was fun, especially asking him this question:

Time Magazine recently provided a list of your novels ranked by the number of cat appearances in them. When you were a beginning writer, is this one of the future realities you anticipated, and do you find it funny or odd that someone was tasked with counting Murakami cats?

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Over on Weirdfictionreview.com, Edward Gauvin has reproduced a “Weird Questionnaire” developed by the French. I’ll leave you to peruse the details over there, but over here I am posting my answers to what are at times uncomfortable questions. Perhaps you too will answer the questions and post your answers. If so, please cross-link to Gauvin’s post.

1. Write the first sentence of a novel, short story, or book of the weird yet to be written.

There was a whirring in the back of the shop that did not equate to the clocks, but was not a cricket, either, and nothing he could think of explained it.

2. Without looking at your watch: what time is it?

12:01

3. Look at your watch. What time is it?

12:03

4. How do you explain this?—?or these?—?discrepancy(ies) in time?

Discrepancies in time are mostly about the ways in which our activities stretch or shorten it. But also about the ways time has become fragmented. The discrepancy in the time as it exists and my idea of time is so small because we have no way of escaping representations of time in this age.

5. Do you believe in meteorological predictions?

Yes, to some extent.

6. Do you believe in astrological predictions?

No, except inasmuch that those who believe in them are then thus influenced in their behavior. They are haunted by these predictions and through the haunting sometimes they come true.

7. Do you gaze at the sky and stars by night?

Yes

8. What do you think of the sky and stars by night?

Overwhelming and troubling and sad and unknowable and in that vastness there is an odd comfort because it keeps humankind’s accomplishments small and in a tiny corner of something larger.

9. What were you looking at before starting this questionnaire?

A bad book of SF stories by a Catalan writer named Manuel de Pedrolo from the 1960s.

10. What do cathedrals, churches, mosques, shrines, synagogues, and other religious monuments inspire in you?

Transformation. I am continually transforming them from their purpose when I enter them, especially the more ornate they are. I don’t care what they’re really for—I just keep seeing them as something else, and repurposing the parts of them as if they were the parts of something else—the ribs of a behemoth, instead of cathedral arches, for example.

11. What would you have “seen” if you’d been blind?

I would’ve seen more texture, which is itself an entirely other land that we tend to forget, and I would have noticed more the way that in cathedrals the air pushes out and in in strange ways and how there can be pockets of quite icy air and it can be hot other places, and although this has a real explanation, the encounter of it on the skin is often unexpected and raises a kind of primal response.

12. What would you want to see if you were blind?

I would want to completely absorb myself in texture and touch. This is a world that would be, in the context of blindness, perhaps both scary and at the same time revelatory and would change my entire perception of the world. In fact, I might want for a time to only have the ability to absorb this kind of sensation.

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(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.

MORD HAS JOINED REPUBLICAN PARTY. MORD MORE HARDCORE THAN ANY REPUB CANDIDATE. VOTE MORD IN IOWA AND ALL OTHER PRIMARIES AS RIP-IN CANDIDATE.

MORD ASK VOTER TO CONSIDER HOW MUCH BETTER MORD THAN ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE:

—MORD NEVER MARRIED SO NOT CHEAT ON ANY WIVES BUT IF HAD WIVES WOULD DEVOUR THEM
—MORD BELIEVE IN LIMITED PROTEIN-BASED ROLE FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
—MORD FIND REPUBLICAN VOTERS SUCCULENT
—MORD CHANGES MORD’S POSITION ON ISSUES EVERY DAY DEPENDING ON HOW IT AFFECTS PROTEIN INTAKE.
—MORD “STUMP” SPEECHES MORE VISCERAL, LESS COHERENT
—MORD’S ROCKS NOT HAVE STUPID WRITING ON THEM
—MORD NEVER NOT BALANCED ANY BUDGETS
—MORD ONLY WANT TO ARM BEARS

MORD MAKE ONLY TWO PROMISES IF WIN REPUB NOMINATION AND MORD BREAK NEITHER:

—MORD HONOR ALL LOSING CANDIDATES…IN HIS BELLY.
—MORD HONOR REPUBLICAN DELEGATES AT CONVENTION…IN HIS BELLY

MORD THEN RUN ON SURVIVAL PROTEIN PLATFORM AND SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING…IN HIS BELLY.

Our friend Sir Tessa has been conducting a kind of tour of the most desirable places in the world, which of course included our part of Florida. Thus, the indelible moment pictured above in which we all three stood mouths agape as a bald eagle at St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge first separated a duck from the floating flock, then waited for it to surface, and skimming along the water, plunged down upon it, and drown-taloned it before flying off with it. At which point Ann uttered the immortal words, “He’s not going to eat it, is he?!” (She’s very nice, my wife.) As chronicled by Sir Tessa here.

In addition, Sir Tessa has been having muppets made, hanging out in North Carolina, and, oh yes, visiting Iceland’s famous penis museum, when she hasn’t been freezing her butt off. Go check out her ongoing adventures…

(Thanks JZ.)

(My video of Chamblin’s, with voice-over text from my Ambergris stories.)

We made another pilgrimage to Chamblin’s Book Mine in Jacksonville, Florida, this past weekend, this time with Sir Tessa accompanying us. The place is larger than last time—it has to be the equal of Powell’s, and larger than any other used bookstore in the US, for sure. The video above should help attest to that.

We focused on trading books in for a selection of anthologies and author collections to further our research for future projects. This also helped alleviate the burden of books in the house. Chamblin’s cash for books percentage isn’t all that great, but in terms of trade credit, it meant we could acquire everything set out below the break without spending a penny.

I must say, though, their general anthology section hasn’t been touched in years. The amount of dust on our hands by the time we’d finished browsing through them…took a lot of washing off. This truly is a book mine, and even just the mystery section is as big as a normal bookstore. There are also some amusing juxtapositions of rooms, given the way Chamblin’s has gradually annexed additional space around the initial building. Thus this photo, with Men’s Studies sharing some prime real estate…

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There’s a lot of nonfiction and fiction today at Weirdfictionreview.com, most of it focused on Michel Bernanos and Jean Ray.

But there’s also Scott Nicolay’s Dogme 2011 for the Weird. It’s basically one writer’s credo about what he thinks will keep his weird fiction more original and unique.

You might or might not agree with it, but I think it’s useful to think about. It’s a list that most if not all of my own fiction adheres. In thinking about what weird fiction is, and how engages with the reader, it’s absolutely right to put forward, for example, the idea of not using werewolves, vampires, or zombies. Nothing can ever stop being innovative or fresh in a good writer’s hands, but the field is so overcrowded with these archetypal monsters that the effects created in fiction using them are not really part of the weird. They belong to horror or other types of fiction. There cannot be the frisson of discovery or of encountering the unknown crucial to the weird, due to the baggage these monsters bring with them. They have been overly contextualized.

Anyway, love it or hate it, I suggest you go check out Nicolay’s points.