Evil Monkey:
Jeff! You’ve come back to the land of the living. Man, I forgot how ugly you are.

Jeff:
Same here.

(more…)

Evil Monkey: Sound bite.

Jeff: What?

Evil Monkey: Sound bite.

Jeff: What?!

Evil Monkey: It’s twitter code for something interesting.

Jeff: What??!

(more…)

Evil Monkey: So you’ve been less silent this week. Still working on the novel.

Jeff: Yeah, I am, but had some other deadline stuff, post-Shared Worlds, to take care of. How’ve you been?

Evil Monkey: Obsessively surfing the intertubes. Scratching myself. Jumping people in dark alleys.

(more…)

Through the magic of previously-scheduled posting, my ghost is able to post this entry, linking to the recent io9 post on magic and science (also reproducing below a post from the old blog on the same subject) while simultaneously working on my novel:

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Jeff: How’s it going.

Evil Monkey: Fine.

Jeff: Anything new.

Evil Monkey: Just contemplating heroism.

(more…)

Warning: profanity follows. This is a re-post from the old blog of Evil’s analysis of Shambly’s Lady in the Water with some Wire first/second season comments worked in.

Jeff

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Someone else is going to have to see Prince Caspian for me and report back. I’m still too scarred from going to see the first film, The Chronicles of Narnia, about which Evil and I had the following conversation back in 2005.

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Evil Monkey:
You write too slow.

(more…)

(Kosher?)

UPDATE: The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals will be published in February 2010, hopefully in time for Purim! You can preorder it here. It is a lavishly illustrated book with humorous descriptions of all of the beasts on display, with an intro by Ann, a forward by Joseph Nigg, the bestselling author of How to Raise and Train and Dragon, and a discussion about imaginary animal recipes with Food Network star Duff Goldman. It’s a 5 x 7 small-sized hardcover–the perfect gift.

In honor of upcoming holidays like Passover, I thought I would ask Jeff’s better half, Ann VanderMeer, editor of Weird Tales , co-editor of New Weird and Steampunk, and a practicing Jew who teaches bat/bar mitzvah students, to give us an idea of which fantastical animals and beings would be kosher and which would not be kosher, in terms of gnawin’ off a bit o’ that. Answers below… - Evil Monkey

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O gather close old friend
I have a tale of woe for you:
It was a [cliched and stereotypical] night
and somewhere someone was typing a rant
about wasting your time posting rants.

Ooo–scary. A single click lay between me
and some awfully weird text laid out in frightening
1980s-style Web Master centered Gravitas
(not a font, Fred).

As my eyes became coated with overblown
and obvious extended metaphor
I could feel myself losing some essential
element of creativity
and came here to tell you
about it at a time when I was too
tired to write my own fiction.

In the deep of night
daily you will rise
preened for today’s bon mot
but be strong
resist the siren call
that mixes your vampire metaphor
with some other myth.

O My Dearest Ancestral Writer Friend
calm that fiend within yer foetid breast.

Blog not! Blog naught! Blog gnat!

Noooooooooo…not that.

[Expiring with blush of anguish and hand held up to head
in languished purple Heathcliff moment...]