(Cover depicts a character from his insane Mind-Worm story)

Okay, is that a cool cover or what? I mean, I look at most of the covers in the SF/F section and I am bored beyond belief. But this? I’d buy that in a second.

(Funny? FUNNY?!)

Before I forget, Maurice Broaddus gave me some great answers about his forthcoming anthology, Dark Faith. It’s also the UK launch date for his first novel, from Angry Robot. So go check out the feature. Go pre-order Dark Faith. Go buy his novel. Both books look really interesting.

Now, to the main order of business: the fact that there’s funny—and I don’t mean “Hmm. That seems funny–why is that thar door to the basement open and why is there a cleaver in my forehead?”–in horror fiction, or in weird fiction if you prefer. It’s perhaps not the laugh-out-loud, slap-your-knee kind of funny. It’s more of a really dark humor that stands out in relief because one element of the story is slightly less perverse than the rest, but it’s still humor.

For example, in re-reading Ligotti, a lot of humor shines through. “The Town Manager” is a good example of this–it’s a disturbing story, but it’s also very funny in its way. Of course, there are other types of examples. Roald Dahl and Gahan Wilson can both be funny and horribly dark at the same time. Angela Carter has her moments of mischief in the midst of the gothic, and so does Tanith Lee (giant ant-eater, anyone?).

This issue of some sort of humor in horror is important in part because it provides variety of tone–either within a story or within an anthology composed of weird fiction. The key is that the humor should be hard-wired to the ‘orribleness; otherwise, there’s not the requisite depth, or the ‘orrible element comes off as cavalier. For the most part.

Anyway, we just turned in our list of the first 205,000 words of the book of weird fiction to our editor. Once we get sign-off we’ll be getting permissions. We’re also, of course, continuing on with selections for the remaining 555,000 words of fiction for the anthology. Yes, it boggled our minds, too. We just turned in a list of stories that’s 30,000 words longer than any antho we’ve done in the past…and we still have 555,000 words to go. The temptation to just include five and half weird novels and call it a night is strong in us right now. (Not really.)

I’m much taken by rabbits these days, whether it’s smorkin’ labbits or the demented rabbit of Donnie Darko, my own Sensio or the dream-derived rabbit of Sexy Beast–or even the rabbits of our friends in Berlin (one of which I swear looks like a tiny bison, its wooly brown ears flopping down to cover the eyes in just the right way). So I ask: Is it wrong of me that one reason I liked Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver is because of the rabbits? The book’s about a contest of wills between two women, but one of them paints rabbits in children’s books for a living, and then puts flowers on the rabbits.

(No, these aren’t the flowery rabbits.)

Anna Aemelin, Jansson writes, “had the great, persuasive power of monomania, of being able to embrace a single idea…And that one thing was the woods, the forest floor.” She paints watercolors that “made people see” the “springy blanket of mosses and delicate plants.” Therefore, in some people’s opinion “It was a shame that Anna spoiled her pictures by putting rabbits in them, that is to say, Mama, Papa and Baby Bunny. Moreover, the fact that she drew little flowers on the rabbits dispelled much of the deep-forest mystique.”

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I might as well give up and admit it–chances are there are going to be a lot of posts on weird fiction here while Ann and I work on this big book of, erm, weird fiction. It’s a good outlet for what’s an intense, satisfying, at times frustrating, and epiphanal project. The book will cover roughly a century, from about 1910 to the present-day. I see it as primarily post-WWI to 2009, but there may be some slight slippage. It’s not a best-of, per se, in that a true best-of for a century seems to me a ludicrous idea, but it’s also not just a history of the weird through fiction, in that we’re uninterested in including something solely because it has been dubbed “influential,” or as loose a group of stories as a “treasury”, which is often another way of saying “these are just my favorite favorites.”

In past posts, I’ve mostly described the grinding process of trying to read everything, in part to blow off steam from some tight deadlines. But there’s a lot of process here, too, which I haven’t mentioned. We’re more or less testing the weird, and setting up some limits and parameters to give the anthology focus while not being so intent on focus that it means excluding some things that our gut tells us should be in the anthology. (Two definite areas outside of our mission: straightforward fairy tales, no matter how grim, and horror fiction, predominantly from late 1980s/early 1990s, that has not even a whiff of the inexplicable.)

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(Some of the more interesting stuff encountered or re-read in the last few days while working on the big book of weird fiction; couldn’t find the Jamaica Kincaid collection to add it to the shot.)

I’m sick of internet kerfuffle, so I’m avoiding it this week. It’s not for lack of sympathy, but for lack of time and lack of energy and also because it’s getting more and more depressing for me personally to emphasize the negative when there is a lot of non-polarizing positive out there that needs support. (Like, GO BUY A BOOK FROM AQUEDUCT PRESS RIGHT NOW! Okay?)

Me, I’m practically ancient now–a half-senile writer with deadlines on various projects between now and May 1st who is slowly “deliquescencing” into that comfortable stage between Young Turk and Old Fart. The world is just one big story, just composed of books, just composed of paragraphs and sentences.

I don’t know how much Ann and I read this weekend, but it was a lot–not just for weird but Clarion submissions and much more. One thing all of this affirmed for both Ann and me: Caitlin R. Kiernan has written so many amazing horror/dark fantasy stories that it’s going to be hard to choose just one.

Meanwhile the first–check out Mark Teppo on the Nature of Magick.

Meanwhile the second–check out Booklifenow, where Tamara Kaye Sellman will be guest blogging this week. Next week, Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl.

…and would like to read or re-read but can’t because you’ve got to read weird short fiction…and pretend to be a Mecha-Ostrich…and things of that nature… (Wild Women has a great great story by Nadine Gordimer in the form of a letter to Kafka from his father; great William Trevor story in the Manguel antho.)

Dear Diary:

Today encountered 77th supposedly classic iteration of the formula in which, on the very last page, the supernatural makes its entrance on the wings of the following:

“Why, I was delighted to meet and have a splendid conversation with your mother/ father/ wife/ son/ daughter/ brother/ sister/ gardener/ plumber/ consierge/ frog the other day in that little abandoned room far from all the light fixtures!”

“What? Why, my mother/ father/ wife/ son/ daughter/ brother/ sister/ gardener/ plumber/ consierge/ frog has been dead for years!” (Or, “What? Why I have no mother/ father/ wife/ son/ daughter/ brother/ sister/ gardener/ plumber/ consierge/ frog and have lived alone for years!”)

Ann: “Jeff, some writers are underrated for a reason.”

Margaret Atwood came to Tallahassee last night to read and answer questions. I’ve written up an account for Omnivoracious.

I thought she was quite wonderful. In answering questions and talking about her books, she was happy to use terms like “speculative fiction” and refer to classics familiar within the genre like We. It became clear from her interactions with the audience that use or non-use of the term “science fiction” didn’t matter in the least. More importantly, given the environmental message of her last two novels, I can see why she would prefer not to use the term “science fiction”–it might seem somewhat limiting given that she seems committed to the idea of a sustainable future as much as she is to fiction. Regardless, it’s certainly her choice to self-define however the hell she wants to self-define.

I thought it interesting that she cites M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud as a major influence in her interview in the local paper, along with Weird Tales comics, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne.

Among the frustrations that balance the many pleasures of having so many projects due in May is not being able to write about movies. This short post won’t really help alleviate that frustration, but…

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(Weirdest thing of all? Both Jeff and Evil Monkey have agreed to learn to cook using this arcane and insane book as a reward to Ann for all of the many, many hours of reading she is doing for the big book of weird project, on top of Weird Tales and everything else…)

Evil Monkey:
“This concerns someone called Beaver Toadstone.”

Jeff:
“Doc Blaine ejaculated incoherently. I wheeled.”

Evil Monkey:
“Here I was ready to accept his offer of a good job as his secretary, and I had to go and pull a drunken boner!”

Jeff:
“Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth.”

Evil Monkey:
“An incredible jumble of small, discolored lumps appeared in the glass, followed by a mass of blurry blobs and points.”

Jeff:
“Interesting, you seem to have given him siphilus.”

Evil Monkey:
“I’m not prepared to argue with a hallucination!”

Jeff:
“Dogs are dirty, birds are filthy, fish are clean except for the intestines, which are dirty.”

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