(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.

(Thanks, Hannu.)

I found following along with Des Lewis’s real-time review of The Weird, in which he would read each story and then blog about it, before moving on, to be a fascinating experience. It’s not often that an editor (in this case, co-editor with my wife Ann) is privileged enough to get such a detailed, sympathetic, and informed read. It’s also an idiosyncratic read in some ways—a determined effort to find an underlying theme or meaning or commonality by a writer and editor whose literary interests are diverse and wide. If it skews, it skews eccentric yet universal. (In fact, eccentric because universal, given that people’s reading tastes often render something eccentric because their reading tastes are not universal.)

I was moved to want to write a post after Des finished for a variety of reasons.

First, that it was a heroic effort—to commit to reading so much and blogging about it, and that this deserved a tip of the hat. But more than that, to note that although The Weird has already had several reviews, only Des’s review contains the totality of the anthology and only a story-by-story encounter with the anthology really gets at whether or not it is of use, whether it has cohesion, etc. In doing this, Des was also sympathetic to the purpose of stories, was open to what they were trying to do, and displayed great sensitivity to the individual paragraphs and sentences in each story. (Which is not to say such sympathy meant he wasn’t willing to reject what he didn’t wind up liking.) This is rare, to be honest, in reviews, and although literary criticism does provide more of this kind of in-depth analysis, it’s in a different context. So I would argue that we need more *reviews* that are both in-depth and sympathetic. That display evidence that the reviewer has allowed the text to be not just at the center of their attention, but to have all of their attention. Which also leads to the observation that not every book deserves this kind of attention. (And, that anthology reviews in general, due to limited word count for many review venues, tend to be lacking and it is much more possible to skim an anthology and do a serviceable if surface review than to do the same with a novel.)

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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.

Over on Weirdfictionreview.com, we’ve gone “Kafkaesque,” posting the entire introductory essay to the new anthology by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, along with an appreciation of Alfred Kubin. (And don’t miss fiction from Leena Krohn, interview and two pieces of fiction from Michal Ajvaz.)

Meanwhile, my co-editor on The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories will be appearing in Amsterdam on December 8th at the American Book Center to do an event in support of the anthology.

Weirdfictionreview.com now has a regular book reviewer, too: Maureen Kincaid Speller. For information on how to send her books, click here.

Finally, both Maureen Kincaid Speller and Des Lewis have continued their story-by-story reviews of The Weird compendium, with Maureen’s latest here (the sidebar used to have the other entries, but you may have to search for them). Des, meanwhile, is up to posts Five and Six.

Interested in more on The Weird?

Or check out Weirdfictionreview.com…

I’ll be freed up for taking on more fiction critiques to commence December 1st. If you’re interested, contact me at vanderworld at hotmail.com for rates and more information. I’m equally at home with stories as with novels, and I also am experienced with all types of fiction except Westerns, so…

The full critique service provides you with handwritten specific comments on the manuscript itself and an email of comments that apply not only to your story or novel but also your writing in general. Usually, I provide a summation and then also a break-down into elements like Characterization, Dialogue, Setting, etc. My goal is not to get repeat business because I give you something comprehensive that carries forward into your future fiction.

For those coming here for the first time, I’m a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and writer who has edited several critically acclaimed anthologies and made the year’s best lists of Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and more. I’ve taught several times at the Clarion Writers Workshops, once at Odyssey and at the Hugo House, Brisbane Writers Festival and other international events, and done mainstream literary workshops as well as focused on fantastical fiction.

(Image accompanying Quintus Erectus by Ajvaz, photo of Caplin Rous.)

We’re very pleased this week to feature the brilliant Czech writer Michal Ajvaz on Weirdfictionreview.com, with an interview and two pieces of fiction. Please go check it out–direct links below. “Quintus Erectus” and the interview are exclusive to WFR.

The Miraculous Side of the Universe: Interview
“I was accused of being too weird by critics who were proponents of the realistic story. And I can imagine a book that is really too weird: a book whose weirdness doesn´t come from the soul of its author and which substitutes this absence of true weirdness (which doesn´t need to be too weird in many cases) by piling up superficial effects.”

“Quintus Erectus”
“The quintus was extremely cuddly; but I must confess that its cuddliness wasn´t pleasant for me. When it tenderly nuzzled my face with its false face, where a tongue of an animal suddenly appeared in an improper place, and when the quintus began to lick me with it, I didn’t feel good.”

“The Secret War”
“The Europeans continued to hold to mathematics, even after they began to perceive mathematical equations and calculations as bizarre dramas, as evidence of the work of the same blind forces as those that cultivated logical deduction and flowed through ma­chines, forces which drove an unceasing, monotonous division and unification. The Europeans were made nauseous by multiplication because now they perceived it as a diseased swelling, a proliferation anterior to any kind of sense and order, a growth which had arisen by the dull repetition of the same numbers and their resigned coa­lescence in the whole.”