I first met Lisa L. Hannett when I taught at Clarion South in 2009, and I was impressed with her originality and her prose. (She also looked like she could kick my ass, although that’s neither here nor there.)

Flash-forward just a couple of years and she has several short story sales and a collection, Bluegrass Symphonyout. The collection is just the opening salvo in what promises to be a great career. As I said in my blurb for the book, she “shows a stylistic flair and depth of story…Her fiction is smart, confident, and in her own voice.”

Publishers Weekly wrote: “Hannett’s first collection shows off her fondness for lush imagery, unsettling concepts, indirect prose, and multilayered plots…a collection for fans of weirdness, wonder, and oft-disturbing twists.” (There’s more info on the publisher’s page for the book.)

Falling roughly into the category of dark Americana fantasy/horror, the collection has a definite cohesive mood and tone. Ann VanderMeer wrote the introduction, which I’m happy to reprint here, so you can get a better sense of Bluegrass Symphony. You can also read Lisa’s blog entries about the collection here.)
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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.

(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.)

Immediately stop disseminating the journals.

G: This is unexpected.

For reasons of universal security.

G: But I am only implanting the ideas in the brain of a subpar specimen of a sub-standard alt-Earth reality, and the specimen only releases the information onto an equally backwater old-fashioned electronic source in a backwater of their pathetic version of a ever-net.

Nonetheless. There has been…leakage.

G: Only an infinitesimal number of sentient minds even read the entries of this subpar backwater specimen? A tiny, tiny percentage!

The issue is that most of them are also among the infinitesimal percentage of minds in that alt-Earth reality for whom the information can spark…actions we do not want and cannot anticipate.

G: Can I continue my dissemination in the other twelve realities of my experiment?

Yes. You can. For now.

G: Should I delete the information from the subpar thinker’s brain? And perhaps accidentally have the information wiped from their primitive every-net?

No, that will not be necessary. You need only make the subject of your experiment think that it would be better to consider his writings off-line and then slowly dessicate the parts of his brain that would supply the energy and imagination to continue to write down any residual information, while stimulating his pleasure centers when he is writing anything else. Just…don’t overstimulate…that might attract attention, given that he writes in what they call coffee shops.

G: And if he continues writing it from his own imagination?

That doesn’t hurt us at all. Let him gracefully bow out and if he comes up with a fabrication going forward, who cares.

G: I kind of liked this subpar specimen. He had spirit.

Don’t we all.

G: Very well, I’ll wind down the experiment and concentrate on the other twelve subjects.

Of course, it won’t matter at all in another million years…but then nothing will.

G: You’re always so cheery.

I’ve seen too much and I work too hard…

G: Is there anything else?

No, I think that covers it. Oh—except the number of rebel angels your operation has flushed out has risen to seven.

G: Seven left then.

Yes. Only another seven. Won’t be long now. Not long at all.

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(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.