Jeff VanderMeer's Blog
December 28, 2009
Slicing Up Your Eyeballs reports that The Church has re-released the Shriek: An Afterword CD based on my novel. The re-release "has been remastered to correct significant audio problems with the initial release, and errors with the tracklisting and packaging also have been corrected." For more info on ordering, etc., visit SUYE.
Here's the track listing on the re-release. I don't have the original in front of me, but I do think it may be different by one song.
1. "We Dwell In Fragile...
December 27, 2009
(My gawd–this is so weird. Before I renounced cephalopods earlier this year, my next novel was going to be titled The Squid and the Squid.)
Since most of my predictions for 2009 came true–I predicted in 2008, for example, that I would end my 2009 Booklife/Finch tour reading from a storage closet in an Atlanta bar and that the blogosphere would come apart at the seams during a harmless discussion of magazine pay rates–I've decided to again put forth some knowledgeable mutterings about the...
December 26, 2009
The Washington Post Book World ran my review of John Twelve-Hawks' The Golden City, the last in his trilogy. Although I'll give him props for some of the settings, the characters were cardboard and the action clumsy at best.
December 25, 2009
Somehow, it seems entirely appropriate to post about The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals on Christmas Day…and necessary since Foreward posted about the book earlier this week. A lot of reverb from that and great word-of-mouth, so I just want to make sure that readers have all the info about the book now, even though it's not out until February 2010 (just in time for Purim).
The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals isn't a rehash of the original post from back in 2007. The selection from the...
(Matt, Ann, and Eric. Yes, Cheney and Schaller are nuts.)
Today I'd like to thank everyone who read with me at events and/or put me up (put up with me?) during my recent five-week book tour. Special thanks to my wife Ann, Matt Staggs, Luis Rodrigues, Jeremy Tolbert, S.J. Chambers, John Coulthart, my publishers, the bookstores & other venues, people like Rob Davies who put up posters, and my readers, without whom the tour wouldn't have been possible.
Sincere thanks and affection to:
My fellow...
December 24, 2009
In doing research for a project, I came across my contributor copy of Air Fish: An Anthology of Speculative Works edited by Joy Oestreicher and Richard Singer. It was published about 17 years ago in 1993. For its year, I thought it was one of the stronger anthologies. Here's the complete table of contents. I reproduce it here because I find an occasional "core sample" from the history of genre instructive at times, especially as we slouch toward 2010.
The particulars about Air Fish: It was a c...
December 22, 2009
(What does a scene in the movie Black Hawk Down have to do with fiction? Read on below…)
In a general way, TV and movies have often had a terrible influence on fiction, in that some writers substitute received experience and received ideas from mass media for their own personal vision–some even think the structure of most TV shows is perfectly suitable, untranslated, for novels and stories. A lot of this material, reading like scripts or in other ways underwhelming, appears on editor...
December 21, 2009
The video above is a promo I shot for Fountain Bookstore in their basement, with blooper at end. I highly recommend Fountain, and they may still have signed copies of Finch and Booklife; if you live in Richmond, check them out–great owner and staff. Just look at the cool display they did for Finch, for my reading there:
…But there's an additional purpose to this post, as the end of the year closes in on us. Some reminders and other housekeeping.
- Victoria Blake at Underland Press is offering a...
