Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 111

Coming Home…To an Embarrassment of Riches

(Murder by Death sent me copies of the green vinyl version of their soundtrack!)

I'm just getting back into the swing of things, and probably won't be up-and-running for another few days, following the massive thirty-event book tour that had me on the road from October 28th until December 12th. Any guest bloggers who want to keep posting through Thursday, feel free. I'll return Thursday afternoon with comments on books I bought while on tour, among other posts.

The book tour was awesome, and I...

Professional rates don't mean you're a professional

Guest blogger Jason Sanford often rants on his website at www.jasonsanford.com. His fiction has been published in Interzone, Year's Best SF 14, Analog, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Pindeldyboz, and other places, and has won the 2008 Interzone Readers' Poll and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship.

I tried to stay out of the great rate fail debate, aside from posting some snarky Cliffsnotes to the whole affair. But it turns out I snarked prematurely, because after I posted a new writer...

Does Art as Social Justice Lead to the Artist as Unpaid Social Worker?

Yasmin Nair, guest blogging at Dakshina, examines the connection between art and social justice with a skeptical eye, suggesting that the connections are not as straightforward as naive writers often want to believe. She also looks at how the idea of writing as a social justice project feeds into the undervaluing of writing-as-labor:

The notion that the production of art is separate from the nitty-gritty of art as labor. While I would never blame artists themselves for their woes in terms of...

The Reading in the Closet

What's happening here? This is Jeff VanderMeer perched and balanced above his audience during his reading in Manuel's Tavern's storage closet in Atlanta on Friday. Why have a reading in a bar? In the closet? Because at least it's quiet.

Thanks to all who came out to the reading in Manuel's on Friday. Thanks for following us into an unlikely venue and being great sports about it. One day we shall tell the others that you were there that day, for the readings on the closet ladder, atop the...

Review of Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark (Agate Bolden, 2007)

Alaya Dawn Johnson's debut novel, Racing the Dark, was released in 2007 by Agate Bolden. The epic fantasy is the first in the Spirit Binders series.

Racing the Dark begins when thirteen-year-old Lana is initiated as a diver who seeks and finds Mandagah jewels, a profession that provides her island's main commercial export and is also religiously significant. The jewels Lana finds during her initiation mark her as chosen by the spirits, but Lana hides this fact so she can attempt to have a...

Mega Thanks to the Guest Bloggers (who can continue)

Just back from the book tour. Tired as heck. Going to hunker down and do nothing through Wednesday. I have LOVED the guest blogging here and would just like to say to all of the guest bloggers, thanks, and please feel free to continue through Wednesday if you have anything left to say. I really have had a great time reading all of the posts.

I will return Thursday.

Jeff

New Music Love, Gabriel Kahane. Putting ice cubes down people's shirts.

I was writing a Very Serious Review (which will appear tomorrow) when all of a sudden Pandora turned up a musician I'd never heard before and I fell in love.

I almost never find musicians I love, but Gabriel Kahane is amazing. He's sort of like Stephen Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown (who, I just learned by looking him up, apparently has a seriously gorgeous Jewish nose) presented as vaguely pop* music.

His instrumentation is stunning and I love the complex melodies. I almost didn't pay...

Correction, and some thoughts

So, following my post about international writers in Analog, Asimov's and F&SF, Sean Wallace has pointed out we missed one, and I'm very glad to be able to correct my initial post: Asimov's did in fact print one story by an international writer: Icarus Saved from the Skies "Icare sauvé des cieux" by Georges-Oliver Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin.

Hooray!

And if we count Sara Genge (which I am told we should) then Asimov's actually lead the print pack, with a whole 2 stories last...

The End of the Endurance Tour: Atlanta, at Manuel's Tonight with Hindmarch and McDermott

(Me with Mur Lafferty, Natania Barron, and giant microbes last night in Chapel Hill)

After a wonderful event last night with Mur Lafferty and Natania Barron at Chapel Hill Comics, the Finch/Booklife tour comes to an end tonight in Atlanta at Manuel's Tavern. We'll start at 8pm in the North Room and I'm reading with Will Hindmarch and J.M. McDermott. We'll also be there early, at 6pm, for a comics meeting/party that sounds interesting.

Also note that Nicola Morgan is answering your writing...

World sf writers? Get used to disappointment

I'm a little disheartened right now. Not angry, just sort of bemused.

If you've been following the World SF News Blog, you might have seen that Charles Tan and I have been compiling lists of stories published in 2009 by what you might called "world SF" writers – writers from outside of the traditional anglo-saxon world, as it were. It was Jeff Ford's idea, and it seemed like a good one (though it took a chunk of time for each posting) – and the results were quite positive. Fantasy Magazine...