Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 116

Core Sample: Event 16, Boston

You tell me: Am I holding up? More video here and here. More next week…

Harlequin Horizons Links

Guest Blogger Charles Tan blogs at Bibliophile Stalker, The World SF News Blog, and SF Signal.

Last week's controversy revolves around Harlequin's new imprint (previously known as Harlequin Horizons), which utilizes a vanity-publishing model. As someone who compiles links for both my blog and SF Signal, here are some links on the subject matter:

Statements from Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Science Fiction Writers of America.Dear Author on Harlequin Horizons...

Feeling Awesome About Comics and Beyonce: A Few Rantings with Pete Toms

S.J. Chambers is an articles editor for Strange Horizons.  Not only has her work appeared in that fine forum, but also Tor.com, Fantasy, Bookslut, and The Baltimore Sun's Read Street Blog.  She is also currently working with Jeff as his Master Archivist for The Steampunk Bible. You can find out more about S.J. at www.sjchambers.org.

Palfs

Pete Toms is a rare tour-de-force that I would have never met if it wasn't for the Internet and Aleks Sennwald, who is also his partner in crime over at

Recommending SFF Books – A Movement

The plan is simply this: to bring new readers into the SFF genre.

We're at a tipping point. Genre is invading the mainstream – or so many articles in newspapers and on television would have you believe, yet the book industry is always anxious at sales performances. It's a tough environment out there, at the front line. It seems that each year there are scare stories about people reading fewer books.

So I think we can certainly bring significantly more readers into the genre, and while we're at ...

Unleash the Grossbarts

S.J. Chambers is an articles editor for Strange Horizons.  Not only has her work appeared in that fine forum, but also Tor.com, Fantasy, Bookslut, and The Baltimore Sun's Read Street Blog.  She is also currently working with Jeff as his Master Archivist for The Steampunk Bible. You can find out more about S.J. at www.sjchambers.org.

Mark this day, kind Ecstatic Days readers, for it is no longer merely November 16, but Grossbarts' day.

I had planned to mark this occassion with a video outtake...

What I've Been Reading (or Watching): Pre-Holiday Edition

It's always hard to keep up with everything that's out there, especially in today's digital world. I'd like to think that I do a fairly decent job of managing to keep myself informed of what's going on in the print and digital marketplaces but, of course, thinking that I do a decent job of keeping up and actually keeping up are two very, very different things. To misquote a cliché, the more I read, the more I realize that – in actuality – I don't know jack.

So I'm turning to you, Dear...

Sunday Reading: Novella "Sublimation Angels" by Jason Sanford

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.

When Jeff selected a group of guest bloggers to keep this site going while he was on his book tour, he told us "I don't mind at all if you plug your projects, just vary the content if you do...

Checking in: CA-1 North Equals Ecstatic Day (and Facebook)

As I talked about on the Borders Babel Clash blog yesterday, I spent a blissful day driving up CA-1 North along the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I spent the night in Monterey before moving on up to SF. It was a mindblowing experience. It was a kind of totally chaste orgasm for the senses. Texture, image, smell, taste–everything. I felt like every circuit in my body was in danger of getting blown out. The only place I've ever felt anything similar was when Ann and I...

How cover art influences book sales (at least, for one picky reader)

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.

Here's a simple story about how important cover art is to an author's book sales. There's this struggling new writer named John Scalzi, who has a first fantasy novella coming out called The God...

100 Words

Guest blogger Kameron Hurley does most of her ranting at her blog, Brutal Women. You can find  some of her recent fiction in Year's Best SF 12, Strange Horizons, and EscapePod. She currently makes a living as a marketing and sales copywriter in Ohio, and has sold or nearly sold or sort of sold or is still in the process of selling a book called God's War, which may or may not actually be published at some unspecified period from an as yet unspecified publisher. Stay tuned.

When I interviewed ...