Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 3

for columbia (temporary post)

Hi! If you’re attending my Columbia lecture tonight and it’s easier to view these diagrams on your phone, see below.

I am not reproducing images from the presentation that don’t have instructional content. Most all diagrams below are from Wonderbook, or the new, revised edition to be released in July. Copyright to me and to Jeremy Zerfoss, who created the diagrams from my rough sketches.

DEFINITIONS

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AREA X STRUCTURES

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ADICHIE’S AMERICANAH–STRUCTURE

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NABOKOV’S “THE LEONARDO”–STRUCTURE

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TUTUOLA-METCALF COMPARISON–STRUCTURE (rough diagram only)

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SCIENCE OF SCENES DIAGRAM

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WORDS TO GET SICK OF SOON (seriously, like I say them 75 times)

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ENCRYPTED STORY

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GORMENGHAST (first slide only)

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(All other images are not, strictly speaking, instructional and not needed to enjoy the lecture.)

 

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April Jeff VanderMeer Annihilation/Borne Book Tour

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April brings a slew of events, most at universities, as I go on a brief but bracing book tour to celebrate the release of Borne and The Strange Bird in trade paperback, along with the Annihilation movie. All events are free, but some are tickets, so please check out the links if interested. Many of the university visits also include meeting with students, which I’m very much looking forward to. Hope to see a lot of you on the road. Don’t hesitate to come up and say hi–and I always love signing books, in any situation. So don’t be shy. All events are open to the public unless otherwise noted.

April 5 (Thurs), 6pm, Alpha Chi Honor Society, Portland Oregon

“This Green Earth” keynote speech for the Alpha Chi Honor Society conference followed by Q&A and book signing. (Only open to conference attendees/Alpha Chi members).

April 9 (Mon), 5:30pm, Texas A&M, College Station Texas, Rudder Theater

“Annihilation Book to Film: Narrative Choices and Reader Response.” An in-depth exploration of the responses to the Southern Reach trilogy, including fan art and writings and even living alphabets, along with a semi-comic account of one author’s viewing from afar of the movie-making process. With exclusive behind-the-scenes images. A highly visual treat for the senses. Now with bears.

April 10 (Tues), 6:30pm, University of Houston, Fine Arts Building, Room 110

Against All Suns lecture series: “Space, Power, Fiction, and Temporality in the Southern Reach Trilogy.” For the University of Houston art department. Books will not be sold at this event, but I will sign any books you bring.

April 12 (Thurs), 3:30pm, Houston, Rice University Cultures of Energy Conference, Lovett Hall, Founder’s Room

Keynote Panel “The Work of Alternate Worlds,” in conversation with Ganzeer and Cymene Howe. Moderated by Caroline Levander. Followed by a reception at 5pm.

April 14 (Sat), 4pm, Word of South Festival, Tallahassee, Florida, Cascades Park (the Edison)

Readings from Borne and The Strange Bird plus a presentation including two raptors provided by St. Francis Wildlife Rescue and Q&A with Ann VanderMeer, followed by a book signing.

April 16 (Mon), 7pm, Austin, Univ. of Texas at Austin, Joynes Reading Room

Reading from Borne and Strange Bird plus some squid anecdotes. Books not being sold at the event, but will sign any you bring.

April 18 (Wed), 7pm, New York, Columbia University, Room 401, Dodge Hall

A lecture on creative writing at Columbia (2960 Broadway) in the series curated by Ben Marcus, in part on the topic of hauntings in fiction and unusual uses of structure. When is structure a construct for the writer’s benefit only—and what is this benefit? How can you find the level at which analysis of narrative structure is of use to other writers? What is organic and what can be mechanical about the art and craft of fiction? What kinds of hauntings in fiction go beyond the uncanny and how are these effects achieved?

April 19 (Thurs), 6:30pm, New York Society Library, Member’s Room (advance registration required)

Participant in panel discussion “Strange Reality: The Art and Activism of Transitional Environments, with Zaria Forman, Gleb Raygorodetsky, and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. Climate change is no longer a mere possibility—it’s already happening. Glaciers are melting, animal and plant populations are failing, and agricultural practices no longer prevent famine. Around the world, scientists, artists, and activists are addressing climate change in media from nonfiction books to documentary films to live theater. This series brings together writers, journalists, and artists in robust discussion on how they address climate change—and why their work is important in the Anthropocene Era.

April 20 (Fri), 3pm, New York, The Strand bookstore

I will be signing stock at The Strand at 3pm for about 45 minutes to an hour, for a live facebook event. This is NOT a public in-store event, BUT if you see me in the bookstore before 3 or after I finish signing stock, I will of course sign your book totally on an ad hoc informal basis.

April 25 (Wed), 7pm, Notre Dame University, Eck Center Auditorium

Reading from Borne and Strange Bird plus some squid anecdotes. Followed by book signing.

April 26 (Thurs), 7pm, Notre Dame University, Debartelo Performing Arts Center (The Browning)

A screening of Annihilation prefaced by my book-to-film talk (with visuals), with Q&A after.

April 27 (Fri), 5:30pm, Northwestern University, Harris Hall 107

“Area X: Environmental Storytelling in the Age of Trump and the Anthropocene.” An exploration with visuals on the difficulties and the importance of telling stories about the environment during the Anthropocene and in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. In terms ranging from political to personal, this talk includes topics like redefining dystopia and the need for new narrative approaches to climate change.

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Thoughts on the Writing Process: Optimal Conditions and Tips

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(Detail from Theo Ellsworth’s contribution to the expanded edition of my Wonderbook, out in July)

I just completed my ninth novel, the first volume in the Adventures of Jonathan Lambshead series, working title “I am Squishy” (that will change, I’m sure). I’m also working on the tenth novel of my career, Hummingbird Salamander. This doesn’t include a number of unfinished or crappy novels written in my teens—or hundreds of short stories.

If nothing else, being a novelist for decades gives you some hopefully useful ideas about process. I’m loathe to ever suggest that there is only one way to do something—it’s different for every writer. But I do think that examining someone else’s process can be of use for your own, even if it’s just to reject everything another writer does!

So, with that caveat, here’s what I’ve learned over time. If some of it seems basic, that’s important, too. Because at the end of the day, there is no magic solution, no short-cut, to writing something that hopefully will last. No matter how we search for one. I also believe strongly in letting the things about writing that should be organic remain organic, but also working in targeted ways on those things that can be improved mechanically.

(These ideas should work for writers who have a day job as well as full-time writers, as I do not stress needing to write every day. In fact, points 1 and 2 should offer relief for writers who beat themselves up about not writing as much as they want to. It’s important to be generous to yourself if you’re in circumstances where sustained writing is not possible, because pushing yourself to write in those circumstances may short-circuit your creativity.)

1—The amount of time you spend writing isn’t necessarily as important as the time spent thinking about what you are going to write.

I often feel it is easier to spoil a novel by beginning to write too soon than by beginning to write too late. Perhaps this is because I need to know certain things before I can even contemplate writing a novel.

For example, I need to know the main characters very well, the initial situation, and the ending (even if the ending changes by the time I write it). I also have to have some kind of ecstatic vision about a scene or character, some moment that transcends, and I have to have what I call charged images associated with the characters. These aren’t images that are symbolic in the Freudian sense (humbly, I submit that Freud just gets you to the same banal place, as a novelist, every time), but they are definitely more than just images. They have a kind of life to them, and exploring their meaning creates theme and subtext. For example, the biologist encountering the starfish in Annihilation or Rachel in Borne reaching out to pluck Borne from the fur of the giant bear. (Both of which also have their origin in transformed autobiographical moments, and thus an added layer of resonance.)

Once I know these things, it may still be six months to a year before I begin to write a novel. The process at that point is to just record every inspiration I have and relax into inhabiting the world of the novel. To not have a day go by when I’m not thinking about the characters, the world they inhabit, and the situations. If I lose the thread of a novel, it’s not because I take a week off from writing, but because I take a week off from living with the characters, in my head. But, hopefully, the novel takes on such a life that everything in the world around me becomes fodder for it, even transformed.

During this part of the process, I usually accumulate about thirty-thousand words of scene fragments and ideas, captured in a central document. I also begin to see the structure of the novel in my head—it forms a kind of glittering latticework revolving in my mind against a dark backdrop. This “structure” is often not structure that the reader will see—it’s more the scaffolding I need as a writer to conceive of the shape of the novel. (I think this idea may get lost sometimes when writers talk about writing: there is the actual structure of the novel and then there are the structures that the novelist creates purely for their own benefit in the moment, to see more clearly what it is they are writing.)

There may also be some basic outline or some list of essential scenes, if it feels necessary. Sometimes it doesn’t.

When I begin to write in earnest, I am still for the most part spending more time thinking about the novel than writing it. For my recent novels, my process has gone something like this: Robust breakfast and coffee, enjoyed watching half an hour of something mindless on TV (which distracts the mind, somehow turns off my internal editor), followed by two to three hours of writing. After lunch, I would go to the gym or take a hike. Yet by bed time, I would have “written” another three or four scenes and have a lot more insight into character. Something about getting away from the writing desk opens up creativity for me, as does doing something that makes me live in the moment.

The point is: Living in the world of your novel is not just something that happens because you’re writing a novel. It’s important to the actual creation of the novel.

2—Reward your subconscious by capturing every snippet of an idea or scene fragment as it comes to you.

I carry a pen and a small notebook or loose notecards with me at all times. I also keep them on the nightstand next to the bed. I have pieces of paper in the kitchen, too. Over the past twenty years especially, I have not lost or forgotten a single idea or scene fragment or character observation or bit of dialogue because I have always written it down immediately, no matter what situation I’m in (this includes when I had a day job).

Over time, my subconscious has rewarded me more and more for taking It seriously. If your subconscious brain “knows” you are going to write it all down and use what it gives you, a loop is created where, at times, and depending on other factors, the problem isn’t lack of ideas but having too many ideas.

Part of this is not immediately editing out certain ideas or thoughts, but writing them all down, even the ones that seem ridiculous. There is an immediacy to writing it on paper that appeals to me, too. This doesn’t strike me as a luddite thing, but a thing about the human brain. (If you cannot use pen and paper, finding some analogous method on the computer is a good idea.)

I also find notecards of use because if you limit yourself to one idea or scene frag per, you can arrange them in chronological order before you type them up, and by writing in longhand first, it means even typing up the text into a computer document in a sense creates a second draft of the idea before you even actually write the scene or scenes in question.

3—Train your subconscious to give you gifts.

If you reward your subconscious, you can also train It on a macro and micro level.

For example, maybe, like me, you wanted to write about wild Florida. Perhaps you actually tell your subconscious “I want to write about Florida” every night before you go to bed or first thing in the morning. Perhaps six months later Annihilation pops out of your head. It’s definitely not how you expected to write about Florida, but you can’t help feeling that your little mental trick led to the moment of inspiration.

On the micro level, I find that if I have been wrestling with a problem in my fiction the best way to solve that problem is to step away and let my mind grapple with it on a subconscious level. One way is to go for a hike and forget about it completely, only to have the answer pop up seemingly out of nowhere. Another way is more targeted: I’ll go to bed, spend 10 minutes thinking about the problem, buffer sleep by reading a bit first, and then nine times out of ten when I wake in the morning: presto, I’ve got the answer.

Of course, this won’t work if you’re fragmented, which is to say limiting social media and time in front of screens, when possible, is very important to de-fragging your subconscious, too. This isn’t a luddite position—it’s more or less established science at this point. If, too, like me, you can be obsessive, it can be important to wall yourself off from exterior things that distress, like the news. All of that “noise” is otherwise competing in your mind with what you want to get done writing-wise—even if it’s the noise you want to write about, or the news.

4—Know when you are most productive and discipline yourself to do your rough-draft writing then.

People sometimes misunderstand the nature of writing, in that writing and revision are ongoing processes that are intertwined and don’t necessarily happen in to distinct consecutive phases. That said, inasmuch as you do work solely on a rough draft, do that work when you are fresh and energized. This may seem like commonsense, but I’ve known many writers who never really examined their processes, just kept on with the same habits they started out with. (This is one advantage of being a beginning writer—that’s the time to experiment and learn what works best for you, and the time to break things fearlessly; getting to a published story is less important than getting to a good one.)

“Fresh” and “energized” are relative terms here. When I had a day job, for example, my lunch-time writing occurred while I was “wilted” and “distressed,” but it was still a more energetic time for me than after I got home.

The point is to organize your writing days or weeks around what you know about yourself—and about diminishing returns. For this reason, I write in the mornings, revise in the early afternoon (on material written the day before), go to the gym or hike in the mid-afternoon (when I usually have low mental energy), and then in the evenings read over and mark up revisions.

5—Good habits create the conditions for your imagination to thrive.

Romanticized versions of the writing life often glamorize drinking and other habits that ultimately take a toll on your creativity, even if this isn’t clear when you’re younger. I don’t want to sound like your mom or dad in this section, but at the same time I don’t want to de-emphasize a commitment to your art.

Currently, in this, a period of greater creativity than I have ever known, I drink very little, I get to bed before midnight, I eat healthy, I go to the gym every other day and get exercise on off days, and although I play around on social media between writing novels, I am offline as much as possible while writing novels. I believe abiding by these simple rules helps me to be my best creative self.

The rules for you may be different—the basic conditions of your life may require vastly different rules. But thinking about what “good habits” means to you is important. Especially if you want a long career.

Because what I’m really talking about here is taking care of your imagination and also of your ability to conjure up physical and mental endurance when you need it.

6—Invest in a love of revision.

Sometimes you won’t be able to think about writing in any kind of leisurely way. When those times occur, what will pull you through is having a love of revision. Not merely a lack of hatred for revision, but an unconditional love for revision.

Because if you love revision, the act of creating a rough draft even less perfect than usual won’t impact you at all. You’ll know that you will re-inhabit the unfolding dream of the novel again during the revision phase and that anything broken can be fixed in such an organic way that no one will ever know it was broken.

How do you get to an unconditional love for revision? Perhaps by recognizing, as I’ve written above, that revision is occurring even in the initial moments of inspiration. The spark in your mind that is transferred to paper by pen and in even that instant you change the wording—and then again when you include that moment in the rough draft. How when you finish writing for the day you’re already changing, in your head, what you just wrote.

I don’t have an easy answer here, if you dread revision. But perhaps if you can fake enthusiasm for revision, you’ll eventually experience real enthusiasm for the task. Think of the emotions associated with something you like to do and somehow transfer those emotions to revision over time.

6—Let your novel guide you in terms of process.

Every novel I’ve ever written has had a slightly different or radically different process, perhaps because I don’t like to write the same kind of novel twice. Despite the fact that my best time to write is the morning, a couple of novels have been best written at night. Despite the fact I don’t like outlining, at least three novels have, at some point during writing them, required that I do a detailed outline of at least a part of the novel.

In all cases, as the ideas accumulate and I am involved in thinking about the novel, I am also thinking of the way in which it will manifest. I am looking at the scene fragments and the structure and imagining the best process for this particular novel and no other.

I admit that this may be an eccentricity of use only to me, but it may be worth re-examining your usual approach if you find yourself stuck writing a novel. The solution may have nothing to do with problems with what’s already on the page, but in how it is getting to the page.

7—Don’t be afraid to change your process or turn to lessons from other disciplines to jump-start your writing or see things in a new light.

Nothing will ever go quite as it is supposed to. Some idyllic process of getting up each morning and writing and then taking a stroll for more ideas is just a construct intended to suggest ways to be generous to yourself to be as creative and focused as possible while writing.

In the actual moment, you’ll have mornings you intended to write and the impulse or hunger isn’t there. You’ll have weeks where exterior events come at you like a bus intent on hitting you and you’ll have to forgive yourself for not writing because Life happened.

But other times, you will need to push past whatever is damming the story. In those times, even simple changes like going to a coffee shop to write rather than writing at home may help. Typing up your rough draft rather than long hand can help. Changing the font of the draft, even.

Beyond simple environmental changes, you may find that bringing in technique from other creative disciplines can help, too. I’ve begun to incorporate a lot of exercises and ideas from the world of drama, for example. What you might call method acting—most famously, breaking into my own house when stuck on a scene in Authority where the main character has to break into the former director’s house.

While extreme, this approach does speak to a frequent problem for writers: Not being able to “see” a scene properly, both in terms of blocking and character motivation. Often times, this is because there is too little real-life experience being brought into the scene.

Such moments of feeling stymied do not need to be stressful (if under deadline, yes, it’s going to be stressful). They can become transformative or even fun moments if you think of them as times when you need to find a new method of imaginative play to get past the logjam. Because, at the end of the day, most of the time what we’re doing is trying to find situations and constructs to best help our imagination help us tell stories.

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Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” in the New Yorker

Thrilled to see our former Clarion student, Kristen Roupenian has a story in the New Yorker, entitled “Cat Person.” Roupenian’s always been a daring writer and willing to take chances. Her voice, style, and point of view were fully formed well before coming to Clarion. Very glad to see her break through with this piece.

And, as you may have already seen, the story’s created some controversy online. Here are links to a couple of articles on the subject. The New Yorker and New York Times both interviewed her, as well.

We published her story “The Rainbow” over at Weird Fiction Review back in 2015–about a cruise gone wrong.

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What to Binge-Watch This Holiday Season: The Gritty and the Even Grittier

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If you’re like me and like gritty, complex crime and mystery dramas, you’re in luck. My wife Ann and I have recently binge-watched a number of dark, layered, sometimes over-the-top series. Check these out if you haven’t already.

I should also mention the Icelandic movie I Remember You–a supernatural thriller currently showing on cable (under new movies for rent) that holds up much better than most and is definitely worth your time.

On Netflix…

THE BREAK – A Belgian series in which a detective returning to the village of his birth must battle the betrayals of the townsfolk and an incompetent department as well as his own personal demons to solve the murder of an African-born soccer player on the local lower-division team. An intense performance from the lead and subplots involving a controversial dam, S&M, as well as a frame in a psych ward and multiple twists, easily lift this fascinating drama above the usual fare.

DARK MATTER – Unfairly canceled after three seasons on SyFy, Dark Matter gets a new audience on Netflix (including me). This is ostensibly a space opera, but it’s got noirish qualities and also a huge central mystery: why can’t the outlaw members of a spacecraft’s crew remember who they are? The answers and the character development are suitably surprising and the ensemble cast is superb from first to last. I must admit that it was rough going through the first three or four episodes, but around episode 5 it all clicked for me and the show found its sea legs. This is space opera the way it should be done, and with a diverse cast, and whether you like SF or not, I think you’ll be satisfied.

HOTEL BEAU SEJOUR – A murdered teenager comes back as a ghost to investigate her own murder, which involves the hotel of the title. Set in a small Belgian town whose inhabitants have plenty of secrets, Hotel Beau Sejour bears some surface similarities to The Break (Belgian, small town, secrets) but it is completely different. The reason some can see the murdered teen and others can’t is carefully thought-out, and once you get used to the conceit, it’s seamless. Complex, at times heart-breaking, and with lots of reversals. Nice, too, that the lead detectives are both women.

MINDHUNTER – One of the most perfect series I’ve ever seen, with multi-faceted, flawed characters and generating suspense through character development, the FBI protagonists’ interviews with serial killers in prison, and ongoing serial-killer investigations. Shot in the wonderfully dark style David Fincher is known for, and with unexpected humor as well. We were captivated from the first moment to the last and can’t remember a show so perfectly paced or thought-out. The last episode of season one is perfect.

On Amazon…

TRAPPED – The Icelandic series Trapped is just completely over-the-top in the best possible way. From a first episode that seems fairly conventional in which a former star detective estranged from his wife and now working in a crappy little town must deal with human trafficking and the discovery of a corpse with no arms, legs, or head, the show just goes into overdrive. This show has everything–avalanches, lots more deaths, family intrigue, long-time town secrets, a harbor deal with the Chinese that goes terribly wrong, and much more. After episode three we felt like we’d seen ten episodes of any other show, it’s so jam-packed. Yet at the same time the portrait of the detective and other characters is pretty deep and the action never seems rushed. Highly recommended.

On Shudder…

JORDSKOTT – This Swedish series features the disappearance of children connected to a development project that will destroy old-growth forest. The lead detective’s daughter, missing for years, returns in an altered state. Something weird is swimming in the river through the forest. Why are there so many tunnels that end in various old houses? Why the heck does that dude have gills? Why are so many people being murdered? If these questions intrigue you, Jordskott is for you. The last episode of the season is a little bit of a let-down, with terrible blocking on some action scenes and a few things that could’ve been tightened up. But as a whole, the series is original enough that we recommend watching, and look forward to season 2.

MISSIONS – A French show in which a mission to Mars by a wealthy billionaire discovers a cosmonaut supposedly dead for fifty years, among other mysteries. Although the fact the credits take up three minutes of every 20-minute episode is a bit much, the show has much to offer, including a grade-A-quality infusion of that frisson of Mars mystery dread some of us really enjoy. Season one leaves things on a cliffhanger, but it’s a tight show that deserves your patience in waiting for season 2.

THE VALLEY – Another (German) show about a small town with secrets, this time revolving around the wine queen, who shows up dead, setting off a series of repercussions for the mysterious stranger with no memory who appears at the local pub around the same time. If for no other reason than to prove his own innocence, the stranger sets off on a quest to solve the mystery…but in doing so, will he unlock secrets about himself that he doesn’t want to know? The resolution to this gothic psychological thriller will either resonate or have you wanting to throw the TV across the room. (For the younger folks–a TV is a large rectangular object oldsters used to watch their shows on.)

On Starz…

(Cable–not under the general TV Shows category, but under Starz only, weirdly in a subcategory that includes shows like Alf! Good hunting)

MONSTER – This Norwegian murder mystery involving a cultish religion, a series of disappearances in the present-day and the past, is, in the end, the most over-the-top and moody of the shows recommended here. The first episode is very ordinary, but then it picks up, with five episodes in a row that are just totally ridiculous in various ways (good ways). An odd perk is the incompetence of the local police, which at times seems deliberate on the part of the show’s creators and then not so deliberate. Why is it that someone who trains a machine gun on two police officers and then tries to kill them doesn’t wind up in prison but is walking around free a moment later? How come anyone who wants to can just sneak into the evidence room and mess with stuff? Honestly, in any other show this would have us turning the show off. But with Monster, with bog-quicksand scenes and an epic battle between epic-ly naked men, a lot of stuff burning to the ground, and a cop who might be one of the biggest bastards you’ve ever seen on the screen…who cares. Just fill in a few gaps with your brain–fan fic anyone?–and you’ll no doubt enjoy the ride.

 

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My Fiction This Year: Borne, Strange Bird, Trump Land, Monsters

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(art for “this world is full of monsters” by armando veve)

It’s been a busy year for me fiction-wise–here’s everything I had out in 2017 in terms of original fiction. Most all of it deals in some guise with human-nonhuman interactions and the consequences of not reaching some new accommodation with our environment, one that acknowledges we are not separate from it. That it is not just a backdrop or something for us to be “stewards” to or exploit.

BORNE – The flagship of my efforts, a novel about a giant flying bear, a blob of intelligent biotech, and a woman just trying to survive in a science-fantasy city of the future. Lots of great reviews–including from the New Yorker, NYT, LA Times, Washington Post–with the trade paperback out in late February.

THE STRANGE BIRD – A Borne-related novella that follows the harrowing adventures of a biotech bird who has escaped from a laboratory. Characters like Mord, Rachel, and Wick enter into the narrative, and the novella provides a deeper understanding of the Magician from Borne. This is probably my most overt attempt at seeing the world from the view of the nonhuman. That included trying to think of landscapes as vertical rather than horizontal–to a point. To have committed to that approach completely would’ve resulted in something too experimental for the story I wanted to tell.

THIS WORLD IS FULL OF MONSTERS – A long story, novelette really, that follows the narrator through the aftermath of a strange invasion that transforms both him and the world. This is not an Area X story, but I do see it as a successor, in a sense, in that whereas the Southern Reach trilogy stops short of showing what the full transformation of the world might look like, “This World Is Full of Monsters” is fully about that. It’s based on study of a lot of weird biology, among other things. Also, if we really want to talk about the “post human,” it’s as likely to occur on the biological sense as the virtual, AI sense.

TRUMP LAND – I don’t think this year could’ve gone by, for me, without directly tackling the subject of Trump, in this case through a short story for Slate about the building of a folly that’s an amusement park in the shape of Trump’s reclining body. It’s tough to do satire in the current era of false news and the conflation of the political and entertainment, so I chose to create a story in which the satire becomes subsumed by the real, placed in the wider context of the environment, by the end. I really don’t think I could stand living in the world of a novel about Trump–the time to write that–but I will continue to explore narratives at shorter lengths that take on Trump and related issues in a direct way.

As for what’s in works…Trump’s election seems to have been a kick in the pants for me. I’m more productive than ever. In addition to working on the YA novel Jonathan Lambshead and the Golden Sphere, which continues to explore animal and political themes, I’m also working hard on Hummingbird Salamander, the next adult novel. In addition, various stories and novellas are in stages of completion or full rough draft, including “The Journals of Doctor Mormeck,” “Nice Is Another World for Terrible,” “Drift,” Depth,” “Bliss,” “Drone Love,” “Constellations,” and “Subject 680.” Percolating in the background are two new Area X novels, Absolution and Abdication. (These are just placeholder titles.)

 

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Novel Sale: Hummingbird Salamander in a Major Deal to MCD/FSG!

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(Image by Cristo Vlahos)

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve sold my next adult novel, Hummingbird Salamander, to Sean McDonald at Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s MCD imprint. Along with a new short story collection. I’m really happy to be back with FSG, who’ve been a dream to work with. Some info about the novel below. Thanks to my agent Sally Harding and the Cooke Agency. For inquiries about film rights contact Joseph Veltre at the Gersh Agency. For foreign language rights contact FSG.

Also, The Verge has an in-depth interview with me about the new novel.

NOTE: I am offline writing through early January. If you need to contact me, use the form on this site. Someone will be reading incoming email.

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A speculative thriller about the end of all things, set in an unnamed part of the Pacific Northwest. A harrowing descent into a secret world.

Another winter morning in a city in the Northwest.

Where, exactly? I won’t tell you.

Who am I? I won’t tell you. Exactly.

But you can call me Jane.

Jane Smith, if that helps.

I’m here to show you how the world will end.

“Jane Smith,” a software manager in her late forties who lives in the Pacific Northwest receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit inside. In the storage unit is a taxidermied hummingbird and salamander. Along with a list of five more animals, signed “Love, Silvina.” The hummingbird and salamander turn out to be among the most endangered species in the world, the taxidermy commissioned by a notorious wildlife trafficking criminal. The message is from the daughter of an Argentine industrialist who has recently died, someone who became radicalized and is thought of in some quarters as an eco-terrorist. Jane does not know Silvina and has never met her, but just by taking the items from the storage unit has set events into play over which she has no control.

Against a very near-future backdrop of severe global warming events and domestic and foreign instability due to predatory government actions and an intrusive security state.

Why me? This was the question that tore at me, made me unable to sleep. Why me? What was so special about me…? “You’re trying to destroy my life.”

“No. I’m trying to save your life.”

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Thanks, Indie Bookstores: From Borne (and Mord)

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I’m soon to depart the internet for a quiet few months working on the next novel. But I wanted to thank indie bookstores again for their massive support for my novel Borne. I had such an amazing time visiting so many bookstores and just like last time, for the Southern Reach book tour, I filed a report on this year’s experience, posted by FSG’s Works-in-Progress site. Check that out for a list of not just great bookstores, but also all of the books I bought in those bookstores. (Not to mention all the great bookstores involved with mini-tours over the late summer.)

Below find a selection of photos from the tour. Thanks again, indies, and readers! (And more photos in this facebook album.)

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A Toronto Trifecta: VanderMeer Events with John Irving, Rupi Kaur, and More!

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In addition to a great event with Manuel Gonzales at the Decatur Book Festival this Saturday, I’m doing three amazing events in Toronto next week, details below.

Sept. 3, Sunday, 3pm: Fan Expo Canada

Annihilation book-to-film presentation as well as discussion of my novel Borne with Sam Maggs.

Sept. 5, Tuesday, 7pm: Toronto Public Library

To commemorate 150 years of US/Canada relations, I discuss eco-fiction with Canadian icon Lorna Crozier. Ticketed, but free to the public.

Sept. 7, Thursday, 7pm: Isabel Bader Theatre

The Cooke Agency, a Toronto-based literary agency, is celebrating 25 years in the publishing industry. To mark the occasion of our mutual agent’s 25th anniversary (the Cook Agency), John Irving, Rupi Kaur and I will read from our work, discuss our favorite books, and raise money for the charity First Books. Ticketed.

 

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The Strange Bird Enters the World: New Borne Fiction

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My novel Borne has been selling briskly based on the kindness of reader word-of-mouth, hand-selling by bookstores, and continued critical acclaim. I’m happy a novel with a giant flying bear in it has captured so many people’s imaginations. Recently, Borne even popped back up on the Locus bestseller list, and some other regional lists–which is gratifying, four months out from publication.

Now, though, there’s new Borne fiction, The Strange Bird–a substantial, 27,000-word novella set in the same world as Borne and, about half way through, catching up to the timeline in Borne. You’ll learn much more about the foxes, the Magician, and even Rachel and Wick. But, of course, you’ll also follow the story of the Strange Bird alluded to in my novel. Order information here.

Here’s a description:

The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.

But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear.

With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

Readers thus far have been very kind in their reactions to The Strange Bird, which is much, much more than just an add-on to Borne. I never intended to write a long novella set in the Borne universe–it came up unbidden and I was seized by the idea and the characters and became obsessed.

You can read excerpts over at Boing Boing and Tor.

A couple of reviews have appeared already–from DePaul’s Environmental Critique blog and Jeff Karnicky.

I also wrote this editorial for the Revelator that speaks to the themes in the novella and talked about the piece over at Publishers Weekly.

Will there be more Borne fiction? Yes. I’m currently working on a long story called “The Three,” about the dead astronauts in Borne, and a Borne bestiary, cataloging 35 of the 120 creatures in the novel, will be posted online by my publisher the end of this month.

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