Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 43

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck (Mountain)–Entry #22

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the entries since easily found in the archive.

They've taken her away from me. They've taken her away from me. They've taken her away from me. They've taken me away from me.

Gabriel came down like a colossus in flames—smashing through the roof of the library where my avatar sat reading love poems, his wings ablaze and the look upon his face hideous. My avatar was flung headlong into a corner, and I experienced a moment of disorientation throughout my Mountain self.

He stood there unable to speak for a moment, teetering and smoldering in his own anger with his head bent down to stare at me. He was enormous, his body taut and muscular, so that with his white robes he looked as if made out of chiseled marble. A burnt hellish scent cut through the air and the aftershock vibration of his presence was like a wave.

Then my link to my surveillance moths cut off. Then my links to visuals and other sense collectors beyond my mountain self. Then there was just me and my link to my avatar. I could see nothing else, hear nothing else, be nowhere else. My avatar and my self might as well have been the same, and with that realization came the irrational fear that if my library avatar died in this moment, I died too.

Standing over my avatar, Gabriel spoke, words sharp and straight and poison-laced. "You spoke to a surveillance subject. You spoke to her across multiple realities. YOU SPOKE TO HER IN A PLACE OF TEMPORAL DYSFUNCTION. YOU SPOKE TO HER AND LIED TO US." The marble of his face seemed to wrench apart and then come back together.

The lack of my normal senses had traumatized me. I could not formulate a response for a moment. I fought against a sense that I should Rise Up, that my mountain-self should dislodge the angels from my summit, that I should destroy it all. But I could see nothing. I knew, too, that retaliation would be brutal and swift.

"I did nothing that betrayed you," I said. "I did break the rules, but it did not hurt anything."

Gabriel reached down and picked me up by the shoulders, flung me across the room. I had dulled my nerve receptors, but there was still a thickness to the crack-and-thud that brought a ghost sensation of blood and nausea with it. I focused very carefully on his approaching figure through the fuzziness of my vision.

Gabriel leaned down and whispered in my ear. Somehow the whisper was worse. It felt like a serpent sliding into my head under the skin and curling around my skull, looking for a way into my brain. What he said was worst of all. "We gave you speech, mountain. We gave you the kind of intelligence that is considered human. We gave you those things so that you could help us. If you met others of your kind, they would not recognize you. They would cast you out. We are all you have, we are your family."

My world closed down even further, to contemplation of the annihilation of what he had just said, the unmaking. A scream rose from my flanks that sent the ghost frogs hurtling away or imploding and the scream up up up through the core of me and into my avatar. I punched myself in the face. I punched myself. I looked for something sharp to jab into my eyes. Because I knew he was telling me the truth. Because of what he had taken away.

"Enough!" Gabriel raised his hand. My scream cut off. A dull, deep, dark sense of calm swept over me. He stood before me now his normal height, his clothes impeccable, the hole in the library's ceiling gone. My avatar stood, and I was now undamaged I could tell. But: inside, beneath the calm, chaos. Who am I? Who am I? What am I? Across the vast empty stretches of space that I had once imagined were from time to time traveled by the juveniles of my kind I saw only the seed pods of something alien and distant from me, grotesque. Except to them I would be grotesque.

Gabriel smiled, as if nothing at all of consequence had happened. Only the twitch and curl of his wing-tips remained as evidence of upset. "We are reassigning you. We think you will find your new assignment more pleasant than the last. Please: continue with your reading."

He walked out through the library door as if he was a flesh-and-blood man. When he was gone, I had my sensors back, and despite the trauma I breathed through every mountain pore of me a deep draught of information, filling myself with a sad relief.

I checked my surveillance links. One link left. One single, solitary link, to a world with no Marty ever in it, and the lack of the rest a void in the core of me. That one reality I had surveilled once before: a a vast civilization pushed south from the Arctic, sending ahead their floating ghost-whale spirit weapons. These floating ghost-whales glided across the surface of the world and anyone they touched, anyone who came within the influence of their wallowing bodies, faded into the past of another, random reality—ceased to exist in the present. But this Earth also existed in a kind of temporal hiccup where everything kept happening over and over again. The spirit-whale advance would reach a certain point, re-set, and begin again—so many times that now the commanders of the northern armies headed south, and their civilian leaders, knew like an echo of an echo in their brains what was happening.

Like Marty now would be to me. I thought the Marty I had met was the reflection, the doppelganger, the avatar. But for me, I now realize, she was the only one I would ever know. The Marty of the Grim Lighthouse.

The last thing she did for me before I left her was to show me the Grim Lighthouse, and I am beginning to think that what I learned there was the greatest gift anyone could give me, even greater than the savage gifts Gabriel has given me. "Don't be afraid," she said, Marty said, a woman who was slowly dying and who lived on a dead Earth. "Don't be afraid." As she led me into that charnal house, that abbatoir for the senses. "Nothing can hurt you here," she said, even as I could tell it hurt her. "Nothing here is real," she said, even though I had given her the knowledge that it was real, somewhere. Beyond, a poisonous sea radiant with the knowledge of its own disease, and yet that not the worst of it.

"Promise me you'll come back," she said, and I'd promised.

But they've taken her from me. They've hidden her from me, and maybe worse, and in their hubris they think that this will be all right, that this will be okay. That you can do this and come away unscathed. The angels made me human, Gabriel says. Well, then, if I'm to be human and utterly alone, perhaps you'll see soon enough the worst a human wronged can wreak—I have the Grim Lighthouse to guide me.

I'll find a way to tear them down, Marty. I'll tear them all down.

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck (Mountain)–Entry #22 originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 14, 2011.

ODD? Contest at SF Signal

SF Signal is hosting a contest for ODD?, our new antho, that will be judged by Jeff Ford.

ODD? Contest at SF Signal originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 13, 2011.

ODD?'s Subscriber, Oddkin, Super Oddkin Search Continues!

Thus far, the response to our call for subscribers, Oddkins, and Super Oddkins for our new ODD? anthology series has been great! In fact, it's been good enough that we're extending our special discounts, listed below, through October 21. We have a real chance to provide stability for this series now, at its inception—thanks so much for your support of unique and exciting fiction.

You can also help us by embedded or linking to the video above and to this post so others can take advantage of this offer.

In other news, ODD will help to bolster content and discussion on our forthcoming weirdfictionreview.com site and check out the cool Greg Bossert backdrop for the forthcoming Cheeky Frawg/ODD website, coming soon:

—Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

****

Each volume of ODD? will contain surreal, weird, fantastical, strange reprints (some of them not available otherwise except in expensive limited editions), previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories. This first volume features, among others, Amos Tutuola, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeffrey Ford, Rikki Ducornet, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Hiromi Goto, Stacey Levine, and Jeffrey Thomas—with new translations by Gio Clairval, Larry Nolen, and Brian Evenson of such classic writers as Gustave Le Rouge, Leopoldo Lugones, and Karl Hans Strobl as well as a brand-new story by Leena Krohn! (Full table of contents here.)

The print versions will appear at the same time as the next e-book installment–i.e., ODD? Vol 1 will appear in print at the same time as the e-book of Vol 2. Every year starting in 2012, we will publish two volumes.

You can subscribe now and be assured of receiving each volume at a reduced price. It's a chance to support a cool new project that brings you fiction from writers from around the world.

—For the 3 initial volumes in e-book form, $19.00 (regularly $21)

—For all 3 initial volumes in trade paperback form, $42 (regularly $45)

—For the next two volumes in e-book form and all three in trade paperback form, $51 (regularly $59)

—Shipping and handling within the US is included free for print volumes; outside of the US please add $25

Or, become one of our valued "Oddkins" for $65 and receive the e-book and trade paperback versions *plus* all kinds of…odd and unique extras…with the delivery of your trade paperbacks. (US only offer: Extend it now to an additional year for only $110 total.)

—Oddkins living outside of the US alas must add $30 to cover shipping.

A "Super Oddkin" at $275 receives every volume until we die or the series is discontinued (this $275 value is guaranteed with books of equal value written or edited by us should ODD? end early) For those outside of the US, a Super Oddkin status is $400.

—You may designate different delivery email/addresses for the print versus ebook versions if ordering both; i.e., give one version as a gift.

Send a check made out to "Jeff VanderMeer" to POB 4248, Tallahassee, FL 32315, or paypal to vanderworld@hotmail.com - you must confirm via email before October 22 that you plan to take advantage of this offer.

ODD?'s Subscriber, Oddkin, Super Oddkin Search Continues! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 12, 2011.

Confluence, Convergence, and Layering

(Does this pertain to Mormeck, the writing book, critiques, or all three? With what did it originate, and where will it end up? I'm sure the illustrator, Jeremy Zerfoss, would like to know.)

Writing an online fiction serial like Mormeck as I've started working on the heavily visual creative writing book for Abrams, which includes re-reading a lot of my own nonfiction and that of others, while also doing some novel critiques has been an interesting experience. I descend through sedimentary layers throughout the day, adhering to a work schedule that separates out these different elements. But, of course, these disparate ways of engaging with narrative bleed into one another, inform one another, and spark ideas across projects.

For example, the novel critiques combined with the writing book research have made me re-evaluate the idea of distance in Mormeck. I'm more and more convinced that in the final draft there will be no "Stalingrad" but only "the winter city" and that in making the historical specificity more general I will bring into focus and make more specific other elements that are more general now. This is important to a narrative that acknowledges hundreds of alternate realities and inhabits several of them. When there are so many iterations of place and situation, the one observing this is perhaps less concerned with the extent of the deviation and more concerned with the personal relationships within that landscape…since the landscape is in a sense an illusion. This was brought home to me when writing the last avatar scene involving a German general. The fact of using a historical figure in the scene stifled a sense of character for me, even with the option of non-standard deviation. The character became encased in a kind of rigid armor, and indeed the reason he sits so stiff when the avatar reveals himself is not just from fear but also from the author's inability to imagine any other action for him.

Another thing that becomes clear from most novel critiques is that beginning writers struggle with how to convey information, especially in SF novels, even in later drafts. It is very hard for beginners to layer in exposition, and to make it a knife point that supports the blade of the characters and plot. When doing a serial, this takes a slightly different form, especially since the idea with Mormeck was to take delight in presenting unusual exposition—to in a sense make the exposition tell its own stories, so that even as this telling is pushing forward with the plot-intertwined-with-characters safely inside its whirring horizontal tornado, the circular force of exposition is itself made of narrative too. No, the problem instead is that particular thoughts, feelings, and actions by the characters at times take on a repetitive feel because I think of something too late and must revisit a context in a later scene to express it. Similarly, scenes that should in the final contract are expanded and over-exposed while other scenes are too short, their brevity birthing scenes later to compensate that would themselves be annexed by other scenes.

The writing books I'm re-reading, including one on subtext and another on the nature of influence between writers, help give further clarity to certain critiques, and at the same time in the anecdotes and situations suggest at times sublimation into fiction, the better to be grist for Mormeck, ground down and reformed in a harder, more concentrated form.

Structures that suggest themselves in Mormeck on a physical level in the form of creatures and objects begin to suggest images for the writing book—images that can contain or accommodate transformation from flesh-and-blood into metaphor (sometimes retaining their subtext from Mormeck) or more literal form-skeletons upon which to drap a point.

In some ways, too, the critiques—by requiring me to find alternate ways to say or structure or convey or imply for the betterment of the story—allow me to work out problems to solve in Mormeck on a practice field of sorts, the Mormeck-ghost attaching itself to the critique-novel context and when one is solved, so is the other, and the ghost, healed, releases, to float off to rejoin the rest of Mormeck-in-my-head.

These are imprecise and sometimes strangely heightened ways of talking about influence within one's own skull, but the point is that I think all of these disparate yet related activities are useful to one another, whereas they could have been disruptive.

Confluence, Convergence, and Layering originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 12, 2011.

ODD?! Odd Anthology, Odd Video, Odd Subscriptions

(Myster Odd based on a character created by Jeremy Zerfoss. Music by Danny Fontaine; lyrics by Jeff VanderMeer and Danny Fontaine.)

WHAT IS ODD?

Announcing the release of the unique new fiction anthology ODD?, which asks the question "Is it odd, or are you too normal?" A mix of originals, new translations, and reprints (many of them hard-to-find) that qualify as "strange fiction", some of it surreal, some horrific, some fantastical, and all of it…odd. (Unless it's just because you're too normal.)

—Featuring, among others, Amos Tutuola, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeffrey Ford, Rikki Ducornet, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Hiromi Goto, Stacey Levine, and Jeffrey Thomas—with new translations by Gio Clairval, Larry Nolen, and Brian Evenson of such classic writers as Gustave Le Rouge, Leopoldo Lugones, and Karl Hans Strobl as well as a brand-new story by Leena Krohn! (Full table of contents below the cut.)

—Brought to you by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, the team behind such anthos as The New Weird, Steampunk Reloaded, Last Drink Bird Head, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, and the Best American Fantasy series.

WHERE CAN I BUY IT?

In addition to Amazon in Germany, France, and the UK, you can buy ODD? at:

—Amazon.com

—B&N

—Weightless Books

—Wizard's Tower

WHERE CAN I SUBSCRIBE?

You can subscribe now and be assured of receiving each volume at a reduced price. It's a chance to support a cool new project that brings you fiction from writers from around the world.

—For the 3 initial volumes in e-book form, $19.00 (regularly $21)

—For all 3 initial volumes in trade paperback form, $42 (regularly $45)

—For the next two volumes in e-book form and all three in trade paperback form, $51 (regularly $59)

—Shipping and handling within the US is included free for print volumes; outside of the US please add $25

(The print versions will appear at the same time as the next e-book installment–i.e., ODD? Vol 1 will appear in print at the same time as the e-book of Vol 2. Every year starting in 2012, we will publish two volumes.)

Or, become one of our valued "Oddkins" for $65 and receive the e-book and trade paperback versions *plus* all kinds of…odd and unique extras…with the delivery of your trade paperbacks. (US only offer: Extend it now to an additional year for only $110 total.)

—Oddkins living outside of the US alas must add $30 to cover shipping.

A "Super Oddkin" at $275 receives every volume until we die or the series is discontinued (this $275 value is guaranteed with books of equal value written or edited by us should ODD? end early) For those outside of the US, a Super Oddkin status is $400.

—You may designate different delivery email/addresses for the print versus ebook versions if ordering both; i.e., give one version as a gift.

Send a check made out to "Jeff VanderMeer" to POB 4248, Tallahassee, FL 32315, or paypal to vanderworld@hotmail.com - you must confirm via email before October 22 that you plan to take advantage of this offer.

WHAT'S WITH THE COOL VIDEO?!

The video featured above is a unique short film by Greg Bossert celebrating ODD? Bossert, based just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. has done research and design for feature films—including the Neil Gaiman/Roger Avary adaptation of Beowulf and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland—and worked on creating visuals and sounds for independent films, including the One Minute Weird Tales video series. His stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and ESLI Magazine. Find out more at Sudden Sound and his website.

WHAT THE HECK IS A CHEEKY FRAWG?

Cheeky Frawg specializes in quality, self-aware e-books. We hand-craft every e-book on a letterpress using only the best, most perfectly formed 00000s and 111111s. Our e-binding is hand-rolled by former Cuban cigar makers, our interiors are lovingly formatted by Neil Clarke, and our covers, unique back covers, and wallpapers are designed by the Las Vegas Madman, artist Jeremy Zerfoss. Cheeky Frawg is a joint production of Ann and jeff VanderMeer. Join us on facebook!

ODD? – TOC

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer – Introduction

Amos Tutuola – "The Dead Babies"

Gustave Le Rouge – "The War of the Vampires" (translation by Brian Evenson and David Beus)

Jeffrey Ford – "Weiroot"

Leopoldo Lugones – "The Bloat Toad" (translation by Larry Nolen)

Mark Samuels – "Apt 205″

Michael Cisco – "Modern Cities Exist Only to Be Destroyed"

Nalo Hopkinson – "Slow Cold Chick"

Sumanth Prabhaker – "A Hard Truth About Waste Management"

Hiromi Goto – "Stinky Girl"

Eric Basso – "Logues"

Edward Morris – "Lotophagi"

Karin Tidbeck – "The Aunts"

Jeffrey Thomas – "The Fork"

Rikki Ducornet – "The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi"

Leena Krohn – "The Night of the Normal Distribution Curve" (translation by Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela)

Amanda le Bas de Plumetot – "Unmaking"

Karl Hans Strobl – "The Head" (translation by Gio Clairval)

Caitlin R. Kiernan – "A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills"

Stacey Levine – "Sausage"

Danny Fontaine & Jeff VanderMeer – "Myster Odd Theme Song" (lyrics)

ODD?! Odd Anthology, Odd Video, Odd Subscriptions originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 11, 2011.

ODD?! Odd Anthology, Odd Video, Odd Subscriptions, Odd Contest

(Myster Odd based on a character created by Jeremy Zerfoss. Music by Danny Fontaine; lyrics by Jeff VanderMeer and Danny Fontaine.)

WHAT IS ODD?

Announcing the release of the unique new fiction anthology ODD?, which asks the question "Is it odd, or are you too normal?" A mix of originals, new translations, and reprints (many of them hard-to-find) that qualify as "strange fiction", some of it surreal, some horrific, some fantastical, and all of it…odd. (Unless it's just because you're too normal.)

—Featuring, among others, Amos Tutuola, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeffrey Ford, Rikki Ducornet, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Hiromi Goto, Stacey Levine, and Jeffrey Thomas—with new translations by Gio Clairval, Larry Nolen, and Brian Evenson of such classic writers as Gustave Le Rouge, Leopoldo Lugones, and Karl Hans Strobl as well as a brand-new story by Leena Krohn! (Full table of contents below the cut.)

—Brought to you by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, the team behind such anthos as The New Weird, Steampunk Reloaded, Last Drink Bird Head, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, and the Best American Fantasy series.

WHERE CAN I BUY IT?

In addition to Amazon in Germany, France, and the UK, you can buy ODD? at:

—Amazon.com

—B&N

And coming very soon:

—Weightless Books

—Wizard's Tower

WHERE CAN I SUBSCRIBE?

This blog post gives you details on all kinds of special offers good through Friday (when prices rise)—along with information on how to become an Oddkin or even a Super Oddkin! (Note: print version of ODD? is out next year.)

WHAT'S THE CONTEST?

Just post an odd true-life story of something that happened to you in the comments thread of this blog post any time between now and Friday, October 21, and you could appear in the next volume of ODD? Yes, that's right. You could receive a contract for your weird true-life story to appear in ODD? Not only that, the winner will receive a year's subscription to both the ebook and print versions. Under 1,500 words, please, and anything above PG-13 will need bleeps. TO BE JUDGED BY ODDITY AND MULTIPLE WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER JEFFREY FORD!

WHAT'S WITH THE COOL VIDEO?!

The video featured above is a unique short film by Greg Bossert celebrating ODD? Bossert, based just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. has done research and design for feature films—including the Neil Gaiman/Roger Avary adaptation of Beowulf and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland—and worked on creating visuals and sounds for independent films, including the One Minute Weird Tales video series. His stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and ESLI Magazine. Find out more at Sudden Sound and his website.

WHAT THE HECK IS A CHEEKY FRAWG?

Cheeky Frawg specializes in quality, self-aware e-books. We hand-craft every e-book on a letterpress using only the best, most perfectly formed 00000s and 111111s. Our e-binding is hand-rolled by former Cuban cigar makers, our interiors are lovingly formatted by Neil Clarke, and our covers, unique back covers, and wallpapers are designed by the Las Vegas Madman, artist Jeremy Zerfoss. Cheeky Frawg is a joint production of Ann and jeff VanderMeer. Join us on facebook!

ODD? – TOC

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer – Introduction

Amos Tutuola – "The Dead Babies"

Gustave Le Rouge – "The War of the Vampires" (translation by Brian Evenson and David Beus)

Jeffrey Ford – "Weiroot"

Leopoldo Lugones – "The Bloat Toad" (translation by Larry Nolen)

Mark Samuels – "Apt 205″

Michael Cisco – "Modern Cities Exist Only to Be Destroyed"

Nalo Hopkinson – "Slow Cold Chick"

Sumanth Prabhaker – "A Hard Truth About Waste Management"

Hiromi Goto – "Stinky Girl"

Eric Basso – "Logues"

Edward Morris – "Lotophagi"

Karin Tidbeck – "The Aunts"

Jeffrey Thomas – "The Fork"

Rikki Ducornet – "The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi"

Leena Krohn – "The Night of the Normal Distribution Curve" (translation by Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela)

Amanda le Bas de Plumetot – "Unmaking"

Karl Hans Strobl – "The Head" (translation by Gio Clairval)

Caitlin R. Kiernan – "A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills"

Stacey Levine – "Sausage"

Danny Fontaine & Jeff VanderMeer – "Myster Odd Theme Song" (lyrics)

ODD?! Odd Anthology, Odd Video, Odd Subscriptions, Odd Contest originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 11, 2011.

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck's Avatar–#15

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the two entries since here and here.

Such a thin line Pavlov showed me, a kind of fatal smile, that line of the Volga River with the winter city hunched up against it, and against that the pressure of the German assault.

What did Pavlov want me to do for him on my way into exile in the Far East? He wanted me to spoil a general's breakfast. Specifically, General Alexander Edler von Daniels, leader of infantry, just that week placed in charge also of General Hermann Hoth's much-depleted panzer army. A divergence in this reality from the norm. It was von Daniels' infantry that had most pressed Pavlov in his not-so-luxurious fortified house, and "now the man will be bringing some additional ferocity to bear."

So I stole from Pavlov's house into the dull gray almost-daylight, tiny and reptilian, and found my way to the Other Side, there to adhere to a soldier's dirty pack and then to the diesel-stinking metal carapace of a tank and then from there to the side of a smoldering building, skittering my way to a certain courtyard full of dead plants and cracked tiles, through to the private breakfast room of General Alexander Edler von Daniels. (It took much longer than my description, but I am tired of delivering wartime travelogues.)

Pavlov's intelligence had not been faulty. Not only did the General eat alone, with guards stationed outside the room, but the extent and detail of the food staggered me—flowing as it did down the length of a long, dark-wood table. The General sat on one end of the cornucopia to receive it, as if the medals on his uniform were for excellence in growing crops and taking care of livestock. Hams and plates of eggs. Herring. Caviar. Sausage. What looked like some form of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Piles of strawberries. Chicken. Fried and poached eggs. Fresh mushrooms. Delicate pastries. The savory smell of it made all of my komodo senses quiver. If he ate all of this then clearly he was preternatural in some way. But I thought rather that he must give the leavings to his staff…while outside his infantry survived on half-rations and the city's populace ate their shoes. Was it flown in on the few surviving supply planes, or somehow ransacked from the countryside?

Regardless, I had no patience for it, and I expanded to my full size, came at him from across the table to swat the gun from his hand as he cursed, and broke his wrist in the process. Then, as he watched, I gobbled up as much as I could in a few bites, bones and all.

Strange, how he sat there petrified, almost as if I had turned him to stone, once I'd taken his gun away. He didn't even attend to his wrist, just let it dangle loosely on his thigh. His eyes never left me, but it was as he was trapped within a prison of his own flesh.

I leaned down until my open jaws were just inches from the General's face. "Sergeant Pavlov, from Pavlov's House, says hello. He says that while you are our guest in the Soviet Union you should eat what the people eat. Nothing more and nothing less. That you should behave in a much more friendly fashion. And if you don't, he will send me to visit you every morning and every night until you do…"

Nothing. No reaction at all.

Well, then. It would stick or it wouldn't. Either way, my belly was full and my obligation to Pavlov fulfilled. I shrunk and made myself invisible, and even that didn't register with the General. I began to wonder whether if I returned that night he would still be staring off into space.

"He will heed the warning for awhile," Pavlov had told me. "And then it will fade as if it was all a dream and he will forget or he will rationalize as we all do. And then one day, if he is still alive, he will resume eating his ridiculous breakfast, and if we are still at war in this city he will lose his fear of me and he will press me even harder. And perhaps after the war, if he is still alive, while eating some other ridiculous breakfast he will tell his grandchildren a silly story about a giant talking reptile…and you will become a completely different kind of monster."

"Is that what will happen between us, Pavlov?" I had asked.

A wide smile had animated his face. "Yes, it is true. This may happen between us. I will wake up one morning with a shriek and I will ask myself 'Why did you ever talk to that impossible lizard. That is the first, the very first, sign of insanity. You must never talk to that lizard again. You must not respond to any guarded letter he might send you. If he sends you a postcard pretend it came from your aunt near the Caspian Sea instead.'"

Would I ever send him a postcard from the Far East? I didn't know. Part of me understood he would be better off never hearing from me again. Part of me as I left the General's quarters wondered why Pavlov hadn't asked me to kill the General, but another part knew exactly why.

On my way out of Stalingrad, against a horizon cut through with spirals of black smoke and the whine of aircraft and mortar fire, I saw an angel. I was a tiny, invisible komodo glued to the side of yet another rumbling Soviet tank belching its way East. The angel stood atop a building torn apart over time by artillery shells until now the roof was gone and the supporting wall of the top floor formed a gaping U. He stood in the embrace of the U like pale statuary or a sentry. But the angel didn't fool me. Its features were too predatory, even from that distance, its gaze too telescopic. Ever vigilant, it was looking for something—perhaps even me.

When we were several kilometers away, bumping up and down on a dirty, rutted road with stripped trees to either side, I realized there were worse things than angels. For it was then that I discovered I had not just a Remnant inside of me, but a demon, too.

Hiding there like the thin, sour-tasting inner lining of a walnut.

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck's Avatar–#15 originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 10, 2011.

ODD?–Sneak Peek! Become an Oddkin or Super-Oddkin!

As you know, it's an uncertain time for the publishing industry, and everyone is experimenting with new models for delivering content and paying creators. In our case, we think it's the perfect time to launch a new anthology series devoted to eclectic fiction, usually with a fantastical, magic realist, weird, or surrealist approach. You might call it…odd. At least, we are, with ODD?, "Is it odd or are you too normal," the e-book anthology that we will be launching late this week.

Each volume of ODD? will contain reprints (some of them not available otherwise except in expensive limited editions), previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories. This first volume will be accompanied by a professionally produced short film featuring an original song.

The print versions will appear at the same time as the next e-book installment–i.e., ODD? Vol 1 will appear in print at the same time as the e-book of Vol 2. Every year starting in 2012, we will publish two volumes.

You can subscribe now and be assured of receiving each volume at a reduced price. It's a chance to support a cool new project that brings you fiction from writers from around the world.

—For the 3 initial volumes in e-book form, $19.00 (regularly $21)

—For all 3 initial volumes in trade paperback form, $42 (regularly $45)

—For the next two volumes in e-book form and all three in trade paperback form, $51 (regularly $59)

—Shipping and handling within the US is included free for print volumes; outside of the US please add $25

Or, become one of our valued "Oddkins" for $65 and receive the e-book and trade paperback versions *plus* all kinds of…odd and unique extras…with the delivery of your trade paperbacks. (US only offer: Extend it now to an additional year for only $110 total.)

—Oddkins living outside of the US alas must add $30 to cover shipping.

A "Super Oddkin" at $275 receives every volume until we die or the series is discontinued (this $275 value is guaranteed with books of equal value should ODD? end early) For those outside of the US, a Super Oddkin status is $400.

—You may designate different delivery email/addresses for the print versus ebook versions if ordering both; i.e., give one version as a gift.

Send a check made out to "Jeff VanderMeer" to POB 4248, Tallahassee, FL 32315, or paypal to vanderworld@hotmail.com - you must confirm via email before Friday of this week that you plan to take advantage of this offer.

Below the cut you'll find a sneak peek in the form of sample lines from each story…

THE DEAD BABIES—Amos Tutuola

Now we started our journey from the Deads' Town directly to my home town which I had left for many years. As we were going on this road, we met over a thousand deads who were just going to the Deads' Town and if they saw us coming towards them on that road, they would branch into the bush and come back to the road at our back. Whenever they saw us, they would be making bad noise which showed us that they hated us and also were very annoyed to see alives.

THE WAR OF THE VAMPIRES—Gustave Le Rouge (New translation by David Beus and Brian Evenson)

The sea in this place was sown with reefs and sandbanks, crossed through with currents, among which I had a lot of trouble maintaining my craft; the cadavers of fish and birds floated belly up, as if the proximity of the accursed mountain could be mortal to all animate beings. A smell of carnage and of corruption rose from these desolate waves.

WEIROOT—Jeffrey Ford

Weiroot, you mad man, what do you think you're doing, sitting in the chill of the night, winking at the winking stars? Are you sending them a message? Come visit me? And what if they were to? What if in say a year or two a star fell, swept down out of the dark, trailing green fire, and smashed with an explosion of sparks and black diamond debris into the dunes surrounding your wooden plank palace? What would you do then?

THE BLOAT TOAD—Leopoldo Lugones (New translation by Larry Nolen)

One day, playing in the villa where my family lived, I stumbled upon a little toad that, instead of fleeing like its more corpulent relatives, swelled up extraordinarily under my stoning.

APARTMENT 205—Mark Samuels

Pieter Slokker awoke from a dream in which he was trapped in a dark, windowless room. It was three o'clock in the morning, and it sounded as if someone was hammering at the door of his flat.

MODERN CITIES EXIST ONLY TO BE DESTROYED—Michael Cisco (previously published in a limited edition)

Standing at the edge of the platform, X. gazes at a panel set in the dingy, bruise-colored wall on the opposite side of the tracks. The wall folds inwards a few feet to the left of the panel, forming a corner that has been invaded by an irregular patch of lacy white scale, which, at times, he thinks looks like the spray of a violent sea, frozen in mid-leap as it dashes against the rocks of the shore.

SLOW COLD CHICK—Nalo Hopkinson

There was an egg huddling in one of the little cups inside the fridge door. Where had that come from? Exactly what she needed. She was reaching eagerly for it when a stench from deep inside the fridge slid into her nostrils, a poisonous, vinegary tang.

A HARD TRUTH ABOUT WASTE MANAGEMENT—Sumanth Prabhaker

They cheered when the toilet shook and made a wet belching sound after sucking down the afternoon's trash, and a small gray animal popped out from the toilet and landed on the bathmat. The animal shivered as the family cheered it on. It shook its leathery skin and curled around the graham cracker leg of the son's chair.

STINKY GIRL—Hiromi Goto

Father's ghost often looks much like a cabbage, rolling around the gritty floor of our trailer, and even though Mother cannot see him, she has booted his head many times, when she punctuates her sayings with savage kicks to what she can only see as empty air. It doesn't hurt him, of course, but it does seem uncomfortable.

LOGUES—Eric Basso

This time the barrier takes shape as a small brass amphora stippled with a few specks of verdigris. A red shirt connects the upper pair of hands to the lower…He spreads the fingers of his left hand. Raises them. The fingers expand, merging with another set of fingers that comes down to meet them at the tips. The game ends here for the time being. The operation was brief, painless. Yet he knows he will have to wait a while longer. It has ended badly, not in the way he would have expected it to end. He must begin again later at still another barrier.

LOTOPHAGI—Edward Morris

If you believe the stoners in Washington, there really are trolls in the Seattle steam-tunnels.

AUNTS—Karin Tidbeck (original to this anthology)

Great-Aunt could no longer expand, which was as it should be.

THE FORK—Jeffrey Thomas

The light snow of metallic scabs sprinkled down from the machines of the sky.

THE VOLATILIZED CEILING OF BARON MUNODI—Rikki Ducornet

The museums of Europe keep curious portraits illustrating the assumption that the body gives the soul its shape. Da Vinci imagined a woman with a monkey's face, Rubens human lions, Delia Porta a man with the profile of a ram. I myself am albino; I look like an angel and so inspire acute passions. Long¬ing for a purifying fire, men would defile me, or, taking plea¬sure, be absolved of sin. If I have never shared their fevers, it is because a woman has stolen my heart.

THE NIGHT OF THE NORMAL DISTRIBUTION CURVE—Leena Krohn (Translation by Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela; first publication in any language)

That morning she was behaving somewhat unusually. When she finally closed the window, switched off the radio, and picked the dead leaf off the table, she froze and stared at something on the tablecloth.

UNMAKING—Amanda le Bas de Plumetôt (original to this anthology)

I wasn't comfortable before. My throat was hoarse and sore because I yelled at them. They deserved it. I screamed at them and swore and cursed when I felt the smooth weight of the sedative leaning down on me, pressing into my lungs. They had no right. I'd been entitled to that meal and sedative wasn't supposed to be part of it. I'd have kept eating. The rest of the lamb, potatoes roasted golden and crisp so that they shattered when I bit into them, all hot and brittle and salt. There was soft cheese and plums and pears and peaches. I'd have kept eating, eaten beyond the sanity of balance, eaten until my gut split and I died in the pain and wonder of too much of everything.

THE HEAD—Karl Hans Strobl (New translation by Gio Clairval)

The room was completely dark . . . all curtains pulled . . . not a flicker of light from the street, and quite still. My friend, myself and the stranger held each other's hands in a spasmodic, quivering grasp. Utter terror lingered about us, within us . . .And then . . . a white, skeletal, luminescent hand pierced the darkness, moving toward us, and began writing with the pencil set on the table around which we were seated. We could not see what the hand was writing, and still we felt the words inside us . . . as they were written…

A CHILD'S GUIDE TO THE HOLLOW HILLS—Caitlín R. Kiernan

Beneath the low leaf-litter clouds, under endless dry monsoons of insect pupae, strangling rains of millipede droppings and noxious fungal spores, in this muddy, thin land pressed between soil and bedrock foundations, the fairie girl awakens in the bed of the Queen of Decay.

SAUSAGE—Stacey Levine

In those days, my every muscle was willing; the meat was all ready, well ground, as if chewed; I churned wild circles, miles of bloody brown sausage accumulating beneath my wheels; perhaps I lagged; I was worried, filled with shame; but wasn't my work earnest?

ODD?–Sneak Peek! Become an Oddkin or Super-Oddkin! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 9, 2011.

Carrie Vaughn and Cherie Priest Interviews: Kicking Butt, Punting Fauns, Telling All

Just a note that Omnivoracious has run two of my recent interviews–one with the wonderful Carrie Vaughn and one with the wonderful Cherie Priest. I think you'll enjoy both of them.

Carrie Vaughn and Cherie Priest Interviews: Kicking Butt, Punting Fauns, Telling All originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 6, 2011.

Evil Monkey and Territories

Jeff:

What do you call someone who defends territory the size of a postage stamp?

Evil Monkey:

A mouse? No! A flea!

Jeff:

What about someone who attacks to acquire territory that size?

Evil Monkey:

Another mouse! No, a flea!

Jeff:

Maybe it looks large to them.

Evil Monkey:

A postage stamp is pretty important to a letter.

Jeff:

A letter is sent to one person.

Evil Monkey:

Not these days.

Jeff:

I'm going to bleed and die for this postage stamp so I can reach this here one reader.

Evil Monkey:

I'm going to invade so I can chortle over your metaphorical mangled remains and proclaim myself ruler of the postage stamp. Man, that postage stamp sure was corrupt until I started to rule it.

Jeff:

And I, ousted, am going to tell everyone far and wide that the postage stamp was a kingdom, wide and vast.

Evil Monkey:

And I will proclaim that my postage stamp *is* a kingdom, wide and vast, and thus make common cause with my enemy.

Jeff:

But that will all just make others covet your postage stamp and try to invade it, because from afar it will look like a mighty kingdom!

Evil Monkey:

Aha! And that is how I will make my escape! Because after conquering the postage stamp, I find I don't really want it. It's a lot of predictable conversations, a lot of meetings, and keeping track of members and dues. So I will be ousted and live happily ever after.

Jeff:

The next ruler will just proclaim the postage stamp an even bigger kingdom to justify the expense and time required to rule it.

Evil Monkey:

Or maybe the next ruler will have the wisdom to just post the letter, finally reach the one reader, and be done with it.

Jeff:

Ah, Evil, you clearly have a less cynical view of human nature than I do.

Evil Monkey:

What the hell do you know? You're just a wandering curmudgeon. You don't even have a stamp to send a letter!

Jeff:

Yes, instead I have my sanity.

Evil Monkey:

Clearly, you have not seen the postage-stamp kingdom shining upon the hill over yonder. How bright it glitters! How impregnable are its ramparts! How rich are its food stores and how deep its water wells…don't you…don't you want to…besiege it…just a little bit?

Jeff:

Not even a little bit.

Evil Monkey:

Damn you, curmudgeon. Damn you.

Evil Monkey and Territories originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on October 6, 2011.