Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 86

Summer travels and story

Summer brought with it a trip to Malmedy in Belgium where we visited the Baugnez 44 Historical Centrum. I found myself quite impressed by the museum and while walking through it, I couldn't help but be moved by the fate of the soldiers who were massacred at Baugnez. My son was very vocal in opining that the Germans were the evil guys and the Allied forces were heroes. Indeed, this is what history tells us, and there is no excusing the atrocities of the Nazi army. But, as I told my son, we...

Moorcock, Purple Beard, More Books

(More about this mega-monster from Mike Moorcock, designed by John Coulthart, on the Amazon book blog in a few days…)

After a week teaching at Shared Worlds and then teaching the last two weeks of Clarion San Diego with Ann, I'm back home again. Here's a sampling of a few books that came in while I was gone, as an interlude between guest blog posts (which continue through the weekend).

Yes, Clarion turned my hair purple (and I performed a Truffidian wedding). More on all of that soonish...

Guest Post: The Software Engineer's Guide To Writing

Writing a first draft is, for me, panicked, frenzied, and riddled with wrong turns. The first few steps are clear, and from there I'm running in a black room and my only light comes from a pair of shoes that blink when I step. At some point I run smack into a wall with "You're Done" painted on it, and then I start the process of turning my winding path into a straight line.

Designing software to a nebulous set of requirements feels just like this.

I am both a writer and a professional...

When the Cover Doesn't Match the Story

Exhibit 1: My face.

Have you ever been to Japan?  I have.  As with all instances of travel, there was a lot to learn, and I learned a lot.

Exhibit 2: Japan is full of Japanese.

There's no way to make that statement without sounding stupid.  Sounding stupid is something I am resigned to.

Perhaps my eyes were not specialised enough.  I have eyes that Australia has given to me, and they are used to unrepentant diversity; buying milk from the milk bar, waiting on the station, pushing in front of you ...

On reprint collections or Never accept a raisin danish from an Evil Monkey

*Angela is snoozing on an eighteenth century fainting couch, using a pile of books as a pillow, and blanketed by sheets of a A4 paper (printed on one side, double space, 12 pt font). A blue pen dangles from her limp fingers and a large blue splot of ink mars her wrinkled brow.*

Evil Monkey creeps closer, leans down and yells: Hey!

Angela: Argh!!! *flails about, falls off the eighteenth century fainting couch, swears* (a lot)

Evil Monkey: Did I wake you?

Angela: I've known you for what? A week...

The Private Lives of Writers and the Blurred Lines of Ministry

Maurice Broaddus is the author of the novel series, The Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot).  His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, most recently including Dark Dreams II & III, Apex Magazine, Black Static, and Weird Tales Magazine.  He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology (Apex Books).   Read his blog where he often opines on issues of race, religion, writing, and pop culture and learn more about him at...

To Comfort the Disturbed, and Vice Versa

Jha is a Malaysian intersectionality blogger studying in Canada. Her proposed MA thesis is on steampunk and postcolonialism. She can bake a mean chocolate cake. You might note that she is also a ridiculous optimist at times.A few years ago, when I was a wee one in the social justice blogosphere (ok, who am I kidding, I still am), I read a quote that went, "Read six disturbing things a day." A little after this, I ran across a saying, a kind of motto, that ran thusly: "Comfort the disturbed...

Maestro!: Nine Movie Composers to Know

Genevieve Valentine's fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, and anthologies Federations, Teeth, and Running with the Pack. Her first novel is forthcoming from Prime. She is a columnist at Fantasy Magazine and Tor.com, and writes about movies of questionable taste on her blog.

So, I am a writer and a movie nerd. These go together, largely because the sound of a keyboard in an empty room tends to freak me out. (I've watched too many horror movies.)

On the other hand, if I a...

Oedipus Hex

Anil Menon's short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Albedo One, Apex Digest, Chiaroscuro, Interzone, LCRW, and Strange Horizons. His most recent story, The Poincare Sutra, can be found in the utterly gorgeous Sybil's Garage No. 7. His YA/SF novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan, India) was released in November 2009. It's been shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword Children's Fiction Prize. He blogs at Round Dice and can be reached at iam@anilmenon.com. He doesn't...

10 Important Things I've learned about Indie Publishing

Alisa Krasnostein is editor and publisher at Twelfth Planet Press, an Australian indie press for fresh, new speculative fiction. She is also Executive Editor of the review website ASif!, member of Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth and part of the podcasting team at Galactic Suburbia.

In the latest episode of Galactic Suburbia, we were talking about the recent apology to writers from Nightshade Press and their subsequent suspension from the Science Fiction Writers Association...