SHRIEK NEWS, LINKS, AND OTHER MISCELLANY

UPDATE:

Shriek excerpt and interview now up at SF Site.

Shriek Stuff



"Maybe it's because Jeff VanderMeer looks so normal when you see him at cons or talking panels that his fiction comes as such a huge shock. Is this fetid hothouse world really the subconscious of that smartly dressed American writer?...A typical VanderMeer novel: clever, intense, and multi-layered. Four stars." - SFX

"Jeff VanderMeer is a realist of the surreal, a chronicler and bibliographer of the impossible city of Ambergris, which could only have been constructed in a collaborative dream between Charles Dickens and E.T.A Hoffman. It is a city of Dickensian scope and intricacy whose inhabitants are the lovers, the artists, the grotesques of German romanticism, and I sometimes suspect that VanderMeer himself is a fragment of the same dream. Shriek is a beautiful and maddening, and beautifully maddening, book. Go to Ambergris: lose yourself among its labyrinthine streets and the fabulous, deadly secrets that lie beneath them." - Theodora Goss

Links of Interest

Emerald City now has an announcements blog.

David Lynton of Galaxy Books in Sydney has a new blog.

London at night now has a blog...

Jeff Ford blogged about the Black Dust (by Graham Joyce) charity project already, but here's a reminder. In addition to fiction by Joyce, it has intro/afterword material by me, Zoran Zivkovic, Ford, and others. You can still buy this really cool book if you send an email to: books @ thetalkingdead.fsnet.co.uk.

Steve Savile has a new web site.

I've meant to recommend Abigail Nussbaum's Asking the Wrong Questions for some time now. Excellent blog entries, and thorough.

This one's for Evil Monkey...

Best New Fantasy, Edited by Sean Wallace--Contents

1 "My Father's Mask," Joe Hill (20th Century Ghosts), 8500 words
2 "Pip and the Fairies," Theodora Goss (Strange Horizons), 3000 words
3 "The Language of Moths," Christopher Barzak (Realms of Fantasy), 11,300 words
4 "At the End of the Hall," Nick Mamatas (Fantasy Magazine), 3300 words
5 "Heads Down, Thumbs Up," Gavin Grant (scifiction), 5360 words
6 "Monster," Kelly Link (Noisy Outlaws), 6700 words
7 "The Dybbuk in Love," Sonya Taaffe (The Dybbuk in Love), 8000 words
8 "Gulls," Tim Pratt, (Polyphony 5), 2400 words
9 "Summer Ice," Holly Phillips (In the Palace of Repose), 7000 words
10 "The Maiden Tree," Catherynne M. Valente (Cabinet des Fees), 2900 words
11 "The Farmer's Cat," Jeff VanderMeer (Polyphony 5) 1760 words
12 "A Little Madness Goes a Long Way," M. Rickert (F&SF), 6557 words
13 "Proboscis," Laird Barron (F&SF), 8500 words
14 "Dancing in the Light of Giants," Jay Lake (Realms of Fantasy), 550 words
15 "Eating Hearts," Yoon Ha Lee, (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), 1500 words
16 "Returning My Sister's Face," Eugie Foster (Realms of Fantasy), 5700 words

World Fantasy Awards

All of us judges for the World Fantasy Award (for material published in 2005) are receiving a ton of material from publishers. But I'd again like to urge you to make sure if you've got something you want considered to make sure your publisher sends it in. Any kind of fantasy, published in mainstream or under genre imprints, from big houses and indie presses. We need to see it all. And the sooner the better. The judges' addresses can be found here. The cut off date for receiving materials is June 1st.

Laser Books to Publish Veniss



Laser Books in the Czech Republic releases Veniss Underground in late February. The listing for the book can be found here. My editor there, Martin Sust, decided early on to include all of the related stories with Veniss, so it's extremely comprehensive. And, in fact, one of the Veniss stories first appeared in Ikarie B in the Czech Republic.

...And a Preview of an Upcoming Interview with My French Translator, Gilles Goullet...

Question: How closely do you work with the author?
A - Shadow them day and night
B- Call them and emit a high-pitched whining sound five or six times a day
C - Live in their house, disguised as a wall.

Answer: Depends. With you, I am kind of a manta-like shadow where the wall meets the ceiling, so more C. But I don't usually need so much additional information from the author (you are my first crazy one). So I ask them a few questions when something seems obfuscated or inconsistent.