DISPATCHES FROM SMARAGDINE: SF SITE COLUMN

My first Dispatches from Smaragdine column is up at SF Site. Along with my Bookslut column on comics, Dispatches is giving me serious joy. I hope you like it. Especially note the first of a series of video interviews with various personalities connected to publishing, editing, and books. For the first few columns, these will focus on Europeans from my trip this summer. This is the first time, for most, that they've appeared on video in the US. I think you'll find it interesting.

And please spread the word: I'm now a monthly book reviewer of sorts, in addition to everything else. Please put me on your reviewer list: Jeff VanderMeer, POB 4248, Tallahassee, FL 32315.

Now returning you to Dana's guest blogs...

Jeff

In November, the brutal heat of the Smaragdine summer is usually gone for good and the city becomes giddy with the crisp month or two before the brutal winter. From the storied, overly marbled downtown with its mainly Central Asian embassies and state houses to the discos and merchant kiosks of the Palisade, Smaragdine is a friendly, more relaxed place. You can even ignore the bullet holes from the November Revolution still embedded in the side of the Murgodan legislative building (which served as the city's Lyceum until World War II).