BLOND? WE NEED YOU!

I still need to photograph a guy with spikey blond hair with somewhat puckish features. 25 to 35, generally. If you fit that description and would like a small photographic part in a short movie called Shriek, please email me ASAP: vanderworld at hotmail.com. Please include a photo if possible with your query.

Thanks!

JeffV

FLOTSAM ME JETSAM

Contrary to reports in certain quarters, I am not dead, just busy. But here are a few things to keep ya occupied this morning.

First off, Luis Rodrigues has been working on the Portuguese translation of "Secret Life" (translated as "Vida secreta"), "Transformation of Martin Lake," and a couple of others for a very short book from Livros de Areia. Er, given the other authors in their line, I'm very pleased indeed. Here's an excerpt from the translation:

Interlúdio III

O cheiro no terceiro andar não provinha de nenhum almoço putrefacto, mas sim de um vice-presidente executivo que, tendo perdido uma colher atrás do frigorífico do refeitório certa noite já tarde, caiu com o esforço de a reaver, perdeu os sentidos, e morreu sem um murmúrio naquele espaço apertado, vítima da dieta que o permitira ali caber, passando-se três semanas sem que o encontrassem, sendo todo este episódio um desgosto para a mulher e quatro filhos, para não falar do porteiro de dia que descobriu o corpo e quase o deixou ali, na esperança de que, um dia mais tarde, o branco dos ossos descarnados fosse mais fácil de limpar.

Meanwhile, via Hal Duncan, a link Evil Monkey loves.

And here's a rejection...via Sherry Decker.

And, finally, Lord of Portugal, Rhys Hughes, has a blog that's well worth checking out.

Jeff

Exercise

Saturday
150 crunches
90 bridges
lots of walking

Monday
150 crunches
90 bridges
100 pushups
lots of walking

Tuesday
full workout (including 20 sets on the leg press, 700 lbs for 9 then 100 lbs less for the other 11, in sets of two, decreasing weight after each 2, then one last ef-u set for good measure; 1 mile run before workout; 30 minutes bike after; rest the same as last gym workout, except added three sets of assisted squats at 300 lbs for kicks.)

CLOSIN' DOWN FOR THE WEEKEND

I'm still a little out of wack with this stomach flu thing and some other thing involving my right eye and lots of pain (woo-hoo! MRI next week! partee), so I'm closin' down the blog until Tuesday. Besides, Ann and I are outta here tomorrow night headed for St. Augustine to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary.

Everybody in the US have a great Memorial Day Weekend. The rest of you fortunate souls, have a great ordinary lovely weekend.

Cheers,

Jeff

(Exercise Thursday--same as Tuesday, except 1 mile run before weightlifting instead of half mile, and 750 lbs on leg press instead of 700, and 35 minutes on bike instead of 30. So: fuck you stomach virus.)

FINNCON--Update

I've got a tentative schedule for Finncon (subject to change, of course).

Saturday
10.00 - Openings
10.30 - 12.00 - Interview
1.30 - 2.00 - Shriek: The Movie
2.00 - 3.00 - Reading
3.00 - 4.00 - Fantasia Noir (Ann's on this one--I'll just be in the audience)
5.00 - 6.00 - SF/F Deadly Sins
6.00 - 8.00 - Masquerade (about half an hour; I'll be helping judge, I believe), Cosplay

Sunday
12.00 - 1.00 - Crossing Over/Mainstream-SF
2.00 - 3.00 - Essential Fantasy
4.00 - 5.00 - Ambergris Extravaganza
5.00 - 6.00 - On Writing

I did a google search on Finland and got the following links, some of which will be more or less helpful:

Least Helpful: Sex

Moderately Helpful: Lonely Planet

Very Helpful: Virtual Planet

CATCHING UP

Heinous weekend. Heinous Monday. Tuesday, better but still nauseating. Went to the gym Tuesday night (same routine as last Wednesday) and now wonder if that was a mistake. Didn't feel bad at the time.

Anyhoo...coming up--interview with Neil Williamson, more on Finland, more on the Shriek movie, more on all sorts of things. Also note the back cover of the French edition (admittedly, a little low res). I just love the mushrooms balanced on the squid. Just a great idea.

As for the Tiptree discussion that's been going on...look, the emphasis of the thing definitely seems to have changed. It seems diluted, not as serious to me. It seems that way to quite a few people. You have to ask yourself why. Is it just an impression thing or a real thing? If it's an impression thing, that speaks to the way in which the award is presented/put forward/whatever. If it's a real thing that speaks to a shake-up in what it's about. Either way, instead of becoming more prestigious, the Tiptree seems to be going in the opposite direction. The Tiptree anthology that came out--a ragtag, poorly edited book (still featuring some good stories)--was just a physical manifestation of this problem.

When you have something that's worthwhile and for a worthwhile cause, the impulse is to forgive it its faults, to think, literally, "but it's for a good cause." But, ultimately, this doesn't help the cause in question. Quite the opposite.

As for the fan fic on the long list--sorry, that's bullshit. There's such a thing as too much democratization. And in a field that's already not exactly always known for its literary credibility or resistance to the all-mighty dollar, I don't think it's too much to ask that such things either be up for their own awards or be left out of the more general discussion.

I'm beginning to worry that SF/F is becoming too susceptible/in bed with pop culture, without the opposite tension of high art to serve as a balance.

JeffV

(Evil Monkey: "Oh, you do like to stir up controversy, you stupid son of a bitch." Jeff: "Not really. I didn't think this was very controversial. I certainly ain't slanderous, as one person said." Evil Monkey: "You make a bunch of generalizations and don't back them up with evidence." Jeff: "I'm just sayin' what a certain number of people are thinkin'. Don't lynch me for that." Evil Monkey: "No award's perfect." Jeff: "No shit. No award out there is anything other than subjective. Some are the mass delusions of the many. Some are the very particular delusions of a jury." Evil Monkey: "So why pick on this one?" Jeff: "Because I really really like the fucking thing." Evil Monkey: "So what if there's no problem with it?" Jeff: "Great! Then there's no problem. But if there's a debate about it in certain quarters, then there's at least a perception problem. People never want to hear about perception problems any more than they want to hear about problems with a real, solid factual basis, because they then have to shift their own perception of how they are perceived in relation to the problem area." Evil Monkey: "Zzzzzzzzzzz." Jeff: "Yeah, fair enough." Evil Monkey: "I remember the good old days when they'd announce the Tiptree winner and it was a book I'd never heard of." Jeff: "Well, maybe it's like when your favorite band gets a big-time record deal, then. Or something." Evil Monkey: "There are a thousand people at Wiscon right now who are about to descend upon your house and burn it to the ground." Jeff: "Right. I'll get the lighter fluid.")

JUMBLY SUNDAY

Saturday afternoon, I came down with a horrible stomach virus. I can't even read it's so bad, and no appetite at all. This thing is truly vomitrocious. It's not Montezuma's Revenge--it's more like Montezuma's All-Encompassing Cluster Fuck of an Unwelcome Surprise. A giant squid and a whale appear to be having a knock-out-drag-down fight in my small intestine. Weee! What fun.

Into this haze of feverish involuntary how-to-wreck-a-weekendness, a few things have intruded.

Like, this exciting news from Finland from Cheryl Morgan.

Or this. I am not so sick that I cannot say: screw you for calling me "New Weird". And if Neil Gaiman's New Weird, I'm a writer of nurse novels.

Or even this, which, in my current state, is somewhat bewildering (via Ann--sorry I'm such a wet blanket this weekend).

And Luis Rodrigues sent this, which I haven't checked out but since he titled it monkeys with squid, must be good.

Neddal Ayad is always sending me interesting links, like this one or this one or this one.

And someone just posted this comment on the Felicity ("Rosie") Savage blog entry from awhile back:

i used to work w/Rosie Savage when she lived in Harlem, here in New York City (heard from co-workers she was into a somewhat abusive relationship w/her live-in black boyfriend...she loves rap, '70s soul). She told me she was into writing fantasy, though i never went to find out more about her works. i remember a few times calling her "ro", and she hated it and always corrected me not to do so in her english/scot accent. she was a lot of fun to be with, talking about her life abroad, funny family members, and opinions of life in general in the break room. We used to be both cashiers and customer support @ Virgin Megastore in Times Square back in 1997-1998; she was fired before me (I was fired in summer 2000), probably because of her attitude getting worse there (it is an extremely stressful place to work at: loud music, annoying tourists, bonehead management, etc.). she used Virgin as a means to give herself a break from writing and gain more knowledge into people in general, i would believe. A few months after her dismissal, i did ser her again and she looked so different: her blondish/brown, all braided, baggy oldish clothes, said she is working at the big apple circus and wanted me to join her...i told her i was surprised in her asking, but a life in a circus was not my means of paying rent. i have not seen her again since, though a co-worker i know who is still working there heard she moved to africa. i, like you, am still searching for this intelligent, fun, but secretive troubled woman...richy

Right. I'm back to bed to collapse and remember with fondness those days when I could eat solid food and read in bed whilst sick.

Jeff

PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES

...put on a great concert here in Tallahassee tonight--energetic, varied, and raucous. The Joggers did a decent job. Giant Drag...sucked. Monotone and annoying.

Still, overall, had a great time. Smoking our black-and-mild. Drinking an interesting Canadian beer.

Jeff

GODDAMMIT

This kinda stuff makes me sad. RIP one of our best experimentalist. Do you know who is he? No? Well, fuck you. And fuck me for not blogging about him earlier.

JeffV

SHRIEK MOVIE UPDATE: PORTLAND!

(Rough of the movie poster Juha Lindroos is putting together)

We're beginning to ramp up on the release of the Shriek movie, and the first thing I'd like to announce is that the Clinton St. Theater in Portland will show the movie on August 19th, along with the Rough Guide to Ambergris short humorous "documentary" and some other cool stuff. Watch this space for updates.

Mega thanks to the awesome Edward Morris Jr. for helping make this happen Seth Sonstein at the theater, and the always dapper Jay Lake, who will be co-hosting the festivities with Edward. Additional thanks to Twenty-Third Avenue Books, who will be providing copies of Shriek for the event. And to the intrepid Leslie Henkley (PR) and Liz Gorinsky (Tor editorial) who are helping with subsidiary support. Tor will be providing Shriek beer coasters and there will be Ambergris beer raffled off at these events, among other things.

Currently, we're finalizing house parties (some closed, some open), bookstore events, and theater events featuring the Shriek movie, coinciding with the release of Shriek: An Afterword in the U.S. I'll have more news in the next month. Thanks to everyone who is volunteering their time--you guys are great. (And if anyone still wants to sign up, let me know ASAP. I can send details of the packet we'll send you, support, freebies, etc., and you can decide if it's something you want to do.)

The movie will be shown at Finncon and at the British Fantasy Convention, with more convention, conference, and film festival events to be announced soon. (Also, tentatively, Forbidden Planet in the UK will host the film on their website.)

Work on the film is going very well. Initial shooting will finish up by June 20th and the movie should be done by around July 15th. The Church has provided three hours of music to choose from for the original soundtrack, recorded over the space of a day and night, and Steve Kilbey and Tim Powles have provided the voice-over for the initial sequence prior to the titles. David Larsen has finished his work on an Ambergris gun prop (which will be re-used for the limited edition version of Shriek the novel). A Shriek website to house various videos, audio, and other special features will go up in June-July.

Coming soon: an interview with Neil Williamson, an announcement about pirates, and much more.

Over and out.

Jeff

BIG-ASS FANTASY LIST

Really, I've got no other title for it. It ain't systematic, but it is all-inclusive--both of your suggestions and another list I found from the Night Shade boards that had a few more books on it. There's stuff on this list that stinks up the place, but it's on there.

You wanted it, you got it, you sado-masochistic people. LOL!

Now, whatcha gonna do with it?

Jeff

P.S. Typos? Probably? Duplicates? Probably. Do the edits in your head. The list's too long for normal quality control, given my schedule. :) THANKS to my long-suffering wife for helping with this.

ZEE OFFICIAL BIG-ASS FANTASY LIST

Abe, Kobo, The Woman In The Dunes
Acker, Kathy, Eurydice In The Underworld
Ackroyd, Peter, English Music
Ackroyd, Peter, The House Of Dr. Dee
Ackroyd, Peter, Hawksmoor
Adam, Villiers De L'Isle, Contes Cruel
Adams, Richard, Shardik
Adams, Richard, Watership Down
Aickman, Robert, Collected Strange Stories
Aickman, Robert, Cold Hand In Mine
Aickman, Robert, The Wine Dark Sea
Aiken, Joan, Nightbirds On Nantucket
Aiken, Joan, The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase
Alain-Fournier, Henri, Le Grand Meaulnes
Aldiss, Brian, Barefoot In The Head
Aldiss, Brian, Malacia Tapestry
Aldiss, Brian, The Eighty-Minute Hour
Aldiss, Brian, The Helliconia Trilogy
Alexander, Lloyd, Prydain Chronicles
Alexander, Lloyd, The Book Of Three
Alexi, Sherman, Reservation Blues
Alexis, Andre, Despair And Other Stories Of Ottawa
Alfau, Felipe, Chromos
Alfau, Felipe, Locos: A Comedy Of Gestures
Allende, Isabel, House Of The Spirits
Amado, Jorge, Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands
Amis, Kingsley, The Alteration
Amis, Kingsley, The Anti-Death League
Amis, Kingsley, The Green Man
Amis, Martin, Time's Arrow
Anderson, Poul, A Midsummer Tempest
Anderson, Poul, The Broken Sword
Andreyev, Leonid, The Red Laugh
Anonymous, (Burton Richard Trans.), The Thousand Nights And A Night
Anonymous, , Sir Gawain And The Green Knight
Anstey, F., A Fallen Idol
Anstey, F., In Brief Authority.
Anstey, F., The Brass Bottle.
Anstey, F, . Vice Versa; Or A Lesson To Fathers
Anthony, Patricia, Flanders
Apuleius, Lucius, The Golden Ass
Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso
Arnold, Edwin Lester, Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation.
Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid's Tale
Auster, Paul, The New York Trilogy
Auster, Paul, In The Country Of Last Things
Auster, Paul, Mr Vertigo
Aylett, Steve, Bigot Hall
Babbitt, Natalie, Tuck Everlasting
Baker, Frank. Miss Hargreaves
Baker, Nicholson, The Fermata
Bakker, R.S., Prince Of Nothing
Ballard, J.G., Collected Stories
Ballard, J.G., The Unlimited Dream Company
Ballard, J.G., Crash
Ballard, J.G., The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G., The Drowned World
Ballard, J.G., Vermillion Sands
Balzac, Honore, Seraphita
Balzac, Honore , The Wild Ass's Skin
Banks, Iain, The Wasp Factory
Bantock, Nick, Griffin & Sabine Trilogy
Barker, Clive, Books Of Blood
Barnes, Djuna, Nightwood
Baron Corvo, , Don Tarquinio
Baron Corvo , , Hadrian The Seventh
Barrett Jr, Neal, The Hereafter Gang
Barrie, J.M., Peter Pan
Barth, John, Giles Goat Boy
Barth, John, The Sot-Weed Factor
Barth, John, Chimera
Barthelme, Donald, Collected Stories
Bataille, Georges, Collection, Madame Edwarda, My Mother, The Dead Man
Bataille, Georges, The Story Of The Eye
Batchelor, John Calvin, The Birth Of The People's Republic Of Antarctica
Batchelor, John Calvin, The Return Of Hailey's Comet
Baudelaire, Paris Spleen (Prose Poems)
Bauer, Wolfgang, The Feverhead
Baum, L. Frank, The Wonderful Wizard Of OZ
Bayley, Barrington, The Knights Of The Limits
Beagle, Peter S., A Fine And Private Place
Beagle, Peter S., The Innkeeper 'S Song
Beagle, Peter S., The Last Unicorn
Beckford, William, Vathek
Beerbohm, Max, Seven Men
Beerbohm, Max, Zuleika Dobson
Bellairs, John , . The House With A Clock In Its Walls.
Benét, Stephen Vincent, Thirteen O'Clock: Stories Of Several Worlds
Benson, Stella , Living Alone.
Berger, Thomas, Arthur Rex
Bernanos, Michel, The Other Side Of The Mountain
Bester, Alfred, Tiger! Tiger!
Bierce, Ambrose, Collected Short Stories
Bierly, Andrey, St. Petersburg
Bishop, Michael, Brittle Innings
Bishop, Michael, Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas
Blackwood, Algernon, The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories
Blackwood, Algernon, Jimbo
Blackwood, Algernon, The Centaur
Blackwood, Algernon, The Human Chord
Blake, William, The Four Zoas
Blanchot, Maurice, Aminadab
Blanchot, Maurice, Death Sentence
Blanchot, Maurice, The Most High
Blaylock, James, Homunculus
Blaylock, James, The Last Coin
Blish, James, Black Easter
Blish, James, Faust Aleph-Null
Boito, Camille, Senso
Bond, Nancy, A String In The Harp
Borel, Pétrus, Champavert
Borges, Jorge Luis, Ficciones
Boston, L.M., The Children Of Green Knowe.
Bowen, Elizabeth, Selected Stories
Bowen, Marjorie, The Demon Lover
Boyle, T.C., World's End
Bradbury, Ray, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Bradbury, Ray., The Stories Of Ray Bradbury
Bradbury, Ray, Dark Carnival
Bradbury, Ray, October Country
Bradbury, Ray, The Martian Chronicles
Bramah, Ernest, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
Bramah, Ernest, Kai Lung's Golden Hours
Brautigan, Richard, Confederate General At Big Sur
Brautigan, Richard, Dreaming Of Babylon
Brautigan, Richard, So The Wind Doesn't Blow It All Away
Brautigan, Richard, The Hawkline Monster
Brautigan, Richard, In Watermelon Sugar
Brautigan, Richard, Trout Fishing In America
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Brown, Mary, The Unlikely Ones
Bukowski, Charles, Pulp
Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master & Margarita
Bulgakov, Mikhail, Heart Of A Dog
Bullett, Gerald, Mr. Godly Beside Himself.
Burroughs, William, Naked Lunch
Burroughs, William, The Cities Of The Red Night
Burroughs, Edgar Rice, Tarzan Of The Apes
Burroughs, Edgar Rice, The Princess Of Mars
Burroughs, William S., The Cities Of The Red Night
Butler, Samuel, Erewhon; Or Over The Range
Buzzati, Dino, The Tartar Steppe
Byatt, A.S., Possession
Byatt, A.S., The Djinn In The Nightingale’s Eye
Cabell, James Branch, Jurgen
Cabell, James Branch, Figures Of Earth; A Comedy Of Appearances
Cabell, James Branch, Something About Eve; A Comedy Of Fig-Leaves
Cabell, James Branch, The Cream Of The Jest; A Comedy Of Evasions
Cabell, James Branch, The High Place; A Comedy Of Disenchantment
Cabell, James Branch, The Silver Stallion; A Comedy Of Redemption
Cady, Jack, The Night We Buried Road Dog
Calvino, Italo, If Upon A Winter's Night A Traveler
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities
Calvino, Italo, The Baron In The Trees
Calvino, Italo, The Non-Existent Knight
Calvino, Italo, Cosmicomics
Campbell, Ramsey, The Influence
Campbell, Ramsey, Alone With The Horrors
Campbell, Ramsey, Midnight Sun
Capek, Karel, War With The Newts
Card, Orson Scott, The Seventh Son
Carey, Edward, Observatory Mansions
Carpentier, Alejo, Baroque Concerto
Carpentier, Alejo, The Lost Steps
Carr, Terry, Ed., Fantasy Annual. 3 Vols.
Carr, Terry, Ed., New Worlds Of Fantasy. 3 Vols.
Carr, Terry, Ed., Year's Finest Fantasy. 2 Vols
Carrere, Emmanuel, Class Trip
Carrere, Emmanuel, Gothic Romance
Carrier, Emanuele, The Moustache
Carrington, Leonora, The Hearing Trumpet
Carroll, Jonathan, The Bones Of The Moon
Carroll, Jonathan, The Land Of Laughs
Carroll, Lewis, Alice In Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis, Alice Through The Looking Glass
Carroll, Lewis, Til We Have Faces
Carter, Angela, Fireworks
Carter, Angela, Nights At The Circus
Carter, Angela, The Bloody Chamber
Carter, Angela, The Infernal Desire Machines Of Doctor Hoffman
Carter, Angela, The Passion Of New Eve
Casares, Bioy, Short Stories
Casares, Bioy, The Invention Of Morel
Cave, Nick, And The Ass Saw The Angel
Cendars, Blaise, Dan Yack
Cervantes, , Don Quixote
Chabon, Michael, The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay
Chamberlin, Darick, Cigarette Boy
Chambers, Robert W., The King In Yellow
Chamisso, Adalbert Von, Peter Schlemihl.
Chant, Joy, Red Moon And Black Mountain
Chapman, Stepan, The Troika
Chapman, Vera, King Arthur's Daughter
Chapman, Vera, The Green Knight
Chapman, Vera, The King's Damsel
Chesterton, G.K., The Man Who Was Thursday
Chiang, Ted, The Story Of Your Life And Others
Cisco, Michael, The Divinity Student
Coblentz, Stanton, When Birds Fly South
Coleridge, Samuel, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
Collier, John, His Monkey Wife
Collier, John, Fancies And Goodnights.
Connell, Evan S., Notes From A Bottle Found On The Beach At Carmel
Constantine, Storm, Burying The Shadow
Constantine, Storm, Calenture
Cooper, Susan, Greenwitch
Cooper, Susan, Over Sea, Under Stone.
Cooper, Susan, Silver On The Tree
Cooper, Susan, The Dark Is Rising
Cooper, Susan, The Grey King.
Coover, Robert, Pricksongs And Descants
Cortazar, Julio, Collected Stories
Cortazar, Julio, Hopscotch
Corvo, Baron, Don Tarquinio
Corvo, Baron, Hadrian The Seventh
Crawford, Marion F., Khaled
Crébillon Fils, , The Sofa
Crowley, John, Aegypt
Crowley, John, Little Big
Crowley, Aleister S., Moon Child
Crowley, John, Great Work Of Time
D' Aurevilly, Barbey, Les Diaboliques
Dahl, Roald, Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar
Dali, Salvador, Hidden Faces
Dalton, James, The Invisible Gentleman.
Danielewski, Mark, House Of Leaves
Davidson, Avram, Collected Stories
Davidson, Avram, Limekiller
Davidson, Avram, Peregrine: Primus
Davidson, Avram, The Enquiries Of Doctor Eszterhazy
Davies, Robertson, The Deptford Trilogy
De Bernieres, Louis, Senor Viva And The Coca Lord
De Bernieres, Louis, The Troublesome Offspring Of Cardinal Guzman
De Bernieres, Louis, The War Of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
De Goncourt, Edmond, The Zemganno Brothers
De La Mare, Walter, Memoirs Of A Midget
De Lint, Charles, Memory And Dream
De L'Isle Adam, Villiers, Contes Cruel
De Nerval, Gerard, Aurelia
De Queirós, Eça, The Mandarin
De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, The Little Prince
De Unamuno, Miguel, Mist
Decamp, L. Sprague, The Incomplete Enchanter
Delany, Samuel, Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R., Tales Of Nevèr-Yon
Dell, Jennifer, The Twisted Knob
Denton, Bradley, One Day Closer To Death
Denton, Bradley, The Calvin Coolidge Home For Dead Comedians
Desani, G.V., All About H. Hatterr
Devereaux, Robert, Santa Steps Out
Di Filippo, Paul, A Year In The Linear City
Di Filippo, Paul, Mouthful Of Tongues: Her Totipotent Tropicanlia.
Di Filippo, Paul, The Steampunk Trilogy
Dick, Phillip K., The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol
Dickens, Charles, The Chimes
Dickens, Charles, The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain
Dickinson, Peter, The Blue Hawk.
Diderot, Denis, The Indiscreet Jewels
Disch, Thomas, 334
Disch, Thomas M., On Wings Of Song
Disch, Thomas, The Businessman
Donaldson, Stephen R., Lord Foul's Bane
Donaldson, Stephen R., The Illearth War
Donaldson, Stephen R., The Power That Preserves.
Dorn, Edward, Gunslinger
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Double
Dowling, Terry, Antique Futures: The Best Of Terry Dowling
Dowling, Terry, Blackwater Days
Du Maurier, George, Peter Ibbetson.
Ducornet, Rikki, Phosphor In Dreamland
Ducornet, Rikki, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition
Ducornet, Rikki, The Fountains Of Neptune
Ducornet, Rikki, The Jade Cabinet
Dumas, Alexandre, The Bird Of Fate
Dunn, Katherine, Geek Love
Dunsany, Lord, Collected Stories
Dunsany, Lord, The Charwoman's Shadow
Dunsany, Lord, The Gods Of Pegana
Dunsany, Lord, The King Of Elflands Daughter
Dunsany, Lord, The Sword Of Welleran And Other Stories
Eca, The Maias
Eca, The Sin Of Father Amaro
Eckman, Kirtsten, The Forest Of Hours
Eckman, Kirsten, Blackwater
Eco, Umberto, Foucault's Pendulum
Eco, Umberto, The Name Of The Rose
Edison, E.R., Fish Supper In Memison
Edison, E.R., Mistress Of Mistresses
Edison, E.R., The Mezentian Gate
Edison, E.R., The Worm Ouroboros
Elkin, Stanley, The Living End
Ellison, Harlan, Collected Short Stories
Emshwiller, Carol, Carmen Dog
Emshwiller, Carol, The Start Of The End Of It All
Ende, Michael, The Neverending Story
Erdrich, Louise, The Antelope Wife
Erickson, Steve, Arc D'x
Erickson, Steve, Tours Of The Black Clock
Erikson, Steven, Tales Of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen – 4 Vols
Erofeev, Venedikt, Moscow To The End Of The Line
Eschenbach, Wolfram Von, Parzival
Evenson, Brian, Altmann’s Tongue
Farmer, Penelope, A Castle Of Bone
Farmer, Philip Jose, A Private Cosmos
Farmer, Philip Jose, Behind The Walls Of Terra
Farmer, Philip Jose, Blown
Farmer, Philip Jose, The Gates Of Creation
Farmer, Philip Jose, The Image Of The Beast
Farmer, Philip Jose, The Maker Of Universes
Faulkner, William, Absalom! Absalom!
Fforde, Jasper, The Eyre Affair
Finlay, Timothy, Headhunter
Finney, Charles, The Circus Of Doctor Lao
Finney, Jack, Time And Again
Flammarion, Camille, Lumen
Fleischman, Paul, Coming-And-Going Men: Four Tales.
Ford, Jeffrey, The Physiognomy
Ford, Jeffrey, Memoranda
Ford, Jeffrey, The Beyond
Ford, Jeffrey, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant & Other Stories
Ford, Jeffrey, The Portrait Of Mrs. Charbuque
Ford, John M., A Dragon Waiting
Fort, Charles, Lo!
Fort, Charles, New Lands
Fort, Charles, The Book Of The Damned
Fort, Charles, Wild Talents
Fouqué, Baron Friedrich De La Motte, Undine.
Fowler, Karen Joy, Sarah Canary
Fowles, John, The Magus
Fowles, John, The Collector
Fowles, John, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Fowles, John, The Maggot
Fowles, John, The Magus
France, Anatole, The Revolt Of The Angels
France, Anatole, Thaïs.
France, Anatole, The Well Of St. Clare.
Franzen, Jonathan, Twenty-Seventh City
Fraser, Ronald, Flower Phantoms.
Fuentes, Carlos, Aura
Gaiman, Neil, American Gods
Gardner, John, Grendel
Gardner, John, The King's Indian
Garner, Alan, The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen
Garner, Alan, The Owl Service
Garner, Alan, The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen
Garnett, David, Lady Into Fox.
Garnett, Richard, The Twilight Of The Gods.
Garshin, Vsevolod, The Signal And Other Stories
Gaskell, Jane, Atlan
Gaskell, Jane, The City
Gaskell, Jane, The Serpent
Gautier, Théophile, Avatar
Gautier, Théophile, One Of Cleopatra's Nights
Gautier, Théophile, Spirite
Gentle, Mary, Ash
Gentle, Mary, Rats And Gargoyles
Geston, Mark, The Siege Of Wonder
Ghose, Zulfikar, A New History Of Torments
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Herland.
Gilman, Greer, Moonwise
Gogol, Nikolai, The Overcoat And Other Tales Of Good And Evil
Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls
Golding, William, Pincher Martin
Goldstein, Lisa, The Red Magician
Gombrowicz, Witold, Ferdydurke
Goncourt, , The Zemganno Brothers
Gorodischer, Angélica, Kalpa Imperial (Spanish)
Goudge, Elizabeth, The Little White Horse.
Gourmont, Remy, Mr. Antiphilos Satyr
Grabinski, Stephane, The Dark Domain
Gracq, Julien, The Chateau d'Algol
Graham, Kenneth, The Wind In The Willows
Grant, Richard, Rumors Of Spring
Grant, Richard, Views From The Oldest House
Grass, Gunter, Tin Drum
Gray, Alasdair, Lanark
Gray, Alasdair, Poor Things
Grimwood, Ken, Replay
Grubb, Davis, Ancient Lights
Guanzhong, Luo, Romance Of The Three Kingdoms
Gun, Guneli, On The Road To Baghdad
Gupta, Sunetra, The Glassblower's Breath
Haggard, H. Rider , She
Hammett, Dashiell, Red Harvest
Hamsun, Knut, Pan
Hand, Elizabeth, Black Light
Hand, Elizabeth, Mortal Love
Hand, Elizabeth, Waking The Moon
Hand, Elizabeth, Winterlong
Hansen, Brooks, The Chess Garden
Harpur, Patrick, Daimonic Reality
Harris, Charlaine, Dead Until Dark
Harris, Joanne, Blackberry Wine
Harris, Rosemary, The Moon In The Cloud
Harrison, M. John, Viriconium
Hauff, Wilhelm, Three Collections
Havoc, James, Butchershop In The Sky
Hawkes, John, Second Skin
Hawkes, John, The Blood Oranges
Hawkes, John, The Frog
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Collected Short Stories
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Twice-Told Tales
Hearn, Lafcadio, Kwaidan
Hecht, Ben, Fantazius Mallare
Hedayat, Sadegh, The Blind Owl
Heller, Joseph, Catch-22
Helprin, Mark, A Soldier Of The Great War
Helprin, Mark, A Winter's Tale
Hernandez, Felisberto, Piano Stories
Hesse, Herman, Damien
Hesse, Herman, Glass Beads Game
Hesse, Herman, Siddartha
Hesse, Herman, Steppenwolf
Hichins, Robert, Flames
Hilton, James, Lost Horizons
Hjortsberg, William, Fallen Angel & Grey Matter
Hoban, Russell, Riddley Walker
Hoban, Russell, The Mouse And His Child
Hodgell, P.C., Godstalk
Hodgson, William Hope, The House On The Borderland
Hodgson, William Hope, The Ghost Pirates
Hodgson, William Hope, The Night Land
Hoffman, Alice, Practical Magic
Hoffman, E.T.A., Hoffman's Tales
Hogg, James, The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner
Holdstock, Robert, Lavondyss
Holdstock, Robert, Mythago Wood
Homer, The Odyssey,
Hopkinson, Nalo, Brown Girl In The Ring
Hospital, Janette Turner, Oyster
Hospital, Janette Turner, The Last Magician
Howard, Robert E., Conan The Conqueror
Howard, Robert E., Skull Face
Hudson, W.H., A Crystal Age
Hudson, W.H., Green Mansions
Hughart, Barry, The Chronicles Of Master Li And Number Ten Ox
Hughes, Rhys, The Darktree Wheel
Hughes, Rhys, The Smell Of Telescopes
Hugo, Victor, The Man Who Laughed
Huysman, J.K., Becalmed
Huysmans, J. K., Against The Grain
Huysmans, J.K., A Rebours
Huysmans, J.K., La Bas (Down There)
Irving, Washington, The Sketch-Book Of Geoffrey Crayon
Irwin, Margaret, Still She Wanted For Company
Irwin, Margaret, These Mortals
Irwin, Robert, Arabian Nightmare
Irwin, Margaret, Still She Wanted For Company
Irwin, Margaret, These Mortals.
Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Unconsoled
Jabes, Edmond, The Book Of Questions
Jackson, Shirley, The Haunting Of Hill House
Jacques, Brian, Redwall
James, Henry, Collected Supernatural Stories
James, Henry, The Turn Of The Screw
Jansson, Tove, Moomin Troll Books
Jarry, Alfred, The Supermale
Jerrold, Douglass, A Man Made Of Money
Johnson, Denis, Already Dead
Jones, Diana Wynne, Archer's Goon
Joyce, Graham, The Tooth Fairy
Joyce, Graham, Requiem
Juster, Norton, The Phantom Tollbooth
Kadare, Ismail, Palace Of Dreams
Kadare, Ismail, Afaik
Kafka, Franz, Collected Stories
Kafka, Franz, Diaries
Kafka, Franz, The Castle
Kafka, Franz, The Trial
Kakar, Sudhir, The Ascetic Of Desire
Karinthy, Frigyes, Capillaria
Kavan, Anna, Ice
Kay, Guy Gavriel, The Summer Tree
Kerouac, Jack, Dr. Sax
Kerr, Peg, The Wild Swans
Kharms, Daniil, The Man With The Black Coat
King, Stephen, The Shining
King, Stephen, The Stand
King, Thomas, Green Grass, Running Water
Kinsella, W.P., Shoeless Joe
Kipling, Rudyard, Plain Tales From The Hills
Kipling, Rudyard, The Jungle Book
Kis, Danilo, A Tomb For Boris Davidovich
Kis, Danilo, Encyclopedia Of The Dead
Kis, Danilo, Garden Ashes
Klein, T.E.D., Dark Gods
Knight, Damon, Humpty Dumpty
Kotzwinkle, William, Dr. Rat
Kotzwinkle, William, Fata Morgana
Krausser, Helmut, The Great Bagarozy
Kristof, Agota, The Notebook
Krohn, Leena, Bloodaxe
Krohn, Leena, Carcanet
Krohn, Leena, Dona Quixote
Krohn, Leena, Gold Of Orphir
Krouch, Percival, The Third Finger
Krouch, Percival, The Stink By Which I Know You
Krudy, Gyula, The Adventures Of Sindbad
Kubin, Alfred, The Other Side
Kushner, Ellen, Swordspoint
Lafferty, R.A., Fourth Mansions
Lafferty, R.A., Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Lafferty, R.A., Not To Mention Camels
Lafferty, R.A., Past Master
Lang, Andrew, The Blue Fairy Book
Langton, Jane, The Diamond In The Window
Lautreamont, Comte De, Maldoror
Le Guin, Ursula, The Dispossessed
Lee, Tanith, Flat Earth Cycle
Lee, Tanith, Red As Blood
Lefanu, Sheridan, Best Ghost Stories
Lefanu, Sheridan, Uncle Silas
Leguin, Ursula K., Collected Stories
Leguin, Ursula K., The Wizard Of Earthsea Trilogy
Leiber, Fritz, Collected Short Stories
Leiber, Fritz, Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz, Ill Met In Lankhmar
Leiber, Fritz, Night's Black Agents
Leiber, Fritz, Our Lady Of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz, Swords And Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz, Swords In The Mist
Leiber, Fritz, The Knight And Knave Of Swords
Leiber, Fritz, The Swords Of Lankhmar
Leiber, Fritz, Two Sought Adventure
Leires, Michel, Aurora
Lem, Stanislaw, A Perfect Vacuum
Lem, Stanislaw, Imaginary Magnitude
Lem, Stanislaw, One Human Minute
Lem, Stanislaw, The Cyberiad
Lem, Stanislaw, The Futurological Congress
L'Engle, Madeleine, A Wrinkle Time
Leroux, Gaston, The Phantom Of The Opera
Leven, Jeremy, Satan: His Psychotherapy And Cure By The Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.
Lewis, C.S., The Narnia Chronicles
Lewis, C.S., Till We Have Faces
Lewis, Matthew, The Monk
Lewis, Wyndham, Malign Fiesta
Lewis, Wyndham, Monstre Gai
Lewis, Wyndham, The Childermass
Ligotti, Thomas, The Nightmare Factory
Lima, Jose Lezama, Paradiso
Lindsay, David, A Voyage To Arcturus
Lindsay, David, Devil's Tor
Lindsay, David, The Haunted Woman
Link, Kelly, Stranger Things Happen
Lively, Penelope, The House In Norham Gardens
Lorrain, Jean, Monsieur De Phocas
Lorrain, Jean, Nightmares Of An Ether Drinker
Louys, Pierre, Aphrodite
Lovecraft, H.P., Collected Stories
Lugones, Leopoldo, Strange Forces
Luo , Guanzhong, Romance Of The Three Kingdoms (Moss Roberts Translation)
Macdonald, George, At The Back Of The North Wind
Macdonald, George, Lilith
Macdonald, George, Phantastes
Macdonald, George, Works Of Fantasy And Imagination. 10 Vols.
Macdonald, John D., The Girl, The Watch And Everything
Machen, Arthur, A Fragment Of Life
Machen, Arthur, The Great God Pan
Machen, Arthur, The Hill Of Dreams
Machen, Arthur, The White People
Madsen, David, Confessions Of A Flesh-Eater
Madsen, David, Memoirs Of A Gnostic Dwarf
Mahfouz, Naguib, Arabian Nights And Days
Mahy, Margaret, The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance
Mahy, Margaret, The Tricksters
Mailer, Norman, Ancient Evenings
Mandeville, John, The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville
Mann, Thomas, The Holy Sinner
Marcus, Ben, Notable American Women
Marcus, Ben, The Age Of Wire And String
Mark, Jan, The Eclipse Of The Century
Marmon-Silko, Leslie, Ceremony
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, The General In His Labyrinth
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, One Hundred Years Of Solitude
Marryat, Fredrick, The Phantom Ship
Martin, George R.R., The Song Of Ice And Fire
Masefield, John, The Midnight Folk
Matheson, Richard, Collected Short Stories
Mathews, Harry, The Sinking Of Odradek Stadium
Maturin, Charles, Melmoth The Wanderer
Maugham, W. Somerset, The Magician
Mayne, William, Earthfasts
Mccarthy, Cormac, Blood Meridian
Mccormack, Eric, The Paradise Motel
Mcintyre, Vonda, The Moon And The Sun
Mckillip, Patricia, Riddle Master Trilogy
Mckillip, Patricia, The Riddle Master Trilogy
Mckinley, Robin, Blue Sword
Melville, Herman, Mardi
Melville, Herman, Moby Dick
Merimee, Prosper, Venus Of Isle
Merritt, A., Dwellers In The Mirage
Merritt, A., The Face In The Abyss
Merritt, A., The Moon Pool
Merritt, A., The Ship Of Ishtar
Meynard, Yves, The Book Of Knights
Meyrink, Gustave, The Golem
Mi Favorito, Arturo, Textus Obscurantus
Miéville, China, Perdido Street Station
Millhauser, Steven, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life And Death Of An American Writer
Millhauser, Steven, Martin Dressler
Mills, Magnus, Three To See The King
Milton, John, Paradise Lost
Mirbeau, Octave, Torture Garden
Mirlees, Hope, Lud-In-The-Mist
Moorcock, Michael, Dancers At The End Of Time
Moorcock, Michael, Gloriana
Moorcock, Michael, Mother London
Moorcock, Michael, The Stealer Of Souls
Moore, C.L., Black God's Shadow
Morley, Christopher, Thunder On The Left.
Morris, William, The Water Of The Wondrous Isles
Morris, Kenneth, The Secret Mountain And Other Tales
Morris, William, The Story Of The Glittering Plain
Morrison, Toni, Beloved
Morrison, Toni, Song Of Solomon
Morrow, James, Only Begotten Daughter
Morrow, James, This Is The Way The World Ends
Morrow, James, Towing Jehovah
Mosley, Walter, Blue Light
Mujica Lainez, Manuel, The Wandering Unicorn.
Murakami, Haruki, Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World
Murakami, Haruki, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Mutis, Alvaro, The Adventures Of Maqroll
Myers, L.H., The Root And The Flower
Nabokov, Vladimir, An Invitation To A Beheading
Nabokov, Vladimir, Bend Sinister
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale Fire
Nahai, Gina Barkhordar, Moonlight On The Avenue Of Faith
Nathan, Robert, Portrait Of Jennie.
Nerval, Gerard De, Aurelia
Nesbitt, E., The Five Children And It
Newman, Kim, Anno Dracula
Nodier, Charles, Smarra
Noon, Jeff, Vurt
Norton, Andre, Witch World
Novalis, The Bottle Imp,
Nye, Robert, Merlin
O’Leary, Patrick, The Gift
O'Brian, Fitz-James, The Supernatural Tales Of Fitz-James O'Brian. 2 Vols.
O'Brien, Flann, At Swim-Two-Birds
O'Brien, Flann, The Dalkey Archive
O'Brien, Flann, The Third Policeman
O'Connell, Jack, The Word Made Flesh
O'Connor, Flannery, Collected Stories
O'Connor, Flannery, The Violent Bear It Away
O'Connor, Flannery, Wise Blood
Okri, Ben, The Famished Road
Ollier, Claude, Law And Order
Olsen, Lance, Girl Imagined By Chance
Onions, Oliver, The Beckoning Fair One
Orwell, George, Animal Farm
Oueneau, Raymond, The Sunday Of Life.
Ouspensky, P.D., Strange Life Of Ivan Osokin
Ovid, , Metamorphoses.
Ozik, Cynthia, The Messiah Of Stockholm
Ozik, Cynthia, The Pagan Rabbi
Ozik, Cynthia, The Puttermesser Papers
Pamuk, Orhan, My Name Is Red
Pargeter, Edith, By Firelight
Park, Paul, The Soldiers Of Paradise
Park, Paul, The Starbridge Chronicles
Pavic, Milorad, Dictionary Of The Khazars
Pavic, Milorad, Landscape Painted With Tea
Pavic, Milorad, The Inner Side Of The Wind
Peake, Mervyn, Letters Of A Lost Uncle
Peake, Mervyn, The Gormenghast Trilogy
Pearce, Philippa, Tom's Midnight Garden
Pelevin, Victor, Buddha's Little Finger
Pelevin, Victor, Four By Pelevin
Pelevin, Victor, Omon Ra
Pelevin, Victor, The Clay Machine-Gun
Pelevin, Victor, Yellow Arrow
Perec, Georges, A Life
Pessoa, Fernando, The Book Of Disquietude
Petronius, Satyricon,
Phillpotts, Eden, Circé's Island
Phillpotts, Eden, Pan And The Twins
Pierce, Meredith Ann, The Dark Angel Trilogy
Piercy, Marge, Woman On The Edge Of Time
Piercy, Walker, Love In The Ruins
Pirandello, Luigi, One, No One, And One Hundred Thousand
Platonov, Andrei, The Foundation Pit
Poe, Edgar Allan, Collected Stories
Pollack, Rachel, Godmother Night
Pollack, Rachel, Unquenchable Fire
Polo, Marco, Journeys
Potacki, Jan, The Saragossa Manuscript
Powers, Richard, Galatea 2.2
Powers, Richard, Prisoner's Dilemma
Powers, Tim, Declare
Powers, Tim, Last Call
Powers, Tim, The Anubis Gates
Powys, John Cowper, A Glastonbury Romance
Powys, John Cowper, Porius: A Romance Of The Dark Ages
Powys, T.F., Mr. Weston's Good Wine
Powys, T.F., The Two Thieves
Powys, T.F., Unclay
Prantera, Amanda, Strange Loop
Prantera, Amanda, The Cabalist
Pratchett, Terry, The Colour Of Money (Discworld)
Pratt, Fletcher, The Blue Star
Pratt, Fletcher, The Well Of The Unicorn
Priest, Christopher, The Prestige
Prokosch, Frederick, The Seven Who Fled
Przybyszewski, Stanislaus, Androgyne
Przybyszewski, Stanislaus, Homo Sapiens
Pullman, Phillip, His Dark Materials Trilogy
Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity's Rainbow
Pynchon, Thomas, V
Queiros, Eca De, The Mandarin
Queneau, Raymond, Saint Glinglin
Queneau, Raymond, The Sunday Of Life
Raban, Arnold, The Rat And The Rose
Rabelais, François, Gargantua And Pantagruel
Rabkin, Eris S., Ed. Fantastic Worlds: Myths, Tales And Stories
Rachilde, , The Juggler
Radcliffe, Ann, The Mysteries Of Udolpho
Ray, Jean, Malpertuis
Read, Herbert, The Green Child.
Reage, Pauline, The Story Of O
Reamy, Tom, Blind Voices
Rendell, Ruth, Collected Stories
Rendell, Ruth, Live Flesh
Richardson, Maurice, The Adventures Of Engelbrecht
Richler, Mordechai, Solomon Gursky Was Here
Rimbaud, , Poetry
Rolfe, Frederick, Hadrian The Seventh
Rooke, Leon, Sing Me No Love Songs, I'll Say You No Prayers
Rosa, Joao Guimaraes, The Devil To Pay In The Backlands
Rossetti, Christina, Goblin Market And Other Poems
Roy, Arundhati, The God Of Small Things
Ruff, Matt, Fool On The Hill
Ruff, Matt, Sewer Gas Electric: The Public Works Trilogy
Rulfo, Juan, Pedro Paramo
Rushdie, Salman, Midnight's Children
Rushdie, Salman, Satanic Verses
Rushdie, Salman, Shame
Rushdie, Salman, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Russell, Mary Doria, The Sparrow
Ryman, Geoff, The Unconquered Country
Ryman, Geoff, Was
Sabato, Ernesto, On Heroes And Tombs
Sabato, Ernesto, The Tunnel
Saki, , Collected Short Stories
Saramago, Jose, Blindness
Saramago, Jose, Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis
Sarban, , Ringstones
Schulz, Bruno, Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass
Schulz, Bruno, The Street Of Crocodiles
Scliar, Moacyr, The Centaur In The Garden
Seare, Nicholas, Rude Tales And Glorious
Serling, Rod, Collected Stories From The Twilight Zone
Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William, The Tempest
Shea, Michael, Nifft The Lean
Shea, Robert, Illuminatus
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein
Shelley, Percy, Prometheus Unbound
Shepard, Lucius, Ends Of The Earth
Shepard, Lucius, Jaguar Sun
Shepard, Lucius, Life During Wartime
Shepard, Lucius, The Jaguar Hunter
Shepard, Lucius, The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter
Sherwood, Frances, The Book Of Splendor
Shiel, M.P., Shapes In The Fire
Shih-Nai An , , Water Margin (Also Called Men Of The Marshes)
Shiner, Lewis, Glimpses
Shwob, Marcel, Imaginary Lives
Silverberg, Robert, Lord Valentine's Castle
Simmons, Dan, Song Of Kali
Sinclair, Iain, Downriver
Singer, Isaac Bashevis, Collected Short Stories
Sisson, C.H., Christopher Homm
Sladek, John, Roderick / Roderick At Random
Smith, Clark Ashton, Zothique
Smith, Cordwainer, Collected Stories
Smith, Thorne, The Stray Lamb
Smith, Thorne, Turnabout
Smith, Thorne, Turnabout.
Snyder, Midori, The Innamorati
Sologub, Feodor, The Petty Demon
Spencer, William Browning, Zod Wallop
Spinrad, Norman, The Iron Dream
Stadler, Mathew, The Dissolution Of Nicholas Dee
Stephens, James, The Crock Of Gold
Sterling, John, Essays And Tales 2 Vols.
Stevens, Brooke, The Circus Of The Earth & The Air
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Dr Jekyll
Stevenson, Robert Louis, New Arabian Nights
Stewart, Mary, The Crystal Cave
Stewart, Mary, The Hollow Hills
Stewart, Mary, The Last Enchantment
Stewart, Sean, Galveston
Stewart, Sean, Mockingbird
Stockton, Frank R., The Bee-Man Of Orn And Other Fanciful Tales.
Stoker, Bram, Dracula
Stover, Matthew Woodring, Blade Of Tyshalle
Stover, Matthew Woodring, Heroes Die
Straub, Peter, Mr. X
Straub, Peter, Shadowland
Strindberg, August, Inferno
Strugatsky, Arkady And Boris, Definitely Maybe
Strugatsky, Arkady And Boris, Roadside Picnic
Sturgeon, Theodore, Collected Stories
Suskin, Patrick, Perfume
Swanwick, Michael, Collected Stories
Swanwick, Michael, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels
Szilagyi, Steve, Photographing Fairies
Theroux, Alexander, Darconville's Cat
Thomas, D.M., Ararat
Thomas, D.M., Sphinx
Thomas, D.M., Swallow
Thomas, D.M., The White Hotel
Thurber, James, The Thirteen Clocks
Thurber, James, The White Deer
Tiptree Jr, James, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Hobbit
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord Of The Rings 3 Vols.
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Silmarillion
Toole, John Kennedy, A Confederacy Of Dunces
Tournier, Michel, The Four Wise Men
Traki, Georg, Poetry
Tutuola, Amos, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Tutuola, Amos, The Palm Wine Drinkard
Twain, Mark, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Unamuno, De Miguel, Mist
Valery, Paul, Poems In The Rough
Van Vogt, A. E., SLAN
Vance, Jack, Dying Earth Sequence
Vance, Jack, Lyonesse Trilogy
Vance, Jack, The Eyes Of The Overworld
Verne, Jules, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
Vian, Boris, Froth On The Daydream
Vian, Boris, Heartsnatcher
Vian, Boris, Red Grass
Viereck, George Sylvester And Eldridge Paul, My First Two Thousand Years
Von Eschenbach, Wolfram, Parzival
Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse Five
Vukcevich, Ray, Meet Me In The Moon Room
Waldrop, Howard, Howard Who?
Walker, Wendy, The Secret Service
Wall, Mervyn, The Unfortunate Fursey
Wallace, Daniel, Big Fish
Walpole, Horace, Hyeroglyphic Stories
Walser, Robert, Jakob Von Gunten
Walton, Evangeline, Children Of Llyr
Walton, Evangeline, Prince Of Annwn
Walton, Evangeline, The Island Of The Mighty
Walton, Evangeline, The Song Of Rhiannon
Warner, Rex, The Wild Goose Chase
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, Lolly Willowes Or The Loving Huntsman
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, Kingdoms Of Elfin
Webb, Don, Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book
Wells, H.G., The Time Machine
Wells, H.G., The Wonderful Visit
Westall, Robert, The Wind Eye
White, E.B., Stuart Little
White, T.H., The Once And Future King
White, T.H., The Sword In The Stone
Whitehead, Colson, The Intuitionist
Whittemore, Edward, Jericho Mosaic
Whittemore, Edward, Jerusalem Poker
Whittemore, Edward, Nile Shadows
Whittemore, Edward, Quin’s Shanghai Circus
Whittemore, Edward, Sinai Tapestry
Wilde, Oscar, Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar, The Happy Prince And Other Tales
Wilhelm, Kate, Margaret And I
Willard, Nancy, Sister Water
Willard, Nancy, Things Invisible To See
Williams, Charles, Descent Into Hell
Williams, Charles, Many Dimensions
Williams, Charles, The Greater Trumps
Williams, Charles, The Place Of The Lion
Williams, Charles, War In Heaven
Williams, Walter Jon, Metropolitan
Williams, Charles, All Hallows Eve
Williams, Charles, Descent Into Hell
Williams, Charles, War In Heaven
Willis, Connie, Lincoln's Dreams
Windling, Terri, The Wood Wife
Winterson, Jeanette, Sexing The Cherry
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy, Insatiability
Wolfe, Gene, Collected Short Stories
Wolfe, Gene, Fifth Head Of Cerberus
Wolfe, Gene, Peace
Wolfe, Gene, Strange Travelers
Wolfe, Gene, The Book Of The New Sun
Woolf, Virginia, Orlando
Woolf, Virginia, The Waves
Wright, Stephen, Going Native
Wrightson, Patricia, The Ice Is Coming
Wu Cheng’en, , Journey To The West
Wylie, Elinor, The Venetian Glass Nephew
Wylie, Philip, The Disappearance
Xuequin, Cao, The Story Of The Stone
Yep, Laurence, Dragon Of The Lost Sea
Yolan, Jane, The Devil's Arithmetic
Yolen, Jane, Briar Rose
Yoshikawa, Eiji, Musashi
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We
Zelazny, Roger, Nine Princes In Amber
Zola, Emile, The Sin Of Father Mouret
Zola, Emile, La Faute De J'abbe Mouret



Exercise:
1 hour 15 minutes singles racquetball

FRENCH EDITION COVER OF CITY

UPDATE: Just learned the Bantam City of Saints made the Locus trade paperback bestseller list, coming in at #4 for April. Woo-hoo! (Exercise today same as last Wednesday.)



Sweet. Just got a look at the cover of the French edition of City of Saints & Madmen, being released in September from Calmann-Levy.

I'm very excited about this edition. The French translator has done an amazing job--I know just from the types of questions he asked--and everything is set for this to be a big success.

Jeff

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN WALKS THE PLANK

Ann and I first met Mike Arnzen at the first World Horror Convention and took an instant liking to him. He's a knowledgeable, friendly, quite funny guy who also happens to be an excellent writer. Back then, he was, along with Poppy Z. Brite and Kathe Koja, one of the Dell/Abyss discoveries. His novel Grave Markings won the Bram Stoker Award. He has also won the International Horror Guild Award and had many of his stories reprinted in year's best anthologies. He is a college teacher, an exporter of gorelets, and now has another novel, Play Dead, out from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Structured in 52 chapters (like a deck of cards), Play Dead is a tale of gamblers who play poker with photographs of their murder victims. Praise includes a blurb from the wonderful Lance Olsen:

" ...a masterpiece of eloquent depravity" -- JA Konrath
"...a fast-paced, brutal, gritty, and unflinching novel." -- Cemetery Dance
"Play Dead reads like white lightning...wonderfully grungy...the richly metaphoric style begs for savoring on every page." -- Lance Olsen

You can find more information about the novel here. (And here are a few other cool links.)

Mike was kind enough to walk the plank via email recently...

Michael A. Arnzen Walks the Plank



Why should readers pick up your book as opposed to, say, just about anybody else's book?
Because if you picked up anybody else's book, you might hurt yourself. PLAY DEAD exceeds all safety regulations, and even contains gently vibrating hand massage technology around the base of the spine, making it a pleasure to hold when you read in bed at night. Its print is also not only easy on the eyes, but also adjusts to the reader's eyesight; there's no need for glasses, and early reports suggest that its auto-focusing print in some cases even acts as a corrective. Screw Lasik eye surgery! A sick book is much more effective.

Does your book have any socially redeeming qualities? If so, what are they?
Society cannot be redeemed, but let me try to answer this anyway. Beyond functioning as a technical manual in how to win friends and influence idiots, PLAY DEAD is--and I'm not joking here--ultimately a repellent inquiry into the pathology of gambling addiction. The novel explores the world of down-and-out poker players living in a homeless shelter who start committing murder just for the chance to sit at the table of a very strange poker game. To play the game, they have to create their own deck of cards out of photographs of their murder victims. I like to tell myself that when I write a novel, I'm exploring a social taboo or a vice that I don't really understand very well, trying to figure out what makes society shun it. So maybe in the process, my work sheds light on those issues. The contrived murders in PLAY DEAD--while outrageously orchestrated like something out of The Omen--are analogues to the destruction spawned by gambling obsession in some people's lives.

But I should just shut my trap. Writers are notoriously bad at interpreting and justifying their own work and, even with a Ph.D. in Literature, I'm really no exception. The only social benefit of writing a book like this is that it keeps me--and anyone who likes reading my work--off the streets, where we would do far more creative damage, I'm sure.

Does your book have any medicinal or mental health value to readers?
I've heard that--in addition to curing eyesight--it can irrigate wounds quite nicely, but because it is a hardcover, it requires a very large wound, and such wounds are often too fatal to successfully test this rumor. Mental health is a fallacy, and if it were real, there would be no value to it anyway. PLAY DEAD, like most horror fiction, reminds people of that.

Assume your book has been filed under "Ages 8 to 12" in the children's section, perhaps by mistake, perhaps not. How horrified do you imagine a child would be after reading your book, and why? How many years of therapy would the child take to recover from the experience?
They'd likely develop an intense fear of playing cards and therefore never be able to endure Alice in Wonderland, suffer those insufferable self-appointed Tarot card readers, pick their teeth, use flash cards to learn mathematics, or ride on a lengthy plane trip ever again. Reno would be off limits as a travel destination, and a visit to Monte Carlo would drive them into a terrifying tuxedo-wearing state of apoplexy. They'd never recover from this trauma, unless they murdered every person in the world named Hoyle. And that would take them until they were 97.

Strange-but-true fact: PLAY DEAD was initially categorized in the national book databases under the subject, "Games--Fiction," rather than ("Books--Wicked Scary") and I'm sure it actually did find its way into the hands of children nationwide, who are emulating it with their families and friends as we speak.

Why don't you write more about cute stuff?
This is exactly what my Grandma used to ask me, while spooning moldy molasses into my toothless mouth with a rusty, sharp-edged ladle she'd just used to plant mushrooms. Years later, once the corners of my lips healed, I wrote "Fuzzy Bunnies," a poem as an attempt to appease her and all the other people in my life who say "but you look like such a nice boy!":

Fuzzy Bunnies
by Michael A. Arnzen

the eyes roll back
and accusingly glare
when my feet slide forward
and hot rabbit innards
squirt between my toes

only then do I see
why these furry white skins
are called slippers

(originally appeared in Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems (Fairwood Press,
2003)

Obviously, like many people who write and love horror fiction, I have a juvenile approach to all things cute...and this is why I probably shouldn't write children's literature. Or maybe I should. But even if I tried to do it, I'd be sort of like Lennie from Of Mice and Men--eventually, something would get its neck broken. Cute never lasts, anyway. Everything cute corrupts. That's all I'm saying.

If no one buys your book and you are unable to continue publishing your fiction due to the intense vilification that occurs in the media, what line of work will you go into?
Wait, hasn't this already happened? Oh, you mean the vilification of Michael Arnzen, not of the written word in general. Well, that hasn't happened completely yet, but, like a gangsta rapper, I am "illified" if not "vilified."

Okay, let's see... if I were marginalized by the already marginalized people who read me--trembling on the event horizon on the edge of a black hole of obscurity--and I wasn't even able to keep my current day job as tenured professor because I had violated all that was holy about "academic freedom"--I think I'd probably try to get into that lucrative field known as "quantum physics," as quickly as possible. I'd like to understand what it is that's swallowing me up, turning me inside out, and spitting me back out through the soiled hole of the space-time worm. But, naturally, like all writers, I don't think I'd ever stop writing, even without an audience, even without a pen, even without hands, when I'm inside out. When I've reached the end, I don't just want to "go out screaming"... I want to leave an artful stain. Just like the way I came in!

KNOWING WHEN NOT TO WRITE

(This entry will sound defensive, but it's not. It's more about how you make decisions in your career as a writer and when you give yourself leave not to feel guilty about not writing.)

A few people, some out of concern, some perhaps out of exasperation at finding a VanderProject or VanderInterview staring back at them from the computer screen every time they turn on their computer, have asked me, "What's happening with your writing? When are you going to start on the next novel?"

This presupposes a few things, I think.

(1) That I announce every new fiction project before I start working on it. (I do not.)

(2) That I should be writing another novel right now.

(3) That I am somehow over-extending myself on peripheral stuff.

(4) That the projects I am working on are not worthwhile or not "independent" projects.

But most importantly, this line of questioning assumes I'm not writing. Or somehow stagnating, much as a boxer stagnates if he doesn't stay busy in the gym. Well, not to fear on that count: blog entries, short stories, movie scripts, day job English passages for kids, introductions for collections, interviewing other authors...all of this is a way of staying in shape. Much of it doesn't push me creatively, but some of it does, and the rest of it is various enough that it keeps me flexible and balanced.

At the same time, there are things I should not be doing right now. I should not, in a year where I have two major books out (City of Saints in Feb., Shriek in Jan/August) and a rather intense travel schedule, beat myself over the head for failing to start the next Ambergris novel. Nor would I necessarily be starting the next novel (or resuming it, rather) even without the distractions. Shriek took a lot out of me and I need time to recharge.

I'm actually not prolific in the fiction department--I just had a lot of stuff rejected for a long time and then suddenly had it all taken and published over a relatively short period of time. I do not subscribe to the write-a-novel-a-year plan. I do not even subscribe to the write-a-novel-every-five-years plan. They take as long as they take and they're not product. They're hand-crafted and individualistic, and with any luck someone reads the finished work and says to themselves, whether they like it or hate it, "No one but Jeff VanderMeer could have written that."

The ways in which I'm challenging myself creatively this year are ways that will help my fiction writing in the long run--like creating a short film script, something I've never done before. Like shooting and editing a documentary, also from a loose script.

If I choose not to write much fiction this year, it is because I don't want the quality of that fiction to suffer because of other projects. It is important to me that I always give my best effort to my fiction, because that is the core of who I am as a human being. I have no religion. I have only my personal relationships and my writing, and things associated with the writing.

I also strongly believe that when you get to a point in your career where you can help your fellow writers and can use your leverage to make certain kinds of projects happen...well, that you should do everything within your power to help people and do projects. Otherwise, what's the point? So now that I am in this position, that's what I intend to do. Five years from now I might not have the leverage to do these kinds of things. Hopefully that's not the case. But who can tell?

And, finally, as anyone who has followed my career knows, I go through phases. It would be uncharacteristic for me to follow a novel with another novel without some kind of editing project inbetween. I like the change of pace.

All this by way of saying, a writer's life is a long one, usually, and filled with many permutations and projects and ambitions and obsessions. I like to do what interests me and I'm passionate about--and that varies from year to year, month to month. My mind is always thinking about the next fiction project, but I may not always set pen to paper to capture the immediate thought. Better to let it mature and to let other things I'm doing permeate my fiction before setting aside the solitary time needed to begin writing in earnest.

In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy the interesting things I've got up my sleeve in the next year--including, of course, the US release of Shriek, only the biggest publication event of my career to date.

Much love,

Jeff

THE REFO:MATION

As you might imagine, I've been listening to a lot of The Church's music recently. Not just because of the release of their new CD, Uninvited Like the Clouds, but also because of their involvement in the short Shriek movie.

One of my favorite Church CDs is still the little-known Pharmakoi / Distance Crunching Honchos with Echo Units by The Refo:mation (1997).

The Refo:mation is technically not a Church CD because the lineup is:

Steve Kilbey



Peter Koppes



Tim Powles



(photos found here, by Julien Klettenberg)

The Refo:mation is a word play on the name for the historical reformation in western religion, and the reunification as The Refo:mation of the two founding members of the group The Church - Steve Kilbey and Peter Koppes. The Refo:mation also includes the current drummer of The Church, Tim Powles.

The lack of Marty Wilson-Piper's guitar is offset by some killer atmospheric song structures, many of them not slow-dreamy but incisive/knife-sharp, that perfectly complement Steve Kilby's voice. Not to mention, this CD has the most killer title of all time, in my opinion. One of my favorite CDs. Absolutely kicks ass. Definitely a stealth selection worth buying. (You may have to search to find it, but I think you can order it here.)

The Back with Two Beasts online release from last year--a kind of precursor to Uninvited Like the Clouds--falls into the same stealth category (or shadow cabinet category), but has a completely different feel to it. It took me awhile to appreciate Back with Two Beasts, but the CD definitely rewards repeated listenings. For some reason only after I listened to Uninvited did Back open up for me. It's a great CD that you need patience with. Listening on headphones definitely recommended.

AMBERGRIS WEAPONRY

I had meant to post the Mike Arznen interview today, but it'll have to wait for tomorrow.

In the meantime, Dave Larsen has been working on one of the props for the Shriek movie. Here is the latest incarnation of one of the Kalif's guns--the guns he flooded Ambergris with right before the War of the Houses. Dave's still working on it, but this is the current iteration. I think it's very cool. Note the squid detail.

I admit it--my inner role playing geek is well pleased. Dave also did the mushroom dweller knife photographed in City of Saints.

Jeff

TEDDY ATLAS WRITES A BOOK AND EXERCISE ANALYSIS

MaxBoxing has a short piece on Teddy Atlas' first book--an autobiography of sorts.

Teddy Atlas was a fine trainer, but what he's given back to boxing fans as a commentator for ESPN has been perhaps even more notable. He is, bar none, the most knowledgeable and interesting boxing analyst on television.

How does that translate into book form? I don't know. I would imagine that it's possible the book is uneven, as this Publishers Weekly review maintains...

Boxing trainer and ESPN commentator Atlas ruminates on fighting as a form of masculine psychotherapy, from his own youthful street brawling to his stints training a young Mike Tyson and heavyweight champ Michael Moorer. His theme is the male psyche's craving for paternal approval, evinced in his juvenile acting out against an emotionally distant dad and his ringside relationships with a succession of surrogate sons. With them, Atlas's mentoring toggles between fatherly tenderness ("I care about you. You're important to me") and tough-love harangues ("hit him in the fuckin' balls and become a fighter or you get on the next train and you get the fuck out of my life!"). He also becomes a spiritual guide to celebrity clients like Twyla Tharp, whom he lectures on the need to face one's fears, and Willem Dafoe, with whom he discusses the nature of truth. Atlas's exhaustively transcribed motivational sermons can be wearisome, and in his self-serving accounts of boxing industry intrigues he is always loyal and principled. But he and amanuensis Alson tell his story with plenty of atmospherics, Runyonesque characters and an illuminating focus on the boxer's internal battle. Photos. (May 9)

But I'm going to pick it up. I think it'll be fascinating regardless.

Jeff

Wednesday's Exercise:

Abs- 3 sets obliques on machine - 4 sets obliques (2 each side) using 70 lb machine weight - 150 crunches (continuous, to semi-exhaustion)

Chest
-3 sets bench press, 2 50 lb dumbbells - 3 sets seated machine press, 140 lbs - 3 sets incline machine flyes, 120 lbs - 3 sets dumbbell pull up, 65 lbs - 3 sets reverse flyes, 2 30 lb dumbbells

Shoulders
- 3 sets military press, 2 30 lb dumbbells - 3 sets shrugs, 2 50 lb dumbbells
(continuous, no rest: bench press, dumbbell pull up, reverse flyes, military press, shrugs)

Back
- 6 sets (single grip; 3 sets per side) latt pull-down at 80 lbs; 3 sets bar latt pull-down at 140 lbs, wide grip - 3 sets upright rows at 135 lbs

Legs
- 3 sets incline leg press at 720 lbs (high, middle, feet together) - 6 sets incline leg press at 700 lbs (high [15 reps], middle [10 reps], feet together [8 reps], with no rest; repeat) - 2 sets at 600 lbs (high, then feet together; 10 reps each) - 2 sets at 500 lbs (same) - 2 sets at 400 lbs (same) - 2 sets at 300 lbs (same) - 2 sets at 200 lbs (same)
(after the first nine sets, no rest between sets for the 2-set combos from 600 lbs to 200 lbs)
- 3 sets leg extensions at 180 lbs followed by 1 exhaustion set at 100 lbs
- 6 sets leg curls at 70 lbs (3 sets each leg)
- 70 calf raises using own body weight (shifting position to hit the muscle differently every 20 or so)

Arms- 4 sets of bicep 21's using 40 lb barbell immediately after doing a set of latt pull-downs (this really hurt) and followed by a set each time of forearms curls with a 30 lb barbell - 1 set of bicep curls using 65 lb barbell
- 4 sets of machine tricep pull-downs at 100 lbs (yeah!) immediately after forearm curls
- 1 set triceps using 2 30-lb weights

Cardio- 1/2 mile run to start, followed by 1 lap sprint
- 30 minutes on exercise bike, mostly at level 21, so close to doing stairmaster, in terms of effort
- 2 lap all-out sprint to exhaustion

Analysis:
I'm really happy because the first few times I went to 700 lbs on the leg press, I was amazingly sore the next couple days. But now my body has adjusted to it and I can begin adding on a little bit of weight gradually over the next nine weeks. I'm also psyched about the strength gains from doing 21's for biceps and mixing in machine work for chest and triceps. Next week, I will up the cardio on non-gym days and being to alter the exercise routine so my body doesn't get too used to it. I also think this three-days-a-week full-body routine (about 2 to 2.5 hours of weight work, 40 minutes of cardio) really is doing the trick. It's helping with flexibility, power, and core strength. I haven't lost very much weight, but I have definitely toned, as everything is fitting me differently. My obliques are more toned than at any time in my life.

Diet:
I've cut my chai latte consumption down to two a week, which means I've cut 200 calories a day out of my diet five days a week. When I drink beer now, I never drink the night before a heavy exercise day and keep it to one beer or a half-beer, if that. I am trying to eat more vegetables and keeping bread other than wheat to a minimum.

I must add that Ann is in incredible shape--she does the gym stuff with me. Absolutely incredible shape.

ONE HUNDRED DAYS TO FINNCON

Only one hundred days to Finncon. Less than nine weeks to perhaps one of the most amazing experiences of my life and of Ann's: five weeks in Europe, culminating in: Finncon...

Jeff

BLOGS OF NOTE: Coulthart, Manaugh, Sydenham

John Coulthart

John Coulthart, one of the best designers in the world in my opinion, has started a fascinating blog called Feuilleton.

Recent highlights include posting some of his recent book covers...as well as a post on some very whimsical and odd old films. John's blog is just as wonderfully unique as his work and I highly recommend it.

Geoff Manaugh

Geoff Manaugh's architecture BldgBlog(well, it's so much more, though) is fascinating and rather unique as well. Many of you may already know about it, but if you haven't visited, you must do so. It doesn't matter what you're interested in--in some way you'll find it relates to this blog.

Anne Sydenham

Anne Sydenham, who created the Jerusalem Dreaming site, has joined the blogosphere with her Cat Politics blog. She's just up-and-running, but should have more posts soon. Sydenham is another true original with a unique viewpoint. I look forward to this blog as well.


*****




NOTE: If you're in the northeast, you should check out a series of readings Kathryn Kulpa is doing for her collection Pleasant Drugs. One of the stories appeared in Leviathan 1 and another in Asimov's, in addition to a bunch of literary magazines. She's a great writer and worth checking out.

Mother's Day Brunch Reading
Saturday, May 13, 11:30 a.m.
Dighton Public Library, 395 Main St., Dighton, MA
Readings on the topic of motherhood, featuring poets,
fiction and creative nonfiction writers
Details/Directions

Reading and Book Signing
Providence Athenaeum, 251 Benefit St., Providence, RI
Tuesday, May 23, 7 p.m.
Details/directions

RIPEN Brunch Benefit for Ovarian Cancer Research
Luigi's Restaurant, 1357 Hartford Ave, Johnston, RI
SAturday, May 27, 11 a.m.
Details/Directions: (401) 861-3850

Reading and Book Signing
William Hall Library, 1825 Broad St., Cranston, RI
Tuesday, June 13, 7 p.m.
Details/directions:

Tuesday exercise: 3-mile walk (sick to stomach from something--couldn't do anything else)

(Evil Monkey: "Are you sitting in the third row?" Jeff: "No. I'm in the first row. I don't like to have to see over other people's heads and hats and things." Evil Monkey: "Ah--my mistake. Those things in front of the first row aren't more rows--they're just heads on spikes." Jeff: "Yes, I guess it achieves the same effect as if I were sitting in the third row." Evil Monkey: "So...what are we watching?" Jeff: "Oh, same old rush to coronation...." Evil Monkey: "..." Jeff: "...Sick of it yet?" Evil Monkey: "But...they're out there just putting a crown on anything that moves." Jeff: "Yes--magnificent isn't it." Evil Monkey: "A bit early in the year for crowning things isn't it?" Jeff: "Not really. It's already May. They've got the things they want on spikes on spikes and they've got the things crowned they wanted crowned. I'd say it's awfully efficient, actually. Now they can rest the rest of the year." Evil Monkey: "Rest up for what?" Jeff: "Doing the same thing next year.")

PREMONITION OF A SHRIEK

Beginning to get our act together on the limited of Shriek. This is just a mock-up Ann put together, using the UK trade paperback. Next week, I'll have a full listing of contents, pricing, etc., for pre-orders. It will be limited to 52 sets and will include a chapbook entitled "FUNGIPHILIA: Implications of the Shift" by one of the Gorts.

Jeff

SHRIEK RIDES THE TRAINS & NEWS

Via Liz Williams, the news that the Shriek review virus continues to infect the U.K., this time through the First Great Western train line's magazine, Reach. I believe this is the same review running in a lot of regional newspapers. Mucho thanks to the reviewer is all I can say.

Jay's review of Shriek at FantasyBookSpot.

In other news, Juha Lindroos has been scouting locations and doing some initial shooting for the Shriek movie, while I work on rewriting my Rough Guide to Ambergris presentation for conversion to a short movie version. Lots more in the works, of course.

Coming up by week's end, the comprehensive fantasy list, for what it's worth. Every list is incomplete. Every list is corrupt. However, if it puts somebody on to a book they haven't heard of before, great.

And, of course, interviews with Mike Arnzen and Neil Williamson soon.

Congrats to all of the Nebula winners, to Jeff Ford for his Edgar, and if you're into F&SF Magazine, don't forget to subscribe. Gordon Van Gelder's doing a little blog promotion thing right now.

Jeff

Monday Exercise
-30 minutes exercise bike
- 1/2 mile run
- full body weights workout (2 hours). different from sat. re
9 sets incline leg press at 700 lbs, 2 sets at 500 lbs only
2 50 lb dumbbells for shrug sets
100 lbs for triceps exercise
did 3 sets 21s with 40 lbs barbell for biceps and then 1 set at 65 lbs, 12 reps

MY 64 FAVORITE FICTIONS

There's no hope of defending any list of this nature as anything other than my favorite fictions. I've expanded it to 64 for reasons that will become apparent in a couple of weeks (yes, yet another project). I do think this is also an instructive list for fantasy writers. On it you find all kinds of variation of structure and technique.

I've XXXXX'd out a couple of entries because of World Fantasy Award judging obligations. I'll do a reveal once the finalists have been announced. I also decided to throw out the ten-year rule but to try to, except for some exceptions having to do with genius, limit each writer to one book.

And, again, depending on the weather, what I've had for dinner, etc., it could change from week to week. Before anyone complains, Use of Weapons is first and foremost the most devastating commentary on war and the effects of war written in the 20th century. It is only secondarily a SF novel. And the Dudman has the surreal, dreamlike quality of fantasy, wedded to extraordinarily precise imaginings about science. As for Troika, I published it because I thought it was easily the most brilliant surreal fantasy I'd ever read. And don't get me started on The Cloud Atlas...

Sometime in the next week I will post a corrected and updated comprehensive Fantasy Reading List based on the original long list and the subsequent comments.

Jeff

FANTASY: 64 Books

1. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake
3. Lanark, Alasdair Gray
4. Jerusalem Quartet, Edward Whittemore
5. The Chess Garden, Brooks Hansen
6. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter
7. Alice in Wonderland & Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll
8. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
9. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter
10. Observatory Mansions, Edward Carey
11. Possession, A.S. Byatt
12. Viriconium Cycle, M. John Harrison
13. Arc d'X, Steve Erickson
14. V, Thomas Pynchon
15. Quin’s Shanghai Circus, Edward Whittemore
16. If Upon a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino
17. Collected Stories, Franz Kafka
18. The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
19. Pyat Quartet, Michael Moorcock
20. The Collected Stories, J.G. Ballard
21. A Fine and Private Place, Peter S. Beagle
22. The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
23. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
24. The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica, John Calvin Bachelor
25. House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
26. The Riddle Master trilogy, Patricia McKillip
27. The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
28. The Other Side, Alfred Kubin
29. The Circus of Doctor Lao, Charles Finney
30. Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks
31. The Circus of the Earth & the Air, Brooke Stevens
32. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
33. Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavic
34. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brian
35. The Troika, Stepan Chapman
36. The "Elements" Quartet, Rikki Ducornet
37. Solomon Gursky Was Here, Mordechai Richler
38. Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux
39. Don Quixote, Cervantes
40. Poor Things, Alasdair Gray
41. Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
42. The Land of Laughs, Jonathan Carroll
43. The Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, Ursula K. LeGuin
44. The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson
45. Little Big, John Crowley
46. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
47. One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead, Clare Dudman
48. The Seven Who Fled, Frederick Prokosch
49. Already Dead, Denis Johnson
50. Tainaron, Leena Krohn
51. Views From the Oldest House, Richard Grant
52. Life During Wartime, Lucius Shepard
53. The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, Barry Hughart
54. The Wavering Knife, Brian Evenson
55. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
56. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
57. Shardik, Richard Adams
58. The Merlin Cycle, Mary Stewart
59. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
60. Ill-Met in Lankhmar, Fritz Leiber
61. The Song of Fire and Ice, George RR Martin
62. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Marukami,
63. Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov
64. The Unconquered Country, Geoff Ryman



Exercise:
Thurs/Friday--nothing

Saturday
Full-on gym work-out, as previous, but 20 sets on leg press (nine at 700 lbs, 2 each at 600, 500, 400, 300, and 200 lbs; the 2 each without rest between)
Plus three sets incline chest press and machine chest press.
Normal abs and sprint/bike sessions

Sunday
4-mile hike
30 minutes cardio

1001 Real Apes

I'm on the distribution list for fans of Robyn Hitchcock and just got this email from them about a project Hitchcock highly recommends. Sounds pretty cool. (I'd never cut Robyn's head off, but if I did, I think he'd keep on singing--about disembodied heads. And squid.)

- Evil Monkey


PelPel Recordings
presents
"1001 Real Apes"
by David Greenberger & Birdsongs of the Mesozoic

1001 Real Apes, mixes David Greenberger's monologues with music by Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. It's loaded with quirky stories, reflections, and opinions that Greenberger has culled from The Duplex Planet, his publication of conversations with old people - particularly drawn from the residents of the defunct Duplex Nursing home in Boston.

Greenberger offers up everything listeners have come to expect from Duplex Planet projects, plus some. The 27 stream-of-consciousness stories are alternately funny, moving, wise, silly, and inspirational, providing a unique view into the minds of the characters. They meander, as minds tend to do, through a terrain of guitars, travel, silverware, dating, beer, dinosaurs, and a perennial Duplex Planet favorite, Snakes. The moods range from the jazzy riffs of the insistent "I Ain't Coe" to the prayerful mourning of "No Firebugs." Working with producer Bill Scheniman (Deborah
Harry, NRBQ, Bon Jovi) has also yielded a friendly, spoken-word pop song, "How Records Are Made." Roll down your car windows, turn up the volume, and go for a ride; this song sounds like summer.

Twenty-seven years ago, David Greenberger started a magazine using stories he collected from residents of the Duplex Nursing Home. The Duplex Planet continues today as a periodical, but has gained wider renown in some of its other forms: book collections, a comic book adaptation, two documentaries, CDs and performances. Last year NPR's All Things Considered featured selections from Greenberger's previous two releases, Mayor of the Tennessee River and Legibly Speaking. Greenberger has just completed a public radio program, Growing Old in East L.A., with music by David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos.

Available now at http://www.duplexplanet.com for just $12 (plus $4 shipping), or by check to: The Duplex Planet, POBOX 1230, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.

David Greenberger: monologues
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic:
Michael Bierylo - guitar, computer sequencing, sound design
Ken Field - saxophones, flutes, percussion
Erik Lindgren - piano
Rick Scott - synthesizer, samples, percussion
Produced by Bill Scheniman

Track listing:

1. 1001 Real Apes Overture (1:27)
2. Dad's Tray (2:09)
3. Cowboy Story (2:40)
4. The Phantom of Crestwood (1:30)
5. Minerals and Moon (2:08)
6. Freaky Women (3:44)
7. Nine Colors/Quincy Sore Throat (2:57)
8. Six Bits of Advice (0:57)
9. 36 Meatballs (1:19)
10. Gravity/Massachusetts/Newton (3:46)
11. Firecrackers (1:51)
12. Dinosaurs (1:27)
13. All About Snakes (4:33)
14. A-E-I-O-U (Guitars, pt. 1) (2:06)
15. Daphne's New York City (2:39)
16. Swimming (3:10)
17. Chicago (1:25)
18. No Firebugs and a Prayer (5:16)
19. Theo (0:52)
20. I Ain't Coe (3:38)
21. Bruno (1:37)
22. How Records Are Made (2:31)
23. Plink Plink Plink (Guitars. pt. 2) (2:07)
24. Rosie (2:42)
25. Time Marches On (1:38)
26. A Cautionary Tale (0:53)
27. I Like Beer (2:47)
28. They Made a Movie Out of This (2:22)

ESSENTIAL FANTASY LISTS REDUX

If you want to weigh in on this list, please do so soon since I'm compiling a revised list over the weekend.

Jeff

MOOT AND THE MAD PREACHER

Hmmm. I'm rather thinking I know why I abandoned this novel, Moot and the Mad Preacher. I got about 30,000 words into it and just...stopped. Back in 1996-97, I think. Possibly 1995. Just found the file on my computer. Thought I only had the hardcopy.

Anyway, this is probably self-indulgent, but here's the first chapter. Particularly love the dialect from the grandmother, and that thar "last sweaty thrusts". Eew.

Jeff



Chapter 1

Once, there lived a mortician's daughter who was lost amid the bones of a desert city so old that it barely remembered its name. Her name was Moot and her story happened a long time ago, in a land so far away even its outermost boundaries are only a dream in the minds of lovers poised on the cusp of sleep.

For centuries this land lay across the back of a beast that none had ever seen, for it slept buried beneath grass and earth, rivers and mountains. Among those who knew the Beast existed, or who worshipped it as oracle in places both profane and doubly forgotten, there was much discourse as to its nature. Was it serpentine? Was it crocodilian? Did it share the guise of bear or of leopard, fish or fowl? Was it perhaps a land whale beached forever in the nautilus coils of its own centuries old memory?

But one night, after so many years of sleep, the Beast woke, and in its throes of waking displaced the world, displaced the city, displaced all questions of its appearance, for that night it had no single appearance, but was the sum of all appearances, here deadly and swift, there slow and merciful as the earth shifted and swallowed whole and spit up and bellowed like a lost, hurtful soul. What did it dream? What did it dream as it rose from sleep, and rising fell? What could it be dreaming but the gleaming white premonition of its own death?

And so it awoke, and in the waking, died.

Then came the years of flesh, the years of bone, and the years of reclamation. Then came Moot, born the night the Beast died.

Moot she was, if not truly mute or beside the point: shags of long, black hair, spindly limbs with no flesh on them, and violet tinged eyes that, by accident or design, pierced anyone who gazed into them; a gaze that caught everything and let nothing out. Pale of skin, with the quick darting movements more common to geckos. She wore rags she had sewn together, so that she resembled a colorful patchwork shadow woven from faded sunsets, wine stains, and the reflections of moonlight on amber glass. A waif, then, fashioned from the last sweaty thrusts of failed relationships, lusts so utterly quenched as to leave her thus fatherless, motherless, alone.

Moot worked for the Can Man, a junkmeister who ruled a twilit world of nostalgia and lost glories and sold parts of that world, broken and whole, to any who could afford his price. The Can Man "can get you anything" and he had gotten Moot a small room on the second floor of his headquarters: a squat, fort like building that enclosed a courtyard. The room's only window looked out on the Cathedral of Soul Voices: a distant spar of bone which rose from near the city's center and functioned as a watchtower, an ingenious architect having hollowed out the bone and added the support of wooden construction beams so that it resembled an inverted harp. When the wind came out of the west or the east, then the windows placed at odd intervals on the Cathedral's lacquered sides played a strange and sighing music. Beyond the tower rose the gaunt hills where the remnants of aristocracy peered down from the rotting palaces known as the Mansions of the Moon, the glassless windows seemingly painted black.

If Moot looked down, she could see Martel Street, the thoroughfare on which the building faced, but she did not look down often. She liked to focus on the tower, marveling at its intricacy, its sheer beauty compared with the squalor of the world below.
Martel Street cracked, dirty, with its cadre of pale skinned orphans (amongst whom the Can Man recruited vigorously) resembled the city in the days after the Beast's death sixteen years before. Whereas the rest of the city, with its white and gray streets, its calm and curving lines, might resemble a graveyard for its paucity of citizens, Martel Street crawled with waifs, those whom the Beast had disenfranchised, either at its death or in the horrific years following. Crowded with phalanxes of ragged, mangy chickens and goats as well. Even the weaseling merchants who carried their livelihoods on their backs would not traverse Martel Street: a shrug, a grunt, a staggered walk, and they might call out, the litany intended for anywhere but Martel Street: "Spices! Spices! Pots! Pans! The finest glasswork! Spices!" All to the vast indifference of Moat’s fellow stragglers, most too poor to afford anything as luxurious as a pot, a pan, a hand-blown glass. Spices? They spiced themselves with the odor of a week without baths, could hardly afford the cold dried mutton slung across the backs of shepherds come down from the parched hills.

And yet, despite her small room, despite the surrounding squalor, Moot never quite forgot that she lived within the hollow bones of a Beast so large its sleeping breath had sent storms across the world. Her eyes would grow bright as she thought how marvelous it was, to be alive in such a place. Other times, she had nightmares that she could hear the Beast breathing still, slow and sonorous and ancient, that it had not truly died but had taken on new and more subtle shapes. In these dreams, she followed the sound enraptured, content to bask in the depths of its hollow echo; followed though it led her down into the earth, so deep that she could no longer even conceive of the concept of a world above and came to believe that the light behind her eyes, memory of the sun, was only the light ahead pulsing from the molten core of the Beast.

Moot at sixteen could have no real memory of a beast dead upon her birth, but her late Aunt Jemsue passed away a year to the day the mad claptrap, rattling skull preacher entered the city had told her stories by torchlight. The Can Man had paid for the funeral and the ceremony by the Servants of the Beast, who had passed a long black shawl over her and taken her away to the vertical tombs that surrounded the base of the Cathedral of Soul Voices.
In the same room she now occupied alone, surrounded by all of Aunt Jemsue's things, Moot had curled up on the old woman's lap and listened to her as she watched the flames of the fire in the clay pot.

Aunt Jemsue was never really her aunt she had only scraps of knowledge about any of her relatives but the Can Man had employed her to raise those girls among the orphans he picked off the street, and of all the girls, Aunt Jemsue liked Moot best; how else to explain that early on Aunt Jemsue moved into Moot's little apartment? Poor as Aunt Jemsue was, feeble as she was, Moot loved her dearly and felt safe enfolded in her arms. Upon her death, Moot had cried and cried, her nights enfolded in intensified nightmares of a resurrected Beast.

"Shivery shuddery death," Aunt Jemsue would intone gravely. "Shivery shuddery death, wi' a great `rackin' sound as th' Beast rose in its death throes. I tell you, child, the city, it moved li' a hun'red earthquakes. Like we was at sea and floatin' on the surface. A scream in a hun'red thousand voices rise from the peoples in their houses an' in their beds an' on the streets, for they knew “They knew the doom foretol' by the prophets of the House o' the Beast had come to pass: the Beast, after more years than co' be `called, sought finally to wake, only then ta die."

Aunt Jemsue had had the slight, clipped lilt to her speech that was common to the folk of the sands, commonly known as the Glassblowers, who tended to their kilns and were such a tightlipped people that it was a marvel to Moot every time Jemsue opened her mouth.

"And my father?" Moot would ask by rote.

"A mortician, a funeral monger, a coffin builder. Lost, me poor child, in th' night, an' his body never `covered."

"And my mother?"

"A brave soul who gives you life amid th' Beastie's death an' then passed on, `er work done. She work for the Can Man an' that's how `e gave you a place `ere."

Then it would be off to bed.

Other times, Aunt Jemsue would scold Moot for having missed the Beast's death.
For Moot had lived unawares through the first year after the Beast's death. The Year of Blood they called it, when rivers of the Beast's ichors clotted the streets and, yes, the city's denizens feasted on the flesh of the Beast, but also in that year, the flesh rotted and brought ten million flies and ten million scavengers from the wastelands beyond the Mansions of the Moon. Families would struggle out into those wastes rather than stay and be poisoned by the gases that rose from the poisoned flesh. In the wastes at least the winds blew stronger. (Although the Can Man, it must be pointed out, had hove to his underground hidey away, well provisioned with supplies to outlast the end of the world, and the end of the next, as well.) The trees and grass in the city, the topsoil the Beast had carried upon its back, wherever that back might have been, had blown away, had been flattened or tossed to one side in the Beast's death throes. Everywhere, enormous bones ragged with flesh stuck up, through streets and doorways and courtyards. The wells that fed from the underground reservoirs were poisoned by the Beast's decay so that the citizens had to reply on the infrequent rainfall.

And when the rains came, they were rains of black blood. And the birds flew away. And the livestock died or ran, panicked, into the wastes. And the courses of the underground rivers had changed, dammed up or diverted so that the fields outside the city no longer sprouted with sweet corn or cabbage.

Nor, Aunt Jemsue would point out, had Moot any remembrance of the second year, the Year of Famine and Bone, when all the meat had rotted away to withered strips or become pustulent and corrupt. Then even the intrepid merchants who had made their way from the nearest cities, Callay and Ithagenia, in the year following the Beast's death would not come again to the nameless city (which surprised many, for it was said, only Death could stop a merchant from selling his wares, even `twere it in the bowels of the Beast itself; many the wag was heard to wager that such bowels was the best place for `em). Then were played out against a backdrop of carrion a thousand tales of desolation and chaos and madness. They city sunk so far into poverty and lawlessness that what little government remained became unhinged itself and people stole what they needed without care for anyone, except, perhaps, to live off the flesh of their neighbors.

"No, Moot," Aunt Jemsue would say, "You was three in th' Year of Rain an' Calm, an' that calm's all you `member, fer all its coarseness. Then's when the heavy rains come fer weeks an' months an' set the desert to bloom an washed the bones of Beast an' man alike clean an drove off them scavengers an brought the toads in the sands from their deep sleep. Sanity, Moot. Sanity, it come crawlin' back into th' city. `Member that clear, Moot, clear as yer clean, pale face. People'd come out o' th' wastes an' walk back into their broken homes, their faces like questionin' masks: Where I been? Why'd I go? Returnin' out of a land o' nightmare. Be thankful you only `member the calm."

A peck on the cheek, dimming of the fire, and sleep.

Sometimes, with Aunt Jemsue snoring, Moot would shiver in the grip of memory and wake to an emptiness that could not be filled with rice or apples or pears or even mutton. For, despite all her kindnesses, Aunt Jemsue could not tell her more about her parents, nor could Moot bring herself to ask the Can Man, afraid both of the Can Man and the tale he might have to tell: a tale of abandonment or death, or both.

Where might her father and mother be now if not in the grave?