THE SITUATION

PS Publishing will publish my long story The Situation as a stand-alone in spring of 2008. I'm very excited to be working with PS, since they do some of the most interesting covers and books around. The Situation has everything: incompetent managers, backstabbing coworkers, a giant grub creature, a fish with a human face, and a lot more besides. I think it's one of my best stories.

BTW--Luis Rodrigues is working on a wonderful new WordPress template for me and I should be moving there from Blogger sometime in the next month. For this reason, I am doing mostly short posts for now. But I will be blogging about the Oscars--check here tomorrow for more information on that.

Jeff

PS The writers whose stories we've accepted for the pirate anthology now stand at: Jayme Blaschke, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear ("Zee Bear! Zee Bear!"), Kage Baker, and Howard Waldrop, with more to come in the next week...


Excerpts from "The Situation"...

One day I could have sworn I heard a sighing sound coming from the darkness that was the high ceiling of my office. The ceiling almost seemed alive. I told myself I was paranoid, but that afternoon I felt a vast wind and a huge black manta ray detached itself and flew out of my door and into the shadows. Such a creature was beyond Scarskirt’s skill level, or even Leer’s. It had to be reporting back to the Mord.

*

My Manager forced me to put my beetle in my own ear, a clear waste, and an act that gave me nightmares: of a burning city through which giant carnivorous lizards prowled, eating survivors off of balconies and window ledges. In one particularly vivid moment, I stood on a ledge as the jaws closed in, heat-swept, and tinged with the smell of rotting flesh. Beetles intended for the tough, tight minds of children should not be used by adults. We still remember a kinder, gentler world.