Ghosts of Christmas past

In the tradition of the scholarly M.R. James, who always read a marvelous new one of his own composing at Christmas, it's time for a ghost story. And here's a new review of Ghosts by Gaslight,edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers. Must say about my mention that this is the first reviewer to imply that there might be a relationship between the mode in which the story is told and the identity of the narrator...

Evidently poet, professor, and twin (very ghostly, that!) Damian Walford Davies has started a Christmas Eve (or thereabouts) reading series featuring James stories by candlelight at the University of Aberystwyth. I wonder how many places have revived the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas--a wonderful idea.

Tracy Roberts does it again!



The illustration is Papa Gatto, "program spokescat,"
from Ruth Sanderson's book, Papa Gatto.


If you have a better memory than I do, you might remember that about a year ago I talked about one of the MFA students I worked with at Hollins while a writer-in-residence there. She won The Shirley Henn Award at The Francelia Butler conference at Hollins for a story, “Head-on,” that we had gone over together, although it was a very good story before I put in an appearance.

She has done it again with the other story we worked on, “Slew-foot.” Once more, I can say it was already a fine (and highly amusing) story before I got to read it. And now they are going to have to graduate her to keep her from doing it again, tic tac toe…

Tracy is interesting and loveable and has goats that stand on jeeps and generally make a goat-fuss.  She shows and raises cutting horses and is all-around a strong and lovely mountain woman. She is also generous. All year I have enjoyed a big sack of her home-grown and home-ground Bloody Butcher meal, made from a type of corn that has been raised for meal and seed in her region of Virginia for three hundred years. And she even sent Lucius Shepard a sack of Bloody Butcher (yes, it’s a ruby red) because he is the coveting type when it comes to heirloom-seed Virginia corn meal, and he coveted mine. She probably prevented some ninja-esque robbery in the stealthy part of the night.

Confetti, Tracy! You are on the upward trail, which is the right one for a mountain child to follow...

* * *

And speaking of Lucius, Jack Dann and Nick Gevers write that the Ghosts by Gaslight anthology from Harper has won a starred review in Publishers Weekly. And that the powers there pronounced all the stories to be good—rather unusual and what Lucius (who has already read it in manuscript) said as well. It will materialize via print and e-ectoplasm and manifest itself everywhere at the start of September.

Ghosts by Gaslight materializing--



A Publishers Weekly Top Ten
SF, Fantasy, and Horror Pick for the Fall.
Pub date: September 6

GHOSTS

The ghost story has a great tradition that twines together the literary and the speculative, those often-battling or sneering-at-each-other genres.  No matter what sort of writer one is, the job of taking a hoary old device like the ghost and making it work the current day is a challenge. And whether you have a love for Henry James or M. R. James or some other ghost-conjurer, there are grand tales to be read.

Thanks to Jack Dann and Nick Gevers for soliciting a story from me for their soon-to-be-launched anthology. And I suspect that if you like Hawthorne, you'll like my story, "The Grave Reflection."

INTERESTING COMPANY

1."The Iron Shroud" by James Morrow
2."Music, When Soft Voices Die" by Peter S. Beagle
3."The Shaddowwes Box" by Terry Dowling
4."The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike" by Garth Nix
5."Why I Was Hanged" by Gene Wolfe
6."The Proving of Smollett Standforth" by Margo Lanagan
7."The Jade Woman of the Luminous Star" by Sean Williams
8."Smithers and the Ghosts of the Thar" by Robert Silverberg
9."The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn's Balloons" by John Langan
10."Face to Face" by John Harwood
11."Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism" by Richard Harland
12."The Grave Reflection" by Marly Youmans
13."Christopher Raven" by Theodora Goss
14."Rose Street Attractors" by Lucius Shepard
15."Blackwood's Baby" by Laird Barron
16."Mysteries of the Old Quarter" by Paul Park
17."The Summer Palace" by Jeffrey Ford

HARPER-COLLINS FLAP COPY:

Edited by Jack Dann, World Fantasy Award-winning co-editor of Dreaming Down Under) and Nick Gevers (acclaimed editor and book reviewer), Ghosts by Gaslight is a showcase collection of all-new stories of steampunk and supernatural suspense by modern masters of horror, fantasy, sf, and the paranormal. An absolutely mind-boggling gathering of some of today’s very best dark storytellers—including Peter Beagle, James Morrow, Sean Williams, Gene Wolfe, Garth Nix, Marly Youmans, Jeffery Ford, and Robert Silverberg—Ghosts by Gaslight offers chilling gothic and spectral tales in a delightfully twisted Victorian and Edwardian vein. Think Henry James’s Turn of the Screw and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a decidedly steampunk edge, and you’re ready to confront Ghosts by Gaslight.

Ghosts by Gaslight available for pre-order

Ghosts by Gaslight
(Harper, forthcoming September, 2011)
Edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers

1."The Iron Shroud" by James Morrow
2."Music, When Soft Voices Die" by Peter S. Beagle
3."The Shaddowwes Box" by Terry Dowling
4."The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike" by Garth Nix
5."Why I Was Hanged" by Gene Wolfe
6."The Proving of Smollett Standforth" by Margo Lanagan
7."The Jade Woman of the Luminous Star" by Sean Williams
8."Smithers and the Ghosts of the Thar" by Robert Silverberg
9."The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn's Balloons" by John Langan
10."Face to Face" by John Harwood
11."Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism" by Richard Harland
12."The Grave Reflection" by Marly Youmans
13."Christopher Raven" by Theodora Goss
14."Rose Street Attractors" by Lucius Shepard
15."Blackwood's Baby" by Laird Barron
16."Mysteries of the Old Quarter" by Paul Park
17."The Summer Palace" by Jeffrey Ford

Wee piece on The Beastly Bride from that bold and energetic reviewer (and anthologist), Rich Horton:

The Beastly Bride is devoted to stories about shapeshifters. My favorites were Christopher Barzak's "Map of Seventeen", an engaging story about a girl, Meg, and her older brother, who has just returned home after some time away -- bringing back his lover, another man -- and, given the theme of the book, different in another way than being gay; and "The Salamander Fire", by Marly Youmans, which naturally enough concerns a glassblower who falls in love with the title fire creature, only to be concerned about her lack of a soul. I also liked stories from E. Catherine Tobler, Lucius Shepard, Carol Emshwiller, and Tanith Lee.