Reading with Jeff VanderMeer at KGB's Fantastic Fiction series

Art work by Scott Eagle, for Jeff VanderMeer's
City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris


January 18,
Wednesday, 7 p. m.

KGB Fantastic Fiction series
directed by Ellen Datlow & Gavin J. Grant
Marly Youmans & Jeff Vandermeer

at KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003

Jeff Ford has a piece about the double reading on 14theditch, the January 11th post. (Skip the bit about The Wolf Pit, as it's not quite right--a novel for adults! And that gets discussed in the comments, as does more about A. Segur...)

2006 Post-Epiphany Bookish Resolutions from the Queen of Procrastination & assorted news

A picture for "Little Christmas"
or Epiphany:
Marie & Godfather Drosselmayer
& the Nutcracker,
an illustration by Adrienne Segur
for "The Nutcracker"
in The Snow Queen
and Other Stories.



Now that the Twelfth Night pageant and the Royal Feast have passed, I ought to get around to making resolutions. After that, I may send out my Christmas cards. Or wait until Valentine’s Day. Unless perhaps I put it off until next year. I’m not committing to a resolution on that one.

1. Keep writing stories. (May as well. I can’t fight it; I’m on a jag, so I may as well resolve to do the thing that I know I’ll do.)

2. Go back to the novel that was interrupted by Life & Death. Finish. (The first portion was written as a novella that is forthcoming in Argosy Quarterly 4, if Argosy Quarterly 4 ever comes out...)

3. Get the new poetry ms. in order. That shambles in the office is reaching absurd heights (as, knee-deep on the floor and ditto if standing on my library table.)

4. Figure out what to do with all these stories and novellas that are lying about in drifts. At least stack the dratted things. Keep publishing them, but what about gathering some of them into collections?

5. Find more contemporary poetry that I like. I’ve gotten lots of pleasure out of Charles Causley and Kathleen Raine, and I was idiotic enough not to know their poems three years ago.

6. Don’t sit on a tuffet and wait for poetry requests in that annoying, lazy way. Send out some of those poky little envelopes with the SASE inside.

7. Think about whether to do and what to do about nonfiction requests.

8. Don’t say “yes” to too many things, and don’t blog about things that should be stories or poems. That wears them out.

9. Don’t bother with the other 1,998 resolutions as promised in the header. Nobody will read that far.

* * *

News & Rampant Confusion

December was a fairly good month, with lots of requests. Requests for poems, requests for stories for magazines and anthologies, even an anthology request for a story based on the winning words from the national spelling bee. Alas, I realized that The Wolf Pit has gone out of print not only in the FSG hardcover but also in the Harcourt paperback. I had hoped that winning a national award would help it recover from the blow of arriving in this world mere days after 9-11, as well as in the choppy wake of FSG's The Corrections and my editor's departure. What does one do, these days, with an out-of-print novel? I frequently get requests for Catherwood, and that one has been out of print for years. Creative Commons license and free downloads? Re-publish with something like the Back-in-Print program? Sell subscriptions, the way Samuel Johnson did? The world of publishing has changed, and there are, oddly enough, options and choices.

Update, 11 January: The Wolf is not out of print! Mere rampant confusion and havoc of the mind in evidence! I take back some of the above...

Words from a Master Bookseller

From writer, reader, and bookseller Robert Grey: I always felt that the essence of being a great frontline bookseller was not selling people what everyone else was reading, but creating in-house bestsellers out of books few people had even heard of. That will also be my new mission at Fresh Eyes Now. Talented readers want to make their own discoveries, to feel "this book is my book." The non-blockbuster world appeals to them, as it has always appealed to me.

And some brand new news that just flew in

Though I was tickled to learn that the two FSG children's books were coming out from Firebird in paperback this year, I was also a little bemused that nobody had bought foreign rights. Now FSG has sold Chinese translation rights for Ingledove to Sharp Point Press. Google tells me that Sharp Point Press is not mainland China but Taiwan (Chinese complex characters).

Love Letter to The Scarlet Letter

A curious thing is what happens to those writers who publish a promising, vigorous book but detest what they experience of the "business" side of books so much that they never try to publish again or else go dormant for many years. Here's a lovely site by a writer who has devoted herself to raising arcane breeds of sheep (Shetland, English Leicester Longwood, Black Cotswold, Navajo Churro, Jacob, and Icelandic) and making needlework reproduction kits, among other things. If you're interested in antique samplers, books on needlework (lace, embroidery, bed rugs, and more), reproduction samplers, charts of antique needlework, Scandinavian linens appropriate to antique-style samplers, or needlework tools, this is a useful and beautiful site to know. If you're not, it may pique your interest all the same. There's a lot of the lavish here, arabesque curls fit for the scarlet A on the bosom of Hester Prynne. The books also include some memoirs, histories, and novels. From time to time, the owner organizes a conference, or publishes an anthology of essays on needlework. She has invaded my work--a woman who makes reproduction samplers is the main character in one of my stories.

One of the genuine glories of the internet is that it links not pages but people. Years ago I emailed this site with a thank you for carrying my novel, Catherwood. (It still has another of my novels.) I'm not a very good correspondent, thanks to the over-stuffed nature of my life, but the correspondence that ensued was intensely enjoyable. And I manage a letter now and then. Despite the unflagging attentions of Theodora the calico and Lady Azure the stupid-but-teddy-bear-cute Persian from Mars, I still have some pristine feathers from Smoke Ham Farm peacocks that are no doubt screaming the Wisconsin sky into dangerous splinters at this very moment. "Smoke Ham Farm was established in 1986 with the goal of preserving endangered breeds of domestic livestock, alongside endangered nineteenth century midwestern ethnic vernacular farm buildings. Today, six breeds of rare and endangered sheep, numerous poultry, waterfowl, and cattle, reside in fourteen restored pioneer log and timber frame buildings on the 93 acre farm, located in the southeastern Kettle Moraine Forest." Doesn't that sound enticing? Yeats said one had to pick between perfection of the work or of the life. This sounds like a fullness and perfection of life.

I wonder what other fascinating things writers who turned their backs on the world of publishing have done...

Good-by, hello--

Photo courtesy of sxc.hu:

royalty-free, by wrhoanaz

Michael's famous New Year's Eve dinner

with a rambling-around-Delhi narrative

& good company

***

'White Ladies'

Moët & Chandon Champagne

Cartlidge & Browne Chardonnay

*

********

1.

Tale Caju

Spicy cashews with cumin & peppers

2.

Gobi Ka Shorva

Soothing cauliflower soup with coriander

3.

Onion pakoras

4.

Tala Gosht

Lamb kebabs with yogurt & pita

5.

Cardamom-scented rice cream with painted saffron topping

6.

Lahori chicken curry with whole spices & turnips

&

Indian-spiced spinach with corn

7.

Mangos, persimmons, & cream

***

Fireworks over snow to follow

***

*

"Compare with me, ye women, if you can."

--Anne Bradstreet, from a poem about her husband, c. 1640

*

Goodby, 2005--

you were cruel to me as a fairy, wild & heartless,

with death and havoc in your blackthorn wand.

***

Hello, 2006--

here's hoping that you are a happy child,

with a tender heart for mortals!