Paper Fruit

Well, okay, I can show you TWO of the covers I’ve seen in the last few weeks. One—the cover for A Pretty Mouth, which is currently undergoing copy edits and shaping up to be the weird, pervy, nerdy book I always dreamed of one day publishing and thus confirming everything everybody always thought about me—is not finalized, and so I can’t show it. Yet. But omfg, it’s amazing. I … might have cried a little when I saw it.

But! There are two other totally rad covers I can show you. First up, from Innsmouth Free Press, here’s the cover for Fungi. I think they revealed this whilst I was traveling in Florida. Check it!

So fuck yes Team Innsmouth! This is obviously insanely cool. Super-stoked to be in this alongside so many fine peoples.

Next up! The first story I sold this year, “The Poison-Well,” will be appearing in The Lion and the Aardvark, forthcoming from Stone Skin Press:

“Aesop’s Modern Fables” is pretty self-explanatory as to what this project is. They aren’t all retellings—mine is original, for example—but all are supposed to be Aesopian stories, relevant to the modern world. I mean, as an armchair classicist, I must say that there are plenty of Aesop’s fables that are still relevant to the modern world, of course, but yeah. Anyways, “The Poison-Well” is sort of more … let’s say deeply misanthropic Beatrix Potter than Aesop, so I’m glad editor Robin D. Laws thought it was a good fit!

Cover mania! Yay!

And seriously, I cannot wait to unveil the sweet, adorable cover for my sweet, adorable little book…

Man, what a great con. Probably the best con I’ve ever been to! And not just because Portland is the best city ever: Because the people were all really nice, the programming was fabulous, and most of the films were excellent.

It’s been over a week since I left, but I’ve been in and out of hospitals and trying to help my mother as much as I can while my dad’s going through some challenges with his pancreatic cancer. So rather than doing an articulate, fresh-off-the-high-of-awesomeness post, here were the highlights:

• Meeting people. I know I’m going to leave someone off and feel bad, but here goes. I got to meet my editor Ross Lockhart from Night Shade, my editor Cameron Pierce from LFP, his wife Kirsten (who’s my copy editor for A PRETTY MOUTH and she is fabulous), and various sundry people I’d only met online before, like Andrew Fuller (the programming chair for the con), Wendy Wagner, who is even more amazing IRL, which I did not think possible, Gwen Callahan, who runs the Arkham Bazaar and also the con itself I believe, Wilum H. Pugmire, a writer I’ve respected for many a year, Cody Goodfellow, who is a hoot, Jay Lake who I met but briefly whilst we were co-paneling, E. Catherine Tobler, who is a Colorado local who I met in Portland for the first time, Jeff Burk, a fellow Bizarro person, Rose O’Keefe, the publisher/CEO at Eraserhead, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, my editor at Innsmouth Free Press. Whew! But seriously, they were all amazing and fabulous and I loved meeting them, getting drinks and eating foods, and generally having a good time. Thanks all of you for making me feel so cool and welcome and one of the group!

• Watching Stuff. Stuff like Wilum’s reading (fabulous!), stuff like the Editors’ Panel where I got to see Ross, Silvia, E. Catherine, Jeff, and a few other people talk awesomely about publishing. Oh, and movies of course. So many movies! I got to watch The Whisperer In Darkness, which was goddamn fantastic. Wow wow wow. Everyone should see this, it was well-produced, beautifully scripted, the special effects were great, the music was amazing, wow. I was genuinely creeped out at times, and while Lovecraft is great at cosmic horror, he doesn’t really give me, you know, the heebie-jeebies so that’s an accomplishment. I also saw a lot of the shorts, which were on the whole awesome. I liked Coda, a short film the aforementioned Andrew worked on, Re-Animate Her, Black Pharoah, GAMMA, Bedtime for Timmy, The Shadow out of Time, and the fabulous (if baffling) clip from The Evil Clergyman, part of an anthology that is being released later this year. I had mixed feelings about Monsters, I guess, because of a lot of reasons, but it had fabulous special effects so I came away feeling neutral about it. Really the only total dud for me was It’s In the Blood, which I watched because it had Lance Henriksen in it, but oh, dear. Full disclosure: I’m never going to be won over by the premise of “father and son go into the woods to figure out their feelings and talk about dude stuff” so maybe the film just wasn’t for me, but the graphic rape of the only female character, and menacing non-Caucasian villain didn’t help me come away with many positive feelings. Extra points taken off for Lance pretending to be a girl having an orgasm for maybe five exceedingly uncomfortable minutes, and the line “if you want to become a man you have to kill the boy inside you.” Or something. Close enough. But you know, it won an award, so maybe it just wasn’t for me. Fair enough. Anyways, my meh over that film aside, the movies were by and large excellent. John got to see Die Farbe, which he said was awesome, so yay!

• Foods. Voodoo Doughnuts. Sizzle Pie. Hungry Tiger Too. Sweet Pea. Blossoming Lotus. Some coffee shop with fabulous sandwiches that I can’t for the life of me remember the name of. Some pub with great beer and, unexpectedly, a vegan pot pie. More Voodoo Doughnuts. Fuck yes.

• Miscellany. The VIP reception. Getting to hang out with everyone at The Moon and Sixpence and Tony Starlight’s and the Lovecraft Bar during afterparty stuff. Hanging out with Bizarro peoples. Getting a Miskatonic University t-shirt. Signing stock at Powell’s. And doing it all with my husband. John had never come to a con with me before, and getting to introduce him to people was amazing.

I want to come back to the Lovecraft Film Festival every year I can. It was so, so fun, and I feel so lucky and honored that I was invited to come speak and read and just simply hang out with such fabulous people. Thank you everyone who was involved in making it such an amazing experience. I miss you so much already—but hope to see you next year!

The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon are happening this weekend in Portland, Oregon, and I shall be there, doing things!

Saturday at 3 PM I’ll be paneling on “Women and Gender Roles in Dark Fiction” along with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Scott Connors, and Robert Price

Saturday at 8 PM I’ll be paneling on “Writing New Horrors” with Cody Goodfellow, Edward Morris, Jay Lake, and Andrew S. Fuller

Sunday at 3 PM I’ll be doing a reading alongside Andrew S. Fuller. I’ll likely read something from A Pretty Mouth, the title novella for my collection forthcoming this fall from LFP.

The rest of the time I plan on being at various screenings, bars, and restaurants, along with my husband John. I’m excited about seeing The Whisperer in Darkness on the big screen, as well as a bunch of other crazy stuff such as new footage from a lost Jeffrey Combs film called of all things The Evil Clergyman.

So anyways, if you’re there, say hi! My hair is brown again, though, so don’t look for some blond lady.

AND IT IS A THING THAT I AM IN! Behold:

So yes! Some brand new Ivybridge madness you never asked for! My story, “The Hour of the Tortoise,” which will be one of the wretched tales of weirdness and uncomfortable sibling relationships in A PRETTY MOUTH (out later this year through LFP!), will be appearing in THE BOOK OF CTHULHU II. Ross Lockhart’s at the editorial helm again so expect the same high-quality, mind-shattering madness of the original THE BOOK OF CTHULHU, which many many people seemed to enjoy.

Oh, and if you never got around to reading THE BOOK OF CTHULHU, Night Shade is totally having a 50% off sale right now. Just sayin’.

I posted on Facebook last week that if any of you out there have not yet watched Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract—one of my favorite movies of all time—the whole bally thing is up on YouTube.

It’s a weird movie, unapologetically so, as well as being slow and, I dunno. Tawdry? Maybe that’s the right word. It’s definitely really sexy, or at least full of sex (depending on your perspective/inclinations), so don’t watch it with your parents/kids/nieces and nephews/maiden uncles, unless you have a very different relationship with them than I do with my own. So, yeah. The film as a whole, sex included, will not be everyone’s cuppa of course, but I aspire to write a period piece as awesome as that. It’s my gold standard.

Anyways, the score is super-good, too. Like, I love that movie to pieces, and I consider the score to be one of the best parts. It’s by Michael Nyman, who is a genius of course (he wrote the score to The Piano, The Libertine, and Gattaca; he did a lot on the Ravenous soundtrack, and also wrote an opera based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, because why not?). It’s my favorite thing of his he’s done, which is saying something.

Nyman’s score for the film is up on Spotify and YouTube, and though it’s not as complete as I’d like, it’s still amazing and I listen to it all the time. In isolation it makes for wonderful listening; in situ, the score is another character in the film. So, anyways, being the nerd that I am, when I was looking up supplementary information on the movie, I discovered that apparently all the compositions in Nyman’s score are based on “grounds” (a “ground,” to my understanding, is like a “riff” in popular music, but I’m really not musical at all so that might be wrong in some ways) by Henry Purcell and William Croft, period-appropriate composers. Best of all, Wikipedia was kind enough to list the specific songs Nyman is referencing, which meant that I could hop back on Spotify and locate them.

Listening to the tracks side-by-side made for a fascinating listening experience. The original compositions are all beautiful (The Academy of Ancient Music’s rendition of Purcell’s “She Loves and She Confesses Too” with Barbara Bonny’s vocals, in particular, is completely magnificent if you can locate that version, and spellbinding after listening to “The Disposition of the Linen,” Nyman’s interpretation). You can really hear why Nyman selected these pieces in particular, they give The Draughtsman’s Contract the frothy, dark, decadent, dissipated, luscious, and thoroughly-Restoration “feel” it has throughout.

yes, please. actually, come to think of it, I'll take two...

But more than the pleasure of being able to directly experience for myself a source of inspiration for one of my favorite artists of all time (not just “musical artists,” either: artists as a whole), listening to the pieces side-by-side was a weirdly enlightening experience. As a writer whose most popular, well-reviewed story to date is a “riff” on Lovecraftian themes, I understand encountering a piece of art and feeling the need to respond to it in an honest, creative way. I think the enduring popularity of the retold fairy tale speaks to this: Those with a creative streak often desire to play in the same sandbox as other creative types they admire, or take issue with, or whatever. Art can be found anywhere, and inspiration, too, so this makes sense.

But as someone whose musical abilities were never particularly amazing (much to my mother’s dismay—she and my grandmother are fundamentally musical people, whereas I was a mediocre singer and flautist … on a good day) it never really occurred to me that musicians might feel the same need as writers and fine artists to respond to those artists they found inspirational. Other than when listening to samples of this-and-that in rap/hip-hop/techno, and in a jazz class wherein we discussed “riffing” or whatever it’s called, I never really thought much about the way musicians comment on and are inspired by one another. I mean, I knew that musicians took subjects and responded to them musically (Into the Woods, the William Tell Overture, Nyman’s opera based on case studies of neurological abnormalities, etc.) but the notion of hearing something and then feeling an artistic need to reply to it in kind—that absolutely blows my mind.

Perhaps this is nothing new to anyone reading this, but if the idea of musicians pulling a Wide Sargasso Sea seems interesting, unusual, or curious to you, I encourage you to listen to the soundtrack for The Draughtsman’s Contract and then seek out the source compositions and listen to them. At the very least you’ll spend some enjoyable hours listening to gorgeous music…

… is over. I’ve been busy and that means no time for blogging—at least here. I did a guest blog for Damien Walters Grintalis, author of dark/horror fiction, vegan, and super-cool person all around. She was kind enough to offer me a spot and I’m kind of glad I left it a little late, because unintentionally I watched 3 super-cool lady-focused horror films this February (Alien, Aliens (rewatch), and the remake of The Thing), so I blogged about my thoughts on all three, and at least tried to tie it all together.

So please, check it out!

Due to certain circumstances in my life, I’ve resigned from Lightspeed. There were many, many things that prompted my decision, but the most important factor in my choice was that I realized I simply can’t give the magazine the time it deserves any longer. It’s been great fun, and I learned a lot—but as they say, “all good things” and all that. It was a hard decision, but I’m sure it was the right choice for me and for the magazine.

I’m now working for Prime Books as Sean Wallace’s assistant. I’m looking forward to new challenges and new kinds of work! I’ve already started easing into the job but will be expanding my hours next month. It seems like very enjoyable work already, and I couldn’t be happier.

So, farewell, Lightspeed Magazine. And, of course, farewell to Fantasy, but I’ve already had to say goodbye to that publication, as it’s been absorbed into Lightspeed. We’ve had a great run together–since 2009!–but so it goes.

Onward!

Nick Mamatas (who wrote Sensation, one of my favorite books I read this year), is really smart. He blogs and writes a lot about writing (I haven’t read Starve Better yet, but it’s on the list as they say), and a few days ago, responding in part to one of the usual kerfuffles over genre vs. literary writing, he said something that (seriously) moved me:

Anyway—here’s a secret. This is what creative writers should be interested in doing. Writing their own best material. Not the most popular thing, or the most acclaimed, or that which will be part of some conversation or leave a mark on this or that genre (including bourgeois realism), but that stuff that is unique to yourself and the complex of life experiences and interests and prior readings and environmental factors of which your writing is an emergent property. Writing is orthogonal to publishing and marketing. It’s also orthogonal to true mass culture. Mass culture only deals with aspects of writing—those aspects that can be reproduced according to the needs of either artisan creation or industrial manufacture. That, being the mass, is what an individual cannot control.

Happy Monday! Let’s all go be productive.

ETA: worst blog post title ever? Mayyyybe!

I’ve got a story in this:

So pretty, no? It’s the companion to Historical Lovecraft, natch. It’s also 20% off right now, until December 4th, for the pre-sale, so if you’re looking for a gift for that someone special, now’s the time to jump on this beast. It’s got stories by me, Nick Mamatas, Jesse Bullington, E. Catherine Tobler, Orrin Grey … you know, the usual suspects. Here’s the ToC and the Introduction, if you need more convincing.

Mine’s called “Go, Go, Go, Said The Byakhee” and it’s nowhere near as long as the Ivybridge Twins in Historical Lovecraft, so don’t worry! Also there’s no byakhee. Ha! It’s my, um, homage I guess to Sonya Dorman’s “Go, Go, Go, Said The Bird” which I read many years ago as a sophomore in college.

Ah, and look! It’s Cyber-Monday so you can support a small online business by pre-ordering.

I am extremely pleased to announce next year will see the publication of my debut book, A PRETTY MOUTH.

Cameron C. Pierce, editor of LFP (a division of Eraserhead) and author of several novels, including Lost in Cat Brain Land, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, and Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom, is as awesome as tater tots. He and I had worked together briefly when he guest edited The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction #5, in which he reprinted my article about zombie klezmer band The Widow’s Bane. I thought he was incredibly talented, friendly, and fun to work with.

A few months back, he was also kind enough to read my humble account of the wretched Calipash family that was recently reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu, “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins.” He contacted me and asked if I had ever considered writing more stories about the Twins, as he felt his imprint would be an excellent venue for such a project.

Indeed, I had considered writing more—much more. But what I had to confess straightaway to Cameron was that “The Infernal History” was, regrettably, not entirely fiction. As I told him, the truth of the matter is that due to a series of strange circumstances, I alone possess the records chronicling the Calipash family’s dark and disturbing lineage. With “The Infernal History” I had tried to write a more elegant account of their crimes than the dry history bequeathed to me, as I thought the story might hold some small interest for the general public.

As I had done my Master’s degree on 18th century British literature and culture, I thought the events of “The Infernal History” would be the best place to begin documenting the unfortunate times when the loathsome family’s ancient curse induced the birth of sets of demoniacal twins, much to the displeasure of all who came into contact with them. Given the record’s reception, I believe I was correct in this assumption—and furthermore, I am deeply pleased (and indebted to Cameron) to now be able to bring more of this family’s unusual history to light.

A PRETTY MOUTH will feature an exclusive account of the incident where the 2nd Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, encountered the Ivybridge family whilst he was still in school at Wadham College, Oxford, as well as four other vignettes, including the original “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins.” The narratives I have agreed to recount are as follows:

“A Pretty Mouth”
“The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins”
“Hour of the Tortoise”
“The Marine Vivarium of Gabriel Prideaux”
“Damnatio Memoriae”

A PRETTY MOUTH will be available in the Fall of 2012.