Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,180 entries, all of them here in full.
February 21, 2017 · 460 words
Lovecraft’s Nightmares
H.P. Lovecraft was notoriously afraid of fish. (As well as Jews, Italians, Irish, Negroes, and immigrants generally.) But Lovecraft was afraid of ordinary fish. Cod, for example, or maybe prawns. What he didn’t know was that the sea was full of stuff that would have caused him to shriek, gibber, and drop away in a dead
Read entry →February 17, 2017 · 142 words
Totally Not a Game
An Indonesian woman arrested for suspected involvement in the killing of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s half-brother in Malaysia was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank, Indonesia’s national police chief has said, citing information received from Malaysian authorities. Tito Karnavian told r
Read entry →February 15, 2017 · 617 words
My Boskone Schedule
I’ll be in Boston this weekend for Boskone 54, one of my favorite conventions. It’s large, it’s literate, it has a very large percentage of professional attendees, and even after all these years it’s still about the books, which is clear the second you walk into the large dealer room, with table after table of (often [
Read entry →February 14, 2017 · 46 words
Valentine Special
I’ve written a long Valentine’s Day love letter to Croyd Crenson, Roger Zelazny’s character in the Wild Cards series, thus kicking off a new series, “My Favorite Wild Cards Character (that I didn’t create).” And while you’re visiting, check out the other content at wildcardsworld.com.
Read entry →February 11, 2017 · 418 words
An Imaginary Conversation in Which I Triumph Totally
As opposed to “an actual conversation,” here’s one I wish I could have. With any number of writers. ME: I enjoyed your new novel, but there was one part that puzzled me. HIM: What was that? ME: The part about the squidlike alien beings who were fans of Sonic Youth. I mean, the book’s set […]
Read entry →February 11, 2017 · 116 words
Fly, My Little Ebooks! Fly!
May I just stand in croggle-eyed amazement and point out that the 99-cent sale on The Rift is the best ever? The sale was supposed to last one week, but it was extended into the second, and now the third, because the book just kept selling! Shows you what might have happened twenty years ago, if the […]
Read entry →February 7, 2017 · 659 words
Unto the Breach
So I’m pleased to announce that I have signed the contract for three more Praxis books. Now I announced the offer in September of 2015, but it took until now to negotiate the contract. What with publishers becoming more monolithic— only five left standing, after all— and feeling threatened by Amazon and new
Read entry →February 5, 2017 · 261 words
Five Beats per Second
An excerpt from the surreal Helzapoppin‘, starring the comedy duo Olsen and Johnson. (Not to mention Slim & Slam, Shemp Howard, and Elisha Cook, Jr., as “the writer.”) A film which, with its dreamlike action and constant breaking of the fourth wall, would nowadays would be considered metafictional, except the word didn
Read entry →February 2, 2017 · 96 words
An Actual Conversation
HIM: I don’t know, it’s so hard. I used to have all these friends, and we talked all the time, but now I can’t keep track of them all. ME: I think I may have a solution. HIM: ?? ME: You know that device in your pocket? The one you use for texting and browsing […]
Read entry →January 31, 2017 · 289 words
Award Season
This is the time of year in which hopeful authors post a list of their publications in the fond belief that their readers will nominate them for awards. It’s never worked for me, but then there’s always a first time. My list this time is short and simple: the only publication I had in 2016 was […]
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