Omnivoracious

Friday Night Videos: Bluesman with a Hell Hound on His Trail

Welcome once again to Friday Night Videos, where we usually match up book-related videos against each other in mortal combat--to satisfy the blood-sport instincts of rabid bibliophiles.

This Friday, though, something a little different. With the forthcoming release of the Bluesman graphic novel by Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo, the book's publisher has created a book trailer that gives readers a great idea of what to expect from this highly lauded project. But, since the trailer is silent, I've added a second video below it as a soundtrack. Just start both of 'em going at the same time and you've got yourself a nice little one-two punch. A kind of YouTube mash-up.

Don't say we never supersaturate your senses here at Friday Night Videos!

Programming note: FNV will be taking a break next Friday and returning on May 30.

Graphic Novel Friday: 'Toons for the Kids

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Last week, a reader asked for more information on manga and anime. We're going to restrict ourselves to books in this column, but in terms of manga, anyone who wants to learn more might consider referring to the interview with and guest column by Robin Brenner at Bookslut (she also has a great website).

Little Lit TOON Books for Younger Readers

The classy Little Lit gang has come up with something new, TOON Books, which they describe as "the first high-quality comics designed for children ages four and up. Each book in the collection is just right for reading to the youngest but, perhaps most remarkable, this is the first collection ever designed to offer newly-emerging readers comics they can read themselves. Each TOON Book has been vetted by educators to ensure that the language and the narratives will nurture young minds."

The first volumes in this hardcover series are Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnes Rosenstiehl, Benny and Penny in "Just Pretend" by Geoffrey Hayes, and Otto's Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch. Silly Lilly is the least kinetic of the three, using a deliberately flat style and even tone to provide a primer on the four seasons. Benny and Penny, on the other hand, features two bickering mice who fight over the reality of a pirate ship. Otto's Orange Day uses exaggeration and good-natured banter to establish its mood. All three are note-perfect for what they're doing.

               

Two for Kids and Adults

Julian Rodriguez: Episode One, Trash Crisis on Earth by Alexander Stadler and Dungeon Monstres: Vol. 1: The Crying Giant by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, John-John Mazan, and Jean-Christophe Menu fall into two categories of illustrated narratives suitable for both adults and children. Stadler's lively, clever tale of an extraterrestrial genius trapped in the body of an eight-year-old boy is the kind of story that adults will enjoy reading to their kids. Reminding me in tone of Nickelodeon's Invader Zim, although not as dark, Julian Rodriguez uses a simple line-drawing style combined with spot color throughout to create his witty and dynamic narrative.

The latest Sfar/Trondheim Dungeon, on the other hand, is the kind of story that adults will pick up whether they have kids or not, but the kids will enjoy the heck out of it as well. This volume contains two stories by guest artists, which may diminish the appeal, especially since the beloved characters of previous volumes only have cameos. Still, despite the lesser nature of these adventures, it's worth your time and money, especially if you've already become hooked on the series.

Fantastical Craziness

The Super Scary Monster Show (featuring Little Gloomy) by Landry Walker and Eric Jones delivers on its promise, with a bevy of wonderful creepy-funny monsters, and adventure galore. It includes takes on the classic Universal Monsters and, in addition to the human girl who lives amongst these creatures, Carl Cthulhu, who just happens to love bunnies. I have to say that the drawings of Carl, with a kind of squidular head, are particularly wonderful. It's snappy, savvy fun.

The ubiquitous Kazu Kibuishi has launched a new anthology series as a companion to Flight. This one, Flight Explorer, is aimed at children, and features the same marvelous fantastical approach to comics, albeit for a younger audience. You'll find a lot of favorites here, including work by Kean Soo, who created Jellaby. Cute, clever, and timely, Flight Explorer is genuinely kid-friendly, like the TOON books, and provides yet another outlet for imaginative, sometimes surreal comic creators.

Programming note: Graphic Novel Friday will be taking a break next week and returning on May 30.

Asimov's SF Magazine Meet Kindle, Kindle Meet Asimov's SF Magazine

Asimov's SF Magazine recently joined the growing number of mags available through Kindle, and editor Sheila Williams is pretty happy about it. "We've been number one for the past 18 hours or so--we've been duking it out with Newsweek for the past three or four days!" Using Kindle is in keeping with Williams' latest forward-thinking push for the one of science fiction's most venerable publications. Asimov's also has a website with fiction and nonfiction. The online forum in particular is very lively.

Check out the wide range of magazines you can put on your Kindle, including other SF pubs, like Analog.

Iron Man: He Lives! He Walks! He Conquers!

Fans of both the Iron Man comics and those who love the crazy-successful Iron Man movie but haven't encountered the superhero before should consider picking up the compact but comprehensive Iron Man: Beneath the Armor by Andy Mangels.

If you've been living beyond the reach of modern technology for the last six months and missed out on the fun, Iron Man is, as the jacket copy goes, "the ultimate smart weapon: man and machine combined for maximum impact. He’s Iron Man, AKA millionaire industrialist and visionary genius turned superhero Tony Stark."

This new book detailing the history of Iron Man includes a brief introduction to the movie and copious panels/covers from the comic book, as well as extensive commentary. It also has an overview of the armor's design evolution throughout the years--something to warm the cockles of our little geek hearts--and provides a complete background of Tony Stark and such classic sidekicks as Virginia “Pepper” Potts and James Rhodes/War Machine. Villains like Mandarin and Crimson Dynamo also get their due respect.

Del Rey has put together a sharp, crisp package that doesn't seem like just an attempt to cash in on the movie version. Check it out!

Steampunk and Jake von Slatt: Retro Tech for the Now Generation

   
The cover of Steampunk and one of Jake von Slatt's steampunk creations...

Steampunk fiction features a heady blend of influences like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and inventor-hero fiction from the American pulps of the 1800s. It typically includes some mix or mash-up of airships, mad (or, at least, heavily-invested) scientists, eccentric inventors, Victorian-era adventure, and clockwork technology of the sort that we've largely abandoned. Its godfather may well be Michael Moorcock, with his novel The Warlord of the Air, and it gained huge popularity in its first wave because of novels like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine in the 1980s and early 1990s. Other classics include Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy, K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, and Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.

Now, it's returned in full force through what's being called the "steampunk subculture"--a subculture my wife Ann and I have encountered and enjoyed while editing our most recent anthology, Steampunk. The book collects iconic short stories of the subgenre by the likes of Joe Lansdale, Michael Chabon, James Blaylock, Neal Stephenson, Mary Gentle, Rachel E. Pollock, and many more. Quite purely by accident, Steampunk's release has coincided with major features on steampunk in the national press, like a recent article in the New York Times. Not only has our anthology already gone back to reprint, but we've been inundated with requests for interviews (including from the Weather Channel website!), with the anthology featured recently on the LA Times blog and on Australian national radio. (For an amusing moment or two, listen to the radio interview and wait for my major brain freeze when asked about steampunk fashion, whereupon I babble about "mechanical corsets," which prompts the interviewer to ask, "What are you wearing?")

   

But the great thing about having edited this anthology is the cross-pollination. Some in the steampunk subculture--brought there by other media like comics or movies, or simply through their friends and social groups--are encountering these classic stories for the first time. Meanwhile, we're getting a crash-course in the steampunk aesthetic, which especially appeals to our tastes in art. Baroque laptops and other retro-fitted gadgetry show that functional does not have to be seamless and slick to be pleasing to the eye. Websites like Brass Goggles, Voyages Extraordinaires, The Steampunk Librarian, and Dark Roasted Blend, among others, frequently hold forth on steampunk-related subjects. There's even a Steampunk Magazine, and bands that create steampunk music, like Abney Park.

One of the best-known "steampunks" is Jake von Slatt, the driving force behind the Steampunk Workshop. He's been featured on Boing Boing and in the previously mentioned NYT article, among many others. I interviewed him recently to satisfy my own curiousity about steampunk and the surrounding subculture...

Life Sucks--or Does It?

Okay, so it's still Monday, which isn't good, but it's also another day in First Second's self-declared "Vampire Month," in honor of Little Vampire and, drum roll please, Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece. Life Suck reads as if Joss Whedon and Dazed and Confused movie director Richard Linklater collaborated on a graphic novel about a 24-hour convenience store run by vampires. Just imagine if you're the night manager for that convenience store and you're "facing an eternity of restocking beef jerky and blood brew for Radu, your crappy boss and Vampire Master." Throw in romantic complications and you've got the undead recipe for something pretty unique as far as vampire stories go. Stylish and modern, Life Sucks made my Monday worthwhile.

For another unique vampire story, you could do worse than check out Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch. This heady blend of adventure, intrigue, surreal imagery, and savage supernatural conflict set in modern-day Moscow totally re-energized the vampire subgenre. (The movie's not bad, either.)

(Also remember--the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader. And in reply to your question, no, I'm not on First Second's payroll--I just think they're one of the coolest graphic novel publishers out there.)

Amazon Exclusive: A Review of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s El Juego del Ángel (Angel's Game)

      
   (The cover of the Spanish edition and the author.)

This week marks the official release of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's El Juego del Ángel in the United States. It's a follow-up to his international bestseller The Shadow of the Wind. As Amazon reported back in March, the novel had the highest initial printing for any novel published in Spain.

The catch? For now, it's only available in the author's native tongue, Spanish. With an English-language version just barely on the horizon, we turned to Larry Nolen to write a review based on his reading of an advance copy of the Spanish edition. Nolen divides his time between being an English and History teacher, engaging in amateur translations of Latin American authors, and operating a blog devoted to literature--a blog that was one of the first to provide any information about El Juego del Ángel in either language in the months leading up to its publication. Nolen, with both the review and the translation of two paragraphs from the novel, gives us limited creatures who don't read Spanish a tantalizing glimpse of the rich treasures to come. Visit Nolen's blog for English translations of two recent interviews with the author.

Vampires? In May? Why, First Second, You Are a Cheeky Publisher, Aren't You?

One of my favorite graphic novel publishers, First Second, has declared May "Vampire Month" in one of those audacious out-of-season moves that means October/Halloween is now officially "Island Vacation Month". So far, the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader.

In heavily related news, First Second is promoting Little Vampires by Joann Sfar this month. The book collects a previously published story about a vampire going to school with two new adventures. The artwork is stunning, with crisp, deep colors and genius-level compositions. These are sly, funny, often slapstick narratives that adults and children alike will find delightful--all in one neat, new trade paper edition put together with First Second's usual attention to detail.

In spirit if not style, Little Vampires reminds me of one of my favorite kid's books: Bunnicula, the tale of a carrot-draining vampiric rabbit. Both are mischievous and hilarious, for one thing. Narrated by the family dog, Harold, and enriched by the clever cat Chester, Bunnicula recounts Harold and Chester's investigations into the new rabbit in the house. When tomatoes wind up being sucked dry, suspicions arise that the the bunny might not be as innocent as it seems. Although it seems unlikely anyone hasn't heard of Bunnicula by now, definitely check it out. It's a classic.

As is Little Vampires, frankly. Sfar is just a brilliant artist and storyteller.

Friday Night Videos: Bright Shiny Morning versus Vodka Chelsea

Welcome once again to Friday Night Videos, where we aim to give you the kind of match-ups you deserve for hanging out here on the weekend. Tonight, in honor of his guest posting right here at Omnivoracious, it's James Frey talking about his new book Bright Shiny Morning (May 13) versus Chelsea Handler talking about Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which just hit the NYT bestseller list. Frey you already know about from his posts. Handler, who has a show on E! every weeknight at 11:30, is a little newer to the spotlight, but very talented. She's got incredible comic timing and has a great blend of irreverent, self-deprecating humor and biting satire. The Q&A from a bookstore gig displays her sharp wit and her quick-thinking approach to comedy. (More videos here.)

Graphic Novel Friday Spotlight: Shadows, Empire, Heavenshields, Bibles, and More

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa (First Second) - A rich allegory in which a man and his son embark on a journey to save their family, while haunted by three shadows. Their trip takes them to many strange places, and although the underlying symbolism is at times obscure, the emotional pay-off is definitely worth the experience.

The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation by Siku (Doubleday) - To me, there's something crazy about trying to render the Bible in graphic form to begin with, given that the rich texture of the language provides much of its power. A manga Bible seems perhaps even crazier, given the stylizations of the form. The results, though, seem much weirder than even that, which I mean as a compliment. Either the Bible was always odd or Siku has chosen to dramatize the stranger bits. I'm not sure the standard manga approach really adds anything new to the experience, but it's a worthy experiment that manga fans in general should consider checking out.

Obsidian Murder Mysteries Crash the Party

Niche mysteries are very popular these days, and the New American Library Obsidian series has just released a bevy of them out into the wild this month. From haunted bookshop mysteries like The Ghost and the Femme Fatale by Alice Kimberly (aka Cleo Coyle) to garden mysteries complete with gardening tips like Perfect Poison by Joyce and Jim Lavene (authors of Poisoned Petals), no matter what your interests in life, you can find a novel you'll enjoy.

Dance enthusiasts may want to pick up Natalie M. Roberts' Pointe and Shoot, a Jenny Patridge dance mystery, while clay crafters and crochet hobbyists may flock to The Cracked Pot by Melissa Glazer (okay, now, c'mon, Obsidian--surely that's a pseudonym?!) and Hooked on Murder by Betty Hechtman respectively. Both books include interesting tips and projects in addition to the fiction.

Finally, if you like mysteries about mysteries, Selma Eichler's Murder Can Crash Your Party, featuring Desiree Shapiro, might be just your thing. When Shapiro is invited as a speaker at a mystery writers' convention, she receives a truly bizarre proposition from a special fan: read my unpublished novel and if you can solve the mystery between the covers, I'll give you $25,000. What follows is more sinister than Shapiro could possibly expect.

All of this is light, harmless fare for readers looking for some entertainment, especially on vacation--on the plane, at the beach, while getting a pedicure. Mystery purists and lovers of brutal noir fiction need not apply. But never fear--a Ken Bruen or Tom Piccirilli novel can't be far around the corner. In the meantime, have a little fun--read a niche mystery in your particular area of interest. You might be surprised at what you find.

James Owen's Search for the Red Dragon

Some multi-talented creators can write books and produce cover art for them. That's the case with James Owen and his Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographic series for young adults. The second book, The Search for the Red Dragon, was released this year. It's a gorgeous book in addition to a thrilling adventure, in no small part due to Owen's marvelous illustrations and cover art. The sketches above showing the creation of that cover art come from a page on his website where he details the whole process. I've posted the finished cover below so you can see the full realization of his vision.

The Search for the Red Dragon has been getting great reviews, and I recommend you pick it up. Here's a little bit more about the book:

It has been nine years since John, Jack, and Charles had their great adventure in the Archipelago of Dreams and became the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica. Now they have been brought together again to solve a mystery: Someone is kidnapping the children of the Archipelago. And their only clue is a mysterious message delivered by a strange girl with artificial wings: "The Crusade has begun." Worse, they discover that all of the legendary Dragonships have disappeared as well. The only chance they have to save the world from a centuries-old plot is to seek out the last of the Dragonships -- the Red Dragon -- in a spectacular journey that takes them from Sir James Barrie's Kensington Gardens to the Underneath of the Greek Titans of myth.

 

Stephenie Meyer's The Host Invades Your Mind Today

In an interesting case of a YA author turning to the adult market, Stephenie Meyer's The Host appears from Little, Brown today in hardcover--this after selling over three million copies of her Twilight saga in the U.S.

As the press release tells us The Host "may possibly be the first love triangle involving only two bodies." Earth has been invaded by aliens who take over the minds of their human hosts, so now poor Melanie has to walk around with two minds. The "Wanderer" is surprised to find Melanie so tenacious--it had expected to subsume her immediately. So Melanie infuses the Wanderer with memories of the man she loves, leading them to both (naturally) go off on a quest to find this man. Thus, a love triangle involving only two bodies.

Sounds pretty claustrophobic to me! Check out the official book site and the author's site, too, both of which have some interesting extras.

New Anthologies: The Starry Rift and The Del Rey Book of SF and Fantasy

                   

The prolific anthologists Ellen Datlow and Jonathan Strahan have been up to their usual creative antics again, bringing to fruition yet more unique fiction projects for hungry genre readers.

Datlow's The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy is an unthemed collection of stories by the likes of Margo Lanagan, Elizabeth Bear, Maureen McHugh, Nathan Ballingrud, Jeffrey Ford, and eleven others. Locus wrote about the anthology, "....Datlow's ambitious volume could easily be [the now defunct online fiction site] Scifiction resurrected in trade paperback. Much the same authors, much the same sensibility--edgy contemporary or near-future stories, full of good prose and suspense, with a touch of horror often evident. ...a feast of good short fiction..." Although not as focused as Datlow's previous anthology, Inferno, genre enthusiasts should enjoy this interesting selection of tales. Datlow also has a blog where she writes about a variety of topics, including her anthologies.

Strahan enters the YA world with his The Starry Rift, which collects new science fiction stories for teens by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and Scott Westerfeld, among others. Strahan says about the anthology, "started with the idea that when people talked about science fiction for young adult readers they kept talking about the classic juveniles of the 1950s. Those books, novels like Robert Heinlein’s A Door into Summer, are wonderful, but they were written by people born before the First World War and were published not that long after the Second. However great those books might be, I wondered if they could possibly be meaningful to someone who’d been born in 1995. It seemed to me that it would be worth asking today’s best SF writers to write new stories that hopefully would resonate with readers today. And writers responded." For more information, check out the website created for the book.

Friday Night Videos: Plummer as Nabokov Lecturing on Kafka versus Headless Sexy Man

Welcome back to Friday Night Videos, where we aim to give you the kind of match-ups you deserve for hanging out here on the weekend. Our first video, in honor of Dmitri Nabokov's decision to release The Original of Laura, is a curious cultural remnant of a time when novelists had more importance than they do today. It's a television re-creation of a Nabokov lecture on Kafka featuring Christopher Plummer as Nabokov. (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.) Nabokov's opponent tonight is Diana Holquist's promo video for Sexiest Man Alive from Warner Books. This video features excellent use of a cat. Enjoy!

Graphic Novel Friday Spotlight: Superspy by Matt Kindt

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Superspy by Matt Kindt seems the perfect way to launch this new feature. It's innovative, adult, exciting, horrifying, brilliant, and one of my favorites from last year. Alas, it also seemed to go unnoticed by many outside of comics, until the Eisner nominations last month. Superspy's interlocking and stand-alone spy stories, told in a variety of art styles, gives readers an unromanticized version of spy life--the danger, the boredom, the subterfuge, the violence. Anyone who likes the structure of noir fiction or complex narratives in the novel form will find much to love about Superspy. Shadows, odd angles, cryptic messages, sudden brutality all play a role in the sobering success of the book.

Also check out Kindt's blog for all things comics-related, as well as his how-to video, below.

1984 in 2008: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother

This week marks the publication of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which as we reported here last month is a young adult novel that functions in part as a correction and update of such dystopic novels as 1984 and Brave New World. Except here the hero is Marcus, a smart seventeen year old caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Picked up by homeland security, interrogated brutally, and then released, Marcus finds himself in a world where fear rules and every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. Marcus has a choice to make--and he decides to fight back. Doctorow has wedded his fascination with cutting-edge technology and the choices we make about technology to a riveting suspense plot in this potentially controversial novel.

Reviews and previews are all over the internet, of course. Ed Park in the LA Times writes that Doctorow is "terrific at finding the human aura shimmering around technology." SFF World believes the novel will "only further reinforce Cory Doctorow’s presence as one of the visionaries of free speech advocacy and great storytelling in the twenty-first century." Strange Horizons comments on the distinction Doctorow draws between privacy versus security: "Doctorow offers a distinction between the two which I am still pondering. He suggests that privacy is individual, with no implications of power over anyone else. Secrecy, in emulation of the old formula ('power + prejudice = racism') can then be framed as power + privacy = secrecy. Secrecy is what you do to others; it is withholding information or demanding access to another's privacy, or demanding of others that they keep 'private' something you have done to them."

A Publishers Weekly feature that ran in January suggested that "Time will tell if the book’s political awareness and tech-savvy will resonate with readers (teen or otherwise), but [Patrick] Nielsen-Hayden [Doctorow's editor] hopes that it will inspire them to become more active and involved. 'It’s not a call for anarchy in the streets,' he says, 'but it is a call for a more reasonable social order.'" Nielsen-Hayden shares more thoughts about Little Brother on the Making Light blog.

Doctorow also talks generally about SF and young readers at the website for a new YA anthology, The Starry Rift, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Tonight he's in Toronto to kick off his book tour. Check out the reviews and check out the novel--you'll be glad you did.

Breaking News: Richard Morgan Wins Arthur C. Clarke Award

As reported here via text message, Richard Morgan has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Thirteen (published as Black Man in England). Thirteen made Amazon's best SF/Fantasy list last year.

Now Morgan has one more reason for readers to pick up the book. Last year in an exclusive Amazon interview, we asked him to tell us what made Thirteen special. His response then? "It is, by all critical accounts, the best thing I’ve written so far. It’s stuffed full of contentious material that, whether you agree with it or not, will give you conversational ammunition at dinner parties for months to come. Shock and Awe your guests with Provocative Genetic Science! It’s my first conscious attempt at a world that is not dystopian--roll up and see a cheery(ish) future society, one you might not actually mind living in for a change. It has a very unpredictable storyline--I know this because I had no idea where my characters were going half the time, and if I couldn’t guess, it’s unlikely the reader will either. If thirteen is a thriller, it certainly isn’t what the gaming community would call 'mission-based'. It isn’t as long as "Against the Day", and is therefore both easier and lighter to hold while reading. You could take it with you on the bus, easy.

Suffering Succotash, Why You Little Bleep!

You could burn your ears several times over reading aloud from Curse + Berate in 69+ Languages, edited by R.V. Branham (and brought to you by the ever-cheeky Soft Skull Press). It's so filthy and rife with controversy, I can't possibly quote from the book itself, except, possibly, from the introduction, in which Branham raises a series of questions, then answered in footnotes so the easily offended won't jump out of their chairs: "What insult has the most time zones, and what is the language of this insult? And what is the most common insult south of the Kush, in south Asia? What was Vladimir Lenin's favorite word?" No, it was not "hushpuppy," "whimsical," or "contented." Instead, it was something that would sear your grandma's eyebrows right off.

I should probably leave it there, though, and let the more adventurous @#&*%! Amazon readers discover more on their own.

Tom Piccirilli: Award-winning Master of Suspense Pens an Instant Classic

Tom Piccirilli is one of the hardest working writers out there, selling his first book while in college and never looking back. Over the last twenty years, he's created keen psychological portraits of people in extreme situations, mysteries as noir as they come, and suspense-thrillers that'll keep you, as they say, on the edge of your seat.

Some of the most recent of his books include The Midnight Road, The Fever Kill, and, in another week, the amazing The Cold Spot, of which suspense superstar Ken Bruen says, ""[the book] is truly dazzling. Piccirilli has taken the mystery to a whole other level."  Publishers Weekly calls The Cold Spot, "a violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate." As ever, Piccirilli approaches his work with honesty, humanity, and a keen sense of the traditions he's working in and with--highly recommended for anyone who loves mystery and suspense. This may just be the book that catapults him to the top of the bestseller lists. I read a lot of suspense/mystery novels and The Cold Spot has an intensity, economy, and tough lyricism that just plain blew me away. As far as I'm concerned, it's a stone-cold instant classic of hardboiled/noir fiction. (Click here for my full review.)

I caught up with Piccirilli recently and interviewed him about his perspective on fiction generally and his own work...

Amazon.com: From your perspective, how has horror and suspense fiction changed over the last 20 years?
Tom Piccirilli: I don’t know if there’s been much of a change in form or content. New subjects come to popularity of course. At the moment it seems like readers can’t get enough of the Knights Templar or Da Vinci or historical mysteries, whereas fifteen years ago it was courtroom dramas. The topic of the hour is always changing. In the field, there’s still a lot of fine and intriguing material being produced, as well as plenty of garbage. That’s just the way of all things, and always will be. So far as publishing is concerned, I think we all know that “Horror” is a despised term. I’m not even sure that Leisure Books, who was one of the few publishers with a dedicated horror line the last ten years and who actually put the word “Horror” on the spines of their books, does that anymore. The word itself is anathema although the subject matter of ghosts, monsters, serial killers, etc. is still popular. Maybe even more popular now than ever thanks to “paranormal romances” which take vampires and werewolves and inject a little erotica and Hepburn and Tracy dialogue in order to mine a whole new extremely popular niche. As for suspense, I think that nowadays writers, readers and publishers appreciate the good old crime stuff a lot more than they once did. There’s been a resurgence in reprints of pulp, noir and hardboiled material from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and that seems to have had an influence in producing neo-noir stylized writing. 

Pop Culture Report #3: James and Kathryn Morrow's European SF Anthology

Earlier this month, Tor Books released the trade paperback edition of James and Kathryn Morrow's The SFWA European Hall of Fame, a collection of sixteen stories translated from a variety of European countries. Contributors include Jean-Claude Dunyach, Panagiotis Koustas, Joao Barreiros, Andreas Eschbach, and many more. Most of these writers are well-known in their own countries but have had very little work translated into English. Our Pop Culture Report #3 (above) gives you more information on this intriguing, some would say essential, anthology. I conducted the interviews with the editors and Greek contributor Koustas in Nantes, France, last year, at Utopiales, a wonderful speculative fiction festival.

From Publishers Weekly's starred review: Wondrous worlds await U.S. SF fans in this sensitively chosen, impeccably translated anthology of Continental European science fiction stories, ranging from 1987 to 2005. Offering "emotional satisfaction and cerebral excitement," as James Morrow puts it in his introduction, highlights include Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll," a Finnish denunciation of materialistic exploitation of children; Romanian Lucian Merisca's "Some Earthlings' Adventures on Outrerria," an excruciating political satire; Valerio Angelisti's "Sepultura," which offers a neo-Dantean Infernoscape; and W.J. Maryson's "Verstummte Musik," a Dutch near-future Orwellian nightmare. A French twist on human-machine interface lifts Jean-Claude Dunyach's "Separations" into a meditation on the nature of artistic creativity, while Elena Arsenieva's "A Birch Tree, a White Fox" exquisitely illustrates the quintessential Russian soul. These "disciplined speculations" by European writers and their painstaking translators not only excite the mind, they move the heart.

Nebula Award Winners Announced

Breaking News: Michael Chabon wins the Nebula Award for best novel. The Yiddish Policemen's Union was announced the winner last night at the Nebula Award banquet in Austin, Texas. Michael Moorcock was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. For the full list of winners, visit Locus Online.

Friday Night Videos: Hidden Cities versus Toddler Reading a Dinosaur Encyclopedia

Tonight on Friday Night Videos, we bring committed bibliophiles across the world a clear choice--a clash of Titans that pits the brand-new Hidden Cities series by rising star Tim Lebbon and best-seller Christopher Golden (Mind the Gap, book one, out in May) against over five minutes of mind-numbing dinosaur name-reading by an anonymous toddler.

Yes, it's what you asked for in the non-stop phone calls, emails, and missives sent through my window with bricks. Lebbon and Golden beating up on a defenseless child. Enjoy!

(And remember: If you're here on a Friday night, you're not alone. There's at least one other.)

T.A. Pratt's Poison Sleep Might Just Infiltrate Your Dreams

T.A. Pratt's Marla Mason urban fantasies, Blood Engines and now Poison Sleep, relate the adventures of a "smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast" who combats murderous hummingbirds, weird frogs, and all kinds of human enemies in these lively, imaginative supernatural thrillers with elements of humor and whimsy. I talked to Pratt recently via email about this evolving series...

Amazon.com: You have tentacles of fungus in your latest book--and that's the first page I flipped to, oddly enough, given my fascination with both squid and mushrooms.
Pratt: There's even more fungus in the fourth book--a whole sorcerer dedicated to things fungal, who worships the giant honey mushroom colony in eastern Oregon as a god...

Amazon.com: Okay, now you're just pandering! However, if you had to pitch your book to Hollywood in two sentences, what would you say?
Pratt: "Ass-kicking sorceress fights plague of nightmares. She also gets laid." Speaking of Hollywood, a company called Phoenix Pictures optioned the series a few months ago, and, without getting into specifics, it looks like cool stuff might potentially be happening, barring the usual sorts of distractions and derailments. Though, this being Hollywood, it'll be a while before anything definitively materializes--or definitively dissolves in a puff of vapor. I try to cultivate an air of detached optimism...

Book-Beer Pairings (Part II)--T.C. Boyle, Chip Kidd, Margo Lanagan, James Morrow, and More

     
(Large beer Drayman's Porter with Small Beer's Ant King; Dudman's novel and Old Speckled Hen.)

Much has happened since posting Part I of the book-beer pairings feature. First, I tested out Three Philosophers with Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton and found that (1) it is indeed a great Belgian-style beer, with some very subtle yet strong flavors, and (2) it goes very well with Groff's book.

Then, I decided to check in with Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press because...well, how can you do this kind of feature and not talk to a publisher called Small Beer Press? Gavin has a lot of respect for both books and beer--and access to both locally. “We have a fantastic brewery (ok, we have a few) in the Happy Valley in Massachusetts: the Berkshire Brewing Company. Their Traditional Pale Ale is a summer time treat and all winter we survive on their Drayman's Porter. Which is what we were drinking when the UPS guy delivered galleys of our next collection, Ben Rosenbaum's The Ant King.” (You can now download John Kessel’s excellent new collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Maureen F. McHugh's powerful Mothers & Other Monsters from the Small Beer website.)

So, without further rabbiting, the continuation of this landmark feature...

Guinness Versus Everything Else?!

Although most participants in the second half of this feature preferred matching a dark beer with their books, a few hold-outs for lighter imbibification include Thomas Disch, Nick Mamatas, and Chip Kidd—Kidd mostly because, as a purist, he deferred to his novel: “In The Learners, Happy and Himillsy down Rolling Rocks at Modern Apizz in New Haven, so that would appropriate. Otherwise, everyone drinks martinis.”

Mamatas probably wouldn’t typify his pick as a light beer, although it is: “The official beer of Weinbergia, the country in Under My Roof, is Red Stripe.  Short and hip, sweet and a bit more dangerous than you might at first suspect.  Plus, hipsters dig it like they dig uncombed hair and T-shirts from 1985.”

Similarly, Disch, author of the forthcoming The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten (coming July 1 from Tachyon Publications), selected either Rhinegold or Lowenbrau for his forthcoming farcical “memoir”: “In the New York of my youth (I was 17 when I got here in '57, and Miss Rhinegold was then an annual tradition. The contestants had their pictures posted in the subways. There was also a Miss Subways. They have both disappeared in our new, unsexed era, but there is another good reason to serve Rhinegold at the book party. It is the beer Wagner made famous. Not much of a beer in itself, as I recall, which is why it may have become extinct, and not the best opera in the Ring either, but no one has ever dared to bring out a beer called Gotterdammerung....I was actually in Lowenbrau Hofbrauhaus in Munich (in 1966). There were tiers of drinking halls where roisterers bellowed out drinking songs. A kind of Valhalla.”

Bothering the Coffee Drinkers: The Multi-Talented Doug Hoekstra

         

Doug Hoekstra has quietly become an icon of Americana music and the Nashville scene, writing beautifully spare songs that contain genius-level observations about people. As Wired magazine has said about Hoekstra "a lot of people write songs, Hoekstra writes five-minute worlds." So it comes as no surprise that Hoekstra also writes fiction and nonfiction, collected in Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, which won an Independent Publishing Book Award.

The book is just as fascinating as Hoekstra's music. I really can't put it any better than the Midwest Book Review: "Each detail segues compactly into the next and before you know it, the book has hooked you in a distinctly quirky and entertaining way. Like all great music, it sounds easy to do. As all great musicians know, this is a deceptive effect that is only maintained through constant work and practice. [Hoekstra] is like a quirky art collector, putting together odd bits and ends, and then making them into something with an effect so much more than the mere sum of their collective oddities."

Hoekstra has just released a CD, Blooming Roses, which consists of another eleven perfectly understated songs that incorporate elements of country, rock, and even jazz. From the easy-going "Naper Vegas Scrabble Club" to the quirky/driving "Your Sweet Love," Hoekstra has crafted some great new songs. I interviewed Hoekstra recently to talk about both writing and music.

Book-Beer Pairings (Part I): Arianna Huffington, Michael Chabon, Lauren Groff, and More

(Lauren Groff's Monsters paired with Brewery Ommegang's Three Philosophers, along with another great Ommegang beer, and an interloping stout.)

For a long time, I’ve wondered why wine and food should have all the fun. Here at Omnivoracious, we also believe in the complementary pairing of books with...beer. Now, please note that we’re not advocating irresponsible reading, but with the current popularity of micro-breweries and the role of beer in the writing of books over the centuries, it seems somehow irresponsible not to pair the two. We’re frankly a little surprised no one’s done it before.

Thus, I took it upon myself to explore the connection between hops and writing chops, going far afield to ask a diverse group of writers what beer or beers would go best with their latest work. The results were so revelatory and comprehensive that we’re running the first half of this feature today and the second half on Thursday...

Light Beers, Lambics, Arrogant Bastard, and More!

Naturally, everyone approached the question in a slightly different way. Eastern European surrealist Zoran Zivkovic appeared to have already sampled a brew or three, sending in the rhyming verse, “Drink Bud West, drink Bud East,/Drink Bud reading Steps through the Mist.” Elizabeth Hand echoed Zivkovic, even while confessing she hasn’t drunk beer in thirty years: “But the last time I did have one, it was almost certainly a glass of Bud with a shot-glass of Jack Daniels in it. A boilermaker, which is what Cass Neary in [the dark thriller] Generation Loss would drink--24/7, and minus the beer.”

Arianna Huffington, author of the just-released Right Is Wrong, decided on a more political (and surprisingly conservative) approach, writing, “Busch, of course!  Besides the homonymic convergence, distribution of this beer helped make Cindy McCain rich and funded John McCain’s political career.”

Other books that apparently take a lighter approach include Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End, paired with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: “The company describes it as a new take on a classic theme; it's light, but complex.  This is a North Californian company, which fits me and my book.  But what I like best is the slogan--‘the beer that made Chico famous.’ The where?”

What's the Fuss About Patrick Rothfuss?

   

Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, recently released in mass market paperback, is an Amazon staff favorite--and, really, what's not to like? Rothfuss doesn't write down to his audience, takes on epic themes, and manages to be original at the same time. He's also a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of guy, as evidenced by this new interview on SF Site, which fans should definitely check out. For example, asked about working on The Name of the Wind, Rothfuss says, "For more than a decade I worked on the book knowing I was more likely to be hit by a bus than get published...I do remember that fairly early on someone pointed out that I used the word 'alloy' and 'counterpoint' in the same sentence. That person pointed out that some people wouldn't actually know what an alloy was. I made a conscious decision right then that my book was written for people who either knew what that word meant, or were willing to look it up."  That's the kind of attitude that, perversely enough, more often than not produces great novels.

The next book in the trilogy is due out next year.

Friday Night Videos: Shelf Monkey vs the Monsters of Templeton

Welcome to a little thing I like to call Friday night videos. If you're here on a Friday night, you're definitely a bibliophile, so to you Omnivoracious gifts: Corey Redekop talking about Shelf Monkey and a very trippy trailer for Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton.

For the rest of the Redekop interview, check out the author's blog--and go to Cultpop TV, a great resource, for more interviews, including one with Groff!

Checking in on YA Titles: Gwenda Bond's Picks

Shaken & Stirred, run by Gwenda Bond, is one of the most literate and interesting blogs out there. Especially in the last couple of years, it has also been of great use for those interested in Young Adult fiction. Bond is a bit of an expert on the subject--in addition to writing for Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post, Kirkus, and Strange Horizons, she is working on a young adult novel and pursuing an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College. She also writes an advice column for Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet as everyone's Dear Aunt Gwenda. You can read much of her published work online for free (or buy some in print if you'd rather).

I recently interviewed Bond about current and classic YA. Bond is an enthusiastic advocate for the form: "The great thing about YA--and children's literature, in general--is that genre divisions are a lot less set in many ways. All the books are in the same section of the bookstore, with the exception that series books are generally broken out on their own. I believe that the overall level of quality in YA is higher than in adult books--perhaps because less is published--and so I'd encourage a person to just wander the section and take a chance on something that piques their interest."

The Martian General's Daughter: Military SF with a Heart

Sometimes you come across a novel that doesn't quite fit your expectations of a genre--in a good way. The Martian General's Daughter, set two hundred years in the future in a world very much like Imperial Rome, is military SF told through the viewpoint of, well, a general's daughter. Steeped in historical and emotional resonance, this slim but satisfying novel is often willfully didactic in the way it treats political/military issues--but it works because of the context. These are the issues the characters are dealing with, this is the way they would talk about them. It's rare that a book will make you think and make you feel in quite this particular way.

As Philip K. Dick Award finalist Adam Roberts says, "The novel is a wonderfully judged character study, a highly readable narrative, often witty, sometimes cruel...but best of all is the narrator, the general's daughter herself--a diffident and modest individual who is nonetheless vividly and marvelously alive, strong and likeable."

You can read an excerpt from the novel here. Go forth and check it out!

 

2008 Eisner Award Finalists Announced

(Just one half of one table of comics considered during last year's judging weekend.)

The Eisner Award finalists for best comics/graphic novels have been announced, in a dizzying array of categories. So many categories, in fact, that I'm just going to let Amazon readers peruse it all themselves, and say I'm happy to see such imaginative fare as Shaun Tan's The Arrival, Jeff Lemire's Essex County, Jason Shiga's Bookhunter, and Matt Kindt's Super Spy making the list. The 2008 Eisner Awards judging panel consisted of John Davis (director of pop culture markets, Bookazine), Paul DiFilippo (SF and comics author), Atom! Freeman (owner of Brave New World Comics in Santa Clarita, CA), Jeff Jensen (senior writer, Entertainment Weekly), and Eva Volin (supervising children's librarian for the Alameda Free Library in Alameda, CA).

Having been a judge last year, knowing how much effort goes into the process, it's mind-blowing that they survive the experience. In addition to their regular reading, the judges are flown to San Diego and basically locked in a room for an entire weekend to read anything they've missed and to thrash out the finalists.

Liz Williams' Near-Future Detective Inspector Chen Novels

Looking for something different? Something immensely entertaining and yet with some depth? Something you can sink your teeth into? Well, I've got just the books for you: the new mass market paperback editions of Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen novels: Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, and Precious Dragon. (Night Shade Books)

In these near-future occult mystery novels set in Singapore, Chen and his demon sidekick Zhu Irzh--one of the Underworld's vice-detectives!--explore cases that involve ghosts, Chinese mythology, feng shui, martial arts, and travel between Heaven and Hell.

Booklist says readers looking "for something uniquely imaginative will find it in Williams' surreal fusion of Chinese mythology, paranormal high jinks, and satisfyingly suspenseful sleuthing," while Publishers Weekly praises the unique storylines, "colorful characters and imaginative settings extrapolated from ancient Chinese mythology...that fans and new readers will enjoy."

Whatever makes you tick as a reader, you'll something to like in this unique, well-written, and fast-paced series.

Author Fact: A British novelist with a background in magic, Williams is a past Philip K. Dick Award finalist.

Tiptree Award Winner: Sarah Hall's Daughters of the North

The James Tiptree Jr. Award has been announced, and the winner is Sarah