Q & A: Steampunk Groundswell Predicted (?), and More

Here're some questions I've been getting via email lately, in enough repetition, I thought I'd just answer them here.Q: Did you plan the publication of Steampunk to coincide with Maker Faire, which has all kinds of steampunk associations?A: Nope--Tachyon set the pub date, and they didn't know Maker Faire was this past weekend.Q: Did you know the New York Times would run a Steampunk article this week, the same week as your anthology came out?A: Nope--pure coincidence. The thing about book promotion is that sometimes you just hit the jackpot through no fault of your own. That one article, and the fact our anthology is just called "Steampunk" rather than something more inventive, has led to enough sales in the last week to put the book into reprint just a week after its official release date. But, it was doing well before that--making Borderlands bookstore's bestseller list for April, even before all of this stuff hit.Q: How difficult is it to keep the publicity side and the actual fiction writing or antho project creation separate?A: Really easy. They're so different there's no seepage. On the fiction side, I never write with an audience in mind except in the most general, amorphous sense so there's no impact. Generally, on the antho side besides Ann and I sitting down to ask, "Okay, is this a slightly more commercial or slightly less commercial antho, focus-wise?" there's no seepage. For example, our pirates antho is definitely on the more commercial side. The fake disease guide definitely wasn't, and yet became more commercial in terms of selling a boatload of copies.Q: How can you write fiction that aims to be more than entertainment and also do all of this superficial stuff?A: I dunno. How can someone enjoy Frasier and also enjoy Kafka? There's a fluidity to the world right now that allows one to dive deep or dive shallow, to stick your toe in or put on a diving suit and oxygen tanks and explore an undersea trench, so to speak. I enjoy doing both things. And since I tend to be both right and left brained (or just scramble-brained), I don't have any problem moving back and forth, to and fro.I'm opening for questioning this weekend, as we read for BAF and prep the Clarion charity antho. Any question will do.