Monstrous Creatures: New Nonfic Collection

(Not the cover, but an example of Eric Orchard's amazing work.)The follow-up to my nonfiction collection Why Should I Cut Your Throat? is tentatively titled Monstrous Creatures and will be published by Guide Dog Books (an imprint of Raw Dog Screaming) in time for the Associated Writing Programs conference in 2010. Monstrous Creatures will include 70-75,000 words of essays, articles, and reviews from the last five years, including rare material like my review of Mieville's YA novel from the Urban Building Review as well as my work for the Washington Post Book World and others. Subject matter will range from competence in genre to the dialogue or lack thereof between genre and mainstream, etc. All of it will be revised from original publication. Since I have over 150,000 words of material to sift through, the final collection should be extremely tight.Both Why Should I? and my first story collection Secret Life were dual-purpose: they were meant to perform the usual purpose of being a nonfiction and fiction collection respectively. However, the other purpose was to be of use to beginning writers by laying bare process, inspiration, and other elements instructional in nature. As a result, both had to be a little baggy. For both Monstrous and the fiction collection from Tachyon--just retitled The Third Bear--the focus will be laser-sharp and the point is to have no fat on the bones. Only muscle.Eric Orchard has been commissioned to do an original piece of art for the cover, which has me doubly excited.I didn't shop this collection around--I specifically sought out Raw Dog Screaming because I like what they're doing, especially giving a voice to authors and books too different for other presses, and because this gives me a good way of learning more about what they're up to.