Subterranean Offer on Shriek, and Linkage
(A reprint of a classic--from Savoy, and the genius of book designer John Coulthart.)Subterranean is offering the limited edition of my novel Shriek, the second in the Ambergris cycle before City and after Finch, below the publisher price. This edition features a soundtrack by The Church and a cover by Ben Templesmith, design by John Coulthart. Signed and numbered.In other news, there've been quite a few interesting posts out in the blogosphere the last week or so. If you haven't caught some of these, check them out.Karen Lord has her first novel out from Small Press Press, and has done some impressive guestblogging at Powell's, including a post on authenticity:
I'm neither a literary critic nor an anthropologist, so I can't tell you what culture is authentically represented by my novel. Redemption in Indigo is authentically me. It is where my ancestors came from (might be three continents there), where I am now, where I've been, who I've made friends with, and what I've read. Accept no substitutes.
Sir Tessa talks about her trip to Tibet in the context of a Tintin comic book; oddly enough, I too wanted to visit Tibet after reading that comic as a kid. I didn't know that the Dalai Lama had given Tintin an award.
Being more of an Asterix girl myself, this is the only Tintin comic I own. It's well-thumbed and falling apart. I loved this comic so much that in Grade 4 I wrote and illustrated a 31 page EPIC which was plagiarism as only children can get away with. This comic is why I have been determined to visit Tibet for the better part of my life.
Catherynne M. Valente has been blogging up a storm, including a very funny yet honest post about editing and another one about SF poetry.
Dudes, a short story is not that long. You do not have 50 pages to hook a reader (you don't, really, in a novel either, but that's another post), you cannot lazily dick around for a page and a half before being all CHECK IT OUT GHOSTPIGS. Because no one ever made it to the GHOSTPIGS, who were buried under: "Robert walked down the street. The sky was cloudy. All the houses were brown. He thought about work."
Hal Duncan talks about Last Airbender in the context of cultural appropriation--or, rather, thinks the discussion should be framed another way (using as a jumping off point a piece on Genreville that had me feeling somewhat ill-used a few months ago):
I want to explore just how representation and figuration can go wrong, ethically speaking, in a number of different ways, with my core contention being that there are very different problems involved, which should not be conflated...Ultimately I’m most interested in what I see as the real problem at the heart of the matter — the process of abjection, of making something (or someone,) abject. Wherever concerns about racebending or lifestyle theft are dismissed, it is most often, I’d say, rooted in a blindness to this process; and that’s what I’m really interested in tackling here.
Finally, Liz Williams is doing a paypal-donate short story sale to offset Night Shade not giving her a royalty statement/monies.