I use Panix's spamassassin implementation. It catches about 96% of the spam that I get. This means that only around 20 spams per day get through to where I see them.

Jesus, all that wasted electricity.

(the brief essay that serves as the intro to Phantom):

Literary Horror: Dude you made that up

The following is a brief (and clearly informal!) e-mail exchange with a colleague--who primarily writes and reads works of fantasy--concerning PHANTOM and horror in general:

Colleague: A horror anthology sounds interesting. I’m a person who loves/hates horror. I can’t read or watch movies without gettng the heebie-jeebies. Yet, I still do it (on rare occasion).

Me: I’m a big time scaredy cat. So my tastes tend to be particular; “literary horror” if there’s such a thing.

Colleague: “Literary Horror” . . . Dude, you made that up! But I think you mean something more psychological than gross out/painful being the result. Or do I have that wrong? I don’t like horror for the sake of having lots of death. I like some deeper reason (more than he was crazy).

All right, so horror has its baggage: the seemingly unending stream of exploitative Hollywood slasher and torture movies, the stuff of pubescent revenge and misogynistic fantasies, or the retread plot of some unspeakable horror visits the nice white suburban neighborhood and the ‘other’ must be defeated; and most recently,the seemingly unending horde of Internet champions, websites with names like StabbyStabStab.com that feature unreadable stories and slime-lined banner-ads to their vanity published books,their authors boasting of being the next Stephen King or being too brutal-for-your-grandma. As frustrating as it is, no other genre seems to be as defi ned or recognized by the works that fail as art.

Yeah, there’s baggage with both words (literary and horror), and yeah, there’s a lot of bad horror but, Dude, I did not make up “literary horror.” I swear. It lives! Within the last half-century practitioners of literary horror include Shirley Jackson, William Faulkner (tell me “A Rose for Emily” is not a horror story, go ahead, I dare you!), Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O’Nan, Chuck Palahniuk, and Kelly Link just to name a few.

Many a more qualified writer has attempted an in-depth definition of the genre, but here’s an incredibly brief and awkward attempt at defining literary horror (I could be rightly accused of simply describing horror that I like . . . but since you’re reading this, you’re stuck with it.) by what it achieves: The literary horror story aims to do more than shock, titilate, scare, or affect the reader. While affect is a clear and important (possibly defining) element of horror fiction, there needs to be more. In using the elements of literary fiction--style, theme, setting, character--the literary horror story goes beyond the scare, beyond the revealing of some terrible truth (personal or social or universal) and asks the truly terrifying questions: What’s next? What decisions are you going to make? Does it matter the consequences? Do you know the consequences? How are you going to live through this? How does anyone live through this? Stories where the shock or the grand revealings or implications aren’t the point, but a part of the exploration of how people react to the everyday horrors of existence, how they might answer How does anyone live through this?

The true horrors of the inimitable Steve Rasnic Tem’s “The Cabinet Child” are the decisions Alma and her husband make, independently of each other, while under the duress of an all-too-familiar loneliness.

Steve Eller’s “The End of Everything” and Carrie Laben’s “Invasive Species” present recognizable but fresh apocalyptic scenarios, making their settings painfully personal via the desperate actions of their flawed and fragile characters.

In the break-neck paced “The Ones Who Got Away,” Stephen Graham Jones tells us right up front that something bad is going to happen, and makes us live through the hours of decisions and consequences (both intended and unintended) leading up to the inevitable.

Michael Cisco’s wonderfully unreliable narrator in “Mr. Wosslynne” spins a dizzying Aickman-like fever dream that blurs reality and identity. Similar in its unreality, Becca De La Rosa’s story pieces the bits of Kate’s life together creating ghosts and houses, and nothing is safe.

From paranoid gold prospectors to lonely curators, Satan worshiping Long Island teens, metaphysics-obsessed television reporters, and to Peter and Olivia and their devastating final choices detailed in the last pages of this anthology, the fourteen stories of PHANTOM present their horrors diff erently, but they all ask: How does anyone live through this?

Long story short...

Saturday I woke up EARLY (like, WTF early!?!?), worked out, bought new pants, picked up new funky shoes with heels, took pants in to get shortened (as always), we drove to Stoney Creek to a mall with the kids to meet up with Grandma, went back to her house and G and I took off to my brother's surprise grad party where I wore new funky shoes with heels. Had tons of fun with family and friends of family.

I did not run out of energy, I was not in pain, and I'll admit there were a few tears of joy once the night was through.

That night cousin told me about a new MS breakthrough. I'll share the article here in case anyone out there is interested:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/researchers-labour-of-love-leads-to-ms-breakthrough/article1372414/

If you or someone you love has MS, you know how horrible it is and this is a little ray of hope. Get your tickets to Italy ready.

Yesterday we brought the kids home, G ran errands and we hosted the Grey Cup party last night. What a shitty way to win. Too many men!?!? Come ON! It was a great game to watch (until that point), and I'm glad some friends were able to join us.

Kathy made fun of my glued shoes. Apparently you're supposed to replace runners every 8 months or so? Bloody hell! My glues shoes are about...15 years old. I went to pick up my shortened pants at the mall and went into the sports store and bought: new running pants, a new top, a new sports bra, but not shoes. LOL! Now I have to wait for X-mas. Until then I can research, apparently there's a fucking lot to know about shoes and I'm starting here:
http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Running_Shoe_Guide_for_Dummies.htm

Kids didn't nap properly today (which means I couldn't nap or work), they were shitting like death-shit-factories all day but thankfully were not feeling sick, I still snuck in a workout before dinner and tonight I sent out invoices.

I'm tired now. :)

Phantom, the anthology of literary horror is finally available at amazon and Barnes and Nobles and the like.

Blurbs:

Ghosts, disaffected wives, deserted towns, obsessive journalists and children who never existed haunt the pages of this stunning, elegant and frightful anthology of “literary horror” assembled by Stoker nominee Tremblay and World Fantasy Award–winning Wallace (Bandersnatch)… deliciously creepy book of horrors that prove all the more terrifying for their everyday nature.”--Publisher's Weekly

"Tremblay and Wallace have put together an oustanding anthology that truly examines the dark corners of the human experience and asks, 'What's next?' Haunting, provocative and immensely enjoyable."--Brian Keene

"Literary Horror is by definition personal horror. As the introduction points out, it asks the question, 'How does anyone live through this?' Phantom attempts to answer in a kaleidoscope of ways, blending stylistic experimentation and surreal subject matter with solid storytelling by established authors and newcomers alike."--Poppy Z. Brite

"A mosaic replete with frightful and hypnogogic imagery. Phantom is the physical artifact of the weird and horrific dreams of fourteen febrile visions aligned in cryptic symmetry."--Laird Barron

TOC:

Introduction (Literary Horror: Dude you made that up!), Paul Tremblay

The Cabinet Child, by Steve Rasnic Tem

The End of Everything, by Steve Eller

A Ghost, A House, by Becca De La Rossa

The Ones Who Got Away, by Stephen Graham Jones

After Images, by Karen Heuler

The Ladder of St. Augustine, by Seth Lindberg

What President Polk Said, by Vylar Kaftan

Kinder, by Steve Berman

Set Down This, by Lavie Tidhar

A Stain on the Stone, by Nick Mamatas

Mr. Wosslynne, by Michael Cisco

Jonquils Bloom, by Geoffrey H. Goodwin

Invasive Species, by Carrie Laben

She Hears Music Up Above, by F. Brett Cox

Subterranean Press is offering 50% off pre-orders, which I can only assume includes Bone & Jewel Creatures.

Also, if you write as much as I have in the past five days, after two days spent cooking an enourmous holiday meal?

Don't expect to be any good on the climbing wall. Just saying.

Once again, I'm with Paul Krugman

Two kinds of sin

Thanx to Susie Bright on Facebook

Back from comic hiatus!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

November 25, 2009 For Immediate Release

Small Press of Toronto celebrating 22 years of book fairs
December 12, 2009 at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel
10 am to 5 pm
FREE

http://www.torontosmallpressbookfair.org/

Toronto, Ontario – The Small Press of Toronto Book Fair is back! Books, chapbooks, graphic novels, zines, comics, audio-books, magazines

PLUS an amazing full day of readings by authors Nancy Jo Cullen, Karen Dales, Shinan Govani, rob mclennan, Al Moritz, Sheree-Lee Olson, Lisa Pasold, Timothy Quinn, & Lisa Ray

PLUS a special interview with Giller Prize-winning writer Austin Clark hosted by Sang Kim.

The Gladstone Hotel will play host to this year’s Small Press Book Fair and it is shaping up to be even bigger than the last. Along with the venue change, our new date makes the event perfect for holiday gift giving--stock up on local press for the holidays!

Talk, buy, peruse, and enjoy books, chapbooks, graphic novels, zines, comics and so much more.

The Fair features an up-close look at some of the city’s most exciting small presses. Small Press of Toronto grew out of the “Meet the Presses” events organized by Stuart Ross and Nick Power back in the '80s, which was then a once-a-month gathering featuring five or six small and micro presses displaying, selling, and reading from new work. A much larger gathering, the (first) Toronto Small Press Book Fair, became an annual event in 1987, and a biannual event in the fall of 1990.

Today, the Fair happens twice a year, a feast of all things printed, with readings, workshops, and prizes. What's more, the event is entirely free & open to the public. This year we are pleased to be celebrating our 22nd year with a fair at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel.

for more information, please contact torontosmallpressfairgroup@gmail.com

location: The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West

Contact:
Small Press of Toronto: Sang Kim or Lisa Pasold, Book Fair co-organizers
http://www.torontosmallpressbookfair.org/

My and David Niall Wilson's long-out-of-print novella My Eyes Are Nailed, But Still I See (originally a 226-copy hardcover novella from Delirium Books, 2006) is now available in PDF, MOBI, and EPUB formats exclusively at Horror Mall:

https://www.horror-mall.com/darksidedigital/product.php?productid=20089&cat=0&page=1&featured



Only $4.95!

~~~~~

Johnson Milhone’s mind is a world unto itself—maybe several worlds. Therapy doesn’t penetrate, but nails do. Leather doesn’t sew easily, and pigs don’t talk—but don’t tell Johnson. Enter a world where spiders stalk sentient stuffed animals that may or may not be carved from the flesh of family members who may or may not be psychotic killers, slaves, and sadistic torturers. Find new uses for lime green Jell-O and lose it as a viable dessert. Find new darkness in Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum and dine at the best table at the Fear Factory. Learn why you should only keep toothpicks in the drawer if you really trust your mother, or your brother, and never—ever—fish in Scotland at Midnight.

My Eyes Are Nailed, But Still I See is the culmination of an odyssey through a warped young mind that leads one way, and then another, through gruesome imagery and psychotic delusion to an ultimate truth you will never see coming.


https://www.horror-mall.com/darksidedigital/product.php?productid=20089&cat=0&page=1&featured

Balanced (but poorly edited) review of Claude Lalumière's Objects of Worship at Strange Horizons:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2009/11/objects_of_wors.shtml


http://chizine.com/chizinepub/books/objects-of-worship.php

+++

Good review of Daniel A. Rabuzzi's The Choir Boats in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy (which hits shelves in early December). No link to it, but we've been given permission to post the full review here:

Daniel A. Rabuzzi makes an auspicious debut with The Choir Boats: Volume One of Longing for Yount (ChiZine Publications, Toronto, trade paperback, 408 pp., $18.95, ISBN: 978-0-9809410-7-4), a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy that, like Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials series, will appeal to both adult and young adult readers. There's a Dickensian vibrancy—and messiness—to Rabuzzi's book; it's filled with outsized characters, colorful slang, outrageous coincidences, buried secrets, stunning revelations, and star-crossed lovers. The novel is not an unqualified success; its first half is substantially better than the second, when Rabuzzi's control of his material slips appreciably, leading to a climax that feels forced. There is also an unfortunate conceptual problem, which I will get to below.

The Yount mentioned in the novel's subtitle is what might be thought of in science-fictional terms as a pocket universe, one that has been brought into contact with Rabuzzi's alternate Earth by some mysterious cataclysm. There are two points at which it is possible to sail from Earth to Yount, and vice versa, aboard boats that navigate by means of a process called fulgination, which can involve technology but is also an innate ability of some people and animals. There is a musical aspect to fulgination, and it's this quality that's alluded to in the novel's title.

The people of Yount look to Earth for salvation. It seems they have been imprisoned, cut off from their own world for crimes they don't entirely remember or agree upon. But prophecies indicate that their long exile can be ended by people from Earth, and Rabuzzi's central characters are an extended family who may possess the ability to do just that. Rabuzzi focuses on three members of the family: Barnabas McDoon, a middle-aged man nurturing a guilty secret and a lost love; Sarah MacLeish, known as Sally, his eighteen-year-old niece; and Thomas MacLeish, his twenty-one-year-old nephew. Sally and Tom are orphans raised by their childless, unmarried uncle. A fourth important protagonist is a London street urchin named Maggie, a mathematical genius who was born a slave in Maryland.

Slavery is a central theme of the novel, though this only gradually becomes clear. Not only is it ongoing in antebellum America, where its casual brutalities have tragically marked Maggie's life, but it's also an ugly reality in Yount, where a civil war was fought, and may yet be re-fought, over the issue.

The Yountians who seek the help of the McDoons are opposed by a frightening figure known as the Cretched Man, a once-human wizard of vast age and power who is the servant of an entity more potent still—a monster with the unlikely cognomen of Strix Tender Wurm. But after the Cretched Man kidnaps Tom, he begins to reveal depths of character that lift him above the common run of villainy—and such is his charismatic appeal that he comes close to walking away with the novel. His origin proves to be both surprising and thematically fitting, and underscores the extent to which the novel draws on Judeo-Christian myths and beliefs; at times it veers more toward allegory than fantasy, but Rabuzzi keeps pulling it back.

Sally is a kind of counter-balance to the Cretched Man. She is, on the whole, less interesting, but that may be because her personality is not yet formed. She is a young woman still growing into the adult she will become, and her heart has not yet been scarred and made cautious. Her brave willingness to love and trust others takes her into some emotionally and physically dangerous places, but it also makes her a heroine worth rooting for.

Rabuzzi's alternate England of 1812 is one that is familiar not only because of its correspondences to the historical England of that time, but also because many of the literary creations of our world have a historical reality in his imaginary one, both as facts and fancies. For example, secondary characters from Dickens novels are encountered as secondary characters in Rabuzzi's book, and, even more strikingly, the story related in Lord of the Rings is here a part of England's own legendarium, as if there had not been a need for Tolkien to invent it.

It's hard to know why Rabuzzi chose to make this metafictional move. It doesn't seem integral to the plot, yet it complicates the novel's central conceit, which is that there are multiple realities, of divergent concordance, intersecting and diverging from each other. Rabuzzi, whether he means to do so or not, is staking a claim to the effect that his fictional universe is the primary one, containing, in their pure and original forms, as realities, what in secondary universes, like ours, are mere echoes scribbled down by sub-creators like Dickens and Tolkien. It's a ballsy claim that colonizes or appropriates the work of better writers than Rabuzzi has yet shown himself to be. That's one strike against it. But even worse, it seems to have been done impulsively, as a kind of shout-out, without thinking the implications through. It's a small yet telling flaw that mars the book on a foundational level. Nevertheless, I was impressed by Rabuzzi's sprawling imagination and more than ready to follow his appealing cast of characters into the next volume of their adventures.


http://chizine.com/chizinepub/books/choir-boats.php

I became aware recently of The Arrivals, one of those religion-specific pieces of counterculture media that gains brief credibility with all kinds of people who practice keeping their minds open all the time, just like you're supposed to do with parachutes. (Think about it.) Like, say, The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know!?, The Arrivals is currently making its way all over pirate boards, passed by the kinds of people who enthuse over Alex Jones, with vague promises that "you'll learn a lot."

The Secret, of course, went mainstream pretty quick,* and all but the diehard "If nobody likes it, it must be true" free thinking/conspiratorial types stopped championing What the Bleep a while ago, outside of the New Agers Ramtha's School of Enlightenment made it for.

They figured out it was somebody else's Sunday School movie, basically – it seemed exotic at first, and then you figure out it's just somebody pushing another religion at you, you could go watch the same stuff on Trinity Broadcasting Network any week, you're just more familiar with that spooky nonsense.

See, if you actually did treat your mind sort of like a parachute – deploy wide open when necessary, maintain and keep it otherwise – you might know a few things that'd keep you from getting sucked into that bullshit at all.

Tweedle me deedles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Minor Bun Engine Made Benny Lava!. Please leave any comments there.

My editor and several other folks (hi, Nanci! :) alerted me this morning that my upcoming first novel Spellbent got a glowing starred review in Publishers Weekly. I can't reproduce the whole thing, but the reviewer writes:

"Snyder combines the best of Jim Butcher and T.A. Pratt in this wildly imaginative and intensely gripping urban fantasy trilogy launch. ... Threads of romance, horror, action, and humor weave throughout, serving as the perfect backdrop against which memorable characters and a unique system of magic can shine."

I'm super-geeked about this ... a starred review in PW is a damn cool thing to get.

Wow, action packed weekend! Good thing the weather was so favorable; I really needed to inspect the flat section of my roof and patch where needed. Fair weather was also good for Filbert's continued work on renovating the middle bathroom of the house (seriously!) Aside from that, Friday brought a decent practice with Filbert and Z (who will be doing the honors at our upcoming final appearances for the year, December 11th at Maison Musique in New Orleans, and December 12th at Creative Arts Warehouse in Pensacola.

Friday I also broke down and purchased some new speakers, in order to bolster the Secret Lab setup into 5.1 surround sound mixing capability. Black Friday discounts enabled the purchase of 3 new KRK Rokit G2 5" nearfield (designed for close listening) studio monitor speakers and a KRK 10S subwoofer. My old KRK Rockit 6" speakers were then relegated to surround speakers with the addition of some little shelves I built for the occasion (you can see one in the picture below.) The completed system sounds absolutely great; I had to get out my little collection of DVD Audio surround CD's and listen again to Queen (Night at the Opera), The Doors (L.A. Woman), The Beatles (Love), Donald Fagan (The Nightfly), and Yes (Fragile) in 5.1... sure wish I had time for more leisure listening! I also tested the system out with some of my own mixes, and it was VERY revealing. This new system should make mixing our forthcoming album a real pleasure... best speakers in this price class, period.

And then it was indeed time for some recording on the new album, with Sam Craft of the excellent local band Glasgow contributing some really tasty fiddle parts to my new bluegrass monsterpiece 'Zombie Apocalypse Barbecue'. Sam played it straight and then I had him do another track with the intention of cracking me up... which he did! It sure sounded dang purty...

After the session, I did find a little time for leisure, taking Jeannine out to see Wes Anderson's new film The Fantastic Mr. Fox. WOW! What a work of art... and hugely entertaining. Just the thing to round out a fine weekend.

More adventures to come this week... tomorrow I've got an appointment with the Doctor. (No, not that Doctor... another Doctor!) Gonna be shooting some new footage... fingers crossed!

Okay, chapter one is down. I've also been working on edits for another author, but I need to snitch some time for my own material.

Dunno if this word-meter thing I'm trying to paste below will work, but I'm giving it a try...

I just got this email from Wendy's:

"$1 off the Baconator with Better Bacon!"

Does that mean the Baconator with the regular bacon isn't on sale?

I didn’t quite stay offline throughout the long weekend, but I didn’t do that much with my website or LiveJournal or any of my other usual haunts. Kept up with e-mail, read a few message boards, that was about the extent of it. Starting today I am a doctoral research widow for the next three weeks as my wife begins the final phase of her data collection, so I wanted to make as much of our four days together as possible. I took her to the bus stop this morning and I’ll see her again just before Christmas.

We cooked meals and ate too much (and yet, I somehow lost weight, much to my astonishment this morning — three pounds!) and watched movies and played cards. I also read John Grisham’s short story collection (review to come) and about 1/4 of Don Quixote. I started the book before, a couple of years ago, and I put it aside for one reason or another and never got back to it. So I found a version for my Kindle and I’ve been reading it before bedtime. It’s a fascinating concept, willing something into existence through sheer force of belief. I’m up to the part where Sancho Panza is returning to bring Don Quixote’s message to Dulcinea while Quixote deliberately “goes mad” in the mountains.

I sent out several press releases to the usual suspects when my new book was about to be released, and another one of them paid off today. I spent 10 minutes on the phone with the editor of the arts supplement of a newspaper and they want to do something about the book before Christmas. It wasn’t exactly an interview today, just a touching of bases as a preamble to whatever it is they decide to do.

I upgraded my message board from version 2.2 to 2.4 today. It’s not an easy process, nothing so slick as how WordPress gets updated that’s for sure. I had to do a clean install in parallel with the old version, set all the file permissions manually (thankfully I’m a UNIX wonk from ‘way back), migrate the configuration, users and old messages to the new install, decommission the old board and commission the new one so that any old hyperlinks to the MB still work. It took several hours and I was sure at two or three points in the process that I had absolutely screwed it up. But it seems to be working just fine. Remains to be seen if I have all of the anti-spam features configured properly.

I was sorry to see the Harlem Globetrotter duo get eliminated from the Amazing Race last night, but the minute they decided to take a 4 hour penalty I was pretty sure the writing was on the wall for them. Four hours is an eternity in this race. All because one guy couldn’t figure out how to make a word out of the letters AFNRZ. I was hoping the brothers were going to get dinged for breaking the gollem’s arm. Jeez, they’re annoying.

I received editorial feedback on a trio of stories that are going to be published next year. One of the stories required minimal revision, one requires a moderate amount of reconceptualization and the third one is going to take a fair amount of work to get it into shape for the editor. I tidied up the first one and got it back to the editor this morning. Should be a neat project, but it hasn’t been formally announced yet. I’m also expecting to receive the proofs of my story for Evolve this week, which I’ll have to review post haste.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.