Things and Stories That Fly

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I just spent the day working on applying for a Russian visa and are my arms tired!  But that's what Mondays are for . . . a return to the work week.  On Friday I was in Bombay Hook, looking at eagles and ospreys.  Saturday I was at the Annapolis Book Festival, hanging with my pals Catherine Asaro and Chuck Gannon and listening to panels, and cruising a very fine used book sale.  So now it's time to get back to paying the rent.


And speaking of which . . .

I just got my contributor's copies of The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, which contains thirty stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Elise Tobler, Jay Lake, Genevieve Valentine, Cat Rambo, Shweta Narayan, Aliette de Bodard, N.K. Jemisin,  Peter M Ball, Sharon Mock, Catherynne M. Valente,  Alex Dally MacFarlane, Tobias Buckell, Matthew Kressel, Margo Lanagan, Amal El-Mohtar, Barth Anderson, Jeffrey Ford, James Morrow, Cherie Priest, Margaret Ronald, Megan Arkenberg, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Mary Robinette Kowal, Samantha Henderson, Nick Mamatas, Nicole Kornher-Stace and Lavie Tidha.  That's a terrific lineup and several of the stories are original to the volume.

Plus, of course, "Zeppelin City" by Eileen Gunn and myself.  Who can resist a story that has an ornithopter pilot named Amelia Spindizzy, a spunky girl inventor named Radio Jones, and giant naked brains floating in glass jars?  I enjoyed writing that story.


And because Ellen Datlow asked me to . . .

I'm posting here a review she just received from Countgore.com.  As follows:

WILD JUSTICE edited by Ellen Datlow

Once again, award-winning editor Ellen Datlow has assembled an incendiary anthology of short fiction that both embraces and transcends its stated theme. In this case, the subject is vengeance. Oh, how wickedly delicious! These stories are so toothsomely universal in their bitterness, sadness, horror, strangeness and even hilarity that readers are sure to detect a whiff of their own most malevolent imaginings of a perfect payback while enjoying these extraordinary tales. Featuring some of the most renowned voices of modern speculative fiction, vengeance comes in varied permutations: a dead ship’s captain seeks atonement, a pornographer misuses an employee for the last time, satirical hatreds of warring television personalities clash, a playboy cad receives a graphically horrific comeuppance, a Poe-esque scheme unfolds in an old theater, a flock of plastic yard flamingoes gets hilariously out of hand, festering family secrets become unendurable, and so much more. The battlegrounds and methods of revenge are each unexpected, unsettling and memorable. Authors of these sixteen remarkable stories include such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Fowler, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Thomas Tessier, Douglas Clegg, Jonathan Lethem, Pat Cadigan, Michael Swanwick and Jack Dann, David J. Schow, Richard Christian Matheson, A. R. Morlan and others. This is a must-have digital anthology that you can read right now!

Click on the cover for an instant download link. You will love these stories…with a vengeance. For more about the editor and this anthology, please visit www.datlow.com.

You'll have to go to Countgore.com to click on the link.  Jack Dann and I contributed "Ships," a story that practically vibrates with negative energy.  Really.  Much more of a downer than you'd expect from me.  I like it a lot.

Above:  An osprey.  Those things were common as dirt last weekend.  It gave me hope for the future.

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