Podcasting

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If you amble over to The Drabblecast, you'll find brand-new podcasts of two pieces of flash fiction by Yours Truly -- Hush and Hark and Metasciencefiction. (Click here.) I'm really quite impressed by the job Norm Sherman did narrating them both. Which is higher praise than you'd think, because I'm extremely resistant to interpretations of my work that differ in any way from how it sounded in my head. Hush and Hark, in particular, had a very Edgar Alan Poe-esque treatment quite at odds with how I'd originally imagined the story. (I'd thought of it as more Dunsany-ish.) But it works beautifully, and it taught me something about my own creation. So, thanks, Norm.

I've only listened to one other "Drabblecast" -- that of Robert Reed's Floating Over Time, but it was also quite good. So I'll probably make listening to these podcasts a regular thing.

One minor correction, though: In the podcast, it's stated that Jason Van Hollander's Hush and Hark (above) was created as an illustration of my story. Quite the opposite. Jason sent me a copy of the picture, and I wrote the story for it.


And as always . . .

I've updated Poem du Jour. This time with a poem to increase your snobbishness.

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The Ineluctable Jason Van Hollander

(First of all, my apologies for missing last Friday's blog. I was laid flat by a cold. This is the downside of running a one-man business. The upside? No problems with the union.)

Jason Van Hollander, with his usual modesty, wishes I wouldn't mention him in this blog so often. He's afraid it makes me look like I don't have many other friends. Well, I do my best. But when he pulls something like the above picture on me (detail below), what can I do but brag?

The picture in question appears on the black cover of A Vintage from Atlantis, volume 3 of the collected fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger. Night Shade Books is engaged in the comendable project of assembling the definitive texts of CAS's fantasy, science fiction, and horror in a uniform five-volume set. All of them (or at least the three to date) with covers by Jason Van Hollander. And, as you can see, Jason slipped in a portrait of me.

Not a very flattering portrait of me. But still.

For those unfamiliar with the works of Clark Ashton Smith . . . Imagine lapidarian prose harnessed to an imagination somewhat darker than Ambrose Bierce's. Imagine dark glimmery beauty in the borderlands of fantasy and horror. Imagine a body of work which inspired Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, which in turn inspired Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. It's not to everyone's taste -- the prose style can be as intense as maple sugar, though in no way sticky -- but if you have a liking for this sort of thing, I fail to see where else you're going to find it.

If you're a Clark Ashton Smith fan already, you want these books. If not, why not check him out? Night Shade Books, incidentally, has got a truly astonishing lineup of authors. So they're worth checking out as well.

Finally, in the interests of keeping the man happy by limiting the frequency of posts about him, I'll mention here and now that Jason Van Hollander has a blog. Astonishing but true. It's called The Jolly Corner and subtitled The Illustration Journal of Jason Van Hollander. Mostly, it's about his book covers. (Jason is an extrarodinary designer, in addition to being an World Fantasy Award winning illustrator.) But the very first entry was penned by Yours Truly, last October, when I showed him how to set up the blog. I thought you should know that, lest you think Jason was being surly.

The Inedible Jason Van Hollander

A month or so ago I dropped in on Jason Van Hollander. It was somewhere between noon and 1 p.m. "Have you had lunch yet?" he asked.

"Yes, I did."

"I thought maybe you might like some soup."

"Well, I already ate."

"Why don't you look in the cupboard and see if there's anything in there you like?"

So I did. And discovered, as documented in the photo above, cans of Swanwick's All Natural Soups: Dragon Lard Chowder (made with Free-Range Babelberries), Aryan-Style Geshmäcktfresser (made with Potato Peelings), and of course Donkey Fazool (made with Psychoactive Ingredients).

Yes, Jason had made his own soup labels. Including the paragraph of happy sales-talk above the bar code:

What could be yummier than Dragon Lard Chowder . . . start with scrumptious lizard skin boots, then add the best Babelberry Juice you could find (Swanwick's of course -- all unnatural*, raised in free-range conditions), and season it according to a mildew-laden, toxic Mayan recipe. No artificial ingredients. No preservatives. No cache de sexe residue. Just heat, eat, and savor your last gasp.

Distributed by
SWANWICK'S
Bulk Dragon Lard Since 1852

*Artificial Babelberries used.
Minimally processed for Passover.

Nor does it stop there. Under Nutrition Facts are such categories as Velleity, Belatednes, Yawpishness, Murmin, Borborygmic, Asymptote, Vastation, Fustian, and Aporla. (One cannot but suspect that there is a line of Clute Soups somewhere.) Plus, of course, the list of:

Ingredients: Water, Carrots, Farina Husks, Free-range Babelberries, Aporia Broth, GInger, Garlic Powder (Contains Substantial Amounts of Octopus Lard).

But, as the guy in the Ginsu knives ad would put it, wait -- there's more! Jason Van Hollander, iron man of whimsy that he is, had similarly alternate-reality-ish copy on the cans of Donkey Fazool Soup and Geshmäcktfresser as well. Ask me next time you drop by the house and I'll show them to you.

The Irrepressible Jason Van Hollander

Earlier this summer I dropped in on artist extraordinaire Jason Van Hollander. While we were sitting on his porch talking, he snapped a few pictures of me with a printed cloth hanging behind my head. A day or two later, he emailed me the above rendition of myself as a triune deity.

Don't you wish you had friends like Jason?

The Inimitable Jason Van Hollander

If, as I presume you do, you value knowing interesting and talented people, then surely you must envy me for knowing the inimitable Jason Van Hollander. He has a compulsively self-deprecating demeanor and an extremely wry wit. I visited him at work once, and he introduced me as "the editor of Casket and Sunnyside Magazine." We went to a grocery store together and he told the man handing out samples of chips-and-salsa that I was "a connoisseur of salts." He's a highly respected book designer and as an artist has received two World Fantasy Awards.

And, because he doesn't travel, you've almost certainly never met the man.

Fortunately for me, I live within a reasonable drive of his house, so every now and then I get to drop in on him. Here's what he made for me after one such visit:






Pretty cool, huh?