Picture of Pictures

Here's the cover of my upcoming story collection Pictures from an Expedition, coming later this summer from Night Shade Books. Thanks to Patrick Arrasmith for a lovely image and to Claudia Noble for an equally wonderful design. I love it and you should, too.

(This is a small version because [apart from bandwidth considerations] the cover hasn't gone to the proofreader yet. But it looks even better full-size...)

Forbidden Planets

Here's the cover of the anthology Forbidden Planets, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the film that we all remember for Robby the Robot (and, let's not kid ourselves, the swimsuit). My contribution is called "This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine," and if I had a list of all the other stories I'd post it. Fans of the movie (and who among us doesn't love this movie?) will find an introduction by Ray Bradbury and about a dozen swell stories...don't miss it.

More Pulp

Got my contributor copies of Retro Pulp Tales in the mail yesterday. Publishers Weekly says, "With six-guns blazing and tentacles flailing, this nifty all-original anthology delivers impressively on the "pure storytelling" promise Lansdale (Flaming London) makes in his intro. The dozen authors manage to address serious issues while remaining true to their roots and the book's theme."

And Booklist: "The movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was contemporary pulp fiction that felt as though it was made decades ago. So, too, are the stories in this exciting new collection of "retro pulp." The contributors, including F. Paul Wilson and Bill Crider, were asked to write a story that could have appeared in the pulps, and they have succeeded spectacularly."

Son of Satan

Just in time to coincide with the release of The Omen, Marvel Comics announced at WizardWorld in Philly that Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, will be coming back in a five-issue limited series that will land in stores this fall. I'm writing it, and Russ Braun is the artist, and there is an outstanding inker to be named later. Here's me talking with Comic Book Resources about the project, and here's my editor Axel Alonso discussing it with Newsarama. My first foray into comics has been a great experience so far.

48 hours

The 48 Hour Film Project came to Portland, Maine, this year, and I had the good fortune to write the screenplay for one of the 14 teams that competed. The film, called Music Box, is linked here. University of Maine new-media professor Raphael DiLuzio put our team together under his 3leggeddog umbrella, and we were lucky enough to get cinematographer Rob Draper (Spitfire Grill, Tales from the Crypt) involved. If you're in the Portland area, there's a screening in Windham Tuesday night...and if the film takes some kind of honors for Portland, it's off to national judging of one kind or another. More as I know it.

Update: Here's a photo from a short Portland Forecaster article about the shoot.

Burn, Baby, Burn

The Batman: Inferno cover, at last.





The book itself is due out on Halloween, which seems timely given the various costumes. If anyone out there is a fan of both Batman and Blaise Cendrars, this book will be particularly chock-full of goodies; also featured are the Joker, Arkham Asylum, and a new villain whose name I am loath to disclose.

Buzz

As you might have seen by now over at John Klima's EV Zine Blog, I'm going to have a story in the Klima-edited anthology Logorrhea, coming from Bantam in May or June of 2007. The list of contributors is pretty good company:

Daniel Abraham
Paolo Bacigalupi
Jay Caselberg
Clare Dudman
Hal Duncan
Theodora Goss
Liz Hand
Alex Irvine
Jay Lake
Kelly Link
Michael Moorcock
Tim Pratt
David Prill
Michelle Richmond
Lucius Shepard
Anna Tambour
Jeff VanderMeer
Leslie What
Liz Williams
Neil Williamson
Marly Youmans

Look for it next year in time for the Bee itself...

More on Riley

Over at the Green Man Review, The Life of Riley is characterized as " elliptical, graphic, edgy but not at all flashy, topical, sharp and very, very sophisticated." Read the rest...

Three Weeks Later...

I stumble back to this blog with not much to report but a disturbing desire to, well, blog. Went to Europe for the first time over spring break, which is vaguely writing-related because while there I met Luc Carissimo, who has just finished translating A Scattering of Jades into French. The translation is due out in the fall. There are already Spanish and Czech editions, and there's supposed to be a Polish one soon.

Bats and Fish

I just finished a new story, "Clownfish," that will be the original in my upcoming Night Shade collection, Pictures from an Expedition.

Also, I've seen the cover art for BATMAN: INFERNO, and it looks great. I'll post it here as soon as I can.

Coming soon: news from the comics front...oh, and there's a well-thought-out and incisive review of The Narrows in the current Realms of Fantasy, by Paul Witcover (who has written some interesting stuff himself). Check it out.