It’s November 24 — the official publication date of my second book, The Devil’s Alphabet. I’ve gotten word from pal Jack Skillingstead that it’s already on the shelves in Seattle—it must be the time difference. And two people just emailed me (it’s 1Am Tuesday morning as I type this) that their order just shipped from Amazon.

The latest reviews, the first chapter, and links to buy are all on the Devil page.

Meanwhile, here’s a party game to play for the launch: go to your friendly neighborhood bookstore, find the book on the shelf… and flip it over. It’s freaky fun for the whole family.

There are a raft of people who were a great help in writing this book. I’d tell you to read about them in the acknowledgments, but what if you never buy the thing? Or if the cover scares you, and you never even look inside?

Better to thank all those people here, in front of God and everybody. Here’s a copy of what you’d find if you opened the front cover:

Many people helped make the book you’re holding (or viewing, or listening to) and I owe them my sincere thanks. Chris Schluep, with a deft hand on the editorial stick, guided this book the final miles over the chilly Hudson. Many more people at Del Rey worked to get these words in front of you, including some–Fleetwood Robbins (who acquired this book when its title was “Work to be Named Later”), and SueMoe! (one word, with exclamation mark)–who’ve moved on and are greatly missed. Deanna Hoak signed up for a second tour of copy editing. And David Bowie–well, he has no idea how much he helped me write this thing.

My gratitude goes as well to the early readers: Charles Coleman Finlay, Sarah K. Castle, Cathrynne M. Valente, and the rest of the Blue Heaven workshop crew who critiqued the first draft; Heather Lindsley, who fine-tuned the second; and Kathy Bieschke, Gary Delafield, and Elizabeth Delafield, who marked up hundreds of pages in between. Emma and Ian Gregory read none of it, but informed all of it.

And to all the Gregorys, Barbaras, Meyers, Riddles, and Heatons, the multitude of aunts, uncles, and cousins — so many cousins! — scattered over the Smokies: thanks for feeding your Yankee relation every time he came to town. Even more than the bizarre residents of Switchcreek, the lonely boy in this book is a creature of pure imagination.

Last, I want to point out that the book is dedicated to my parents, Darrell and Thelma. You wouldn’t believe what they had to put up with.

My interview with Patrick Wolohan of the Stomping on Yeti blog just went live. Patrick’s been running an interesting interview series called “Keeping an eye on….” Here’s how he explains it:

In June 2008, there was a SF Signal Mind Meld entitled Who Are Tomorrow’s Big Genre Stars. Basically, a group of genre superstars involved in editing, publishing, and writing weighed in on who they thought were going to be next genre heavy hitters in the years to come.

They were 21 names on the list, and Patrick’s been trying to follow up with each of them to hear what they’re working on now and to ask a few off-the-wall questions.

In this one we talk about the ghettoization of genre, the highlight of my career so far (emotionally speaking, I peaked early) and my favorite word. Patrick will also be publishing his review of The Devil’s Alphabet this week.

Oh, here’s the list of the other folks on that SF Signal list that he’s been keeping an eye on:

• Paolo Bacigalupi
• Jay Lake
• David Moles
• Benjamin Rosenbaum
• Cory Doctorow
• Ted Kosmatka
• Chris Roberson
• Vandana Singh
• Daniel Abraham
• Laird Barron
• Elizabeth Bear
• Alan DeNiro
• Alex Irvine
• Paul Melko
• Naomi Novik
• Tim Pratt
• M. Rickert
• Jason Stoddard

Okay, I love World Fantasy, but I came back with a head cold, which today blossomed into fever, body aches, and massive sinusoidal activity. I went home from work and crashed hard. As I type this I’m riding a wave of ibuprofen and sudafed. Also, the ringing in my ears sounds like Jethro Tull. I’m hoping it will pass soon.

It was a great convention, though. I made new friends and kept the old, one is silver, the other is… hey aqualung…. Okay, I’m back.  While in San Jose I got to hang out with Team Pandemonium: my first editor, Fleetwood Robbins, my second editor, Chris Schluep, and my copyeditor, Deanna Hoak. Only cover artist Greg Ruth was absent (but I was on a panel where the moderator asked me to talk about the cover).

Speaking of covers, Chris brought along the first printed copy I’d seen of The Devil’s Alphabet. A very nice moment, getting to hold that first warm copy.

I also learned this weekend that Publisher’s Weekly named it one of the top 100 books of 2009 — one of only five in the science fiction/fantasy/horror category. They said:

This subtle, eerie present-day horror novel mercilessly dissects and reassembles the classic narrative of a man returning to his smalltown birthplace, where the familiar folks have become strange creatures.

So dissection and reassemblage — that’s pretty cool. And to be in such good company: China Mieville’s The City and the City (also edited by my man Chris Schluep),  The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (he’s a friend o’mine), Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, and Ellen Datlow’s anthology Lovecraft Unbound (which my Lovecraft-obsessed son will undoubtedly get). Buy them all for Christmas.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon Pandemonium lost the best novel award to Jeff Ford and Margo Lanagan, two stellar writers. I’m getting used to losing to Jeff, and if he wasn’t so good, and a nice guy to boot, it might start to bother me.  But as my daughter pointed out, Neil Gaiman also lost. So that makes Neil and me, like, equals, right? (Right….)

Okay, off to take more pills and lie down. Just as soon as this flute solo dies down.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to my favorite con, the World Fantasy Convention, being held this year in San Jose, California. (Yes, you can start humming the song now. ) Pandemonium is up for Best Novel, and my goal, when I lose, is to smile manfully in such a way that people buy me consolation drinks. I have to make this pay somehow.

I’ll be appearing at the panel “Contemporary Rural Fantasy” at Sunday  10:00 AM. Everybody’s heard of urban fantasy — these days, that mostly means chicks in leather pants killing vampires — but this panel asks if there is such a thing as rural fantasy. I doubt the panel will answer that question — con panels don’t have a reputation for resolving much of anything — but we can always hope for controversy, right? I shall make the case for Suburban Fantasy being the most important genre of our field, and then storm out in anger.

World Fantasy is my favorite because it’s small (capped by its bylaws, a wonderful thing), it’s professional (mostly writers and editors and agents, with no costumes allowed), and the number of great people this con attracts  is pretty stunning. I’ll be seeing my editor there, hanging out with people I admire, and trying not to say anything -too- stupid.

But what I’m most looking forward to is reconnecting with some good friends, and finally meeting in person some people who I’ve only talked to through teh internets. And if this is like any previous year at WFC, I’ll be meeting one or two strangers who will turn out to be lifelong friends.

Gotta pack!

You know how the other day I was talking about the great stuff at Clockwork Storybook? I swear I didn’t know that they were about to ask me to join their illustrious (literally — some of them are illustrators) group.

The CWSB people–Chris Roberson, Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges, Bill Williams, and Mark Finn — mostly write comics and prose, and that prose is mostly SF and fantasy. They critique each other’s work, support each other, and blog about the writing craft on their website.

I met Chris at the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, and then at last year’s World Fantasy Convention in Calgary he introduced me to his friend Bill Willingham. Cue fanboy moment: I had read Bill’s comic series The Elementals back in college and loved it. He was the first writer I read who put heroes and villains in the real world and showed how complicated that could be. Years later, you can see that influence in my first novel, Pandemonium.

Now, cue second fanboy moment: at the very same table in that bar in Calgary, Chris introduces me to Paul Cornell. He wrote several episodes of the new Dr. Who (including the amazing “Father’s Day” episode ) and also does comics. He just finished a run on Captain Britain and is next working on Dark X-Men. He’s also a gifted prose writer and funny as hell.

Also also, Paul is joining Clockwork Storybook too, along with comic writer and novelist Marjorie Liu, and comics/screenplay/novel writer Mark Andreyko. Call us the class of ’09. And hey, now there are nine of us.

As I just told Matt Sturges, I have a lot more to learn from them than I’ll be able to contribute in return — but that won’t tempt me to turn down their offer. This’ll be fun.

One of my favorite blogs, Clockwork Storybook, is active again. CS is a group blog by comic and prose writers Chris Roberson, Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges, and Bill Williams. These guys have been friends for years, and their blog is an ongoing discussion about the craft.

So many good discussions going on:

• Bill Willingham does his take on Marjorie Liu’s 4 rules of writing. Liu is a Marvel comics writer and novelist, and her rules are:
  1. Get to the point
  2. Get back to basics
  3. Do it with pizazz
  4. Don’t lose your edge
• Matt Sturges complains about zombie ninjas on the moon and other genre mashups, and Chris Roberson takes umbrage
• Bill Willingham provides a textbook example of how graphic artists can (and must) carry the weight of the story

Just great stuff. Tune in.

Got a nice package in the mail, the other day. Year’s Best Fantasy 9, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, is being published by TOR.com, and and you can get it at their online store (and probobably elsewhere as well).

Nice cover, eh?

The table of contents starts with Elizabeth Bear’s Hugo-winning story and goes on to include some other great stories — some of which are available online:

1. Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear
2. “The Rabbi’s Hobby” by Peter Beagle
3. “Running the Snake” by Kage Baker
4. “The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm” by Daryl Gregory
5. “Reader’s Guide” by Lisa Goldstein
6. “The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D.” by Al Michaud
7. “Araminta, or, the Wreck of the Amphidrake” by Naomi Novik
8. “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” by Catherynne M. Valente
9. “From the Clay of His Heart” by John Brown
10. “If Angels Fight” by Richard Bowes
11. “26 Monkeys and the Abyss” by Kij Johnson
12. “Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita” by Debra Doyle & James MacDonald
13. “Film-Makers of Mars” by Geoff Ryman
14. “Childrun” by Marc Laidlaw
15. “Queen of the Sunlit Shore” by Liz Williams
16. “Lady Witherspoon’s Solution” by James Morrow
17. “Dearest Cecily” by Kristine Dikeman
18. “Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta” by Randy McCharles
19. “Caverns of Mystery” by Kage Baker
20. “Skin Deep” by Richard Parks
21. “King Pelles the Sure” by Peter Beagle
22. “A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead” by Richard Harland
23. “Avast, Abaft!” by Howard Waldrop
24. “Gift from a Spring” by Delia Sherman
25. “The First Editions” by James Stoddard
26. “The Olverung” by Stephen Woodworth
27. “Daltharee” by Jeffrey Ford
28. “The Forest” by Kim Wilkins

The gateway drug that led me to D&D and Champions.

Randolph Carter writes the gaming blog Grinding to Valhalla. He regularly interviews SF & fantasy authors,with a slant toward how gaming—including roleplaying games, computer games, and board games—influenced the writers.  From reading Pandemonium, he somehow sensed (I’m shocked) that I may have played a few RPGs in my day.

We talked about my gaming history—all the way back to Chainmail, people!—the differences between GMing a game and writing a story, which demon I’d play if they made Pandemonium into an MMO, why I avoid playing those online games anyway, and passing the torch:

“Now my son, who is 13, runs his own games. I’m as proud of that as any ex-high school athlete whose son has learned to throw a 90 mph fastball.”

The interview is here.