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.

So here’s a dream come true: getting nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Pandemonium is in the list with these worthies:

The House of the Stag, Kage Baker (Tor)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin; Knopf)

I’ve heard good things about some of these upstarts. People tell me that Neil Gaiman guy is pretty good. And oh yeah, Jeff Ford? I still have my earlobes, Jeff! (See the Whoosh and Thunk below.)

–d

Editor Lou Anders just announced the pending publication of With Great Power, an anthology of superhero stories that will be appearing from Pocket Books in 2010–maybe in time for Comicon next May. As Lou says, these stories not parodies or pastiches, but prose takes on heroes and villains, by science fiction writers, comics writers, and writers who do both forms. Not only am I thrilled to have a story in the book, I’m thrilled I get to read it.

Some days, it’s good to be fanboy.

The TOC:

Introduction: The Golden Age by Lou Anders
“Cleansed and Set in Gold” by Matthew Sturges
“Where their Worm Dieth Not” by James Maxey
“Secret Identity” by Paul Cornell
“The Non-Event” by Mike Carey
“Avatar” by Mike Baron
“Message from the Bubblegum Factory” by Daryl Gregory
“Thug” by Gail Simone
“Vacuum Lad” by Stephen Baxter
“A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows” by Chris Roberson
“Head Cases” by Peter David & Kathleen David
“Downfall” by Joseph Mallozzi
“By My Works You Shall Know Me” by Mark Chadbourn
“Call Her Savage” by Marjorie M. Liu
“Tonight we fly” by Ian McDonald
“A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe (Villains Too)” by Bill Willingham

Heading to World Science Fiction Convention in a couple weeks. It’s in Montreal, where even the Klingons speak French. Ian — age 13, fanboy already — will be there with me, digging the scene. Wait til he finds out that SF authors never leave the bar.

If you happen to be coming, here’s my schedule for all the non-bar activities. (Mom, it’s where we do business. I swear it.)

I’m especially looking forward to the panel, “Are We Conscious?”  At least, my brain is looking forward to it. I wouldn’t know.

Friday 10am: When did SF Conquer the Mainstream?
Location:  P-518A
Daryl Gregory, Fred Lerner, Julie McGalliard, Kathy Morrow, John Joseph Adams, moderated by Julie McGalliard.
Once upon a time, very little science fiction was to be found that didn’t appear either as a novel of ideas with a dash of action (Wells, Rosny) or a juvenile yarn with a dash of ideas (Verne, E. E. Smith).  Today, science fiction runs the entire gamut from the pulpish to the mainstream (Chabon, McCarthy) and ideas may be served up wholesale in many other media.

Friday, 3:30pm: Are We Conscious and Does it Matter?
Location:  P-512CG
Daryl Gregory, James Morrow, Kathryn Cramer, Peter Watts, with Kathryn Cramer as moderator
What do we mean by consciousness? Has it become as much of a distraction as wondering whether there is a heaven? Would we act any differently if we didn’t think we were conscious? How important is the concept to fantasy and science fiction?

Friday, 8pm: Post-Modern, Post-Human: Writing Beyond the Human Race
Location:  P-513B
Daryl Gregory, Geoff Ryman, Geza A.G. Reilly, Nancy Kress, Geza Echs, and Geza A.G. Reill moderating.
What is there in post-modernism that invites exploration in post or trans-human stories? Is there a connection between a reaction to modernist technique and a movement away from the “just
human”?

Saturday, 1pm: Autograph signing

Got an email this morning from Martin Šust with a link to the cover for the Czech edition of Pandemonium, by the artist Jan Dolezalek, AKA HunteR. The book is now on sale from TRITON publishing. Click for the full size!

Pandemonium, the Czech edition

That, my friends, is the sound an award makes when it flies right past my head and  into the arms of someone else. I’ve gotten real familiar with it lately.

A month or so ago I experienced a flurry of self-esteem when Pandemonium suddenly was nominated for three, count ’em three, awards: The Locus Award for best first n0vel, the Shirley Jackson award for best dark fantasy or horror novel, and the Mythopoeic Award, for a book that was… mythopoeic.

The worse thing? I can’t even be mad. Not even a little. I mean, the nominations mean that some panel of people somewhere actually read the book. That is no small thing. Also, I lost to really good writers, including Paul Melko, a (former) friend. (Just kidding, Paul. I still still love you.  Just stop calling me to tell me how the Locus Award smells.) (Evidently, like buttered popcorn and the tears of children.)

And at Readercon a couple weeks ago, I was at the awards ceremony in person.   Here’s a picture Ellen Datlow took of me and my agent, Martha Millard, just before the ceremony started, when my heart was giddy with foolish hope:

See those arms behind my head? And that hand that looks like it’s going to grab my ear lobe? Jeff Ford owns those appendages. Jeff’s a writer’s writer, and The Shadow Year, also up for best novel, is one of his strongest books. You can see where this is going. Frankly, if for some reason they’d given the award to Pandemonium, I wouldn’t have been able to look Jeff in the eye. I’d still have taken the award though–I’m not crazy. Also, I would have run from the room with it. I like my lobes.

But the cool thing about the Jackson award is that they give all the nominees an engraved rock. You know, because Jackson wrote “The Lottery?” The one with the stoning? Yeah, that one you read in high school. Anyway, the rock is my new favorite thing. I’m going to throw it at my computer screen to ensure a good harvest of fiction this fall.

On to the Mythopoeic. I couldn’t be there, but I learned via the Interwebs that I was not the winner. I think they would have called or something if I’d won, right? The award went to Carol Berg, who — and this is getting annoying — is also extremely, extremely nice. What’s the deal? Is there no one for me to hate in this field? I’m sure there is. I’ll work up some hate for somebody at some point.

Anyway, it was a lovely run, and honestly, I’m just thrilled to be on the same ballot with those writers. Several people at Readercon told me they’d dug Pandemonium, and several more said they were just about to read it. (Hey, I’m not going to call them liars, but I say that all the time about books that will never get off my nightstand.)

And now, on to the next novel. While I was at Readercon, Del Rey sent me a box of the advanced reader copies of The Devil’s Alphabet. Copies are already winging their way across the country into the hands of reviewers. It’s a lovely time to be optimistic. And soon I’ll be able to share news about several new projects: a short story, a novella, and a new novel deal — as soon as I get those contracts signed.

I’m out of time, and I still haven’t talked about the great kids I met at the Penn State Young Writer’s Workshop. Okay, more later.

–d