I’m flying out to Calgary today for the World Fantasy Convention.
On Friday @ 12PM, there will be a reading for The Living Dead, featuring George R. R. Martin, Catherine Cheek, Darrell Schweitzer, Nina Kirki Hoffman, and Nancy Kilpatrick.
On Saturday @ 1PM, I’ll be on the panel “What A Good Anthology Does & Why It Matters",” along with Gary A. Braunbeck and Darrell Schweitzer.
Tonight, I’m going to be appearing at Freebird Books in Brooklyn to talk with the store’s post-apocalyptic book club. We’ll be focusing the discussion on Wastelands, and these three stories in particular:
The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi
Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler
The End of the World as We Know It by Dale Bailey
The event starts at 7:30 pm. The film 28 Days Later will be shown afterwards at nearby Sugar Lounge bar and restaurant.
Freebird Books
123 Columbia Street (between Kane and Degraw streets)
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718-643-8484
If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop by!
One of publishing’s top trade journals, Library Journal, has reviewed The Living Dead, giving it a starred review, which indicates a book of exceptional merit: “Editor Adams does a remarkable job of collecting a sampling of variations on this theme. … Highly recommended for all horror fiction collections.
Also, the Sacramento Book Review reviews The Living Dead: “A collection of short zombie stories from some of the greatest horror writers of all time.” [PDF]
As does Realms of Fantasy: “It’s hard to find fault in almost five hundred pages of zombie stories.” [not online]
I’ll be attending this year’s Zombie Fest next weekend (Oct. 25-26), the annual celebration of all things zombie. It’s held in Monroeville, PA, at the actual mall where George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was filmed and takes place.
From the website:
- A two-day zombie-themed convention at the Monroeville Mall, site of the Romero zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, featuring vendor exhibits, film screenings, author discussion panels, live bands, games and other fun activities for zombie fans. And in 2008, it’s FREE admission!
- The Zombie Masquerade Ball is the monster party of the century! Eat, drink, dance, and rub elbows with the upper crust undead! Prizes awarded for best overall costume and best zombie costume. The Ball also includes live entertainment and a silent auction (last year’s auction raised $1,000 for breast cancer research!). The Ball is a 21 and over event and there will be a separate admission fee.
- On Sunday morning, zombies, young and old, will gather at the Mall, shambling and moaning for brains while bearing food donations for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Led by Professor Emcee Square, the horde of zombies slowly made their way from one end of the mall to the other. In 2007, the total number of zombies who signed in was 1,028, establishing a new Guinness World Record™, and more than half a ton of food was collected. The walk was honored with a Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Fan Event of 2007. In 2008, the Monroeville Mall Zombie Walk will be the hub of World Zombie Day™, with walks being held in more than 40 cities worldwide benefiting local food banks.
The blogosphere is a wild and sometimes chaotic place, but in that vast sea of voices there are some people saying things that need to be heard. And since blogging is just a form of writing, there are naturally several blogs that dispense valuable writing advice.
The benefits of interacting with the blogosphere can be great. Not only can you pick up free writing advice from professional writers who speak from personal experience, but you can also become part of your favorite writing community by reading the posts, then reacting to them either by posting comments or writing blog posts of your own.
Diving headfirst into the blogosphere is not without perils, however. If you have the tendency to spout off without really thinking through what you’re saying, you can quickly develop a bad reputation as a troublemaker, or a troll as such folks are known online. Reading a lot of blogs can also be a huge time-waster–time that might be better spent actually writing–so it’s important to spend your blog-reading time wisely. Below is a list of some of the best blogs about writing and/or publishing, written by writers and other publishing professionals.
The Short Review on Wastelands: “This could have been dreary. … [But] there’s nothing dreary in this book. The stories here are real, juicy, solid stories instead of morality lessons in disguise, and not two of them are alike.”
SF Scope covers the Oct. 7 “Readings of The Living Dead” event presented by the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series: “At a time when the scariest stories are found on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and on the very evening of a Presidential debate (on top of which, I’d just been to the dentist and told that I need a root canal), zombies have a lot of fierce (dare I say stiff—get it? "Stiff", dead body?) competition to terrify us, but Kirtley and Langan successfully managed to affect us, haunt us, creep us out, disgust us, and even raise the odd hollow chuckle.”
Mania.com also reviews The Living Dead, giving it an “A” grade and calling it “One of the best zombie anthologies published in recent years.”
Last weekend, I appeared alongside David Barr Kirtley on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York to discuss The Living Dead and Seeds of Change. Dave came along and read his story from The Living Dead, "The Skull-Faced Boy."
Here’s me, relaxing in the studio as Dave reads his story:
And here’s Dave reading:
You can listen to the whole show by streaming it from the WBAI’s website, or you can download the following MP3s. Dave edited down the show into an abridged “good parts” edition for your listening pleasure:
Part 1 – Discussion
Humorous zombies?, Joe Hill, Owen’s King’s Who Can Save Us Now?, Seeds of Change, The Living Dead cover art
Part 2 – Reading
"The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley, read by the author
Part 3 – Callers
Andy Duncan, Zora Neale Hurston, George Romero, From Dusk Til Dawn, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead
There are a couple new reviews of The Living Dead to share:
USA Today’s Pop Candy blog: “a cool new anthology.”
BookLoons: “A fascinating collection which proves to the reader that no zombie story is the same and shows what amazing settings and situations authors can create to involve zombies.”
Subterranean Online: “The Living Dead features some great seminal tales [and] several lesser-known stories that definitely deserve more attention.”
Bookgasm: “Contains its fair share of pleasant surprises. … Filled with tales that take the zombie in wildly different directions.”
Textual Frigate blog: “There was a lot of variety in this book. … There really is something here for any type of zombie fan.”
I just wanted to post a quick note to let the writers who read this blog know that over at F&SF we’ve added a new editorial type to the team: Lisa Rogers. She’s just started working with us, but she has several years of editing experience. She went through some slush on Wednesday, so some of you will be seeing rejections from her. I really just wanted to point this out to let everyone know that she has not replaced me—we’ll just be working along side one another.
