Gwenda, Author at Gwenda Bond

The Best News Ever Hits the Street

2 Comments / Books / By Gwenda / October 16, 2006

Stolen shamelessly from Sarah, who thinks it sounds awesome:

David J. Schwartz’s SUPERPOWERS, dubbed "The Incredibles" meets THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, in which after a night of heavy drinking, five friends wake up to discover they have superhuman abilities, but lacking super-villains they find that the ramifications of their new powers are more complicated than they anticipated, to Jason Pinter at Three Rivers Press, by Shana Cohen at the Stuart Krichevsky Agency (NA).

I have no doubt it will be. Yay, Dave! (And Shana!)

Here’s a link to his story The Lethe Man, which is one of my favorite stories that we’ve ever published in Say… And his bibliography has links to more stories online.

Again with the YAY!

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Literary Rats

LitBlog Co-Op / By Gwenda / October 16, 2006

Over at the LitBlog Co-Op Ed talks about why he nominated the latest Read This! selection: Sam Savage’s Firmin. (This is a charming, thoughtful little book* that was pretty much neck and neck for my affections with nominee Manbug, which Matt Cheney will post about on Wednesday, I believe.) And it comes from the truly awesome Coffeehouse Press. So, check it out.

Something else about this round’s books? There’s only three, as there will be in every round from now on, and they’re all short, which may never happen again.

*I first suspected I’d like it when I noticed Karen Joy Fowler blurbed it. I make it a habit never to quibble with Karen’s taste.

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Sunday Hangovers

Hangovers / By Gwenda / October 15, 2006

The excellent Powers can be found online now (at least Who Killed Retro Girl? can). (Via Leila at Bookshelves of Doom.)
Erin went to see The Science of Sleep and has some thoughts about how it’s a much smaller film than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (Attention, Mr. B: Whimsy alert.)
Slate’s fall fiction issue.
William Gibson’s new novel is done and he’s as happy as a dancing midget.
Theresa Duncan points out that Marina Warner has a new book coming out.
Max handily rounds up the National Book Award noms, with links to excerpts where available.
Terri Windling on the haunting, breathtaking art of Odilon Redon.
Traveling to the third tallest waterfall in the world, "discovered" a few years ago in Peru.
Another reason war is bad.
Jeff Ford floats a genius idea: taking the writers out of the convention and the convention to a sleazy motel where everyone drinks and then: The next day, you’re hung over and you wake up and look around you at the grim surroundings and it makes you feel good about going home and writing. Count us in.
The fabulous Jenny D on Paul Collins on CBGB and why life is sometimes as good as you’d hoped when you were 10. Gloating deserved.
The Not Your Mother’s Bookclub interviews–with links all in one place.
Myla Goldberg likes Chris Adrian’s excellent-sounding The Children’s Hospital: Magic realism has undergone a change since Gabriel García Márquez first graced his novels with magic carpets and melancholy ghosts. The new generation of magic realists, suckled on comic books and science fiction, features the fantastical rather than diverting it to a story’s margins. Chris Adrian’s excellent first novel, “Gob’s Grief,” placed him among the top ranks of these writers. His second, “The Children’s Hospital,” confirms that he is possessed of the imagination, ambition and deep-veined intellect that will allow this evolving literary movement to deliver on its possibilities. You guys feel free to have fun parsing and debating that one; I’m too tired, but I’ll watch.
And an oddish review of a new Johnny Cash biography, which contains this gem: It involves a Texas hobo who wore a ragged blue bandanna around his neck, like the ghost of Jimmie Rodgers. Occasionally this mysterious codger, named Jim George (or so he said), would appear at the Cash homestead, eager to swap yarns for a hot meal. Because this drifter “smelled like a barnyard,” as Cash later explained, the singer’s mother would coax Jim George to wash up. But even in the bath, he wouldn’t take off his bandanna. When teased about this, the vagabond turned somber. “I don’t want you to see the rope burns,” he said. “I was hanged with some of the James Gang in 1882.”

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One Song: “Human Behavior”

5 Comments / Musical / By Gwenda / October 13, 2006

"Human Behavior," The Decemberists – So, yeah, I’m basically trying to annoy you with this one. This bangy little track combines two things which drive some people beyond the crazy and which are like champagne and dark chocolate for the rest of us: Bjork + The Decemberists. Enjoy. Or feel angry. Your choice.

Download thedecemberistshumanbehavior.mp3

p.s. Louis-villains, don’t forget the reading. Come out, come out, come out! Happy Friday the 13th, everybody. Good weekend.

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Soundtracks, Lives, On Random

1 Comment / Memes Upon Memes / By Gwenda / October 12, 2006

Because I’m not in the mood to do a real post, a long musical-type thing stolen from E Bear.

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

The results behind the cut…

p.s. Since I just started putting stuff in iTunes a couple of months ago, there’s gonna be a lot of recent stuff. I’m still being honest. Promise! (Our huge music library from our converting CDs digital is on the external hard drive and I haven’t moved any of it over yet.) But this is all stuff I’ve been listening to lately.

…

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Oh, Black Friday the 13th

Books / By Gwenda / October 12, 2006

Tomorrow, the final installment of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books hits the streets. The Washington Post asked 13 fans how they think it will end. Half think happy ending, half think dark as night. The results are charming:

"The series will end with Mr. Snicket writing two endings to the book. One of the endings will be happy, and one of the endings will be sad. Mr. Snicket will say something like, ‘If you like happy endings, read the next chapter, and if you like sad endings, read the chapter after the happy ending.’ " — Henry Brandmark, 12, Vienna

"Olaf and the orphans travel to a remote island and miraculously find the orphans’ parents. The Count tricks them into letting him have their money in exchange for their children. But then he kills the parents anyway and escapes in a boat, leaving the murder weapons behind. Soon some fishermen arrive, see the dramatic scene and assume that the orphans killed their parents. The children are sent to jail and live miserably ever after." — Alexander Kopenhaver, 12, Arlington

The sweet thing is how most everyone wants some sort of happy ending. Oh, woe, that is so not what these books are about–but a kid can dream.

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NBA Smackdown!

1 Comment / Books / By Gwenda / October 11, 2006

National Book Award nominations are out, and I’m so so so happy to report that M.T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing is among the Young People’s Lit nods. Yay!

There’s lots of other cool kid favorites or, at least, Danielewski, Spiotta and Powers.

Complete list here.

(Thanks, Shana!)

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File Under, Research I Can’t Use

Write Talk / By Gwenda / October 11, 2006

Awhile back I posted a gross yet interesting thing from my Aztec Dance Tunes’ research that I couldn’t use. Here’s another remarkable tidbit of unusableness from an interview with Christopher Faraone about Ancient Greek love magic:

The other thing that struck me about these spells is that they are used by men to inflict great pain and suffering on women, but the men want the pain and suffering to stop when the women arrive at their door. Thus a common formula reads something like this: "Burn, whip, torture the heart, the liver, the body of Ms. X, until she leaps from her home and comes to me, Mr. Y." The assumption of the users of these spells is that these women are not going to make love to them or even look their way unless some supernatural torture is applied to them to force them to come. One of the ideas that I explore in my book is that you have the same kind of assumption and the same application of force in a certain type of marriage in the Greek world called bridal theft, or abduction marriage, a form of kidnap or elopement that was still practiced in Greece and the Balkans even in the 1950s. In more traditional places where a man was interested in a woman and there’s no way for them to get together–maybe she’s from a higher socioeconomic bracket–he might get a bunch of his buddies together and kidnap her. In some cases, however, he might do this with the tacit agreement of her parents, who might be glad to forgo the expense of a wedding or a dowry. There is not enough evidence for me to actually prove this, but I suspect that erotic spells were a kind of supernatural form of abduction marriage. That’s the sociological frame, but when you’re working in the ancient world there are no certainties because we don’t have a lot of good evidence even for this kind of marriage.

Of course, maybe I’ll use some of it in the next one… in which I will definitely be modeling the heroine’s father sorta, kinda on Professor Faraone himself. An idea of great joy.

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Y’all Come Out

4 Comments / Books / By Gwenda / October 11, 2006

Christopher will be reading in Louisville this Friday night at the fabulous InKY series–probably from an awesomely spooky, brand-new story "The League of Last Girls," which will appear in the forthcoming Jason Sizemore-edited Aegri Somnia anthology. (Pre-order now.) The flier’s so fabulous, I’m just inserting it below for the details.

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Wednesday Hangovers

1 Comment / Hangovers / By Gwenda / October 11, 2006

The art of longhand penmanship is dying. Somehow, I feel we should hold Margaret Atwood responsible.
And the WaPo Magazine Reader column looks at the post-Plimpton Paris Review. The verdict? It’s better than ever.
Naomi Novik looks so cute in the photo accompanying this NYT piece about her Jacksonian good fortune with the Temeraire books. (Could have done without the idiotic 40-Year-Old Virgin reference though: puh-leeze!)
The Boston Globe’s New Wave Fabulist story has yielded lots of comments, and now comes my favorite definition of NWF ever from George at Bookninja: That’s when you get your hair spiked so high and so shiny with gel that people walking past you in the street can’t help but grip their ears and scream “FABULOUS!”
The FABULOUS Bennett Madison gives an update on the future of Lulu Dark and his next novel, The Blonde of the Joke, due out in 2008. There’s excerpty goodness.
Whoopsie. When posting is too aggressive: a Booker story. Possibly apocryphal?
Midori Snyder on the Salon Fantastique anthology.
Matt Cheney’s Q&A about his story "Blood" at One Story.
William Gibson runs Jack Womack’s genius (as usual!) comments on the (possible) title of his new novel Spook Country.

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