Gwenda

(Sorry for the proliferation of hangovers this week, but I’m busy, busy, busy. I do plan a reading update and some other things for the weekend… she said, noncommittally.)

• Two posts in one week: Welcome to the apocalypse. Christopher announces his big Wild Cards news. UDPATE: Make that THREE posts; he’s just put up a PDF of the first halfish of his new story "Another Word for Map is Faith," which will be in the August issue of F&SF.
• Meanwhile, the lovely and stylish Erin Keane is having what looks to be an utterly fab release party tonight for her new poetry chapbook The One-Hit Wonders. I am so, so sad that we are lame and can’t go out on school nights to Louisville. If you live there, or close by, get thee to this party. And bring a mix tape/CD.
• There’s a brand new Temeraire (the Dragon) short story up on Naomi Novik’s web site, "Feast or Famine," set between His Majesty’s Dragon and Throne of Jade. Subscribe to the Temeraire newsletter while you’re there. Novik also confirmed on her blog that she’s just reached a deal with Del Ray for three more books, to come at the rate of one per year (what no one per month, indefinitely? wah! but sane…).
• Daniel Handler knows the pain of having a more famous alter ego/pseudonym. (Via Bookninja.)
• Transhumanists in Slate.

• DeNiro unplugged, er, interviewed. (Via Matt Cheney.)
• Roger Ebert wants you to go see Al Gore’s global warming movie. He’s convinced me.
• Everything you wanted to know about 6-6-06.
• Cartoon Network bringing the reruns of PeeWee’s Playhouse.
• Bring out your (best) dead (face) for Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek movie.
• Margo Lanagan’s guest blogging at Inside a Dog.
• Teen repeller.

• Stop by supercouple Alan DeNiro and Kristin Livdahl‘s new blog on all things pet-related, 1 Tough Puppy, where the costs of pet ownership are currently under discussion.
• Evil Editor. (Via Holly Black.)
• New horror column debuts in the NYT (haven’t had a chance to read this yet). Some related commentary at Contemporary Nomad by John Nadler.
• A new edition of Scott Esposito’s The Quarterly Conversation is out.
• Russian kittens. (Via Literaticat.)
• I was actually pretty surprised at the breadth of blog reaction to the top 25 novels included in the NYT round-up of same.
• Jeff VanderMeer posts some excellent thoughts on the importance of having/giving yourself permission to fail (jumping off Kelly’s risky proposal): I would have said to those high school students: Whatever you do from now on, don’t feel that it has to always be successful. To be successful, to be as good as you can possibly be in whatever field you choose, you need to have permission to fail.
• Hal Duncan on cultural appropriation: Don’t get me wrong; writing the Other has it’s own set of issues. I just can’t see what it has to do with "cultural appropriation". A fictive representation of a culture is not that culture itself. Having a painting which contains an image of a "dreamcatcher" on your wall is not the same as hanging some New Age trinket of string and feathers, made by and for white middle-class hippies, over your bed. Writing a 5-page scene in a novel which portrays a voudon ritual is not the same thing as setting yourself up as a practicing "babaloa" in Bognor Regis. Representation is not appropriation. The map is not the territory. And there’s lots more where that came from. Also, "Dionysus Knows No Nations" would make a great T-shirt.
• MP3s of Tolkien singing and reading from TLOTR. (Via Need Coffee.)
• Book Nerd with her long-promised post on the future of bookselling.
• Finally, I’d be less than delighted if my own neighborhood had been invaded by Paris Hilton. But Caitlin shouting, "I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees!" at Paris and Nicole makes me pretty freaking happy. Just on general principle.

• Jenny Davidson posts news of great joy, that her book Dynamite No. 1 will be published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2008, with a sequel to follow. Honestly, I can’t WAIT to read these.
• Tim Pratt posts his own fantabulous news of great joy, a two book deal with Bantam Spectra (& the kick-ass Juliet Ulman to edit) kicking off a new series. Congratulations!
• Remember the principal in The Breakfast Club (of course you do)? Jeff Bryant has uncovered an interesting connection between the actor who played him and Jack Kerouac.
• Mr. McLaren has all the hot Canadian comics news.
• Matt Cheney sexes things up.
• The brilliant Liza Palmer on the X-Men movie and more important matters of art and commerce (a must-read post, promise). A snippet: It’s funny – I know which company my book, and genre, would be in. I know that I would be chilling in some hypothetical, yet far less money making, room with X-Men and all those other more commercial works – the Wes Andersons and the Charlie Kaufmans would think me too fluffy for their room – which I imagine looks like the Gryffindor Common Room.
• Army report on ESP in pets. (Via #1HS.)
• Excellent advice from Le Lioness Link about taking risks in your writing, not just being competent, over at Charles Coleman Finley’s blog.
• Pinky points out the beauty in JT Leroy’s blog still clinging to life.
• Battlestar Gallactica next season stuff.
• Mysterious red rainstorms. (Via Caitlin.)
• High-larious writing prompt-related, 1,000-words-or-less short story competition at McSweeney’s.
• Kids interview their favorite writers at the Guardian. The results: you will die from cute. Plus, we all love the readery kids best.