News & Blog

Yesterday was perfect weather for the Brooklyn Book Festival, warm in the sun and seasonably cool in the shade, making being out in the open all afternoon quite bearable. Alexa and I met up with some friends and took in the festival, always one of the literary highlights of the year.

As you can see, it was quite crowded. Too crowded to stumble across any of the other friends I knew would be at the festival, alas. Well, all except this guy.

Meet the Dim Sum Warrior, mascot to a company producing interactive e-books for learning Mandarin. The Dim Sum Warrior was, quite literally, everywhere we turned. It was impossible to avoid this delicious-looking, pork bun-headed mascot. I got hungrier and hungrier every time I caught a glimpse of him in the distance. Or, just as often, right behind me.

Here is the Dell Magazines booth. I think that’s Michael Swanwick holding up a copy of Asimov’s magazine!

Toadlily Press. I only took this picture because I wrote a story called “Toad Lily” for Cemetery Dance. It’s also in my new e-book collection Still Life: Nine Stories. Which you should totally buy right now!

My friends Chris Lynch, Ben Francisco, Dan Braum, and Jen Martino listening to one of the speakers.

It was a fun time at the Brooklyn Book Festival, as always. You can see more pictures here!

September 11 sneaked up on me this year, and as I look back it seems almost impossible that terrible day was over a decade ago now. The memories are still vivid — the burning buildings, the smoke and particulates in the air, the posters everywhere of the missing — but they’ve taken on the vividness of a remembered dream, the kind where you’re not sure you’re remembering the actual events or remembering your stories of them. A lot has happened to me in the intervening eleven years, both in terms of personal relationships and my career. I got married again. I published more and better. I signed a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press. Unfortunately, most of what has happened at Ground Zero itself in the intervening eleven years has been utterly mortifying bullshit, but even that seems to be progressing now, despite the continuation of the bullshit.

One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower, but that’s such a bullshit jingoistic name I can’t even bring myself to say it with a straight face) is almost complete, finally. Of course, in the eleven years that have passed we could have rebuilt the Twin Towers three times over, but that’s a moot point. Soon, One World Trade Center will be finished and that will be a long-missing balm to the wounds of 9/11.

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum still isn’t ready, not even eleven years on, because of the same kind of dick-swinging bullshit that delayed rebuilding One World Trade Center. However, an agreement was reached yesterday between the Mayor and the Governor to resume work, so who knows, maybe next year?

In other no-longer-quite-so-embarrassing news, the government has finally stopped with the bullshit, admitted it wasn’t safe to send workers into Ground Zero right after the attacks, and at long last added 58 different types of cancer to the list of covered illnesses for people who were exposed to toxins at the site. This, too, happened only yesterday.

There was a lot of unnecessary bullshit to wade through, a lot of stupid turf wars and “who’s going to pay for this?” but we seem to be moving forward, finally. Maybe soon I won’t have to be so mortified anymore.

In happier news, Osama Bin Laden is still dead.

Paul Tremblay and I share our own genre: Captivating Fiction!

One of the things I love about living in New York City is that it often feels like the literary capital of the world.  There’s always a book event going on somewhere, and since I’ve been in the business a while now, odds are I’ve met the author involved somewhere along the way. In the case of Victor LaValle, who read from his new novel The Devil In Silver last night at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, I’m proud to call him a personal friend, too. Here’s a picture of Victor wowing the crowd — and what a crowd it was! The place was packed! (Sorry about the fuzziness of the photos. My cellphone camera isn’t the best.)

Afterward, Victor and special guest star Kelly Link engaged in a very enjoyable discussion about horror, monsters, literature, and the imagination. I could have listened for another hour!

I went out for drinks with some folks afterward, and then came home to this, a present from my wife in celebration of my new book deal with St. Martin’s Press!

Best. Night. Ever.