Been real busy at Comic-Con. Too busy to post here. I worked from 5:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. yesterday writing and/or editing 20 stories for Blastr. But there were plenty of fun moments mixed in.

Like talking to Seth Rogen about the Lone Ranger.

And this. Danny Trejo, star of Machete and fearsome dude, handed me a beef taco last night. I ate it. I had to.

Would you have turned this guy down?

More later when I come out the other side of Comic-Con!

If you’ve been wanting to own a mess of my stories between two covers, but horror’s not your thing (so These Words Are Haunted isn’t for you) and zombies freak you out (so What Will Come After is waaaaaay out of your comfort zone), check out the cover to my next collection, What We Still Talk About, which will soon be published by Fantastic Books.

What We Still Talk About collects eleven of my favorite science-fiction (aliens, robots, time travelers and more) short stories from the past thirty years. As soon as ordering information becomes available, I’ll be back to let you know!

A week ago today, Kit Reed, Mike Allen, Adam Golaski, Barry Malzberg, Kathryn Cramer, and Peter Straub (who can all be seen in that order in the clips below) took part in the Readercon panel, “Down There in the Gutter: The Fiction of the Unpleasant,” and I was in the front row recording it with my Flip MinoHD.

Here’s how the panel was described in the program book:

In a recent online essay, Peter Straub argues that the only difference between the best horror and “literary” fiction is that the former acknowledges that life is dominated by unpleasantness, by “crappy, low-rent feeling states.” But in making this argument he mentions neither fear nor disgust (the staples of genre horror) but shame, loss, envy, panic, greed, insecurity, and loneliness. There’s no question that we are oddly hardwired to enjoy fear when we intellectually recognize that there is no actual threat. There is, however, much less of a case to be made for the vicarious enjoyment of the other emotional states that Straub lists, so it is harder to see them functioning in a story the same way fear does in genre horror. Is Straub here in fact defining a new literary subgenre entirely, one that just happens to include (but is hardly limited to) the best of horror? If so, can we trace the history of this secret genre and its influence on and interaction with more conventional literary fiction?

Here are the three best chunks from that 55-minute hour. (more…)

I was too busy tweeting and shooting video at Readercon to take my usual number of photos. What few I managed to snap can be seen over at flicker.

And now I find I’m far too busy and tired to write up an account of the weekend. So for now, let this picture of me with Junot Díaz stand in for all the fun I had.

And for those of you who wish you could have been there, you can be. Sort of. Here are four more excerpts from Readercon panels I attended. (more…)

And another thing you missed by not attending Readercon was me reading my short story “Tell Me Like You Done Before,” which can be found in my collection of zombie stories, What Will Come After.

If you’re up to finding out what happened to George and Lenny after John Steinbeck got through with them, check it out below!

(more…)

I’ve told you about something I call Edelman’s Schadenfreude Theory of Convention-Going, haven’t? If not, it goes like so—

It is insufficient for one to have fun at a convention. One’s friends must know about it and feel miserable for not being there with you! Therefore, all convention reporting must occur while the convention is still going on, so they can think, “Why aren’t I there?” So they can wonder, “Should I catch a plane right now to be there tomorrow and join in the fun?”

In that spirit, since words and picture aren’t enough to let you see what you’re missing, here’s VIDEO from a panel held at Readercon Thursday night. “I Know These People. Personally.” featured (from left to right in the clip below) John Langan, John Kessel, Elizabeth Hand (who moderated), Kit Reed, and Barry N. Malzberg.

And here’s how the panel was described in the program book:

“Writers,” Harlan Ellison famously claimed, “take tours in other people’s lives.” In his recipe for a two-month novel, Jeff VanderMeer advised, “Base at least some of your main characters on people you know and really like, BUT make sure they are not people you have spent a lot of time with.” The roman à clef aspects of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando or Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly may be clear enough, but what about that girl on the T with the really interesting face or that actor with the striking name? Using examples from their own work, our panelists explore the continuum between consciously employed technique and unavoidable side effect—the wages of the writer’s magpie mind.

Enjoy!

And remember—it’s only Saturday morning! There STILL time for you to get here yourself!

I am loving Readercon 2010, as I have loved every Readercon I’ve attended. And as you know, I’ve attended them all.

I’ve been enjoying myself SO much that I haven’t been snapping the pictures I should. In fact, this is one of the few I had taken, and it was done purely so I could email it from a restaurant to David Streitfeld, who wasn’t there this year, to chide him for missing out on a great dinner with friends.

So here I am with Paul Di Filippo and Liz Hand, as well as the unseen Deb Newton, John Clute, Liza Groen Trombi, Michael Dirda, Cecelia Holland, and Amelia Beamer.

I want to tell you more—but I think I’ll go have fun instead. (If you want to know what I’m up to, however, you can always follow me on Twitter.)

One month has ended, and a new one begins. If you’ve been following my life for any length of time, you already know what that means—it’s time to collect in one place the many tweets I made during the previous month about my active dream life.

And for those of you who’ve never seen one of my monthly dream collections before—yes, I really do dream that much.

I dreamt I attended a pre-Oscars bash because I was a designated acceptor, but when asked whose trophy I was there to pick up, I blanked. June 30, 2010 8:07:07 AM

I dreamt I was trying to explain Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Seinfeld reunion arc to Irene, using clips that don’t exist anywhere but my dreams. June 29, 2010 8:04:55 AM EDT

I dreamt I was once more working as a loan underwriter, and getting lectured for not logging in files using the correct numbering system. June 29, 2010 8:03:06 AM EDT

I dreamt pregnant Irene and I (in a completely different dream) fled the hospital in order to make sure the kid’s birthday would be 6/30. June 29, 2010 7:57:20 AM EDT

I dreamt I showed off a collection of mine that doesn’t exist in real life. Each story had an illo that looked like a comics splash page. June 29, 2010 7:53:49 AM EDT

I dreamt I was at a hospital with Irene, who was suddenly pregnant. I wasn’t surprised, just waiting for her labor to kick into high gear. June 29, 2010 7:48:59 AM EDT

I dreamt I attended a convention held in the food mart of a local gas station, packed tightly among the aisles of chips and candy bars. June 28, 2010 7:42:25 AM EDT

I dreamt I was luging down a mountain at dizzying speed. There was no snow, though — I zoomed through tall grass and over bare earth. June 28, 2010 7:38:04 AM EDT

I dreamt I was dreaming (sort of metafictional) about hanging out with my father at a party, eating pizza and drinking cherry-ginger soda. June 28, 2010 7:33:49 AM EDT

I dreamt I was a local trash collector being paid for the week with a crisp $40 bill. That oddity didn’t bother me. But the low pay did. June 27, 2010 7:56:59 AM EDT (more…)

That Readercon schedule I shared with you a few days ago? You can ignore it. Because the committee put its finishing touches on the program today, and I can now share with you the full list of what I’ll be doing the weekend of July 8-11.

Though I’ll be arriving at the con Thursday, my official participation doesn’t begin until the next day, with a very busy Friday:

Theodore Sturgeon Short Story Readings
Friday, 11:00 a.m., Room 730
Twenty-five years after Sturgeon’s death, Readercon is organizing a set of readings of some of his best stories by authors who love his work. The readings also celebrate the upcoming publication of the thirteenth and final volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon by North Atlantic Books, edited by Paul Williams. The stories being read demonstrate Sturgeon’s unusual range, comprising fantasy, sf, horror and comic pieces. They will be moderated by his daughter, Noël Sturgeon, who is the Trustee of the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. (I’ll be reading “It Was Nothing—Really!”)

Reading
Friday, 5:00 p.m., Room New Hampshire/Massachusetts
This is when I’ll be reading one of my own stories. What will I read? I haven’t figured that out yet. But it will be something I’ve never read at a Readercon before.

Why Aren’t I Repeating Myself? Why?
Friday, 8:00 p.m., Salon F
with David Anthony Durham, Patrick O’Leary, Paul Park, Jennifer Pelland, and Michael Swanwick
Some writers hone a single approach for their entire careers, while others are much likelier to produce work that is, by their own track record, sui generis. Why are these writers driven to explore new genres, styles, themes, and structures, when most of their peers need less variety? Is it simply a product of having wide-ranging interests? Or something deeper? Since we suspect that many such writers may find the phenomenon mysterious to themselves, we encourage them to trade notes about their specific motivations for writing works that took them to new stylistic, structural and thematic territory.

The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award: The History So Far
Friday, 9:00 p.m., Maine/Connecticut
with John Clute, Alan Elms, Barry Malzberg, and Gordon Van Gelder
One of the founders of the award [Alan Elms] is joined by past and present judges and all is revealed. How did Smith’s daughter and Elms and Benko come to found the Cordwainer Smith Foundation? Where did the idea for the Award come from? How have the judges been chosen, and how have they gone about choosing the winners? How did the Award come to Readercon? To be followed immediately by the presentation of this year’s award (across the corridor).

The Double-Driven Story
Sunday 2:00 p.m. Salon G
with Felix Gilman, John Kessel, Marilyn Mattie, and Graham Sleight
We divide stories into “character-driven” and “plot-driven,” but in fact many stories aspire to a perfect confluence of protagonist and plot. In these “double-driven” stories, there exists a mutual need and intimate fit between the two elements: the one adolescent whose precognitive powers could enable a planetary revolution, the one ruler whose extraordinary past qualifies him to outlaw torture. This notion is a useful critical tool: imagine how much better the Foundation series would have been if we’d had a genuine sense of Hari Seldon and the forces in his life that led him to invent psychohistory. We’ll look at double-driven stories and examine how understanding this structure can yield insight into why certain stories work as well as they do.

See you there!

When I heard earlier in the week that Cory Doctorow would be in Baltimore yesterday for a reading at Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffee House, I decided to head over. I don’t see Cory often enough, partially because it’s hard to grab extended time with anyone in the maelstrom of a convention, but also because his success as a writer and pontificator out in the “real world” has transformed him from Cory Doctorow into C!O!R!Y D!O!C!T!O!R!O!W. (Not that he thinks of himself like that.)

I arrived half an hour or so before his reading began, and though there were a couple of dozen people already there, Cory was alone at the counter, typing away on his laptop. Was the crowd too in awe of him to go over and speak, or were they just respectfully giving him space to get some work done? No idea, but it meant there was space for me to slip onto the stool next to him and catch up until it was time for him to perform.

He started out by reading a brief section from his new novel For the Win, a clip of which I’ve embedded below. I captured Cory with my new Flip camera, my first attempt to do anything more than experiment with it around the house. It wasn’t the best idea to record him in a dark bookstore with a sunny window behind him, because it caused a halo effect at times, but the place was packed, and by the time I realized how he occasionally appeared to be glowing, it was too late to move. But I think the video is worth sharing anyway.

And here’s the Q&A, chopped into YouTube-friendly chunks. (more…)