Up until last week, I don’t think I’d seen more than two or three praying mantises in my life, and each time I felt privileged, sort of the way I feel when I see a rainbow. Though I’ve spotted rainbows far more frequently. (Yes, even double rainbows, of which I’ve seen a few.) But last week, I saw two praying mantises just a foot or two away from each other.

I was inside working, Irene was outside, and the phone rang. Which had me thinking … uh, oh. Irene spotted a snake. But she hadn’t. She spotted these guys.

First up—the male. (Or so I assume. You tell me.)

Next—the female. (Or so I again assume.) (more…)

I’ve been so busy preparing for, reporting on, and recovering from Comic-Con that I’ve had no time to share my thoughts about it here, so why not let a picture stand in for those thousand words?

One afternoon, as I was racing from one end of the humongous exhibit hall to the other, I spotted a dealer selling the original art for the cover to an issue of Doorway to Nightmare I’d written long, long ago. (Make that long, long, long ago.) So I stopped my power walking and asked, “How much do you want for the Kaluta?”

The dealer’s answer? “Thirty.”

You do realize I was meant to add three zeroes after that number, right? There was of course no way I could afford to own the drawing, but I figured I should at least get a picture with it.

And so:

Here’s the cover as it was originally published.

Time flies. Money flies, too.

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…)

While at my favorite convention in 2010, I read 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 out my reading below, which is embedded in three parts!

(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.)