Irene and I moved to our current home in June 2004 and have been planting spring bulbs each fall ever since. Two years ago, we decided that we should celebrate the end of winter with a Thank God It’s Spring Daffodil Party, and now pack the house and garden with friends each April on the first or second Saturday. This year we ate, drank, and made merry from noon until 9:00 p.m.

There’s a bell curve to the rise and fall of the two-month daffodil season, but I always count the blooms the afternoon of the party to see how much progress we’ve made from year to year due to both new bulb planting and intense fertilization.

At our April 8, 2006 party, we had 635 daffodils in bloom.

On April 14, 2007, we had 939 daffodils in bloom.

Yesterday, we had an amazing—

—2,568 blooms! These were two of them, and here are others.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Ford’s novel The Shadow Year, and immediately recommended it for both a Stoker and a Nebula Award. Shortly, I’ll recommend it for a World Fantasy Award as well. But now, I’m recommending it to you.

The Shadow Year is an expansion of Ford’s novella “Botch Town,” which appeared for the first time in his collection The Empire of Ice Cream and went on to win the World Fantasy Award. “Botch Town” was about kids in the ’60s who build a replica of their town in the basement and the parallels that then crop up between that fantasy world and the real world. I loved it. It had me feeling nostalgic for a place I’d never been.

I sensed there was more to tell, and thought that the story was worthy of being expanded to novel length even before I’d learned that Jeff was considering doing so. But at the same time, I was afraid, because “Botch Town” was so perfect, and I didn’t want to see the novel … well … botched.

But I should never have doubted the miraculous Jeffrey Ford, because the novel is as amazing as the novella. I can see no seams from its expansion, no flaws in its construction, no spots at which additional information was clumsily jammed in. I imagine that someday someone will do a doctoral thesis comparing the two, but that’s not for the likes of me. I just plan on enjoying them again and again. And you should, too.

The Shadow Year was published last month by William Morrow.

Here’s another example of how Paul Di Filippo bedeviled the Post Office year after year.

I have no idea who these smiling, finger-snapping guys are—Used car salesmen? Shriners? Madison Avenue ad men?—but they managed to march to my old address in Maryland without delay.

Even though it’s long past Easter by the calendar, it’s always Easter on our West Virginia island, as you can see by the daffodil that just popped by our moai. Though I’ve visited all seven continents, making it to Easter Island is one of those dreams I’ve yet to fulfill, and so I set up a pretend piece of that faraway land about 400 feet out back from the house, just before you get near the area with the bamboo and the Buddha.

As you can see here, the daffodils continue to explode. We had 1,494 in bloom yesterday, he admitted sheepishly. (As I’ve said, I do count them every few days, because I’m perversely interested in the bell curve of the blooming season.)

Comic-book writer Jim Ottaviani, creator of science-related comics such as Two-Fisted Science: Stories About Scientists, posted this flow chart yesterday to shed some light on his working methods.

I’m out of the comic-book loop for the most part these days, so I’ve got to sheepishly admit that until discovering his post, I’d never heard of Ottaviani. But since I’m a major fan of Richard Feynman—I long ago took up the title of Feynman’s autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think? as a mantra—I’ll have to keep an eye out for Ottaviani’s upcoming graphic novel about the physicist.

It seems to me, though, that the road map laid out in these squiggles, arrows, and boxes speaks to the journey of non-comics writers as well, and so I decided that it was worth sharing here.

The only thing missing from the chart seems to be the part where we spend time blogging about what we should have been doing instead of actually doing it!

John Joseph Adams has just posted the complete table of contents for his upcoming zombie anthology The Living Dead, of which my Stoker-nominated tale “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” will be a part.

I won’t repost the entire TOC here, but I do want to point out how proud I am to be collected between the covers with such strong stories as Doug Winter’s “Less than Zombie,” Dan Simmons’ “This Year’s Class Picture,” and Adam-Troy Castro’s “Dead Like Me.” Just reading those titles brings back powerful memories from when I experienced each of them for the first time. If you haven’t read them yet, it will certainly be worth picking up the book for that trio alone. But since the book will feature 34 stories and more than 230,000 words, you won’t want to stop there.

The Living Dead won’t be out until September, but since it’s already listed on the Night Shades Books Web site, why not order it now?

With George Clooney’s film Leatherheads opening this weekend, taking us back to football of the 1920s, it seems like a good time to return to the time machine here as well.

As I’ve shared before, I love digging through century-old magazines, and one of my favorite essays from that period is this one by Elbert Hubbard, which was printed in the March 1903 issue of The Cosmopolitan, a magazine we’ve visited here before.

If you attack football in this country today, you might as well be attacking Mom and apple pie, but things were obviously different 105 years ago, as reflected in “A Gladiatorial Renaissance,” which was published in the magazine’s “Men, Women and Events” section.

Check out the excerpt below to learn just how many men were killed playing football in 1902, and how many driven mad. (more…)

While in Utah a week ago, I stole a few hours from the World Horror Convention to ride the light rail system so that I could at least pretend that I’d seen some of Salt Lake City. (Often, all I ever see of a city while attending these conventions is the airport, the interior of the hotel, and the view from the cab while shuttling between the two.) So I rode the University Line and saw the recently refurbished state capitol, the interior of the Mormon Tabernacle, and many other local sites.

I also jumped off to visit the main branch of the public library, but what I found more interesting than the architecturally intriguing library building was this book-themed public sculpture across the street and between the tracks at the Library Station.

Above are the metal stacks of books, which were covered in light snow that day. Some of those stacks were were short enough that you could sit on them while waiting for the next train. (more…)

My first original short story of 2008, “Petrified,” was published last weekend in Desolate Souls, the souvenir program book for this year’s World Horror Convention.

Since the convention took place in Utah, the editors were looking for desert-themed horror stories, so I set mine in Petrified Forest National Park. The book includes a mix of original and reprint stories, with a list of contributors that includes F. Paul Wilson, Orson Scott Card, Dennis Etchison, Yvonne Navarro, Linda Addison, and others.

As I was flying home from Salt Lake City, however, I discovered that due to a publishing glitch, the story didn’t appear entirely as I’d intended it. Because of that, I’d rather “Petrified” not be judged by how it appeared in Desolate Souls.

So if there’s anyone out there who would like to receive a PDF of the story as it was meant to appear, please e-mail me and I’ll send one along.

Unless there’s a shake-up to my publishing schedule, my next story to come out will be “A Very Private Tour of a Very Public Museum” in the Worldcon 2008 Special Issue of Postscripts magazine.

I’ve always been fascinated by the philosophical concept of mono no aware, which, though literally translated as “a sensitivity to things,” I’ve always interpeted personally (and perhaps wrongly) to mean the idea that things are beautiful not just in spite of the fact that they are ephemeral, but because of it. That one of the qualities that makes the things we love beautiful is because they are dying and only here for a moment.

I was reminded of this while reading an article in the New York Times titled “Japanese Poetry Persists in Korea, Despite Disapproval,” which is about older Koreans who are scorned in their home country because they have a passion for writing haiku.

Japanese poet Reiko Yamaguchi is quoted as she explains one of the reasons for this disdain:

“Japanese and Koreans have different ways of perceiving nature,” she said. “Japanese tend to find maximum beauty when they see cherry flowers falling. Koreans’ hearts exult when the flowers are in full bloom.”

Something to think about when considering literary translation. Some things, while they are capable of being translated literally, might still not be able to be made to speak to everyone.

This might also explain one the the reasons I found Japan to connect with me so deeply during my visit last summer, and why I ache to return. I’ve always found the fact that things fade to be one of the reasons for their beauty, and rather than mourning, instead feel an aching poignancy.

I guess I must be Japanese.