So many fine people came to our NYRSF reading tonight - friends old & new, and even some strangers! It was a full house, which was terrifically gratifying and not a little moving. Our 20th Anniv Curator, Claire Wolfe Smith, gave a very moving opening talk about the history of NYRSF, complete with anecdotes you had to have been around 20 yrs ago to fully appreciate! Which, of course, we were. She also read the list of those whose readings she'd curated back then, including Delany, Emshwiller, Gaiman, Palwick ,Haldeman, Dozois, and many many more. A real Honors List. Many of these, our Elders, have had serious health scares recently; it made me happy to realize that, with the exception of Tom Disch, who took his own life last year, they are all still with us, bless them.

Delia read "How the Pooka Came to New York," which will appear in Ellen Datlow's NAKED CITIES next year (in a slightly longer version - we edited it down to be under 30 minutes); she read Liam's POV, and I read the Pooka's. Then I read "The Man with the Knives" (which will go out on submission as soon as I figure out where the Glory and the Money are next). Instead of dividing it evenly between POV's (mad Alec's & Sofia's), I went with my gut and simply assigned certain Sofia bits to Delia - including dialogue. It was a bit like music. I think it worked well. My only regret is that we read right up to the time we needed to vacate the building - so I didnt' get the chance to get everyone's reactions, field questions, etc. I invite you to do that here, if you like.

7 pm (doors open at 6:30 - there will be cider, cheese & crackers!). NYRSF. Still agonizing over reading choices. There will be books for sale, and we will sign them.

At last, it can be told!!!

deliasherman & I will be the (no longer)-SuperSecret Guests at this year's Georgia Filk Convention in Atlanta, Jan. 8-10, 2010!

Are you going? Have you been? What's it like?

"I know you're outer-directed, honey, but get a grip," says Delia. "Now, I have a house to clean."

Thus, this morning, as I obsessed (again) over what I would read next Tuesday at our big 20th Anniversary NYRSF Reading at South Street Seaport (hosted by old friend Claire Wolf Smith, whose LJ Identity I will leave to her to reveal in these pages as she chooses). Should I do the joint reading of The Man with the Knives, with Delia reading Sophia's p.o.v. sections, and me doing Alec's interior monologues? We read through it on Sunday, and it's awfully dense language & text (plus, her part is longer than mine! And I get all the difficult poetryish bits). I haven't even sold it yet (it's out right now with an Exclusive anthology), so it won't be appearing for months, if not years. Is this a horrible tease? Or a Rare Treat? If I promise to do an unpublished Riverside story, but I chicken out at the last minute, will you be content with "The Duke of Riverside" instead (sold to Ellen Datlow's CITIES for 2010), even if I can't read the whole thing 'cause it's too long? (Or can I take 45 minutes to read 1 story?) Or would you rather hear something you've already read? I think that it was ca. 20 yrs ago (agh!!) that I first read "The Swordsman whose Name was Not Death" at NYRSF - Jim Freund says he still has the tape - would it be fun to hear that now?

My divine chiropractor, George Russell, says Go For It - he is an astute reader with a prodigious memory who, as he worked the knots out of my legs, suggested various scenes from TPOTS which, in fact, are the very ones I usually read aloud to audiences (he also remarked, "I think Marcus is transexual" - well, whatever that term is for someone who's not committed either way). I adore George. If you're a writer in NYC whose body hurts (Don't all jump up & down at once!), call him. And/or try this Ergociser program maryrobinette tweeted me about.

This Friday night at 9:30, I'm introducing a film at the Rubin Museum of Art's pretty amazing Cabaret Cinema film series inspired by their current exhibit, Carl Jung's Red Book.

Perhaps this public forum is not the place to announce that I know absolutely nothing about Dreyer or German Expressionist Cinema - or even much about Carl Jung . . . I can vamp on Vampires some, but for now I'm, ah, looking for inspiration, insight, and a few good factoids (besides those easily found on Wiki). Anyone?

Here is a very cool flyer about the event.

If you're around, you should come! There's a bar, and free gallery admission, and a scary movie - and me!

As you may know, I'm a co-founder, currently serving as President, of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the support, and promotion of interstitial art: literature, music, visual and performance art found in between categories and genres – art that crosses borders.

We have just published our second anthology of original writing, Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman (deliasherman) & Christopher Barzak, and we're celebrating with a multi-city chain of readings, signings, and musical collaborations.

TOMORROW (Friday) night we kick off the East Coast jam! I hope you can join me there: ( NEW YORK CITY )

This is Brian's baby: He enthralled KGB audience a few months back with a a words/music mix, and I can't wait to see what he does with the potent combo of all those Interfictions writers + his band. Here's a sample of some of Brian & band's past improv readings.

It really is art without borders.

Not in NYC? No fretting: Brian & a bunch of writers & musician pals are doing another show in Boston next Friday, Nov. 13th at Lily Pad in Cambridge!

This morning was the first rehearsal for the new production of my Klezmer Nutcracker. I blush to say I've been Tweeting it, including a rehearsal photo, over at:
http://twitter.com/EllenKushner

I should say more here, but I have to go finish packing for World Fantasy Con in San Jose & SF/CA (you'll find my schedule in an earlier post), and then do my best to get to tonight's Interstitial Arts Salon run by the mad bad ktempest, who also has to pack for WFC but somehow manages to do it all, not excluding a wonderful page previewing the Auction. Some people.

Here's where deliasherman & I will be during World Fantasy Con in San Jose next weekend:( EK/DS WFC Schedule )

. . . and then we go to San Francisco for a Group Author Signing at Borderlands Books on Monday night Nov. 2 - do come and make us feel loved! - followed the next day by what promises to be a memorable INTERFICTIONS reading/signing on the official pub day of IF2 (!!): Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, also at Borderlands, featuring Amelia Beamer, Delia Sherman, Anna Tambour, and Ray Vukcevich.

(in addition to his being one of the great writers of our time, that is) Because he is wise, and erudite, and sometimes extremely silly. I enjoyed the chance to talk some - never enough - to Gene Wolfe & his wife Rosemary at Readercon. They drove there from Chicago in the company of young writer C.S.E. Cooney, who, at the con, made sure Rosemary wheelchair got where it needed to go. csecooney's description of their trip, in her July 7-12, 2009 LJ posts, is a joy to read - a running record of what they talked about in the car, and, well, cute things longtime couples say to each other.

I have known the Wolfes since I was a pup: I think I met them first when I was working for David Hartwell and we published The Shadow of the Torturer. I would hang around Gene at conventions, and talk to him about my aspirations as a writer. He gave me excellent advice. I remember one time telling him about trying to create Riverside, and he pointed out that seedy gamblers & their ilk always wore bits & bobs of misplaced finery (I'm not doing him justice, here). I hadn't thought of that. I put that in.

I met up with csecooney and the other Goblin Fruit lasses at their launch party. sevenravens brought her harp, and I was smitten. We sang. The next night, we sang some more. I blasted out a capella ballads, and taught them "Grey Funnel Line" - it was wonderful hearing the harmonies come in strong & true by the 4th verse. I'm afraid I had a little too much of movingfinger's single malt (which, for me, is not that much), and insisted on printing out the lyrics to "A Weekend in the Country" from A Little Night Music and making poor, gifted Miss Cooney do all the parts with me. (O, when did I lose the ability to hear every tune and harmony in my head, and render them perfectly each time? Like Gene & Rosemary, I may well say, "Thank god for the support of the young!")

P.S. And my two Readercon panels really were cracktastic. My favorite takeaway - from a panel I moderated, on readers confusing authors with their characters, featuring the combined brainpower of Peter Straub, Suzy McKee Charnas, Shariann Lewitt & Kit Reed, was the latter's summation:
"I am all my characters. But none of them are me."

In Boston now, staying at a warm little B&B near our old house. Delia's reading & signing at Porter Square Books ['EAT/SLEEP/READ'] went beautifully. If you couldn't get there but want a signed copy of her books, or any of mine for that matter (including trade paperback TPOTS), we left a nice big stack all duly autographed. They sell by mail, as well.

We nearly didn't make it, though. We planned to pick up the rental car & leave NYC at 1 pm. We were excited about getting to ride back with our good friend Sarah Smith, who'd been in town to meet with her editor about a new book(!!). At 5 past 1:00 the phone rang. I heard Delia saying, "Oh my god. Oh. Oh, no." She didn't sound panicked, just a bit shocked.

Sarah was lying on the sidewalk a block from our house, waiting for an ambulance. She'd tripped and fallen, and was pretty sure her arm was broken. The call was from a guy who'd stopped when he saw her, and called 911.

I ran out. She was being a tremendously brave little soldier, but her wrist was looking bad & swelling up. I gave her Advil (racing to the nearby bodega for bottled water), and started calling friends. Ambulance came, and suggested - just in time - we take off her rings before her fingers got too swollen. I greased her fingers with the last of my Ayr menthol ointment from winter! (I'd just changed bags for the trip, and wasn't toting my usual handcreme). I was relieved to see she kept her color when she stood up. In the ambulance, they took her ID info while I found a friend of hers to meet her at Mt Sinai. Then we called her husband, who said he'd drive down from Boston to get her. This relieved my mind mightily; I felt awful just leaving her there, but we had to get Delia to her gig. I took Sarah's pack & computer back to my house, and we left the keys with the doorman (how I love the doormen!) so she could crash there when she got out of hospital. Which is what she did. (And the guy who called 911? Even after I got there, he stood quietly on the sidewalk - with the 2 large dogs he was walking - and watched until we got into the ambulance; must've been there a good half hour. She asked for his name so she could thank him later, but he just said, "Don't worry about it.")

Delia, too, was a brave little soldier; she'd thought her gig was at 6, not 7, and that it took 4+ hours, not 3.5, to drive to Boston. So essentially she thought we'd be almost an hour late, but I had no idea she'd quietly swallowed that bitter pill til we'd been on the road almost an hour. Fortunately, we made good time on a pretty day with little traffic, and were even able to check into the guest house before heading to the bookstore. It was so good to see old Boston friends there - and new ones, as well!

Lunch tom'w with more old friends, a little gentle retail therapy in the old neighb (Delia's knitting baby hats for all and sundry - she finds it soothing, and they are adorable!), and then, off to READERCON! I'll post my schedule separately.

Finland, here we come!!! I have just accepted an invitation to be Guest of Honor at Finncon in July 2010. (I suspect I owe this honor in large part to my wonderful Thomas the Rhymer Finnish translator, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo . . . and also to a good word from past GoH Cheryl Morgan?) It will be held in Jyväskylä, which is a big University town - but we'll start in Helsinki, to do some interviews, I'm told. Hoo boy.

We are just delighted that we'll now get the chance to see a bit of that part of the world. I wonder how much else we can squeeze in?? My first thought was, "Oh, boy! Folklore! Sami! Joikking! Karelia!" But now I realize we'll be close to St Petersburg. And even Latvia & Estonia. Any suggestions?

NYC's Books of Wonder has put up a rather splendid announcement & poster for our TROLL'S EYE VIEW event there this Sunday (1-3pm).

blackholly, deliasherman, ellendatlowand I will, it seems, each "speak about their contribution to this new book, answer questions from the audience, and then sign copies of all their wonderful titles."

If you can't be there in person, the store does a brisk mail-order business, and encourages pre-ordering signed copies, so don't be shy. (I don't see a way to specify that you want a signed copy on their order form, though - maybe you need to phone that in.) They hand us a stack of little slips and say, "Please sign it to So-and-So."

BTW, I've now got an e-mailing list for my NYC live events. You can subscribe to it here: http://groups.google.com/group/ekannounce-ny/subscribe

I've got one for Boston, too, but I'm not sure of the URL - I'll find out. Nothing upcoming there except Readercon, though, so no e-blasts in the near future.

They're on my Calendar - maybe they could be on yours! Some details here; more to come.

Sat, May 2, 2 pm
(deliasherman only, but of course I'll be in the audience)
NYPL Literary Cafe: YA Writers "Magical New York" roundtable
42nd St Library (the one with the Lions!), NYC

May 22-25 WISCON
Madison, WI

Weds, June 3, 6-7:30 (DS only)
Teen Authors Reading
Jefferson Market NYPL Branch (magical Greenwich Village!), NYC

Sunday June 7, 1-3 TROLL'S EYE VIEW reading
(EK, DS, Ellen Datlow, Cat Valente, Holly Black)
Books of Wonder, NYC

July 9-12, READERCON
Burlington (nr. Boston), MA

How I love the big little interstitial con in Burlington in July! This will be its 20th year, and I have barely missed a single one. This year's Readercon Guests of Honor will be Elizabeth Hand, Greer Gilman, and . . . yes, there's always a Memorial Guest: Hope Mirrlees. While filling out various forms, I came across their Participants Page, listing every author signed up so far - which may be enough to get you there all on its own! - but the Mirrlees bio is absolute Essence of Readercon. Sign up if you want to spend a weekend with people who think like this:

It's been said of the Velvet Underground that they only sold 500 records, but that everyone who purchased a copy started a band. The VU of fantasy is unquestionably Hope Mirrlees, whose sole fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) has slowly grown in reputation from obscure oddity to full-blown classic. Since its reappearance in print in 1970 in Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy line it has become a huge influence on a generation of fantasists, including Joanna Russ, Neil Gaiman, past Readercon GoH Michael Swanwick and both of this year's Guests of Honor. Mirrlees (1887–1978) led a fascinating life (see Swanwick's "The Lady Who Wrote Lud-in-the-Mist") that is well worth exploring, but we will of course focus most of our attention on her sui generis masterpiece. If you haven't already encountered this taproot text of modern fantasy, now is the time!

Heavens, what a week! Best friend from summer camp long ago in for the weekend along with signing & socializing at NY Comic Con, then lunch with desayunoencama on Monday, dinner with blackholly on Tuesday, last night a reading with real actors in our livingroom, of the first draft of a friend's play based on a 19c ladies' manual of manners (all interspersed with frequent bouts of Being Helpful about my brother's upcoming wedding in Norfolk, VA). . . and tomorrow, we're off to Santa Cruz, where we're reading at UCSC next week (and speaking to Karen Joy Fowler's creative writing class). Before that, however, we're running off for a romantic weekend in Big Sur. It will be cold, and rainy, and I Do Not Care. There will be surf and fog and redwoods and maybe some seals - and definitely a hot tub and massage or two. I will speak to no one except Delia (who will probably not speak to me, as now that she's done settling Interfictions2, she has to catch up on all her World Fantasy Jury reading).

Back to civilization on Weds. Feb. 18th for a reading at UCSC, 5:00 p.m., that is open to the public - maybe we'll see some of you there.

And may I just say that A Little Night Music is the most perfect musical ever written?

Look, ma'am, an invitation!
Here, ma'am, delivered by hand!
And ma'am, I noticed the station-
ery's engraved and very grand . . . !

You know you want more.

And, like Elvis & Judy, I just give and give and give.

Next chance in NYC is Tuesday, Dec. 2nd, 7 pm, when deliasherman & I are part of a very special event: the NYRSF Reading Series annual Holiday Family Reading.

Yep, series curator Jim Freund decided that 2 girls who got married in Massachusetts are one perfect, cuddly example of the kind of family NYRSF's prestigious series would like to celebrate. We'll be joined by hot new couple Sarah Langan & J.T. Petty. We're thinking of reading the Last Night scenes from The Fall of the Kings, the novel Delia & I wrote together. Unless someone out there strongly prefers something else.

( Here are details: )

Delia & I are off to Roanoke, VA, tomorrow to give a talk on Friday at Hollins Univ. for Amanda Cockrell's GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE. I didn't have time to set anything up at the local bookstores (wahh!) so this will be our only public appearance there:
Fri. June 27, 7:30 pm, Hollins Room, Wyndham Robertson Library.
All events are Open to the Public. We'll be talking about how we work together as an artistic couple, writing & editing. With plenty of time for Q&A, of course.

World Fantasy was fantastic - seems like a million years ago! I was pretty low-energy because of my cold, so I missed all the parties, but at least I got to have quiet quality time with lots of old friends from all over who came together at WFC, including Sharon Shinn (St Louis), Guy Kay (Toronto), Caroline Stevermer (Mpls), Lisa Tuttle (Scotland), and a host of other notables I hope I didn't infect with anything other than banter. It's amazing to me that these are now names to conjure with; we were all puppies together not so long ago. I must say I do like the folks who are puppies now. Good people all around; a fine family to belong to.

I was blown away by a panel featuring Betty Ballantine, founder - with late husband Ian - of Bantam Books and then of Ballantine, the original publishers of LOTR and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. When the moderator was taking questions, I stood up and thanked her for creating my entire generation of fantasists. There's no question but that we would not exist without the inspiration those books provided, both aesthetically and practically. I mean, there we were, young and impressionable - first they give us Tolkien & James Branch Cabell & E.R. Eddison et al . . . and then Peter S. Beagle & Joy Chant, so we know this stuff isn't just written by Dead Guys . . . . Tom Doherty, who had been her sales manager, was also very impressive about the biz. It was an amazing slice of history; I hope someone else has written the panel up somewhere more thoroughly than I ever will.

I hated to leave on Saturday afternoon, but needs must. ( Lots more after this )
See ya in Kalamazoo.