First off, apologies to everyone to whom I owe a letter, a response, a thank you note, etc. (esp. Adrienne Martini - I love the scarf you made & gave me at Worldcon! I have a great photo of all of us wrapped in it! I should post it! Oh, hey - you've written about our dinner at Little Sheep! Cool photos.). In addition to getting ready for our 3-week UK jaunt, I've suddenly had - and hit - a bunch of deadlines. Here's my crossed-off To Do list. Give me your love!

* Revise "The Duke of Riverside" story for Ellen Datlow's urban fantasy anthology (coming in 2010, titled NAKED CITY, St. Martin's Press). Yeah, I sold it to her, got the contract, and then went, "Mmm...I don't think this story really works." She said if I could get it done before we left for England, she'd try to fit it in - assuming she agrees with me. Got it in last night. Phew!!! (But if none of my clothes match when we get there, that's why.)

* Draft "Dear Bordertown Authors" letter. Send to blackholly & bgliterary & Terri' for fussing over details. Worry about who has time to reconstruct map of Bordertown from existing stories. Realize in bolt of genius that Fan Sites have already done exhaustive lists! Bless you, fans. We loves you. Have long phone meeting with Barry & Holly & figure out I don't really know how Googlegroups work, but am willing to learn. Letter sent. Awesome authors' awesome replies mostly responded to. It's magic!

* Type in all the performance changes from last year's Klezmer Nutcracker that were penciled in my script but never actually typed up, for reading (yesterday) at Vital. Which I don't have time to tell you about, but it was great. Lots of rewrites ahead, however.

* Figure out which shoes will not exacerbate exciting new foot condition (cuboid syndrome, anyone?) for next 3 weeks by trying on & wearing (w/different sock combinations) for an hour each. I'm almost there....

* Get tix for complicated multi-leg trip to WFC.

*Leave letter for doorman explaining which peripatetic musician friends will be crashing here while we're not.

* OK, you're bored now, aren't you? Go do something else! I am so glad the weather's broken. Trying to pack for 50-62F when it's 90 was a bit of a challenge.

I also want to give a special thank you shout to all my Interstitial Arts Foundation committee heads & members, & my IAF Executive Board pals - knowing you're out there doing great work makes it all so much easier!

An absolutely wonderful meeting today with Welcome Back To Bordertown (or whatever we end of calling it) editor Mallory Loehr at Random House (and coeditor blackholly & agent bgliterary)! More like a reunion of longlost B'towners than a business meeting . . . . We decided that yes, 2011 is too long to wait for the new book - and are scheming to start getting some kind of advance B'town material up online somehow before then.... So Watch This Space for news of leaks from the Border!

Meanwhile, I'm glad to see that our new friends over at Hard Luck Cafe are already planning their outfits for the Midnight Release Party!

blackholly & bgliterary & I have a big meeting scheduled for Weds. at Random House with our new editor, Mallory Loehr). Warm & enthusiastic notes have been exchanged, but this is the first time we'll all be meeting together w/Mallory to plot & scheme the creation & launching of the next Borderlands anthology.

Do I have time to reread all the books between now and then? (Only if I give up all Social Networking, I bet . . . .) Oh, the shame! This was written Friday. And did I...? Fortunately, Sheila Wms' daughter Irene (who danced at our wedding as a 3-yr--old in a dear little red velvet frock) is in our livingroom right now, alphabetizing our huge collection of children's books. I feel sure she'll find Finder for me....

Since we announced the new anthology on July 7th, I've stumbled across some lovely tributes to Bordertown by various people who saw the announce. If you know of any websites, tributes, etc. (besides those posted here & here), I'd love to see a link in comments, below. Thank you!

I have been sitting on my hands for months, now, and you know it's been TORTURE. But the deal is finally done, and now blackholly & I can joyously announce:

We're doing a new Bordertown anthology!

Here's the official announcement to the trade:

Terri Windling's groundbreaking urban fantasy shared world is back in an all new Borderlands anthology, WELCOME TO BORDERTOWN, to be edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, featuring new stories from many of the original writers including Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Midori Snyder and Charles de Lint, as well as new work by writers who were inspired by the original series, including Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Kelly Link and more. At auction to Mallory Loehr at Random House Children's Books, by Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary LLC and Christopher Schelling at Ralph M. Vicinanza Ltd.

Of course, there's a long & entertaining backstory, which I will tell you when I'm not packing for big trip. But essentially Holly & I decided it was time. We went to Terri, who gave us her blessing. Terri's deep in her own art and writing these days and won't be editing the volume herself, but she's been closely consulting with us, and will write an Introduction to the new volume. The title is tentative, and so is the pub date, but we think it's Summer 2011 (I know, I know, seems like forever - unless you're the one having to write the story, design the cover, create the marketing, etc etc).

Is this the first of many? Will the old stories come back into print? Even we do not know the answers to any of this yet. All we know is, Random House is excited, we're excited, and right now we're dreaming of the Border . . . .See you there!

ADDED: Also see posts by Holly here & Terri here.

Added: DAMMIT! This was actually a post about the Fallen Princesses Project & also Lev Grossman (who pointed it out to me)'s new book The Magicians. Bad, bad, stupid cut-and-paste has failed me. Gone, gone, never to be re-undone. The links alone must suffice.

Here's what got pasted in instead (a comment I made to yesterday's Urban Fantasy post, but you should probably see it here, too):

* This 2008 Library Journal article by Nanette Wargo Donohue - footnoted in the Wiki "Urban Fantasy" listing - is spot on. Poor L. Miller's got no excuse!( Read more... )

Wanted to let everyone know how much I'm enjoying the discussion following yesterday's post. Terri Windling turns out to have a strong thread about this going on her Facebook Wall, as well. She also told me that Mercedes Lackey wrote her series as a direct response to Bordertown, which I hadn't known.

As I keep saying to anyone who will listen: "This is not hard to research! It only happened 20 years ago! We're not dead! Just ASK!"

I'm now particularly interested, in an OED geeky way, in the first recorded use of the term "urban fantasy", which jongibbs asked about yesterday. From TW's Facebook thread comes this note from
Russell Blackford at 5:37am June 23
I co-edited an anthology called Urban Fantasies back in 1985. The expression "urban fantasy" was in use well before then. I picked it up from Lee Harding, and it was applied during the early 80s to books such as Harding's _Displaced Person_ (known as _Misplaced Persons_ in the US), which was published in 1979. I'd be confident that it goes back even further. Mind you, what is now known as "urban fantasy" may be rather different, but still ...

I haven't even finished the no doubt excellent new Salon article by Laura Miller on "the kickass young heroines of urban fantasy fiction" but this had me seeing red:

"...the term "urban fantasy" (meaning fantasies set in the contemporary world) was first applied to the work of such writers as Neil Gaiman and John Crowley, whose aspirations are more literary. . . . "

Oh, the giantness of this GIANT FAIL!!!!!

Of course it's only 2 male authors who are cited - probably the only fantasists who she can even think of with "literary aspirations" . . . . .

Nicola Griffith asks an interesting question - here's my hastily scribbled answer (as I am, in fact, running off the country):

*Such* a good question - esp for fantasists! Tolkien set the mark with LOTR and his love of countryside - and a generation of American (& Brit?) fantasists then had to dig their way out of his love and knowledge into our own spaces, which tended to be Urban. In the 1980s worked a lot with Terri Windling, culminating in the Bordertown series, which some say was the start of Urban Fantasy....Still going on today.

Me, I made up an entire city to play in, and 3 novels later am still enjoying being there.

Today's Question:

Have you ever read any books in the Terri Windling shared-world "Bordertown" series?

If you're a writer, do you think they influenced your work in any way?

If you're curious, here's Terri's Borderland page, the Wiki page with a list of all stories & authors, and the latest Borderland fan page, with links to lots, including an LJ community, "Bordertown's Journal."

It amazes me to realize that I had a story in every single one of the 4 volumes (while "Charis" has been reprinted most often, I think my favorite is "Hot Water," with "Mockery" a close second.) Will Shetterly & Emma Bull wrote entire Borderland novels. And there are even some who say that the current spate of Urban Fantasy (Division of Elves on the Streets) owes a lot to kids who read them at an impressionable age when they first came out. What say you?