UNNATURAL CREATURES: RELEASED!!

AT LAST! This anthology has been gestating since – well, since before I was involved with it – but I’ve been working on it since last summer. Somewhere in July or so, Neil Gaiman called me and asked if I’d join him in editing a YA book about strange monster/creature-y items, to benefit 826DC (also known as The Museum of Unnatural History). He’d signed on a few months before, and the book, while theoretically awesome, did not yet exist in any real form.  I like strange monster-y/creature-y items. I like 826 (all the 826’s), and the things it does for kids. I like Neil, and his wide-ranging taste in stories (seriously, and this is to no one’s surprise, the man has read everything, and keeps the plot of everything in the back corners of his brain.) I said sure. 

And so we went forth into the wilderness – and it was, indeed, a wilderness. The world is full of wonderful stories. The world is also full of wonderful stories long out of print, whose rights needed acquiring, stories extant only in crumbling paperbacks (or in some cases, in memory), stories sought in dark corners of the internet from scans of magazines last published in 1914. My job was to find those things, bring a few new stories and writers to the list, and generally fill in gaps in the process wherever we found them. It was an education. I have increased and epic respect (mind you, I already had respect) for anthology editors and their time-management skills. I had to do some hunting for rights and for stories, and my hunting wasn’t always in mapped forests. It is to my joy that between us, Neil and I know a lot of people, and that ultimately, we were able to score permissions for nearly all the stories on the original list. As well as a few more, once we realized that we could add some things, and have even more fun with the list than we’d originally thought. 

Unnatural Creatures is a combination of classic stories and new ones. It’s a kind of glorious mixture, in my opinion, and in Neil’s too. He had an initial list of stories, which he brought to me, and then I read, added, subtracted, attempted to get permission for, jumped up and down, and ultimately…we ended up with an distractingly gorgeous selection of 16.  

It’s a diverse collection of creatures (I think there’s only one duplicate monster, and it’s a werewolf – in Anthony Boucher and Saki’s very, very different stories). The book contains everything from Dianna Wynne Jones on dragons to Larry Niven on “horses”, Samuel R. Delany (yes, a YA-appropriate story, and even a rather fairy-tale-ish one, from Chip Delany!) on an unknown something in a box, to E. Nesbit on Cockatoucans. It has recent stories from Nalo Hopkinson on transformations, Megan Kurashige on manticore, mermaids and other wanderings through a Natural History collection, Nnedi Okorafor on serpents and goddesses, and E. Lily Yu on wasps and bees, alongside classic (but not obviously “creature” as in animal stories) from Avram Davidson on a multiplying and mechanical creature (s), and Peter S. Beagle on Death. It has Frank R. Stockton on Griffins, and Neil on Sunbirds. As well – and this was a matter of happy coincidence – it has a story by me, about a geographical beast. That particular story had been three lines from done for years, and when we discovered we had a gap, and that this story exactly fit the prompt, we added it.

I love all the stories in the book, but the one I think of most frequently when I think of Unnatural Creatures is  by Gahan Wilson, about a bit of ink that isn’t. Why? Because the entire time I was putting the stories together into manuscript form, and sending them in to Harper, I was biting my fingers in fear that the title of the (utterly wonderful) story would somehow end up being not  but INKSPLOT TK. (As it was in the word doc.) (Or worse: INKSPLOT TK – NOTE FROM MARIA: OMG OMG OMG, PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO PUT THE INKSPLOT IN, FOR REAL, NOT THE WORD, BUT THE IMAGE, THANK YOU GODS.)

In addition to the stories, the book has gorgeous illustrations by Briony Morrow-Cribb, and that is to my extreme joy, because I got to add her to the project. I’ve long admired her work (See here for lots of beautiful examples…I’ve not only bought her etchings for friends, I’ve got two of them on my own wall) and when we needed an illustrator, I brought her in. 

Happiness. 

It’s a really great book. It’s getting really great reviews.

Here’s the starred review from Publisher’s Weekly:

Unnatural Creatures

Edited by Neil Gaiman with Maria Dahvana Headley. Harper, $17.99 (480p) ISBN 978-0-06-223630-2

In this striking anthology of 16 stories of strange and incredible creatures (most previously published), Gaiman and Headley have included several classic tales, such as Frank R. Stockton’s delightful “The Griffin and the Minor Canon” (1885), which concerns the unlikely friendship between a monster and a minister; Saki’s mordant werewolf tale “Gabriel-Ernest” (1909); and Anthony Boucher’s astonishingly silly “The Compleat Werewolf” (1942). There are also fine stories from such major contemporary fantasy writers as Peter S. Beagle, Samuel Delany, Diana Wynne Jones, and Gaiman himself. Particularly pleasurable are the stories by newer writers, such as Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Smile on the Face,” which demonstrates the benefits of channeling one’s inner hamadryad; E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” an animal fable with a sting in its tale; and Nnedi Okorafor’s original story “Ozioma the Wicked,” which concerns “a nasty little girl whose pure heart had turned black,” but who nonetheless saves her village from a monstrous snake. Teens with a yen for the fantastic would be hard pressed to find a better place to start. The collection benefits literacy nonprofit 826DC. Ages 13–up. (May)

Booklist  made it their Review of the Day:  From darkly menacing to bizarrely surreal, these 16 fantasy stories featuring mythical and imaginary creatures combine work from such luminaries as Saki, E. Nesbit, and Anthony Boucher, as well as more contemporary writers. Larry Niven’s “The Flight of the Horse” is on the sillier side of the spectrum: a time traveler is sent to the past to retrieve a horse, which he has never seen except in picture books, and he mistakenly returns with a unicorn instead. In Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Smile on the Face,” a self-conscious girl is bullied for her size and pressured into an unwanted sexual encounter, but she finds inner strength—and an inner fire-breathing monster—thanks to an accidentally swallowed cherry pit from the hamadryad in her front yard. Gaiman’s contribution, “Sunbird,” recounts the adventures of the Epicurean Club members, who, grown bored after tasting every available thing on the planet, enjoy the best (and last) meal of their lives. In true Gaiman fashion, these stories are macabre, subversive, and just a little bit sinister. His fans will eat this up—ravenously. The book will benefit nonprofit 826DC, which fosters student writing skills.

And here’s one from TOR.com, which called it – among other excellent things, “a wonderfully diverse and enjoyable collection of stories from over a century of fantasy writing.”

See entire review here – it’s lovely. 

 

Neil and I are both immensely pleased with how this book came out. It’s beautiful, exciting, and full of things you’ve not read before. (Unless you’ve got a library with depths unsounded.) Here’s Neil’s blog about Unnatural Creatures. If you buy a copy, you benefit 826DC – all profits go to them. Advances, donated. I didn’t make any money from this, and neither did Neil, but we’re both very happy to give our time and energy to an organization that gives to kids and teaches them to move mountains, and monsters with their minds.

 

I hope you love it. 

 

Thank you’s, by the way, on a book like this, are totally epic (and it’s a woeful epic fantasy that I might, in this post, manage to track down everyone who helped me track down every story in this collection, though I wish I could! I thank all of you!), but I wanted to particularly acknowledge Rosemary Brosnan, the editor at Harper, and the excellent Andrea Martin, associate editor. As well, Joe Callahan at 826DC, Briony Morrow-Cribbs who rocked the illustrations, and Henry Wessels, who helped me, on the strength of a Twitter shout-out, track down Avram Davidson’s permissions. And thank you to Neil who invited me to do this in the first place! 

 

AMERICAN GODS, ALL SORTS, PLUS ME, COMPARING REVISING TO INEPT TEENAGE SEX. YEP.

So, as I said, I have things to say about the Town Hall/University Bookstore event I did with Neil Gaiman in Seattle on June 26.  Neil talked about it on his blog days ago, because he is better than I am.

Here is a photo from said event, taken by my friend Victoria Kieburtz, who was in the audience. I suspect, from the look on my face, that this is midway through Neil giving a speech about turning off one’s cellphone, even if you are using it as a camera and have forgotten that it is in fact a phone, even if you are the sort of person who never ever gets a call. Because, you will get a call. And then people will want you to die. You yourself will want to die.

More about that in a moment.  Now it’s July 8th. Dear god.  I don’t know how time is passing this way, except that I’m writing a book, and hours pass in moments.  This is a good thing. Sometimes when you’re writing (or revising) (or for those who are crazy like me, simultaneously writing AND revising) a book, the days stretch to infinity, and yet Nothing The Fuck Gets  Accomplished. Maybe you move a comma. Move it again.  Crumple said comma and throw it out, grab it back again, try vainly to put it in again.

And it is significant that when I just attempted to type “comma” I typed “condom” instead.

Hell. I trust my typos. I’ll go there instead of where I was planning to go.  Revising – she said, completely seriously – can, in fact,  be like unskilled, enthusiastic-but-spastic teenage sex.

Stay with me.

The kind wherein you don’t quite understand where things are supposed to go,  and so you spend more time trying to figure out how to put the condom on without sticking your thumbs through it (16 years), than you spend actually doing the deed (3 minutes).

This is so true of revising. It can take WAY LONGER to revise a manuscript than it took to write the first draft.  So, you know, metaphorically, you twitch the condom around, try different brands, trying to get it to feel right. It never quite does.  Maybe because you’re putting the thing on inside out. Or because you believed that dude who told you you should use the ones made of delicate baby lambs.

*dark look*

Or, you know, if you’re the girl, you’re sometimes looking wild-eyed at the whole thing, thinking Dear God, I Have No Idea. What The Hell? For example.*

The sorrow of revising, really, is that you grow your virginity back every time.  It never seems to get better. Sex does. You learn how to do it. Revising is different for every project.

Each time, it’s a whole new partner, and sometimes said partner is equipped with parts you’ve never encountered before. Six legs, yo. Forty-seven mouths, and you’re having to DEAL WITH THAT MADNESS.  Dental dams?

I’m not in that place right now, thank god. I’m first drafting. Which is like falling in love, rather than like bad teenage sex.  Everything I write makes me think I’m  a genius just now. Give me a few months. I’ll be cursing the name of this beloved, and wondering why we ever started dating in the first place, because clearly, said beloved will now have revealed himself to have perhaps giant gaping holes in the middle of his heart, and thirteen penises. Which will need to be, um, dealt with.

Wow. That was a departure from what I was meant to be talking about.  Never ask me for writing advice. I’m a pornographic hazard. Also, probably I should never speak to children.

Okay. Onward. I grabbed some clips from Youtube of this event I did with Neil at Seattle’s Town Hall.I think there was official video too, but I haven’t seen it.  So, these are cell phone videos from the audience.

We were in the greenroom backstage for a while, because of the spectacular fact that there were a kabillion people.  Not a kabillion (I realize, this figure, questionable) but 1000-ish, and a line around the block, because mysteriously, in the Gaiman Fan World, everyone’s last name begins with A-M, and so there was one gigantic line, and another very tiny, and it took a while to figure out what had happened. Neil had been suffering an extensively crappy day involving accidentally sending his hotel room phone number and room number out into the Whole World via a TwitterFail. He’d also pre-signed many many books. I’m not sure he still had feeling in his fingers. Had I been Neil,  I would have just had one shriveled left Monkey’s Paw of a signing hand. (Not a happy outcome either, the monkey’s paw signing hand – it can grant wishes, yeah, but just as in the story, the kind of wishes a shriveled signing hand might grant are not wishes you’d want granted.)

Molly Lewis, ukulele lady extraordinaire opened up for us – Neil had noticed via Twitter that she was showing up as audience, and messaged her to come play, and honestly, who doesn’t like a little ukulele song? Here’s Molly, singing a killer funny immodest proposal to Stephen Fry (not from the event – I don’t see any video of that night, but this is one of the songs she sang.) Molly is lovely. Also, her man had on  devastating lavender wingtip shoes, which I coveted. She rocked the house, basically, and put everyone who’d been waiting a while back into an excellent mood.

And then it was time for us. There were complications. Somewhere, I’m sure, someone’s got a photo of me (5’3″) standing onstage next to Duane Wilkins from University Bookstore (6’8″-ish), with both of us looking baffled, and as though we’re doing some sort of vaudeville.

There was confusion. It was that kind of day. So, Duane was meant to introduce me, and then I was supposed to introduce Neil and then Neil was supposed to come out, but something went sideways, and Duane and I ended up onstage together, looking at each other in fuddlement as Duane introduced Neil, and as Neil came out.

Rather, as he says in the below clip, Neil was suddenly thrust onstage, and we looked at each other going, hmm, and kind of cracking up. It was fine, though. Neil declared himself invisible, and I introduced him anyway. Because hell, I had many nice things to say about the man. I wasn’t going to not say them.

This one, two clips, one of Neil arriving early onstage. The next of him reading from American Gods, very beautifully.  Like most people in the room, I’d have been down to listen to him read all night.  Neil’s a deservedly decorated reader. Some authors read from their own work and find themselves sweating and panting. Neil’s great at it. See clip.

After he read, we sat down to talking.  I asked Neil about the genesis of American Gods. Normally, this question – the one where you ask a writer where he gets his ideas, is not allowed. None of us like it. It makes for sarcasm, typically, and internally, we’re all saying snarkily, Dude, the Idea TREE, what do you think?

But I knew that the genesis of American Gods was a really interesting story, and Neil is eminently equipped to tell such a story, so, I asked. Neil obliged by going into detail on topics ranging from the initial image of a man sitting down on a plane next to a stranger and the stranger telling him he was late (Seriously, if that image appears in your brain, how could you NOT write a book? It kills.)  to Iceland, jet lag derangement, window blind fails, and lack of sunsets, to the weirdness of America, people waiting ritualistically for cars to fall through ice on a lake, to the nature of thinking about America as someone who has come into this country as a foreigner himself. Somewhere in there I asked about whether or not he now found the UK to be weird too – and he talked a bit about Neverwhere and writing a book about Weird London from America as a means of dealing with missing the UK.

I, was, of course, onstage, and therefore not taking notes, so I’ve got nothing in the way of direct quotations. Sad, too, as Neil said tons of incredibly smart, funny things. But-

Writer Dana Hunter was at the event and wrote a couple of very nice recaps of it here, and here, with some video and photos.** She does a much better job than I could do as far as quotations are concerned.

Here is Neil talking about writing for Dr. Who – the video is less than spectacular, but the audio is good.  This was in response to an audience question about whether writing for the show was exhilarating or terrifying. He talks in depth, eloquently and hilariously about many topics, including the joy of daleks, and of the discovery that they were unable to see the color red, “which I thought was brilliant, except that there were red daleks” and of being a small child, watching the show from behind the couch in his grandparent’s house, as well as about how he ended up writing The Doctor’s Wife.

There were a lot of really wonderful questions from the audience, which I got in notecard format. If you see me in the videos, looking totally distracted, and shuffling cards, that’s why. I was listening to Neil but I was also going through a pile of amazing questions, and trying to sort them into an order so that I could ask a little bit on a lot of topics.  There were lots more to cover, and it was a bummer that we couldn’t just go all night. We could have.  The last question of the night was my favorite, actually, and it was the following :

Have You Ever Met A  God?

What a lovely question.  Neil had an equally  lovely answer (involving devastating impressions) regarding Alan Moore and Douglas Adams.

Somewhere in there, to bring this post full circle, I asked a question that’s been obsessing me lately, both for real reasons and for ridiculous -because it’s *obviously* not a full-on serious question.

Queen of Kings is my first novel, and the world has changed a lot, very quickly, in terms of author promotions, and what you do to help a book get noticed. That’s the real part. Every author I know thinks about these things – how much promo do you do? How much do you pay for? How much do you put yourself out there? I clarify, this is in ALL scenarios, wither you’re with a major publisher or not, whether you have a 200 copy print run, or a 200,000 copy run.  Another author friend of mine and I have been cracking each other up talking about just how far things will go.

We came up with the (terrifying) notion of the Author Sex Tape. People have made careers that way. Leak a little love to Youtube. I mean, it hasn’t hit the author market yet, but…

Think about it. George RR Martin already has a copyright on his personal sextape catchphase, Winter Is Coming.

I asked Neil what, in a world in which things had gone totally crazy, would be his own author sextape catchphrase.  Here’s what he said (lots of laughter, but you can hear him):

I love that he told me I was asking this question of a man who’d written a book in which, early on, a gentleman disappears inside a prostitute. I was.

He asked what I would choose for his catchphrase, and I said American God.

He is. Not American, but what the hell. (The phrase English God doesn’t really have the impact, does it?) I love what Neil does in both our genre, and outside it. He is a tireless advocate for libraries, for free speech, for keeping the word of literature full of weirdness, and for, generally, stories.  He works his ass off, basically, and he manages to write really fantastic books at the same time.

Rock. On. That’s all I can say.  I thank Neil and University Bookstore for inviting me to do this event.  I had a great time.

And now, back to my dearly beloved, currently flawless and darling, first draft of a second novel.

xxx

M

PS: While I’m at it, my much-mentioned dear friend Sxip Shirey is doing a Kickstarter Fund Drive right now for his new – absolutely going to be amazing album A Bottle Of Whiskey and a Handful of Bees, and you should certainly go visit that page and watch the video he made. Give him some money! Sxip is another of those American Gods I was just talking about.  I donated. He’s done work with me (he scored my book trailer), and with Neil too (he scored Neil’s short film, Statuesque).  His own work is just fucking brilliant. He brings it, on instruments real and invented, with breath and bones and marbles, with toy pianos and harmonicas and heart and soul. Yes. Help him make this album.

*I advocate safe sex, don’t get me wrong. Use condoms. Duh.

**I’m posting this even though there are some snarky things about me in the comment section. Sigh. Note: I definitely wasn’t bouncing my leg because I was trying to tell the world that I have nice legs. It was because, HELLO, it was supremely boiling onstage, and I was nervous. But let me say here, this could have been WAY worse. I asked Twitter what I should wear to interview Neil, and it was a straight up dead tie between 1) Child-Size Dalek Costume, and 2) Naked.

LOCUS AWARDS, CHINA MIEVILLE SPEECH, CLEOPATRA WEBCOMICS, AND POWELLS TONIGHT!

I’m on a train between Seattle and Portland right now. Wi-Fi. An unexpected perk of Amtrak.

This blog is #1 to tell you that I’m reading at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon tonight, at 7:30pm. It’s the Burnside location.  You should come. I’ll be wearing a dress covered with Iron Maiden lyrics, and various oddball slang and terminology from an Egyptian dictionary. Also, I’m reading from Queen Of Kings, which is the more important part of the equation. And signing. And, you know, depending on how many people come, I might also be drinking. You are the ones who’re in charge of how much I drink. Less than 4 people, I’ll be deep in my cups before the end of the night.

So, show up.

I have a skillion things to blog about, among them the Locus Awards and Sci Fi Hall of Fame ceremony – both of which were awesome. (And I want to blog about the event I did with Neil Gaiman a couple days ago, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to get that far on limited battery, so, two parts.)

The night before the Locus awards, I went to Clarion West’s opening party, where I dueled a little with Gardner Dozois for access to the bar (manned by one very wasted bartender, it seemed) and then hung out for most of the evening with the magnificent writer duo of Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith. I’m so excited about Nicola’s new historical novel (I’ve read only the first 118 manuscript pages, so sadly, it’ll be a while before it’s out in the world) I can’t even speak.  Total genius. I read it, underlining, oh, every line. Incredibly specific description of the natural world, and a fiery child heroine, growing up into a world of deep wonder and catastrophe. (She gets older. But in the pages I read, she’s a child.) You will love it.  All of you. And Kelley is  currently posting fab writing, daily in support of Clarion West’s Write-A-Thon. Go check it out.

So, basically, Kelley, Nicola, Gary Wolfe and I closed the bar, talking gleefully about everything in the writing world, topics ranging from the underknown apocalypse classic EARTH ABIDES, to Nicola’s Hild, to Monsters, oh, many other things.

And then the next day, I zipped myself into my bright yellow, mermaid printed Hawaiian dress, and went to the Locus Awards Luncheon. The dress kills. It came from Ebay, 50’s pinup corset coolness with a sarong skirt. Begs to be worn to a luau. I mean, sure, I got some freaked out looks as I walked down the street in Seattle, where it was dark gray cloudy and roughly 60 degrees, but…

The Locus Awards have a mandatory Hawaiian theme, and I was not going to fail. I’ve never been to them before. It’s actually supposed to be a Hawaiian shirt, but I figured dress was fair.

There are photos, but not in my possession. Someone will post them, though. I know there are going to be plenty of images,  because I was sitting next to Neil Gaiman. Flashes. Went. Off. All. Day. Long.

I got to sit at a table with a slew of legends & rockstars: Neil Gaiman (I was Neil’s guest) Terry Bisson, Connie Willis, Gary K. Wolfe, Tim Minchin (actual rockstar, Australian, more on him later), and more, and I also got to accept China Miéville‘s Locus Award for Kraken, Best Fantasy Novel on his behalf.

It’s not even just that I like to drink with luminaries (Although, hell yes, I DO, and I love to drink with nonluminaries too) but that said luminaries are all incredibly brainy, funny, and nice people.  That, of course, makes it RIDICULOUSLY, STUPIDLY GLORIOUS.

Also, there is a Hawaiian Trivia show, and several Sci-Fi/Fantasy legends did the hula.  Here’s a photo of Neil, beside me,  watching the trivia unfold. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Sort of. It was black and printed with turtles. Which were mostly invisible.

And here is a crappy Maria’s cellphone photo of Neil very deservedly winning the Locus Awards for both Best Short Story  (The Thing About Cassandra) and Best Novelette (The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains).

Here, for interested parties, is China’s Kraken acceptance speech, minus my neurotic introduction having to do with terror of mispronunciation – you’ll see why – and China’s email to me saying that these were words to be delivered “in my voice” – a fearful thing, as I do the crappiest English accent ever.

My huge thanks to Mic Cheetham, Chris Schluep, Julie Crisp, all at Del Rey and Macmillan, Jesse Soodalter and Mark Bould, and all the readers who have supported this shaggy-god story. I’m very sorry I can’t be there, and I thank Maria Dahvana Headley for being me with vastly more aplomb than I would if I were, At this point in the rupturous and tentacular history of our ongoing apocalypse, it can no longer be a point of debate that cephalopods, those distributed alien intelligences, are the most important biological vehicles of semiotic freight ever thrown up by evolution. Nor that these end-times, however terrible, are not without humour. I’m humbled and enormously grateful, therefore, for the great honour that you grant this eschatological squid comedy. [Aside: Maria, please insert a pun of your choice on the words ‘calamity’ and ‘calamari’ in here.]
Thank you all very much.

So, I left the awards with China’s Locus in my purse. Later, said Locus was joined by Neil’s laptop. I know. It’s ridiculous, and more the sort of thing that might happen in a dream than in actuality. But, well, I’ve got awesome friends. This was the first event I’d ever been to, in my brand-new genre. Queen of Kings was such a departure from The Year of Yes (which is emphatically not sci-fi – though it is, perhaps, a science experiment…) that this is literally an entirely new group of writer colleagues. And to enter into their midst  as I did this weekend was, um, VERY UNSUCKY.  Almost every day I find myself amazed by the spectacularity of the people I know.  Here I am, in some crazy starry company. All I can say is…

Well, I don’t even know what to say. I had a fabulous day. Thank you’s are due to both Neil, who invited me to go with him, and to China, who invited me to accept for him.

Photo by Shellie Rae Clift

Maybe one day I’ll have a Locus of mine own, but for now? It was pretty glorious to hang out with such a great group of people. And their awards.

Later, I went with Neil and Tim to the EMP/SCI FI Museum, where we sprinted through the Avatar Exhibit, discussing the Uncanny Valley phenomenon, and then we went to the Sci Fi Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where Gardner Dozois, Vincent Di Fate (sci-fi and fantasy artist, Moebius (Jean Giraud) (French comic artist and amazing production designer), and Harlan Ellison were inducted.   The speeches, both introductions and acceptances were fabulous.  Neil accepted on behalf of Harlan, and read a short story involving card tricks, tons of references to Harlan’s stories, and 1920’s Paris, which will no doubt appear soon on his blog.

And a little later, I drove Neil, Gary Wolfe, and Locus Editor-In-Chief Liza Trombi to the Tim Minchin show at the Neptune. Tim’s a friend of Neil’s, and I’ve never listened to him before, but what a gift to attend. More thanks to Neil, who has great taste in humans. Tim’s show was a completely killing experience. His live show, much more than the things available on Youtube, is a tightly crafted crazy masterwork of a cabaret performance, mixing ferocious satire with deeply hilarious goofy comedy – one of his songs, for example, deals with heavy social issues, interspersed with a chorus about the joy of boobs – and he did one, called Cont, which unfolds from a wildly transgressive song of loathings into something else entirely more badass – and the whole fucking thing had me literally bent over in my seat laughing so hard I was chewing my kneecaps. At the end, he broke the room open by singing two more serious songs, White Wine in the Sun, and then a cover of Cohen’s Hallelujah, and a room that’d been essentially a revival show dealing with atheism, transgression, hippocracy, personal twistedness, and the implausibility of sacred objects, became a room singing along to Cohen’s unhymn. Tim’s version of it, by the way, re-enchanted me with the song. Since its appearance in Watchmen, I’ve been a bit pukey toward it, and this is sad, because it’s a crazy great song.

Neil, Tim, Tim’s tour manager Grizzly and I then went out to dinner.  Neil threw down a stressful challenge in a city like Seattle – let’s eat something delicious. We were starving, having never had dinner.  It was 11:15pm. Seattle closes at…BLOODY EARLY.

But I had an idea which turned out to be one of the better ideas I’ve ever had. Elemental. It’s a Seattle restaurant which is a)close to impossible to find b) has no menu, and c) is incredibly tiny. It seats til Midnight on Sat. Here’s a sample menu, but it changes every week, and it’s completely at the whim of one of the most amazing chefs anywhere.Wine with every course. Lots of wine. And don’t be scared. It looks incredibly expensive. It’s not.  Fixed price. Wine included. Amazing owners. Restaurant is currently surrounded by construction, and so people are having difficulty fiinding it. It’s open! If you’re in Seattle and have an occasion, or don’t, you should go. It might change you.  This restaurant, I’m telling you, is annexed to heaven.

For me, I just kept throwing my head back and crooning. Nothing is more wonderful than incredible company paired with incredible food.

Also, the place is called Elemental, and you know. It could not have been more appropriate.

By the end of the meal – hell, by the beginning, our entire table was groaning with joy. And then we ate cheese. And dessert. And in the car, as I took him back to his hotel, Neil named it one of his ten best nights ever.

It was one of mine too.

Just a couple more things today.  Maki Yamane, author of the webcomic Tiny Concorde read Queen of Kings and made something awesome. A webcomic, dealing with Cleopatraian parenting, and with using Queen of Kings as a parenting guide…

Ha! Definitely click the link.

“Today, we take a parenting inspiration from Cleopatra in the book Queen Of Kings : Growing Up Polyglot”

See you in Portland! (Or, you know, at least send your Portland friends to me.)

SEATTLE/PORTLAND EVENTS, BEA & BLUE OYSTER CULT

First off:

YOU SHOULD READ THIS REVIEW OF QUEEN OF KINGS, FROM OPEN CITY LETTERS

Particularly if you think  you might not like Queen of Kings, for reasons ranging from “man, she mixed my historical fiction with monsters, and she sucks” to “I have overdosed on paranormal” to “agh, trendy” to “There’s no way it’ll be good.”  The reviewer, Steven Donoghue, felt the same way.  He wanted to feed the book to his dog.  Then he fell in love.  This review made me way happy. It’s kind of what you always hope will happen.  OPEN CITY LETTERS, QUEEN OF KINGS REVIEW.

OK, NOW FOR THE REAL MEAT OF THIS BLOG POST…

READINGS, APPEARANCES & RANDOM SIGHTINGS OF MARIA

ACTUAL SEATTLE READING – JUNE 7

I’m reading and signing on June 7th in Seattle at University Bookstore. The reading is at 7pm. There will be bites from Golden Beetle, which is a kickass Egyptian restaurant in Ballard.  The name comes from an ingredient in the Moroccan spice blend Ras al hanout, and the ingredient is actually, um, dried beetle.  And guess what sort of properties the golden beetle is said to have?  That’s right, baby. Aphrodisiac.  I feel like this, all of it, is appropriate for a Queen of Kings reading.  There are love spells in this book.  There are potions.  There are bites.

And if you live in Seattle and don’t show up? I will bite YOU.

Actually I did this offer in reverse on Twitter – as in “if you DO show up, I will bite you,” and I got several people considering flying long distances to be bitten. I was crazily flattered. When it gets out of control and I become like Robert Pattinson, chased through suburban shopping malls by teenage girls asking for his teeth, I might be not so willing, but for now?

I’ll probably bite you if you want me to. Or I can leave tooth marks on your book. Or a lipstick kiss. I’m like, well, the willingest author in the world.  I’ll even sign your boobs.

I won’t, however, let you sign mine. I have some boundaries.

Anyway.  It will be a party. And you should totally show up, because man? I haven’t really read in Seattle yet for Queen Of Kings. I did a tiny reading from this book last fall at University Bookstore with my friends Erik Larson (Devil In the White City, In The Garden of Beasts) and Peter Mountford (A Young Man’s Guide To Late Capitalism) in support of The Novel Live and our book Hotel Angeline (which I think I’ve mentioned here before – the big collective novel, of which we each wrote chapters) but I had an 103 degree fever, and I don’t remember it. Maybe some of you do. I hope not.  I was so feverish I was seeing stars, and then our motley author trio went out and drank a regrettable quantity of hot toddies.  Well, I did. Erik drank martinis. Peter drank something, but I’m not sure what, as I was delirious.

I kept saying, after Toddy#2, “Wow, I’m totally over the flu. I’m good. I’m fucking great!” This was not accurate.

Onward.

JUNE 26, SEATTLE APPEARANCE #2, IN WHICH I INTRODUCE, INTERVIEW, AND WHOOP IT UP WITH A SPECTACULAR AUTHOR NAMED NEIL GAIMAN.

Town Hall. 7pm. It’s a Sunday.  And if you don’t show up to this one, you are going to be so incredibly sad, because it’s me, and Neil. He’s reading and signing on his American Gods 10th Anniversary Tour. I’m neither reading nor signing (don’t want to mislead you – if you want to hear ME read, come to my event on the 7th – though if Neil’s signing line is really long, I might make my way up and down it slapping Queen Of Kings fake snake tattoos onto biceps) but I’m on intro and interview duty, which is pretty kickass. It’s not every day that you get to share a stage with a superhero. You need a ticket for this one, and it will certainly sell out.  So get on it. They go on sale on June 21st, through University Bookstore.

June 21, by the way, is my birthday.  So, buy my book while you’re at it. Buy one for your friend. Buy one for the person who makes you coffee every morning. Buy one for your great aunt who is obsessed with Egypt and periodically shows you her teeth. Buy one for your 20 year old nephew who is obsessed with video games. Serious. All these categories of people have thus far dug the book.

Sunday • June 26 • 7pm

American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition (WILLIAM MORROW)

Reading & Book Signing

Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle (Enter on Seneca)

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods appeared in 2001 to wide acclaim. It’s a story of magic and myth, a great and towering fable that uses the American landscape as its backdrop. On this, the tenth anniversary of the book, Gaiman will stop by Town Hall to talk about the updated and expanded edition now available. Tickets are free with purchase of a copy of American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition, or $5. Available June 21.

Please Note: Autographed copies of books are only available after the event.

IF YOU’RE READING THIS AND CURSING THAT I’M NOT COMING TO PORTLAND – CURSE NO MORE!

I AM! JUNE 28TH.  POWELL’S CITY OF BOOKS, 7:30pm.

I love Powell’s. When I was little, I stole all the copies of Harriet the Spy they had in stock, because I didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on My Personal Book. They still invited me to read there, and for this I thank them.

So, yes. That’s what I’m doing in June, thus far.

I’m also writing a book.

OTHER STUFF + PEOPLE I ADORE

I thought I’d write a whole BEA post, but I can’t wrap my mind around it. Lots of people came to my signing, which was very gratifying. I stayed up every night until 4AM. I hung out with people ranging from badass accordion slamming musicians (Jason Webley – and if you don’t know him, get thee to a nunnery. Or get thee to Bandcamp, right now.) and one man band circus player song-inventors (That’d be the Famous Sxip Shirey, and what I said of Webley applies to Sxip too – he’s amazing. If you haven’t listened, prepare to be blown the fuck away – ok, hold up, I’m just going to post a live cut of one of Sxip’s songs, sung at Joe’s Pub a couple weeks ago, by Xavier, who sounds like Michael Jackson + Lionel Richie. Listen. I Don\’t See Her Walkin\’ In, Sxip Shirey Song, sung by Xavier) and genius photographers (Kyle Cassidy – and the photos from that day are coming soon!) to a drop dead gorgeous (both heart and flesh) painter of tarot cards and author of a memoir (Katelan Foisy), to a posse of artists (Molly Crabapple, Fred Harper, Cynthia Von Buhler, and more) in the dead of night at a bar that didn’t actually exist.

I dined with my dear (and insanely brilliant) nonfiction writing friends, Matt Power and Jess Benko, who were both heading off to talk to animals at the edges of the world. I talked to every cab driver in New York City, in depth. New York has the best cab drivers in the world. Almost all of them are great storytellers. I sat in rooftop bars looking at the light of the single star you can see from Manhattan.

I met tons of other writers, people I knew and didn’t know, and without exception, they were lovely to be around. Lunched with the spectacular horror writer Peter Straub, and was overcome by glee, because man, we got along like wildfire, and Peter’s brain is filled with a skillion books, just like mine. It was a ridiculously pleasurable couple of hours.  Wandered BEA with Nancy Pearl, Librarian Superhero, whose brain is also filled with books – and who is a profound joy to be near.  There’s nothing like the geekjoy that can result when two people who are made of books find each other in a crowded room.  Pages begin whirring. I caroused with my dear friends of long duration, Playwrights Zay Amsbury and Greg Kalleres.  We made very very dirty jokes for about six hours straight. I’ve known them since I was 19.

And then, when I thought I was so tired I’d never speak again, on the way home, I sat on the airplane next to Blue Oyster Cult.  For real.  I was already entering airplane sequesterization mode, when Jules Radino, BOC’s drummer of 6 years, sat in the aisle seat. I was in the window. We instantly knew that we were friends who hadn’t met yet (Actually, all the above people? That’s pretty much how I met them too.) and we had to talk for 6 hours.  Poor middle-seat guy. He had no idea what he was in for.

So, that’s what I leave you with.  Don’t Fear The Reaper.  I don’t. My life is, pretty much all the time, so fucking amazing. This isn’t bragging. This is saying, yours probably is too. Live it.  Love it. It goes quickly, and man, there are so many incredible people living on this planet.  Find them.  I know. I suddenly sound all self-helpy, but seriously, my whole life is made of strangers who’ve become my heart. It’s a pretty excellent way to do it.  And this song? Come on, it’s a GREAT song. And it even ties in with Queen of Kings.

QUEEN OF KINGS IS OUT! AND THANK YOU’S TO SOME GENEROUS AUTHORS…

I wrote this post four days ago. It was that kind of week, running in circles, getting on airplanes.  I had a delusional notion that I’d somehow actually post a long and thankful blog on a day when I had a book coming out. I nearly managed it, and then I collapsed.

Now I’m in Key Largo, for two days, where I plan to catch up on things while my man dives in the only underwater state park in the country.  My stepdaughter graduated from the University of Miami yesterday, and I’m feeling victorious.  Two children, out in the world.  There will be a blog posted at the Penguin Author Desk this week which talks more about the craziness of birthing books versus birthing babies. There’s also another blog linked below, having to do with classical vampires, which I posted at Penguin the other day.

Without further ado, some thanking.

***

It’s Thursday. Queen of Kings has hit bookstores!! Well, some bookstores.  Not, for example, the bookstore nearest my house. Here is a photo of Queen on the Williamsburg Bridge, though. My excellent friend Sully  took her there. I hope she’s dancing and not considering a leap.

I’m told, or at least this is what a pile of emails from frustrated people indicates, that there’s a large shipment of books delayed somewhere in Arizona, which is awesome, so I haven’t actually seen a copy of my book in the wild yet. If you HAVE seen one, do me a favor: take a picture and post it either at my facebook page or put it up on Twitter.  I’m @MARIADAHVANA over there, and if you put my name in the update, I will see it and repost. Also, I will be super excited.*

There are many places to see as much, or more of me as I’m putting up here today.   For example:

My dear friend Matt Cheney interviews me at length – well, really, we converse via gchat, and then post the gchat, hardly edited, (but a little – there was one place in which I declared that I could type faster than a Kraken, which Matt wisely edited out) on topics ranging from monsters to politics to In Cold Blood – over at his blog The Mumpsimus.  Matt has been one of my favorite people on earth for years now. He is profoundly brainy, wickedly funny, and you know, strange like me.

HERE IS THE MUMPSIMUS INTERVIEW.  If you wonder what it would be like to get drunk with me, this might give you a sense  of it. The conversation was free ranging.

If you’d like to ACTUALLY get drunk with me, I’m going to be at Book Expo in NYC very soon. I’m signing in the autograph tent at 10 am – 10:30 on Weds the 25th.  We won’t be drinking at 10 am (I don’t think, anyway, though it depends on how stressful BEA is) but I’m going to be around the conference. Let me know via twitter, if you’re there.  I’m going to be wandering.

And at Penguin’s Author Desk, you can read a long post about Vampires, Cleopatra, and Bloodsuckers of the Classical World which goes into why I’d write a book like Queen of Kings.

At Largeheartedboy’s BOOKNOTES feature, I made a soundtrack for Queen Of Kings. One of my favorite things I’ve done in weeks, actually. I love music.  This has  everything from Sxip Shirey and Amanda Palmer to Iron Maiden and Stevie Nicks.

At Kelley Eskridge’s blog, there’s something very damn nice.  Also, if you don’t know Kelley, read her newly reissued novel Solitaire. It’s beautiful. At some point soon, there’ll be an entire Kelley blog, not cause she did one for me, but because she is wonderful in 1630 different ways.

What else? My husband cooked me breakfast this morning and he sang Happy Book Birthday To Queen Of Kings.

That was excellent.

Sxip called me and we did what we always do, since I met him a year ago, which is accidentally talk for two hours, miss deadlines, and laugh so loud that everyone around us wants to run away. This is Sxip. There will be a longer post about him in the near future, but for now – check out this WSJ article about him, from a couple days ago. Sxip is amazing.  He did the music for the Queen of Kings trailer. He makes magic.

Then I sat at my desk for…well, I’m still sitting here. Shortly, I’m going to get myself together, and have a celebratory drink -(NOTE FROM SUNDAY NIGHT – HERE’S WHAT I WORE TO HAVE SAID CELEBRATORY DRINK. RED, BACKLESS, TWO YEARS WORK ON THAT BOOK! ENOUGH SAID. )

-but thus far, it’s all typing and typing and typing.

Not that I don’t like typing. This is, after all, my chosen occupation. I type like a motherfucker all day long. Life could be worse. Had I been raised in a time in which I had to write with a quill, I might not have been a writer at all. I’m left handed and I smudge the ink all over myself by dragging my hand through my words. I’d have been one of those writers whose work is “lost” but in my case, the work would have been “obliterated” by mucky ink.

Today, as well, I want to say a public and passionate thank you to the authors who gave me early blurbs for Queen Of Kings. It’s a big deal, getting a quote from an author you admire. Often, they are some of the first people who actually read the book – besides one’s husband, who in my case, read the book like 19 times –  and the fact that they’re willing to take time out of their own crazyass lives (and more importantly, their writing) to offer their support is, well, priceless. So, here goes. They each get a public lovenote, right now. Alphabetically.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, none of these people are Sirs. I’ve knighted them myself, for acts of benevolence to the realm of my Queen.

SIR ED BRUBAKER

Ed Brubaker, the Eisner and many-other-award-winning graphic novel king, who wrote, among many other things, Incognito, Criminal, and, perhaps extra notoriously, THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA gave me a kickass quote.

This is Ed, and a cover for Incognito, his pulp noir series. You should buy it. Visit his website linked above, to find out where best to find it. It’s in many places, I just want you to buy it where Ed wants you to, and not in a random link somewhere off the edge of the world.

His blurb isn’t on the cover of the book, because we had space problems. This was a bummer, although, let’s be real, it’s a cup runneth over kind of bummer. Still, though, it bites, because Ed is awesome.  Ed has a long and fascinating history as a creator of stories, an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of books, in genres other than the ones he writes in, as well as in those he does, and he generally cracks me up.  He is wildly impassioned, totally opinionated, and tends to injure himself writing.  As I do the same thing, (I seriously somehow ripped my shoulder writing Queen of Kings) we’re very much in sync. Ed is also generous with his time and conversation, and he manages to be both exuberant and caustic simultaneously. I like all these qualities too. Ed’s on Twitter.  Go tell him you love him. And also, go and read his stuff.

(Actually, reading stuff is a very good way to tell a writer you love them. In fact, you can tell ME you love me by reading any of the work of any of the writers below. Um, after you read Queen Of Kings. )

SIR NEIL GAIMAN

Neil Gaiman is a friend of mine, which makes me a very lucky person, not least because Neil is the sort of person who could get lost in a rare bookstore for days and days and only come out because he’d finally found something he hadn’t read there, and wanted to get a look at it in the light.

I love people like that. I like to talk to people about obscure books, and Neil happens to share a favored obscure book with me, a book I can’t even bear to share with the internet because if I do, I’ll never be able to find a copy of it again. It’s rare like that. (Though, you know, beg me, and I might.) I know Neil because of his wife, Amanda Palmer, who deserves, and will get her own blog. Suffice it to say that I am as lucky to know Amanda as I am to know her man.  She is extraordinary.  Back to Gaiman: I also love people who manage to combine a skillion different things into everything they write, beautifully, comfortably, and without seeming to be working at it at all. I first encountered Neil’s work through Sandman, and embarrassingly, I was quite sure I wouldn’t like it. It was a comic book. I thought I didn’t like comic books. I was very badly mistaken.  (See Also: Brubaker) That series is filled to the brim with magic, deeply inventive sentences and possibilities, complexity, and literary balls to the wall kickassness. There’s even a bit involving Augustus, who also figures in Queen of Kings.  So, yeah, I could go on. I could also post a whole lot about all his other work, and talk about how he just wrote a Dr. Who episode and it apparently was spectacular (I haven’t seen it yet, but I will soon, I swear). I’ll just post this cover of the 10th Anniversary Issue of American Gods, which is a terrific novel, and which I read just as I was finishing the first draft of Queen.

What I really want to say is that Neil took time out of the most travelpacked life, read the book, and gave me a quote, and for this, I am grateful as all get out and in.  He is, of course, on Twitter. And if you don’t know his work, well, get some. There’s lots. You will love it.

SIR GARTH STEIN

Garth Stein is the excellent author of THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN. This is Garth.

This is Garth’s MEGA BESTSELLER, which just celebrated 100 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list:

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy it too. There are enough copies of it for everyone. Garth is funny and deep and weird and twisted, all at once.  He’s a terrific writer, and also a very good friend. I know him because we met doing a radio panel one morning, maybe two years ago. We started talking about bourbon. Later we talked about how all readings should take place in venues with moodlighting and alcohol. It was 8AM.  I knew instantly that we would get along. Garth is deeply in deadline on his own new novel, but he willingly put it aside to read mine. Not even the finished version of mine. No. The rough, uncopyedited manuscript. He rocks. Garth’s on twitter too. He is also spectacularly fun to spend any amount of time with, and he is a big part of the reason I ended up becoming part of the Seattle7Writers last year. It’s like it sounds, although there are way more than 7 of us. We raise money for literacy, put on crazy events, and sometimes just hang out with Seattle’s large and fabulous community of writers in all imaginable genres, and, you know, do what writers do when they get together. (Bourbon.)  Last fall, a quick plug for a project we did together, 36 of us wrote a novel in 2 hours shifts. (Bourbon.) You can get it now, as an ebook. I wrote chapter 5, with a 104 degree temperature.(Hot toddies.)  It raised lots of money for charity. Buy it, and help us raise more.

SIR PETER STRAUB

I’ve never actually met Peter. Yet. But he is known throughout the literary world as a gentleman, a hilarious raconteur, and an excellent friend.I’ve been a fan of his for years – Ghost Story is, if you’ve not read it, a classic and a holy terror. The film version of same actually made me vomit with terror, when I inadvertently viewed it at a sleepover when I was around 8 years old, and I’ve really been haunted by it ever since.  Peter’s been decorated with every imaginable medal. Google him and check it out.  This is Peter in his office, photographed by Kyle Cassidy, who photographs tons of wonderful people. Not me yet.  I look forward to the day when I qualify, because damn, Kyle’s photos are fine.Peter and I share an agent (See: Gernert), and also a friend (See: Gaiman) and both of these things conspired to get Queen of Kings onto Peter’s desk.  The same desk where his most recent book, A Dark Matter, was born.  He wrote me a tremendously kind blurb, after reading my book on a tight damn deadline.  I was rapturous, because, well, idol. Peter’s on twitter. There are also a couple of faux Peters there. Here’s the real one.  Go read some Straub. You will not remotely regret it. He goes everywhere, into terror and into Nordic myth, into alternate universes and into creepy rooms filled with questionable collections.  I love a person who does it so large and with such complexity.

SIR DANIELLE TRUSSONI

Yeah, yeah.  I know. She’s a girl. I hate Lady, though. It’s not as satisfying to type “lady.” I myself would much rather be a knight than a nightingale.  If I could find my camera cable, I would post a photo of Danielle and I in France a couple weeks ago, but since I can’t find it anywhere, I can only say that we hung out recently, much to my delight, and that the photos are very nice.  So, Danielle is the author of two books, FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH, and ANGELOLOGY. Like me, she wrote a memoir first, and then a novel with history and supernatural content.

We met when we were just about to publish said memoirs, about…5 years ago.  Angelology is selling gloriously all over the world right now, and Danielle deserves it.  She’s brainy and intense, profoundly inventive, and also, just a damn fine person to hang out with in the middle of the night. A lot of our history has been middle of the night conversations, and I’ve been cheering about Angelology for about three years straight. The fact that we got to drink wine together a couple weeks ago was very nice – we had many things to celebrate. She took time out from ANGELOPOLIS, the second in her trilogy, to read an incredibly messy manuscript and give me a quote, and I love her for it.  Go find her on Twitter.  Tell her you can’t wait for her next book. I can’t.

***

And that is all from Sunday night in the Florida Keys.  I must post this now so that I can sleep. And then, tomorrow AM, write more blogs, very due blogs, for people who shouldn’t have to wait for me to get my crazy mind together.