Steampunk is dead; Dieselpunk is the next big thing. Quick, somebody out there write me a novel featuring Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, and the redhead from Mad Men in a flame-throwing Cadillac, fighting communist zombies from outer space.

What happens when an independent publishing company with somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty titles decides it's time to finally move out of the garage and into a warehouse?

Short answer: CHAOS!

Last Thursday, the decree came down from the top. We were moving. That weekend. Wheels had been in motion for weeks, leases signed, notices given. We knew we would be moving, but the announcement was still a bit of surprise, coming immediately after Jason recovered from World Fantasy (the flu, I believe, but an entirely Jason-centric mutation). Books would be moved over the course of the weekend; office pack-up, I assumed, would start on Monday. I left that evening after reserving a 24' truck for the occasion, and feeling like I was leaving the move in more capable hands.

Monday, sure enough, Jason's garage was empty. Maddie sniffed around at the Styrofoam scraps scattered around the emptiness as we wandered back to the office, where she settled in to her bed under my desk and I booted up my laptop. While we settled in for the day, Hannah the Intern arrived. We chatted for a few minutes, then I checked my e-mail. A quickly-typed message from Jeremy, subject line: MOVING AND SHIT. "Warehouse is a disaster," it read. "I need you and Hannah to head over."

I considered bashing my head against the keyboard. Instead, I said, "Looks like we're headed over to the new digs, Hannah."

I loaded Maddie into the car, then drove across town, talking music, city life, science fiction, and academia with Hannah, wondering just what we'd gotten ourselves into.

Needless to say, the place was a mess. One garage and two storage units worth of carton after carton of science fiction, fantasy, and horror hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass markets, loaded onto a truck, then unloaded in nearly random order. Our mission: Sort the books onto pallets, like titles together. My back ached to think about it. A few hours of tossing around twenty-to-thirty-pound boxes of books, and all the weird similarities of genre fiction titles titles become painfully obvious. We navigated our way through piles of PRADOR MOON FLIGHTS, climbed stacks of PRECIOUS DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS, and eventually we'd made a dent. We called it a day. I loaded Maddie back into the car, gave Hannah a ride to where she'd left her bicycle, then drove home, sore, dirty, and exhausted.


Maddie wasn't terribly happy working in the warehouse on Monday. She complained about the cold concrete floors and noise all the way home, so she stayed home today.

( More behind the cut. )

"So where's my desk gonna go?" Maddie checks out the new home of Night Shade Books.

I'm taking the day off in order to recover from this weekend's World Fantasy Convention in San Jose. I need it. The convention was amazing: conversations resumed from previous cons, amazingly cool people, great food, and far more books than one can safely shake a stick at. And the parties! And I've got the pictures to prove it.


But first: The suit! Kitted up on Sunday for the World Fantasy Awards banquet.

( More to see behind the cut! )

1) Do laundry.
2) Make Anti-Vampire Garlic Dip for the Halloween party I'm going to miss.
3) Cut up strawberries.
4) Cut onions, chives for egg salad. Wash dishes.
5) Wash hair.
6) Dig suitcase out of closet. Pack suitcase, shaving kit. Decide whether I'm packing the copy of American Fantastic Tales Jennifer gave me for our anniversary in hopes of getting Peter Straub to sign the thing while at the convention. (Answer: Yes. New question: Am I bringing my two Pugmire books, too? (Answer, in the form of a question: Why not?)
7) Walk Maddie. While out walking, buy treats for Maddie at Our Best Friends.
8a) Figure out if I need to pick up anything at NSB HQ on the way to San Jose. (Answer: Eight or so boxes of books.)
-b) Did the latest issue of Electric Velocipede show up?
-c) If dropping by NSB, figure out whether it's better to clear out trunk full of manuscripts and corrections before I drive down, or once I get to the office. (Answer: Drop 'em at office.) Pull dog seat out of car.
9) Once Jennifer gets home, drive her to errands, library.
10) Make an awesome dinner. With coffee. (Note: Substituted Coke Zero.) Clean up afterward.
11) Load the car, hope for the best.
12) Kiss Jennifer goodnight. Tell her I'm sorry I'll be missing our tenth anniversary, but duty calls. And that I'm looking forward to the next ten years. And twenty. And thirty. And so on.

I cut out of work a little early this afternoon, braving the wrath of Typhoon Melor (wasn't that one of Oscar Wilde's later pseudonyms? Or was that Sebastian Melor?) and the biggest storm to hit the Bay Area since '62 in the hopes of beating the bulk of rainy-day rush hour traffic home. Apparently, I succeeded!

While I'm (loosely) on the subject of pseudonyms, the brand new Graham Joyce novel, How to Make Friends with Demons, showed up at the Night Shade warehouse on Monday. This novel was originally published in the UK as the faux-memoir, Memoirs of a Master Forger, by "William Heaney" (the novel's protagonist). It was a real pleasure to be able to work on the Night Shade US edition, and it's even better to (finally) get this one out into the wild and into readers' hands. It's a great book, intelligent, literary, topical, and fantastic, and I highly recommend it to all of you.

Amazingly enough, we even managed to get all the HTMFWD preorders shipped out yesterday afternoon (thanks to Hannah the Intern!). Ah, it's great being caught up on shipping. Here's a quick glance at my copy of the book, hanging out before I bothered to shelve it last night.



Looks great, eh? If I do say so myself (and I will), it's even better (and less blurry) in person. All the elements came together. Eugene Wang's jacket design, spine stamp, and title logo work hand-in-hand with Mike Dringenberg's artwork. And I'm really happy with how the layout comes across; why the margins are wide enough that I doubt even Jeff VanderMeer could find something to kvetch about this time around (then again, why jinx myself?). Why even the boards of the book itself, cased in red with matching header caps, look awesome. Major shout-out to Michael Lee, NSB's Production Guy, for pulling this one together.

But enough about the book-as-physical-object. I know what you're saying: "Why should I read this book? And what's up with that title; is this a self help book?" Consider this: Charles de Lint says, "Anyone who isn't reading Graham Joyce is doing themselves a huge disservice"; The Guardian calls it "an ultimately uplifting feat of storytelling which grips the reader to the very last page"; SFRevu says that How to Make Friends with Demons "stands as a model example of the craft, a master class in novel construction and character development."

Better yet, consider these comments in praise of "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen," the O. Henry Award-winning excerpt (originally published in The Paris Review) from the novel:

"The thing I admire most about this tale is the pace, the rhythm, the economy of incident and the accuracy of the words. Each sentence adds something to the world being described. It looks simple and easy, and is in fact controlled and crafted." - A. S. Byatt, author of Possession.

"There is so much to admire, and so much to love... that I'm daunted by the task of doing justice to this beautifully shaped, immaculately pitched, and scarily convincing - as nightmares are convincing... story." - Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried


Still not convinced? My very good friend, Maddiezilla, High Demon of the Seventh Realm, says: "Buy this book, or I'll swallow your soul!"

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl "one of the finest science fiction novels of the year." Sean Melican at BookPage is certain The Windup Girl is "the most important SF novel of the year." I say they're right. In fact, I say The Windup Girl is not only a good candidate for next year's Hugo Award, it's the best book, hands down, you're going to read this year.

The Windup Girl is the brand-new dystopian thriller from Paolo Bacigalupi. If you don't know Paolo's work, you should. Paolo's fiction deals unflinchingly with environmental and sustainability issues that many authors are afraid to touch. The science is cutting-edge, the settings grim and evocative, the prose resonant. At the same time, Paolo's writing is character driven, lush, and captivating, with an impassioned emotional core.

But don't take my word for it. I'll be the first to admit I'm biased. Read a couple of Paolo's short stories. Read an interview or two. And check out this jacket copy and awesome cover image:



Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.

Now go track down a copy of The Windup Girl for yourself. We've got 'em in stock at Night Shade Books, so you can order directly from us, or you can get it through the usual suspects like Amazon.com (and while you're ordering The Windup Girl, don't forget to pick up Paolo's collection, Pump Six and Other Stories), Borderlands ,Borders, Barnes and Noble, Copperfield's, and your better local independent booksellers. And if they don't have it in stock, demand they order it through Diamond Books, Ingram, or directly from NSB). And don't forget to recommend it to your friends.

The vamps have hit the streets... and rumor has it they're ready to party.

In other words, By Blood We Live is finally out! You remember, right? The John Joseph Adams-edited vampire anthology I gave you a sneak preview of back in March, the one featuring a quarter-million words of the best of the last thirty years of vampire short fiction? The one with stories by John Langan, Robert J. Sawyer, Elizabeth Bear, and Lilith Saintcrow (not to mention Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, Harry Turtledove, Stephen King, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sergei Lukyanenko, Tanith Lee, Joe Hill, Kevin J. Anderson, L. A. Banks, and Catherynne M. Valente, among others)? The one that includes a definitive vampire fiction bibliography for further reading. The one vampire anthology you absolutely need on your bookshelf.

It's out! And in-stock* at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other e-tailers, and very likely on the shelves at a better bookstore near you (and if it isn't, make 'em order you one).

So what are you waiting for? Go get it!


And don't forget to click on the cover above and check out the official website, with free samples, author interviews, and much, much more.


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* However, we are still waiting for stock to show up at the 'Shade.

Recently, I had a chance to sit down and chat with Nathalie Mallet, author of the Prince Amir mysteries, Princes of the Golden Cage and its recently-released sequel, The King’s Daughters, about real-world inspirations, worldbuilding without maps, literary influences, and writing across genres. So take a few minutes, click on through, and read the Night Shade Interview with Nathalie Mallet.

Just in case you live under a rock, here’s the news: Right now everybody’s pissed at Amazon.com and nobody trusts the Kindle. Why? Three things: 1) Somebody who didn’t have permission made a couple of George Orwell titles available for Kindle download, 2) Amazon sold a bunch of ‘em, and 3) once Amazon found out that things weren’t 100% legit, they pulled the title, erasing downloads and automatically refunding money in the process. OMG1!! type the bloggers, IS MEMORY HOLE!!!1!. And yeah, sure, what Amazon did by sucking the downloaded file out of each-and-every Kindle (and erasing comments on their website) is kind of creepy, but they’ve already said they won’t do it again, and seriously, we’re talking about 1984 and ANIMAL FARM here, works you’d have to be an idjit not to realize are still new enough (1948 for 1984) to be under copyright protection in the United States (Australia and Canada need not apply). So ultimately Amazon did do the right thing.

Hang on, I know what you’re going to say. Hear me out. As I read thread-after-thread on this highly emotional topic, I thought to myself, Orwell’s dead, I get that, and I get the whole free culture thing, and I fully realize that the entire iPod business model is based on compatibility with your illegally downloaded music library, but what if this was a new book, by working authors? What if this was a book by a bunch of professionals expecting, and in many cases just plain hoping, to get paid? What if this was a Night Shade book? What if this was, say, THE LIVING DEAD?

And not more than an hour later, I found myself sending DCMA takedown notices to two of the biggest file hosting and blog hosting companies out there, all because some knucklehead had made a bootleg version of that very book (THE LIVING DEAD) available on his blog. And I fully expect that link to be gone by tomorrow morning, because I’ve had to do this before. A few months ago I had to do the same for John Joseph Adams’s previous Night Shade anthology, WASTELANDS: STORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE and I won’t be a bit surprised when I have to do it again in a few months for BY BLOOD WE LIVE and THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

Because that’s what a responsible publisher does. When you agree to publish someone’s book, you are purchasing from them the exclusive right to distribute that work, this is a limited, legal monopoly, and it’s up to you as the publisher to make sure that not only is the author not getting ripped off by the existence of bootleg copies, but also that those copies out there represent the work in the best way possible. Bootlegs are shoddy, error-ridden affairs (but then again, so are many e-books, but that's another matter entirely), beyond the control of author and publisher; the recipient of a bootleg book might be reading another book entirely!

Amazon did the right thing, because these versions of 1984 and ANIMAL FARM were unauthorized editions. Straight-up stolen. No amount of righteous indignation can convince me otherwise. Unlike Amazon, if you downloaded THE LIVING DEAD, I'm not going to come over to your house and delete it from your computer. I'll leave that up to you and your conscience. And ultimately, it’s not like 1984 itself has disappeared down the aforementioned “memory hole.” The Virginia M. Woolf Foundation have an “extra large print” edition available for Kindle download. Just four bucks. Order yours today.


---

And no, I don't own a Kindle. But if someone from Amazon.com is reading this, feel free to send me one for review.

We've been busy at NSB lately, bringing more than twenty titles to print over the last couple of months. Between this, the recent sale, and our need to move a large amount of inventory off-site and into storage, I've been positively swamped. But hey, at least it's positive.

Anyway, here's a quick run-down of our recent arrivals (available NOW at better bookstores near you):


The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Four: The Maze of the Enchanter
The Shadow Pavilion, by Liz Williams
The Lees of Laughter's End, by Steven Erikson
Mall of Cthulhu, by Seamus Cooper
Bar None, by Tim Lebbon
Prador Moon, by Neal Asher
Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams
The King's Daughters, by Nathalie Mallet
Moon Flights, by Elizabeth Moon


Mass Market Paperbacks!
Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams
Passage at Arms, by Glen Cook
After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove
Balefires, by David Drake


All our Mass Market Paperbacks to date (spines up):
Ice, Iron and Gold, by S. M. Stirling
Lightbreaker, by Mark Teppo
The Demon and the City, by Liz Williams
Snake Agent, by Liz Williams
Balefires, by David Drake
Passage at Arms, by Glen Cook
Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams
The Princes of the Golden Cage, by Nathalie Mallet
The King's Daughters, by Nathalie Mallet
Moon Flights, by Elizabeth Moon
Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams
Prador Moon, by Neal Asher
After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove


The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan
Incandescence, by Greg Egan*
The Swordbearer, by Glen Cook


"So what are you waiting for?" wonders Maddie. "Go buy some books!"


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* Wow, I posted about the hardcover release of Incandescence exactly one year ago. This Trade Paperback edition features all-new cover copy, and we were able to fix a couple of the hardcover's glitches.

This weekend, I had a chance to sit down and chat with the Bunny Magus himself, Night Shade author Mark Teppo, about his recently-released novel Lightbreaker, its forthcoming sequel Heartland, Urban Fantasy, Western Occultism, industrial music, and Mark's appearance this coming Tuesday at San Francisco's Borderlands Books. So click on through (or on the artwork below) and check out the inaugural episode of The Night Shade Interview: LIGHTBREAKER's Mark Teppo.

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter will be shipping right around the end of June, continuing our five-volume Collected Fantasies series. Today, the Bard of Auburn is best known as a writer of weird fiction, one of Weird Tales' most prolific contributors, and a contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. But he was also a poet (one reviewer dubbed Smith "the Keats of the Pacific"), sculptor, and painter, in short, a twentieth-century renaissance man. To learn more about Smith (and see photographs of his art), we encourage you to visit Boyd Pearson's excellent website, The Eldritch Dark. The Maze of the Enchanter includes, in chronological order, all of Smith's stories from "The Mandrakes" (February, 1933) to "The Flower-Women" (May, 1935), extensive story notes by editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, and an introduction by the inimitable Gahan Wilson.

And remember, The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter is just one of the many titles eligible for our annual 50% off sale, which runs through June 17. Just add four or more books to your shopping cart, then enter coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we’ll knock your final price in half! If you've been looking for an excuse to order the entire five-volume Clark Ashton Smith series, now is the time!

At long last, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 has a cover! And with Fred Gambino's beautiful artwork and design by Eugene Wang, what a great cover it is! With all of my favorite short stories from the last year (Seriously, Jonathan Strahan has picked out an amazing collection of stories here. Lots of editors know what stories you'll enjoy reading; Jonathan Strahan, on the other hand knows the stories you NEED TO READ!), including ones by Paolo Bacigalupi, Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Holly Black, Peter S. Beagle, Michael Swanwick, and Kelly Link (not to mention some guy from Maine that you might have heard of), The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 shows why Night Shade Books has, in my totally unbiased* opinion, the must-buy "best of" of the year. Seriously, if you aren't reading Bacigalupi, Bear, Chiang, and Link, you might as well not be reading at all.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 is headed to the printer this week, so it will be shipping right around the end of June (and showing up at better bookstores near you in early-to-mid July). But do you know what's even cooler that that cover? The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 is just one of the items included in the annual Night Shade Books 50% off sale! That's less than thirty five cents per story! Just order the book along with three other titles, then put in coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we'll knock your final price in half! How easy is that?

Not completely convinced? Then read the jacket copy and lineup:

An alien world with an argon atmosphere serves as the stage for the ultimate self-examination; an African-American scientist dissects a Lovecraftian slave race while fascism rears its head on the other side of the world; an elderly Jewish artist attracts a celestial muse; a doomed village of scavengers discovers the scattered pieces of a metal man; a stalwart reporter gambles on an interview with the power to alter the world; a steel monkey defends a young girl from a rival family's assassins; a 19th Century country gentleman's curious daughter meets the enigmatic Dr. Viktor Frankenstein; a rivalry between brothers complicates the interpretation of a message from the stars; two girls discover that the cruel social rituals of adolescence apply differently in fact than fiction...

The depth and breadth of science fiction and fantasy fiction continues to change with every passing year. The 29 stories chosen for this book by award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan carefully map this evolution, giving readers a captivating and always-entertaining look at the very best the genre has to offer.

Jonathan Strahan has edited more than twenty anthologies and collections, including The Locus Awards, The New Space Opera, and The Jack Vance Treasury. He has won the Ditmar, William J Atheling Jr. and Peter McNamara Awards for his work as an anthologist and reviewer. Strahan is currently the reviews editor for Locus.


Contents:

Introduction - Jonathan Strahan
Exhalation - Ted Chiang
Shoggoths in Bloom - Elizabeth Bear
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel - Peter S. Beagle
Fixing Hanover - Jeff VanderMeer
The Gambler - Paolo Bacigalupi
The Dust Assassin - Ian McDonald
Virgin - Holly Black
Pride and Prometheus - John Kessel
The Thought War - Paul McAuley
Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe - Garth Nix
The Small Door - Holly Phillips
Turing's Apples - Stephen Baxter
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates - Stephen King
Five Thrillers - Robert Reed
The Magician's House - Megan McCarron
Goblin Music - Joan Aiken
Machine Maid - Margo Lanagan
The Art of Alchemy - Ted Kosmatka
26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss - Kij Johnson
Marry the Sun - Rachel Swirsky
Crystal Nights - Greg Egan
His Master's Voice - Hannu Rajaniemi
Special Economics - Maureen McHugh
Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment - M Rickert
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled... - Michael Swanwick
If Angels Fight - Rick Bowes
The Doom of Love in Small Spaces - Ken Scholes
Pretty Monsters - Kelly Link

Trade Paperback 978-1-59780-149-2
479 Pages $19.95

Still here? Go buy the book, already.


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* Okay, sure. Maybe I'm just a little bit biased. But only a little bit.

Sale: 50% off all in-stock and forthcoming Night Shade titles

It's that time of year again, sale time at Night Shade Books. We've got a lot of big new titles coming in, and we need to clear space in a big way (and pay off a few print bills)! So for the next two weeks, from Wednesday, June 3 until midnight on Wednesday, June 17, we're offering 50% off all in-stock and forthcoming* Night Shade books, with a four book minimum order. Just use the coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we'll do the rest!

Recent releases that we know you're going to like include Mark Teppo's Lightbreaker, Glen Cook's An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 5: The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions, Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse 2, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Fast Ships, Black Sails. And arriving shortly, mass market paperbacks of Liz Williams's Precious Dragon, S. M. Stirling's Ice, Iron and Gold, Elizabeth Moon's Moon Flights, Neal Asher's Prador Moon, Nathalie Mallet's The King's Daughters, Glen Cook's Passage at Arms, Walter Jon Williams's Implied Spaces, David Drake's Balefires, and Harry Turtledove's After the Downfall, not to mention Steven Erikson's The Lees of Laughter's End, Liz Williams's The Shadow Pavilion, and The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter, which will all be arriving (finally!) over the course of this month. Later this year, we'll be bringing you Glen Cook's Swordbearer and Darkwar, and publishing two brilliant debut novels, John Langan's House of Windows and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

Don't forget this year's forthcoming anthologies: John Joseph Adams's By Blood We Live and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 1, and Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 3 and Eclipse 3.

And coming next year (and now available for preorder): Glen Cook's Starfishers Trilogy: Shadowline, Starfishers, and Stars' End, Ellen Datlow's Tails of Wonder (Cats!), Tim Pratt's Sympathy for the Devil, Jonathan strahan's Wings of Fire (Dragons!), Walter Jon Williams's The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories and The Best of Fritz Leiber!

Order up, so that we can keep bringing you the best in SF, Fantasy and Horror! Once again, just enter the coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we'll take 50% off your order of any four or more Night Shade Books!

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* Preorders will ship as published. Estimated publication dates are subject to change.

Night Shade Books has joined forces with World Fantasy Award-nominated magazine Electric Velocipede, and, like a pair of steam-powered metal titans joined together to form a mighty behemoth, the pair plans to march forward in unison, changing the genre fiction battlefield for the better.

Electric Velocipede is a critically acclaimed science fiction/fantasy/cross-genre magazine published twice a year. Issues of Electric Velocipede have included works by award-winning authors such as Jeffrey Ford, Jeff VanderMeer, Alex Irvine, Liz Williams, Hal Duncan, Charles Coleman Finlay, and others. Many stories appearing in Electric Velocipede have appeared in the recommended reading lists for both the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and Year’s Best Science Fiction for several years running. Electric Velocipede editor John Klima will remain at the helm of the magazine, relying on Night Shade Books’ expertise and deep market penetration to help shepherd the magazine to the next level.

In celebration of this momentous alliance, Night Shade Books and Electric Velocipede are proud to announce a subscription drive: sign up for a one year subscription or renewal, and we’ll send you your choice of any two in-print Night Shade paperbacks or trade hardcovers! Just list your selections in the comments field when placing your order. Sorry, this offer applies only to United States subscribers only. Books must be in-print and available from Night Shade Books at the time the order is placed, and will be shipped concurrently with Electric Velocipede double issue #15/16. Night Shade Books reserves the right to make substitutions.

Subscriptions are for four issues, starting with the current issue. New subscriptions will begin with double issue #15/16. Double issues will be counted as two issues. Renewals are also four issues, starting with the next issue after your current subscription ends. Offer expires January 8, 2009.

Click here for more information, including a listing of the contents of double issue #15/16.

Book Review: The Second Book of Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber



This omnibus, collecting the last three of Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books (THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR, SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC, and THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS), finds its author approaching, in the time-honored tradition of aging SF authors, full-blown dirty-old-man-mode (at least Heinlein was able to attribute his latter-years satyriasis on a brain tumor). True, Leiber's duo of heroes, unlike, say, those of Tolkien, exhibited active libidos from the start, but here one can chart a sort of crescendo of kink, starting with the relatively chaste, but nudity- and sex-filled nonetheless, THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR (1968), but escalating rapidly in the last two books, as Leiber explicitly indulges the Mouser's ephebophilia and sadism ("The Mer She", from THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS, for example finds the Gray One repeatedly binding an adolescent stowaway to his shipboard bunk), and both heroes develop a Tourrette's-like tendency to drop c-bombs (and other misogynistic interjections) in casual conversation.

But even a priapic Leiber could write rings around most authors (indeed, the penis mightier than the sword), and this collection is filled to overflowing with the wild romance, strange adventure, perilous plotting, memorable characters (Kreeshkra, the ghoul-girl from THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR, being particularly fun), and clever banter that have been hallmarks of Leiber's Lankhmar tales since 1939's "Two Sought Adventure."

"But one certainly cannot fault the little darlings for their occasional itch for each other, since their taste is so exactly like my own." -Mouser

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Books Received:



Irish author Derek Gunn was kind enough to send me copies of his two Vampire Apocalypse novels, Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder and Vampire Apocalypse: Descent into Chaos. Long story short, he's hoping for a mention in the Recommended Reading section I'm compiling for By Blood We Live, the vampire anthology coming in August 2009 from Night Shade Books, and I'm looking forward to reading 'em.

Have you written a vampire novel I should know about? If so, feel free to send a review copy to:

Ross E. Lockhart, Associate Editor
Night Shade Books
1423 33rd Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122

The trailer for this year's must-own zombie anthology, The Living Dead, just went, well, live. Watch it here, or on editor John Joseph Adams's blog, or over at the book's official website (where you can read several of the book's stories for free), and then go track a copy down for yourself. And remember: the undead make wonderful holiday gifts!

"Hello..."


"Hello..."


"Hellooooooooo...."

"What are you doing Maddie?"

"Just saying 'Hello.' But check it out, my voice sounds all stretchy and echoey in here. Hellooooooooooo...."

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I scored a rare Monday off yesterday, thanks to a late Sunday night text message from jlassen telling me that, since the next day was a holiday, I may as well stay home. Of course, today is the real holiday, parades and all, but who am I to argue with a chance to hang out at home? So stay home I did, working (of course) on a comprehensive "recommended reading" list of vampire novels that I've been putting together for By Blood We Live, the vampire anthology Night Shade Books is putting out next August.

Have you got a favorite vampire novel that I absolutely shouldn't forget? Have you written the great American vampire novel? If so, say something in the comments, and if it isn't there already, I'll add it to the list. And yeah, you can recommend short stories, too (or you can suggest them directly to the editor, John Joseph Adams, right here).

And I'm nine days away from forty. And counting. Ugh.

The zombiefied copy of The Living Dead we flushed out of a carton yesterday at Night Shade Books. You gotta watch out for those... they're biters.


Scary close-up.