The Plasteel Spider Factory

It's well past time to admit, for those who might chance upon this journal, that I no longer intend to crosspost here. (As for original posts, I stopped doing that many months ago.)

I have never been a prolific blogger, but nonetheless I maintain two. What I suppose could be called my editing and publishing blog updates at Mythic Delirium Books. My "personal" page, which these days is mostly about fiction writing milestones, is still at Descent Into Light.

More immediate stuff happens on Twitter and occasionally on Facebook. What can I say, I'm just not a put-it-all-out-there sort of person. Nonetheless, I'm doing stuff, and when I think it's worth mentioning something about that, I do.

Just, alas, not here.

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Our fall 2016 issue (click here to view) has arrived, and it is full of ghosts who walk the Earth (or Mars) and people who become as ghosts.

In Andrew Gilstrap’s short fiction debut, a man in black with a guitar has a thing or two to share with a roomful of music fans about the afterlife. TJ Radcliffe gives us a story in verse about supernatural vengeance across the sands of Mars. Chris Reinhardt, in his fiction debut, shares a comic and touching tale about the weirdness of losing corporeal form.

Our poems for the issue, from Lore Graham, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gwynne Garfinkle, Mari Ness and Sandi Leibowitz, explore themes of loss and love, witchery and monstrous relationships, elemental forces and the end of the world.

Our cover art comes from Roanoke, Va., artist Bill Rutherfoord. His painting “What Really Happened” is part of his “Allegory of No Region” series, a traveling exhibition currently on tour.

If you don't want to wait three months to read the entire issue, you can purchase it for $2.99 at Amazon (click here) or at Weightless Books (click here), or subscribe (click here) on the Mythic Delirium Books website. Subscriptions are also available at Weightless Books.

Our October features are live now and free to read. Here's the schedule for this issue's monthly features.:
 

Featured in October
John Wagner's Last Blues • Andrew Gilstrap
Butterfly • Lore Graham
To the Ends of the Earth • Jeannine Hall Gailey

Featured in November
The Revenge of Hillier's Belle • TJ Radcliffe
Champagne Ivy • Gwynne Garfinkle
After Midnight • Mari Ness

Featured in December
Fade to Glass • Chris Reinhardt
Im Wald • Sandi Leibowitz
Introduction to Electromagnetics • Jeannine Hall Gailey

 
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The featured story and featured poems from the electronic pages of Mythic Delirium 3.1 have gone live for the month of September, meaning the entire issue is now free for all to read.
 
Our newest features are:

• "Left Behind," a wonderful science fiction/magical realism/mythology mashup from Yukimi Ogawa.
 
• Kavitha Rath's "Morgan Le Fay at the Downtown Mall," a dark mediation on magic and myth in the modern age.
 
• "Rusalka" by Jane Yolen, an uncompromising meditation on a folk tale's implications.

You can purchase the complete issue for your electronic reading devices for $2.99 at Amazon (click here) or at Weightless Books (click here).
 
The October-December issue is coming together, and it's truly special, with first fiction publications from Andrew Gilstrap and Chris Reinhardt, an old-fashioned Nelson Bond-style story-in-verse from TJ Radcliffe, new poetry from Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gwynne Garfinkle, Lore Graham, Sandi Leibowitz and Mari Ness, and wildly surreal cover art from Bill Rutherfoord.
 
To read the next issue before everyone else gets to see it, subscribe (click here) on the Mythic Delirium Books website. Subscriptions are also available at Weightless Books.
 
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The featured story and featured poems from the electronic pages of Mythic Delirium 3.1 have gone live for the month of August.
 
They include:
 

• "Comet's Call," a science fiction story from Benjanun Sriduangkaew about a mercenary arms trader who is herself a living weapon.
 
• "I learned" by Lyndsey Silveira, a beautiful poem about wolf's teeth and wisdom imparted.
 
• Ada Hoffmann's "Million-Year Elegies: Edmontonia," a wry look at evolutionary misunderstandings and the value of an armored shell.

 
Enjoy!
 
If you don't want to wait another month to read the remainder of the issue, you can purchase it for $2.99 at Amazon (click here) or at Weightless Books (click here), or subscribe (click here) on the Mythic Delirium Books website. Subscriptions are also available at Weightless Books.
 
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Last time I wrote an update, Anita and I were about to drive up to Readercon in Boston. A whole lot has happened since, some of it fun, most of it not fun at all, but for purposes of this update I’m sticking to the fun stuff.
 
Readercon itself was terrific for us. We held in essence a second launch reading and launch party for the Clockwork Phoenix 5 anthology. Rob Cameron, A.C. Wise, C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez, Barbara Krasnoff, Sonya Taaffe and Keffy R.M. Kehrli all read excerpts from their stories. At the party, Anita and I got to meet even more of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers group that Rob belongs to — a delightful bunch and I suspect a rich source of talent that we’re all going to hear a lot more about through future years. I also had a well-attended solo reading in which I read the title story from my collection The Spider Tapestries.
 
A.C. Wise (left), C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Barbara Krasnoff, Rob Cameron and Sonya Taaffe at the Clockwork Phoenix 5 reading. Photo by Jim Freund.
 
Just hours after Readercon wrapped up and Anita and I had started on our long way home, we got the news that the 2016 World Fantasy Award judges selected C.S.E. Cooney’s Bone Swans: Stories as a best collection finalist. (The news came first via happy text from Cooney, no less!) We’re so proud that Claire’s book is getting such prestigious recognition, and especially proud that we’re the ones who brought this book into the world. This World Fantasy nod is not just a first for Claire Cooney, but a first for Mythic Delirium Books. At present Anita and I have plans to attend the World Fantasy Convention in November. Should those plans change, we won’t keep it a secret; and if they don’t change, we look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.
 
Much closer to home and in time, the organizers behind the Roanoke Valley’s GeekMob event have invited me to be this year’s guest of honor. I’ll spend most of it behind a table chatting with whomever is inclined to stop by, perhaps selling a few books, and taking a break to give a half hour reading. GeekMob 2016 happens 1 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 14, at the Salem Civic Center. If you live nearby, come see us! More about GeekMob here.
 
Finally, sharp-eyed Mythic Delirium contributor Adam Howe pointed out to me that there’s photographic evidence that master film director Guillermo del Toro owns my horror story collection Unseaming. This evidence emerged with the opening of the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition “At Home with Monsters,” featuring artifacts and images from del Toro’s Bleak House, the house he maintains as a kind of personal inspiration space. Unseaming pops up in a photo in the accompanying catalogue; it's on a shelf in his living room, behind a life-size sculpture of Edgar Allen Poe! It’s hard to express what a thrill it is to know this.
 
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I'm very pleased about my final schedule of readings and panels at Readercon in Boston this weekend. Anita and I look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.
 
We'll also have copies of all our books with us (our big push will be for Clockwork Phoenix 5, and a little bit extra for The Spider Tapestries, but all the rest will be along, too), in case you want to get one in person and have it signed.
 

Friday July 08

5:00 PM A Clockwork Phoenix 5 Group Reading. Mike Allen, Rob Cameron, C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Keffy Kehrli, Barbara Krasnoff, Sonya Taaffe, A.C. Wise. Contributors to the bestselling fifth installment in the critically-acclaimed, boundary-expanding Clockwork Phoenix anthology series read excerpts from their stories.

 

Saturday July 09

1:00 PM A Reading: Mike Allen. Mike Allen. Mike Allen reads stories and excerpts from his newest collection, THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES. In the words of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, expect "weird and transgressive" tales that "defy genre and moral expectations."

 

Sunday July 10

10:00 AM AT Autographs. Mike Allen, Joe Haldeman.

1:00 PM 5 Tanith Lee - A Retrospective. Mike Allen, Gemma Files, Lila Garrott, Theodora Goss (leader), Sonya Taaffe. Tanith Lee authored over 90 novels and 300 short stories, a children's picture book, poems, and television episodes. In 1980, she became the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award, for her book Death's Master. Yet in 2010, Tanith Lee mentioned she was still writing novels, and consistently publishing short stories, but publishers were not interested in her longer works. Lee's impact on the genres that make up slipstream fiction was significant. What leads a publisher to look at works from an influential, established writer and decide they are not worth the shelf space? How can we keep Lee in print, and in people's minds?

 
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This newest issue kicks off the fourth year of Mythic Delirium Mark II, and it launches as Anita and I prepare to see friends and hawk our wares at Readercon.
 
Our summer offering gives center stage to a trio of voices from the far side of the world: Suzanne J. Willis brings a beautiful and gruesome story of maps inked on skin and where they lead; Benjanun Sriduangkaew shares a story of a space-faring arms dealer who is herself a weapon; and Yukimi Ogawa rejoins us with a mash-up of mythology and multiple genres that’s unlike anything you’ve ever read.
 
Our poetry crew this time around consists of Jane Yolen, Lynette Mejía, Christina Sng, Ada Hoffman, Kavitha Rath and Lyndsey Silveira, who together take us on tours through realms of legend and sorcery, dinosaurs and death personified.
 
Our cover art comes from Lissanne Lake, illustrator of the Buckland Romani Tarot.
 
Here's the contents and the schedule for upcoming features:
 

Featured in July
The Cartographer’s Price • Suzanne J. Willis
Half in Love with Easeful Death • Lynette Mejía
Mirror to the Other Side • Christina Sng

 

Featured in August
Comet’s Call • Benjanun Sriduangkaew
I learned • Lyndsey Silveira
Million-Year Elegies: Edmontonia • Ada Hoffmann
 

Featured in September
Left Behind • Yukimi Ogawa
Morgan Le Fay at the Downtown Mall • Kavitha Rath
Rusalka • Jane Yolen

 
If you don't want to wait three months to read the entire issue, you can purchase it for $2.99 at Amazon (click here) or at Weightless Books (click here), or subscribe (click here) on the Mythic Delirium Books website. Subscriptions are also available at Weightless Books.
 
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First posted at Mythic Delirium Books

 

 
I’ve launched an experiment here at Mythic Delirium Books. For the next couple weeks or so, ebook editions of all five of the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies are discounted to 99 cents across all the major electronic book platforms. My thanks to Holly Heisey for the snazzy promo banner!
 
Links to all, or at least most, of the discounted editions below.
 

Platform

Clockwork Phoenix Volume

Kindle	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Kindle UK	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Kindle CA	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Kindle AU	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Google Play	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Nook	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
iTunes	One	Two	Three	Four	Five
Kobo	One	Two	Three	Four	Five

 
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Originally published at Mythic Delirium Books. You can comment here or there.

Mythic Delirium Books at last has a site map!
 
On this page, you can find all the stories and poems from all the online issues of Mythic Delirium, sorted alphabetically by author. The index also includes all the stories from the Clockwork Phoenix anthology series and in C.S.E. Cooney’s collection Bone Swans, with links to the landing pages for the individual books.
 

 
I gotta give a shout of gratitude to Jacob Clifton, who super-generously made this page for us.
 
Further things included: links to stories from our books, poems from the print issues of Mythic Delirium, and even song lyrics that we’ve shared on the site.
 
Things not included: a breakdown of the contents of my own books (Hungry Constellations, The Spider Tapestries, The Sky-Riders); sortings of the first and second Mythic Delirium anthologies, as all the stories and poems they hold are available on this site; an alpabetical indexing of the poems from the print issues of Mythic Delirium (though a complete index of the contents of those issues can be found here.)
 
Have fun exploring!
 
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Originally published at Mythic Delirium Books. You can comment here or there.

Our June featured poems and story from the electronic pages of Mythic Delirium 2.4 have gone live on our website, wrapping up three full years of digital zinesterhood.
 
Alisa Alering’s “We Will Hold,” inspired by a remarkable ceramic sculpture by Pam Stern, shares a surreal, eerie and unforgettable tale of five sisters with a special bond.
 
Daniel Ausema makes his Mythic Delirium debut with “Beings of Air,” a wistful science fiction poem, while A.J. Odasso offers an evocative, grim meditation on genetics and chemotherapy in “XX/XY.”
 
Check ’em out and let us know what you think!
 
At present, I’m at work assembling the July-September issue, Mythic Delirium 3.1, and it looks like I’m going to be able to deliver it on time despite a slew of surprise technical problems. (So it goes in the life of a micropress publisher…)
 
The new issue holds fiction by Suzanne J. Willis, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Yukimi Ogawa, and poetry by Lynette Mejía, Christina Sng, Lyndsey Silveira, Ada Hoffmann, Kavitha Rath and Jane Yolen. Our wild cover art comes from Lissanne Lake.
 
You don’t want to miss this, trust me, so be sure your subscription is up-to-date. You can do that here at the Mythic Delirium Books website, or here at Weightless Books.
 
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Originally published at Mythic Delirium Books. You can comment here or there.