auction item for the HelpVera fund

Here's the relevant entry on the HelpVera auction page:

===============




Shortly to be published by PS Publishing, the novella The City in These Pages is my homage to the late, great Ed McBain, taking the form of a police procedural that's also a piece of cosmological fantasy. (Yeah, and people pay me to do this stuff?)

PS Publishing's page for the book is here and the book's cover blurb reads like this:

City Hall is on Lewis-and-Clark Street, so it was the 14th Precinct that got the call, and very soon the 14th Precinct, in the persons of Detective Sergeants Moto and Pincus, was on the spot, bending down and looking into the car at the condom-shrouded figure of Ratty Scarlatti but not touching anything because the m.o. and the scene-of-crime crew hadn't gotten here yet, being stuck in the traffic jam on Eighth thanks to the burst sewer there...

It might seem like just another case for the gallant boys of the 14th but, as the days progress and Moto (look, just don't make any jokes about his name, okay?) and Pincus delve deeper, the body count rises inexorably, with each murder reaching a new height of ludicrous surrealism – if not downright impossibility. It seems there's an avenger on the loose in the enigmatic city.

Yet is the unknown perpetrator truly seeking vengeance? Is the motive instead to patch up this version of reality in the least implausible fashion possible before its inhabitants begin to suspect there's something fundamentally awry? Or are there operators moving at an even deeper level than reality?

John Grant has commented: "I've been a devotee of the works of Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) for decades – since puberty, perhaps longer – so that when the great man died in July 2005 it was almost like losing a family member. I wanted to write my own, very humble tribute to him by way of thanks for all the pleasure he'd given me, but it was some while before the right combination of ideas came along."

The result, The City in These Pages, is a McBain-style police procedural, full of crackling wit and sharp one-liners, that's also a multi-layered cosmological fantasy in whose shifting perspectives nothing is ever quite as it appears. You've never read anything like it.


The book's being published in two editions: an unjacketed hardcover (500 numbered copies signed by just me at £10.00 [$15.00] apiece) and a jacketed hardcover (200 numbered copies signed by both me and Foreword writer Dave Langford at £25.00 [$37.50] apiece). (There was in addition to be a lettered, slipcased edition signed also by cover artist Vincent Chong, but that seems to have been delayed.)

What I'm offering is a rare unnumbered copy of the more expensive, jacketed version from my extremely limited personal stash of just three author copies of this edition. It's signed by both Dave and myself, and I will additionally personalize it to you (or to whomever you buy it as a gift for).

It will definitely remain one of a kind, because I'm damned if I'm giving away any more copies of the jacketed edition: the rest of them are mine to cuddle and adore, okay?

Minimum bid: $25.00
Shipping: on me

===============

If you want to bid on this (or on any of the many other fine items being auctioned for the fund), don't do so here but follow this link.

I'm planning/hoping to put up further items in due course. Would anyone be interested, for example, in a copy of my 1992 novel The World . . . ?

new Estronomicon out

The new edition of Steve Upham's FREEEEEEEEE e-zine Estronomicon is now out, and can be downloaded as a PDF in all its 67-page illustrated glory from here.

Stories and stuff are by Tony Richards, Geoff Nelder, Stephen Bacon, Charles Black, Neil Davies, Paul Kane, Marie O'Regan and the ever wonderful Allyson Bird -- whom Pam and I had the very considerable pleasure of meeting for the first time, albeit far too briefly, at this year's FantasyCon in Nottingham, UK.

Indeed, this issue of Estronomicon is a sort of FantasyCon special; of the issue's many attractions, perhaps most notable of all is the section focusing on the art of British Fantasy Award-winning artist Vincent Chong, whose recent covers include this one for my own The City in These Pages. (See? You knew I'd get in something egobooish somewhere sooner or later, didn't you? And I didn't wish to disappoint.)

Quite how Steve, whose Screaming Dreams Press published my novel The Dragons of Manhattan earlier this year (there! -- that's two bits of egoboo!), manages to pull such distinguished contributors to Estronomicon time after time after time is a mystery to me, especially since it's a free 'zine. Whatever, signing up for a subscription is much to be recommended.