My friend and fellow-author Dave Hutchinson (http://hutch0.livejournal.com/) has told me that I should start myself a Live Journal and thereby get with it, join the smart set, look cool, be a babe magnet, etc. So here I am testing the system to see if I can master the technology ...
Who am I? Ignoring centuries of philosophy, perhaps the simplest way to answer would be to paste in (assuming I can find a copy) the latest-ish version of my standard biographical blurb, as supplied to luckless publishers and readers:
=====
JOHN GRANT (real name Paul Barnett) is the author of about 70 books. His The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters, currently in its third edition, is regarded as the standard work in its field. As co-editor with John Clute of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy he received the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award and several other international awards. As managing editor of the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction he shared a rare British Science Fiction Association Special Award, the first to be given in 17 years. He received a second Hugo in 2004 for The Chesley Awards: A Retrospective (done with Elizabeth Humphrey and Pamela D. Scoville).
Under his own name he was until 2003 Commissioning Editor of Paper Tiger, the world's leading publisher of fantasy art books; he received the 2002 Chesley Award for his work with Paper Tiger. He was until recently the US Reviews Editor of Infinity Plus and is a Consultant Editor to AAPPL (Artists' & Photographers' Press Ltd).
Recently published major books, all as John Grant, include Masters of Animation, the "book-length fictions" Dragonhenge (illustrated by Bob Eggleton and shortlisted for a 2003 Hugo Award) and its "sequel" The Stardragons, the novel The Far-Enough Window, the story collection Take No Prisoners, the children's book Life-Size Dragons (illustrated by Fred Gambino), the anthology New Writings in the Fantastic, and two books on the history of science, Discarded Science and Corrupted Science. He has just finished (1) a wildly experimental mosaic novel eviscerating the Bush Administration and (2) a cute children's book, and is currently at work on a book about film noir and, with his other hand, a further history-of-science book.
=====
That seems to be more than enough to put into this first experimental foray ...
