realthog

A couple of bits of Anthologies News have come in from two different sources over the past few days -- I stress the "two different sources" aspect because the news items share much in common.

First off, Vera Nazarian's (

norilana's) much heralded anthology Sky Whales and Other Wonders now has a firm publication date of December 2009. Among the authors in the line-up are Tanith Lee, Anna Tambour, Erzebet YellowBoy, Linda J. Dunn, Sonya Taaffe, Mary A. Turzillo, Mike Allen (

time_shark) and, er, me. The story in question of mine is "Breaking Laws", an attempt to deconstruct -- as it were -- urban fantasy. I love this story to pieces, and very luckily Vera likes it too!

Vera passed along a preliminary cover visual for Sky Whales and Other Wonders. Done by Ahyicodae, this apparently still lacks a decorative cartographical border. It looks pretty stunning nonetheless, in my opinion:

A couple of days later I heard from Dave Hutchinson (

hutch0) about a quite different anthology in which I have a story, the story being my short novella "The Beach of the Drowned" (another personal favourite) and the anthology being what was once called New Writings in the Fantastic #2 but had to be retitled when Pendragon Press, publisher of New Writings in the Fantastic (which I edited), declared an indefinite moratorium on new releases in response to the economic climate. Now called Under the Rose, the book is -- like Sky Whales and Other Wonders -- to be released by Norilana Books (

norilanabooks); it's scheduled for October. I'm not sure who the other authors are in the ToC; as soon as I find out I'll add the info.

Meanwhile, I have to prepare myself to have my carotid arteries ultrasounded this morning -- their annual checkup. This is by no means as much fun as it might seem, since it involves someone sticking a blunt object very, very firmly into sensitive bits of my neck for protracted periods. Still, it's definitely better than my ultrasounding experience last fall, when one of the stenting wounds was causing problems and consequently what was being ultrasounded was my groin. It makes me limp just to think about it . . .

So tomorrow it's back to hospital (a different hospital, in fact, but when you're staring at the ceiling blearily they all look much the same) to have a bit more surgery done.

This time it's nothing so baroque or flamboyant as on my last excursion: merely a matter of having arterial stents ("kissing stents" is the rather charming technical term) emplaced in both legs via a puncture in my groin area; as a special bonus, they shave my groin for free!*

As far as I can understand, the experience should be roughly the same as for the angiogram I underwent a few months ago, and I ought to be back home by evening. I get the impression that for the next few days I may be of use for not much else but looking pitiful and occasionally drooling in an earnest manner -- two activities for which I have a pronounced talent. If I'm up to it, I'll do some research reading for Bogus Science; if the residual anaesthetic is still making my mind wander, I guess my reading matter will be . . . less demanding. To be honest, I have my fingers crossed I should be able to carry on work as usual: there's a lot to be done.

Recovery should be fast thereafter. My hope is to get across to Nottingham, UK, for Fantasycon in mid-September, where there's the possibility I can do something to assist my novel The Dragons of Manhattan, currently in severe danger of being "orphaned" owing to circumstances beyond its publisher's control (major illness, something that's of course far more important than the fate of any novel . . . yet I have to think about the novel too). If I do make it across, this'll necessarily be -- for reasons of both expense and time -- a down-and-dirty trip, just there and back, with none of the bopping around to see friends/rellies that's usually a major part of such ventures.

Of course, another lure of Fantasycon is that it'd be nice to be there in person for the British Fantasy Awards ceremony, just to witness first-hand my failing to pick up a BFA for the anthology New Writings in the Fantastic. I've managed to miss the vast majority of awards ceremonies in which I've had an interest, so . . .

* As they did preparatory to angiogramming me. My innocent fantasies of this act being performed by a Barbarella-style delight were shattered cruelly when the nurse in question appeared at my bedside, complete with his nautical swagger and his bulging, tat-adorned biceps. All that was missing was the can of spinach.

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Entries tagged with under the knife

anthologies news

and for my next trick . . .

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