realthog

A note arrived this morning from the wunderkind of British fantasy illustration, Vinny Chong, to say that at last there's a book of his artwork on its way: Altered Visions: The Art of Vincent Chong, to be published March 25 by Telos. (I'm not sure yet if there's to be a US publisher/distribution.) You can find details by clicking here and then, once on the Telos site, by clicking on the "Original and Classic Fiction" icon on the right. (Real intuitive, yep?)

The book's to be launched at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, and I'd be surprised if Telos find themselves taking many copies home afterwards.

Vinny did the cover for my 2008/9 novella The City in These Pages (PS Publishing; see icon above), and blew my mind with it. Like every author who's ever had a Chong cover, I'm hoping I'll get another somewhere down the line . . .

What's really making me fed up, of course, is that I'm no longer with Paper Tiger (such of that imprint as is left). This is a book I'd have loved to have published. Oh, well, dammit.

Current Music: Mozart: Piano Concerto #15

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 . . . ?

Current Music: Dido: Safe Trip Home

Further exploration reveals that Vinnie Chong has done a back-cover illustration for the book as well:

I feel very privileged!

Current Mood: doubly lucky
Current Music: Yanoska - Yanoska

Thanks to the patience and kindness shown by

al_zorra in explaining the technique to this humble cyber-simpleton, I am now able to bring to you the cover image I was talking about last night:

The book is, once more, called The City in These Pages (well, you guessed that part, didn't you?) and the publisher is PS Publishing. There's more info at http://store.pspublishing.co.uk/acatalog/the_city_in_these_pages_hc.html.

Current Mood: gasping
Current Music: Bob Carpenter: Silent Passage

My server, optonline.net, appears to have taken it into its head to block e-mail from the great PS Publishing, who're releasing my Ed McBain homage, The City in These Pages, soonish. I'll be making another onslaught on the optonline bozoes on Tuesday (a first attempt, on Friday, got exactly nowhere -- someone ought to bring a class action against these dimwits for the time they waste) . . . [256-page rant omitted by popular request]

Anyway:

Tonight, while trying to work out a way of getting in touch with my publisher, I saw for the first time the cover artwork for The City in These Pages . . . and it's wonderful!

My LJ account doesn't allow me to upload the picture here (it's because I'm a cheapskate, you see), but you can gaze in awe at it at http://news.pspublishing.co.uk/2007/12/14/finished-cover-the-city-in-these-pages-by-john-grant/.

A huge thankyou to Vincent Chong for the fab artwork . . . and of course to the folk at PS for commissioning him!

Current Mood: fatigued
Current Music: Bob Carpenter: Silent Passage

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Entries tagged with vincent chong

Vincent Chong has a book of his art coming out

auction item for the HelpVera fund

and there's more!

The City in These Pages

The City in These Pages cover a/w - wow!

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