I’ve known Michael Walsh for a couple years now, and he’s a very cool guy. He has chaired a truly ridiculous number of conventions, including my all time favourite con (the Washington World Fantasy). This year, in amongst working a day job, publishing terrific books and so on, he is also the chair for Capclave 2005. All well and good you say. I’m living in Perth and you’re probably not in the Washington area either, so why should you care?

Well, turns out that one of the guests is the all-time, best ever Swancon guest, Howard Waldrop. This is nifty enough, but he’s committed to provide two never-before-published stories to be published in a free booklet that will be available only to Capclave members (limit one per membership). Now, anyone who knows the history of Howard knows that the best way to get him to write stories is to get him to be a guest at a convention where he has to do a reading (it worked at Swancon), so this is going to happen.

Because you are a scion of good taste (as am I), you are no doubt groaning and thinking how am I ever going to get one of these books? Well, simple. Memberships seem to be only $US30. You may not be able to go to the Con, but it’s cheap for two Howard stories and, hey, the Con might be able to put the money toward getting Howard a better class of fishing rod or somesuch.

I honestly never thought you’d see the eidolon name in print again, but here we go again. After a lot of conversation, and nearly three years in limbo, Jeremy Byrne and I have decided to dust off eidolon, give it a fresh coat of paint, and put it out as an original anthology series. It’s not limited to Australian folk or to any particular kind of story. We’re hoping to get something wonderful for the first volume, and then to really grow it over time. It’ll probably always be on a modest scale, but we hope it’ll have real impact, and give a slightly more internationally-focussed stage for Australian writers. The announcement, with submission details etc is over on my NightShade board and on the Eidolon Books website.

does ‘writer to watch’ just mean that they’re shifty, that you shouldn’t leave your car keys near them or something? I just ask because I’ve noticed a desperate look come into the eyes of some writers to watch at booksignings, and lifting your car keys to flee in desperation doesn’t seem that unlikely, somehow.

…continues unabated. The following good folk have now posted interviews on his livejournal: Chris Barnes, Stuart Barrow, Lee Battersby, Deborah Biancotti, David Carroll, Jay Caselberg, Bill Congreve, Stephen Dedman, Brendan Duffy, Russell B. Farr, Paul Haines, Robert Hoge, Robert Hood, Trent Jamieson, Martin Livings, Geoffrey Maloney, Chuck McKenzie, Ben Payne, Robin Pen, Nigel Read, Colin Sharpe, Cat Sparks, Jonathan Strahan, Anna Tambour, Lyn Triffitt, Iain Triffitt, Kaaron Warren, Grant Watson, Kim Wilkins, and Sean Williams.

I’ve had several conversations of late about small press publishers producing sets of ‘collected works’ or ‘collected stories’ volumes. In amongst mention of the Leiber, Simak and other sets, I’m almost always asked about whatever happened to that Vance project? For those who don’t recall, a group of dedicated and very well organised Vance readers, working under the Vance Integral Edition name, proposed to produce a set of 44 volumes reprinting all of his published works. More than that, they sought to restore the texts, with his approval/agreement.

Although it wasn’t very widely recognised beyond those most immediately affected, the VIE people decided to divide the books into two 22 volume ‘waves’. The first wave was published in the Spring of 2003, and I’ve just seen on their website that the second wave has been printed and delivered to the binders in Italy. Copies, one would expect, will ship in the next month or so.

There’s a lot to like about this project, and only one or two things that I have reservations about. I like that they were so respectful of Vance’s work, that they endeavoured to do the right thing by him, and that they created pristine digital texts that other publishers could use (a number of VIE texts have been used by mass market publishers, most notably ibooks, to produce new Vance mass market editions). I’m less sure about restoring texts, but that’s a call for Vance himself, whose wishes should be respected. For those interested, there are a number of variant options on obtaining VIE volumes, which you can find here.