I’ve been working my way around the traps, trying to catch up on everything that needs to be read before the big deadlines come crashing down, and stumbled across a couple cool things. The guys over at Lenox Avenue have a good story by Jay Lake and Jenn Reese, “Dutch Boy Roller Coaster Blue 14-F5 “, which I’m guessing is the only piece of fiction to put Tim LaHaye on the wrong end of the Rapture. I’m not sure it 100% works, but it’s well worth reading. I also read a good review of Lake’s novel, Rocket Science, by John Clute in Interzone. I need to check my notes for the year, but it’s one of the two or three best first novels of the year.

Small presses take chances all the time; it’s the nature of the business. However, when one of the best small presses in the business decides to take a chance, publishing the first short story collection (and I think, first book), by a pretty much unknown writer, and then decides to produce it in what looks to be the biggest print run they’ve ever done, you need to pay attention.

It’s been known around the traps for a while that Pete Crowther’s PS Publishing will publish newcomer Joe Hill‘s debut story collection, Twentieth Century Ghosts, this coming September. It’s only just been announced, though, that the book will appear in three editions, including an affordable thousand-copy trade paperback.

As you can imagine, I began to wonder why. I’d recently read a story of Hill’s in Postscripts magazine, “Best New Horror”, and had thought it was one of the best stories I’d read so far this year. Well, yesterday, in amongst some other reading, I began to work my way through Twentieth Century Ghosts. Because I’m also reading for my year’s bests, I decided to start with the collection’s two previously unpublished stories, “The Cape” and “My Father’s Mask”. The first of these is an amazing story, subtle and powerful. It starts in a place a writer like Stephen King might recognise. A seven-year-old boy is playing superheroes in his backyard, climbing a tree to tease his elder brother, who is fast outgrowing such games and is unimpressed. In an appalling accident, he falls, hurting himself badly. His injuries haunt him into adulthood, as do confusing recollections about what actually happened. To tell more would be to spoil the story, but it’s terrific. I’ll probably read “My Father’s Mask” tonight, and then on through the other twelve stories in the book. If those other stories live up to “Best New Horror” and “The Cape”, then Crowther’s confidence in the book will have been more than justified and he will have published one of the year’s very best collections. If you like great short stories, or horror fiction, this may prove an essential (and affordable) purchase.

a breath test for cancer, from perth, where i live. if it’s real, if it works, wow. cheap, easy, accessible to all. just, wow.

John Klima, illustrious editor/publisher of the estimable ‘zine Electric Velocipede, has done something that any ‘zine editor would love to do: he’s sold out of copies of his latest issue. This is a good thing. A better thing is that, faced with this, Klima has decided to put all of Issue 9 online so that folks can taste the handcrafted goodness that goes into each and every issue of EV. My strong recommendation is to get yourself over there, check it out, and then subscribe.

There are a million good reasons not to post about what has happened, is happening, and is yet to happen to the City of New Orleans. I’m not from around there, it’s easy to pontificate, and how dare any of us do so from abroad. So, not that. Just two things. One, I think that there is a generation of people who thought that their times were to be defined by what happened in New York on September 11 who are about to find out, or already realise, that their times are actually going to be defined by this. It’s impossible to believe that the ramifications of this even won’t change everything. Two, I’d point you to John Scalzi’s post on ‘being poor‘ – it explains itself.