So, I’m innocently browing the web this morning, and come across an article about Amazon’s Shorts program (neatly avoiding the article about whethere Christopher Paolini has jumped the shark already). The article doesn’t say much that is interesting, except for providing a list of all of the writers involved in the program, until Big Fish author Daniel Wallace is quoted as saying:

Publishers have always had a hard time selling and marketing the single, short-form work—the novella, for instance, or the novelette, or its even more diminutive cousin, the ‘novelini’—and these days it’s even harder,” says Wallace.

Say what tha?!? Novelini? What the heck is a novelini? Apparently some guy, Adam Engel, has decided to create 20-page novels and call ’em ‘novelini’. I love it. It sounds like a cool new marketing term for ‘short story’, and I hereby dub it so. Now, all I’ve got to do is tell Jeremy that I want to subtitle the new Eidolon anthology – which is nearly finished (yay!!) – a delectation of novelini.

Scott says that Peeps week is now over. We can all resume normal programming, and then he posts this photo (via, I believe, John Scalzi), which I found flat out disturbing.

I’m yet to read Peeps, but will soon. Should you? It depends. Does this picture freek you out? If so, go, buy and read the book. Help end the PEEPing.

Oh, and yeah, I think Single White Parasite would have been a way cool title for the book.

This is why we love Locus: Online and Mark Kelly. Following on from a promise just days ago, he’s alread put up a 2004 Directory of Cover Artists. Check it out. Offer commentary. He might even add a way for you to add info to, making it easier on him. This is very cool.

I’ve been posting too much over at Deb’s blog, talking about Australian SF and such. If you’re interested, there’s a link somewhere over there on the right. In the meantime , I’ve spent a little time surfing the next and come across a couple cool things:

Link link
Salon’s Laura Miller loves Kelly’s Magic for Beginners. I do too, and so will you.

Mark’s list link
Mark over at Locus Online is intending to add information about editors to his book listings, and to put together a list of work by cover artists for each year. These are the reasons why Mark deserved his Hugo, and why we should all love what he does. He’s one of those people who does cool, useful stuff without anyone much noticing. It takes a lot of work, and he does it all pretty much on his own and unpaid too.

Story link
Ellen over at SciFiction has just posted a terrific new M. Rickert story, “Anyway”, which you should check out.

And a comment. Yesterday I received the October Realms of Fantasy in the mail. It’s the alternate issue, the one that comes without the soft porn cover, and it has a cool story by Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout. It’s called “Robots and Falling Hearts”, and is a lovely piece. I read it pretty quickly last night, and liked it very much. I think I might post a kind of review tonight or tomorrow, but I’d like to re-read it first.

In the interests of correcting a previous typographical error, this shameless promotional placement –

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There are other books deserving of similar product placement, but this blog recommends you take a peep at this one first.