I’ve not posted about this book much of late (well, I’ve not posted that much of late), but Jack Dann and I have, along with the good folk at HarperSydney been putting the finishing touches on LEGENDS OF AUSTRALIAN FANTASY.  We’ve just got the final cover in from Greg Bridges, and it’s a peach. The book features some terrific stories by some of Australia’s best known fantasy writers and will be out in June 2010.  The table of contents for the book is:

Introduction: Homegrown Legends, Jonathan Strahan and Jack Dann

1. To Hold the Bridge: An Old Kingdom Story, Garth Nix
2. The Mad Apprentice: A Black Magician Story, Trudi Canavan
3. ’Twixt Firelight and Water: A Tale of Sevenwaters, Juliet Marillier
4. The Dark Road: An Obernewtyn Story, Isobelle Carmody
5. Crown of Rowan: A Tale of Thrysland, Kim Wilkins
6. The Spark (A Romance in Four Acts): A Tale of the Change, Sean Williams
7. The Corsers’ Hinge: A Lamplighter Tale, D M Cornish
8. Tribute to Hell: A Tale of the Tainted Realm, Ian Irvine
9. A Captain of the Gate, John Birmingham
10. The Magic Word, Jennifer Fallon
11. The Enchanted: A Tale of Erith, Cecilia Dart-Thornton

About the Editors

I also note that, over at the Subterranean site, they mention that stocks are running low on Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter Beagle and that they expect to be sold out on publication. If you’re interested in this book (and I can’t wait to see my copies) then order now!  Subterranean often don’t reprint books so this may be your only chance.  I also see that they’re taking pre-orders on the other Beagle project I edited, “Return“.  The book edition of this looks very handsome and worth ordering too.

I have been lax in updating you all on various projects of mine that are slowly wending their way to publication. Last year I spent some time working with Walter Jon Williams editing his new collection, The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories.  I’ve loved Walter’s work for a long time, and was fortunate enough to get to publish several of his stories in anthologies I’ve worked.  The brief for this book was simply to collect Walter’s best recent work, and the book does that. Of course, that means you have some of the best short fiction written in the field in the past five years or so.  And all with a spiffy introduction by Charlie Stross.  It ships April, and if you order it right now you can get a 50% discount I believe.

The last week or three has been a little frustrating.  As I’ve mentioned here, I’ve been struck by some kind of vertigo-related inner-ear condition that has been a constant pest for three weeks and, on a couple of occasions, has pretty much completely knocked me out.  Last Wednesday, and again this, I was struck by intense vertigo, cold sweats, soaring levels of tinnitus, and convulsive vomiting. Not so nice. I’ve seen doctors on both occasions, and we’re slowly working out possibilities on what might be the cause. Viral infections seem out, as does fluid on the ear etc.  We’ve considered Meniere’s Disease, which isn’t out of the picture, but seems long odds. The latest candidate is some kind of benign positional vertigo (or something that sounded like that when the doctor told me yesterday).  Whatever it is, it pretty much wipes me out for the day, and I suffer a kind of hangover the following day where I’m worn out and a bit dubious health-wise. I do feel on the mend, though. My right ear feels as good as it has at any point in the past three weeks, but I’m not through whatever this is yet.  If it doesn’t clear up in the next week though I’m off to an ENT doctor quick-smart.

Why am I telling you this? Partly because I’d like to apologise for any delays in correspondence anyone dealing with me may be experiencing, partly because this is my blog and I’m allowed to whine if I want to (I checked, it’s in the blogging terms and conditions). I do know there are people out there with a lot of serious medical problems, and I’m not equating my position to theirs: I’m just not really very well right now.

And then the rains came.  About twenty minutes after the previous post the enormous thunderstorm that had lashed other parts of Perth struck my area. It was like the sky opened and just dropped a small ocean of water in our neighbourhood. The sky was black and lowering, lightning flashed, and the streets ran like rivers.

I was cooking dinner, and waiting for Marianne and Sophie to get home safely, which they did, when I thought I’d better call my mother. It was planned she’d babysit for the evening because we were going out.  Well. Things weren’t going as well for her.  The rain had dropped where she was too, was pouring down her driveway and into her garage, and was threatening to flood her entire house. I could tell from the edge of panic in her voice that she simply wasn’t coping with what was happening, so I jumped in the car and drove over (after trying to contact my sister, who lives on the same street).

By the time I arrived a neighbour had popped over to see if mum was ok, had found the street gutters blocked and cleared them, had found the garage gutters blocked and cleared them, and the water was subsiding.  The house was safe, but the garage (which was full of stuff) was water damaged.  It had also shaken mum pretty badly.  Mum’s always been the pragmatic, practical one who could triage a situation and get things fixed quickly.  She’s now older, and I think needs more help because things like this tend to flummox her.  We ended up spending a bit of time cleaning up and draining the water away, before I headed home.  We’d decided after a quick confab that the girls would visit Nan’s, my sister and her partner would come over, and we’d go to see Lyle Lovett.

The girls were excited by this. We dropped them round at about 6.30pm to find everything stabilised, and headed to the Concert Hall.  Traffic was at a terrible standstill on the way out of the city, but our journey there and back was uneventful.  Support act Kasey Chambers was fine, if a bit raucous, while Lovett and his Large Band were spectacularly good. It’d been a while since we’d listened to his stuff, so we mostly didn’t know the two and a half hours of music they played, but it was mordant, melancholy, sometimes funny, and sometimes rowdy: A fine evening and a concert well worth the trouble of attending.

We picked up the girls at around 11.30pm and had them in bed, sleepy, not long after. I then opted to sleep in and grab a cab to get to work. The longest commute I’ve yet had, and the most expensive cab ride. Traffic lights were out, trees destroyed and goodness knows what property damage.

I’m now flying solo at work and everyone’s keeping an eye on the weather.  Whew!