A Special Video Post, and A Few Rare Finds

Some viewing for your chilly, snowy nights. Plus an opportunity to score rare books. And a preliminary announcement.

Winter Tales

First up: I have had the honor of taking part in Joseph Freeman’s latest online spooky reading fest, alongside Simon Bestwick and Gary McMahon and Lisa Morton and Joe, himself. My performance is of my story, “Jetty Sara” (from Tell Me When I Disappear), in its entirety. You can find the whole show here.

And While I’m At It…

Titan Books asked me to contribute a snippet and short introduction to “Dry and Ready”, my new story in editor Ellen Datlow’s Christmas and Other Horrors anthology. They’re putting together a more elaborate book trailer featuring many of these snippets, I believe, but have given me permission to post mine here as well:

Some Holiday Shopping?

I was helping my mom move, and came across a box of my books, which included a handful of copies of the exceedingly rare, beautiful first edition of my 2010 novel, The Book of Bunk, from Earthling Publications. Still one of my personal favorites of anything I’ve done. It’s about the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression, and creativity, and being young, and having nothing, and dreaming the country that was and the one that never quite has been. If you liked Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (my favorite fiction I’ve read all year), you might like this. Or, as the late and much missed Lucius Shepard put it, “It’s as if Woody Guthrie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had co-authored a 90000 word folk song…”

There were only 400 of these hardbacks made, and they sold out immediately. They are hard to get, and in terrific shape. So I am offering four copies at $75 each, plus postage. Signed, of course, and personalized if you wish.

In the same box, I found pristine copies of the limited Subterranean first edition of my 2012 collection, The Janus Tree, which of course includes the Shirley Jackson Award-winning title novella. Again, these are long sold out and hard to come by, so same deal: I have four copies available at $75 each, plus postage.

If you’re interested in either of the above, let me know. First come, first served.

And if you need any other signed books of mine to round out your collection, shoot me a message. We’ll get you sorted.

And Finally, a Heads-Up:

More posts to come this month, but on January 1, I will be switching off billing and putting this site on semi-hiatus for a bit. Some longer projects have been brewing for a while, and now they are demanding I come tend to them.

I still plan to pop up here from time to time, but not with the regularity I have during 2023.

Everything on this Substack is set to retreat behind a paywall after a bit, so if you want permanent access to it, you might want to consider some sort of subscription now. After the first payment, you won’t be re-billed until whenever I decide to return to regular posting.

Thanks in advance. Wishing you joy and renewed commitment to spreading it, despite/because of everything.