Mermaniac

This.

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:55:42 -0700

This.

Love this interview with Tommy Krasker about an insane-sounding 1946 flop musical (Sweet Bye and...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:19:44 -0700

Love this interview with Tommy Krasker about an insane-sounding 1946 flop musical (Sweet Bye and Bye) with an even crazier backstage story but with gorgeous songs by Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash. Krasker is finally realizing a 25-year-old dream of releasing a studio cast recording of the score.

This German music video is 1000% Yes. Deichkind - Ich betäube...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:29:41 -0700

This German music video is 1000% Yes.

Deichkind - Ich betäube mich ft. Sarah Walker (by DeichkindVEVO)

Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 10:41:00 -0700

I’ve been obsessed with the brown butter cinnamon rolls at Baker & Banker, a bakery and restaurant that’s a few blocks off Fillmore. They are a combination of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had, reminiscent of fresh yeasty sweet rolls from my youth in Illinois, with a brown butter frosting that makes me want to lick the waxed paper.

This morning, I decided I’d make my own low-rent (or, if I’m being generous, Semi-Homemade) version. A few cursory glances at online recipes made me confident that I could pull it off.

First, it’s very easy to make brown butter. All you do is melt a stick in a saucepan, then continue stirring on medium heat until it turns brown. It took about five minutes, all told.

Then I took out some refrigerator crescent rolls (don’t judge me), and filled them with a drop or two of the melted brown butter and some cinnamon sugar.

While the crescent rolls cooked (about 10 minutes on 375º), I made some frosting. I dumped about 3/4 of a container of powdered sugar in with the brown butter, and stirred it up. I decided to toss in a bit of the cinnamon sugar, and maybe a tablespoon or so of milk.

Once the rolls were done, I added some of the frosting. It instantly melted, turning more into a glaze. At any rate, it was almost a perfect match for the flavor of the Baker & Baker frosting. The rolls were nowhere near as good as the original, but we were happy enough to eat them hot out of the oven. I gotta say: for such a simple recipe, these rolls turned out surprisingly good.

I put the leftover frosting in a container for the fridge. I’m not sure what we’ll frost with these (I think the only sweet things in the kitchen are oreos), but I’m sure we’ll think of something.

Twitter Oddity

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 10:49:05 -0700

When I logged in to Twitter this morning, I noticed a new avatar thumbnail in the list of people that I follow. I clicked on it, and realized it belonged to someone who has been offline for years but who I’ve missed and worried about for a while.

The odd thing was: I wasn’t following him, and he wasn’t following me. It was a tiny glitch that let me know he’s back online and apparently tweeting and blogging again.

And for that I’m grateful.

A sonnet in Oscar Wilde’s handwriting, titled “The...

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:41:00 -0700

A sonnet in Oscar Wilde’s handwriting, titled “The Grave of Keats”, sent to Emma Speed, Keats’ niece. Dated March 21st 1882, which was during Wilde’s yearlong tour of America.

The Grave of Keats
Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But dim-grew violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Was thy name writ in water? It shall stand:
And tears like mine shall keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.
Oscar Wilde

List of songs written or produced by Stock Aitken Waterman

Fri, 27 May 2011 20:24:59 -0700

List of songs written or produced by Stock Aitken Waterman:

Best Wikipedia page?

Much like Trannyshack itself.

Sun, 08 May 2011 11:10:08 -0700

Much like Trannyshack itself.

This photo of Free Comic Book Day by Gwen makes me unspeakably...

Sat, 07 May 2011 19:46:45 -0700

This photo of Free Comic Book Day by Gwen makes me unspeakably happy.

Discover a World of Sounds: Mary Finds Love. Andrew Dupuy puts...

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:36:00 -0700

Discover a World of Sounds: Mary Finds Love. Andrew Dupuy puts together “an hour-long radio program combining early Girl Group music, educational shorts from the 50’s/60’s, saccharine instrumentals, and a huge dose of melodrama.”

I remember running into Dupuy at the Castro Street Fair a few years ago, and totally geeking out to him about his Crossover:The Sounds of Dolly Parton 1977-1980 episode of Discover a World of Sounds, which I found via Scrubbles (of course).

Kickstarter project to publish anti-bullying comic “The...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:38:00 -0700

Kickstarter project to publish anti-bullying comic “The Power Within”.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - Perform This Way (by...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:16:00 -0700

“Weird Al” Yankovic - Perform This Way (by alyankovic)

Gaga refused to let Weird Al release the song; if he had, all the proceeds would have gone to the Human Rights Campaign. Here’s his blog post about it.

Update: Oops, turns out Al can release the song after all.

(via Titas wuz here - The Boston Globe)

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:31:44 -0700

(via Titas wuz here - The Boston Globe)

Just want to issue my congrats to Justin Hall for his well-deserved Lambda Literary Award...

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:31:00 -0700

Just want to issue my congrats to Justin Hall for his well-deserved Lambda Literary Award nomination for Glamazonia: The Uncanny Super-Tranny. I went to the crowded book launch at Mission Comics back in December.

Glamazonia is from Northwest Press, a relatively new publisher specializing in LGBT comics. Amazingly, two Northwest titles were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards: Jon Macy was nominated for his graphic novel Teleny and Camille, an adaptation of the work usually attributed to Oscar Wilde and his circle.

Also wish to congratulate Lethe Press for receiving six Lambda nominations, including one for the 2010 edition of Wilde Stories. (I just wrote about the 2011 Wilde Stories last week.)

therealchrislilley: Rebecca Black (Friday) RESPONDS TO...

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:08:57 -0700

therealchrislilley:

Rebecca Black (Friday) RESPONDS TO HATERS!!! (by LIAMdeveer)

I know this song is very five minutes ago, but it is improved by the addition of Ja’mie.

Jermaine Stewart “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes...

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:14:00 -0700

Jermaine Stewart “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off

1986. Produced by Narada Michael Walden.

Wilde Stories 2011

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:24:53 -0700

One of my favorite Year’s Best anthology series is Wilde Stories, which focuses on gay speculative fiction. It’s edited by Steve Berman, the publisher of Lethe Press. Previous editions have introduced me to major authors that were under my radar, such as Richard Bowes and Laird Barron, as well as up-and-comers like Ben Francisco (whose story “Tio Gilberto and the 27 Ghosts” was a highlight of the 2010 volume).

The table of contents for the 2011 edition of Wilde Stories has just been released:

“Love Will Tear us Apart” by Alaya Dawn Johnson (from Zombies vs. Unicorns)
“Map of Seventeen” by Christopher Barzak (from The Beastly Bride; [complete story online])
“How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade” by Nick Poniatowski (from Strange Horizons Jun 21 2010 [complete story online])
“Mortis Persona” by Barbara A. Barnett (from Fantasy Nov 14 2010 [complete story online])
“Mysterium Tremendum” by Laird Barron (from Occultation)
“Oneirica” by Hal Duncan (from Icarus 5)
“Lifeblood” by Jeffrey Ricker (from Blood Sacraments)
“Waiting for the Phone to Ring” by Richard Bowes (from Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2010)
“Blazon” by Peter Dubé (from Saints + Sinners 2010)
“All the Shadows” by Joel Lane (from Brighton Shock!)
“The Noise” by Richard Larson (from Sybil’s Garage 7)
“How to Make a Clown” by Jeremy C. Shipp (from Fungus of the Heart)
“Beach Blanket Spaceship” by Sandra McDonald (from Clarkesworld 46 [complete story online])
“Hothouse Flowers: or The Discreet Boys of Dr. Barnabas” by Chaz Brenchley (from The Bitten Word)

Block Quote - The Case for the Novella - NYTimes.com

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:54:36 -0800

Block Quote - The Case for the Novella - NYTimes.com:

John Brandon on the novella. I’m a big fan of the novella form, or the long short story, or the really short novel.

Dancing the Dance: An Interview with Richard Bowes

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:16:00 -0800

Introduction

Science fiction and fantasy short story writer Richard Bowes has been quietly carving out a reputation as one of the finest writers in the industry. His World Fantasy Award winning novella “Streetcar Dreams” became the heart of his 1999 novel-in-short-stories Minions of the Moon, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy novel. His next book, 2005’s novel-in-short-stories From the Files of the Time Rangers was nominated for the Nebula, as were two of the collected novelettes. Since then, he has been at work on a third sequence of short stories to be called Dust Devil: My Life in Speculative Fiction, which I wrote about last month.

Afterward Bowes himself was kind enough to get in e-mail contact. He also re-blogged my post on his blog, saying “It’s an amazing summary of what I’m working on” before filling in the gaps of what I missed in the post [I’d been listing all of the stories that he’d announced for Dust Devil]. He ended it “Otherwise this is so complete a record and so astute a summary of what I’m doing that I’ll use it for reference myself.”

Since I had been reading so much of his fiction lately, I had a number of questions that I wanted to ask him. I asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed by me. He agreed.

Dancing the Dance: An Interview with Richard Bowes

You’ve written personal stories in the past, but the Dust Devil stories are much more autobiographical fantasy and horror stories, enough that Richard Larson’s description of this sequence as “speculative memoir” seems completely apt. Why do you think you keep going back to your life as a source for your fiction?

Maybe it’s laziness. I already know the plot and have some understanding of the narrator so a lot of the work on a personal story is already done when I start writing it.

Fifteen stories (all published) became part of Dust Devil: My Life in Speculative Fiction. Each has personal elements. Some are closer to memoir than others. But none is absolute memoir - the whole truth to the best of my recollection.

In fact I have trouble accepting the memoir form, don’t entirely believe in an author able to tell her or his story without imagination intruding in some way.

The supernatural elements, obviously, are fantasy which I think of as metaphor, super-charged truth. Ghosts, for instance, are a way of writing about memory. A doppelganger is a way of showing that each of us has more than one aspect.

With Dust Devil three of the most personal stories have attracted the most attention.

“There’s a Hole in the City” is largely based my memories of Greenwich Village in the days just after 9/11.

“If Angels Fight” has a fictional central character, Marky Bannon, but is very true to the Irish American neighborhood in Boston where I grew up where politics was the local sport. The adventures the narrator and Marky have - from seeing Jack Kennedy to the rescue of a small kid from an icy river - are all first hand.

“I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said,” is my story of being a patient in that Greenwich Village legend St. Vincent’s Hospital. It’s the closest to memoir. About 90% is as true as I could make it.

Among them these stories were on eight award short lists - all were Nebula Award finalists. They won a World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and the non-genre Million Writers Awards, have been anthologized ten times and translated into German, Japanese and Italian.

Given how personal some of these stories are, were any of the Dust Devil stories particularly difficult to write?

“The King of the Big Night Hours” centers around the suicides at New York University’s Bobst Library where I worked for many years. Remembering was hard going but I found the story to be a kind of companion piece to “There’s a Hole in the City”. The first suicide took place the day after the second anniversary of 9/11.

“Circle Dance,” is the story of my brother Gerry and me. It was written shortly after his death and was my way of mourning.

“Pining to be Human,” is one of the last stories I wrote for the Dust Devil sequence. I intended it as filler material to link other stories together. But, as happens with fiction, the story took off and led me through some rocky parts of my past.

At some point as you were writing these stories, you must have realized that you were creating a novel-in-short-stories. Was that moment early on, or later in the process? What was that moment like?

I’d been thinking of writing about spec fiction writers in New York City. I also intended to make 9/11 and what followed part of the background.

Spring 2005 was, apparently, far enough away from that event that I could deal with it clearly (lots of 9/11 related memoirs and fiction appeared shortly after that). I wrote “There’s a Hole in the City,” and realized I’d found the voice with which I could discuss Manhattan past and present.

“Circle Dance,” was already written and I decided that should be part of the series.

The story that cemented the series, defined the place, milieu and time period (Downtown Manhattan people in the arts from the mid-1960’s to about now) and, in fact, gave the project its name was “Dust Devil on a Quiet Street”. That name is the title of an episode of the old NAKED CITY TV series that was filmed on the streets of New York in the late ‘50’s, early ‘60’s. I watched it as a kid in Boston before I knew the city.

Did the realization that you were writing a novel affect the writing of the stories? Were any stories written deliberately to complement or contrast or be juxtaposed with stories that you had already written?

The first 9 or 10 stories I wrote were semi-stand-alone. They shared a narrator, some characters and a locale but came to me separately - stuff that happened to me like being hospitalized in “I Needs Must Part,” or subjects like the adult children of artists and the hard life of the arts scene in “Dust Devil,” or the way the East Village changed from the mid’60’s to the early ‘70’s in “AKA St. Marks Place”.

The last 5 or 6 I wrote to provide linkage or fill in background, give closure etc.

In the acknowledgments to Minions of the Moon, you mention the impact that your editors had on that book. Do you think that the editors you’ve been working with on Dust Devil have had a similar impact?

Peter Crowther at Postscripts/PS, Nick Mamatas at Clarkesworld and Matt Cheney at The Mumpsimus each requested a piece (Mamatas and Cheney thought they were getting non-fiction - silly boys!). Ellen Datlow at Sci Fiction and in her anthologies published seven stories, (Terri Windling was her co-editor on two of those books, Nick Mamatas on one) Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF published five.

I’m very grateful to all of them for keeping my name out there over the years. If a publisher is interested in the finished product then there will be another editor and I look forward to working with her or him.

As you are writing each story, do you already have sense of where it will be published? For instance, was “I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said” always intended for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine?

Ellen Datlow works in anthologies these days and they’re by invitation. So if I got invited I was writing the story for her (and sometimes Windling or Mamatas). Usually these are themed. Sometimes the theme is non-specific: the Special Issue of Subterranean had a general horror theme, Salon Fantastique required a certain kind of elegant/decadent fantasy. Other times it’s more specific. Like the The Beastly Bride where she and Terri Windling wanted Animal/Human interaction.

I owe a lot to Gordon and F&SF. For that market there’s no theme. But the magazine’s been around for a long time and there are stories that simply are F&SF and ones that aren’t. And, no, I don’t know for sure which is which. Over the last twenty years F&SF has published eighteen of my stories and a Curiosities column. Both of my World Fantasy Award wins were with F&SF stories. But F&SF has bounced a bunch too.

Have all of the stories for Dust Devil been written, or are there more to come?

The stories have all been written and published.

Dust Devil, like your Lambda-winning Minions of the Moon and From the Files of the Time Rangers, is a mosaic/fix-up novel, consisting of previously-published stories that fit together to make a coherent novel. What draws you to this format?

The first three books I published were through-written novels. But in the last twenty-plus years I’ve written fifty-one stories. It’s the form I’m easiest with. Of those all but a dozen are parts of various series/suites /sequences.

To work in the short forms is to dance a dance with obscurity.

But for me to write a novel would take a long time and I might well get forgotten. By getting the stories published, having them in anthologies and on awards list I remind people that I’m around and working on a project.

Has your experience with Minions of the Moon and From the Files of the Time Rangers been making it easier to turn Dust Devil into a novel?

Nope. It was still a complete shock when I had to do it.

After all of the Dust Devil stories have been published, what steps do you have to take to turn them into a novel? Is it just a matter of positioning them in order, or is there some level of re-writing (and new writing) that also will happen?

The order is a big deal, especially with something involving as much memory of the past as my stuff does. But there’s also rewriting (interpolating themes, weaving characters from one story into another) and new writing (In the novel version the narrator’s younger life is described a bit more; the final chapter is mostly stuff that hasn’t appeared in print).

How far along in the process of turning Dust Devil into a novel are you, would you say?

It will probably be finished by the end of the month. A couple of editors have expressed interest. We shall see what happens.

Are you working on any other projects now, or do you have any in mind to start once Dust Devil is finished?

Since my last collection of short fiction, Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies came out I’ve done nine stand-alone stories (about 40,000 words). Three of these were written and sold last year. I’d like to have enough more for another short story collection.

I’ve also written a group of stories that combine Fairies, telepathy, intrigue and love in the demi-monde that lies between The Kingdom Under the Hill and (of course) New York. The first of these appeared in Steve Berman’s Gay themed Fairy anthology So Fey a few years ago. One will be out later this year in Datlow’s Supernatural Noir. Another will be in the Datlow/Windling Post-apocalypse YA anthology After.

Thanks to Camp Blood for linking to this bit of Mary Cherry 1999...

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:00:07 -0800

Thanks to Camp Blood for linking to this bit of Mary Cherry 1999 “Popular” Ryan Murphy brilliance today.