The Mumpsimus

If anybody would like me to feel deep, visceral envy of them, they should attend the Monday, November 24 St. Marks Bookshop Reading Series where the readers are Samuel Delany and Junot Diaz . Even if you don't care if I feel deep, visceral envy of you, you should attend if you can, because it's likely to be a phenomenal evening.

Though I am shamefully behind in blogging, reviewing, interviewing, and e-mail answering, nonetheless, I am not dead yet. Just busy in the midst of a few different things, especially trying to figure out how to teach anything to energetic 9th and 10th graders and, in the bits of spare time that allows, reading stories for the next edition of Best American Fantasy (thanks, by the way, to Rick Klaw for a very nice review in The Austin Chronicle ). Proof of my status as a living, breathing human being can be found at two upcoming public events in Manhattan. First, on October 30 , I will be participating in the Interfictions reading at the wonderful McNally Robinson bookstore, with some of my favorite fellow-readers, Tempest Bradford, Veronica Schanoes, and Delia Sherman. And then on November 21 , I will be reading at the KGB Bar with Lucius Shepard . (I expect to read a story that will be coming out in the next issue [I think] of LCRW .) This is something I'm looking forward ...

This weekend, Meghan McCarron and I went to the Juniper Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts to see Alan DeNiro read, and to hang out with him, Gavin Grant and Kelly Link of Small Beer Press , and Holly and Theo Black . Alan read from "Home of The" from Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead , and the audience was amused and enthusiastic, as was only proper. There was even cotton candy . More readings need cotton candy. The Juniper Festival is not something I was aware of before we visited, but it's a great event, and next year if I'm in the area, I hope to attend more of the readings and panel discussions, because Amherst is fun town and the mix of writers and readers is eclectic. (And Amherst Books is a marvelous bookstore!) Lucy Corin particularly grabbed my attention with her reading from Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls , a novel I now hope to read very soon. (Yes, I know I say that about a lot of books. And I mean it. I'm full of hope. ...