The New Dan Simmons Novel May Make Your Hat Explode

Last year, I interviewed illustrator John Picacio about his work on the first volume in a new edition of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series—and a collection of Moorcock’s Seaton Begg stories called The Metatemporal Detective. It’s the Victorian-askew look of the latter that came to mind this morning when I got a look at Picacio’s artwork for a limited edition of Drood, the new Dan Simmons novel that asks the question, “Did the famous and loveable and honourable Charles Dickens plot to murder an innocent person and dissolve away his flesh in a pit of caustic lime and secretly inter what was left of him, mere bones and a skull, in the crypt of an ancient cathedral that was an important part of Dicken’s own childhood?”

Well, now that the question’s been put on the table, we’ve got to know, right?

Subterranean Press will be publishing 500 signed, numbered copies of Drood for $80; for $500, you can get one of just 26 copies that comes in a custom traycase. If those options seem too steep, there’s always the regular trade edition from Little, Brown coming in a few weeks. Although the cover art to that edition, while suitably atmospheric, isn’t quite as… arresting, shall we say, as Picacio’s take on the story.

8 January 2009 | uncategorized |

What’s New With James Cañón?

A year and a half ago, James Cañón wrote a guest essay for Beatrice about writing Tales from the Town of Widows while he was still learning to become fluent in English. This spring, I found out that the novel had wound up on the shortlists for both the the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the debut gay fiction categories—and just now I’ve learned that Cañón was named as a finalist in LatinoStories.com‘s “One Brown Book, One Nation” (a program tied into Hispanic Heritage Month, which begins today), and was the winner of France’s Le Prix des Lecteurs Vincennes. Congratulations, James!

15 September 2008 | uncategorized |