Mystery 101

Over at the Mysterybookspot.com Brian gives people trying to take their first or second step into mystery with A Mystery/Crime Fiction Primer.

When I look at something like this I can’t help but think how much I don’t like the ’specialist’ mentality. That isn’t to say that these authors consider themselves what people slot them as but the fact that people can file on some type of consistent basis/outcome for some completely senseless reason bothers me. I admit this just be an artificial way for me to raise authors I enjoy, but in discussions we had at the old ‘bookspot I look at the authors of some of my favorite mystery books - Chabon, Lethem, Auster, Banville (Benjamin Black), Jeffrey Ford, Eco, Kobo Abe and what I’m left with are authors that certainly are not considered mystery writers. I look at a Ian Pears and I find I only like the work he did where we unshackled himself from the members only jacket (An Instance of the Fingerpost).

Another danger in labels is that mystery is taking taking (for me) the role of fantasy where just about every quality book can claim it by single element. Isn’t VanderMeer’s Shriek: and Afterword essentially a mystery? Danielewski’s House of Leaves? Hell, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is a one big mystery surrounded by min-mysteries, with more consistent talk of what, and whodunit than any mystery/crime book you will find on the web right now.

At any rate check out Brian’s list and be on the lookout for some sweet new exclusives coming up. Hopefully my interviews will be coming up soon, and a fresh new look for FBS, and sweet Heliotrope announcements for issue#5!

New reviewers at FBS

Just wanted to mention that we have and welcome the new reviewers at FBS and take a look at what’s going on this week!

- Jeff Sullins pulls one out of the Tad Williams archives and takes a look at War of the Flowers.

- Medora checks out Kathleen Bryan’s The Golden Rose.

Welcome to both!

- Brian flips through what I think is arguably one of the best titles out right now, Jason Aaron’s Scalped in the collected format Scalped: Casino Boogie.

- Val continues his studies of the classics with Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and tackles Jordan’s eternal wheel, this time A Crown of Swords.

- Amber continues Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer series with book III, Embrace the Night.

Expect a new look at FBS soon to go with our new dwellers!

Heliotrope#4 is out!

Heliotrope is out! Get your nostalgic fill as this issue represents the last look at this format as we bring you new hotness next fall! In this issue our line-up includes:

G-O-O-D-B-Y-E by Nick Mamatas
Succession At Quandon Creek by Anna Tambour
The Shadow Cabinet: Spotlight on Dedalus by Jeff Vandermeer
A Virtual Anthology: Weinachtabend by Ian R. MacLeod
The Devil and Mr. V by Catherynne M. Valente
What Burns Within (excerpt) by Sandra Ruttan

Check the issue out!

Thank you to all to contributors and be on the lookout for issue#5 announcements in the very near future!

Win copies of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

Damon has announced a contest at FBS that gives two people the opportunity to win an old fashioned physical copy of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (a book, not a person).

ENTER HERE

It was released online for free download last month and you can check out Mr. Doctorow’s tour schedule here.

FBS Stuff for the week

Just want to highlight some recent FBS stuff:

- Craig Gidney gets the Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier.

An elegiac mediation on grief created out of scraps of genre fiction.

-Val continues going through the classics, this time hangin’ on Discworld for the second spin with The Light Fantastic. I love me some Discworld as it’s really one of the few childhood books that I enjoyed that has evolved with the reader over time.

He also checks out Mark Summer’s The Last King. Being the go-to-guy recently he also reviews the first title I had to cut-and-paste, Leerling Tovenaar Vader & Zoon by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, giving you the heads up (don’t tell Richard Morgan!) on the newest wave, the Dutchmasters.

-Speaking of classic, Roxy digs into the one O.G. IA reading Pebble in the Sky.

- Brian reviews one of my favorite writers period, giving you the low down (or at least one hell of a long quote) from Brian Evenson’s The Open Curtain. If you are one of those people looking for great writers and you have gone through all the Booker long lists, already have a residence in Ambergris, and applied for the job of fantasy writer’s assistant, this is the guy.

If Jim Thompson were alive today he’d want to write a novel like this.

-Also a reminder that we put up an exclusive chapter excerpt of R.A. Salvatore’s The Ancient.
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Part of my lack of blogging here is I really get conflicted sometimes. Should I make a blog post, or post a psuedo-E article at FBS? Should I talk about a specific subject here or make a column? We are going to rectify this problem as I think Brian and I are going to sign our FBS exclusive contracts, yet, in one motion usher in a new age of independence. Next couple of months is going to bring a lot of our plans into the first visible signs of fruition, and I want to thank all our readers who are with us as we continue to try to always improve The Spot. Damon, Mark and Dave are working on a number of projects that include, but not limited to, our first major step into Crime/Mystery.

Heliotrope will be out next week. There has been some confusion because though I posted we are currently closed to submissions on the front page there was a area that stated we were still open to them. I apologize for that - to be clear we are closed to submissions currently and I’m at work putting together our Fall issue (which is basically filled - excluding some names in the black book I’m looking to hear back from). I have got some worried queries lately - Heliotrope is fine and when you see release of the initial contributors to that fall issue you will believe it! It’s a bit of a special, focused issue - but more on that and even bigger news later!

More soon!

Mind Melding

In my new life, with a shift from perhaps overrated to the now underrated in an oversaturated sandbox I have myself in need of moral support. Having no wonder twin, and not even being a citizen of Exor, I have instead chosen to get my mind meld on.

Thanks to John DeNardo for the invite and for making me look novice in comparison to his other choice of company!

Check it out!

FBS Contest: NY Comic Con Grab Bag

As I said in a previous post Damon was at the NYC Comic Con and before he got kicked out by the Empire for harlaning the Princess he was able to steal some con exclusive goods:

Signed books, comics, posters and magazines for the faithful!

If interested just say the word and you’re in!

The Ancient by R.A. Salvatore chapter excerpt

Over at Fantasybookspot.com I just put up an FBS exclusive of the third chapter to R.A. Salvatore’s recently released The Ancient. This is a novel of Corona and is the second book in his Saga of Kings sequence.

Check it out here!

Some years ago Medsin reviewed the first book, The Highwayman, at FBS and you can check that out here.

FBS at NY Comic Con

Being that it’s unholy that I can’t go to these things and it is Damon representing us at these con I hate to even mention it - not to mention dude didn’t even get me a Mouse Guard sketch! - He can’t front and say he didn’t see the dude, I got evidence:

Where’s my sketch!??

It looks like Damon hit the NYCC and represented. First, the dude is front and center on the MSN coverage:

At any rate, he’s got a nice report you can read here. He also has some extra pictures taken by FBS shadow-cabinet member Mark here.

Expect to see FBS coverage in the comic medium to expand this year with non-standard industry reviews and interviews.

Another Interview and Reviews at FBS

My last post mentioned Craig’s interview with Ekaterina Sedia (which basically forced me to take a trip to Amazon), but intent on forcing me to post more, Lawrence put up his interview with Alistair Rennie, a contributor in the new Weird Anthology edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer that included contributions from others like Jeffery Ford, Michael Moorcock, Mike Harrison, Thomas Ligotti, K.J. Bishop, and Brian Evenson. Here is a bit of it:

“Also, there is a difference I think between the instinctive emotional reaction of abhorrence and its intellectual translation into a powerful political or moral position like pacifism. I’m not so much interested in formulating distinct intellectual positions in fiction, or illustrating a particular moral dilemma, so much as creating emotional effects out of extreme situations (which are suggestive, perhaps, of intellectual positions without formally stating them).”

Read the full interview here.

A few new reviews at over at FBS including Brian Lindenmuth’s review of a book by one of my favorite writers, Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain. Val continues digging in the crates and reviews Frank Herbert’s The Dragon in the Sea. Val also takes a look at Mary Gentle’s Cartomancy. If you look at Chris Roberson’s blog you see posts that’s content make me sometimes feel like I’m reading my own blog (except I don’t post) just based on dude’s interests see to mirror my own in terms of novels and comics, Jeremy reviewed his Set the Seas on Fire.

What I am doing -

We kind of have some big announcements coming up and they are the type we wish we could announce now but we have some legal matters to handle first. Heliotrope will be out at the end of the month, and the issue after that is already set in stone (in terms of contributors) and sports a sweet line-up and a bit of change in format that will be explained by our aforementioned forthcoming announcement. The line-up for issue 5 will be announced after issue 4 goes live. Both Damon and I have been working on (and locked up) some exclusive content to bring to you that you should see pop up periodically over the next couple months and continue as regular elements at FBS. To say it out loud and thus put pressure on the people doing it - FBS will also be going through a redesign in the near future. As far as what I am reading right now, they include Daniel Abraham’s latest in his Long Price Quartet and Glen Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps. I just finished reading Paul S. Kemp’s Shadowbred and Shadowstorm and will have some thoughts on both of them soon.

In other words, more sweet stuff for FBS members and reading non-members coming soon! I want to say more but I have to play the Blackbolt role for now and just play the silent type.