UnCommonwealth

Slow week

We've got company in town for Thanksgiving so updates will be sporadic for the next few days.

"Updates will be sporadic." Somebody should come up with an emoticon for that.

Awards, Links

The International Horror Guild, which, as far as I've been able to determine, exists in some kind of opposition to the Horror Writers Association, has announced their annual awards. The fiction categories are what concern us here, and these are they:

• Novel: The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell
• First Novel: The Ghost Writer by John Harwood
• Long Fiction: Viator by Lucius Shepard
• Mid-Length Fiction: Flat Diane by Daniel Abraham
• Short Fiction: A Pace of Change by by Don Tumasonis
• Collection: The Wavering Knife by Brian Evenson
• Anthology: Aquainted With the Night, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden

Some good stuff in there, but as my study hall teacher used to say with great exasperation, "Boys, boys, boys."

In other news, if you haven't gandered over to the right, you should. You'll see there, under the People header, a list of folks who maintain provocative and interesting internettage. Run your cursor over their names and you'll find my handy reductions of their public personae. I've recently had cause to update the addresses of Gwenda and Melissa, and to add a couple of more local folks, Kim and Jason. Welcome, y'all.

Buckeyes

It's a touch nutty here, so here's some good stuff you should go read elsewhere. Frequent perusal of all linked web pages is recommended.

Chris Barzak has a new story up in the latest edition of the Journal of Mythic Arts at the Endicott Studio. (The painting reproduced near the top of the Journal's page, by the way, is credited to "Archimoldo." I've usually seen the name styled as Giuseppe Arcimboldo, but whatevah. If you've been to the Musée du Louvre then you've probably spent a few minutes with his four seasonal paintings, my favorite of which is L'Inverno.)

Charles Coleman Finlay has a new story up in this week's edition of Strange Horizons.

Chris and Charles (but not Giuseppe) are from Ohio, thus the "Buckeyes" tag. This is the level of blogging you can expect from me on busy days.

At least it's exotic.

Except for the bit about Ohio, I mean.

Shine on, Mr. Westerfeld

Curious about a comment I saw in this entry on YA supahstah Scott Westerfeld's blog, I did some googling around and determined that, hey! The Penguin Australia edition of Scott's So Yesterday has won the 2005 Victorian Premier's Literary Award Prize for Young Adult Fiction.

Sources tell me that "[t]he Victorian Premier's Literary Awards are one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious annual literary awards. Financially supported by the Victorian Government, the Awards are nationa and reward Australian writers for the best Australian books and writing in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, poetry, drama, essay, screen writing and literary translation."

And you thought he was a Texan.

The judge's report (linked off the Award home page above) on So Yesterday has nice quotes like these:

"A clever, witty narrative wryly examines adolescent obsessions with being cool, or choosing not to be, without talking down."

"This original novel confirms adolescents as the savvy people they are."

I can't really add much to that, other than to say that while I'm not a savvy adolescent, I can highly recommend So Yesterday. Congratulations, Scott, much deserved.