November 2009

I asked the talented Elena Giavaldi to help me out with this cover as I'm falling behind on this Nanowrimo project I swear she did it in five minutes.

Apologies for the lack of activity here; I'm traveling on business. Regular posting should resume in a few days, hopefully with an announcement about 2009's favorites of the year post. It's going to be very different, and hopefully entertaining for y'all.Off to eat more carne asada fries...

Images by Michelle Lord, from Future Ruins (inspired by JG Ballard’s ‘The Ultimate City’), 2008.
‘Pulled apart by the elders, many of the sets revealed their internal wiring. The green and yellow circuitry, the blue capacitors and modulators, mingled with the bright berries of the firethorn, rival orders of a wayward nature merging again after millions of years of separate evolution.’
JG Ballard, ‘The Ultimate City’, 1976.

Originally published in Architectures of the Near Future: Architectural Design (ed. Nic Clear), September-October 2009, pp. 82-7.

The fiction of JG Ballard was centred almost wholly on the built environment. Ballard took architectural design to its logical extreme and then contorted it further. Simon Sellars looks at how architects can learn from Ballard and, specifically, his use of urban sound as a metaphor.
In JG ...

Sometimes I get emails from people who are just starting out in the publishing process. I understand the frustration that comes when from seeing that practically every publisher requires agented submissions. If you aren't sure where to start, it can be daunting to try to find information on publishing through Google (Writer Beware covered this a while back, and they've got some good points---there are a lot of self-publishing and disreputable agents that show up at the top of such searches).But the solution is not to approach a publishing house or a specific editor to ask (or even sometimes demand), "If you won't read my manuscript, then recommend me to an agent so I can get you to read my manuscript!" I can't even do this for relatives/friends/relatives of friends without knowing their writing really well (and even if I know their writing well and think it's good enough to be published---a rarity---I would generally be more likely to recommend someone's writing to a fellow editor, rather than an agent).I don't feel qualified in helping writers find agents, and in fact feel that it's a conflict of interest to make such recommendations. Agent...

Sometimes I get emails from people who are just starting out in the publishing process. I understand the frustration that comes when from seeing that practically every publisher requires agented submissions. If you aren't sure where to start, it can be daunting to try to find information on publishing through Google (Writer Beware covered this a while back, and they've got some good points---there are a lot of self-publishing and disreputable agents that show up at the top of such searches).But the solution is not to approach a publishing house or a specific editor to ask (or even sometimes demand), "If you won't read my manuscript, then recommend me to an agent so I can get you to read my manuscript!" I can't even do this for relatives/friends/relatives of friends without knowing their writing really well (and even if I know their writing well and think it's good enough to be published---a rarity---I would generally be more likely to recommend someone's writing to a fellow editor, rather than an agent).I don't feel qualified in helping writers find agents, and in fact feel that it's a conflict of interest to make such recommendations. Agent...

Sometimes I get emails from people who are just starting out in the publishing process. I understand the frustration that comes when from seeing that practically every publisher requires agented submissions. If you aren't sure where to start, it can be daunting to try to find information on publishing through Google (Writer Beware covered this a while back, and they've got some good points---there are a lot of self-publishing and disreputable agents that show up at the top of such searches).But the solution is not to approach a publishing house or a specific editor to ask (or even sometimes demand), "If you won't read my manuscript, then recommend me to an agent so I can get you to read my manuscript!" I can't even do this for relatives/friends/relatives of friends without knowing their writing really well (and even if I know their writing well and think it's good enough to be published---a rarity---I would generally be more likely to recommend someone's writing to a fellow editor, rather than an agent).I don't feel qualified in helping writers find agents, and in fact feel that it's a conflict of interest to make such recommendations. Agents...

When Donald Miller agreed to adapt his bestselling Christia

Lots of folks are talking about the John Gall-curated Nabokov redesigns. And well they should -- it's not often that we see an author's entire body of work redesigned by such an impressive cadre of designers.Three days before Gall posted the series at Design Observer, though, a BDR reader wrote in about the "best Nabokov cover I've ever seen--blows the sh**ty Vintage/Random House motif out of the water." His words, not mine. Here's what he sent in (source here); if anyone's got any info on this cover, please pass it along. (UPDATE: "(the designer is) Jerzy Faczynski, a well-known Polish ex-pat who not only did book design, but built a few churches, painted watercolors, made prints, and fought wars. He died, I believe, in 1994.")Here's Carin Goldberg's new cover for Pnin:

This past Friday and Saturday I traveled three hours to the south to Springfield, Illinois. But, I didn't go to the state capital to visit politicians. I went to sit under the teaching of one of my favorite Bible teachers, Beth Moore.I have participated in seven or eight of Beth's Bible Studies at my church, and we are currently studying Esther. For those who don't know much about Beth, she writes in-depth Bible studies for women with five days of lessons per week. We meet first as a small group to discuss the five lessons, then gather with other small groups to view her video that prepares us for the next five lessons.Beth is an anointed teacher. She is down to earth, funny and blessed with energy that rivals a classroom of preschoolers. (I stole that line from one of my stories) God has gifted her with this energy because she needs it to do all she does, traveling, teaching, studying, and still spending time with her family.Nearly 9,000 ladies descended upon Springfield's convention center. They may be used to...

I haven't been keeping up well with my LiveJournal friends list. Every time I think I might, I get daunted by how long it's been since I've caught up, and of course the cycle continues. And Facebook and Twitter are much less of a time-suck because they're more easily skimmable while juggling other day-to-day responsibilities. But I love the conversations that happen in the children's lit blogosphere, so I've been trying to dive back in and catch bits and pieces, the way I do on Twitter. I've heard the flow of information on Twitter described as "trying to drink out of a firehose," and the way many handle it (including me) is looking at it as a river flowing by: you can dip in and drink from the river, but you can't drink the whole river. You can't fit it all in, but you can grab a little bit as it floats past.That gave me what I have to share with you today:Via Janni Lee Simner, we have Jo Walton's giggle-inducing elf policy, which then leads us to

I haven't been keeping up well with my LiveJournal friends list. Every time I think I might, I get daunted by how long it's been since I've caught up, and of course the cycle continues. And Facebook and Twitter are much less of a time-suck because they're more easily skimmable while juggling other day-to-day responsibilities. But I love the conversations that happen in the children's lit blogosphere, so I've been trying to dive back in and catch bits and pieces, the way I do on Twitter. I've heard the flow of information on Twitter described as "trying to drink out of a firehose," and the way many handle it (including me) is looking at it as a river flowing by: you can dip in and drink from the river, but you can't drink the whole river. You can't fit it all in, but you can grab a little bit as it floats past.That gave me what I have to share with you today:Via Janni Lee Simner, we have Jo Walton's giggle-inducing elf policy, which then leads us to

I haven't been keeping up well with my LiveJournal friends list. Every time I think I might, I get daunted by how long it's been since I've caught up, and of course the cycle continues. And Facebook and Twitter are much less of a time-suck because they're more easily skimmable while juggling other day-to-day responsibilities. But I love the conversations that happen in the children's lit blogosphere, so I've been trying to dive back in and catch bits and pieces, the way I do on Twitter. I've heard the flow of information on Twitter described as "trying to drink out of a firehose," and the way many handle it (including me) is looking at it as a river flowing by: you can dip in and drink from the river, but you can't drink the whole river. You can't fit it all in, but you can grab a little bit as it floats past.That gave me what I have to share with you today:Via Janni Lee Simner, we have Jo Walton's giggle-inducing elf policy, which then leads us to

Design by Karl SpurzemHaving just watched the season finale of Mad Men, it's hard not to think of that show's opening credit sequence when looking at this cover for an examination of financial crises.As series creator Matthew Weiner states (at about 2:15) when talking about the sequence, "American businessman jumps out the window, that is a statement...it's part of our iconography."

ELO_AI: Archive & Innovate


The Electronic Literature Organization’s
Fourth International Conference
& Program of Digitally Mediated Literary Art
June 3-6, 2010
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Organized by the ELO and Writing Digital Media
at the Brown University Literary Arts Program
dedicated to Robert Coover
The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University’s Literary Arts Program invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference to be held from June 3-6, 2010 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
electronic literature . writing digital media . language-driven digital poesis . literal art
We welcome papers and presentations on a broad range of topics. The conference will focus on the theory, criticism, close-reading, practice and archiving of language-driven digital art and poetics. Our gathering will also embrace all the related cultural practices that continue to be addressed by scholars and artists in our growing field:
expressive processing, computational art, artificial cognition and intelligence, aes...

We can be grateful that the world of 2009 is so unlike the world of 1939, in which The Review of Politics was first published at the University of Notre Dame.
But agreeable as it is to leave the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin, the invasion of Poland, the concentration camps and fire bombings uniquely associated with that earlier time, it is not difficult in this one to share what the journal’s first editors described as a feeling “that we are living in a kind of interval of history, in a duration of formlessness and fury.” That generation-spanning resemblance may account for the Review’s enduring status as an indispensable journal of political philosophy.
The Review of Politics was founded during the tenure of Notre Dame’s 13th president, Rev. John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., who was, to put it mildly, an unlikely patron for this or any other intellectual project. Suspicious of philosophy and all but apologetic theology, he forbade the campus sale of publications he found objectionable—Time magazine was one such—and routinely banned the many books he disliked from the University library. Even one of his admirers, the late professor of American studies and former editor of the Review, Thomas Stritch, saw fit to describe him as “a censori...

I forgot to take many pictures at World Fantasy. (I know! Me! Calling myself a "photographer"!) Plus, my laptop's hard drive is literally so full that it won't let me upload what pictures I did take. So you won't get to see all the attending Utahns with author L.E. Modesitt and agent Joshua Bilmes (taken specifically to make Brandon Sanderson jealous, because he couldn't make it this year--blame Dan, or if you're a Writing Excuses fan, blame Jordo, who wasn't even there and it was his fault), and you won't be able to see me in my I Am Not a Serial Killer t-shirt, so you won't be able to be reassured that I'm not a serial killer until next week.In the meantime, head on over to Tu Publishing, where today is an open thread--tell us what you'd like to see on the Tu Publishing website. What would draw you to return to a publisher's website?Also, continued gratitude to all the people who are pledging to give Tu a kickstart! We...

I forgot to take many pictures at World Fantasy. (I know! Me! Calling myself a "photographer"!) Plus, my laptop's hard drive is literally so full that it won't let me upload what pictures I did take. So you won't get to see all the attending Utahns with author L.E. Modesitt and agent Joshua Bilmes (taken specifically to make Brandon Sanderson jealous, because he couldn't make it this year--blame Dan, or if you're a Writing Excuses fan, blame Jordo, who wasn't even there and it was his fault), and you won't be able to see me in my I Am Not a Serial Killer t-shirt, so you won't be able to be reassured that I'm not a serial killer until next week.In the meantime, head on over to Tu Publishing, where today is an open thread--tell us what you'd like to see on the Tu Publishing website. What would draw you to return to a publisher's website?Also, continued gratitude to all the people who are pledging to give Tu a kickstart! W...

I forgot to take many pictures at World Fantasy. (I know! Me! Calling myself a "photographer"!) Plus, my laptop's hard drive is literally so full that it won't let me upload what pictures I did take. So you won't get to see all the attending Utahns with author L.E. Modesitt and agent Joshua Bilmes (taken specifically to make Brandon Sanderson jealous, because he couldn't make it this year--blame Dan, or if you're a Writing Excuses fan, blame Jordo, who wasn't even there and it was his fault), and you won't be able to see me in my I Am Not a Serial Killer t-shirt, so you won't be able to be reassured that I'm not a serial killer until next week.In the meantime, head on over to Tu Publishing, where today is an open thread--tell us what you'd like to see on the Tu Publishing website. What would draw you to return to a publisher's website?Also, continued gratitude to all the people who are pledging to give Tu a kickstart! W...

Michael Butterworth in the Savoy office, 1998 (photo by Ben Blackall).

Interview by Mike Holliday.

This is the first of a proposed 3-interview series. Parts 2 and 3, featuring David Britton and John Coulthart, will discuss Savoy’s musical, spoken word and visual/comics/graphics output. To coincide with this series, please enter the Savoy Books Microfiction competition! Win super-rare Savoy books, comic books and CDs by writing a short story of 100 words or less on ‘Savoyesque’ or ‘Ballardian’ themes. Details here.

Savoy Books, which bills itself as “England’s only truly alternative and autotelic publishing company”, was started by David Britton and Michael Butterworth in 1976. For more than 30 years, Savoy have published books based on the sole criterion of admiration for the content or the author, and thei...

Lord Horror (1997). Image by John Coulthart.
Coinciding with our three-part interview with Michael Butterworth, David Britton and John Coulthart of Savoy Books, Ballardian.com is pleased to announce the Savoy Books Microfiction Competition.
NOTE: Due to popular demand, the Ballardian/Savoy microfiction competition deadline has been extended to 15 December. Winners will be announced in early January 2010, coinciding with Part 2 of the Savoy interviews.
UPDATED RULES: The rules are very simple: write a 100-word (or less) short story on anything with a ‘Savoyesque’ or ‘Ballardian’ theme (note: hyphenated words count as one word). If you are unfamiliar with Savoyesque themes, please see the interview with Mr Butterworth. For the dictionary definition of ‘Ballardian’, please see here. And if you would like to know more about writing microfiction (a.k.a. ‘flash fiction’), we

The Texas Rangers Versus the Texas Rangers

As part of the National Novel Writing Month I will be posting quickly-designed covers for participating authors - a new one every day. This will likely end in tears.

Click here for the synopsis of this book.

Had family in town this weekend. Thus:Unpublished concepts for Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue and Troublesome Words. Via The Casual Optimist.The new Penguin Podcast features Ron Currie, Jr., author of Everything Matters. I loved that book.Old dust jackets. I mean really old. And most likely, pretty dusty.

For the month of November I am going to be participating in National Novel Writing Month by attempting to design one cover for participating authors every day - 30 covers in 30 days. The authors are randomly selected by the propietors of the NaNoWriMo project to have their synopsis/title designed around by yours truly. The point here is volume/output and not necessarily quality, but I'll do my best. This is probably a very foolish stunt on my part, and even more foolish to be turning it over to you dogs of war to critique! I won't pretend that these are going to be mindbogglingly good, as despite all appearances I have a life beyond graphic design, so i can only take about an hour a day on these.

Here's the first one. You can read about the story here on the author's Nanowrimo profile. I would have liked to spend more time on the type, but I've gotta crank out the next one right away!