Thank you writing such wonderful stories and for maintaining such a wonderful blog.
I think fans of this blog, though it may seem too self-promoting to you, would love to hear what others are saying about advance versions of Anansi Boys. Jonathan Strahan has some wonderful things to say about an e-mail version on his blog (just scroll down a bit).
http://notesfromcoodestreet.blogspot.com/
Also, I'm putting in a request for you to sign in Milwaukee, WI, this fall (I know, you have nothing to do with the itinerary, I should contact my local bookstores). Thanks again for writing such magical stories, and for being such an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of the genre (your enthusiasm is quite infectious; reading your blog makes me want to go read and read and read!).
Kelly Christopher Shaw
Milwaukee, WI
Oh good. I'm really pleased that Jonathan enjoyed it so much.
(His review is at http://notesfromcoodestreet.blogspot.com/2005/05/spider-stories.html)
It really is a funny book, I hope, although that's not really all it is. In the back of my head, when I was writing it, I had a writer named Thorne Smith, who is now almost forgotten. (Undeservedly so, although I suspect that many of the things that made his books work so well in the 1920s are the same things that make them harder for a reader to parse today.) He wrote books which, sentence by sentence, were comedies, but when you stepped far enough back were tragedies. Anansi Boys isn't one of those -- in my head at least, it remains a comedy the whole way, but the Thorne Smith approach to books with eruptions of magic into normal lives seemed like a territory that would be worthwhile to explore.
...
My assistant Lorraine has a blog she shares with her band-mate (and my televisual undead assistant) Malena, at http://www.lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/
Yesterday, talking about their new album, she says: Soon we will start recording. It all seems to be coming together nicely, and we go into the studio Friday the 13th of May ( nice day for it , eh? ) for the Lojo Russo portion of the sessions. If anyone know of an Uilleann or Irish Bagpiper player in the Twin Cities area who would be up for playing on a cool Gothic Folk cd, let me know. We have a song that has pipes all over it, if we can but find a player.
And I thought I'd repost that here, because, at least right now, I've probably got a few more readers than they do. Although, I'd like to point out, they'd only had their blog and website up for a couple of weeks when they got an official corset endorsement thingie -- they now wear and endorse the corsets they love, and they get free corsets to wear at gigs and in photos and when out walking the dog and so on.
I, on the other hand, have industriously blogged away, wearing my fingers to the proverbial etc, for over four years, but despite dropping serious hints, I would like to point out that I still had to buy my own Mini and my own fountain pens, and I'm honestly convinced that if I ever want to buy my own island I'm going to have to do it myself.
Oh well. They'd like a bagpipes player and can provide their own corsets.