Given, well, everything, I thought today’s photo selection could focus a bit on Portugal’s prodigious, and I do mean prodigious, street art presence. Obviously, Portugal is home to a deep presence of art everywhere — statues, fountains, architecture, egg tarts (ahem), and perhaps most notable and everpresent, the azulejo tiles. But it’s the street art that hits you perhaps first and most relentlessly, because it’s everywhere. Everywhere. At all times. My understanding of this is, it’s technically illegal, but they open up buildings and certain objects (electrical boxes, f’rex) to being all art ..read more

“With fear for our democracy, I dissent” — Justice Sotomayor, today, in a statement that is chilling in its necessity and also vital. That statement, her statement, keeps doing laps around the inside of my skull. You can read the whole thing here (the bottom for the dissents). But that final statement of hers is a terrible, essential echo. It feels like the distillation of everything that’s gone on with Trump, since Trump, about Trump — how electing him unleashed something terrible, or perhaps worse, simply mirrored it, multiplied it in that reflective visage. With fear for our democracy, I d ..read more

HEY WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND A CASE OF COVID? *shakes little plastic baggy of two severed thumbs at you* This guy. As in me. As in I have COVID, and also this little baggy containing two severed thumbs. This is pretty much exactly what happened to me last year on my Amsterdam – Germany – Spain trip. Came back, two days later, ta-da, COVID. As we left a whole month earlier this time I thought maaaayyyyyybe we’d get ahead of any Summer Surge, but nope, not so much. So far I’m the only jabroni in the family with this jawn, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the others catch it. I’m currently in quarant ..read more

What’s that? How is it being a writer right now? An author? Ha ha, yeah, man, yeah, no, it’s fucking great, everything is super cool right just, just really chill and what is it the kids say? Skibidi? It’s all coming up skibidi. Skibidi toilets all the way down, dude. Yeah, no, check it out, right? So it’s like, publishers always threw us to the wolves a little but — but then there was Twitter, which was this rickety platform we could all stand on and squawk like angry blue jays about our books. Except then I guess that got bought by an apartheid-huffing man-boy billionaire who I think instant ..read more

If you were like, “Gosh, I really would love to read about how EVIL APPLES infect a small town in Pennsylvania and the orchard from whence they came spawns an EVIL APPLE CULT,” but you were also like, “All I have in my pocket are these ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE PENNIES,” then gosh wow, do I have a deal for you. Simply go to any of the ELECTRIC BOOKMONGER websites, shove your pennies into your computer, and yell at it: GIVE ME BLACK RIVER ORCHARD, YOU FUCKING ROBOT PIECE OF SHIT, I HAVE GIVEN YOU MY GOLD, NOW GIVE ME NIGHTMARES. And it’ll work. I mean, probably. Some approximation of that. W ..read more

AHOY, FRANDOS. A bit of news! A spot of news, perhaps, in the British parlance, or even a spotted dick of news? A bubbles-and-squeak of news? Whatever. Anyway, hey, look — Black River Orchard is up for its second award! It’s on the final list for best horror at the Locus Awards, amidst truly spectacular company. Company so good it is 100% true to say, “It’s an honor to be nominated,” because it’s like getting to hang out at a cool party I wasn’t technically invited to. I mean, the list is: Tananarive Due, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham-Jones, T. Kingfisher, Victor LaValle, Alix Harrow, Isabel ..read more

In just over a year’s time, Ryia Cautella has already earned herself a reputation as the quickest, deadliest blade in the dockside city of Carrowwick—not to mention the sharpest tongue. But Ryia Cautella is not her real name. For the past six years, a deadly secret has kept her in hiding, running from town to town, doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the formidable Guildmaster—the sovereign ruler of the five kingdoms of Thamorr. No matter how far or fast she travels, his servants never fail to track her down…but even the most powerful men can be defeated. Ryia’s path now leads d ..read more

Reviews — meaning, in this case, usually a star-driven text-based evaluation of a book by an author — are curiously controversial. And understandably so! As authors, we don’t precisely know how to grapple with them, if we should look at them ever, if we should engage with them in any way, if we should ask for them, or pretend they don’t exist, or god, do they even matter at all? As readers, more questions ensue: where should they go, what do star ratings mean, who are they for, what is their ultimate purpose, and are they increasingly more noise and less signal? I sometimes pop on THE OL’ SOC ..read more

Listen, it’s the time of the year when B&N offers a pretty nice deal on preordered books, and so of course every author in the world is like AHHHH PLEASE PREORDER MY BOOK, and honestly, if you can, it’s great? It’s good for the author, it’s good for bookstores, it’s good for the overall bookish ecosystem. It is not required, but you will surely find a lot of cool books to pre-order out yonder, and of course I am obliged to hang out my own shingle and gesticulate wildly toward it. I, in fact, have two books for preorder– The first, arriving June 25th, is the paperback of Black River Orchard ..read more

Fallout is, so far, the most videogamey of all the potential video game adaptations. When I say it is the perfect adaptation, I don’t simply mean in quality — though the quality is high! — I mean that it somehow has distilled the experience of the game into the sweet narrative liquor of a television show. Game mechanics are represented organically, and in a way that makes sense, down to (and these are first episode spoilers, very light, but be warned) using stimpaks and having a scene of “presenting my skills for character creaton” and the bloody mess perk and the junk jet gun, and, and, and ..read more