All the To-ing, All the Fro-ing

Autumn always winds up this way: conferences, events, readings, and more. This year’s been no exception.

Though it’s hard to believe, the 2023 James River Writers conference was already nearly two weeks ago. It was a great time, from talking with friends old and new to thought-provoking panels to hearing about new books. The panels I moderated were (he said modestly) outstanding, and the audience was clearly into it. If there was a picture of the grants, awards, and residencies panel, I haven’t seen it, but here’s the crew after Things That Go Bump In The Night:

J. T. Glover, Chad Luibl, Mark Oshiro, Alma Katsu | photo courtesy Alma Katsu

Barely a week later, I found myself at Williamsburg’s newest bookstore, Turn The Page Bookshop, celebrating the release of Dark Corners of the Old Dominion. It was a delightful (and spooky, naturally) afternoon with a bunch of ardent horrorists, and we did indeed sell copies of the anthology and more.

William R. D. Wood, Joseph Maddrey, James L. Hill, Valerie B. Williams, J. T. Glover, Charles E. Wood, Sidney Williams, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Rook, D. Alexander Ward | photo courtesy Joseph Maddrey

Post-func reprobates | Courtesy D. Alexander Ward

And last night I had the pleasure of attending the release for The Goth House Experiment, new out from Richmond author S. J. Sindu, whom I work with with my day job hat on. It was held at the always-excellent Fountain Bookstore, and the seats were full! I came home with the aforementioned title, as well as S. A. Cosby’s new one, All the Sinners Bleed, which has been in my sights (and my library hold list) for a while, and for which I finally couldn’t wait any longer:

New buds, joining the pack.

JRW 2023 Registration Closing Soon

For those in, near, or willing to travel to Virginia, registration is closing soon for the 2023 James River Writers Conference. Registration information is available on the conference website, and these are the panels I’m moderating:

Saturday, October 7, 9:30 a.m. Awards, Grants, & Residencies: Putting Yourself Out There

Some authors seem like they’re always earning awards and getting accepted for retreats, residencies, and grants. Beyond being talented, dedicated writers, do they also know something you don’t? How do you find out about these opportunities, and what are best practices for applying? 

Panelists: L.D. Lewis, Mia P. Manansala, Bethanne Patrick

Moderator: John Glover

Room: E10C

Saturday, October 8, 10:45 a.m. Writing That Goes Bump in the Night

Join our panel of horror experts to learn how to send chills up your reader’s spine. How do you write “dread-soaked pages” (Alma Katsu) and illuminate “life’s darkest horrors” (Mark Oshiro), and what makes a particular horror novel a good sell (agent Chad Luibl).  

Panelists: Alma Katsu, Chad Luibl, Mark Oshiro 

Moderator: John Glover

Room: E10D

Coming soon: the JRW Conference

Happy “surely it’s still summer,” y’all! I hope your summer has been as good and productive as mine. I’ve been busy reading, from Karl Edward Wagner to Karenne Wood; traveling, to the beach and to Quebec; and writing, with a novel (which I’ve jokingly called UNTITLED FUTURE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND PULITZER PRIZE WINNER) nearly sewn up and soon to be querying. More on all of that down the road!

If you are in or near Central Virginia, I hope you’ll take a look at this year’s James River Writers conference. There’s some great panels, and I have the good fortune to moderate two: “Writing That Goes Bump in the Night” and “Awards, Grants, & Residencies: Putting Yourself Out There.” I’ll post more about both sessions, and why I’m excited about both as the conference approaches.

Writers, “Writers,” and Writers(?)

Several years ago, I was doing some archival research on the history of literary groups, associations, and the like in Richmond. At the time I was serving on the Board of Directors of James River Writers, the largest and most prominent literary organization in Central Virginia, and I’d gotten curious about where and how these groups preserve their histories. I didn’t expect to be personally attacked in the process, and yet—!

In the course of reading, I ran across a letter between two members of a bygone organization, talking about the value of different authors’ works. One said to the other that, in essence, people who publish academically are not real writers. An interesting claim, and one that makes more sense, given the letter was from many decades ago, back before creative writing put down… not merely roots, but taproots in the ivory tower.

To be fair, these correspondents weren’t discussing scholarship, much of which is just not created to be read for pleasure, with artistic goals in mind, or both. My publications over the last fifteen years have encompassed all of the above, though the last few years have seen a decrease in my fiction credits as I’ve turned my attention toward novels. For better or worse, that meant more careful allocation of my time, which led to less time reading and writing short fiction. It hasn’t, however, cut so much into my academic writing. Some of that’s professional stuff about my work as a librarian that is probably of no interest to most people reading this, but not entirely.

To wit, yesterday I got my (aforementioned) contributor’s copy of Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. It includes my chapter “Olympia, Wilderness, and Consumption in Laird Barron’s Old Leech Cycle.” Viz:

This essay had a long gestation period, as is not uncommon in the humanities. I’m grateful to the editors that it’s out in the world, and I hope it finds readers! While I don’t have the same artistic ambitions with it that I do have with my fiction, I tried to write it well, and I tried to offer some perspectives that might be interesting to other readers of weird fiction, and Laird Barron’s fiction in particular.

Other than that? With March here, it seems like Omicron might be behind us, even if the world is unquiet. I’m still thinking about next steps on the novel I wrote about a couple posts back. In the meanwhile, I’m 10,000 words into a new novel, one that involved as detailed an outline as I’ve ever created, along with 25,000 words of preparatory character sketches. Sometimes new books need new methods, or so I’ve heard. Happy Spring!

Whenworldscollide: Special Edition

One of the categories on this here blog that consistently gets attention, even after individual posts have fallen off most people’s radars, is “whenworldscollide.” That’s where I stick the stuff that lives in the Venn diagram of creative writing, scholarship, librarianship, and academic stuff. 2021’s been busy with that kind of stuff.

Early next year, my essay “Olympia, Wilderness, and Consumption in Laird Barron’s Old Leech Cycle” will be published in Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Likely not the rubric most people use for thinking about Old Leech, but it worked for me because I kept thinking about how very well Laird Barron does both Olympia and Washington, and also how little academics have yet written about either Barron or fiction set in Olympia. I probably wouldn’t have tried to write this piece back when I was first a librarian, trying to wall off different parts of my life and never really thinking about literary scholarship, but here we are.

Last week I moderated a lively discussion about the future of speculative fiction for James River Writers, the Central Virginia writing org on whose Board of Directors I served some years ago. Our conversation roamed over many topics, but I wound up juggling my writing hat and my library hat a bit, in particular on the question of genre labels and taxonomies. A tough issue that continues to get tougher as readers’ tastes solidify and specify. Many U.S. readers have no nearby bookstore they can happily browse, and many factors (not least the pandemic) have continued to drive book buyers to online sellers. In that environment, what a book is classified as can at times matter far more than it used to… to the reader, writer, publisher, OR library.

Finally, back in May I had the distinct (and new for me!) pleasure of serving as a keynote speaker at a symposium hosted by the University of Calgary, “Integrating Library, Archives and Special Collections into Creative Writing Pedagogy: An Experiential Symposium.” It was an honor and super-invigorating to present and help plan with the organizers and my fellow keynoter, David Pavelich. This event was some years in the making and had to be shifted online due to the pandemic, which put a damper on some facets and allowed for new ones, including broader attendance. None of it could have happened without the indefatigable efforts of my Canadian colleagues, Melanie Boyd, Aritha van Herk, and Jason Nisenson. Lots of great “whenworldscollide” moments here, but I have to say that it was a particular delight to talk about the research practices of various folks in horror and weird fiction.

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