Blogging will be light for a few days, as I'm spending the long weekend with my folks. Ordered the first issue of The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives from Small Beer Press, and I got a note back a few hours later from Gavin Grant that he was on the road, but would send it out as soon as he got back. While I'm off eating home-cooked meals and enjoying functional airconditioning, why don't you check out Project Pulp?

Smoking Mirror ordered me to pick up a copy of A Scattering of Jades by Alexander C. Irvine now that it's in mass market paperback. It also wanted me to look for this Scattering of Jades as well, but one thing at a time. Although John Bierhorst's praise is no small matter. Anyway, Irvine's Scattering manages to mix up P.T. Barnum, Aztec mythology, the Burr Conspiracy and Tammany Hall politics into a spicy secret history gazpacho. No, I can't believe I just typed that either. Just buy the damn book. Now I just have to wait a whole year before his next novel, One King One Soldier One King, One Soldier comes out. From Irvine's website:

In it, you'll discover interesting things about Arthur Rimbaud, the Ark of the Covenant, baseball, the Grail quest, and some other stuff.

He's got several short stories and poems on his website, he edits a zine and it looks like the man's a small press fiend as well. And hey, he's from Ann Arbor, home of my alma mater. What a weird coincidence. Stop smirking, Smoking Mirror. The title of Irvine's book comes from an expression used by the Aztecs to denote a wise man imparting his lessons. Besides the human sacrifice that everyone knows about and being one of the few people the Spanish could beat up, they were an amazingly aesthetic people.

Silliness on Friendster continues, with me seriously thinking about befriending Death, Repo Man and Giant Squid, among others. I bet Giant Squid wouldn't have a meetup at a vegan restaurant where the waitress laughs at your attempts to use chopsticks. As if that's a Confucian thing to do. Perhaps Pure Evil will be my friend. Then that waitress will learn the error of her ways.