(UPDATED 6/14)

Next Tuesday, Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio are out with STORIES: All-New Tales, a collection of genre-fuzzing fictions from an eclectic mix of great writers. I consider myself fortunate to have a story of my own in there, “The Devil on the Staircase” (my current favorite thing to do at readings).

On the same day STORIES is released, Tuesday the 15th, Neil Gaiman and Al will be in New York City, at Columbia University, to talk about the imagination and the increasingly scuffed line between genre and mainstream fiction. Several contributors will be on stage with him, including Kurt Andersen, Jeffrey Ford, Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Kat Howard, and yours truly; ace editor Ellen Datlow will also be a part of the panel.* Here are the gory details:

Horace Mann Auditorium

Teachers College

Columbia University

7:00 PM

Hope to see you there.

In other news, as of this morning, Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2, edited by William Schafer, is up for preorder here. I’ve got a story in that one, too, “Wolverton Station,” which is about a corporate hatchet-man who climbs onto a train in London and finds himself carried away into the sort of country that lies at the heart of the darkest sort of fairy tales. Dark Fantasy 2 is set to feature cover art by Dave McKean, and will be out in January 2011.

* ace editor Ellen Datlow will be in attendance, but not actually on the panel; my bad.

A few comic-ky notices and links I’ve been meaning to post…

Ain’t it Cool News recently wrote a mash note to Locke & Key and followed up by placing both Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft and 20th Century Ghosts on their annual list of Christmas gift suggestions. Hey, you won’t catch me arguing with them.

Chris Bolton at Powell’s books wrote a very positive review of Welcome to Lovecraft. Worth a look if you’re curious about Locke & Key, but not sure you want to take a chance on a comic book.

The first issue of the next Locke & Key storyline will be out in early January, but you can read the opening 7 pages right now in the latest issue of Wizard magazine (that would be the January ’09 issue, but nevermind the date, it’s already in stores). This is a particularly cool issue, since it has an Alan Moore interview, a preview of the upcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a long piece about Lost writers Brian Vaughan and Damon Lindelof. And, tho’ I blush to write it, in Wizard’s annual best-of issue (December), they were kind enough to vote me Best Horror Writer.

There’s a chance I might be posting more than usual on the blog, here in the last week before Christmas. During the time I was offline, waiting for power to come back on after the ice storm, I wound up roughing out several posts (we had a generator, so I could noodle on the computer, even if it was usually in the dark). Whether or not anyone will want to read them is another question. I explain why after the jump.

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Over on the message board, Paul Campbell wonders if I’m washing my hands of short fiction. The short answer on that is, no way.

It’s true that at the moment I’m knee-deep in a novel that I didn’t expect to be writing, and having a hell of a good time with it, thanks. And until I turn in the new book, I won’t have a lot of time for short fiction. But I recently collaborated on a novella with my Paw, so that’s coming down the pike. I also promised a short story to a couple friends for their upcoming anthology, and although I don’t keep all of my promises, I plan to fulfill that one. And while Locke & Key isn’t short fiction in the traditional sense, I’d argue that crafting the script for a 22-page issue calls on a lot of the same skills you need to execute a short story. I’m still a guy who believes most 300 page novels would play better as 30 page shorts, and who feels most at ease writing stories that can be read in a single sitting; I have a basically short story imagination, I think.

The proof of it just went up over on Nextbook.org. A few months back I agreed to write an essay for Nextbook about the influence of Bernard Malamud on my stories, stupidly forgetting that I hate to write essays. I always think I sound windy and self-important, and I’m not sure I’ve read enough or written enough to play the literary scholar. I made one attempt after another to write something about Malamud that I’d want to read myself, but couldn’t get anything started until I finally decided to try dressing my essay up as a short story, and then it went fine, and Nextbook just published it, alongside the above, very cool illustration of yours truly being all Edgar Allan Poe and shit.

Check it out if you get a chance; or, even better, track down a copy of The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud, and read “The Jewbird,” the story I’m spoofing in my Nextbook piece. Because really, why read a Malamud take-off when you can get a dose of the real thing?