"Nothing can kill a show like too much exposition..."

One would think that, faced with actual developments in my life for the first time in ages, I would have made a point of posting about them sooner, no?

Oh well.

I’d mentioned a few entries ago that there had been some upheaval at Tor. Now that the news has been out for awhile, it’s safe to share it here: Jim Minz, one of our editors—specifically, someone who we all liked enough to conspire to crochet a blanket for his newborn daughter, and who, from my first day as an intern, always made me feel safe about bothering him with inane questions about publishing—has left Tor for a job at Del Rey. No one around Tor is happy about this, and I think it’s fair to say that most of us miss him terribly.

But, ever the opportunist, I have to confess that my despair has been mitigated by two (pretty sweet) side-effects: first, the divine Miss alg has finally gotten the office and the title that she’s deserved for ages. Secondly, they decided to divide up Jim’s list instead of hiring someone else to take over his books. Because Jim is swell, he Jim decided that I was well-suited to take on Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer. Jeff is most commonly known for his collections Veniss Underground and City of Saints and Madmen and for co-editing the immensely cool Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. I’ve talked here before about imposter syndrome, so you can probably guess that I’m a bit intimidated by the fact that I, who am pretty new at this, am being matched up with a guy who has quotes from a frightening number of smart writers and has won or been nominated for half of the awards in the genre. But now that we’ve exchanged a few e-mails and established some of our compatible obsessions (House of Leaves, the Dresden Dolls) and I’ve read most of the book twice, I’m a bit more hopeful that I’ll have something useful to contribute. Either way, I’m sort of insanely lucky for the chance to find out if I can pull this off.

In one of those cases where the saying "good things come in threes" is uncannily accurate, a few days later I went out to lunch with Patrick and learned that I’d be doing the primary editorial work on our two new Dave Duncan books, Children of Chaos and Mother of Lies. Duncan’s name hasn’t been ringing any bells with most of my friends, but I’m kind of starstruck: back in my pre-high school days, when I was reading tons of genre fiction selected by no sensible criteria that I can discern, I somehow latched on to Dave Duncan and read everything by him that I could find—well over a dozen books. The fact that I’m now working with him is surreal, to say the least: as I remarked to a friend, my life has been giving me "some slight incredulity issues" lately. Anyway, Duncan’s e-mails make me laugh and I quite like what I’ve read of the first book, so I think this will wind up being a lot of fun.

With all the busyness attendant with the aforementioned new projects, I haven’t been as culturally ambitious as usual, but I’ve seen a few things worth noting.

• I had a ton of fun at "How I Learned to Read", a benefit for 826NYC that featured a bunch of celebrities reading children’s stories. I’d have written more about it if there hadn’t already been a great description in Neil Gaiman’s journal.

• Donald Margulies’ Brooklyn Boy (not to be confused with that horrid musical with no vowels in its title) may not be getting fantastic reviews, but it hit me really hard, which I guess is unsurprising: as someone who’s both obsessed with publishing and an atheist Jew with two parents from Seagate, I could hardly be a more ideal audience member for this play, which was so accurately—and, in parts, devastatingly—written that I’d swear Margulies must have been listening in on all of the visits I’ve paid to family members dying in hospital rooms (okay, so it’s not the cheeriest play ever).

• Though I think Sir Peter Hall’s As You Like It at BAM was a flawed production (I found the scenes with Duke Senior and his noblemen to be overblown and kind of dorky, and the guy who played Jacques was resolutely sedate and dour without paying any attention to the character’s interesting undercurrents), Rebecca Hall’s Rosalind was so luminous and thoughtful and arresting that I was in love with her by her third line and only got moreso as the play went on, which was enough to make every second she was on stage positively glow for me.

• The Classical Theatre of Harlem’s production of The Cherry Orchard affected me as deeply as a Chekov play ever has, yet somehow managed to be hysterically funny as well. The CTH continually impresses me with its ability to keep its prices and ticket availability accessible (especially in contrast to the overhyped and undergood experimental theatre groups getting prime coverage in our local theatre mags) despite every critic in the city fawning over how great they are, so if you care about theatre and you’re not too chicken to go above 145th Street, you’ll thank yourself for making the effort.

I’ve also spent perhaps more time than I ought hanging out with college kids lately, which I might feel lame about if they weren’t so much better at having fun then us "adults" are. The weekend before last I was at Vericon, which gave me the opportunity to attend a Masquerade as a pirate wench, play 6+ hours of Mafia with some of my favorite players in the world (I’m not a HRSFA-fangirl *at all*. No, really), and attend my first scavenger hunt, which was apparently waiting for me: not only did I convince the judges to give me a point for "four and twenty blackbirds", but I got a point for, well, being "too much exposition".

And last night I headed uptown to my alma mater for the Fed Bash, a benefit concert/smutfest for my college newspaper. Thanks to the positively heroic efforts of prosthetichead, this was probably the best Fed Bash so far. There are very few places in this world where I can wear PVC corsets without anyone looking at me askance, see a Mary Prankster concert, ogle scantily-clad girls with gorgeous accents, and hang out with a dozen or two smart, sarcastic, beautiful friends all at once. Viva la Fed.

Part of the reason I don’t spread memes is that they’re usually way over by the time I’d have a chance to say anything about them here. But I somehow failed to watch this animated short when it was first mentioned in Neil’s journal, and now that I have, I can’t overstate how awestruck I am. But don’t take my word for it: when I passed the link along to pnh, he remarked "It’s like a German expressionist film! With muppets!" tnh later added, "If someone were to go to the movies in the universe of Babe: Pig in the City, this is exactly what they’d be seeing." If you haven’t seen this, I kinda have to insist that you do so now, before it stops being free.

Hate to close on a down note, but: the recent news of Arthur Miller’s death hit me pretty hard. There are a lot of people out there that thought Miller was drastically overrated and, after reading a few of his plays in my high school English classes, I was inclined to agree. It wasn’t until I finally saw him on stage, via revelatory productions of A View From the Bridge, Death of a Salesman, and The Price and even a mediocre one of The Crucible, that I finally realized whence his legend had sprung. After that point, whenever I’d ponder aloud whether Wallace Shawn or Edward Albee is the greatest living American playwright, I’d always stop after a moment and add, "Oh, and Arthur Miller, of course." I wish he was still a contender.

Oh, yeah. Today is some dumb Hallmark holiday, so I’m hosting an Anti-Valentine’s Day cookie swap for anyone who is tired of society conspiring to make them feel like there’s something wrong with them because they’re not part of a couple, or who just doesn’t have plans for tomorrow and likes eating cookies. If that description agrees with you, please leave a comment or drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you details and directions to my house.