Interview at The Fix-Online-short stories

The Fix Online Short Fiction Review has an interview with me (ostensibly on the topic of short fiction) at
http://thefix-online.com/interviews/gregory-frost/

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Books Without Borders

An essay on the state of bookstores, the slow death of a chain, and what it may mean for all writers.
http://www.wildriverreview.com/oped_bookswoutbordes.php

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Don't take my word for it....

New review of Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet on LiveJournal.

Concludes the reviewer: MUST HAVE

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LORD TOPHET IS LOOSE!

LORD TOPHET, the sequel to SHADOWBRIDGE, released today, July 29th. This volume concludes the story of Leodora and Diverus, so don't wait for volume three to come out, because there isn't one. As with its predecessor, the reviews coming in are raves, therefore rather than having me tell you shamelessly that book is exceptional, I'll let them do it:
—Publishers Weekly: "Frost brings the charm of an ancient storyteller and the wit of a contemporary tale-spinner to this dramatic tale, effortlessly manipulating his troupe of mortals and immortals and bringing the truths and myths of Shadowbridge equally to life."


—Paul Witcover, SciFi Weekly: "His pages bristle with the kind of lively energy I associate with Miyazaki films, and his delight in the stories his characters hear and transform and retell is palpable and contagious."


—Fantasy Book Critic: "...not only is Lord Tophet...a richly rewarding experience, it is also one of the few must-read fantasies of the year."


LORD TOPHET

by Gregory Frost

Del Rey Books $14.00

ISBN: 978-0-345-49759-8

Author Interview at Fantasy BookSpot.com

Interview with Jay Tomio, tied in to LORD TOPHET, the sequel to SHADOWBRIDGE.

On the Spot at The Bookspot.

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The Liars Club Takes Philadelphia

On June 12th, D.H. Dublin (Jon McGoran), Jonathan Maberry, L.A. Banks, Gregory Frost, and Kelly Simmons took over a Barnes & Noble and held the audience hostage while they read and discussed the process of writing. No audience members were injured.
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Jason Van Hollander dips into Classic Imagery to Illustrate Attack of the Jazz Giants

Golden Gryphon Press chose the cover artist for Attack of the Jazz Giants, and in "Six-Degrees of Separation" event, they selected Jason Van Hollander, a multiple World Fantasy Award winning artist who also happens to live a block from me.



I live in an artistic community, though you wouldn't know it if you came to visit. On the surface, everything appears to be normal here, the way it would be if we'd all been taken over by pods from outer space. My next door neighbor, Bryan Willette, is a stained glass artist. Up the street is carpenter, and next to him a guy who builds movie sets. Across the street from Jason, a photographer. Behind us, a guitar virtuoso. A few blocks away, a children's book illustrator/writer.



This communal spirit created a rare collaborative bond between us. Not only was Jason showing me sketches for the cover, he was also proposing to include interior illustrations for the stories.




I printed out the stories that we'd selected for the collection and he read them. He asked questions about them. He followed me home in the dark. (You, you foolish people, you think I'm kidding.)We spent time in a few libraries, researching source material. I hunted up images of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope for him, while he invaded the stacks on a quest for odd Russian iconography for another set of drawings. He threw himself into the creation of the book, vanishing for days, weeks, at a time, only to turn up with another weird piece of carefully stippled illustration--of Elvis nailed up as Jesus, of a drug-warped head of Edgar Allan Poe topping the body of the Conqueror Worm, of the Virgin Mary reflected in the protective goggles of a face that looks remarkably like his own.




All of this time and effort he put into the project was out of pure love for it, because the publisher couldn't pay for interiors. They were getting them because he was compelled to create them.




Only two artists I've ever worked with have solicited opinions from me about the artwork they proposed to put on my books: Thomas Thiemeyer, who painted the magnificent covers for the Shadowbridge books; and Jason Van Hollander, whose strange and grotesque artwork is the personification of Arkham House the way it used to be--the distorted, twisted architecture of Innsmouth and a dozen other Lovecraftian landscapes.




Derangement turned inside out. And yet, like a diseased mirror, his work reflects the range of dark fantasy and horror and, yes, humor that lies between the covers of Attack of the Jazz Giants & Other Stories. I can't imagine these stories of mine now without the accompanying illustrations. And in the process I gained a mordant, talented, remarkable friend.

So long as his sly wit graces the neighborhood, I'll know that we've not yet been taken over completely by the pod people.











gf (with assistance from Don Lafferty)

A Day at the Poe House

I visited the Edgar Allan Poe house (yes, yes, I was in the Poe house...so don't make that joke, I already did) this afternoon to hear a lecture by Edward Pettit, a local (Philadelphia) Poe expert. The subject of the talk, however, was author George Lippard, who was a good friend of Poe's--one of the few who stayed a friend of his to the very end. Lippard was, in his day, a huge best-selling writer with his novel The Quaker City or The Monks of Monk Hall. It was, as Pettit informed us, a kitchen sink of a novel, filled with endless acts of depravity, nightmarish hallucinations, an evil cabal of the wealthiest men in the city, premonitory visions of the decayed Philadelphia of 1950, and, lest that fail to do you in, necrophilia. No wonder it was so popular.

Lippard was a novelist, editor, publisher, and a proto-Marxist who campaigned for the rights of the downtrodden. His output was prodigious--approximately a million words a year for the ten years he wrote before his untimely death from consumption. He is all but forgotten now (in fact he was referred to as a forgotten author by the 1870s), but Pettit and others are attempting to rescue from obscurity this gothic novelist of grotesque and noir sensibilities. And while we're at it, the same for Charles Brockden Brown!

If any of that sounds like fun, go to http://omnigatherum.com/blog.html
where you can read pieces of Lippard's work; or to Pettit's Ed and Edgar blog at http://bibliothecary.squarespace.com/

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Every Angel is Terrifying

John Kessel and I are in the process of collaboratively podcasting readings of each other's stories in preparation for a tour we're doing in May across North Carolina. We'll have CDs of these readings to give out at our events there.

In the meantime, Dr. Kessel has posted a podcast of my reading of his story, "Every Angel is Terrifying." If you don't know this story, it's his remarkable response to and continuation of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

The recording can be found HERE.

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(This post duplicates content found at Live Journal post, Frostbites)

Amazon.com Interview now up

For those who want to know ALL the secrets behind SHADOWBRIDGE (like that's going to happen)...

Jeff VanderMeer has done an interview with me for Amazon.com. It's up at
OMNIVORACIOUS

Enjoy,
gf
Publish Post

Jeffrey Ford Weighs In

When it rains it pours, I guess.
I spent the day at the ALA mid-winter conference in Philadelphia. Never mind that it's 50+ degrees here so "winter" is one of those sillyass words that gets thrown around by clambrained maroons like Senator Inhofe, who thinks global warming was invented by an evil cabal of liberal activists bent on kicking the shit out of Exxon or something ... and by the way, when can we start?

A great time was had by all. Librarians are wonderful folk. You'd almost think they got into this particular occupation because they feel that books--and by extension thought--mattered. Jeepers, Mr. Kent. No wonder Vice President Emperor Zombie would like them rounded up.

Last night was a Random House party at the Mummer's Museum. Much dancing to live string band music (especially by one particular couple from Random House). About half a million copies of Magic in the Mirrorstone were signed and given away. Some will go on library shelves. Some were for the librarians themselves. Ann Veddies came up with a brilliant scheme I will hereafter adopt: to sign the LAST page of one's story in a collection instead of the first. That way, whatever pithy comment flows out of one's addled brain, it seems like an afterword.

But I digress....

Jeffrey Ford has posted to his blog a very nice piece on Shadowbridge, and in the interest of increasing his traffic flow (what else?) I point you to it: http://14theditch.livejournal.com/ It's much better than me tooting the horn. Really. You've never seen me toot.

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Her Name is Leodora and She Dances in the Sand

Jezebel, the evil incarnate interviewer spawned by author Jackie Kessler, has just posted her interview with Leodora, the heroine of Shadowbridge.

You can hear what Leodora has to say at http://www.jackiekessler.com/blog/2008/01/12/her-name-is-leo-and-she-dances-on-the-sand/

or via the LiveJournal format:
http://jackiekessler.livejournal.com/

Man, you invent these characters and then they go around telling stories about you...

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Gearing up for the ALA

The ALA (American Library Association) is meeting in Philadelphia this weekend. I will be on hand, along with Holly Black and others, to sign copies of the YA anthology, Magic in the Mirrorstone, as well as the first-seen copies of my novel, Shadowbridge. I've no idea if there are librarians tracking any of this blogosphere stuff, but if so, please drop by the Random House booth on Saturday and say hello.

Best,
greg