ellen_datlow

I'll be attending, signing books, and being on panels at the free Baltimore Book Festival Friday September 28-Saturday September 29th. (the festival is through Sunday but I leave Saturday night).

They expect 50,000 people. I hope to see some friendly faces while I'm down there.

The Childrens Bookstore will be selling copies of After edited by me and Terri Windling. This should be its first public appearance (the book will be officially out October 9th)

Friday, September 28
6pm Once Upon a Slightly Different Time
Five authors and editor Ellen Datlow offer their thoughts on the recreation and retelling of fairy tales for a modern audience.
Panelists include Shannon Hale, Goose Girl, Ellen Datlow, Troll's-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales, Michael Buckley, The Sisters Grimm Book 9: The Council of Mirrors, Adam Gidwitz, In a Glass Grimmly, Jessica Day George, Princess of the Midnight Ball, and Sarah Beth Durst, Vessel.
Childrens Bookstores Stage


Saturday, September 29

The rest of my events take place under the aegis of SFWA. They will be selling a selection of OP titles that I'm shipping today and include hardcover copies of YBFH #6, 10, 11, 16, 17, and 20 plus Inferno, Off Limits, Blood is Not Enough Naked City (op in hardcover), Black Swan, White Raven, and a couple of trade paperbacks.

12-noon: autographing SFWA to sell books

1-1:50 Steampunk and gaslight fantasy: It’s Hot and on Top. Come talk with our steampunk/gaslight authors and editors about this immensely popular new genre

4-4:50 YA Dreams: The young adult genre is booming in both books and movies

6-8 RECEPTION/AUTOGRAPHING: COME MEET OUR AUTHORS:

Rob Killheffer moved 8 cartons (some small most large) of books from my apt and we put them into storage. We removed 4 cartons of correspondence and brought them TO my apartment so that they can be shipped (hopefully soon) to The University of Liverpool.

I have a little time before I have to begin reading for The Best Horror of the Year, volume four, so have been picking through books I missed or that I bought (yes, Virginia, even I occasionally buy books--usually art/photography books)and haven't had the presence of mind to look through and/or read.

I just picked up Rare:Portraits of America's Endangered Species by Joel Sartore. The portraits are of animals and plants ranging from the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit (the next to last was Bryn, who was photographed a few months before she died in 2008. The last of the breed, another female, died a few months later)to the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle (194 remain), the California Condor, and the Red Wolf. I read the first essay and started crying. I think this will have to be something I read in small doses.

So, on to something else. Maybe I'll return to The Gun by C.J. Chivers, about the AK-47. That'll be cheery.

Happily, my new netbook is set up thanks to Jim Freund (I tried it and it works. Yay!) and my printer four in one has been set up by Matt Kressel. And it works. Another yay--thanks guys.

Hoping a friend will take the HP printer off my hands soon.

Finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I loved. I think I'm glad I saw the movie first because the actress who plays Lisbeth is so perfect. Having seen the movie I don't feel I really needed to read the book, although there is far more about the relationship between Mikael Blomkvist and Erika Berger (the publisher) in the book. Having seen the movie helped keep the members of the Vanger family straight--I have a feeling that if I read the book first I might have been very confused.

I've just started The Girl Who Played With Fire and it immediately draws the reader in.

I had two wonderful meals this past week: Sushi, at my local Japanese restaurant with lots of Nigori unfiltered cold sake, plenty of sushi and various flavors of mochi (the ice cream wrapped in pounded sticky rice). Delicious. Then Wednesday I celebrated a friend's birthday at Café Soleil on the upper west side. Wine flowed, food was eaten, women talked (it was 13 women) and desserts were tasted. It was a fine night.

This evening I watched It's Complicated, the recent comedy with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. Streep and Baldwin have been divorced ten years and he's remarried to the younger woman with whom he cheated on Streep. Streep and Baldwin start having an affair just as she's becoming interested in Martin. Streep and Baldwin are great in it. Martin is stiff. Not as funny as I would have liked but pleasant enough.

The second movie of the evening is the amazing French movie Innocence, which has to be one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. It opens with a coffin and a bunch of little girls opening it and goes on from there. About thirty girls from 6-11 years old are living within a "park" that houses a school. They are taught by two young women and catered to by a bunch of elderly servants. Marion Cottilard is one of the teachers. It's written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (her first full length film) and based on a novella by Frank Wedekind (author of the hit musical Spring Awakening. Interestingly, after listening to a long interview with Hadzihalilovic, the movie is not intended to be creepy. But see it for yourself.