Last time I wrote an update, Anita and I were about to drive up to Readercon in Boston. A whole lot has happened since, some of it fun, most of it not fun at all, but for purposes of this update I’m sticking to the fun stuff.
 
Readercon itself was terrific for us. We held in essence a second launch reading and launch party for the Clockwork Phoenix 5 anthology. Rob Cameron, A.C. Wise, C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez, Barbara Krasnoff, Sonya Taaffe and Keffy R.M. Kehrli all read excerpts from their stories. At the party, Anita and I got to meet even more of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers group that Rob belongs to — a delightful bunch and I suspect a rich source of talent that we’re all going to hear a lot more about through future years. I also had a well-attended solo reading in which I read the title story from my collection The Spider Tapestries.
 

A.C. Wise (left), C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Barbara Krasnoff, Rob Cameron and Sonya Taaffe at the Clockwork Phoenix 5 reading. Photo by Jim Freund.

 
Just hours after Readercon wrapped up and Anita and I had started on our long way home, we got the news that the 2016 World Fantasy Award judges selected C.S.E. Cooney’s Bone Swans: Stories as a best collection finalist. (The news came first via happy text from Cooney, no less!) We’re so proud that Claire’s book is getting such prestigious recognition, and especially proud that we’re the ones who brought this book into the world. This World Fantasy nod is not just a first for Claire Cooney, but a first for Mythic Delirium Books. At present Anita and I have plans to attend the World Fantasy Convention in November. Should those plans change, we won’t keep it a secret; and if they don’t change, we look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.
 
Much closer to home and in time, the organizers behind the Roanoke Valley’s GeekMob event have invited me to be this year’s guest of honor. I’ll spend most of it behind a table chatting with whomever is inclined to stop by, perhaps selling a few books, and taking a break to give a half hour reading. GeekMob 2016 happens 1 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 14, at the Salem Civic Center. If you live nearby, come see us! More about GeekMob here.
 
Finally, sharp-eyed Mythic Delirium contributor Adam Howe pointed out to me that there’s photographic evidence that master film director Guillermo del Toro owns my horror story collection Unseaming. This evidence emerged with the opening of the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition “At Home with Monsters,” featuring artifacts and images from del Toro’s Bleak House, the house he maintains as a kind of personal inspiration space. Unseaming pops up in a photo in the accompanying catalogue; it’s on a shelf in his living room, behind a life-size sculpture of Edgar Allen Poe! It’s hard to express what a thrill it is to know this.
 
#SFWApro