Author Interviews

Oprah's Movin' On:  Today Oprah Winfrey announced that the "The Oprah Winfrey Show"--the biggest daytime show in television history-- will come to a close during its 25th season. The last show will air on September 9, 2011. The multimedia icon and mogul is expected to launch a new talk show on her eponymous cable network.  [Yahoo News via AP and The New York Times]

Martin Amis' New Novel: In an interview in today's Guardian, Martin Amis talks about the genesis of his forthcoming novel The Pregnant Widow (coming May 2010), and counters claims that the story--which follows the lives a group of young people during the sexual revolution of the 1970's and the negative consequences of promiscuity for women--might be interpreted as anti-feminist. Amis "insisted that it was actually 'a very feminist book'." [The Guardian]

Open and Shut Case:   David Davis of the LA Times reviews Andre Agassi's just released autobiography, Open, and finds it an "inspiring acheivement."  Don't miss Agassi's candid and touching video introduction to the book. [LA Times]

Moving & shaking:  Sportscaster Len Berman's The Greatest Moments in Sports lands in our top 10 Movers & Shakers following his discussion of history-making games on this morning's Today Show. 

--Lauren

As Omni readers know, our own Jeff VanderMeer, who usually posts from the Florida panhandle, has been on a typically hydra-headed book tour for his two new releases this fall: his latest novel, Finch, a hard-boiled tale set in his city of Ambergris, and Booklife, a guide to the writer's life in the early 21st century, with from-the-front-lines advice on how to survive in the new world of new media. Happily, as his fuzzy phone photo from last week confirmed, he made it to Seattle (twice!) and we were able to sit down for lunch at a pub near the Amazon offices (and meet in person for only the second time). At the end of the meal I risked what I'm learning is the ultimate buzz kill for any convivial author meeting and pulled out my beloved Flip camera to record a little of our conversation for Omni. But Jeff was game, and had some sharp things to say about a couple of my questions.

So while Jeff and Ann get all gussied up in New York for tonight's National Book Awards, here is Jeff talking about what a booklife really means in 2009. (Pardon the background pub chatter: we call that "atmosphere.")

My first question, after being somewhat daunted, as I'm sure some writers will be, by all the possible routes to getting your work out there he describes in Booklife--and having seen in practice how many of them Jeff uses, often in the space of a single day--was: do you have to be a whirling, multi-platform dervish like Jeff VanderMeer to live a modern booklife?

Then, taking from his comment that he had "laid bare" his own methods and writing career in Booklife, I asked if the new writer's life demanded that he or she erase the line between public and private life? How do you draw the line, when the culture demands that you erase it?

--Tom

In late September, the Canadian contingent of the Amazon Books team traveled (or travelled, as they say north of the border) to Toronto to help celebrate the five fantastic finalists of the 33rd Annual Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and to honor(/honour) the winner.

Let me pause here to acknowledge that you may be wondering how it could have been the 33rd Annual Amazon.ca First Novel Award. There isn't room in this post to explain (gotta keep it tight), so I'll just say it's an award with an illustrious history and impressive previous winners (like Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, and--most recently--the amazing Gil Adamson), and we feel very honoured to have been involved since we first opened our virtual Canadian bookstore. You can find out more here--and keep an eye out for the 34th Annual FNA winner, who will be announced in April of 2010.

I wasn't a judge for this award, but I was thrilled when I heard their unanimously enthusiastic verdict: Joan Thomas for Reading by Lightning, which has the markings of a real classic (and not just a classic of CanLit). I felt real affection for her vibrant heroine, Lily Piper, born on the dust-covered Prairie in the first quarter of the 20th century to a devout family who thought she might be flirting with the Devil. Her sudden departure/escape for England as a young woman, the onset of World War II, her mad love for her kooky, hot, brilliant adopted (adopted, so it's not weird!) cousin George, her bouts of wild grief, and the strange dynamic with her mom that only gets stranger--it all feels true to the time and Lil's character, but contemporary and totally absorbing. Plus, Thomas's writing is often crystaline.

I notice the novel's official description calls it a bildungsroman, which seems like a pretentious word for such an everygirl story--but come to think of it, Lily isn't really an everygirl. She's imaginative and amazing, and she had a fascinating life. Though I finished this book almost 3 months ago, I can pull myself back to the final scene at will, and though I don't remember the exact line, the memory still does something warm and interesting in my chest. (I'm a very sensory reader--I have to feel a book somewhere in my torso to really like it.)

At this point, you might like to get one for yourself from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com Books, or for your Kindle. Excellent idea. But first, read on--because I have this special bonus Q&A!

Amazon.com/.ca: Lily Piper is one of the most fully alive heroines I've ever encountered. Was she your own invention, or were you inspired by someone?

Joan Thomas: I had the spine of a true story to start with. When my aunt was 16, her father took her out of school and sent her to England to look after his mother. All on her own, she took the train two thousand miles to Montreal and boarded a ship, and went to live with people she had never met. I was amazed when I heard about this.

Yet my aunt never talked about her excellent England adventure. None of my older relatives talk much about the past—they’re actually a little suspicious of people who dramatize their experiences or dwell on their feelings! So I had to make sense of this story with my imagination. I sent Lily to a different part of England than my aunt had visited, and I invented her experiences there. Lily is the result of my desire to create a character I could understand and relate to, one who experienced adolescence with the intensity that I experienced it. I think of her as a contemporary character living in the past. As a first-time novelist, I had no idea whether I could pull this off, but by the end Lily was so real to me that the final chapter pretty much wrote itself.

Amazon.com/.ca: The story of the Isaac Barr's ill-fated Canadian prairie colony is a fascinating historical component of the story. Did your family have a personal connection, or was this just a story that captured your imagination?

Joan Thomas: I never knew my grandfather, but I was told growing up that he had come from England with the Barr Colonists, so I read what I could find about that movement. I went to the archives and poured over the passenger lists, where the names of everyone arriving in Canada by ship in any year are written in ink in someone’s crabbed handwriting. I never found my grandfather’s name. But by then I was hooked by the story of the Barr Colonists, the megalomaniac Isaac Barr and the naïve immigrants who were so sure their English superiority would carry them through.

Amazon.com/.ca: There's irony in how the aspiring paleontologist George "tried, finally, to evolve, to fit into a different world, but couldn't do it fast enough," while Lily, raised in an evangelical Christian community with a mother who's powerfully fearful of change (especially changes in Lily's body), undergoes dramatic personal transformation before she finally feels at home in her world. Your next novel, Curiosity, due out next spring, also has evolution at its center: an intact skeletal fossil of a prehistoric dolphin-like creature, the first discovery of its kind, is unearthed by a 12-year-old cabinet-maker's daughter, who goes on to become a paleontologist well before Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.

What makes the scientific story of evolution such a potent metaphor for exploring the lives of your characters, as well as the evolving relationship between science and our concept of ourselves?

Joan Thomas: I never studied science but I’m intrigued by fossils, those millions-year-old bits of the past. My decision to send George to Dorset for field school turned out to be a fateful one (for me—if not for George!). It was while I was researching the Dorset coast for Reading by Lightning that I discovered Mary Anning, the amazing young woman you mention, who found huge fossil remains at Lyme Regis back when no one had any sense of what these creatures were. I've since made three research trips to Lyme Regis, and have had a fantastic time walking that coast and writing a novel about Mary Anning and her sidekick, the geologist Henry de la Beche.

So evolution (in a literal sense) is more at the centre of Curiosity than it is of Reading by Lightning. When Mary Anning found the first ichthyosaurus in 1811, the townspeople thought she’d dug up a dragon, and the scientists coming down from Oxford thought it was the bones of a creature drowned in Noah’s flood. Mary Anning’s fossil finds were a huge challenge to their beliefs about nature and humanity’s place in it. Ideas of extinction and an old earth, concepts so important to evolution, were in the air.

Evolution is on my mind at the moment because of the crisis we face on the planet. Whether we can transform fast enough to avoid full blown ecological disaster—I see this as the major question of our age. As a novelist you approach such big ideas with caution. You’re writing stories, not political discourse. With Curiosity, I was really happy to have stumbled upon a story that, although it’s set in the early 19th century, raises ideas that are so timely.

As you suggest, I did see evolution as a metaphor for how the characters in both books develop. Fiction loves those moments when a character sees that the way she thought about herself and her world is faulty. As the title of Reading by Lightning implies, this awareness may come the way a lightning bolt illuminates the landscape in a storm, although the process of actually transforming the way you act in the world is often slower and subtler, as it was with Lily. As for George, his changes hurt me as I was writing them, because I really like George. He was so open and in love with the world, and he becomes less optimistic, more cynical. It was an evolution forced by brutal circumstances, and maybe it’s just as well that we don’t see what the war would have made of him in the end.

Recommended for fans of The Forgotten Garden, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and Helen Humphreys.

 
  
The band Murder by Death incorporates a little bit of everything cool into their music: alt-country, post-punk, and alt-rock to create a sound that’s very much “Americana”—sometimes stark and beautiful, sometimes rich and layered with a driving beat. The band members are guitarist and singer Adam Turla, cellist Sarah Balliet, bassist Matt Armstrong, and drummer Dagan Thogerson. You can check out their CDs here.

Recently, they created a rather amazing instrumental soundtrack to my new novel, Finch, which is a noir fantasy featuring a reluctant detective forced to try to solve a bizarre murder case against a backdrop of an failing city state oppressed by occupiers and beset by rebels, spies, and other forces bent on affecting the balance of power. Finch been blurbed by Ken Bruen, Jack O'Connell, and Richard K. Morgan, among others, and I recently wrote a piece about how fantasy and autobiography intersect in the novel for the LA Times. The soundtrack captures the phantasmagorical yet stark and melancholy feel of Finch and I absolutely love it. They also managed to convey the strangeness of the fungal technologies that form the main fantasy element. You can listen to the soundtrack here.

I thought it’d be interesting to interview Murder by Death about their reading tastes, and recording a soundtrack to a novel. They’ve also toured a lot recently, including a U.S. tour with The Gaslight Anthem, and given that I’m embarking on fool-hardy 27-event, 35-day book tour starting tomorrow, I was interested to hear about their experiences. (I will be reporting back to Omnivoracious on my potentially perilous adventures from time to time. I should get a chance to sample all different types of book culture in the U.S. I'm covering the National Book Awards for this blog, and doing a wide variety of venues, from lectures at MIT and the Library of Congress to readings everywhere from bookstores to bars and nightclubs.)

Adam and Dagan answered my questions on the eve of a trip to Greece.

 

Amazon.com: What do you like the most about touring, and does anything ever surprise you about audience reactions?

Adam: We love to travel—we have a policy that we will play anywhere in the world as long as they can cover our expenses. We happen to be headed to Greece tomorrow for a tour! Audiences have been great—it never feels like a stinker show when you're thousands of miles away from home. In July we did a tour of Italy (including the island of Sardegna) and then headed up to Germany, Switzerland, and Poland. it was short and sweet, only two weeks, but we managed to visit four different seas—the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian, and Baltic. 

Dagan: The fun part about touring in the States, aside from playing shows of course, for me is staying connected with friends that have spread out across the country. We have some very close pals all over the U.S. European touring is great because it's such a different experience. Europe is old, so there are things like castles everywhere. We're in Greece right now, and the Acropolis is a ten minute walk away. It's kinda surreal. Plus, there's some amazing food over here too. Audience reaction has been very good over here. Especially in Germany and Switzerland.
 
Amazon.com: Dagan said you all read books on tour. Did you read anything this last time? Stuff you'd recommend (or not recommend)?
 
Adam: Yeah we read a lot. Best book I read last year was Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Recently just got into Sci-Fi. It had a clinical feeling that was somehow really thrilling. Reading John Steinbeck's America and Americans now and also Fatu-Hiva by Thor Heyerdahl, the guy who wrote Kon-Tiki (an incredible true story about a voyage by raft across the ocean to prove a scientific point about human migration).

Dagan: We've all become interested in graphic novels somewhat recently. The Watchmen went around the van and was well received. Also, Y: The Last Man was a huge hit. Great story. I also re-read (for about the fourth time) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. One of the funniest books ever.
 
Amazon.com: Your songs often have a strong storytelling element to them. Are you ever inspired by fiction?

Dagan: I'll let Adam handle this one--he writes the words. I hit stuff.
 
Adam: Always. More so than by other bands. Some of our albums are complete stories--they all fit into the same world of Murder By Death. I return to the world of MBD whenever I write.
 
Amazon.com: How did you decide what scenes from Finch to use as a spark for the songs on the soundtrack?

Dagan: I really enjoyed the story a lot. In fact, I read the entire trilogy in reverse chronological order after I finished Finch. So I chose the scenes to write about, and sort of submitted them for approval to the rest of the band. I picked the scenes that I though had the strongest imagery and/or drama. Then I broke the scenes down in to descriptive words or phrases and we used those to guide our writing.
 
Adam: We thought of central or particularly vivid scenes we wanted to recreate and went for it. We wanted various styles of music on the soundtrack so we tried to use dark moments, sad moments, brutal moments etc to vary the feeling. The fun part was trying to think how a mushroom sounds. Since we didn't use lyrics, we had to communicate all the ideas through music and the feel of song. We decided a vintage Fender Rhodes had the best overall tone for "mushroom".
 
Amazon.com: Was it different creating music for a soundtrack, and if so, how?
 
Adam: Yes--we do instrumentals occasionally, but not this much material. Having something specific to write the music to made the writing much more interesting and purposeful than just stringing together some riffs and chords. We typically center our songs around the storytelling but this was telling a story with no words.

Dagan: This was different from any previous project we've done. We have songs fully written and rehearsed before we go in to a recording studio, but this time we wrote, rehearsed, and recorded on the spot. Plus, we don't necessarily have to play these songs live, so we were able to get pretty elaborate in the studio. Things like six cellos playing at the same time, and three Dagans and Adams singing underneath it. 
 
Amazon.com: I thought it was great you decided to use the band in the bar scene in Finch. Did you try to use the same instruments mentioned in the book, or...?
 
Adam: yes we wrote a kind of drunken party song for a scene in the book that was described as having a cello, accordion, and a drum set made of trash cans. We gathered scraps of metal and garbage and Dagan played drums along with Vincent on Accordion and Sarah on cello. I wrote em a little ditty and they knocked it out while Dagan and I sang.

Dagan: Yeah, we pretty much used exactly the instruments you described. Cello, accordion, and junk. I did use a cowbell though, which is not junk. It is awesome.

This winter Murder by Death will be working on their new CD, tentatively scheduled for release in April 2010.

 
 
 

I've raved on Omnivoracious before about mystery/noir master Tom Piccirilli--his The Cold Spot and The Coldest Mile are among my recent favorites. Now he has another first-rate novel out, Shadow Season, with an intriguing premise that severely limited or, depending on your perspective, opened up the possibilities of his prose. It's another instant classic. I got hold of Piccirilli during his busy schedule for promotion of the novel to get his thoughts on the idea behind the novel and the challenges he faced in writing it. Here's what he had to say...

  

TOM PICCIRILLI ON THE SHADOW SEASON...

My new novel is the story of a blind ex-cop, Finn, who is now a teacher at an all-girls academy in an isolated town in upstate New York. The novel is written completely from Finn's point of view, and so it's one of total darkness. Such a perspective forced me to alter my narrative style a great deal. I couldn't write with any of the usual concrete images or visual details, which are inherent in my style (and in just about every writer's style). So the other senses had to fill in a lot of the descriptions, characterization, and depictions  for me. I had to paint my secondary characters in a much different way than I had before, putting more of an emphasis on what they sounded like, smelled like, and most importantly what kind of a personality they exuded and emitted. And how close they were to Finn physically at any given time. Are these people twenty feet away or six inches away, and how does that change how he conceptualizes them?   

Since Finn can't see anyone, he's forced to base his mental images of them on other people from his past. When he talks with an older woman he imagines he's talking with his mother. And when that woman smokes a cigarette, which his mother never did, he's surprised and unsettled. When he meets with one teenage girl, he pictures his first puppy love, a southern belle, except this girl doesn't speak with a southern accent, so once again he's shocked and disturbed. So not only is his blindness a factor on the storyline, but so is the constant draw of his memories and past, and the constant agitation and bewilderment that his handicap forces upon him.

A portion of the book is written in flashback, which fills in some backstory and shows Finn as a much different person, as a young cop with a new wife, and with a best friend on the force who is quickly becoming a rogue, dirty cop. As the release date of his imprisoned former partner comes up, Finn begins to get swept up in his own need for revenge. The strain of his handicap is taking its toll on him, and he discovers that a couple of bad guys are trolling the school grounds, possibly to kill him or to cause other kinds of trouble. When some girls go missing, he's forced to act. He's also torn between the memory of his dead wife, his current girlfriend, and a seductive teenager who won't quit throwing herself at him. All of these aspects wind up telling Finn's tale in ways I normally wouldn't have if I'd been writing about a sighted protagonist.

The joke used to be that Subterranean Press editions sold out so quickly the books hardly seemed to exist in the first place. It's certainly a problem a lot of publishers would like to have, and speaks to the loyalty Subterranean's customers feel toward the brand. Over the past three or four years, however, not only have the books the press has produced been popular and beautifully made, Subterranean has also begun to register in a big way outside of the collector's market. Trade editions of both reprints and originals have made Subterranean more versatile and garnered even more attention from readers and reviewers. Founder Bill Schafer is attracting some of the biggest names in science fiction, fantasy, and horror--including Joe Hill, John Scalzi, and Peter Straub, as well as doing great work publishing books by relative newcomers like Mary Robinette Kowal. In addition, Subterranean has expanded to publish fiction online, further bolstering their profile while providing a much-needed showcase for some of genre's brightest stars.

Three recent titles exemplify what's made Subterranean Press so successful: John Scalzi's forthcoming The God Engines, James P. Blaylock's The Ebb Tide, and Crystal Nights & Other Stories by Greg Egan. The Scalzi is his first foray into dark fantasy, the Blaylock helps promote an excellent and nuanced author associated with Steampunk, and the Egan delves into the subgenre of hard science fiction. All three are high-quality, but more importantly help to demonstrate both the range and the savvy of Subterranean. (I'll be featuring several more Subterranean titles over the coming weeks.)

I interviewed Schafer about Subterranean and publishing in general via email...

   
(Egan's mindblowing hard SF, Blaylock's textured Steampunk, and Scalzi's nod to Conan; that's him on the cover...)

Amazon.com: What did you grow up reading?
 
Bill Schafer: I grew up reading pretty much everything, from Twain to Dumas to Agatha Christie to P.G. Wodehouse to Bob Silverberg, Isaac Asimov. I discovered Vonnegut and T.C. Boyle in high school and have remained a fan since. Both have collections coming out later this year, and I’ll be first in line to get copies.

I've never felt limited to any particular genre, though my tastes have certainly honed in on science fiction, fantasy, and horror, as my reading time has been squeezed in adulthood, and in running the press. I should add that discovering Stephen King (and The Stand) when I was seventeen had a huge effect on my reading. I still recall fondly my freshman year of college when I was trying to deal with the transition from high school, keeping up with classes, working part-time, *and* reading IT every spare minute I could find. I've found King’s work, especially, functions as benchmarks for me, and I've recently begun reading works I first read decades ago--I'm 41 now--to see if my initial estimations have held up, or if my perceptions have changed with age.

Amazon.com: Did you always collect books yourself?

Bill Schafer: In the early nineties, before starting the press, I went through a period where I was a pretty heavy collector of signed, limited editions, but my needs have refined a bit--I don't need signed firsts of everything by all the authors I read. With certain exceptions,such as Dan Simmons, I'm content to have one signed first by an author I enjoy.
 
Amazon.com: What's the biggest difference in Subterranean's focus now as opposed to when you started?

Bill Schafer: At first, we were very definitely a horror small press in the Cemetery Dance mold, in part because my reading ran that way, and also in part because I cannot stress enough how much help Rich Chizmar was in sharing contacts with me, advising on print runs and contracts, and the other million things you don’t realize come with running a small publishing house until you’re doing it. There would not be a SubPress without his help in those early years.

At the same time, I couldn't help but notice the wonderful projects that CD was offered, and I realized that if we used the same playbook and authors they did, SubPress was always going to be the second option for those projects. At that point, this was when Rich was publishing the limited edition of Douglas E. Winter's seminal anthology, Revelations, I realized SubPress needed to go in a different direction if it was to succeed long term.
 
Amazon.com: Are the challenges the same now as they were then, with regard to the business of selling books?

Bill Schafer: It's become easier, and harder at the same time. When we first started, there was a network of small specialty dealers, and you could count on selling a good portion of your print runs to them. They paid slowly, but if you were conscientious about collections, and scheduling must-have books so dealers would keep their account reasonably current, you could do okay. On the other hand, we didn't have outlets like Amazon, which reach an infinitely larger number of readers than all of those specialty dealers' catalogs. Our print runs today are significantly higher than they were 15 years ago.

Amazon.com: Is there any early book you published that you feel helped define the Subterranean brand? Why?

Bill Schafer: I think our long-term association with Joe R. Lansdale has been essential to defining the press. Among those very early books, I'd have to point to his The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, because it gave us the template of being a place where authors could turn for projects that they wanted to do, but which might not be right for their mainstream careers.

Amazon.com: At a time when a lot of indie presses seem to be contracting, you're expanding. Is this a matter of building reader loyalty across authors, or something else entirely?
 
Bill Schafer: You've nailed it. We are very aggressive about establishing ongoing relationships with writers we enjoy, who also have significant followings. It's worked with Charles de Lint, Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and  more recently, John Scalzi and Kage Baker.
 
Amazon.com: Could you talk a little bit about how you and Peter Straub worked out publishing an alternative version of his forthcoming novel, Skylark?

Bill Schafer: I'm afraid there's no great story here. I heard through my pal Bill Sheehan, who is also close to Peter, that there was an alternate, more than 200 manuscript pages longer version of his upcoming novel, A Dark Matter. I've known Peter for better than a decade, and worked with him before, so I dropped him a note with an offer to publish the variant edition. Peter had another small press interested, but we were able to offer a bit more of an advance, and a definite slot in our schedule in which we could publish, so he said yes quickly.
 
Amazon.com:  In looking at the advance reader copies you've sent me, at a glance it would seem to be obvious which are going to sell better than others. For example, John Scalzi's The Last Colony will probably sell better than the brilliant Mary Robinette Kowal's short story collection. What constitutes success for you? Is it just selling out a print run? What intangibles come into play?

Bill Schafer: Bottom line, we publish what I enjoy, and want to share with people. Of course, different books have different audiences, some larger, some smaller, and we try to keep a good mix of those books which will keep us profitable in this economy, and those titles which may be close to my heart, but won't be as profitable.
 
Amazon.com: With the understanding that you love every book you publish, is there a recent book that for some personal reason you are particularly proud of?

Bill Schafer: I was truly honored to be allowed to publish Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. Stephen King's quote, calling it "one gorgeous read" led me to pick up the trade paperback. After a couple of year of off-and-on searching, I located Carlos's agent, who was quite agreeable to our producing a limited edition. For me, that's one for the permanent shelf.
 
Even more recently, I'd have to point to Lewis Shiner's Collected Stories. Lew's criminally underappreciated as far as I'm concerned, and this 500-page volume of 41 stories shows off one of America's finest writers at his full range.
 
Amazon.com: What do you think of electronic versions of books, given that you obviously take great care with the physical look-and-feel of your editions?

Bill Schafer: I love them. We have e-readers of different stripes here in the office, including a Kindle, and frequently use them to read manuscripts, and other books we just don't feel like waiting for a hardcopy of.
 
Amazon.com:  Is there a book that got away? A book you wish you'd had a chance to do?

Bill Schafer: Of course, there've been a few that, due to rights situations, or politics, that haven't come our way, but I'd best leave those bodies buried, because, who knows...one or two of them might end up on our schedule if circumstances change.

Last month food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs launched their much-buzzed-about website, food52, hosting an enthusiastic, open forum where home cooks are invited to submit their best recipes based on weekly themes. After a year of gathering winning recipes--determined by reader votes--the results will be collected in a cookbook published by HarperStudio.

And today Amanda and Merrill launched what promises to be a very entertaining feature: The Tournament of Cookbooks. Sixteen of 2009's best cookbooks will face off against each other with their fates determined by a star-studded panel of celebrity chefs and food writers. The winning cookbook will take home "the coveted Piglet trophy." Early round action kicked off with an upset as Donald Link and Paula Disbrowe's Real Cajun sent John Besh's My New Orleans back to the Big Easy. And the first-round fun continues with Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved taking on Erin McKenna's BabyCakes and Matt Lee and Ted Lee's The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern going up against David Chang and Peter Meehan's Momofuku.(See the complete bracket.)

I caught up with Amanda and Merrill to check in on food52 and talk about what makes a great recipe, the art of adaptation, collaborating in the kitchen, and get the skinny on the Piglet.

--BTP

Amazon.com: You and Merrill have been working together for five years testing 1,200 recipes and now, with food52, you’ve launched another major project together. What’s the key to your collaborative success?

Merrill Stubbs: We're great friends, and we have similar cooking styles and palates, which makes things run pretty smoothly in the kitchen. Of course, there are ingredients and techniques that we don't agree on, which often inspire interesting (and sometimes lively) debates. Our writing styles are different but complimentary, perhaps because each is colored by the fact that both of us are home cooks at heart.

Amanda Hesser: Merrill has excellent knife skills; I do not. I like working with pastry; Merrill does not. That pretty much sums it up!

Amazon.com: There’s an austere charm to your mission: “Every week we name the themes. You submit the recipes. We pick two finalists. Everyone votes. And the winner goes into the book.” How do you go about curating the selection of finalists for each week’s themes?

Hesser: We read through every recipe that's submitted for a given recipe theme, and we choose a handful to test. Then we split up these recipes, test them and report back. After selecting the best two, we cook them again on the day we do photography. For our weekly video, we cook two finalist recipes a third time, so by the time the finalists are announced, the recipes are fully vetted. This also gives us a chance to genuinely get to know the recipes and write up an informed headnote. We also read through all of the recipes coming into the site because every week we name a "Wildcard Winner." Any recipe uploaded to the site is eligible, and we keep a running list of recipes we think have great potential. So, behind the scenes, we're constantly cooking these recipes in search of ones we think are truly great. Wildcard Winners also go into the cookbook.

Amazon.com: Now that you’ve opened the doors to food52 what has surprised you the most about the submissions?

Hesser: How great they are! We've been delighted by the quality and originality of the recipes. When we came up with this idea, we were betting that there were extraordinary home cooks out there waiting to have their work discovered. And it turns out--thankfully--we were right.

Amazon.com: For me, a rich headnote is as important as the recipe itself. Have you been impressed with the “stories” behind the dishes?

Stubbs: We completely agree. For us, the story behind each recipe is what really brings it to life. The evolution of recipes--how they were conceived, what other recipes inspired them, whether they've been passed down through generations--is a topic we both find fascinating, which is why we encourage our users to really dig into the headnotes. Happily, other people seem to be on the same page. We've gotten some great stories. For example, one woman submitted an apple cake recipe that she got 45 years ago from a friend of her mother, while they were all living on an Air Force base in Okinawa.

Amazon.com: Something that you’ve addressed is the art of adapting a recipe to make it your own. That must be quite challenging to vet submissions to make sure it isn’t something "borrowed" from another source.

Stubbs: It is a bit of a challenge, but so far the safeguards we have in place seem to be working. We've done everything we can on the site to encourage people to cite their sources. If a dish is inspired by someone else's recipe (whether it's from a friend or from Julia Child), we ask users to share that information. We fully research all recipes before considering them as finalists, and there is a button on each recipe page where users can flag a recipe to let us know privately (our goal is not to publicly shame people) if they've seen it somewhere else.

Amazon.com: One of my favorite sections is your slideshows, where you lay out the ingredients and document the recipe-testing process.

Hesser: Thank you--we work with a wonderful photographer, Sarah Shatz. Every Tuesday we get together and cook all of the finalist recipes (plus the Wildcard). We do set up the ingredient shots but the rest of the photography is off the cuff, with Sarah moving around the kitchen with us and shooting as we cook. We have a couple of goals with the photography--the first is to celebrate cooking, both the beauty and the mess. We hope to entertain both cooks and armchair (laptop?) cooks with the photography. For people who want to cook the recipes, we want to tempt them, give them a sense of what things should look like and offer tips. And for those who who aren't cooking the recipes, we want to provide them with enough information to make a decision about which recipe to vote for. Last but not least, we thought it would be fun for the people whose recipes we cook to see their dishes prepared, styled and shot by a professional photographer.

Amazon.com: As someone who obsesses over cookbooks on a daily basis, I wanted to talk about your Tournament of Cookbooks. Starting today you’re pitting 16 of 2009’s best cookbooks against each other in a quest for glory--and “the coveted Piglet Trophy.” Before we get to the cookbooks, what’s the origin of the Piglet? Do you have a picture of it?

Stubbs: The Piglet is our homage to the Rooster, which is the prize awarded to the winner of The Morning News' annual Tournament of Books. Their tournament inspired ours, so we thought we'd give our prize a similar feel. A piglet just seemed right for a cookbook tournament. Unfortunately, we don't have a photo of the trophy, as we are still awaiting its arrival. But it's definitely topped with a pig!

Amazon.com: How did you select the Sweet Sixteen?

Hesser: Tons of cookbooks are published each year, so Charlotte Druckman (our partner in the TOC), Merrill and I called publishers, kept up with cookbook news, talked to friends and colleagues, and did our best to look at a wide range of books.

Amazon.com: With any list like this people (myself included) are quick to see what didn’t make the cut. Any titles that didn’t make it that you wish did?

Stubbs: We considered a few other titles, but unfortunately some of them weren't available when we began the judging--even in galley form. Hopefully some of those authors will have books out when we do this again!

Amazon.com:I noticed there are three food lit titles in there (I Love, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, The Sweet Life in Paris, and Ratio). Are they eligible because they featured recipes? How do you think they’ll fare against a straight-up recipe book?

Stubbs: Yes, they all have recipes, and the authors are serious cooks. We included these three because we thought the recipes were insightful and could stand up to those from other, more conventional cookbooks in the competition.

Hesser: Also, Charlotte, Merrill, and I wanted a range of cookbook styles because we wanted to encourage the conversation about what makes a great cookbook. Is it just the recipes? Is it the writing? The aesthetic?

Amazon.com: I, too, was a big fan of Canal House Cooking and can’t wait for future, seasonal installments. It’s a tough book to get your hands on, though.

Hesser: It appealed to us that the authors, Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, were going against the grain and experimenting with a new form: the seasonal cookbook. We thought it was important to recognize interesting books like this, even if it takes effort to buy them.

Amazon.com: You’ve got quite the lineup of judges--Grant Achatz, Dan Barber, Nora Ephron, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name a few. What’s the judging process like? What are they looking for in a cookbook?

Stubbs: The judging process is different for everyone. We did ask that all of the judges cook at least 3 recipes from each of their two books, but other than that they were pretty much on their own. We chose these judges because we were confident that they had enough experience with cooking and writing to be able to assess cookbooks with an eye toward all of the important factors: flavors, clarity, organization, visual appeal, narrative, etc.

Hesser: And when you have this many judges, the range of perspectives makes it exciting. That's how we ended up with some upsets, and some really wonderfully written decisions.

Amazon.com: Will there ever be a time when everyone’s in the same room together hashing it out?

Stubbs: Not this time around, but maybe in the future we can have an all-out debate for the final round!

Amazon.com: In your opinion, what makes a cookbook a keeper--one you’ll turn to again and again?

Stubbs: We ask ourselves this question whenever we're trying to determine whether a recipe we've tested for food52 deserves to be a finalist, and we think it applies here as well: "If we were served this dish at a dinner party, would we ask for the recipe?" In our minds, a cookbook that contains more recipes which would elicit a "yes" to this question than a "no" makes it a keeper.

Whenever I'm in New York, the trip doesn't seem complete unless I've hit a Danny Meyer restaurant. Whether it's a glass of bourbon and Texas beef ribs at Blue Smoke, a black-and-white shake and a Double Shack Burger at Shake Shack, or the chef's tasting menu at Gramercy Tavern, I've never been disappointed. As the owner of some of New York's most acclaimed restaurants (with 19 James Beard Awards between them), restaurateur Danny Meyer has been raising the bar on hospitality for a generation of diners. In Mix Shake Stir, a gorgeous collection of creative cocktails, mixology tips, and gourmet nibbles, Meyer extends his legendary level of service behind the bar, offering readers the ultimate resource for elegant entertaining at home. I recently checked in with Meyer over e-mail to talk about cocktail culture, signature drinks and spirits, the popularity of food trucks, summer at CitiField, and Meyer's new restaurant, Maialino. (Stick around 'til the end for the recipe for one of Meyer's favorite drinks, the Dirty Pete.)

--BTP

Amazon.com: So I imagine you and your staff had a grand time testing the recipes for Mix Shake Stir. What are some of your favorite drinks in the book?

Danny Meyer: I'm fond of anything that does not include Tequila or Gin. There. Now you know the two spirits I just can't stomach. Seriously, one of my top favorites is the Dirty Pete [recipe follows]--so named because it's a dirty martini juiced up with Texas Pete hot sauce. There's a fun story behind its creation. It fits perfectly at Blue Smoke.

Amazon.com: In the introduction to the book you ruminate on the "ritual of cocktail hour" your parents and their friends observed when you were growing up in St. Louis. There's even a drink in the book, the Mortoni, in honor of your father. Do you think the at-home cocktail hour will ever regain its Mad Men-era popularity?

Meyer: Every now and then, one or two--or more--people find themselves tempted by the idea of a cocktail--even though it had been the furthest thing from their mind when they arrived. When entertaining at home I sometimes begin by saying, "I'm having a cocktail--but we also have wine and beer if you'd prefer." Cocktails will probably not regain their early dominance--mostly because there weren't as many really good wines back in the Mad Men era. But they'll always have a place at the table.

Amazon.com: What are some of your tips, regarding cocktails, for successful entertaining at home?

Meyer: Always have plenty of ice on hand, and make sure to have a bottle of each major spirit--vodka, gin, white and dark rum, scotch, and bourbon. It helps to have vermouth in case someone might want a martini, and it can't hurt to have lemon, lime, and green olives.

Amazon.com: I'm a firm believer that every man should have a go-to drink at the ready when he steps up to order at the bar. What's yours?

Meyer: The Mortoni.Equal parts Campari, vodka, and tonic; over lots of ice and garnished with a lime. I named it for my late father, Morton Meyer, whose go-to drink was a Negroni (which is classically gin or vodka mixed with Campari and vermouth). I'd drink a Mortoni over a Negroni any day.

Amazon.com: Do you have a favorite signature drink at each of your restaurants?

Meyer: I love the Dark and Stormy at Blue Smoke. And the Martini at Eleven Madison Park (have it mixed tableside!) is peerless. At Tabla, I'd order the Tablatini, and at Union Square Cafe, I tend to drink wine.

Amazon.com: I would think that, after the reservationist and the host or hostess, the bartender plays a pivotal customer-service role in your organization. What special touches do the bartenders working for your Union Square Hospitality Group bring to your bars?

Meyer: They are hosts, listeners, and guides--long before they're mixologists! They need to understand our food, our service style, and important details about our guests.

Amazon.com: Whether I'm alone or even with a friend, I often prefer sitting and eating at the bar rather than a table. What's your take on dining at the bar? Should it be reserved for drinking?

Meyer: No! Going all the way back to 1985 when Union Square Cafe first opened, we've never even contemplated building a bar without imagining it full of diners as well as drinkers.

Amazon.com: With a return to vintage recipes like fizzes, smashes, swizzles, and slings and housemade infusions, syrups, sodas, and bitters, many bars and restaurants are displaying a renewed interest the pre-Prohibition Golden Age of the American cocktail. Do you think this is a trend that's here to stay?

Meyer: I think for a number of years, peoples' interest in wine leapfrogged their passion for cocktails. But now cocktails are enjoying a renaissance in terms of the interest they're generating among inquisitive hedonists. There will always be adventuresome and aspirational types who seek what's new, and what is good. For that reason, there's no going back!

Amazon.com: You also touch upon the importance of ice in the book, an increasingly popular topic among drink aficionados. Have you installed Kold-Draft ice machines (the ones that crank out those slow-melting, perfect 1.25 x 1.25 cubes of nearly impurity-free ice) in any of your restaurants?

Meyer: Yes. Eleven Madison Park and Gramercy Tavern take their ice especially seriously. And regardless of the ice machine at our places, we filter the water before it becomes ice.

Amazon.com: Mix Shake Stir features many drinks inspired by greenmarkets, and more bartenders seem to be taking cues from kitchen (and vice versa) when creating their cocktails. Your Heirloom Bloody Mary is a great example. How have your bartenders surprised you with their renewed attention to using seasonal ingredients?

Meyer: It's really not a surprise, because many of our bartenders were once either waiters or even cooks. They're around good food and ingredients all day, and they want to use those same quality ingredients they see elsewhere in the restaurant behind their bars.

Amazon.com: I really admired the use of spirits like Aperol, Chartreuse, Punte e Mes, and Cherry Heering in the book. What do you think is an underrated spirit that more people need to pay more attention to?

Meyer: The one you like the best! Not that it is underrated, but I am an avowed nut for Campari.

Amazon.com: I like to see a bartender dip a cocktail straw into a mixed drink to sample it to make sure it's achieved its proper balance. You mention in the book it's like a chef tasting a dish before sending out. Do you think enough bartenders are doing this?

Meyer: It's important that bar patrons understand what's going on with that straw dip... I can imagine that for many people it's like, "get your straw out of my cocktail!" In any case, we owe it to our guests to make sure that food and drinks taste as good as they’re supposed to. Tasting helps.

Amazon.com: You even include many nibbles and bar snacks to complement the drinks in Mix Shake Stir but I have to ask how Blue Smoke's BBQ potato chips and blue cheese dip didn't make the final cut? If I ask really nicely could you share the recipe?

Meyer: I'm sorry that I haven’t been able to get Chef Kenny Callaghan to share it. It is mighty good, though!

Amazon.com: It's been a tough time for many restaurants, but here in Seattle, with every restaurant that closes there's another big-buzz debut in the works and many downtown joints are seem to have a "what recession?" vibe as they're SRO at 9PM on a weeknight. Hospitality seems more important than ever. What are some keys for a restaurateur to attract and maintain loyal customers in this economic time?

Meyer: The same as always: good food, deft service, and a warm, genuine welcome. The recession has been humbling for everyone. But it's not hard to show humility when you know that it is harder than ever for people to part with hard-earned dollars in your restaurant. Extra appreciation goes a long way. I will say that our hospitality industry never ceases to amaze with can-do entrepreneurs. Behind every fallen leaf lies a fresh, green bud.

Amazon.com: What's your take on mobile dining? Food trucks are all over New York and have been the talk of Seattle this summer. Are food trucks this year's cupcake?

Meyer: To a degree. And it's no surprise. Until landlords come back down to earth with the rents they're asking, people with something to sell will seek less expensive places and ways to proffer their goods.

Amazon.com: With Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, El Verano Taqueria, Box Frites, and the Delta Sky360 Club you're a big part of the much buzzed-about culinary scene at Citi Field, the Mets' new ballpark. How has the experience been so far?

Meyer: We have learned an enormous amount. The team we've fielded there has been remarkable, and I'd reckon they've created as much fan pleasure with their food and hospitality as the Mets have on the field! None of us can wait until next year to apply all we’ve learned to keep improving even further.

Amazon.com: And speaking of Shake Shack, how does the new Upper West Side outpost compare to the original Madison Park location?

Meyer: Our Upper West Side Shake Shack--unbelievably--is just as busy as the original in Madison Square Park. But because we had more space to work with, we were able to increase the size of our kitchen, and so the line moves quickly. What I'm proudest of is the incredible level of consistency both in terms of the food and our team's service and hospitality.

Amazon.com: Can you share any upcoming news? You're working on the restaurant at the newly refurbished Gramercy Park Hotel, right?

Meyer: In November we'll be opening Maialino--our first new (non-Shake Shack) restaurant since The Modern. Maialino will be our homage to the Roman trattoria--with a spirited coffee and wine bar up front. Having lived in Rome for some of my formative adult years, this one is coming straight from the heart.

Amazon.com: Are there any new fall cookbooks you're particularly excited about checking out?

Meyer: I just got a copy of the new Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook by Chris and Idie Hastings. I haven't cooked from it yet, but it is gorgeous and there are lots of wonderful sounding recipes that got my mouth watering. And I'm loving My New Orleans--from Dorothy Kalins and John Besh!

The Dirty Pete
(Makes 1 drink)
2-1/2 oz vodka, preferably Ketel One
1-1/2 oz Spanish Queen olive brine
5 or 6 dashes of hot-pepper sauce, preferably Texas Pete
2 pitted Spanish Queen olives
1 pickled jalapeño

Fill a cocktail shaker and a rocks glass with ice. Add the vodka, olive brine, and hot-pepper sauce to the shaker and shake vigorously. Strain into the glass, garnish with the olives and pickled jalapeño, and serve

Seeing how his book is responsible for my jacked-up knee, ESPN.com's Bill Simmons graciously took time recently for an exclusive Q&A on NBA history, great nicknames, surprising myths, and other gems from his upcoming book, The Book of Basketball.  Not sure if my injury guilted him into this interview, but hey - always gotta work the angles.

--Dave

Amazon.com: What is your reaction to fans that dismiss the NBA by saying "I can only get into the college game"?

Simmons: Do people really say that? I always thought people got into college hoops because A) they went to a college with a strong program, B.) they live in an area with the ACC, Big 12 or whatever, or C.) they're attracted to the corruption, cheating and dishonesty. I have always been one of those "I like the absolute best" guys. That's why I can't watch the WNBA, the MLS, Arena Football or anything of that ilk. The college product isn't as good as the pro product and I'd hope we can all agree on this. Only one season hooked me in the last 10 years - the one with Durant and Oden - and that's because those guys were prodigies to some degree. When I was growing up, the best guys stayed in college for 3-4 years and the product was fantastic - you felt like each team had a real identity. Not the case anymore. And I don't know how anyone can defend a sport that enables opportunistic, rule-bending scumbags like Calipari to switch colleges as soon as they find trouble for breaking the rules at the last one. But whatever.

Amazon.com: What player surprised you the most during the course of your research?

Simmons: Probably David Thompson. I devoted maybe 2800 words to him. His college career coupled with his first 3 NBA seasons had him on pace to be Jordan before Jordan. Then the drugs happened. It's strange that he hasn't been romanticized more - you'd think everyone would know that this guys blew a chance to be one of the 12-15 greatest players ever. I was also fascinated by Kareem. I disliked him so much for so many different reasons (remember, I'm a Celtics fan) that I had never really thought about how amazing his career was. People will be surprised when they read the piece I wrote about him. And that's really why I wrote the book - the premise is that time does strange things to our memories, and we end up either overrating or underrating guys for reasons that really don't make sense. So I wanted to come up with a definitive method to figure out who mattered and who didn't. (I think I did. I hope I did.) It sounds a lot boring than it is. I blow up the NBA Hall of Fame and turn it into an Egyptian Pyramid with levels - no, really, and there are a ton of footnotes and d--k jokes. I actually thought about calling the book "A Ton of Footnotes and D--k Jokes" but apparently this isn't a marketable title.

Amazon.com: What are the top four myths about NBA basketball? 

Simmons: The first is that the stats are consistent over the years. For instance, people think Oscar Robertson's triple double is this amazing achievement because they're applying it to right now - as in, "wow, nobody could do that now, that's incredible!" - when actually, it wasn't so incredible when you examine all the factors from that era. The second is that Bird and Magic "saved" the NBA. Not true. (I explain why in the book.) The third is that there will be another Michael Jordan. (I explain why there will not.) And the fourth is Wilt Chamberlain was straight. He was actually very, very gay. Way out of the closet. Everyone knew this at the time. He lived with Rock Hudson for 10 years, for God's sake. We delve into this in my book.

(Note: The last one isn't true. I just wanted to increase the odds that someone would buy it. Sorry.)

Amazon.com: Give us your top five NBA nicknames.

Simmons: I like this question because nicknames died once everyone decided it would be easier to just shorten people's names. (Like, I would be "B-Simm.") The best nicknames were from the 60's, 70's and 80's. So I'd go with Larry Legend; the Dipper; the Iceman; Earl the Pearl; and the Mail Fraud. The last one was my self-created nickname for Karl "Mailman" Malone because he choked in so many playoff games. I also really enjoyed the fact that Walt Frazier was nicknamed "Clyde." Do you really need another nickname that sounds like a name when your name is "Walt?" It really bugs me that we don't still have good nicknames now. I had a footnote in the book trying to figure out why they decided in the 70's that Leonard Robinson's nickname would be "Truck." That's a pretty strong statement to just say, "We're calling you Truck." My theory was that he did truckloads of blow, but it might have been something else. We need more NBA players named after inanimate objects like trucks and chainsaws.

Amazon.com: If you could redo the NBA logo, who would you feature as the silhouette?

Simmons: I like the Jerry West pick. I mean, his nickname is "The Logo." We couldn't change it on him. He's already one of the five most bitter ex-athletes on the planet - stealing his nickname would move him into the top-3. But if we had to dump him, I'd switch to Ray Allen launching a three. Perfect shooting form, the NBA at its finest. And he's the only NBA player to film a sex scene with two real-life porn stars in a Spike Lee movie which should count for something.

Amazon.com: Pair up the cast of any current TV show with a corresponding NBA Hall of Famer.

Simmons: That's too hard. You can't make me do that one because I'd spend 45 hours trying to figure it out. Let's just agree that Jordan was definitely Tony Soprano and we're good.

Amazon.com: Excluding The Book of Basketball, what are your favorite NBA books?

Simmons: My favorite of all-time is The Breaks of the Game by Halberstam. I read it once a year. It's the best possible book about the best possible time of the league - the late-70's, back when things were really effed up and there was a chance the league might not make it. I love everything about it. Also really enjoyed the two Terry Pluto books (Tall Tales and Loose Balls), as well as The Franchise by Cameron Stauth and Unfinished Business by Jack McCallum. And Second Wind by Bill Russell. That's my pantheon.

Amazon.com: Baseball has “The Curse of the Bambino” and “The Curse of the Billy Goat.”  The NFL has “The Madden Curse.”  What's the NBA's curse? 

Simmons: I wrote a whole column about this recently: It's the curse of the LA Clippers, which I called "The Curse of the Sacred Buffalo." Things turned for them in 1976, when they were the Buffalo Braves, when the owner tried to move them to Florida. All hell broke loose. You can't piss off Indian spirits and that's what the owner did. Thirty-three years later, the franchise remains the biggest mess in pro basketball despite signs of potential life with this year's team... which reminds me, good seats still available for the 2009-2010 season! Call Rob Strikwerda of the Clips for details. He's waiting by the phone.

No, really.

As I reported back in May, the Arthur C. Clarke Award was won by Ian R. MacLeod for his novel Song of Time--a book published by the excellent PS Publishing.Not only is PS Publishing a small/indie press based in the United Kingdom, they specialize in beautiful limited edition hardcovers and trade paperbacks. The win came as something of a surprise because PS Publishing isn't a large commercial press. Indeed, it's still difficult to obtain many of their titles on Amazon. However, for those in the know in genre, the news just confirmed what many have been saying for years: PS Publishing may be the best SF/Fantasy/Horror publisher you've never heard of. Over more than a decade now, they've published some extraordinary finds--like the first edition of Joe Hill's award-winning short story collection. Names like Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, and Gwyneth Jones are typical releases for them, along with many newcomers. Among other strengths, PS Publishing isn't afraid to take a chance on unknowns.

Case in point: the recent release of Sebastien Doubinsky's daring The Babylonian Trilogy, published in a stunning hardcover with an introduction by Michael Moorcock: "What could a depressed soldier, a bloodthirsty journalist, a strange dog, a writer in the making, a depressive commissioner, a hitman, a stripper and a poet possibly have in common? Well, they all live in Babylon, a city where everything is possible, including the impossible. The Babylonian Trilogy is a novel divided in three loosely related parts, each dealing with a particular aspect of the bizarre metropolis." The novel's chapters rarely are longer than a couple of pages, and the reader has the enjoyable job of piecing together the narrative from these fragments. Because of Doubinsky's writing style, the variety of characters, and an underlying playfulness, The Babylonian Trilogy is a quick, often exciting read. As Michael Moorcock writes in his introduction, "Doubinsky is...a personification of the best modern French literature." Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if, just like Hill's short story collection, The Babylonian Trilogy wasn't picked up by a North American publisher soon. (You can read an excerpt here, and some online dealers through Amazon do have the book, apparently.)

Since Doubinsky's novel is only one of many excellent releases from PS Publishing, I thought I'd ask the press's founder a few questions about his enterprise. (Crowther is also an accomplished anthologist and fiction writer.)

   

Amazon.com: How many hours a week do you put into these books, and how many are originals, first published by you?

Peter Crowther: PS is pretty much a full-time job now...and I'm talking seven days a week here, every week, around seven or eight hours a day. I don't mind that--I love doing it--but sometimes I get a little frustrated that I don't get any time for my own writing. But things are improving slowly now that Nicky (my wife) has taken over most of the organization work. In fact, the whole PS team supports me wonderfully (that's Mike and Nicky, Robert Wexler and Nick Gevers plus various editors and proofers and ad hoc designers, and Theresa Loosley at our printers--Theresa doesn't actually work for us but she's as important a player as anyone else). I'd guess that well over 90 percent of our titles are original to us, and most of the exceptions will contain additional material not present in the original work (Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, all of our Bradbury titles and so on).

Amazon.com: You've discovered quite a few writers. Who in particular, and which discoveries have given you the greatest satisfaction?

Peter Crowther: I suppose the biggest charge was putting out Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts. That was a doozy. And persuading Steve Erikson to do us a novella way back before he became so big with the Malaz novels. But I also have a soft spot for Adam Nevill's Banquest for the Damned and Tracy Knight's The Astonished Eye...plus our upcoming novella and novel from Rio Youers (Old Man Scratch and End Times). And it meant a lot to me to make available again Mike Coney's Hello Summer, Goodbye along with, for the first time, the sequel, I Remember Pallahaxi. The truth is I love all of our titles...or, quite simply, we wouldn't be publishing them. Of course, it's nice when they perform well commercially but the main thing is *I* have to like them.

Amazon.com: Is there a dream project you haven't yet done that you'd like to attempt someday?

Peter Crowther: I don't know about a "dream project"--they're *all* dream projects, and dream *writers* to boot!--but there are certainly folks I'd like to work with one day on something: Ursula LeGuin; John Irving, maybe (I still reckon A Prayer for Owen Meaney was the best fantasy novel of its year); Neil Gaiman; Charles de Lint; Richard Ford; Alan Moore; Joyce Carol Oates; Peter Straub; another project with Stephen King (I love Steve's work, even the books that ultimately didn't quite do it for me--it's the damn writing
that's just so good) -- so, in that respect, Peter and Steve...how about letting PS do Talisman 3? But there are lots of people I'd like to work with, both for a first time and as a return-match. Let's face it: I'll
never be bored.

Visit PS Publishing's website for more information on their titles. (And, if you want to be truly adventurous when it comes to indie presses, check out Twelfth Planet Press, a new Australian outfit that hasn't yet appeared on the Amazon site but has published excellent titles by emerging Australian talents like Peter Ball and Deborah Biancotti. In their own stylish fashion they may well some day become as influential as PS Publishing. Great stuff!)