The Mumpsimus

Eric Schaller and I have been working on creating an online version of a magazine some of our ancestors  were involved with in 1876, and after a long period of work, with the brilliant and invaluable help of Luís Rodrigues, THE REVELATOR can now be revealed. In it you will find two new short stories, "Gaslight" by Jeffrey Ford and "Nick Kaufmann, Last of the Red-Hot Superwhores" by Nick Mamatas; an essay about the relationship between Salem, Massachusetts and witches by Robin DeRosa, poetry by Lillian Aujo and Beverly Nambozo, an interview with and comix by Edward Bolman, an account of The Spleen Brothers by Brian Francis Slattery, paintings by Michaela D'Angelo, and an eyewitness account of the James/Younger gang's raid on the bank in Northfield, Minnesota -- an account unlike any others, and till now lost in the archives of The Revelator ! A theme of twins, doubles, and doppelgangers runs lightly through this issue of the magazine. It's presen...

Once upon a time, Jeff Ford was one of my favorite bloggers.  He posted stories, rants, photos, etc. on a Livejournal site charmingly called 14 The Ditch.  It's now only available in fragments on the Wayback Machine , alas.  Mr. Ford quit halfway through his first term decided to focus more of his time writing award-winning stories and novels , and further recovering from once collaborating with a schmuck , the lowest moment of his career.  He opened a Facebook account and spent most of his time posting cute pictures of cats and the occasional status message such as, " Jeffrey Ford has decided to accept the offer to write 10 books in the Left Behind series.  Important to have an eclectic career if you want to survive these days as a writer. " Thankfully, Mr. Ford has decided to return to the land of blogging with a new Livejournal site, Crackpot Palace .  No more cute cat pictures, he promises.  And he's given up Left Behind for the Predator se...

It's so rare that I agree with lists of the best books of the year that I'm astounded to see Amazon.com picked two books I'm quite fond of as its top two science fiction/fantasy titles of the year: Brian Slattery's Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America and Jeff Ford's The Drowned Life (a book I'm hoping to write about in the next week or two). I may even like more than those top two, but I haven't had time to read any of the others. Thus, this week various people I voted for actually won elections and a top-ten list was published that I don't hate. What is happening to me?! Why is the world trying to make me content?!!