Thus far, there are four published Booth stories that are not in The Bone Key:

• "The Replacement." The Willows 2.3 (September/October 2008): 48-54.
  
• "White Charles." Clarkesworld Magazine 36 (September 2009).
  
• "The World Without Sleep." Postscripts 14 (Spring 2008): 40-64.
  
• "The Yellow Dressing Gown." Weird Tales 63.2 (March-April 2008): 63-69.

I intend to keep writing Booth stories--I'm working on several right now, for very loose definitions of "working"--so eventually there should be enough for a second collection, but it's not one of those things where you should wait under water.

Today I shipped books to Canada, Germany, and Australia.

You know who you are.

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Also, kate_nepveu, two of those packages were my contributions to con_or_bust. And for the rest of you, a reminder that the accessiblehouse auction continues until April 25, where you may bid on--among many other items of great shininess--a signed set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths hardbacks (current bid $200) and/or a signed trade paperback of The Bone Key (current bid $50).

con_or_bust is an LJ community devoted to helping fans of color/non-white fans get to Wiscon. accessiblehouse is an LJ community devoted to helping jbru and his partner keep their house, which has been extensively renovated in order to accommodate his partner's disabilities. Both communities are running auctions with many nifty items available, and I have a question: if I were to put up for auction two complete signed sets--one in each auction--of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, and Corambis), would people bid? (With the caveat that the sets won't be sent out until the publisher sends me my author's copies of Corambis: the one I got on Monday has to stay with me as my reference copy.)

Again, as with the ARC auctions I just did, I'm not asking for promises. I just want to know if there's enough interest to make it worthwhile.

--oh wotthehell, as mehitabel the cat says. I have posted auction items to both con_or_bust and accessiblehouse.

• The Doctrine of Labyrinths, signed hardback set, here and here.
  
• The Bone Key, signed trade paperback, here and here.

Given the rather startling value of a complete set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (4 books at $24.95 each, and two of them out of print in hardback), I didn't feel right setting the starting bid lower than $50, but The Bone Key starts at $15.

I need to brag share good news.

I got the first royalty statement for The Bone Key today. In its first year out in the big wide world, it sold out its advance approximately six times over. It is totally the Little Book That Could.

And so that this entry is not entirely me me me me me, if you have not already, I highly recommend you read Elizabeth Bear's short story, "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall."

( cut for extraneous stuff )

The Lone Star Stories Reader will be out soon. (Features my story, "A Night in Electric Squidland.")

So will Fast Ships, Black Sails. (Features the story I co-wrote with the fabulous and talented Elizabeth Bear, "Boojum." Think Lovecraft as written by Tiptree.)

The September-October issue of The Willows features a new Kyle Murchison Booth story, "The Replacement."

Speaking of Booth, here's a story by story review of The Bone Key. I think Ryan Harvey thinks I think a little too well of myself (didja follow that?), which is totally his prerogative. I would like to confess, however, that I have never read Algernon Blackwood--aside from failing to get through "The Willows" (oh the cruel irony! the shame! I weep!)--so the presence of Blackwood that Harvey detects "echo[ing] as strongly" as Lovecraft and James through The Bone Key is illusory. I'm really sorry.

And speaking of Bear, two reviews of A Companion to Wolves, here and here.

Y'all gratified me with questions about Booth, so I shall gratify you by answering them.

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Q: You said in the introduction that Booth was your most autobiographical protagonist. Why did you chose to make him a male character?

A: ( cut for length )

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Q: will there be more?

A: Yes.

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Q: do you plan on trying to shop around a second volume of Booth stories when there are enough?

A: I can't see any reason why I wouldn't.

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Q: Do you envision the stories as eventually forming a complete mosaic, or are they written as new facets evolve, or is neither of these an applicable question? Also, am I the only person who would like to have seen them illustrated by Edward Gorey?

A: They're written as I find ideas for them. I was actually surprised at how nicely the ten stories in The Bone Key fit together into a narrative arc.

In its original publication in Alchemy, "The Wall of Clouds" had an epigraph from The Iron Tonic. I decided against putting that in The Bone Key because (a.) I didn't want to deal with the permissions headache and (b.) it didn't feel right somehow. But, yes, they're very Gorey-esque in my head.

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Q: Have you ever thought about writing Booth a novel? It seems like Bone Key was only the beginning of the story, like one giant exposition.

A: No. There won't be any novel-length Booth stories.

My personal feeling is that horror, as a genre, is ideally suited to the short story. And that goes double for the James/Lovecraft style stories I write. I couldn't sustain Booth for a novel--not in the sense of sustaining the character, but in the sense of sustaining the incident. Long novelettes, yes. Maybe even a novella. But nothing longer than that.

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Q: Also. Is there a reason you chose not to have continuously recurring characters that play a central role, besides Booth? I know Blaine shows up in a couple in memories and dreams and such, and...whatshisface shows up in "The Venebretti Necklace" and "Wait for Me," but I mean on a slightly larger scale.

A: Because they wouldn't fit?

If I'm doing them right, Booth stories are fairly tight, compositionally speaking. There's Booth and the Eldritch Horror of the Week and the character(s) involved in the Eldritch Horror. (I figure these stories are as close as I'll ever get to writing sonnets.) Also, all of the Booth stories are designed to stand alone, so other characters can recur, but they can't have continuity.

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Q: I would love to know what the Bone key opened. More childhood background on Booth would be cool too.

A: WYSIWYG.

If you've read the stories in The Bone Key, you essentially know as much as I do.

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Q: I could never quite figure out when the stories take place. Are they between the world wars, or after WWII, or in some alternate history that doesn't involve either?

A: To me, it's always been obvious that they're set between about 1920 and about 1935 (the same era as Dorothy Sayers' books). This is yet another of those things I didn't set out to make mysterious, but also, the point of the stories is so emphatically NOT to be historical fiction that it's never felt necessary to specify.

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And one more so I don't lose track of it.

Q: When you can only write longhand, do you have a pen/paper preference, or will any old thing do?

A: Well, in a pinch, anything that can be deciphered later is a win. *g*

Given my preferences, however, I am exceedingly fussy. ( cut for geekery )

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[To ask a question, go here.]

I went to bed last night with a headache, and it was still there when I woke up. It has, in fact, persisted all day--although I think it's easing off some--meaning that today has been (a.) less productive and (b.) less pleasant than I had hoped.

However, comma, my general state of decrepitude and despond has been alleviated by two things:

1. The most fabulous fidelioscabinet sent me porcupine quill hairsticks, which are both the platonic ideal of awesome and also useful.

2. The Bone Key is a finalist for the first annual Shirley Jackson Awards. I am pleased about this not merely for the obvious reasons, but also because I think it's incredibly cool that Shirley Jackson is being memorialized in this way. The Haunting of Hill House is one of the most elegantly terrifying books I have ever read.

If you have good things you would like to share, I'd love to hear about them.

1. Having just finished The Wee Free Men, I point everyone to Match It For Pratchett.

2. Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is June 20-22. matociquala is the Guest of Honor, and I'm going as her date.

3. The last print issue of Subterranean Magazine has a story of mine in it.

4. As does the current issue of Weird Tales.

5. David Berberick is trying to answer the question, Why do people love Tolkien? If you want to help, take his survey.

6. If you've read A Companion to Wolves and noticed a typo, you could do matociquala and me a tremendous favor by commenting either on this post or on her post asking for the same favor.

7. L. Timmel Duchamp reviews The Bone Key for Strange Horizons.

8. muneraven also reviews it.

9. And from the Department of Head Trips, Alison Sinclair (whom I do not know, but I wish her well) has sold a fantasy trilogy which is described as being "in the tradition of Sarah Monette and Ellen Kushner."

o.O

I have a tradition?

Jeff VanderMeer ambushed me yesterday.

And speaking of Jeff, his and Ann's anthology, The New Weird, in which I participated, got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. w00t!

orrin likes The Bone Key, as does Sam over at Whatta Fiasco. (I'm both pleased and amused that no one can agree on what the best/worst stories in the collection are, although, yeah, "Listening to Bone" is the slightest. I could explain what it is I think the story is doing and why I still think it belongs where it is, but, you know, that defeats the purpose of telling the story in the first place.)

tangeriner likes The Virtu, ethereal_lad gets the nutcase mishmash of genres, and schnaucl thinks the series should be longer (an idea which, I have to confess, fills me with terror and ennui in roughly equal measures--I love these guys, but I am done).

Poodlerat has a review of A Companion to Wolves.

I've no idea exactly what this is (oh the wonders of the internet and its daily doses of wtf?), but some of you may know and/or be interested in it.

Shadow Unit will be updating regularly Thursday night and Sunday night; the first full story will be posted in exactly one month (February 18). There's an RSS feed for updates, also a message board, so I'm not going to mention updates here after this, except as the spirit moves me. It's my blog; I can be capricious like that.

joonscribble, exlibris76, and rivkat are all, to varying degrees, underwhelmed by The Bone Key.

oursin, on the other hand, says very nice things.

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On the other other hand, The Mirador made OF Blog of the Fallen's Best of 2007 Countdown, and muneraven has a lovely post about introducing people you love to things that you love and having them click. It is purest lagniappe that the primary example used is A Companion to Wolves.