Hey, Look! I'm In A Book!

All right, I've been excited about this for a while now, but now I have the proof in my hands, and it seems like a good time to write about it.

I'm a published author!

In an actual book!

This one, to be precise:

If you can see from the image, it also has contributions from China Mieville, Alan Moore, Mike Mignola, and a whole bunch of other really great authors.

Now, you may wonder how I ended up in this book. I will tell you. The editor, Jeff Vandermeer, has a blog that I read with some regularity. One day, he mentioned that he was putting this book together, and that he was looking for some entries to put in the back of the book, kind of an index of unusual objects.

The whole book is like this- the premise is that Thackery T. Lambshead has a vast collection of items in this cabinet (these sorts of cabinets actually exist. Lawrence Weschler actually wrote a very interesting history of them in his book 'Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder' ), and each item is kind of a jumping-off point for a story or anecdote or picture or drawing. It's an idea that lends itself to all sorts of creative takes on what might be found in a cabinet like this.

Anyway, I read about this book, and thought it sounded like a great idea, and then saw that I could submit my own idea for an unusual object, which would then possibly be included in the book. I came up with something (I guess you'll just have to read it to found out what!), sent it in, and then found out that I actually was going to be in the book! With an author bio and everything!

So, yeah, it's kind of exciting to be a part of this really cool project.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that the book comes out next week! So pre-order it now, why dontcha?

This is a peek at all the different author contributions (I'm there at the bottom, if you squint).

And here's a sampling of some of the varied artwork from inside the book.

Aaaaand now I will cease my blatant self-promotion. Carry on.