New Fiction -- to me anyway

I've been following any leads I get about new to me writers and having a blast with new surprises. One of my sources is Small Beer Press, the independent publishing company that helped sharpen the writerly teeth of author Jedediah Berry. Today I read an article in the Atlantic Monthly about the sliding of our beloved speculations into the works of more literary writers. First the zombies infiltrating government enterprises and now the pens of literary writers. Who knew? I have my theories about why that is happening but not for here or today. Letting that marinate a bit.

A friend (Lynn Townsend) of a friend (Richard Crawford) is a published steampunk author and she posted a link to an author I didn't know. Then it turned out that the author one I was kinda familiar with: Holly Black. She is definitely someone I need to read. And, before you ask, yeah, I read YA. It's how I find out what's really good and interesting, these days. Started with reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy. Oh, yeah, about Holly Black, She's writing a vampire story based on a previous short. I'll let her tell it.

From almost the beginning of my career and especially in the last five years, people have been asking/telling me the same thing:

Will you ever write a vampire book? C'mon.

You know who you are.

And mostly I said no, because even though I love vampires (and I have loved vampires a looooong time -- I wore a vampire cape to middle school just for the heck of it; I reread INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE about a million times in high school; I did my eighth grade research paper on vampire folklore; hell, I begged my way into writing the introduction to a Puffin Classics edition of DRACULA not that long ago)* it always seemed like the wrong time. Vampires were either so hot that there seemed to be no room in the market or so over that there seemed to be no room in the market either.

But then, a couple of years ago, while I was waiting to get back my editor's edits on WHITE CAT, I wrote the short story, "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" for THE ETERNAL KISS, a vampire anthology. And it was incredibly strange, because I started it thinking I had nothing to say about vampires and I wound up having a lot to say after all.

So much that I decided I wanted to go back to that world and tell a different story. And now, it's going to be a book!

You can read the official announcement here.

Oh and here's the trailer for Steamlust.


So, you know my additions to my reading list. Mostly shorts but they are the perfect thing to fill bits of time. How are you spending your spare time? Read any good short stories lately?