Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder have signed a contract to expand their recent short story collaboration into a novel. From Yolen's web site:

And Ace bought the novel EXCEPT THE QUEEN, based on the novella Midori Snyder and I had in the World Fantasy winning anthology FAIR FOLK. Though the book had been offered to and turned down by Tor, my major publisher, the editor at Ace who had done the paperback of the collection was thrilled to have it. Midori and I are already talking about all the ways the book can be opened up. Lots of fun ahead!

Fair Folk is one of the anthologies I have on tap for a column this summer, so I'm doubly excited to get reading it soon.

Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened, sounds like a beautiful and very unique book. Due out in June from Villard (RH), it's based on editor Jason Rodriguez's antique postcard collection. He goes way further than a coffee table book though - he's gotten a ton of comic book artists to expand on the stories hinted at in the postcards:

Jason Rodriguez has collected a remarkable array of these correspondences, dispersed them among thirty-three of comic's greatest creators, and asked them to each create a story about the person who sent it. The result is a vividly imagined, gorgeously rendered graphic novel anthology illustrating tales of romance, adventure, hardship, and mystery. In [POSTCARDS], these gifted artists share some of the most rich and inventive work of their careers.

Here's a list of the contributors and story titles. (Ande Parks! Tom Beland! Antony Johnston!) (link via JDC)

I'm not sure how I missed that China Mielville had a new book out, but with blurbs from Kelly Link and Holly Black, Un Lun Dun is already a book I need to read. This review kind of seals it for me. I'd love to know how I missed this book though - is it really YA? It wasn't in any Random House YA catalog I saw.....

SPOILER ALERT

I especially like that the girl who's supposed to save the world dies right off that bat. So it falls to the un-Buffy to get the job done. Pretty smart plot twist, I'm thinking (and long overdue).

SPOILER DONE

Over at the Guardian, author Julie Bertagna asks a valid question concerning fiction and global warming, as in, why haven't more novels been written about it?

Humanity has a rendezvous with destiny. As President Jacques Chirac said, our house is burning down. Our future depends on us turning a new page in the human epic and imagining a whole new way of being in the world. Science is key, but fiction can offer a map, torch and compass through terrors and dreams.

Finally, am I the only one who is dazzled on a daily basis by what Midori Snyder and Terri Windling are doing over at the Endicott Studio blog? Talk about impressive - the fact that they can track down so many mythic fiction links and stories and then post them in such a gorgeous manner, while also writing and editing and being major forces in the fantasy field, just blows my mind. It makes me wonder just what the heck I'm doing with my days.....