Jane Yolen mentioned in her journal the other day (no way to link direct to the entry but it's the June 21-22 post) that she is working on a Tam Lin novel, Burd Jennet. I love love love Tam Lin novels - both Fire and Hemlock from Diane Wynne Jones and Tam Lin from Pamela Dean are two of my favorite books. (Do ignore the deplorable cover on the Jones novel!)

Mark has posted one of those delightfully smart (and dare I say indulgent) posts at TEV about Paul McCartney. This is the sort of mini essay I really enjoy and while I am nowhere near the kind of fan he is, I can certainly attest to how lovely the new album is. My son is a big Beatles (and Wings) fan, so we are playing it quite a bit.

Allow me a moment of comic book geekery as I am near giddy with joy over the thought of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Daniel Green analyzes the new Small Beer anthology Interfictions and I have to tell you - I just don't try that hard to figure out an overriding theme for anthologies. I've only dipped into this one a bit (as you may recall Chris Barzak's haunted house tale knocked me out of my writing slump), but I've just been reading it to enjoy it and not to understand it. I don't know - that might make me a lazy reader (and I'm okay with that assessment in this case), but I'm too busy reading the stories and thinking about them in a singular fashion to wonder whether or not they fit a definition of "interfiction". My thought was that they were all of the spec fiction variety and beyond that - I just started reading. So far I'm enjoying it - I'll keep ya posted on the review.

Also be sure to check out Emma Bull's answers to some questions about her upcoming revision of the Gunfight at the OK Corral (and other things Tombstone), Territory. The entries start here and she's now up to answering four questions about inspiration and that sort of thing. As it happens I basically grew up on westerns and I'm really looking foward to reading this (top of my stack as a matter of fact). One tidbit in this exchange that has me thinking is when she writes about the Chinatown aspect of Tombstone. Here's a bit:

From China Mary it was an easy step to Chinese magic, which led me to thinking about the parallels between feng shui and the notion of ley lines, and the silver that was the reason for Tombstone's existence... Sometimes I think the creation of stories looks like video of an explosion replayed in reverse and slow motion. A vague, glittering cloud of something that gradually collapses in on itself, becomes denser and more coherent, until--hey, look! A recognizable object! In this case, a pair of novels.

My review for this one will be August or Sept - not sure yet but I'll keep you posted on what I think.