Monday Watches You From A Tree, Waiting

LOOK AT THE BIRD. It wishes you were a little mouse so it could gobble you right up. Lovingly, of course. It is, after all, the week of Valentine’s Day. (That’s a red-tailed hawk I caught hanging out in the trees above the shed; down the road I also found a black vulture just chilling in a tree, and that photo can be found at the bottom of this post.)

Anyway, some quicky news bits, let’s begin.

Where’s Wendig? Some updates to my schedule so far — I’ll be giving the keynote at DFWCon, as noted, and I’ll also be at BEA BookCon, and San Diego Comic-Con. I’ll likely add some events too between now and Wanderers release, as I’m hoping to get into some bookstores and visit readers. As to what bookstores, I do not yet know! KEEP YOUR GRAPES PEELED.

Kirk Us? But I Hardly Know Us. Looks like Vultures got a Kirkus review, the takeaway quote being: “Gruesome and bathed in ebony-black humor, this is a much-deserved conclusion for one of horror’s most imaginative heroines.” You can read the whole thing here, though, if you’d like. I do dig that they referred to it as a horror novel. I know “horror” isn’t as much a thing now, and some publishers still want to kinda flirt with it without marrying it, but really, the Miriam Black series has been horror (slash crime) since the very beginning. Sure, sure, “urban fantasy,” okay, yeah, “supernatural suspense,” but it’s horror-crime. Also, genres are just a thing people made up.

The Wendi-no-go. It has come to my attention that the sandwich formerly known as the Wendigo is… well, now formerly known as the Wendigo, because Wendigo, though being my last name with an ‘o’ at the end of it, is also a cryptid appropriated from indigenous (Algonquin, I believe) myth, and I would not want to be on the end of appropriating culture. So, the sandwich will now be heretofore known as THE CHNURK MANDOG. Update your records. (And here someone will probably chime in with how people are too sensitive and language changes and something something everyone else has already used Wendigo, so why can’t I? To which I respond, I’m a writer, language is important, and I should be aware of how I use — and misuse — its power. It’s not my job to tell a marginalized community not to be mad because I’m taking something from them — it’s literally the least I can do, given how much has already been taken from them. I have a wealth of privilege and opportunity at my beck and call, and if I can not stomp around with my big stompy boots on someone else’s stuff, then so say we all, huzzah, amen.) Apologies.

Hey, I’m trendy! Looks like Wanderers is demonstrating a cover trend at the moment. Ooh-la-la.

And now, a vulture. Enjoy.