I’m blogging this week over at Ecstatic Days, the blog of author and editor Jeff VanderMeer. Please stop by if you get a chance and heckle me in cyberspace.

Ben and I will be talking about NO ONE YOU KNOW today on his weekly radio show, Backstage with Ben Fong-Torres. Tune your dial to 106.9 KFRC from 8 - 9 this morning or 8 - 9 this evening. In addition to chatting about the book, Ben will be playing songs related to No One You Know, and some foggy tunes to pair with The Year of Fog. This is gonna be fun! Go here to see the archives.

Ben Fong-Torres is on KGO AM 810 as we speak, talking about Elvis, Quincy Jones, the movie Almost Famous, and other stuff. He also talked about three books he’s in at the moment, including No One You Know. I’m about to call in and heckle him. You can tune in live here.

John McNally is at it again. The author (The Book of Ralph, America’s Report Card) and editor who brought us When I Was a Loser: True Tales of Barely Surviving High School has a brand new anthology, Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight at Book Passage in the Ferry Building: Ellen Sussman and contributors to her latest anthology, Dirty Words, A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex. This book has been getting loads of bang-up attention, for good reason. It’s fun, it features some serious tar-power, and it probably contains a few
positions, um, words, you don’t know. Come see what all the fuss is about! 6:00 p.m.

My friend Cynthia Gentry alerted me that the 20th Century Fox research library is in danger of closing. Here’s why it matters, and what you can do. From Cynthia:

“Some of you in the Film and Creative communities may have already heard that the 20th Century Fox studio research library (one of the very last, and definitely the best) is in danger of being lost forever…
The 85-year-old library is a priceless resource, a part of film history and our larger cultural heritage. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be discussing NO ONE YOU KNOW tonight at Kepler’s in Menlo Park. 7:30 p.m. Hosted by the wonderful Nancy Salmon!

Vestal Review Web Issue 34 is up, featuring the flash stories of Marcia Aldrich, Ana Marcela Fuentes, Tammy Guzman, Kyle Hemmings and Ladisa Quintanilla.

Fae Myenne Ng and the fabulous Ben Fong-Torres will appear tonight at Book Passage in the Ferry Building to talk about Ng’s new novel, Steer Toward Rock, and Ben’s 2006 book THE DOORS. Ben happens to make a cameo in Steer Toward Rock, which “tells the story of two generations of Chinese Americans in S.F.’s Chinatown in the 1960’s.” (Read a couple of posts back, and you’ll see that Ben, who is a character in my new novel, NO ONE YOU KNOW, made a guest appearance at my reading last week. At this rate, Ben will have to take on reading-at-other-people’s-events as a full time job). The event begins at 6:00.

Also tonight: Meg Waite Clayton will be reading from and discussing her terrific new novel THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS at Books Inc. in Laurel Village, at 7:30.

Jeff VanderMeer recently interviewed me for Omnivoracious, the Amazon editors’ blog. VanderMeer peels back the cover for a look inside No One You Know. Subjects discussed: the influence of Borges and Paul Auster, math as a labyrinth, the joys of coffee and a blank page, the difficulty of getting the cornbread right, and what you can do to get yourself invited to dinner. Read the interview here.