I'll be arriving in Chicago for a much needed vacation in less than two weeks and I'd love to hang out with Buffistas while I'm there.

Details in F2F.

Publisher's Weekly reviewed our first print book, Deb's Still Life with Devils, and they like it!

Still Life with Devils Deborah Grabien. Drollerie (Ingram, dist.), $15.95 paper (218p) ISBN 978-0-9798-0810-4

Grabien (New-Slain Knight) turns to supernatural crime with an artistic twist in this eerie thriller. Leo Chant and her brother, SFPD Lt. Cassius Chant, join forces to identify Captain Nemo, a psycho who kills pregnant women and then arranges their corpses according to feng shui principles. After Nemo claims a seventh victim in broad daylight, an elderly Chinese eyewitness helps Leo provide the police with a sketch, but the almost demonic features give Leo a shock. Has she seen them before? Digging through old sketchbooks with Mara, her preternaturally wise teenage niece, leads Leo to a dangerous attempt to catch Nemo by entering the “shadowlands of painted reality” through Leo's painting of the killer. Leo's blend of art and magic is a novel and intriguing method for closing cases and will leave readers hoping that a sequel is in the works. (Dec.)

If you didn't hear my interview with poets Roger Bonair-Agard, Lynne Procope, Marty McConnell and Rachel McKibbens on "The Eclectic Word," listen to it right now.

We've had some good discussions on this show so far, but this one was amazing -- four brilliant poets with candid and incisive insights into poetry today. Seriously, give it a listen.

It's new lesson time at Gothic Charm School: Of Elegant Gothic Lolita, Deathrock, and Victorian Fashion.

At long last my column,"How to Succeed As A Failing Writer," is back! This week's installment is Harry Potter and the Vampire People: Building communities around a story. In a lot of ways, it's a companion piece to my interview with Allyson Beatrice and Jillian Venters.

Enjoy!

One of my closest friends wrote this movie and it opens this weekend. [link] Go see it! Not just because it's really great, but because she didn't start writing seriously for film until she was in her 40s--thus giving hope to all aspiring Buffistas.

New (and long overdue) essay up on my education blog, Little but Fierce: Oh Crap! I Forgot How to Teach! Please come visit if you get a chance or pass the word along to others in the teaching biz. Thanks!

Hi there.

I've been off the board for quite a while thanks to serious illness in the family, a new job, and new house (I think that totals 9.6 on the stress-o-meter).

Anyways, given all that I won't be able to organize the seventh annual Sooper Sekrit Buffista Gift Exchange. If anyone else is interested in taking on the job, please email me at my profile email address.

Thanks, and I hope to see you all again sometime in 2008...

(X-posted from my LJ) Hey, could one of the L.A./Hollywood Buffistas help me out?

Could I talk one of you into going to the BPAL this coming Friday night (they're open from 7PM to 10PM.) I would be able to email them and pre-order and pay for the bottles I want, I just need someone local to go pick them up and mail them to me. Please mail me at my profile addy if you can help me out!

(Info about the BPAL will-call: [link]

If you haven't yet, go listen to me interview Patricia Smith, Mark Eleveld and Marvin Bell. You will not regret it. Three amazing literary thinkers with their fingers on the pulse of contemporary poetry.