I’m taking advance orders now via PayPal to joannemerriam@gmail.com (or mail a cheque or money order to Joanne Merriam, P.O. Box 41232, Nashville TN 37204 USA). Be sure to include your mailing address in your comments. The chapbook will be selling for US$5.00/Cdn$6.00 (using the SMOASP currency exchange rate) and for advance orders I’m not charging for shipping. (You can request a specific cover or specific number in the series and as long as it’s not already sold out I’ll send that.)

Edgewise will include “The Aviary” (Chiaroscuro, January-March 2008), “The Butterfly Factory” (42 Magazine, Summer 2009), “Deaths on Other Planets” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2008 and Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, 1 February 2009), “Evolution” (Mise En Poem, 22 March 2009), “Last Will and Testament” (Chiaroscuro, January-March 2007), “Ribbons. Lightning.” (On Spec, Spring 2004 and Brain Harvest, 12 September 2009), “Spring in Rutherford County” (Dreams and Nightmares, No. 77), “Stolen Lighters” (PicFic, 17 August 2009), “Thirteen Scifaiku for Blackbirds” (Strange Horizons, 12 October 2009), “The Undead in Hospital” (Alba, January 2007), “Venusian Girls are Better” (Coyote Wild, January 2008), “Werepenguin” (Strange Horizons, 10 March 2008), “Work Requirements” (PicFic, 18 August 2009), and six untitled scifaiku (three from Scifaikuest‘s February 2010 print, February 2009 online and February 2009 print editions respectively, and three from Things Japanese in Tennessee, Duthie Learning. September 2008).

Chinstrap Penguin and Atlantic Puffin. Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

In the attic of childish desires
puffin is king — sentimental, avuncular.

- from “Quiet and Getting Quieter” by Nancy Schoenberger

Reindeer on our neighbour's lawn, December 2008.

New post up at Vary the Line about using traditional songs and verses in your poetry. I started thinking about it because “Angels We Have Heard On High,” a poem about my niece’s reaction to Christmas, was published today.

In other news, it is snowing here in Tennessee. Surely the end times are upon us. It’s actually incredibly frustrating driving here when it snows, because (1) there’s no infrastructure in place to do anything sensible like plow or salt or sand the roads and (2) everybody freaks out because it’s the end of the world and we’re all going to die and (3) nobody knows how to drive in it. I’m convinced that I’m in more danger driving in the 2 inches of snowfall we probably got here than I would be in a blizzard in Canada.

Finally, the muppets were a sublime commentary on the human condition.