The story behind "Unique Chicken"

John Joseph Adams of Night Shade Books interviewed me via e-mail about my Nebula-nominated story "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," originally published in Jonathan Strahan's Night Shade anthology Eclipse One, and the result is here on the publisher's website. Thanks, John. The story's online, in various formats, at the same site.

The Bottom Line on our Iraq readings

The editor of The Bottom Line, the Frostburg State University student newspaper, here editorializes about the weekly campus reading of the names of the Iraq war dead, a project I've been helping with occasionally.

"Unique Chicken" is online

For the duration of awards season, my Nebula-nominated story "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," from Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse One anthology, is available as a free download at the website of the book's publisher, Night Shade Books.

Whatever happens at the Nebulas -- and no, I don't expect to win -- I'm honored by all the nice things folks have said about the story.

Michael Swanwick: “Wonderfully demented … The highlight of the book … It’s good enough to make principled men go against their conscience and vote to give a genre award to a mainstream story. Honest.”

Nancy Kress: “Hilarious … funny and sad with a punch at the end … This story is wonderful. … Like all Duncan stories, it’s difficult to say briefly what it’s ‘about.’ Maybe it’s about what miracles mean, what grace means, and why extremes are needed to bring about both. Or not.”

Gardner Dozois: “What it is is an Andy Duncan story, who’s a genre to himself.”

Jeffrey Ford: “The story is great. ... Definitely read it.”

Ed Park: “Odd, mesmerizing … Duncan’s brisk little fiction develops into a sly variant of [Flannery] O’Connor’s intense modern morality tales.”

Mark Bartlett: “Probably the best Duncan story I've read.”

Kathryn Cramer: “A really cool story.”

"Unique Chicken" also is on the Locus 2007 Recommended Reading List and has been named one of the top stories of the year by SFRevu.com.

My mother-in-law likes it, too.

My thanks to all. I'm surprised and gratified.

Was Helen Duncan "rightly banged up"?

Andy McSmith in The Independent doesn't think much of the movement to pardon the late Scottish medium Helen Duncan, convicted in 1944 of violating the centuries-old Witchcraft Act. He describes her as most likely "a fraud who was rightly banged up for making money from the grief and gullibility of the bereaved."