Wednesday night was the monthly Fantastic Fiction reading in New York City’s KGB Bar. As usual, the joint would have been jumping, but for the fact that it was jam-packed. Before the actual reading started, there were many people milling about, socializing, talking, drinking, and basically enjoying the company of like-minded individuals. Co-curator Ellen Datlow started the scheduled event by welcoming back Dan the bartender, who’d been away for eight months.
The first reader of the evening was Christopher Barzak, who read a chapter from his novel One for Sorrow. Before reading, he described the book for those of us who haven’t yet read it, calling it a “coming of age novel/ghost story told by a 15-year-old boy whose grandmother recently died, whose mother was recently paralyzed, and whose best friend was just found murdered.” He’s falling apart and being haunted by his murdered friend. Barzak read the chapter “Dead is dead is dead,” telling us the story of our narrator, Adam’s, somewhat sexual encounter with Gracie. He’s a good writer and a good reader, and the audience laughed in the right spots, and cringed with memory in the right places.
After the intermission, Datlow introduced Naomi Novik, whose so-far-four-volume Temeraire series needed very little introduction. She read from the still-being-written fifth volume, Victory of Eagles, which is apparently due to her publisher in a few months, because it’s scheduled to be published later in 2008. She warned of spoilers, though I didn’t feel terribly spoiled hearing the chapter told entirely from Temeraire’s point of view.
After the readings, as usual, a crowd of attendees went out to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant. I wasn’t able to join them this month (deadlines, don’tcha know), but Barzak mentioned that, in addition to the usual good food and conversation, dinner included a Helen Mirren sighting (you know, the Soviet commander in 2010, and Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
And as always, Ellen Datlow took a lot of pictures at the event, which you can see at this link.
Next month, the reading will be on 16 January (it’s always the third Tuesday of the month), and the readers will be Dan Braum and Marly Youmans. For more information, see www.lcrw.net/kgb.