Hey Jeff, I kind of responded to the whole thing at my journal, since it was a bit too long to muss up your comments section with.

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Gabe: Thanks for the note. I added notice to my post and a link to your journal. Good to hear from you.

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here->
http://lyceum.kapo.ws/?p=31

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Question: Is anyone talking about Martin Greenberg and John Helfers' Slipstreams in conjunction with this?

Should we be discussing them together?

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Jeff --

My interview with Kessel & Kelly was just published on SCIFI.com: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw12963.html. It focuses, of course, on slipstream and the new anthology.

Gabe --

I only glanced at the Greenberg/Helfers book, so I can't say for sure, but I'm skeptical. The introduction starts off well enough, but then Helfers says that when he asked for the stories, he only told the authors to combine two or more genres of any kind and to send him the result. He says he didn't define slipstream for the authors, though presumably they knew the book would be called Slipstreams, so perhaps they did write the stories with that goal in mind.

Of course, there's not one writer in the TOC who I would have thought of as a slipstream writer, and there's at least one (Rob Sawyer) who I thought was about as far from a slipstream writer as you can get.

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Where "Claus of Death" was concerned, I just tried to follow the "blend multiple genres" guidelines as given. To that end, I merged mythology/fantasy with mystery, going for sort of a classic noir by way of Ross McDonald's Lew Archer (with the voice of Harris Yulin narrating). To add to that, I also had fun turning Christmas/winter icons inside out.

Is it slipstream as others might define it? Probably not. Is it slipstream as far as the terms of the anthology go? I suppose so. It's probably more urban fantasy with mystery undertones. But I had a lot of fun, and John seemed to like it.

I'll have to check out Kessel's collection to see what else is considered slipstream.

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Michael: I was unaware of the Greenberg/Helfers slipstream anthology with your story in it. I'll be looking for it when I go to the book store next week. Thanks for stopping by to post.

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My pleasure. I arrived here sort of sideways through Google, so it's good to see any talk, even obliquely, of the Greenberg/Helfers anthology.

I certainly can't/won't pretend I've broken any literary barriers, at least not this time around. But if my story can keep readers entertained for a few minutes, it's a start.

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Michael: There's more discussion on the slipstream issue in the comments of different posts here. Look backward and forward a little from this one. Also, Paul Jessup had an interesting and lengthy one at Lotus Lyceum and Gabe Chouinard had one at his site, both of which are linked off one of the comments boards here.

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I've been following those discussions. I'll have to check them out along with the Kessel/Kelly anthology so I can really see how the stories compare to the arguments. I certainly didn't realize there was so much to the debate. I have much to learn. :>

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