m. c. de marco

Via @sfwa and SFScope: Pyr has announced they’re slushing unagented fantasy doorstops—uh, novels.

Pyr is only reading unagented submissions in “the subgenres of epic fantasy, sword & sorcery, and contemporary/urban fantasy.” Their needs for horror, science fiction, and slipstream are being met by agented submissions, so they’re not opening up those subgenres to the great, unagented masses.

Via a mailing list: I will just note in passing that the once-reputable romance publishing giant Harlequin Enterprises has become a vanity press, as noted by the RWA. Jackie Kessler has a detailed exegesis of Harlequin’s press release announcing their new vanity imprint.

Via @StanCarey: the Guardian reports on what flies on and off the shelves of Oxfam used book shops.

Brown, who has sold more than 81m copies of The Da Vinci Code worldwide, has been revealed as the most donated author to Oxfam’s 700 high street shops.

What comes after publication, bestsellerdom, movie options, and the blockbuster movie that makes mincemeat of your novel? Apparently, it’s the board game: Purple Pawn reports that Twilight is “going cardboard,” as they say at Boardgame News.

Via Futurismic: more alternate news from the Alternate Reality News Service. This time, they observe an endangered species in its natural habitat:

When I got to the viewing area across the street from the subject’s nest, the first thing the two researchers instructed me to do was keep my head down and my conversation hushed.

“She can be a little skittish,” sociobiological Thanatosist Gandalf Jarmusch explained. “We need to be as inconspicuous as possible.”

Via Futurismic: more news from the Alternate Reality News Service.

The usually sedate courtroom of Justice Roberta Padwihller erupted yesterday when the star witness in the Macy Maroon murder trial took the stand: the undershirt of Jason Modeska, the man accused of Maroon’s murder.

The protesters, who oppose the idea of smart clothing giving testimony in a criminal case, unfurled a banner that read “Time for clothing to come clean!” while chanting “No shirt! No shoes! No justice!”

Futurismic has a highly entertaining faq excerpt from the Alternate Reality News Service:

9) What happens to ARNS reporters who materialize in alternate realities hostile to life?

They make employee of the month.