Charming Monsters

Torontoist has the scoop on a new bookstore opening in the College/Spadina area of Toronto in March 2010: Of Swallows, Their Deeds, & the Winter Below. Even better, it’s being structured as a collaborative project, providing the store with additional revenue by sharing space with other literary efforts in need of short-term digs or long-term corner nooks from which to operate. Their first tenant is the Toronto New School of Writing, which sounds like a fascinating project unto itself (given my recent mood, their course on The Joy (and Ethics) of Not Writing might be worth signing up for…).

On an vaguely related (well, Canadian lit scene related) note, Quill & Quire reports that Lynn Henry has been named publishing director for Doubleday Canada. Henry is currently the publisher for House of Anansi Press. I’ve really been enjoying Anansi’s output under her guidance, and it’ll be interesting to see what direction she takes in her new role.

Although New York tempts me with its cinematic offerings, London is the city that really knows how to lure me in: the bookstores. Oh, oh, the London bookstores. Specifically, the London esoteric bookstores, with their pedigrees and their events and their shelves stacked high with obscure grimoires and dusty alchemical texts. Oh! It sets my bibliophile heart aflutter, just thinking of it!

Treadwell’s is top of my personal list, if only for the delightfully tempting list of titles and events listed on their webpage. They’re the newest of the lot, open less than six years now, but the owner has an academic background in medieval history and their selection seems both interesting and reasonably-priced (well, as far as antiquarian book collecting goes). Their lectures series is absolutely fascinating to me, and I’m likely to make Jim batty when we visit London by trying to plan our trip to accommodate some upcoming Treadwell’s speaker or event.

Next on the tour is Atlantis Bookshop, one of London’s oldest occult bookshops. It should probably be first, given it was founded in 1922 by a group of magicians that included Austin Osman Spare, Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley, and they do run another impressive series of events, lectures and pub nights. Chalk it up to nostalgia: Treadwell’s was the first bookstore I fell in love with online, and I’m still a bit sweet on them as a result.

Finally, there’s Watkins Books, who almost got the top billing when I spotted the A.O. Spare book on the top of their Antiquarian page. (Then I spotted the price, which may well be reasonable for Spare’s extraordinarily rare works, but still!) Watkins was actually founded before Atlantis Bookshop, issuing their first catalog in 1987 and opening doors on their current location in 1901. W.B. Yeats used to shop here, and the original owner was a friend (and printer) for H P. Blavatsky, a key figure in the Victorian occult revival. Like I said, pedigree!

Londonist.com has some lovely photos of all three shops in their Biblio-Text series: Treadwell’s, Watkins and Atlantis.

Ah me. In lieu of an overseas trip, I’ll have to make time this weekend for a stop-in at The Monkey’s Paw, one of my favorite browsing spots in Toronto. They may not have a specific focus in esoteric/occult texts, but there’s always one or two books in their little glass shelf to make my heart go pit-a-pat.

Megan Crewe is looking for people to help spread the word about her upcoming novel, GIVE UP THE GHOST, and she’s got a really great prize pack to sweeten the deal! Check out the contest details on her blog – you have until July 20 to enter!

Jillian Venters, proprietor of the Gothic Charm School (and Cupcake_goth on livejournal) has finally made her Rather Exciting Announcement: HarperCollins will be publishing her book Gothic Charm School – An Essential Guide For Goths and Those Who Love Them in June 2009! Jillian is a delightful writer and I can’t wait to curl up (in a velvet armchair, by candlelight, draped in frills and eyeliner) to peruse her work in print form.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this chance to point out that Gothic Charm School merchandise is currently available online through her Café Press store – I’m particularly fond of the “flouncing” t-shirt. And just to make it feel extra real, there’s even an Amazon.com pre-order page!

Chris Butcher over at Comics212 has some info on the upcoming release of Street Fighter Turbo II HD Remix, one of several big projects that my partner Jim has been working hard on over the past year. Long Vo, who was the main sprite designer on the project, was at the Miami Book Fair with Jim over the weekend, so I’m sure Jim will be returning with some fun stories about working with the Chinese animation studio from Long’s perspective.

The Udon Studio has really been ramping up over the past year, bringing on some fantastic new artists to help them keep up with their creative client work while getting the publishing side of things back up and running. The publishing schedule for the next year is pretty ambitious, and doesn’t include some of the upcoming art book translations, Korean Manwah and original art books on tap for next summer. It’s pretty exciting, but it’s also a good thing I live in the house where Jim does most of his Udon work, or I’d probably never see him!

As for me, the weekend was not as productive as I would have liked, although I did manage a revamped query letter – and, frankly, too much World of Warcraft. I watched a fair number of movies, including The Lady Eve, two more episodes of Les Vampires and a repeat screening of Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary, some of which clearly draws inspiration from the ballet sequence in the first episode of Les Vampires. I also read three books (How to Hook a Hottie by Tina Ferraro, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland by Adam Selzer and The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher – can you tell I’m trying to catch up on my contemporary YA reading?), ordered Indian food, and attended a wonderful wedding for my friends Jamie & Shoshana, which gave me an excuse to wear my new coat (the grey plaid!) before the weather turns too cold.

Okay, so perhaps it was just not productive in the way I’d been hoping…