Another installment of My Friends Are Awesome.

Come to find out yesterday that Chris Lane, multi-talented illustrator of the cover of Trevor's first book as well as the entirety of Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection and Harry Houdini: The Legend of the World's Greatest Escape Artist, and super good friend and all-around piece of wonderfulness in my life, is now a San Francisco Chronicle Bar Star, 2013!

And then: amazing author and magnificent human being Renee Swindle read to a packed house at my favorite bookstore, Diesel, A Bookstore, for the publication of her second book, Shake Down the Stars.

Yes, it was a good day. So proud!

WOO-HOO! Here's the New York Times Book Review of Harry Houdini, illustrated by my friend, the very talented Chris Lane.















"Beautifully illustrated." Big-time kudos.

Chris, as you may recall, also did the cover of Trevor's first book, Rarer and More Wonderful, and more recently, the illustrations for Zombies: A Record in the Year of Infection (in which moi was depicted as patient zero).

It looks like a fantastic book. So very excited for Chris!

Friend, bartending wizard, and illustrator extraordinaire Chris Lane has a new book he has illustrated coming out through local folks Chronicle Books called Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection



















Part diary, part field guide a la the classic book Gnomes, Zombies... is chock full of Chris' scary, gross, and sometimes funny visions of the undead.

Out in October 2009, come get some.

There's also a little surprise appearance by yours truly:












Excellent!

Trevor Calvert's first book of poetry, Rarer and More Wonderful, is being published at the end of the month by Scrambler Books. I am so excited for him!


















(gorgeous cover art by the obscenely talented Chris Lane)

Trevor's work is simply brilliant. But, as you may think me biased, I won't allow you to merely take my word for it...

[T]hings / hidden remain alive." Like—and with—Jack Spicer before him, Trevor Calvert helps us to celebrate this notion by bringing light to the lives of hidden things—answers, insects, music, the heart—without ridding them of the veils, the walls, or the hidey-holes to which we're initially drawn. Rarer and More Wonderful is aptly named. -- Graham Foust

Rarer & More Wonderful are the attachments, the combinations, of these poems. Here, language, carved and specific, secures one figure to the next, to its double, or is that a ghost? Perhaps both. And then what appears in the negative space of what happens: "none of these things / will act as the thing itself that / is soon ending." So there is a serious struggle here with experience, with being, and then when you least expect it comes the debonair turn, like getting away with wearing period hats. The period? Well, there's no closure, either. Of its moment. -- Stephanie Young

Trevor will be reading from his book at Pegasus Books in Berkeley on June 6th, and in Denver, Colorado on June 14.

Times, guest readers, and more reading dates will be coming soon!