Fantastic Metropolis

Gabe Chouinard: What’s next from you? What’s next from the Ministry of Whimsy?

Jeff VanderMeer: Next up for me is a nonfiction collection entitled Why Should I Cut Your Throat?: Selected Nonfiction, from Cosmos MonkeyBrain Books. It will consist of about 150,000 words of reviews, interviews, articles, essays, humor pieces, most of them revolving around genre fiction. The Ministry’s next project is Leviathan 3.

Gabe Chouinard: What can you tell me about Leviathan 3? Who do you have lined up so far?

Jeff VanderMeer: For Lev3 my co-editor Forrest Aguirre and I have already taken a library story cycle by Zoran Zivkovic, two pieces by Michael Moorcock, and a story by Michael Cisco. We will be taking plenty more, including some French Decadent era fiction never before translated into English. In short, the anthology has no theme this time, but Zoran’s story cycle, which the individual stories seeded throughout the collection, provides the backbone. The stories that we place around the library stories will in some way pertain to the library stories thematically, stylistically, etc. It should be a very interesting effect.

Gabe Chouinard: Leviathan 3 is also your first foray into Print-On-Demand. Will this method affect the exposure of the collection, do you think? How does this help or hinder the people that are looking for the anthology?

Jeff VanderMeer: Leviathan has always been a steady seller and a critical success. Our main problem has always been having to pay upfront to have all the copies printed and in our warehouse even though we know it will sell out over a year to 18 months, not all at once. We have also had difficulties with distribution. POD allows us to cut initial costs while making the book more readily available through Ingram’s distribution, which means anyone anywhere can walk into a bookstore and order the anthology. Unlike our other books, Leviathan has never been carried by Ingram’s before—too esoteric—and we have relied on direct mail sales and book catalog sales. Leviathan 3 should, therefore, do as well or better than in the past. And we will have plenty of physical copies available at conventions, etc.

Gabe Chouinard: Back to the world of Ambergris; you also have The Exchange out now, which is a unique pamphlet/chapbook from Hoegbotton & Sons, celebrating the Festival of the Freshwater Squid. And you have some rather unique treats to go along with it…

Jeff VanderMeer: The idea was to create an artifact supposedly from Ambergris, centered around a short story called “The Exchange.” My frequent collaborator, the artist Eric Schaller, designed the pamphlet and illustrated it. We also collaborated on some incidental text. The deluxe edition comes with mushrooms, message pellets, candles, etc. I’ve been very surprised that this self-published project has garnered so much attention, with good reviews in Locus, Realms of Fantasy, etc.

Gabe Chouinard: Yes, Gahan Wilson was quite impressed with both City of Saints and Madmen and The Exchange. That must have been quite a high point, considering Gahan’s reputation and personality!

Jeff VanderMeer: Gahan was very, very kind. Especially as the book was not yet out and I had to present him with a bunch of separate publications and xeroxes in order for him to meet his deadline. It was definitely a huge thrill. It’s always amazing to me when someone whose work I have admired and who I do not already know likes my fiction. It was wonderful when Thomas Ligotti liked “Dradin” in 1996. It was humbling with Moorcock agreeing to do the introduction for the current book. At some level, I have to laugh because I can remember coming out of high school and saying to myself, “Okay—you know you want to write, mostly because you can’t not write, but someday you are going to find your level and that level may be sub-publication or may mean you only ever publish in local publications, and you have to be happy with that.” So, to be honest, although I work very hard, all the rest of it, on some level, is just a bonus.