Teaching evaluations are possibly even worse than reviews, you can read 50 good ones and 2 bad ones and all you remember afterwards are the bad ones…

Yes. The research is for real, though scientifically contentious.

Were you inspired by that interview on “This American Life” with the “Parasite Rex” author . . . ?

I didn’t catch that one. Oddly, Carl Zimmer is a friend of a friend of mine, but I haven’t called him up or sent him the book. It was way late to the publisher, and I was terrified he’d get all expert on my ass and find a bunch of mistakes. But I lifted from Parasite Rex so closely, it’s probably pretty accurate.

And Peeps is in first person, after all. And in first person, authors don’t make mistakes; characters make mistakes.

[Kirkus'] core audience is acquiring librarians and its central function is to let them know what they can safely skip

Hmm, I always thought that was ALA Booklist.

Mind you, acquiring librarians really are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings in the whole world. Along with bookstore employees and reading teachers. Oh, and cover designers.

Congratulations on having a book they can’t skip!

I just finished PEEPS today. You’re batting four for four– I really enjoyed it. I’m not really that squeamish but parasites freak me out, so I had to read the parasite chapters peeking through my fingers, more or less. (Is that thing about toxoplasma for real, by the way? That’s really bizarre and hard to fathom and existentially disturbing.) Were you inspired by that interview on “This American Life” with the “Parasite Rex” author, where Ira Glass accuses him of rooting for the parasites?

Also, best explanation ever of the necessity for secrecy when running a vampire-hunting organization.

PS. Guinea worm was endemic where I lived. You forgot to mention that it causes or is related to elephantiasis, where the affected limb can swell to ten times its normal size.

I’m excited–can’t wait fo it to come out!

You could write a whole treatise about the secret baddy-hunting organization genre, and how big and complicated those organizations are. Everything from the federal government (Men in Black or Hellboy), to the world-spanning NGO (like Buffy’s Watchers’ Council), to the Vancouver Police Department (Forever Knight, sort of). But Blade definitely is at the organizational minimum, having only a sidekick–although a particularly well supplied one. The main difference in having no large ogranization behind him is that Blade isn’t taking orders from anyone (can you imagine?), whereas the MIBs are, and Buffy is more or less supposed to be.

I think all these organization get invented by writers because we realize that baddy-hunting requires an infrastructure. As Buffy found out, you don’t want to be holding down a day job while you deal with the forces of evil. You don’t even want to have to make your own bed. (In many genre films, there’s that uncomfortable bit where the protag–who’s been sucked into saving the world–just stops going to work.)

Mild spoilers for Peeps follow:

When contemplating an infrastructure for Cal, I decided that it would make more sense if the Night Watch was a municipal organization, descended from the night watches of colonial times. After all, the New York City government is much older than the federal government, so of course they’d know more about vampires and history and stuff.

Having dealt with this city’s government a lot, and the feds relatively little, I felt I could do a more realistic job of portaying NYC services, which have a very distinctive tone and feel (and smell). In fact, that texture is much more interesting (to me) than the giant underground high-tech bunker that we all know and love from Men in Black or James Bond or whoever.

In other words, there are ceiling fans.

(Enough spoilage. I’ll stop now.)

Not trying to say your book is a knockoff of Blade, just that the review may leave that impression to anyone who might have seen the movies or read the comic books.

If it’s as good as So Yesterday I will certainly look forward to reading it…

Well, except for the parasites, and the NYC setting, and the clandestine organization (Blade’s a loner, isn’t he?), and the sexually transmitted disease part, and the non-fiction elements. And does Blade ever have a girlfriend? I don’t know the comics, only the movies. Not to sound defensive . . .

The main difference in genre elements (probably not evident in this review) is that Blade is about “magic” vampires, like blood gods and stuff. My vamps are much more science-y. No morphing or instant healing or flying. They just got a crazy disease, so they’re not all custom-suit-wearing and high-rise owning like Blade’s euro-trash vampires.

Anyway, how’s that for snark?

JeremyT: Glad JJA liked it. John Joseph Adams reviews for pretty much everybody, including Kirkus. I like his Slush God site.

Thanks for news about the release date!