So, I’ve been a slacker at posting here, mostly because I’ve been hella busy and any posting I’ve done has gone into Haute Macabre.

What have I been busy with? Reinventing the salon. Not the sort one gets one’s hair done at, but the  16th and 17th-century ideal of a gathering place for artists and intelligentsia, a place for cross-pollination of ideas and a mingling of the best and the brightest minds around. It’s an interesting concept, and a tough one to do: how do you pull together interesting people under one roof, and begin to form the sort of community in which a free flow of ideas and creativity just naturally happens?

Meet my new baby: The Bone Room Presents. A gallery by day, and space for author talks, lectures, classes and gatherings by night, all tied together with a single theme: Natural History.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Also, I will be constantly on the lookout for artists to show in the gallery, as well as for people who will be in the Bay Area to give academic lectures, authors to speak and sign books, and people with interesting skills to give classes. Write me if you would be interested in becoming a part of the project! So far, our Grand Opening was an artist reception for engraver Sharon Augusta Mitchell, and a reading, talk, and book signing by the amazing Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

To give you some idea, here is a talk Mary did at this year’s TED conference, entitled “10 Things You Didn’t KNow About Orgasm”. Wait for the pig-diddling video. It’s AWESOME.