Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 19

Wed 1 Nov 2006 - Filed under: LCRW | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

aka 10 years of doing it all wrong.

November 2006 · $5 · 56 pages · Black & white.

See Scribd preview below.

masthead
Made in the autumn of 2006 by:
Gavin J. Grant · Kelly Link
Jedediah Berry · Michael Deluca · Heidi Smith · Lauren Smith · Caitlin Beck

fiction
Ray Vukcevich, Tubs
Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Grebe’s Gift
Dennis Nau, Dropkick
Nancy Jane Moore, Phone Call Overheard on the Subway
Cara Spindler & David Erik Nelson, You Were Neither . . .
Kara Kellar Bell, The Bride
Andrew Fort, Lady Perdita Espadrille Tells the Story
Anna Tambour, The Slime: A Love Story
Carol Emshwiller, Such a Woman, Or, Sixties Rant

poetry
K.E. Duffin, Two Poems
Laura L. Washburn, The Troll in the Cellar
Katharine Beutner, Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster
D.M. Gordon, Sliding

nonfiction
Dear Aunt Gwenda

cover art
Eric Schaller

advertisers may include the following:

Howard Who?
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Dabchick Eggs
Travel Light
Carmen Dog
The South Western Wrestling Alliance
LCRW subscription department
Lady Killigrew Cafe
Moo Shoes
Night Shade Books
The Privilege of the Sword
Mothers & Other Monsters
Oddfellow Magazine
Lone Star Stories
hangfirebooks.com

The Entertainers

Kara Kellar Bell has an Honours degree in Film and Media, and lives in the West of Scotland. Her writing has appeared in Bonfire, QWF, The Gay Read, Orphan Leaf Review, Aesthetica, Open Wide, the Showcase at laurahird.com, among other publications. She is currently completing a literary thriller.

Katharine Beutner lives in Austin, Texas, where she writes novels, eats fish tacos, and studies for advanced degrees in unremunerative fields. This is her first publication.

Gwenda Bond shoots big fish in big ponds. From Kentucky, or other, less interesting places, she blogs at Shaken & Stirred.

K.E. Duffin is the author of a collection of poems, King Vulture (University of Arkansas Press). Her poems have appeared in Agni, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, The New Orleans Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattapallax, The Sewanee Review, Verse, and have been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A painter and printmaker, Duffin lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Carol Emshwiller was recently awarded a Life Achievement World Fantasy Award. She is the author of the a number of collections, including Report to the Men’s Club and I Live With You, and the novels The Mount, Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, and the upcoming Secret City.

Andrew Fort writes fiction when he is not hunting bears, panthers, dragons, or dinosaurs with a Tinkertoy gun. He lives with his wife Jennifer and son Noah in Portland, Oregon, where they are sometimes gloomy but never S.A.D. His limited-edition novel The Emerald Ballroom is available through readingfrenzy.com or powells.com.

Previously an equestrian and chamber musician, D. M. Gordon moved to The Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts and drank the waters. Now she writes. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Nimrod, Weber Studies, and the Northwest Review. She is a 2006 finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in fiction, and a 2004 finalist for the same in poetry.

Nancy Jane Moore‘s novella Changeling is part of the Conversation Pieces series from Aqueduct Press. She expresses political opinions on In This Moment.

Dennis Nau graduated from St. Thomas College in St. Paul in 1971, educated to teach high school English but with a burning desire to conquer the world with his guitar. He was able to do neither. His stories have been published in Heartlands and Big Muddy. He is the mayor of Gibbon, Minnesota, and gets to discuss interesting subjects like barking dogs and cat licensing on a daily basis.

David Erik Nelson is a co-founder and editor for Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k), purveyor of fine prose, poetry and advice from the Giant Squid. Mr. Nelson is startlingly accurate with a small caliber pistol, and he is Cara Spindler’s husband.

Daniel Rabuzzi lived in Norway and Germany, earning degrees in folklore and history. An executive in an education non-profit by day, Daniel explores a world called Yount by night and on weekends. Having finished one novel about Yount, Daniel is working on a sequel and hopes to share Yount with other pilgrims soon.

If you’re the sort who keeps an ear glued to the keyhole, your eyes on the ground, and your head on the railroad track, you might have seen Eric Schaller’s cartoons featuring the character Sad Bird in the zine The White Buffalo Gazette. He contributed illustrations to Jeff VanderMeer’s The City of Saints and Madmen and has fiction forthcoming in Postscripts and The New Book of Masks.

Cara Spindler lives and works in Michigan. A long, long time ago, her favorite book was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. She is suitably ashamed of this, but is willing to admit people are fallible (now).

Anna Tambour currently lives in the Australian bush with a large family of other species, including one man. Her collection Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales & and her novel Spotted Lily are Locus Recommended Reading List selections. Medlarcomfits.blogspot.com

Ray Vukcevich’s collection, Meet Me in the Moon Room, was published by Small Beer Press, and his novel, The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces, by St. Martin’s. He also works as a programmer in a couple of university brain labs in Oregon.

Laura Lee Washburn is an Associate Professor of English at Pittsburgh State U., an editorial board member of the Woodley Memorial Press, and the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Quarterly West, The Sun, and Clackamas Review.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.19 November 2006 (10 Year Issue). ISSN 1544-7782 Text in Bodoni Book. Titles in Imprint MT Shadow. Since 1996 LCRW has usually appeared in June and November from Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060 · info@lcrw.net $5 per single issue or $20/4. Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Printed by Paradise Copies, 30 Craft Ave., Northampton, MA01060 413-585-0414. Thanks for reading.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 19 ebook


Kelly reads “The Hortlak”

Tue 31 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

KQED just posted a downloadable mp3 of Kelly reading one of her favorite stories to read, “The Hortlak“, on The Writers’ Block:

Kelly Link reads “The Hortlak,” from her short story collection Magic for Beginners. “The Hortlak” is a Turkish word, meaning revenant, or ghost. Eric and Batu work at the All Night Convenience store across the road from the Ausible Chasm, at the bottom of which lies a vast zombie city. Zombies stop in at the All Night on their way to the chasm. Are Eric and Batu part of some kind of “new retail” experiment designed to study the shopping habits of zombies? Will Eric ever get the nerve to talk to Charley, the woman who works at the local SPCA putting dogs to sleep?

“The Hortlak” was first published in Ellen Datlow’s ghost story anthology The Dark. Most recently it’s been translated into Japanese by Motoyuki Shibata for an anthology of recent fiction by American writers.

That city, still burning.


Happy Halloween

Tue 31 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Yes: we are going to Texas for the WFC. (To sing Joe Hill songs!) Kelly is not, apparently reading there, but we’ve got a nice reading on Sunday at 5 PM at Book People with Kelly, Howard Waldrop, and Ellen Kushner. Phew, that’s talent. Everyone else is reading here.
There’s a bookshop t-shirt tour pic here for Book People somewhere.

If this is your month to write a novel (and this is said with love): break a leg!

We’re in the American Southwest and the camera cannot be attached to the computer due to cord-at-home-itis. Duh. Must take pix anyway. Mactop can take pix with its scary little eye watching all the time. See what we’re doing now? Huh? Hello Big Brother. [Hello, said Steve J. What's Up?]

We are in the American Southwest (as above) and the food is mostly pretty good! But it means all those submissions are just piling up back at the office. Eyargh.

LCRW? Sometime soon!

Let’s see: war in Iraq. A cockup. Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer. % of companies offering health insurance has dropped from 69% in 2000 to 60% now. (Whose term does that coincide with?). Yep: now is the time for gasoline prices to fall and to raise the fear terrorist threat level to Vote!


Slither!

Thu 26 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

For those who like the horror movies, Slither, Kelly’s favorite horror movie since Shaun of the Dead, is now available on DVD.

For those who keep track of these things, it stars Nathan Fillion of various things and is directed by James Gunn (who wrote The Specials—an excellent little film—and the newer Dawn of the Dead). Apparently it’s smart and funny and plays with all kinds of horror conventions.

Kelly would be like the millions of peeps who missed this if it weren’t for some smart folk in North Carolina who dragged her to see it. They knew what they were doing (thanks!) and she’s been telling people about it ever since. She got her copy yesterday.


What to do with podcasters.

Mon 23 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Back in July (which must have been, oh, a week ago at least), in a dimly lit restaurant we asked distinguished critic Gary Wolfe for his thoughts on podcasting.

So that’s what it’s all about.


Fri 20 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Carthage, Missouri, is the home of Janet K. Kavandi, Astronaut, and has a plaque celebrating her on the city limits. Our tiny car racks up the miles, but doesn’t approach her over 13.1 million (from 33 days in space and 535 Earth orbits).

Back in Zinelandia you can read the whole of the new ish of Xerography Debt as a PDF here.

Good days in the reading world:

Dave, Dave, Dave! Yay!

Rain Taxi Book Fest in the Twin Cities: nice! Best desserts: a tie between the churros at Masa and the dark chocolate thingy at Auriga. Or the Tetleys at Brits pub — an English pub with a bowling green on the roof. Wacky.

Next. Paperback of Magic for Beginners went back to press. Kelly is at the Conference of the Undead(!) in Berkeley then on Saturday at the the Nimrod Fest in Tulsa. Soon after, Austin. In between: Katamari Damacy. You would not guess who is to blame for this.
Strange Horizons review of The Privilege of the Sword:

The Privilege of the Sword, for all its serious underpinnings, is a delight to read, with colorful, well-defined characters and a droll sense of humor.

And a review of Maureen’s collection on Pedestal Mag:

The thirteen stories in Mothers & Other Monsters are solidly written, superbly characterized, and ultimately unforgettable.

LCRW is at the printer. 10 years old, aw. Ful (sic) of typos. Ha ha. Ew.

Raking leaves is practice for shovelling snow. Discuss.


Fri 20 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Carthage, Missouri, is the home of Janet K. Kavandi, Astronaut, and has a plaque celebrating her on the city limits. Our tiny car racks up the miles, but doesn’t approach her over 13.1 million (from 33 days in space and 535 Earth orbits).

Back in Zinelandia you can read the whole of the new ish of Xerography Debt as a PDF here.

Good days in the reading world:

Dave, Dave, Dave! Yay!

Rain Taxi Book Fest in the Twin Cities: nice! Best desserts: a tie between the churros at Masa and the dark chocolate thingy at Auriga. Or the Tetleys at Brits pub — an English pub with a bowling green on the roof. Wacky.

Next. Paperback of Magic for Beginners went back to press. Kelly is at the Conference of the Undead(!) in Berkeley then on Saturday at the the Nimrod Fest in Tulsa. Soon after, Austin. In between: Katamari Damacy. You would not guess who is to blame for this.
Strange Horizons review of The Privilege of the Sword:

The Privilege of the Sword, for all its serious underpinnings, is a delight to read, with colorful, well-defined characters and a droll sense of humor.

And a review of Maureen’s collection on Pedestal Mag:

The thirteen stories in Mothers & Other Monsters are solidly written, superbly characterized, and ultimately unforgettable.

LCRW is at the printer. 10 years old, aw. Ful (sic) of typos. Ha ha. Ew.

Raking leaves is practice for shovelling snow. Discuss.


John Klima, where are you?

Tue 10 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Catching up on his zine, anthology, chapbook, kid, life, tickets, hotel, library, shoe-making, and whatever else he is cobbling together. Ack! How does he do it. Please, organize our lives.

In the spirit of the mighty Klima, here’s the Table of Contents for the next LCRW. Due to weirdness in our UniVac Central Computational System, the website will probably not be updated with this info for a while. Darnit!

So, LCRW 19 (now with more ads!) which has the Usual Mix (TM) of new and known authors that we find so dear to our hearts. And has an awesome, fragile, thumpity-thump cover. (That will make sense when you see it.) And this will be its composition. (Not including the chocolate.) Should have it in Texas but mailing date is still unsure:

Fiction

Ray Vukcevich, Tubs
Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Grebe’s Gift
Dennis Nau, Dropkick
Nancy Jane Moore, Phone Call Overheard on the Subway
Cara Spindler & David Erik Nelson, You Were Neither . . .
Kara Kellar Bell, The Bride
Andrew Fort, Lady Perdita Espadrille Tells the Story
Anna Tambour, The Slime: A Love Story
Carol Emshwiller, Such a Woman, Or, Sixties Rant

Nonfiction

Dear Aunt Gwenda

Poetry

K.E. Duffin, Two Poems
Laura L. Washburn, The Troll in the Cellar
Katharine Beutner, Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster
D.M. Gordon, Sliding

Cover art: Eric Schaller


Rust Belt Surrealist

Tue 10 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Yes he is. Look at that, a great piece on new wave fabulists in the Boston Globe.

The Globe is of course the only remaining spherical newspaper in the world (after the demise of the Atlanta Sphere in the midst of the late 20th century depression).

Bostonians (and readers elsewhere) have long-established habits and traditions of how to read it. Some prefer the onion-skinning method of peeling a page off at a time, while others prefer flattening the whole thing and reading it as if it were any other daily. That all supposes that no one kicks it off your front step in the first place. Since the New York Times purchased the Globe a couple of years ago, there have been persistent rumors that the new ownership would switch the format but local sentiment (as well the daily tours of the unique Mercury Grace presses) have thus far prevented it.

Our favorite use of unread copies of the Globe are the Lynn Circular Houses. The hive was begun in the early 1970s and is still occasionally added to. Pictures can be found here.


Meanwhile, over the water

Mon 9 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Like Looper or some of the other mellow relaxipop coming across the water from Scotland? Readers who remember this guy, might want to go check out First Tiger. Pop! (Friend them or whatever one does on the mindspace?) There’s more here. When wil they cross the pond to superstardom?

Also: Scotland put one past France!


Elliott Bay

Fri 6 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Bookshop T-shirt tour: Elliott Bay in Seattle, WA. Nice rich color, good for autumn.

There are tons of great bookshops in Seattle. Some of them probably don’t force you to turn your back to people to show off the wonder of their graphic design dept. But Elliott Bay is confident that you will. Or, that you’re a leader and people behind you will suddenly realize that they should pop off to the original E.Bay and get a book.

A book? How about something naughty and futuristic for the weekend? Such as Sex in the System: Stories of Erotic Futures, Technological Stimulation, and the Sensual Life of Machines. (That’s, er, a mouthful.) Edited by Cecilia Tan, it has stories from Sarah Micklem, Steve Berman, Jennifer Stevenson, Scott Westerfeld (reprinted from Say…), Gavin J. Grant (reprinted from Singularity a while back), at least one pseudonymous author, and an orgy of others. (“Orgy” being the collective term for erotica writers, no?) Funny cover, too. Don’t know if there are Seattle writers in this, or if there’s a Seattle event planned, but you can always go read it aloud at a park and see what happens.


Handy Book Sense pick

Thu 5 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories CoverWe are way behind with spotlighting good recent reads. Happily Book Sense made it slightly easier on us by choosing Liz Hand’s new collection, Saffron and Brimstone, as a Book Sense pick (um, next month):

SAFFRON AND BRIMSTONE: Strange Stories, by Elizabeth Hand (M Press, $14.95 paper, 1595820965) “Stories from a master of lapidary style and fey fiction. I’m reminded of John Fowles’ touch of the mythical in The Magus, but Hand is no imitator — she wields her own magic.” –Pauline Ziniker, Country Bookshelf, Bozeman, MT


T-shirt tour

Thu 5 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Prairie Lights, Iowa City. Nice aesthetic. Pity about the bod.


Bye, Mark. Bye Dennis? Bye bye George.

Wed 4 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Mark Foley may bring down the government. (Perhaps it’s time to start drinking, not stop?) After the torture “debate”, hackable voting machines, pushing a war (or two, hello Afghanistan, increased opium production and all) based on false (where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?) premises, an energy policy crafted by oil insiders, and so (endlessly) on for the last six years, the present administration is going down over this? Sure, why not.

Didn’t they learn from last time they were in power? It’s the Cover Up, stupid.

Mark Foley is a poor fuck-up who we now hear was an abused kid, is gay, and a drunk—still waiting to hear his next excuse; believe it has something to do with being paid to send those IMs by the Democratic National Committee. He was the Co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children by day and, by day, exploiting children. The question rattling through Washington is who knew what he was doing and when?

Who thought it was a good idea to shuffle reports of his behavior into the “to do later” pile? Fire them all! This isn’t anti-Republican. It’s not a campaign orchestrated by anyone: if anything it’s a consensual cover-up being exposed. The IMs are coming from ex-Pages (who don’t want their own careers ruined), not from anyone else in DC.
There’s no organization, company, or group in the world who wouldn’t be calling for the heads of anyone involved in not acting on this information.


Poor hungry Not a Journal.

Wed 4 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Never gets fed. Until this afternoon.
Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword pb is in its 4th printing. Our edition is selling nicely.

Great review of Howard Who?

Back in print after so many years, Howard Who? remains a terrific collection of short stories. There is nobody else alive writing stories as magnificently strange, deliriously inventive, and utterly wonderful as Howard Waldrop. More.

This won’t stay online, so here’s the full thing.

Nancy Pearl Books Reviews for 10/2/2006:

On the one hand, reading Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link’s exquisitely loopy collection of stories, demands a certain suspension of disbelief, not unlike when you read Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, or the other magical realists. (As Shakespeare had Hamlet note, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”) You simply have to accept (at least for the length of the story) that there might be zombies living among us, or that a purse can expand to hold a complete village. On the other hand, Link’s writing is so remarkable, her use of language so mind-boggling perfect, that you’re sucked into the world of the stories before you know it, beguiled by descriptions like this one, of a sofa covered in “…an orange-juice-colored corduroy that makes it appear as if the couch has just escaped from a maximum security prison for criminally insane furniture.” My favorite is the title story, which reminds me of a drawing by M.C. Escher’s picture The Drawing Hands. It’s intricate, wildly imaginative, and totally wonderful. Whether or not you think you like fantasy, if you’re a fan of inventive plots and good writing – Link’s use of language will fill you with awe and joy – don’t miss this collection.


Get your name in a story &c.

Wed 4 Oct 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

More interesting things from the Clarion auction: your name in a Kelly Link story. Howard Waldrop on your answering machine. Your name in a Kate Wilhelm novel. Wacky. Other cool stuff.


Generalized ineptitude/updatitudinal

Fri 29 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Friday afternoon and the tree limbs are scraping against the window. How did they get here, to the 54th floor? We send one of the temp typographers over to open the window and he is never seen again. Did he run out to get more ink, or did the trees take him? The light is yellow, burning, and our secret HQ’s engines aren’t responding. We have done our Scotty imitation but so far we are stuck. And the tree branches are scraping, scraping.

–

Kelly Link and Shelley Jackson read tonight at Amherst Books in Amherst, MA, and next Sunday at KGB Bar in NYC. They read last night at Newtonville Books with Kelley Kerney (who read from her funny and dark first novel Born Again). Newtonville has a great reading series: Books and Brews. Smart peeps who know readings always go better with drinkies. Newtonville Books is also the spiritual home of a smart mag, Post Road, of which we are often enjoying.
LCRW 19 is becoming an item. The fun thing about this: it is the ten year anniversary issue. You will know because everything will be repeated 10 times. Times. Times. (Etc.) Table of contents, type of chocolate, still to be fully determined. Yes, we are pushing it. No, reviewers can’t get it yet. No one can.

Exciting LCRW news will be released to the tubes at some point. Until then go phone the White House and see if Mr. Stupid will explain his latest abuse of the constitution.

Incessantly listening to Thom Yorke. (There’s a site for his new CD, but it’s filled with flash and pdfs, so, really, what’s the point. That’s not browsing, that’s work.)

Good books and mags have been flooding in for this year’s Year’s Best. Now we are officially buried. Yay!

[Update] Good news about the 2006 edition: our editor reports the paperback edition just went back to press.
Big developers with no taste want to knock down Las Manitas restaurant in Austin, TX. How dumb is this? Does Marriott really want to close down a childcare facility and lose the best breakfast place for blocks around? Not a smart pr move. (Thanks for breaking our hearts, Robert.)

Git ye to an apple farm and pick.


Ellen Kushner signed book

Mon 25 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the SwordWe kidnapped Ellen Kushner, whished her away to one of our secret locations in a sunny place, made her juice*, and asked her politely to sign some of her lovely swashbuckler The Privilege of the Sword. And, you know, she did. So, if you want a signed copy, now’s your chance! WordPress love: cut’n'pasted button below:

PS We have lots of other signed books, here.

* A lie. We made apple juice today and when we looked for Ellen, she was not to be found.


eye popping art

Sun 24 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Do you have hungry eyes? Would they like to partake of a feast? Charles Vess illustrated the upcoming Susanna Clarke collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and provides samples and comments. (Yes, these are the DVD extras and no you don’t have to pay for them.) At his blog, n’est pa? Charles, one of the loveliest people around, has also been blogging about giving Clare Danes art and so on. What fun.

Also, at some point last week someone pointed (sorry, no attribution) to the photos from the film adaption of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. You must go look at those pictures. Satrapi’s simple lines are genius (calling the MacArthurs!—although with the way her books are doing maybe she’s doing fine these days). More good news there: in October she has another slim volume out,
Chicken with Plums, about an uncle who died after his wife broke his favorite musical intstrument.


Text Edit, energy, stickers.

Tue 19 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

For anyone fed up with how slow Word can be, Jed Berry pointed us to this handy text editor: a modified version of TextEdit. Get the Ogre Kit extras too, set the preferences, and off we go.

Futurismic points to good energy news:

Since 2000, global wind energy generation has more than tripled; solar cell production has risen six-fold; production of fuel ethanol from crops have more than doubled; and biodiesel production has expanded nearly four-fold. Annual global investment in “new” renewable energy has risen almost six-fold since 1995, with cumulative investment over this period nearly $180 billion.

Cafe Press updates (very irregular):


Catch up time

Mon 18 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Thoughtful and excellent review of Skinny Dipping:

“An impressive and darkly humorous debut collection—well worth every baby sacrificed in the making.” — Diagram

Calendar: Kelly is on the west coast this week and Ellen Kushner reads at KGB in NYC on Wednesday.

Exciting travel news: Kelly will be going to Italy in December to take part in the Turin Rome World Book Capital Program. She’ll be reading or doing events in Turin, Milan, and Rome. This is in between two other events, the small/indie press Book Fair in New York City on Dec 1/2 (that’s 1st & 2nd, not 0.5) and something else, but there’s enough time, a week or so, to go see some Old Stuff. Constantine’s finger, here we come!

This is due to the fantastic job Donzelli has done with Stranger Things Happen. We received some PDF pages of an Italian mag article on Kelly and the book—the piece had some great art in it so at some point we hope to get them on here. In the meantime, a little Italian blog love.

From our newsletter thing: Aunt Gwenda’s been handing out pithy advice for a while now. Aren’t you in need? Send us your question to info@lcrw.net (include your address and with luck we’ll send you the ish of LCRW your question appears in). That could be LCRW 19, which will be the 10th anniversary issue. Perhaps the last if we think too deeply about that. But Zine World just said this about #17, so maybe we will keep going: “This treasury of fiction is a feast of mystery, novelty, and desire.” Send Aunty G. a Q!

Clarion move FAQ.

We’d love to hear from any teachers or professors or whomever using Small Beer books in classrooms or any kind of teaching use. We want to send some catalogs out to other people who could be doing the same thing so maybe you can help us use the right language?


This Corrosion

Mon 18 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

2 AM videos: Ok Go. Best use of exercise machines, best choreography. (Thanks Meghan!).

Then there are so many crowd (and regular) videos on YouTube that 2 can easily become 4 (AM). Thanks to everyone who ever sneaked a decent video camera into a concert. Watching a lot of bands whose videos never made it onto Top of the Pops, Old Grey Whistle Test, and whatever other few places to see them there were in a non-MTV land or digging into the past of bands only later learned to love.

Sisters of Mercy. An appropriate slight case of overbombing: Dominion (any excuse to play around in the desert), 1959, Lucretia, My Reflection (begin with the bass), This Corrosion (in its year of release it has to be danced to at least once per week), Possession, Heartland—this tape does indeed contain “a portion of Jolene“. Knocking on Heaven’s Door.

Few others: Still in Hollywood, Concrete Blonde. (So young! So much fun. Still a great video. Still don’t know all the words, sorry Gwenda.) Have to check out Catfish Scar, Johnette’s new band.

Tinariwen! Hipsway.
Also this:

  Tiptree radio drama; “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” — Max Schmid guest host

Thanks to Jim Freund for the link—which will be live for 10 more days or so.

Some other time: more embarrassing bands, more embarrassing hair cuts.


Good stuff, cheap

Wed 13 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Ok, so some of it is great stuff, so sue us for the emotional distress of reading that Gene Wolfe’s books are good, not great. We believe you. We sympathize. We’d like to talk about it over tea, though, and think that mediation is appropriate here, instead of legal action.

Anyway, lookee here: 2006 Clarion SF eBay Auction Sept. 10 – Oct. 8. See the stuff or get straight to the bidding. Q? A. Chocolaty subscription to LCRW and naming rights to character in a Jim Kelly or Kelly Link story available. Huh. Must go bid!
All proceeds directly benefit the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UCSD.

UCSD? Yup. Clarion East just became Where in the World is Carmen San Deigo. Why? Finances, baby! Should work out that the students have as good a time as ever, if travel is more expensive there should be new travel scholarships from the Clarion Foundation.

Our mole (we have links everywhere) tells us the Foundation (a scary group of powerful backroom figures or an all volunteer board, you decide) spent a year talking to schools around the country and UCSD was the most enthusiastic and put together the best long-term package. Bummer to leave Michigan: it was hot, the food was college food, but everyone worked hard and the workshop was successful. Hope San Diego has a botanical garden near the dorms.
Clarion’s survival, being there for writers, is what all the Clarion workshops are about. Clarion West in Seattle is an amazing thing. Clarion South, the Australian edition, is every two years to best fit their needs. Clarion East becoming SD (or whatever) is pretty shocking but, like the move Clarion took from Pennsylvania to New Orleans(!) then to Michigan, it has to go where it must. 2007 instructors are: Gregory Frost Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jeff VanderMeer, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman.


James Tiptree. Jr.’s letter to Carol Emshwiller

Mon 11 Sep 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Carol EmshwillerRecently we got the chance (you know, dark alleys, anonymous meetings in bars, dead letter boxes, the usual routine) to buy a letter to Carol Emshwiller from James Tiptree. Jr., aka Alice Sheldon (whose bio, by Julie Phillips, is burning up the book charts). Carol never replied but she kept writing and now has quite a few books out, including The Mount, Report to the Men’s Club, and Carmen Dog.

It’s a fantastic letter: over-the-top, enthusiastic, coffee-stained—although whose that is and when it happened is unknown.

We forged some ownership papers and caravaned it safely out of the country to our cold storage facility in the Arctic where it’s got a whole ice-cavern of its own.

But that didn’t seem quite right, so we’ve put up a low-resolution scan. This is how it starts:

24 May 75

Dear Carol Emshwiller:

May a stranger make known how much your book, JOY IN OUR CAUSE has been enjoyed? Weak word, meant to include admired, goggled at, occasionally genuflected to, been rivetted in entrancement by, and, not least, suffered suicidal inferiority-convictions from.

Read on


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