10 x 5
Wed 31 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., To Read Pile | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
5 spooky books for Halloweeen from Kelly; 5 not-so spooky from Gavin.
New LCRW
Tue 30 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller, LCRW | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
The new LCRW is at the printer—so we should have it (fingers stiff from still being crossed) in Saratoga. In the table of contents there are names familiar and surprising (as per).
In fiction we have stories from authors new (to us) such as Adam Ares, Alice Sola Kim (whose story “The Mom Walk” is also fantastic) the Stephanie Brady Tharpe (first publication!), the redoubtable Garbo (aka Matt Cheney), Corie Ralston, Benjamin Parzybok, and Kirstin Allio (whose novel Garner appropriately garnered much praise).
Returning to us are Jeanette Westwood (LCRW 18), Brian Conn (LCRW 10), and Carol Emshwiller (LCRW 8, 19)—who will be a guest of honor this coming weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs and who we think is completely fabby.
We only have one poet (again, new to us) this time, Lauren Bartel. Happily Dear Aunt Gwenda is back and we have a short piece from the World Sci Fi Convention in Japan. We twisted Abby Denson’s arm until she sent us a comic with cats and dolls and we have Suzanne Baumann’s tiny drawings all through.
The cover is by the fantastic Tatsuro Kiuchi.
There is a lack of zine reviews, so maybe they will appear on the site later.
We updated the subscription page for this issue and added the Google Map of LCRW stores (so few! won’t your store carry this zine?) to the main LCRW page.
And as an aside, you can order it (and now The Best of LCRW as well as many other things) here.
LCRW 21 should be mailing out to authors, artists, poets, subscribers, shops, shoppes, and preorderers, in the first week of November. Chocolate is actually here ahead of time and if it isn’t eaten first will be in your happy hands within 2 weeks. Or so. You know mailing on time is our weakness.
Fiction
Alice Sola Kim, The Night and Day War
Adam Ares, The Curmudgeon
Matthew Cheney, The Lake
Stephanie Brady Tharpe, On a Dark and Featureless Plain
Jeannette Westwood, Two Variations
Kirstin Allio, Clay
Brian Conn, The Postern Gate
Benjamin Parzybok, The Coder
Corie Ralston, Maps to God
Carol Emshwiller, Sanctuary
Poetry
Lauren Bartel, Two Poems
Nonfiction
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
Mamoru Masuda, A Primer on New Wave and Speculative Fiction in Japan
Comics
Suzanne Baumann, The Blokes of Ball Point
Abby Denson, The Mysterious Mr. M.
Cover
Tatsuro Kiuchi
Cheney, Schanoes, Tempest tonight
Tue 30 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Interstitial Arts | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
If you’re in NYC and aren’t sure if the short story is dead, get along to the INTERFICTIONS READING & SIGNING tonight at McNally Robinson (look at the pretty pictures!), 52 Prince St., New York City, and see the revivified form burst to life with editor Delia Sherman, and contributors Veronica Schanoes, Matt Cheney, and K. Tempest Bradford.
Tuesday October 30, 2007
7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
McNally Robinson
We go to Saratoga
Mon 29 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Maybe see you there? We’ll have a table in the dealer’s room with some interesting extras besides our books and (fingers crossed) a new issue of LCRW.
Kelly’s schedule is:
Friday, 2:00 PM, City Center C: M.R. James and His Successors.
Christopher Roden, John Langan (m), Kelly Link, Ramsey Campbell, Barbara RodenSaturday, 9:00 PM, City Center C: The Legacy of Shirley Jackson.
Charlaine Harris, Kathryn Cramer, Alexandra Sokoloff, James Frenkel (m), Kelly Link
Gavin is on the judges panel (bring chocolate, not rotten cabbages, it was such hard work!) at some point on Sunday afternoon after the banquet.
Literary Beer Episode 1: Traditional Hard Cider
Fri 26 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Literary Beer | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Michael
(Episode 0 explains the conceit.)
The word ‘traditional’ is here meant to indicate that I’m not using added sweeteners (which could range from raisins to honey to plain white sugar, and would increase the resulting alcohol content) or other mitigating elements (such as campden tablets, fruit pectin, fruit enzyme or packaged yeast, which would ensure a more reliable fermentation, but would require me to expend more money and effort). This article gives a good overview of the terminology for the different styles of cider and their composition.
A caveat: I’ve been brewing successfully for awhile now, but I have never made cider before. What follows is largely an experiment (albeit a meticulously researched one), whose results will hopefully lead to further experimentation and refinement in years to come.
The Future
Thu 25 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., To Read Pile | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Apparently the only way Forbes magazine can think about the future is to ask 5 guys to write science fiction. So is this future of short SF highly paid magazine slots? Excellent. (Cory’s story is fun, haven’t read the rest yet.)
Five authors tackle the same scenario: “It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace.”
Recent reads
Wed 24 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Zines | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
There’s a new issue of Xerography Debt—”the review zine with perzine tendencies.” Available at Atomic Books, Quimby’s, etc! It’s a great place to find new things to read which haven’t been okayed by Rupert Murdoch, etc.
You can order it here or, if you like that PDF thing, you can get the Whole Thing for Free. Which means you saved some $$ you can go spend on other zines, right?
Come south for winter
Tue 23 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, workshops | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Clarion South have just announced the 2009 tutor line up:
- Week 1: Sean Williams
Week 2: Marianne de Pierres
Week 3: Margo Lanagan
Week 4: Jack Dann
Week 5: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant
Week 6: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant
We’re going back to Brisbane! You can come too—for 6 weeks of writing workshop! The workshop was incredibly impressively put together and we’re very much looking forward to Clarion South ‘09.
Brisbane! Riverboats, wine, museums, Aurealis Awards, koala petting zoos(!), more fun than you can carry back on a 24-hour flight. Wonder if Virgin Airlines can take us there….
Q. Wasn’t it hot there?
A. Yes. But there was knee-high snow at home, so it seemed like a good idea.
A(2). Besides, it’s Australia!
Q. Are there any good bookshops in Brisbane?
A. Funny you should ask (and why wasn’t this the first question?). Pulp Fiction is a wonderful spec fic shop (now with added Press), there are a bunch of Dymocks, there’s the Avid Reader Bookshop in the West End. Oh, there’s tons.
Q. Will you faint if you meet Margo Lanagan.
A. It would be nice to manage not to for once but it’s probable.
Q. 17 students, 6 instructors. Is that cricket?
A. Cricket is the one with wickets (do all sports have rhyming components?). This will be more like rugby, but with water guns, red pencils, barbecue, and accents.
Q. Can only Australians go?
A. We’re not Australian. The more nationalities, the better! It would be great to see writers from all over Asia, Oceania, Antarctica, etc.
Q. Tell me more!
A. Ok, from their site:
Application Process
Applications will close at the end of June 2008. Applications submitted by the Earlybird Date of Wednesday, April 30th may be eligible for a $100 discount if you are accepted to the workshop.
There is a maximum of seventeen places available for Clarion South 2009. Participants will be selected by a panel of industry professionals based on the quality of their written submissions.
Useful Web 2.0 Stuff
Tue 23 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., website bumph | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Just signed up for Tour Filter (should be one word, all lower case, of course) which does seem rather groovy and very much like something we’ve been waiting for the web to deliver (we don’t program: we wait).
Yay! Cut and pasted tons of bands from our this-empty-space-is-a-social-experiment-really myspace page and Voila! Tracking tons of bands. Could be good, as it grows, to check out cities where we have to go for conventions: LA in June, anyone?
Also signed up for Book Tour. You can subscribe to authors (they’re still adding people so not everyone is there), check by zip code or city, and look for books. That last one seemed the weakest link and it doesn’t have the fastest search engine, but it could become a good site. Anything that makes keeping up easier. May add our authors to this—or see if someone else will!
Read Around New England took a shot at this previously, but maybe didn’t have rss feeds (Or Chris Anderson or “Chief Evangelist” [religion, it's everywhere] Kevin Smokler).
It’s the personalizationableness (ha!) of both of these things that will determine their survival.They’re both nice, simple sites at the moment—although the above-mentioned mycrap site shows that simplicity and good design aren’t actually necessary to pull people in—and if they can keep that and resist the Amazonian urge to mess with their recommendation engines, they’ll be huge.
Now, can someone write a site like these for TV? How about short fiction? Vegetarian restaurants? Nonleather shoes? Every petty little need and want?
At the other end of the spectrum on Monday we got a call from a large literary organization (whom we like a lot so no names) asking if we would like to pay $395 a year to have a profile on their site.
Could be the wrong answer (hope we’re not in the bad books for this) but, um, thanks for the opportunity, but no thanks. $395 is a lot of beer. And what’s the point of paying for a profile? Either the website is edited/curated and the profiles mean something, or they’re paid for and it’s just a link farm moneymaker.
New subscription level?
Mon 22 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
There’s a new ish of LCRW almost ready to go (the people chewing on old rags to make paper are a little behind but it should still go out on time). In the meantime we’re considering adding a new subscription level: the LCRW-engraved iPod! We just need 250 people to sign up….
Literary Beer Episode 0: Ruminations
Mon 22 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Literary Beer | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Michael
People not familiar with the publishing world tend to look at me askance when I tell them I’m an intern at a place called “Small Beer Press”. It’s the beer part that throws them, I think–knowing me and my fondness for froth, they suspect me (not unfoundedly) of jerking them around. And I must admit that upon first presenting myself at Small Beer Press, I was a tiny bit disappointed that beer didn’t play a more important role in the proceedings.
Well, I am here to remedy that.
Gavin invited me to blog about brewing. Brilliant idea! Can’t think of why it never occurred to me before, except that I’ve only been brewing for just over two years–a relative newbie compared to some of the hoary old beerheads with whom I consort. But given such a fine opportunity, I am more than happy to have a go at combining my two not-so-disparate passions–writing and brewing.
What, I have at times been asked, can the brewing of beer possibly have to do with the business of books? Ha! I am often inclined to respond (though I resist). Ha!
Fill with mingled cream and amber
I will drain that glass again
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chambers of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies,
Come to life and fade away:
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.
–Edgar Allen Poe (copied from the bathroom wall of a pub in Washington, DC)
I most recently came across the term “small beer,” used in its original sense, in a lovely annotated edition of R.L. Stevenson’s Kidnapped that I picked up at a library book sale. The year is 1751. David Balfour, our orphan boy hero, arrives at the home of his last living relative, an uncle, only to be greeted with the blunt end of a blunderbuss and promptly sent packing. Not so easily deterred, and with no other ready prospects, our hero persists, and at last the old coot begrudges him a seat at his table, a miser’s share of homemade porridge, and half a pint of small beer from his personal stash. What does this mean, exactly? It means the old coot is too much of a miser to go trading his precious coin for a dram of the pale when he can cook up his own on the cheap. Homebrew!
As a synonym for homebrew, “small beer” went out of wide use in this country during Prohibition, when all beer was small beer because it was illegal, and nobody bothered making beer anyway because it was far more profitable to make hooch. Not until 1979 (tellingly, the year of my birth) did the brewing of single batch beer in the comfort of one’s kitchen cross back into the good graces of the Man. Since then, it has become popular to refer to small beer by its trendier synonym, “microbrew”.
It so happens that the independent publishing of striking and unusual speculative fiction has quite a lot in common with the meticulous small-batch brewing of delicious alcoholic beverages. First, that DIY spirit. Second, an under-the-radar uniqueness. Third, a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment.
And finally, an exhilarating hint of the supernatural.
My friend and beer ally Scott Andrews once pointed out the link between the fantastic and the alcoholic. Human civilizations have been built around the brewing of spiritous drink for four thousand years and longer, but the existence of yeast wasn’t discovered until 1680, and its role in the fermentation process wasn’t understood until the mid-nineteenth century. So from the drunk slaves who built the pyramids right up to the merry pumpkin-ale-brewing wenches of frontier New England, nobody really knew how the spirit was getting into the drink. You filled an open vat with soupy, starch-and-sugar-infused liquid, looked away for one waxing and waning of the moon–and by magic, when you looked back, the same stuff not only tasted better, it made a hard life easier to bear. Belgian monks in the middle ages attributed the fermentation process to an act of God. A myth dating from the Egyptian Early Kingdom conflates beer with the blood of Hathor, a vengeful war goddess who, after Osiris got her drunk, was transformed into a kind and nurturing goddess of motherhood and fertility. For most of the history of recorded literature, the art of brewing was a branch of sorcery.
Right then. Unless I get into my cups at the keyboard, that will probably be it from me as far as ruminations on the sublime nature of beer. Though if I come across any other great beer myths or beer lit, I’ll pass them along. And I’m not swearing off the occasional dabbling in beer history. But other than that, it’ll be DIY from here on out.
Up next: my first-ever effort at hard cider.
Year’s Best Fantasy ‘06
Mon 22 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Uncategorized | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
We completely missed the best fantasy of 2006: The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard. It was shown in the UK in 2006 and just started on PBS.
[Spoilers] Jane Horrocks plays a supermarket manager who starts a new political party and pulls off a democratic revolution basically replacing all the grey old men in power with women and not really commenting on that aspect of it.[/Spoilers]
Wikipedia says it could be all down hill from the first couple of episodes, but who cares? Some reviews like it. Could there be a independent revolution in the USA? Um, only dreaming, guv, no need to bring up Guantanamo Bay.
Other stuff:
Also: saw The Jane Austen Book Club the other day. Hey, not bad! And someone pointed us to this picture of the author, the screenwriter, and that guy from Buffy.
United Airlines has a nice call out to Interfictions in their inflight mag Hemispheres. (Thanks Ellen!)
A review of Iain Banks’ new novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale.
On Library Thing someone has the pretty pretty Romanian cover of Magic for Beginners.And Mario Guslandi flexes his brain around The Best… in the Agony Column.
Somehow missed Colleen Cahill’s review of The Best of LCRW in SF Revu (found due to noodling around Library Thing!). She notices our penchant for:
“. . . poetry with intriguing titles, as in Sunshine Ison’s “The Posthumous Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” and “Lady Shonagon’s Hateful Things” by Margaret Muirhead. . . .
Eclectic, heart-warming, cautionary, funny, informative, and most of all enthralling best describe this book. You will find no better place to explore this outstanding and unique publication: I highly recommend you pick up a copy today.”
Mon 22 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art | 1 Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
What would we like for a present? Oh, you’re too kind! How about something like this panel carved by Deborah Mills. We found Deborah’s work through Daniel Rabuzzi (who had a story in LCRW 19) and have been admiring it online. Need to go see it one of these days.
Mon 22 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
What would we like for a present? Oh, you’re too kind! How about something like this panel carved by Deborah Mills. We found Deborah’s work through Daniel Rabuzzi (who had a story in LCRW 19) and have been admiring it online. Need to go see it one of these days.
SH supporters
Fri 19 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
Hey kids, if you asked for a Small Beer book when you supported Strange Horizons during their recent fund raiser, well, that book May Be On Its Way!
Thanks for supporting them!
Booker books online
Fri 19 Oct 2007 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Publishing | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press
This (from Shelf Awareness) is pretty exciting:
The organizers of the Man Booker Prize are negotiating to make the six shortlisted titles this year available in their entirety and for free online, the Times of London reported. The idea is to reach areas, particularly in Africa and Asia, where the books might not be available. “The downloads will not impact on sales, it is thought,” the paper wrote. “If readers like a novel tasted on the internet, they may just be inspired to buy the
actual book.”
The publisher of the Man Booker winner, The Gathering by Anne Enright, said he prefers “a partial reproduction.”
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