Did you know we are publishing Karen Joy Fowler’s next book?

Tue 22 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

It is true! How happy are we? Massively! If happiness were weighed in stars we’d be a black hole!

Looking at those announcement posts we did a while back, it looks like we never made it all the way to September of this year (mmm, autumn!) which is the when when the what all over will be What I Didn’t See and Other Stories. And that what is a stunning collection: heartbreaking and deeply realistic even with their occasional fantastic touches. Did you ever read her story “King Rat” in Trampoline? Egads, it was a killer. Now it has been gathered with eleven others (including one, no, wait, two! Nebula Award winners) and, tra la la, a story that makes its first appearance here.

And how shall this book appear? As a zap-it’s-yours ebook from the usual places and also as a lovely hardcover paper book made from lovely recycled paper. The cover is a collage which is being handmade especially for the book by Brooklyn artist Erica Harris—whom some of you may remember as the artist whose fabulous art graced one of our early books, Carol Emshwiller’s collection, Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories.

We’ll have a preorder page set up soon and or you can order it from Powell’s. Or, wait a bit and see if Karen is reading near you! Karen is one of our favorite readers—or panelist: go see her whenever you can—and we expect to be setting up quite a few West Coast readings and maybe maybe more elsewhere.

Ta da!


Up! Date!

Mon 21 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Everything has slowed down at Small Beer hq due to the summer heat and maybe maybe perhaps that little thing that World Cup. Yay for the future arriving and being able to watch most of the matches on ESPN3—or free at many many bars, mmm. Sadly the White Horse Tavern in Allston was out of Dogfish IPA two days in a row but Troeg’s Hopback Amber was a good substitute.

Congratulations to Gerbrand Bakker (and translator David Colmer and Archipelago Books!) whose novel The Twin just won the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Between that and Tinkers receiving the Pulitzer price it makes for a great year for independent presses!

We have a fun update on Kathe Koja’s book coming later this week. Let’s just say you should order then, not now. Oooh!

What else we’re up to:

Watching the World Cup. No, really, there are 3 games a day at the moment. How is anyone supposed to do anything else but sit in bars, drink, and watch the games? Deadlines? Whoosh!

Also, Kelly’s about done with her blogging, although she does promise a couple more posts here and at Gwenda’s at a time TBA. Nice to see Gwenda (and some others) poking her head up above the bunkers again. We too watch the True Blood but are a season behind. Ah, DVDs.

Just saw a great review of A Life on Paper on The Agony Column. There’s one way to make sure the rest of G.-O. C’s work gets translated into English:

Châteaureynaud has a backlist for American readers that this book makes enticingly tangible, almost real. His own work is such that it might be subject of one of his stories. This might be all there is, the rest pure fabrication. The unreal, awaiting translation.

Alasdair Gray is interviewed by Jeff VanderMeer on Gray Week at Omnivoracious:

Gray’s new novel, Old Men in Love, is a mash-up of several different voices, creating a narrative through collage. The main text is presented as the posthumous papers of a retired Glaswegian schoolmaster named John Tunnock, seemingly edited by Gray. Tunnock’s a rogue whose exploits often backfire on him, and the novel contains everything from historical fictions set in Renaissance Italy to accounts of how his young mistresses take advantage of him.

Also, Will Self’s Appreciation of Alasdair Gray’s Old Men in Love

And Thursday Extra: Alasdair Gray, Author of Old Men in Love, Recommends Agnes Owens

How awesome was that week? Well, apart from the commenter—who says he’s a big fan of the author—who gave the book 1 star because he can’t read it in the format he wants. Oh well.

Old Men in Love was also reviewed by a long-time reader of Gray’s books, Gerry Donaghy, on Powell’s Review-a-Day:

Clear in this book, as in past volumes, is Gray’s devotion to the idea of the book as an object. Throughout his career he has designed his own books (usually to either save his publisher some cash or collect a second paycheck), and Old Men in Love is no exception. Poorly suited to a Kindle reading experience, it’s filled with various typefaces, ornamental drawings, and Blake-inspired illustrations. Even the boards of the book itself are tooled in silver-looking flake. If eBooks are the future, it looks like Gray is going to go out swinging.

A bit of LCRW news:

Does seem like there was more going on. But somehow the day has passed passed and gone and now it’s either time to see Luis Alberto Urrea at the Harvard Bookstore, or not! And, tomorrow: Colson Whitehead. And, in a few weeks, David Mitchell. Ooh, those lit’ry mens.


Are you a Geoff Ryman superfan?

Mon 21 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 8 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

We’d love to hear from you!


Alasdair Gray: out now!

Thu 10 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

At last! We have copies, the author (post office willing) will soon have his copies, lovely people who pre-ordered theirs have their copies, NPR got their copies (and one of our local stations, WBUR, has reprinted that review), NYTimes, and so on, all have their copies, everyone can get copies of Alasdair Gray’s latest novel Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers. Reviewers? Want a copy? Drop us a line!

Fun coming up: Alasdair will be interviewed online. More on that if and when it happens. And, for the nonce, here’s an interview from October on the center of all things internet, The Rumpus.

Also, you can read an excerpt on Scribd. (No, there will not be an ebook although we’ll talk more to Alasdair about that later.)

This book was awesome to publish: not just because I’ve been reading Alasdair’s books for years but it was great to deal with Alasdair—and his lovely secretary, Helen—when things went pear-shaped with the Bloomsbury files. Weeks disappeared. Weeks! But it has (almost!) all come out ok in the end.

One of the parts that was easiest about publishing this book was the flap copy because the UK edition already had copy written by Will Self so we’ll post it here just for all yous:

———–

Alasdair Gray’s new novel, Old Men in Love, exhibits all of those faintly preposterous foibles that make him a writer more loved than prized. The bulk of the text constitutes the posthumous papers of a recondite – yet venal – retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, named John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself.

This literary subterfuge serves to fool no one who needs fooling, yet will satisfy all who believe that the truth can be found more exactly in chance occurrences, serendipity, and the eggy scrapings from the breakfast plates of the neglected, than any crude, linear naturalism.

Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock’s own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government’s final five years.

Only Gray can be fecklessly sexy as well as insidiously sagacious. Only Gray can beguile quite so limpidly. If I were a Hollywood screenwriter (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am not), I would pitch the film adaptation of Old Men in Love thus: ‘Imagine Lanark meets Something Leather, with a kind of Poor Things feel to it…’ By this I mean to convey to this novel’s readers that Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He’s the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly.

———–

Get your copy here!


Signed Cloud & Ashes

Wed 9 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

After WisCon we have a few signed copies of Cloud & Ashes up for grabs. Someone asked if this book will be paperbacked and the answer is a definite: not sure! Maybe maybe. Maybe just Unleaving by itself. Still thinking it over.


Topics for Kelly?

Wed 9 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s blog tour is under way and if you have any topic requests for later in the week please post in the comments!

Here’s the tour so far. (Today’s is a book giveaway, so go sign up for that, or you can get your copy from Powell’s who have it in stock now.)

Updated with links to posts:

The Cozy Reader — on writing and not writing
Forever Young — a continuation of the above
Parajunkee’s View — paranormal monsters
Reviews by Brooke — lists!
Anna’s Book Blog — reading as a writer
Books By Their Cover — short review + interview
Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews — story idea generation
Monster Librarian — interview
Fantasy Book Critic — Kelly interviews N.K. Jemisin
Word for Teens — on Diana Wynne Jones
The Compulsive Reader — go make a zine!
TBA: Bookchickcity.com


Old LCRWs getting lighter and cheaper

Tue 8 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve just added LCRW 16, LCRW 17 and LCRW 18 to Weightless and dropped the price of LCRW ebooks to $2.99! Woot! Cough! Exclamation!

Also of LCRW interest: a review of LCRW 24 from Ray Garraty in Russia (and in Russian).

More ebookery: we just added Part 2 of Astrid Amara’s The Archer’s Heart on Weightless. What are we talking about? Here, go get Part 1: serialized fiction, it’s Weightlessed!

Travel Light is now available as an ebook for the very first time. It is an awesome book that you should have read when you’re 10. In fact, if you are 10, read it now. If you are not 10, read it anyway. And, isn’t that the best title ever of a book to read as an ebook? Oh sure, our paperback has the gorgeous Kevin Huizenga cover but you know, travel light. Of course if you’re hauling around some huge ebook reader maybe that isn’t travelling so light.

At some point we will probably offload all our ebooks to Weightless—which is growing along nicely. (And we’re very happy that those 2 million iPad readers will be able to read PDFs on it now. We make pretty pages and want you to enjoy them as well as the stories on them.) Anyway, so tell us if you think the offloading of ebooks to the other site is s a good or bad idea.


Introducing Georges-Olivier

Mon 7 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Today we’re celebrating the publication of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s first book in English, A Life on Paper: Stories, translated by Edward Gauvin. Obviously we will be watching the New York Times bestseller list closely this week because this book is a surefire hit: not only is it a translation, it’s a short story collection. Last week’s bestseller list contained four collections (one translated from Basque, one Welsh) and two anthologies—one of the usual sex+drugs+rocknroll stories and the other an anthology of Czech novellas. So the national appetite is whetted for a collection such as A Life on Paper, which introduces one of France’s premiere masters of the form. Run to the store! Or, download it now.

Edward Gauvin first brought Châteaureynaud to our attention a couple of years ago with a small chapbook of three stories, Trois Contes (One Horse Town), and he continued to keep us up to date with his doings. There had been a story published here, a story there, had we seen that Châteaureynaud won another award, let me tell you about this great and weird novel he just published. He sent us some pictures of the author (see below—and we realized that this was the French Vonnegut) and a few of his French book covers. Eventually we clued in to the fact that we are publishers and here was a fantastic French author whose work hadn’t been published in ye olde English language. At that point we broke out the checkbook and acquired the book. We also realized that Châteaureynaud’s face was about the best cover possible for this book. There’s a face that says I’ve got stories to tell.

Publishing a translation of 22 stories taken from half a dozen different collections whose rights are owned by three different publishers and the author has been . . . interesting! The easiest part was working with Brian Evenson who wrote the excellent Foreword to the collection. The more difficult part was that thing about the three publishers and so on. However, that’s where the French Publishers’ Agency comes in. The lovely people there worked with us on all those contracts (and the revisions, the endless revisions!) with Actes Sud, Grasset, and Juilliard, and without them it’s unlikely that this book would have made it to publication here in the USA. They also worked with us and Edward on applying for a couple of different grants—which very much helped with the costs; and one of the grants may be used for Châteaureynaud’s next book instead of this one. Because it turns out that some of Châteaureynaud’s work is connected and if you read some of these stories they help set up the world of some of his novels. Which is something we’re looking forward to getting to once Edward sends us the translation. Of course, Edward is off in Belgium on a Fulbright, but we’re hoping he won’t be so enamored of the Belgian beer and books that he will forget his US readers patiently waiting for the next Châteaureynaud.

So in the meantime, we’re proud to present our second translation—Kalpa Imperial by Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer and translated by Ursula K. Le Guin being the first—and newest collection of short stories: A Life on Paper. As usual for us, this book crosses many genre borders so no doubt in some bookshops you will find it shelved in fiction and in others you’ll find it in science fiction. The one given is that you should go out and find it!


Kelly’s going on a blog tour

Tue 1 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Pretty MonstersNext week the paperback of Kelly’s collection Pretty Monsters comes out from Penguin and since she won’t be going out on tour (maybe she will for the theoretical next book—which, to forestall questions, isn’t written, scheduled, etc.), instead she is going out into the Great Tubes of the Internets for a tour of the far horizons of Bloglandia. The paperback (just to complicate the lives of blibliographers) has one extra story, “The Cinderella Game”—originally published in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Troll’s Eye View anthology—and is sitting here looking very pretty and proud.

Also, I think about four of these sites are giving away copies of Pretty Monsters so please do add these to reading calendar for next week:

June 7: Thecozyreader.com
June 8: Foreveryalit.com
June 8: Parajunkee.com
June 9: Reviewsbybrooke.blogspot.com
June 10: Annavivian.blogspot.com
June 11: Booksbytheircover.blogspot.com
June 14: Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews
June 15: Monsterlibrarian.com
June 15: Bookchickcity.com
June 16: Fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com
June 17: Wordforteens.blogspot.com
June 18: Thecompulsivereader.com


Wanted: list of any sf+f stories set in Tokyo

Sat 29 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 12 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Mari Kotani and the rest of the women who are running this year’s Japanese science fiction convention are looking for any stories (science fiction or fantasy) set in Tokyo. Help? Ideas? Lists?


Wiscon/Laurie Marks

Sat 29 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, I’m at WisCon—hello lovely Madison! If you’re here and want to donate to help Laurie J. Marks’s wife Deb Mensinger’s liver transplant we have a donation box at our table in the dealers’ room. As well as some books and all that stuff—and not just from us!

ETA: We raised $200 and sent it on to Laurie and Deb, thanks to everyone who donated.


Tonight: Wrrock! Tomorrow: Bea (not Arthur)

Tue 25 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight we are in Brooklyn at the Wrrrrrrrrrrrock ON Rock n Roll Show which our pals at Two Dollar Radio put together. It’s a party, a show, a fundraiser, a raising of hell. We hope to exchange deafened nods with you there!

Then: tomorrow we are at BookExpo New York. The new, slim-lined edition (i.e. Honey, they shrank the show!). We shrank it, too, and have a shelf of books (and some giveaways, natch) in the Consortium area, Booth 4511. Drop by and say Hi! Julia Holmes, debut author of Meeks will be there and on Thursday (as subscribers to our nifty Events Calendar will already know) Delia Sherman, co-editor of Interfictions 2 will be signing that there book: Table 1, 10:30 AM.

Later on the week: Jed Berry goes to Bloody Words (no, really!) and Gavin goes to WisCon. Irregular mailing of books may result (although there are peeps in the office: Michael! Cristi! Maybe More!) and email will be a Shambles. (Yes, email will resemble an area of York.)

This update brought to you by Peter Pan Free Wifi!


Donate to Narrative? Uh, no.

Thu 20 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , | 4 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

God knows why I get Narrative magazine’s spam. I don’t remember signing up for it but that’s a common story online. And I haven’t unsubscribed as they are the original car-crash-good-lord-do-they-really-charge-writers magazine. Their model seems to be a weird hybrid of popular vs. unpopular kids with the first part being those who drank the koolaid, paid $20 to submit their story (No, really, $20.) and maybe have been published, but published or not have bought into the publishers’ idea. The unpopular are the great unwashed (me!) who think they’d be better to buy a six pack of beer and a couple of magazines with that $20. Yup.

So now they are spamming everyone on their list with a request for $10. Wow: spam that reads like spam! It’s . . . spam!

Why $10? Well,

$10 is not so much when you consider that Narrative publishes more fiction writers, poets, and artists than any other literary magazine—more than 300 authors and artists last year alone—and that we give our content away, free.

Ok. So:

  1. You want money because you published more authors (including all those dead authors who I am sure are right grateful to be published and their zombie selves will be at your door ready to receive their checks any day now) than anyone else. Um, congratulations.
    But, didn’t all those authors—and anyone else daft enough to pay—already give you $20? Do they get 2 chances in some crappy drawing you’re offering people who reply to your spamscam? Once they’ve paid $10, will you reel them in to higher levels? Ah, apropos of nothing at all I’d just like to reminisce about that great book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.
    So, did Narrative count how many authors other magazines published? Did they query emails lists? (They didn’t query the CLMP email lists.) Did they, in fact, have a really really hard time coming up with reasons why anyone would send in their hard-earned cash?
  2. You want money because you “give our content away, free.” Um, no. That is wrong. If you give it away free you do not get to demand money. Nope.

Hmm, ok. Enough time wasted on this. They, apparently, “need you.” Right. All arts organizations always need supporters and they’re always hoping for more money. Hell, so are all companies, such as us at Small Beer Press. But if you have $10 to spare today, send it to Laurie J. Marks and her wife who’s getting a liver transplant, send it to Haiti, buy a subscription to One Story, go get a great lunch. Don’t give it to someone who’s asking you for money for something that’s “free.”


Tom Canty art, signed books by Kelly, more more more

Thu 20 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Here is a tiny note to ignore. In fact, skip this para and go right to the next one. If you do read this, please don’t go bid against us for the Thomas Canty-illustrated copy of Water Logic—which is part of the auction to raise money for Laurie J. Marks’s wife, Deb Mensinger’s liver transplant.

Ok, so you skipped that paragraph. Thank you! But before you read on to find out what exciting things are happening here (alchemy! we turn art into commerce!) how about bidding on this copy of Water Logic customized with an original drawing by Thomas Canty ? Yay!

Bid!

And, they just posted this offer: all of Kelly’s collections either signed or personalized to you. You know we’re not going anywhere for a while so if you’d like a signed copy, this is your best chance for, what, a year at least?

Today’s featured (starred!) review on Booklist is Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo! That cover is not the actual cover, everyone will be relieved to know. The final cover is almost done, the interior is done (sorry, not being printed in indigo ink), so off to the printer it will go. This is the first novel you’re going to love and you will be so happy to be one of the readers who can say I was there when . . .

New Zealanders—this one is for you! “Next week (May 24 – 28) ‘Good Morning‘ book reviewer Laura Kroetsch is looking at Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (Text, 9781921656361)” + 2 other books! (Thanks Renee!)

Edward Gauvin is fighting a valiant battle against those who think Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is a Kurt Vonnegut literary game.

The strenuousness of these assertions–mine and publisher Small Beer’s–should not, I repeat, decidedly not be construed as protest, or evidence of insincerity. That is all.

In the meantime, A Life on Paper has shipped from the printer and will be hitting stores in a week or two—reviews should then pile in. Who isn’t going to review a major French author’s first work in English? Here’s a story from the book, “The Excursion,” in (the fantastically named) Joyland.

Over there in October (since all time exists at all times if you look sideways from here you can see October) we’re in the middle of publishing Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy—and part of the fun is the stage show which will debut next February (look a bit more to the side, there it is! Phew, sexy!). Kathe’s joined Kickstarter to raise some knicker money (so that the knickers can later be dropped? There’s a vaudeville joke in there somewhere) for the girls Under the Poppy, which is, natch, a Victorian brothel.

Inside baseball time: we just presented our autumn and winter titles to our sales reps and it was fun to see the reactions from the sales reps so yay for that. We’re lucky in that we have a team of sales reps (Consortium’s) who read a ton (some of them had already read some of these books from early ebook versions we’d sent ahead) and like the slightly weird stuff we give them.

Also: how many times a book is sold:

  1. By the author to the agent
  2. agent to editor
  3. editor to publisher and sales team and whoever else
  4. sales team to sales reps
    1. publicist to reviewers/editors
    2. reviewer to editor (or vice versa)
  5. sales reps to the booksellers (or to the bookstore chain buyers)
  6. bookseller to you

There are probably a few more steps in there!


Châteaureynaud: winners & a London event

Thu 13 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

That was surprisingly agonius or whatever the right word would be (maybe there’s a better on in French!). We made someone else choose which commenters would receive an ARC of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s A Life on Paper and that person chose the following 5 readers whose books will be flung off into from our office to their mailboxes out as soon as we confirm addresses for Kristin, Gay Terry, James, Lucius, and Susan. Yay for yous!

And, we’d like to right now scotch the rumor that this is an elaborate hoax: Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is indeed a living, breathing, famous French author (and you can see him in London soon, see below) and not in any way related to or in actual fact the late Kurt Vonnegut writing under a pseudonym!

Go see him here:

Tuesday, 15 June 7.30pm
London

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud and Helen Simpson on short stories

To celebrate the publication of his first book in English, Prix Goncourt-winner Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud will discuss the similarities and differences of short stories in France and in the UK. with Helen Simpson.

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud was born in Paris in 1947. He has written numerous short stories and novels (La Faculté des songes, Le Démon à la crécelle, Singe tabassé par deux clowns, L’Autre rive). Helen Simpson lives in London. She has won numerous prizes for her various short stories collections. Her latest collections of short stories are Constitutional (2005), and In the Driver’s Seat (2007).

Tuesday, 15 June 7.30pm | £5, conc. £3 | in English | Institut français, 17 Queensberry Place SW7 2DT, 020 7073 1350, www.institut-francais.org.uk


Holly Black on tour

Fri 7 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Don’t miss Holly Black who is on tour all over the country this month for White Cat—and, of course, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories! We’ve had a bunch of reviews come in all of which are a reminder of that a strong book this is:

“Black’s writing is vivid and beautiful, although it is a given that most of the stories will have a twist at the end, or everything will not be as it first appeared. Nearly all of the stories are dark, in the sense that there is looming danger and creepy things waiting for the protagonists. Some are tragic and some are not, but a thread of hope runs through most of them. Like much current young adult fantasy, particularly urban fantasy, there is here sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and grit as well as lurking elves, curses, and malevolent teachers.”
—Bookslut

“With its wide range of subject and style, this collection of supernatural stories shows off Black’s fertile imagination.”
—Horn Book

Read more


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