Storyteller – Writers on Clarion
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Memories and lessons learned at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop:
Gordon Van Gelder | Jeff Ford | Kit Reed | Jim Sallis | Cory Doctorow |Gregory Frost | Nancy Kress
Nowadays when I teach Clarion (I’ve had the pleasure a few times), I always wind up describing various anecdotes and lessons that Kate imparts in this book: You are not your story, the criticism is tough-minded because people care about your story, first-person viewpoint is the hardest p.o.v. for a new writer to handle. (Maybe that one’s not in this book, in which case, go read Those Who Can, ed. Robin Wilson.)
Last summer I found myself repeatedly describing one other anecdote. It was told to me by Nicola Griffith.
Nicola went to Clarion as a student, learned some good lessons in the first four weeks, and generally got nice feedback from the instructors.
Then in week five, in her individual conference, she heard Kate say, “Nicola, you’re a good writer, you seem to be learning some lessons here, I’m sure you’ve gotten nice feedback, but I’ve read your stories and I don’t see anything of you here. I feel like I know nothing more about you from reading your stories. What are you hiding from?”
Nicola gave a hollow answer, probably said she wasn’t hiding from anything. After the conference, she went back to her dorm room and trashed it. Overturned the mattress, threw things at the wall — did a real Johnny Depp on the room. (Or was that Alec Baldwin?)
Because, of course, Nicola had been hiding, hadn’t wanted any of herself to come out on the page, and she’d thought that if her craft were good enough, no one would notice. A dozen years after the event, when Nicola described it to me, she said, “That was the turning point for me. That was what I got out of Clarion: an idea of what I was about as a writer.”
You can read this anecdote — quite rightly — as an example of Kate Wilhelm’s prowess as an instructor. You can take it as an example of how a book like the one you’re holding in your hands can never fully replace the process of experiencing Clarion for six weeks. But I offer it primarily as advice to a new writer: don’t hold back. Put yourself into your work. Lay it out there. You’ll get feedback that hurts, but you’ll find the feedback will help you grow.
In 2004 I taught in the last two weeks of Clarion East along with Kelly Link. We were in a sorority house without air conditioning somewhere in East Lansing, Michigan in July and it was hot as hell. By the time we arrived, the students had been there for four weeks already. They’d been working really hard and that along with the stress of being away from home and loved ones was starting to show. The group dynamic was a little frayed. We did a couple of days of what they’d been used to, and then Kelly and I had a meeting. Kelly was a veteran of past Clarions, but it was my first time and I was a little nervous as to whether I’d be helpful to the students. I had some writing exercises in mind I was going to roll out for her to see what she thought, but the first thing she said was, “We need to have a party with alcohol and music.” Well, this was something I’d had some practice at, so I readily agreed. Going along with this drift, I suggested we also give them two days off from the group workshop that was held everyday and have them write something very short for the next meeting we had. We decided on a 900 word story. In those first couple of days we’d been looking at some voluminous works whose quality dissipated in direct proportion to length. I thought this was as a result of the pressure of producing steadily at a breakneck pace for four weeks, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. When we announced these changes, a couple of the students seemed a little put out that we were screwing with the format and interrupting the pieces they’d been working on. But some of them got with it, and the party metamorphosed, at the suggestion of a couple of the students, into a cross-dressing party, so the men were to come dressed as women and vice versa. I showed up wearing a tiara, earrings and mascara. I was going for the Audrey Hepburn look. The women, god bless them, had really gotten with the party idea and transformed their rooms — one into a bar, one into a dance floor, and one into a lounge. Beds were dismantled, dressers were moved, lighting was adjusted. The party was a blast. Two days later, we saw the results of the 900 word stories, and many of them were very successful. The students were rejuvenated to the point where we could get some good work done in the remaining week and a half, and they’d had a chance to put what they’d learned into action on a piece that was short enough for them to really scrutinize. I realized that what we were seeing in the successful results of these short short stories was all of the wonderful work that their previous teachers — Andy Duncan, Suzy Charnas, Nina Hoffman, Nancy Kress, Gordon Van Gelder — had done with them.
In the two weeks I was at Clarion, I made friends, helped people with their writing, reinspected my own beliefs about writing and found quite a few wanting, missed my wife and kids, laughed a lot, saw some fine writing, shared in the amazing energy of new writers, and learned that when things get tight it’s a good idea to have a party.
Somebody called me up and asked me if I wanted to spend a week in Michigan, teaching at Clarion. I said yes because I thought it was Ann Arbor. Imagine my surprise! We landed in East Lansing: black squirrels, dozens of picture perfect Barbies and Kens pedaling down sidewalks at tremendous speeds, welcome to downtown Oz. Gigantic campus. Statues of Spartans, to say nothing of the canal. I never worked harder. Great group. Mikey, Lucius, Bob Frazier, Paul Witcover, to name a few, almost all then present are still being heard from in the SF world and that is cool. Extremely cool.
As with so many other good things in my life, I blundered onto, or into, Clarion. As editor of New Worlds I’d had very little idea what I was doing; as a writer, I had even less; and as a teacher, I had no idea at all. A partial list of my students — George Effinger, Vonda McIntyre, Octavia Butler, Lisa Tuttle — attests not just to the quality of the workshop, but to the simple truth that sometimes fools like myself are allowed to stagger offstage without having done permanent damage.
Damon Knight has lost his hearing in the higher registers, so he couldn’t hear the alarm on his wristwatch that went off every day at 11AM sharp. He would sit there beaming at us all Zen, while we stared at each other and wondered if this was a Yoda-lesson: critique through the shrill pips! Someone worked up the courage to ask him about this teaching method and he laughed and said that he’d been pissed because the damn watch alarm hadn’t ever worked (i.e., he could never hear it). Rosie Savage’s high voice was out of his hearing range, but he adored her, and when she spoke, he would cross the room and stand before her, knees bent, hands cupped to his ears, beaming mischievously.
What I learned both as a Clarion student and as a Clarion instructor is that you cannot necessarily point to the members of the class and say “This one will make it and that one won’t.”
Some people arrive with their talents fully formed — Athena has sprung from their foreheads and, really, you’re just there to point her in the right direction now that she’s loose. These people, however, are in the minority, never (in my experience) more than one or two per group.
The majority are still trying to figure out where they’re going with this, if anywhere at all. Most of the guidance, advice, and flat-out manipulation you bring to bear is for them. The greatest pleasure for me as instructor has been getting to watch someone’s craft catch fire right before my eyes; but even so, that person might go home and stop writing, and someone else who was groping in the dark throughout the six weeks will have an epiphany six months later and start producing the best work of all. You never give anybody short shrift, if only because later you’ll have the vicarious if self-deluded pleasure of thinking that you made a critical difference in their climb.
I have taught Clarion four times, and each class has had its own distinctive character. But the class you remember best is the most recent one; like layers of rich soil, the class closest in time yields the freshest memories.
In 2004 the Clarion class held seventeen writers. Even talented beginners make basic mistakes, and by the end of the week I had said some of the same things so often that the class was starting to chant them with me:
“Don’t start your story with a large lump of exposition.”
“Story events should cost your characters something.” Or, more simply, “Things cost.”
“Show us, don’t tell us.”
“You have White Room Syndrome.”
“No sighing — there’s way too much sighing in science fiction.”
At week’s end the class gave me a wonderful gift: a basket of rubber balls, each one inscribed with one of those writing dicta. The idea was that in future classes, I could save everyone a lot of time by just throwing the right ball at the student whose story was being critiqued. I treasure this gift, both as memory of Clarion 2004 and as a profound underlying truth about our genre:
It takes (at least metaphoric) balls to imagine the future.
Christopher Rowe – Trampoline Interview
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Trampoline: an interview
Christopher Rowe (The Force Acting on the Displaced Body)
Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
“The Force Acting on the Displaced Body” isn’t representative what my work has been, but I can’t way whether it represents a new direction or not. Yes, it’s a departure in style and subject matter — this was a much more personal story for me, and one of the first times I’ve used “real places” in a story set in Kentucky. I also radically altered my working method for this story. Most of my stories have extensive notes and research and I do a lot of “pre-writing.” I try to write very, very clean first drafts and tend to do most of my revision before the act of composition. This usually means that the notes for a given story usually total four or five times the word count of the final story. In this case, I did almost no planning and pretty much sat down and wrote it. I’m not very comfortable with that, but some of my peers have told me that I’d do well to loosen up my grasp a little.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
I drink beer or wine, mostly. When I drink liquor, it’s usually bourbon or single malt scotch, neat. So if a cocktail has to be a “mixed drink” then I guess my default favorite is gin and tonic, because that’s pretty much the only one I ever drink (and that rarely).
So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?
I do not believe in alien abductions. All sci-fi writers, however, do.
Who’s been eating my porridge?
Cock Robin.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Ocala, Florida, USA.
Who cleft the Devil’s foot?
Which foot?
Does she or doesn’t she?
I don’t know about her, but her little sister sure does.
What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?
I usually write indoors.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
Right, I was actually talking about this with you (Gavin) on the phone the other day, when I was explaining why I haven’t seen Daredevil. I’m surprised and oddly disappointed that I have no desire to see that movie — I kind of feel like I’m betraying my teenaged self. I had every intention of playing Dungeons & Dragons and staying up late to watch Space:1999 marathons for my entire life (as a lot of the people I keep in touch with from high school still do, actually). And then there’s a couple of guys I knew in college who would talk about “pulling a Christopher,” by which they meant my (to them) annoying habit of talking up some book or movie or band and then after they got into it I’d lose interest. I did that with that card game, Magic. And earlier I did it to my high school friends with Dragonlance novels. I still think my life would be easier to manage if I played a lot of D&D and read Dragonlance novels. Not better, but easier to manage. Oh well, I still mix in a lot of goofy superhero comics in with the cool stuff Gwenda buys. And I follow professional bicycle racing, which requires a certain level of obsessive geekiness.
Maybe none of that answers your question, does it? Okay, how about this? I remember being at MOMA in the summer of 1998 and staring at Jackson Pollack painting for about thirty minutes and finally getting it. Reproductions don’t do him justice and I’m embarrassed to say that I’d previously been in the “I could do that” camp regarding his and some other non-representational painters’ work. That reaction drives me crazy now, especially in terms of the visual arts. “I could do that.”
First of all, you didn’t. Second of all, no you couldn’t, and it’s only because you’re a willfully ignorant, visually illiterate barbarian that you don’t see why some curator hung it in the first place. You want to bitch about paintings? Go to Paris (or St. Petersburg or London or New York or Washington, DC or Vienna — anyplace that has a lot of museums and galleries) and spend a year or two looking at a couple of thousand pictures. Then come talk to me.
Um. Okay, use the third and fourth sentences from the second paragraph in this section for my answer. I’m going to go get some more coffee.
O
Next — Dave Shaw
O
Read another Rowe story: “Sally Harpe“
Trampoline – Index
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin
Trampoline: an anthology
Edited by Kelly Link
A partial index for this volume
O
Orange
“Sunrise colors faces of buildings”
“Far ahead, desert sunset spreads”
“sectional couch in Pearl Street”
“Her breakfast’s in a napkin”
“rolls unheeded from her lap”
“Will there be”
“See, that by thy pillow.”
“lying by a tarry hand”
“she held a scrawny”
“but dwindled out an”
“oil of”
“Coors Lite cans and”
“keep him in warm beer and fresh”
“frozen exhaust on”
“circle further up”
“County 14”
“Grove Mall”
“and the last of”
“in the fading light”
“and licking the”
“with long, tongues”
“lit with citronella”
“Your hair’s”
“and silver like the seething”
“a glass of”
“sliver in the sky”
“Nut meats and”
“in a bowl”
“sweet”
“glowing bright”
O
Tomato
” and tiny fried eggplants stuffed with”
“cans of…and kidney beans”
O
Greer Gilman – Trampoline Interview
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Trampoline: an interview
Greer Gilman (A Crowd of Bone)
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
Folk songs and ballads, mostly, ravelled out and rebraided. Lots of Anon. Some formal poetry: Hopkins and the Gawain poet, for the hedge-entangled language; Andrew Marvell, for the mowers. And for the soliloquies, a slew of playwrights. It’s a winter’s tale, a late romance. I wrote it for the ear, as much as for the imagination. There are two sorts of voices here, in counterpoint: Cloudish vernacular and a high Jacobean iambic, endlessly enjambed.
I owe the vision of the Scarecrow/Hanged Man/Child Sacrifice to the late miraculous Lal Waterson. Her song, “The Scarecrow,” haunts me, and it has for years.
Oh, and Thea’s magic is inspired by the art of Andy Goldsworthy.
Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
I keep moving inward. It gets bigger.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
Chocolate.
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Don’t know whose friends they are, but Sloth and Gluttony keep hanging around my kitchen playing cards.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
When you come back for it, it won’t be there.
Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?
No. None. Not at all.
What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?
Waiting anxiously in hallways.
Best trampoline story you know (or, in lieu of story, rules for best trampoline game you’ve played).
The one with the castellated blancmange and the roller skates has seldom been attempted.
Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?
A kitchen table with old friends. A library. Woods in autumn. An English wood in spring. A winter hillside on a starry night. My desk when I’m writing well. The seacoast of Bohemia.
What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
Say five, six, seven.
I always loved Mary Poppins and Irene’s Great-Great-Grandmother (in The Princess and the Goblin). They were my first intimations of godhead. Mary Poppins is Artemis. (“Is this a Nursery or a Bear Garden?”) Prickly, aloof, but a great protectress if she’s yours. And the sun, moon, and stars dance for her: she’s a strange attractor for the numinous.
But Irene’s Grandmother — ah, she indwells. I’ve been writing about the moon ever since. And threads and labyrinths and rings, and children lost in houses which are dreams.
Alice got into my warp as well. Everyone she meets is so rude. And that row of asterisks as she’s shrinking — chin to foot — gave me a sense of the magic in typography, of spell.
What else? I loved The Golden Almanac, which gave me my fascination with the turning year. October had “The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies, O!” in a whirl and tatter of leaves — so ballads keep for me that vivid restless melancholy.
Oh, and fairy tales. “The Snow Queen” for the shards of mirror and the puzzles of ice; for the winter hag who is fell and beautiful, the crones in their reeky hovels, and the robber girl. And “The Twelve Swans” and “The Dancing Princesses.” I loved the nettleshirts that bound winged creatures to the earth, the wood of silver underground.
The Oz books, alas, have faded for me, though I read them all with passion. I still have my Scarecrow and my Witch, but she’s indelibly Margaret Hamilton.
There are other children’s fantasies I love — The Wind In the Willows, Earthsea,and Green Knowe, stories by Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones — but I found them long afterward.
And a little later on–at eight, nine, ten — I read and loved The Secret Gardenand A Little Princess; Hitty: Her First Hundred Years; all the Alcott books; Elizabeth Enright…All the girl books, and whatever I could lay my hands on. But the fantasies came first.
Tell me a little about when you left home to live on your own.
Oh, I just snailed away, carrying myself with me.
If you could have a writer of your choice come live with you, who would it be and what writerly stuff would you want to talk to them about?
Dear me. I wouldn’t dream of imposing my company on strangers. They have their own friends, or ghosts of friends; their own rooms on earth or elsewhere. Unless by chance we meet in that publisher’s hallway…? And then drift away for tea. I’d love to talk with Sylvia Townsend Warner. And Angela Carter. Hope Mirrlees? I’d be shy of Shakespeare, though I’d love to watch him in rehearsal. And I’ve always wanted to take Jo March to the movies.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
I do change my mind, but glacially. Hard to remember what I thought in the Mesozoic.
What book or books do you press upon friends?
Whatever book is Three-Bearically right for that friend. I get a huge kick out of perfect matches. I don’t press.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
Free lemonade?
I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
For the tang of it, the taste of Otherwise; for all the flavors of quark: not just Truth and Beauty, but up, down, charm, and strangeness.
My story has a semi-wild chimpanzee in it; does yours?
Alas, no.
Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?
No. My life, maybe. Not my writing.
What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?
Aslant. Their landscape is like the north of England; but their laws are otherwise. It’s as if the White Goddess and the Golden Bough were true, as if metaphor and myth were physics. Metaphysics. Cloud has the same stars as this world — our sky is their Wood Above — but their constellations are strange. Somehow this world is bound to theirs: the back side of their brighter tapestry.
Can I quote myself?
“Not that there aren’t quilt knots here and there, stitching heaven and earth. Houses, in the astrological sense; or sacred places, which are realer than the world, and have a way of disappearing like the egg in Alice. Woods, stone circles, sheepfolds. And the one long seam, the Milky Way.”
If you could live in a book, which one would it be?
Oh, I’d like to travel in many books. Sadly, I can’t envision stories while I’m reading them, so I’d dearly love to see a score of other worlds. And talk with their denizens. But here’s where I live.
Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and directly as a voice of conscience?
With all respect for the voices of conscience, it would be a sad grey world without works of pure imagination. Wodehouse. Austen. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”
Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?
Fugue, rhyme, rainbow — I love all sorts of patterns and forms. Conjugations and crystals. Self-assembly. Mathematics. I think people are made to make patterns, to see them with delight. Defy entropy!
O
Next — John Gonzalez
Alex Irvine – Trampoline Interview
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Trampoline: an interview
Alex Irvine (Gus Dreams of Biting the Mail Man)
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
This story has a little bit of each of the Beats in it, a touch of Phil Dick, and a bit of Kenneth Fearing. The alchemy of the interaction I don’t understand — mostly I wanted to write a story about people who like working a lousy job, and about the strangeness of strangers. And of course the whole thing started when I re-read The Time Machine and wondered what the hell really happened to the prototype.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
Tom Collins, for some reason
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Sloth. Sloth seems elysian to me these days.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
Don’t take any wooden nickels. Mostly because I’m always waiting for an exception to come along and prove this rule.
Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?
Well, this story wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t actually had a dog named Gus who eternally wanted to bite the mailman. He recently went to the big hot dog farm in the sky, and we are currently petless. Not for long, though.
So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?
Who told you to ask me this?
What has it got in its pocketses?
It’s holding, for sure.
Biographical sketch of someone you know:
Wes Graves grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota, and moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan with the encouragement of his high-school girlfriend, who dumped him the day he got there. At the time he owned an orange Volvo, which as far as anyone knows is still in the garage of a house near the Eastern Michigan University campus. He has been a baker, pinball-machine technician, and all around good joe. He nurses an inordinate fondness for guitar accessories, and now lives in Denver, Colorado.
Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?
I want to haunt a place that doesn’t exist any more, a sandwich shop in Ann Arbor called Drake’s that operated from the twenties until the early nineties under the ownership of a guy named Truman Tibbels. It was painted olive green, had wooden booths, two counters with candy in jars, autographed pictures of Blackstone the Magician. You could get ice cream or a sandwich named for a Big Ten university or just drink coffee all day for a quarter. Upstairs was the Martian Room, with trombones on the wallpaper and a constant atmosphere of furtive lust. In the back, an actual phone booth with a door that closed. A place from another time. Now it’s been turned into a Bruegger’s Bagels, which is an incalculable loss.
What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
10, hmm. The Swiss Family Robinson, Space Angel, second time through The Lord of the Rings, the Earthsea books, baseball biographies, and a submarine book whose title I can’t remember by a guy named Robb White.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
I used to believe that football was manly. Then I started watching rugby.
What book or books do you press upon friends?
Jim Dodge’s Stone Junction, almost anything by Philip K. Dick, Charles Portis’The Dog of the South, good books by people I know.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
An anthology called Peleton, perhaps.
I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
Story, man. The first stories you hear as a kid aren’t about suburban adultery, they’re about mystical artifacts and dangerous monsters and all kinds of stuff that doesn’t exist but should. Those are the stories that you cut your teeth on, and those are the stories you (by which I mean me) want to read and write.
My story has a semi-wild chimpanzee in it; does yours?
You didn’t see it?
Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?
I’ve only been writing during the last half of this unfortunate sequence, so I’m still new enough at it to hope I’m getting better.
If you couldn’t write what would you do?
Get better at chess, play the guitar more often, act in plays.
What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?
In this story? None whatsoever, except the bit about frosting Danish.
If you could live in a book, which one would it be?
Huckleberry Finn.
O
Next — Beth Adele Long
Trampoline – An Interview
Fri 24 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Trampoline: an interview
We asked Trampoline contributors to send us some interview questions. Then, trickily, we mixed up the questions and sent them out to the contributors. The questions range from serious, literate, ruminations on the writer’s place in society to rather less serious questions (What’s your favorite rule of thumb?).
The writers are appropriately bouncy in their answers: Enjoy.
Christopher Barzak
Richard Butner
Alan DeNiro
Carol Emshwiller
Jeffrey Ford
Greer Gilman
John Gonzalez
Alex Irvine
Beth Adele Long
Christopher Rowe
Dave Shaw
Vandana Singh
Rosalind Palermo Stevenson
O
Matt maps the everywhere
Thu 23 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, Interstitial Arts| Posted by: Gavin
Last week Matt Cheney posted an mp3 of his reading of his story, “A Map of the Everywhere,” which was published in the first Interstitial Arts Foundation anthology, Interfictions. Check, one-two-three. Check, one-two-three. You are good to go:
I’ve been meaning for a while to record a reading of my story “A Map of the Everywhere”, first published in Interfictions
Keep it green, chum
Wed 22 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, YouTube| Posted by: Gavin
From The Regulator, another great bookshop in North Carolina:
This website not really brought to you by:
Wed 22 Jul 2009 - Filed under: smallbeer| Posted by: Gavin
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is proud to announce support from the following corporate partners:
LCRW, Stranger Things Happen, The Mount, Report to the Men’s Club, and Lord Stink.
— Keep it Independent!
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The Distressed Envelope Let us make your company look |
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Cheese & Krakens Supplying you, you snackity snakity food you. |
Ursula at home
Tue 21 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ursula| Posted by: Gavin
Ursula, born Feb. 23, 2009, arrived home to
day. Yay!
The King’s Last Song – Reviews
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
The King’s Last Song
Geoff Ryman
“Ryman’s brilliant new novel, “The King’s Last Song,” is permeated by the theme of salvation through destruction. In parallel narratives, Ryman reveals the (imagined) memoir of 12th-century ruler and Cambodia’s greatest king, Jayavarman VII, and presents the history of 20th-century Cambodia, a story of endless and eviscerating civil war. In so doing, he vividly creates a portrait of individuals whose souls are fused with that of their country, both ravaged and beautiful…. Ryman – best known as a fantasy writer but one who proved his power as an author of nuanced, rich historical fiction in the unsung novel “Was” – has not so much created as revealed a world in which the promise of redemption takes seed even in horror.”
—Boston Globe“The novel conveys not merely a story, but the light and darkness, despair and hope, tradition and Westernization that is Cambodia itself…. While peaceful William, war-consumed Map, and Cambodia-loving Luc could easily be flat, typecast characters, Ryman steers clear of such simplifications. Their interwoven histories are at times noble and at times horrifying, laced with profound emotions and punctuated with atrocities…. The King’s Last Song leaves one questioning preconceptions of good and evil, and conflicted between hope for and discouragement with the human race.”
—Rain Taxi* “An unforgettably vivid portrait of Cambodian culture past and present.”
—Booklist (starred review)“Ryman’s knack for depicting characters; his ability to tell multiple, interrelated stories; and his knowledge of Cambodian history create a rich narrative that looks at Cambodia’s “killing fields” both recent and ancient and Buddhist belief with its desire for transcendence. Recommended for all literary fiction collections.”
—Library Journal“In the end, it’s the vibrant emotional lives of Luc and his friends that capture the tragic beauty of Cambodia.”
—Publishers Weekly” Inordinately readable . . . extraordinary in its detail, color and brutality.”
—The Independent“Sweeping and beautiful. . . . The complex story tears the veil from a hidden world.”
—The Sunday Times“Richly layered, comparing past and present day Cambodia and is full of details and tidbits about Cambodian life that any reader will enjoy. It’s definitely piqued my interest in the country and I will be trying to find more books about it in the future.”
—S. Krishna’s Books
Geoff Ryman Bio
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Geoff Ryman is a Canadian living in the United Kingdom. His first book based on events in Cambodia was published in 1985, the award-winning The Unconquered Country. The King’s Last Songwas inspired by a visit to an Australian archaeological dig at Angkor Wat in 2000. He has been a regular visitor since, teaching writing workshops in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap twice, and publishing three further novellas set in Cambodia. In Britain he produced documentaries for Resonance FM, London, on Cambodian Arts. He has published nine other books and won fourteen awards. He teaches creative writing at the University of Manchester.
Geoff Ryman’s books:
The Warrior who Carried Life, 1986
The Unconquered Country, 1986 (British Science Fiction & World Fantasy Awards)
The Child Garden, 1989 (Arthur C Clarke Award, John W Campbell Memorial Award)
Was, 1991 (Eastercon; Gaylaxicon Lifetime Achievement; short listed for the Impact award)
Unconquered Countries, 1994
253: a novel for the Internet in seven cars and a crash, Internet 1996, 253: the Print Remix, 1998 (Philip K Dick Memorial Award)
Lust: or No Harm Done, 2001
AZ, 2002
VAO, 2002
Air: or Have Not Have, 2005 (Arthur C Clarke; British Science Fiction Association; Sunburst; James Tiptree Jr Memorial Awards)
Tesseracts 9: New Canadian Speculative Fiction, Edited with Nalo Hopkinson, 2005 (The Prix Aurore)
Readings of Writings for Listenings
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: smallbeer| Posted by: Gavin
Subscribe to our audio page by subscribing to the RSS feed on podcast posts here.
John Kessel stories: The Baum Plan for Financial Independence [audio]
Every Angel is Terrifying Read by Gregory Frost
Pride and Prometheus [part 1 | part 2]
Jennifer Stevenson
Trash Sex Magic Chapter 1 · Ch. 2 · Ch. 3 · Ch. 4
Kelly Link stories:
The Hortlak KQED — The Writers’ Block
Catskin WNYC — Spinning
The Girl Detective Read by Alex Wilson.
Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water Read by Alex Wilson.
The Specialist’s Hat (40 minute MP3). Read by Jason Lundberg.
Tiny excerpt of Kelly reading “Monster” during a WNYC story
by Richard Hake on the Dirty Laundry Readings Series.
(Nov. 10, 2005)
Perpetual Motion Roadshow CD (7/04)
We made a CD. It’s not
for sale, but thanks to the generosity of all involved you
can make a copy yourself. The cover can be downloaded here.
Print and fold along the lines.
Stoddy Awchaw — Geoffrey H. Goodwin (fiction, LCRW 10, 7:28)
Stoddy Awchaw — Toby Goodwin (song, 2:32)
Paper — Gavin J. Grant (fiction, Broken Pencil 21, 2:06)
Fructify My Orange Suit — Gavin J. Grant (fiction, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, 8:13)
Christmas in Yorkville — Liisa Ladouceur (poem. Each word taken
from a sign photographed in Yorkville, Toronto, Dec. 2003.
2:23)
100 Dead Workers— Liisa Ladouceur (poem. Each word taken from a plaque photographed at the 100 Workers monument honouring men and women killed on the job. Toronto, May 2004. 0:46)
Eruption — Liisa Ladouceur (poem. From the Teeth Poem series. 2002. 0:50)
Oh Register! Why Are You Crying? Audobon Park (Song from the CD Angry Bees Outside, These Bees Inside. audubonpark.blogspot.com)
Ash City Stomp — Richard Butner (fiction, Trampoline / Horses Blow Up Dog City, 32:17)
Ray Vukcevich – Interview
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
How long have you been writing?
“I remember what was maybe the first story I ever wrote. I was making the 125-mile trip home from Tucson, Arizona late at night. Since there was not enough room in the cab of the truck for everyone, the dog and I rode in the back. It was very cold. Huddled under a tarp with the dog licking my face, I imagined a story about the fetus in the womb of the woman in the warm cab of the truck (not my mother) sending spooky messages to man driving the truck (not my father) and the smug teenager in the middle who was not my sister. The girl kept saying, “eek!” The fetus could project glowing red eyes into the rear view mirror, and when the man jerked around to look, there was no one there!
I wrote stories in high school. I didn’t realize you were supposed to try and publish them. Since I lived 40 miles from the nearest town, I never bumped into anyone who might have tipped me off about that. I did a novel in pencil back then, too. We didn’t have TV until I was eleven and even then it was a weak black and white signal from far away. I’m so hooked into the Internet these days that it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like. The world must have been both much smaller and much bigger. Every little thing from the outside must have been very important. So much time to daydream. Going off to the big city for college was an eye opener. I’ve been writing ever since with time out for family, tragedy, laziness, false starts, and dumb mistakes. Finding the writing community here in Eugene was very important to me. I think most writers need a community.
There does seem to be a high concentration of writers in Eugene…
Yes, there are so many wonderful writers in this town. There’s Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Past The Size of Dreaming) and Leslie What (The Sweet and Sour Tongue), Bruce Holland Rogers (Flaming Arrows) and Jerry Oltion (Abandon in Place), David Bischoff (Philip K. Dick High) and Alan Clark (Imagination Fully Dilated), and many others. There is probably a workshop going on every night of the week in Eugene. My own group meets on Tuesdays in a bookstore called Tsunami Books. I also attend a monthly workshop with Damon Knight (Humpty Dumpty) and Kate Wilhelm (The Deepest Water). I feel wonderfully nurtured in this place.
What is it about the short story form that attracts you?
Do you remember that old TV show “Name That Tune”? I’m not sure I remember the show itself, just the idea. There is something elegant and elemental about telling a story in the smallest number of words possible. I don’t mean minimalism. I mean no wasted words. It might take several volumes to tell some stories. Some of my favorite short stories are in the international volume of Sudden Fiction. My favorite Borges is in that book and my favorite Yourgrau. I discovered Clarice Lispector there. The first story in the book is the very wonderful “Falling Girl” by Dino Buzzati. More generally, there’s Barthelme, Bisson, and Lafferty. I like Aimee Bender, Paul Di Filippo, Carol Emshwiller, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ken Kalfus, Bruce Holland Rogers, George Saunders, and Leslie What. I’m reading Kelly Link’s new book (Stranger Things Happen) now. She is so amazing.
Your writing skips between seamlessly between genres (such as fiction, surrealism, fantasy, mystery, and others) in the manner of George Saunders or Kurt Vonnegut. Before writing a story do you any idea where it’s going?
For me the writing process is like Tourette’s syndrome. In fact, it may even be Tourette’s syndrome. Hey, I wonder if that’s one of the things Jonathan Lethem is saying in Motherless Brooklyn? I should go back and read it again with that angle in mind. Anyway, there is a linguistic deluge going on in my head all the time — “a mile a minute” as my grandmother used to say. Jabber jabber jabber, and when I write, I reach in and scoop some out and see what it looks like (or sounds like — maybe “scoop” was the wrong piece to grab in this case). I might know in very general terms where I’m going, but even if I’ve outlined (which I generally do when thinking in longer lengths) the outline probably just influences what floats by. I seldom think in terms of genre.
When do you write?
I try to get in a couple of hours in the morning before I go to my day job. Sometimes I don’t succeed. I try to make up lost time on weekends. Sometimes I don’t succeed in that either.
Name three good books.
Here are three strange and wonderful books.
The Mustache by Emmanuel Carrere
The Unconsoledby Kazuo Ishiguro
Humpty Dumpty by Damon Knight
They are very different books, but they’re grouped together in my mind. Someone should do a dissertation, a compare and contrast and come up with conclusions kind of thing. Not me.
Who are your favorite writers?
Today I’m thinking J. G. Ballard (my favorite Ballard is a weird little book called Concrete Island), Jonathan Carroll, Philip K. Dick, Umberto Eco, R. A. Lafferty, Jonathan Lethem, Patrick McGrath, Christopher Priest, Philip Pullman, and Kurt Vonnegut. Ask me tomorrow and you might get a different list.
Your novel, The Man of Maybe Half-A-Dozen Faces, was published by St. Martin’s last year. Are you writing more novels?
I am working on a couple of other projects. I don’t know which will be done first. I can never talk about unfinished work.
Ray Vukcevich was born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and grew up in the Southwest. He now lives in Eugene and works as a computer programmer in a couple of brain labs at the University of Oregon. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s, Twists of the Tale, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rosebud, and Pulphouse.His first novel, The Man of Maybe Half-A-Dozen Faces, was published in 2000 by St. Martin’s Press.
Interfictions – Reviews
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing
Edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss
“Odd, Deep, Delightful”
— Michael Bishop, Atlanta Journal-Constitution“This idea of playing with genre conventions is interstitiality’s charm and what makes it a movement for the hypertext age. We want words to do more now and for our time not to have been spent with just one idea.”
— Adrienne Martini, Baltimore City Paper“Buy this book.”– Sean Melican, Ideomancer
“Playing outside the rules once again is Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writings (Interstitial Arts Foundation / Small Beer Press ; April 30, 2007 ; $18.00), edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss. In this case, Small Beer Press is the distributor, which means, as I said above, they’re bringing the world this collection, while the publisher is the very interesting Interstitial Arts Foundation. The mission is pretty clear: publish stuff that falls between the cracks, that lies outside of any single and perhaps all genres. They call themselves Artists Without Borders, so expect to find literature, visual arts, music and performance arts. Their list of contributors on the website is pretty amazing; Ellen Kushner, Gregory Frost, Heinz Insu Fenkl and Eve Sweetser; all these just writing essays. There’s a lot to look at and more importantly read, and they seem to have chosen to publish on line the sort of material one can read online.”
— Rick Kleffel, the Agony Column
Sean Stewart – Bio & Reviews
Mon 20 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Sean Stewart is the author of the innovative I Love Bees and Beast search operas, two short stories, and seven previous novels:
His novels have received the Aurora, Arthur Ellis, Sunburst, Canadian Library, and World Fantasy awards. He presently writes lots of things that have Non Disclosure Agreements attached so he cannot talk about them.
A little more:
Stewart is tall, energetic, uses big words easily, coaches his daughter’s soccer team, is a great reader, has taught writing, and lives in Davis, CA, with his wife and two daughters.
More on the web:
A few older interviews:
Novel excerpts:
Author photo by Biko.
Download for print.
Perfect Circle
Sean Stewart
available in hardcover and trade paperback
June 15, 2004
Reviews
“A cracking good read.”
— The Bookseller, May 27, 2005“Stewart delicately balances humor with a strong sense of place and menace.”
— San Francisco Chronicle* “All-around terrific.”
— Booklist (starred review)“Heartbreaking and hilarious, peppered with satisfying pop-culture references (Battlestar Galactica, Tom Waits, Ramen noodles) and informed by Stewart’s twisted sense of humor and proud redneck sensibility, Perfect Circle delivers what the maudlin “Sixth Sense never did – a wicked good time.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer“Stewart’s compelling account of how DK comes to grips with his ghosts, both actual and metaphorical, is alternately poignant and hilarious, with some genuinely creepy moments and one or two powerful jolts…. Compelling … with strong potential for crossing over into the mainstream.”
— Publishers Weekly“Stewart’s quicksilver wit makes Perfect Circle perfectly hilarious. And, a supremely skilled storyteller, he saves the best for last.”
— Texas Monthly“His novels deserve to be more widely known than they are. He delicately balances humor with a strong sense of place and menace. Perfect Circle finds him in fine form and will leave readers eager for his next offering.”
— San Francisco Chronicle“Sean Stewart delivers an urban fantasy that is the perfect amalgam of cursed past and haunted present, of classic ghost tales and up-to-the-minute cinematic riffs … Stewart’s mastery of Will’s first-person narration is unflinching and unfaltering. The voice conjured here is absolutely authentic and affecting, as is the portrait of Houston, Will’s stomping grounds. Will’s vast extended family of oddballs and losers and honest toilers imparts a John-Crowleyesque heft to the book. And his treatment of the ghosts — “Ghosts don’t do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself” — is truly eerie. Readers familiar with the quotidian spookiness of master English horror writer M.R. James will find similar frissons here, but married to the gritty demimonde in the novels of American noir writer James Crumley, resulting in a fusion of black humor and pathos, blood and ectoplasm.”
— Washington Post“By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Perfect Circle is … an impressive example of an author using genre resources to stake out a territory that, for the moment at least, no one but he occupies.”
— Locus“A read-at-one-go novel…. Everything is both stated and understated, elegant, full of the mundane horror and fear that inform a normal, frustrated life…. And it is well, well worth the reading. A highly recommended work.”
— F&SF“A hell of a book.”
— SF Site“The kind of book that fatasy was invented for.”
— NYRSF“By turns funny and sad…. Compelling.”
— New Trail“When he isn’t peering into other realms, Kennedy meditates on rock music, Texas culture, and the nature of regret. There may be more to be had from a ghost story, but I don’t know what.” A
— Marc Sheehan, On the Town, West Michigan“You can’t put the book down because you just have to know what is going to happen next. You can’t sleep if you don’t find out. Sean Stewart manages this brilliantly…. Oh, and the soundtrack is great too.”
— Emerald City
Advance Quotes:
Perfect Circle is a perfect read, exciting, unique, everything here but the Second Coming, but, Sean Stewart himself is the prize. What a talent. Write on, my man. Write on.
— Joe Lansdale, Sunset and Sawdust
A heartwarmingly sweet novel about what it’s really like to be haunted. Sean Stewart’s best yet.
— Sarah Smith, Chasing ShakespearesNeedy Ghosts, bar fights, concealed weapons, R.E.M., and ramen noodles —Perfect Circle is an irreverent Texas treat. Sean Stewart is one bright, funny writer.
— Stewart O’Nan, The Night CountryWill Kennedy has some troublesome relatives. Especially the dead ones. Perfect Circle is Sean Stewart at his spooky, funny, sad, and haunting best.
— Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book ClubPerfect Circle is a ghost story for grown-ups, frightening, funny, and finally redemptive. It kept me up way past my bedtime.
— Harley Jane Kozak, Dating Dead MenI read it all in one gulp, by turns fearful and joyful for Stewart’s likable loser protagonist.”
— Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard TribeIf Oprah read science fiction…This quirky, engaging novel tells the story of William “Dead” Kennedy, a thirtysomething former punk rocker and down-on-his-luck divorced dad — who sees ghosts. After a visit to his haunted cousin goes horribly wrong, “DK” finds himself getting lots of attention — mostly the wrong kind – from both the living and the dead. Funny and thought-provoking!
— Carol Schneck Schuler Books and Music, Okemos, MIMy favorites among Sean Stewart’s books are those that hover on the edge of our reality. His characters, like William “Dead” Kennedy are much like my friends and relatives — although if any of my relatives are seeing ghosts, they haven’t mentioned this to me. Will leads a not-quite life in Texas, working in dead end jobs, and yearning to reconnect with his ex-wife, and trying to avoid ghosts. When a cousin calls with a ghost-busting request, his financial offer is more than Will can resist. But accepting the job opens Will up to a whole new level of darkness. Great prose (Stewart has some of the best metaphors going) and a melancholy mood, like music half-remembered.
— Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy Bookshop, San Diego, CA
The Serial Garden and the copyright office
Fri 17 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Joan Aiken| Posted by: Gavin
Just had a fun (seriously) couple of phone calls with the Copyright Office about Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories. The question was about who had compiled the collection, which was, happily, easily answered, as Joan herself had put the book together before she died. Which means, of course, that the in-house editing job was much easier than otherwise—and thanks to Joan’s estate’s agent, Charles Schlessiger, getting the stories was almost easy, too.
The copyright is owned by Joan’s children but the copyright to the whole book isn’t theirs, as there is an introduction by Garth Nix and illustrations by Andi Watson. Who knew that they would tweeze thigns apart so finely?
This seems as good a time as any to mention that Joan’s fans should pick up a copy of the May/June issue of The Horn Book as there is a piece worth reading by Lizza Aiken about her mother, Joan.
LCRW and the spice
Fri 17 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., chocolate, LCRW| Posted by: Gavin
The new issue of LCRW is about to go out and we are last-minute getting the chocolate in (in summer we can’t keep it around here because 1) Gavin will eat it and 2) it will melt). So we’re ordering a bunch of chocolate and this time round we are getting in the even better stuff. Last time we asked if anyone minded a low-price (er, cheap) bar that time so that we could go great this time. The readership said Sure! and we sent out IKEA Food dark chocolate bars! So this time we’re taking the savings from that time (and any subscribers since then are just lucky!) and ordering Chuao Chocolatier‘s Spicy Maya Bar. This is one fantastic chocolate bar which we’ve only tried a couple of times: it’s more of a birthday present than an everyday bar.
So, anyway, if you want to subscribe to LCRW and get a chocolate bar each time, now is maybe the best time ever to do it. We’re going to order something like 100 bars (hope the delivery person isn’t a chocolate fiend) and once they’re sent out (and once we’ve tried a few around here) that’s it with the Over The Top excellentness and it will be back to the regular goodness.
First Hound review
Wed 15 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Vincent McCaffrey| Posted by: Gavin
Publishers Weekly gives Vincent McCaffrey’s debut novel a good review. We’re having fun getting this out to readers and we have a lovely pulpy cover in the offing:
Hound Vincent McCaffrey. Small Beer (Consortium, dist.), $24 (280p) ISBN 978-1-931520-59-1
McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut. Boston bibliophile Henry Sullivan, who leads a lonely life in pursuit of rare books, attracts police attention after the strangulation murder of Morgan Johnson, the widow of a renowned literary agent—and Sullivan’s former lover. Not long before, Morgan retained Sullivan to appraise her late husband’s book collection that she was planning to donate to Boston University. Johnson’s husband’s relatives, each with a financial motive to have done her in, make up the small circle of logical suspects. Meanwhile, the reappearance of an old girlfriend forces Sullivan to consider another missed opportunity at happiness. Indeed, the crime-solving remains secondary to the author’s sensitive portrayal of his middle-aged protagonist’s search for meaning, suggesting this novel could’ve worked as well as straight fiction without the whodunit plot. (Sept.)
Charles Brown
Wed 15 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world| Posted by: Gavin
It has been a long sad couple of days since hearing that Charles Brown had died on the way home from Readercon. Part of that sadness and grief is selfishness: Charles was a character worth knowing and for family reasons we could not go to Readercon this year so we missed our last chance to see him.
Kelly says she fell in love with Charles when she discovered he had put out a Georgette Heyer fanzine. It was probably that that persuaded her to accept Charles’s offer of 2 Hugo Awards for one of her Nebulas. Charles had more Hugos than we’d ever seen in one place but he didn’t have any Nebulas. Suffice to say at some point a box arrived at our house and now we have 2 Locus Hugos and somewhere in the Locus HQ is one of Kelly’s Nebulas.
Charles wasn’t the easiest person to get to know but one of his best qualities was his continued openness what was happening in his sphere of interest. On first meeting, and second and third, he was a odd, gruff, cold, and a bit terrifying. This was a guy who read books by our favorite writers before their editors read them. But he was interested in what we were doing with LCRW and Small Beer and that meant at some point we gained a seat at some of those endless convention tables: eating with Charles and co. was always at the very least fascinating. That continued openness meant that Charles and Locus never stagnated. He wasn’t skipping from new thing to new thing, but he was open to reading and writing about the YA explosion, urban fantasy, and other aspects of his beloved field that achieved new prominence.
A couple of years ago Kelly and I spent the night on the Murphy bed in (beside?) the Locus library. Although before sleeping we spent a long time cranking the shelves back and forward and being awed at the collection, pristine, of course, and the dedications within the books. Going to the Locus house was like going to a tiny museum and being led around it by Charles was always great fun.
In talking to Amelia at Locus she said that his death was a shock but not a surprise which captures it completely for me. He looked terrible over the past couple of years but then, he’d looked terrible over the last couple of years, so we figured he would keep on going for a while yet. Charles tried to be a curmudgeon but his joy in life kept overcoming his curmudgeonliness. It was great fun to eat and drink and talk with Charles whether it was at a fancy restaurant or at a “Locus suite” at a convention.
I love the picture of him that Locus posted and have ganked it for this. He will be missed and we will raise a toast to Charles and what he accomplished whenever we meet friends who miss him too.
Reviews of The Ant King
Tue 14 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
The Ant King and Other Stories
Benjamin Rosenbaum
“Lively, bizarre, and funny as well as dark, sinister, and sensual.”
—Boston Phoenix
“Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, “best first collection” for this book.”
—Booklist (Starred review)
“Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout—a woman in love with an elephant, an orange that ruled the world—this collection is a surrealistic wonderland.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Rosenbaum proves he’s capable of sustained fantasy with “Biographical Notes,” a steampunkish alternate history of aerial piracy, and “A Siege of Cranes,” a fantasy about a battle between a human insurgent and the White Witch that carries decidedly modern undercurrents…. Perhaps none of the tales is odder than “Orphans,” in which girl-meets-elephant, girl-loses-elephant.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Benjamin Rosenbaum is a talented short story writer whose fiction always seems modern even while employing the most absurd surrealism. Although he’s been up for awards, he’s remained a peripheral figure in the field. This collection may change that because in The Ant King and Other Stories Rosenbaum shows off an effortless talent. Whether he’s working with whimsical material as in the title story or creating a more serious tone as in “The House Beyond Your Sky,” Rosenbaum’s range is impressive.”
—Realms of Fantasy
Views of Small Beer Press
Tue 14 Jul 2009 - Filed under: smallbeer| Posted by: Gavin
Reviews, press coverage, awards, events
Early history
2015
“The works Small Beer produces are so unique that they could come from nowhere else, a singularity that fosters the same kind of loyalty music buffs feel toward their favorite record labels.”
— Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe
2012
“All in the Family: Ig Publishing, Two Dollar Radio, and Small Beer Press”
Poets & Writers, Nov./Dec.
2009
— Gavin J Grant & Kelly Link receive a World Fantasy Award for Small Beer Press & Big Mouth House
— Bookseller Pens Mystery About Book Hound, PW, Sept. 1
— Small Beer Press Big into e-Books, PW, Aug. 17
2008
— Small Beer, for Children, PW, Sept. 15
— Small Beer Offers Free Downloads of New Collection, Publishers Weekly (April 18)
“In some ways, the evolution of their publishing endeavors can be described as two people working with greater and greater amounts of paper”
— Is Greater Than, March 24
— LCRW and The Best of LCRW are Locus Award finalists
2007 — “They have a knack for putting out books that are different from just about everything else.”– MassLive, May 19
— Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword wins a Locus Award.
— LCRW is nominated for a Hugo.
2006 A. DeNiro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead Longlisted for the Second Annual Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
— Kate Wilhelm’s Storyteller wins the Hugo and Locus Awards.
–“Make it Weird,” Boston Globe, October 8
2005
— Nominated for the World Fantasy Award
— “The Book People,” The Valley Advocate, July 28
2004
— Nominated for the World Fantasy Award
— Small Beer on the Rise, Publishers Weekly, June
— Interview, Emerald City, June
— “Small Beer Press doesn’t put out as many books each year as the bigger houses, but the average quality is remarkable. This remains one of the genre publishing stories of recent years.”
— Richard Horton, Internet Review of Science Fiction, November
2003
— Nominated for the World Fantasy Award
— An Omnibus Review at Green Man Review, July
— Interview in Broken Pencil issue 21 (not online)
— Feature article: Matrix: the news magazine of the BSFA, Jan./Feb.
— Small interview (on the Wheel of Time mania page), January 10
2002
— Feature article in Poets & Writers, Sept./Oct.
— An interview about Small Beer with Gavin J. Grant on RevolutionSF, July
2001
— A review of Stranger Things Happen and Meet Me in the Moon Room in Canada’s January Magazine, Aug. 21
— Bookweb/Bookselling This Week, “Small Beer Press Makes a Heady Debut“, July 19
Water Logic
Laurie J. Marks
- Tiptree Honor List
- Booklist starred review
Endless Things
John Crowley
- Locus Award finalist
Interfictions
Edited by Delia Sherman & Theodora Goss
published for the Interstitial Arts Foundation
- Tiptree Honor List
Generation Loss
Elizabeth Hand
- Believer Book Award Finalist
- Shirley Jackson Award Finalist
Howard Who?
Howard Waldrop
The Privilege of the Sword
Ellen Kushner
- Locus Award Winner
- Tiptree Honor List
- Nebula & World Fantasy Award finalist
- Romantic Times Epic Fantasy Novel Revewers Choice Award finalist
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
A. DeNiro
- Crawford Award finalist
- Longlisted for the Second Annual Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
- Book Sense Pick
- Lit Blog Coop pick
Magic for Beginners
Kelly Link
- Best of the Year: Time Magazine, Salon, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Locus, Capital Times, PopMatters
- Book Sense pick
- Locus Award Winner
- World Fantasy, Stoker, International Horror Guild Award finalist
Mothers & Other Monsters
Maureen F. McHugh
- Finalist for The Story Prize
- Book Sense Notable Book
————————-
Storyteller
Kate Wilhelm
- Hugo Award Winner
- Locus Award Winner
Travel Light
Naomi Mitchison
Mockingbird
Sean Stewart
Perfect Circle
Sean Stewart
- Excerpted on Salon.com
- Book Sense Notable Book
- Starred review in Booklist
- World Fantasy & Nebula Award finalist
- “Clearly one of the best fantasy novels of the year.”
— Richard Horton, Internet Review of Science Fiction
Trash Sex Magic
Jennifer Stevenson
- “A strong first novel, a wild book, well-imagined and well-written, with absorbing characters.”
— Richard Horton, Internet Review of Science Fiction
Kalpa Imperial: the greatest empire that never was
Angélica Gorodischer
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
Trampoline
Kelly Link, ed.
- Greer Gilman’s novella “A Crowd of Bone” won World Fantasy Award.
- Alex Irvine’s short story “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman” and the anthology were both nominated.
- Richard Butner’s “Ash City Stomp” received an Honorable Mention from the new Fountain Award.
- Susan Mosser’s “Bumpship” will be reprinted in The Year’s Best SF.
- Christopher Barzak’s Dead Boy Found” will be reprinted in The Best New Horror.
- Karen Joy Fowler’s “King Rat” and Richard Butner’s “Ash City Stomp” are reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. [paperback] [ hardcover]
- Philip K. Dick Award Winner
- Impac Award Nominee
- Nebula Award Nominee
- Starred review in Publishers Weekly
- Reprinted by Firebird
Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories
Carol Emshwiller
- “Creature” won the Nebula Award for Short Story
Stranger Things Happen
Kelly Link
- Firecracker Award Nominee
- “Louise’s Ghost” won the Nebula Award for Novelette
- “The Specialist’s Hat” won the World Fantasy Award
- “Travels with the Snow Queen” won the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Award
Meet Me in the Moon Room
Ray Vukcevich
Reviews — Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist
Also: Locus, F&SF, Science Fiction Chronicle, Tangent Online, January Magazine
- Philip K. Dick Award Nominee
The Rose in Twelve Petals
Theodora Goss
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVIII (Datlow, Grant, & Link, eds.) honorable mentions: “Her Mother’s Ghosts” & “The Bear’s Daughter.”
- Fantasy Book Spot
- “Theodora Goss is one of the most exciting new writers to appear in this
century.”
— Richard Horton, Internet Review of Science Fiction
Horses Blow Up Dog City
Richard Butner
- “Butner picks up the absurdities of high-speed America and throws them back in its face, reveling in the wild, wonderful mess he creates.”
— New Pages - The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVIII (Datlow, Grant, & Link, eds.) honorable mention: “The Rules of Gambling.”
- “Wry, caustic, calculated, impulsive…. Gems of gorgeous weirdness.”
— Asimovs - “Richard Butner has rather quietly published some interesting stories over
the past several years…. Good stuff—the foundation of a fine career,
I hope.”
— Richard Horton, Internet Review of Science Fiction
Bittersweet Creek and Other Stories
Christopher Rowe
- “As smooth and heady as good Kentucky bourbon”
— Locus - “‘Men of Renown’ is a herald of what Rowe can do best: deal with time and place without limits.”
— Tangent Online
Other Cities
Benjamin Rosenbaum
- “Throughout Other Cities, compressed insight and wonder are compressed into but a handful of words. This small book’s crisp design and illustrations mirror the elegance of the writing: recommended.”
— Xerography Debt - “Charming…”
— Locus - “I enthusiastically urge you to get a copy and enjoy the exciting and odd metropolises in Other Cities.”
— Washington Science Fiction Association The WSFA Journal Dec. 2003 - “And though the stories are tiny, they do not disappoint as a result of their brevity. When you leave one fantastic destination behind, there is another city right around the corner.”
— Tangent Online
Foreigners, and Other Familiar Faces
Mark Rich
- “A fine selection of some truly imaginative fiction.”
— Xerography Debt - “There is some interesting stuff here. He seems to do best with stories that involve gardening.”
— A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 20
Lord Stink and Other Stories
Judith Berman
- Asimov’s
- Locus Online (far down)
- Tangent Online
Rossetti Song: Four Stories
Alex Irvine
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVI (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nod: “The Sands of Iwo Jima”
- F&SF
- Locus Online
Five Forbidden Things
Dora Knez
- SF Site
- “a fine burgeoning talent.” Asimov’s
- “…one admires Knez’s gift for language. It should come as no surprise that three poems of impeccable craftsmanship follow the five narrative prose works…”
— Star*Line - The (almost) title story, “The One Forbidden Thing” and “Vaster Than Empires” received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (vols. XIII & XIV, respectively)
4 Stories
Kelly Link
- SF Site
- “a wide-ranging artist at work.” — Asimov’s
- “Shoe and Marriage” was nominated for the World Fantasy Award
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
No. 22 —
- —
No. 21 —
- “An accomplished magazine. There’s no shortage of ambition amongst the writing on show, and even those stories criticised here have obvious qualities and are the work of demonstrably capable writers. The standard throughout is high and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is neither as fey nor as hard to approach as its esoteric name might suggest. This issue contained a number of genuinely memorable stories and some excellent writing. It is a read that is certainly worth your while.”
— The Fix - “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a different kind of magazine.”
— SF Revu
No. 20 —
- “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a different kind of magazine.”
— SF Revu
No. 19 —
- Reviews?
No. 18 —
- “Primarily fiction with some non-fiction and poetry. Literary journal/small press quality; very polished writing. A two-page play I didn’t get, a magic realist piece about souls blowing loose from their bodies on windy days that makes a comment on being on the fringe; a dreamy piece about lost girls and a witch’s garden; something about a train I didn’t get; a darkly funny zombie story about consumer guilt; and poetry I actually understood. That’s just the first half. Well worth the price.”
—Zine World #24 - Tangent
No. 17 —
- John Brown’s “Bright Waters” reprinted in Best of the Rest 4.
- Deborah Roggie’s “The Mushroom Duchess” was on the Fountain Award short list and was reprinted in The Year’s best Fantasy & Horror: 2006, 19th Annual Edition (Gavin Grant, Kelly Link, & Ellen Datlow, eds.)
- “Number 17 is one of the best issues I’ve seen of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.Hightlights include Philip Raines & Harvey Welles’s “All the Things She Wanted”, set in a much changed Washington DC, where everyone seems to have (at least potentially) a personal map of a different city. A woman buys a potion that gives her what she wants, at a certain price (first one’s free!) — only to find that the things she wants keep changing. Deborah Roggie’s “The Mushroom Duchess” is a pleasant depiction of a quite monstrous Duchess, whose experiments with mushrooms extend to using them to control her unwanted daughter-in-law in a nasty way. John Brown’s “Bright Waters” is a fine, long story, only barely fantastical, of a rather ugly trader in pre-Revolution America whose efforts to find a wife among the local Indians meets with little success. But things change when he meets a feisty English immigrant, and also gets some magical help from an Indian medicine woman.”
—Rich Horton, Locus, 2/06 - “A feast of mystery, novelty, and desire.” — Zine World 23
- Tangent
No. 16 —
- “Three Urban Folk Tales” by Eric Schaller reprinted in Best of the Rest 4. and recommended by Rich Horton in Locus (“Impressive…. The three stories intertwine in surprising ways — lovely stuff.”)
- Tangent
No. 15 —
- “Successively bridges the literary and genre worlds with strange, off-beat tales that venture into the fantastic while somehow remaining grounded in the real world. This really is a magazine worth checking out, regardless of whether you favour genre or literary fiction.”
— Kara Kellar Bell on the Laura Hird site - “LCRW never ceases to amaze me. It is always a beatiful zine, but the caliber of the writing in it is stunning.”
— Xerography Debt, 17
No. 14 —
- Douglas Lain’s story “Music Lessons” received an honorable mention from the Fountain Award.
- Deborah Roggie’s story “The Enchanted Trousseau” from has been picked by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Haber for their anthology, Fantasy: The Best of 2004.
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVIII (Datlow, Grant, & Link, eds.) honorable mentions: James Sallis’s “The Museum of Last Week,” Deborah Roggie’s “The Enchanted Trousseau,” and David Blair’s poem Diamond”
- Tangent
- “Old as Methuselah in small-press years, LCRW shows no signs of hardening of the arteries.”
— Asimovs
No. 13 —
- SF Site
- “If you enjoy short fiction and essays this one comes highly recommended.”
— Xerography Debt - “As usual, the editorial dynamic duo, Grant and Link, has put together an assortment of sly, bizarre, funny, and haunting stories by writers both familiar and unfamiliar. …[Which] amuses, enthralls, mystifies, and moves me. It’s always a wonder to me that Grant and Link can continually bring us such fresh, idiosyncratic talents.”
— Tangent
No. 12 —
- Harvey Welles and Philip Raines’s “The Fishie” received an Honorable Mention from the new Fountain Award.
- Harvey Welles and Philip Raines’s “The Fishie” reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.
- “Home and Security” by Gavin J. Grant was reprinted in the Zine Yearbook Vol. 8
- “There’s something for everyone within these pages, which include fiction, poetry, non-fiction, a book review, a film review, a few zine reviews, and even a piece that could pass for a visual poem. If anything, you could argue that the zine is a little too eclectic because it doesn’t cohere under any one theme or mood. But these days, who needs coherence?… Many of the stories, like Jan Lars Jensen’s “Happier Days”, at first seem perfect for a lazy, hung-over Sunday afternoon when you may be more receptive to a bit of gold old nostalgia, but then take a weird and welcome twist. Cara Spindler offers some poetic mid-zine relief with her delightful lyricism, and Richard Butner instructs on how to make a proper martini. (There is no such thing as a Choco-Banana Martini.) … This is a good zine to keep in your bag during daily travels.
— Broken Pencil, 23 - “Rich in elegant prose and startling literary perspectives, Richard Parks demonstrates anew his talent for oriental fables…[with] a medieval-Japanese ghost story with a shock in reserve; Ursula Pflug intones a heartfelt love song to mythic Ireland…; Jan Lars Jensen…haunts his characters with much more recent legends, to alarming effect; and Jennifer Rachel Baumer writes with superb lyricism of very subtle phantoms…. But best of all is “Bay” by David Erik Nelson, a recontextualization of ghosts that is authentically surprising, genuinely horrifying — an extraordinary achievement in a hackneyed subgenre.”
–Nick Gevers, Locus - “A highbrow literary zine that presents fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with beautiful layout and spare but attractive graphics.”
— A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 20 - “Had LCRW #12 been a sheaf of blank pages around “The Fishie,” I still would have felt compelled to give it a good review. But with its usual assortment of quietly compelling fiction hovering somewhere around the nexus of ghost story, fairy tale, folklore, fantasy, and magical realism, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet continues to define-and redefine-for me why we read, write, and take risks on new writers, new ideas, and new ways. Quality.”
— Tangent
No. 11 —
- Sarah Monette’s story “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland” won the 2003 Gaylactic Spectrum Award
- Nan Fry’s poem “The Wolf’s Story” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVI (Datlow & Windling, eds.).
- The following stories & poem received honorable mentions:
- Theodora Goss — The Rapid Advance of Sorrow
- Sarah Monette — Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland
- Kathryn Cramer — The Mourners
- “I particularly enjoyed Sarah Monette’s fey eroticism in “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland.”
—Asimov’s - “Oil and Greece” by Gavin J. Grant reprinted in the Zine Yearbook Vol.7
- “Smart, accessible… If you’re looking to spend some quality time with a lit zine, this is a must have.”
— A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 18 — supplement - Locus, Jan. 2003, “a very strong outing.” Especially recommended: Minsoo Kang’s “Three Stories”
- Locus, Feb. 2003 Recommended Reading: Sarah Monette’s “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland”
- Tangent
No. 10 —
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XVI (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nods:
Brian Conn, “The Mushroom”
Jeffrey Ford, “What’s Sure to Come”
Amber van Dyk, “Sleeping, Waking, Nightfall” - “hefty” — A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 18
- New Pages review
- Xerography Debt
- Go Tangent
- “LCRW impressed me.” — The Fix, no.5
No. 9 —
- “Simple living” by Margaret Muirhead was reprinted in the Zine Yearbook Vol. 6
- “Annabelle’s Alphabet” by Tim Pratt was reprinted in The Best of the Rest 3 and The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XV
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XV nods:
Amy Beth Forbes, “A is for Apple”
Eliot Fintushel, “Drought”
Theodora Goss, “The Ophelia Cantos” - Nice review in The Fix
- Tangent review
- “Precious imaginations run riot” — A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 17 — supplement
No. 8 —
- Tangent review
- Broken Pencil review
- Nice review in The Fix
- “a fine collection… The writing is superb….” — A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 17 — supplement
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XV (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nods:
A. DeNiro, “Cuttlefish”
Carol Emshwiller, “As If”
Theodora Goss, “Chrysanthemums” & “Helen in Sparta”
Nancy Jane Moore, “Three O’clock in the Morning”
Ray Vukcevich, “Pretending” (also reprinted in The Best of the Rest 3)
No. 7 —
- SF Site review
- Ellen Klages’ story, “Flying Over Water,” Nebula Award finalist.
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XIV (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nod: Jeffrey Ford’s “High Tea with Jules Verne”
No. 6 —
- SF Site review
- “Intriguingly surreal fiction” — Asimov’s
- The Hotsy-Totsy Club review
- Nice mention in the “Zines with a Literary Bent” section of the shouldn’t-be-missed Xerox Debt
- The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror XIII, (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nod: Kelly Link’s “The Dictator’s Wife”
No.5 (v3,n2) —
- The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror XIII, (Datlow & Windling, eds.) nods:
Dora Knez, “The One Forbidden Thing”
Sten Westgard, “The Marriage Doll” (as well as three of his other stories).
No. 4 —
- A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, no. 12
“The fiction by Nalo Hopkinson and a hilarious short story by Kelly Link about beauty queens are impressive. The poetry ranges from good to fair, but the zine has some interesting nonfiction pieces as well. Naoko Takahashi’s observations on Japan’s culture and media are fascinating. A debate about the death penalty by Gavin J. Grant is excellent. Fiction and zine reviews, too. Nicely presented.”
Press releases
August 22, ’01, “A play based on a Kelly Link short story”
Seems like we don’t really do these after all.
“Small Beer is the hottest thing in publishing. It’s amazing. Like learning that Luxembourg has nuclear warheads.”
— Rick Bowes
Kelly Link
Tue 14 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin
October 2, 2008 from Viking Penguin:
Kelly Link
HC: October 2, 2008 · 978-0670010905 · $19.99
Nine stories each with an illustration by Shaun Tan.
“The Wizards of Perfil,” “Monster,” “The Surfer,” The Constable of Abal,” “The Wrong Grave,” “The Faery Handbag,” “The Specialist’s Hat,” “Magic for Beginners,” and “Pretty Monsters.”
Order a signed copy and receive tattoos, stickers, and similar items of interest.
** News:
- “Pretty Monsters” in Pretty Monsters
- The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2008: 21st Annual Collection (with Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant)
- “The Constable of Abal” in The Best Sciene Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 2
- “Light” reprinted in Best American Fantasy 2008.
- “The Surfer” in The Starry Rift.
- More
** Interviews:
- Redivider | Sybil’s Garage | Return of the Reluctant | Strange Horizons | Milk of Medusa | The Well | Salon.com | Beatrice.com |Locus (Order this issue: free shipping or free with subscription.)
- Illustrated by Shelley Jackson.
- Hardcover | paperback | Limited
- Best of the Year: Time Magazine, Salon, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, PopMatters.
- Reviews
- Free Download
- “Eerie and engrossing.”
— Washington Post Book World - * Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.”
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
- Debut collection by Kelly Link. A Salon Book of the Year and Village Voice Favorite Book.
- Reviews
- Free Download
- Now in its sixth printing.
- Fifth Printing Note: We are sorry to say some copies of this printing have page 118 reprinted where page 188 should be. There are a couple of remedies. You can download the pdf of page 188here or you can email us.
We are a tiny press and we apologize for our mistake. We hope the replacement page (or the book) will satisfy readers. However, if you’d rather, we will replace your book. Please email us if this is the case.
How to identify if your copy is a 5th printing: On the copyright page it states “First Edition 5 6 7 8 9 0”
Thank you.
Trampoline: an anthology of mostly original fiction edited by Kelly Link.
- Greer Gilman’s novella “A Crowd of Bone” was a World Fantasy Award Winner. Alex Irvine’s story “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman” and the anthology were also nominated.
Laurie Marks Bio
Mon 13 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Laurie J. Marks is the author of three Elemental Logic novels, Earth Logic, Fire Logic, and Water Logic, as well five other novels. She teaches at U.Mass Boston and lives in Melrose, Massachusetts, with her partner, Deb Mensinger.
For more see here.
Author photo: Deb Mensinger.
Water Logic Reviews
Mon 13 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Water Logic
Laurie J. Marks
“The war between the Sainnites and the Shaftali has ended with a Sainnite victory and a gesture of peace and reconstruction. As Sainnite General Clement renews her relationship with Shaftali cow doctor Seth, now a Councilor from her village, forces are working to undermine the peace and end the life of Karis, the new Shaftali G’deon, the woman who agreed to peace with her country’s enemies. When an earth-blooded prophet gets lost beneath the ice and is transported to another time, she finds that she holds the key to solving the problems of the “future,” if she can only discover a means of communicating through time. The third installment, after Fire Logic and Earth Logic, in Marks’s “Elemental Logic” series, explores the relationship of water, an element that travels through space and time, to those people who share its qualities or who oppose its power. Finely drawn characters and a lack of bias toward sexual orientation make this a thoughtful, challenging read that belongs in most adult fantasy collections.”
— Library Journal“Frankly, it’s mind-bending stuff, and refreshing…. I haven’t read the previous two Logic books by Marks so this was like a flashback to my childhood. Interestingly, while there was some character history that I missed, from what I’ve seen of Marks’ writing style, I didn’t necessarily miss much explanation anyways. The world is presented as-is, and of course all the people in it know what is going on and why. I found the book quite intriguing, since Marks does have some unusual magic going on, and there’s certainly no overkill in the infodump department.”
—James Schellenberg, The Cultural Gutter* “How gifts from the past, often unknown or unacknowledged, bless future generations; how things that look like disasters or mistakes may be parts of a much bigger pattern that produces greater, farther-reaching good results—such is the theme of Marks’ sweeping fantasy, which reaches its third volume with this successor to Fire Logic (2002) and Earth Logic (2004).”
—Booklist (Starred Review)“This is a genuinely original and subversive work of fantasy literature. It’s the real thing: capable of changing the world, or at least the way you see it. Grittier and ultimately more satisfying than Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels, but with some of the same delicious sense of a world with plenty of room for queerness . . . there’s the depth and mythic sweep of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, with a seasoned, mature sense of a world where adults make hard choices and live with them.
“Marks’s characters are real people who breathe and sleep and sweat and love; the food has flavor and the landscape can break your heart. You don’t find this often in any contemporary fiction, much less in fantasy: a world you can plunge yourself into utterly and live in with great delight, while the pages turn, and dream of after.”
—Ellen Kushner“Picking up the threads left loose at the end of Earth Logic (2004), Marks’s third Elemental Logic tale weaves three story lines through her tapestry of a war-torn world whose elemental forces are dangerously out of balance. Clement, reluctant general of the Sainnite army occupying Shaftal, has made peace with Karis, the Shaftali G’deon, and now seeks to suppress insurrection in her ranks and legitimize the leadership role thrust upon her. Meanwhile, Clement’s lover Seth pursues an assassin who nearly murdered Karis. In the story’s most fantastic subplot, fire witch Zanja na’Tarwein [spoiler deleted]. Marks plays the fantasy of her unfolding epic more subtly here than in previous volumes, and the resulting depiction of intransigent cultures in conflict, rich with insight into human nature and motives, will resonate for modern readers.
—Publishers Weekly
Ellen Kushner Bio
Mon 13 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
Ellen Kushner is the host of PRI’s Sound and Spirit. She is the author ofSwordspoint, Thomas the Rhymer, and, with Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings. Her novels have won the World Fantasy, Spectrum, and Mythopoeic Awards, and been chosen as a School Library Journal Adult Book for Young Adults. She lives in New York City.
Full bio on the Sound and Spririt site.
Download author photo for print.
Author photo credit: TK.
The Privilege of the Sword – Reviews
Mon 13 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin
The Privilege of the Sword
Ellen Kushner
Reviews
“This novel introduces a fearless and resourceful heroine with a true heart and a keen-edged blade. Spiced with humor and spot-on period detail, this coming-of-age tale belongs in most fantasy and YA collections.”
— Library Journal (Starred Review)“Plot and style here are in the swashbuckling tradition of Dumas, but the characters are very real beneath their facades.”
— Booklist“Bound to become a feminist classic….”
— Helen Pilinovsky, Endicott Studio“Winning high fantasy … a welcome return to the romantic Riverside world Kushner introduced in Swordspoint.”
—Publishers Weekly“If Swordspoint is a perfect gem, The Privilege of the Sword is the gem in its full setting: elegant, wicked, funny, intelligent, and fluent.”
— Green Man Review“There’s no doubt that the book is great fun. Kushner’s prose is fabulous and her characters vivid, though the book itself is far more charming than any of them. I hate having to say this about a book, because it sounds like an insult, but it really would make great beach reading.”
— Emerald City
Advance Readers say:
“One of the most gorgeous books I’ve ever read: it’s witty and wonderful, with characters that will provoke, charm and delight.”
— Holly Black (Tithe)
“A magical mixture of Dumas and Georgette Heyer. The dialogue dazzles and so does the swordplay.”
— Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners)
Read the new LCRW before it gets printed
Fri 10 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, LCRW| Posted by: Gavin
Current Issue: Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet Number 24
Current location: at the printer.
Current availability: paper edition will mail out next week to subscribers and bookstores. However, the DRM-free PDF ebook is available now.
Additionally: we’ve dropped the price of the LCRW ebook to $4 from this issue on and also for the back issues (more of which should be available later this month). The price has been changed at Fictionwise, too, although that may take a little while to percolate through the system.
US/Canada $5  |
International $8 |
Ebook $4 |
And what’s in this death and radishes issue? Familiar and unfamiliar names! A lack of radishes. A comic by Abby Denson.
As ever one of the aspects we are most pleased about is the number of authors we were previously unfamiliar with. We aren’t the fastest readers out there, but we read everything we’re sent and are regularly delighted to be able to bring new authors to the fore:
Fiction
Alexander Lamb, “Eleven Orchid Street”
Liz Williams, “Dusking”
Jasmine Hammer, “Tornado Juice”
J. W. M. Morgan, “Superfather”
Dicky Murphy, “The Magician’s Umbrella”
Alissa Nutting, “Leave the Dead to the Living”
Eve Tushnet, “A Story Like Mine”
Dennis Danvers, “The Broken Dream Factory”
Anya Groner, “The Magician’s Keeper”
Nonfiction
Gwenda Bond, “Dear Aunt Gwenda”
Poetry
Neile Graham, “Machrie Moore”
Marina Rubin, “Bordeaux, And Other Mysteries”
Comics
Abby Denson, “Heady’s Crush”
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