Small Beer Podcast 1: Delia Sherman and The Freedom Maze

Thu 20 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Julie

Delia Sherman is a woman very close to our hearts here at Small Beer Press. To launch our latest podcasting venture, we decided to chat with Delia about her latest book, The Freedom Maze, her Southern roots and the stubborn nature of dreams.

Episode 1: Delia Sherman Discusses Her Latest Book, The Freedom Maze with Julie Day of Small Beer Press.

Oh, and if  the excerpt Delia reads catches your fancy, and we think it will, you can preorder The Freedom Maze right here on the Small Beer site.

This is the first in a two or three month podcasting series.  Tune back in as we discuss everything from yarrow-flavored beer to Mexican speculative fiction.

Subscribe to the Small Beer podcast in iTunes or using the service of your choice:

rss feed


We go to Boston!

Fri 14 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Tomorrow—god willing and the creek don’t rise—Kelly and I will be at the Boston Book Fair. We have a booth (#12) and will have copies of our new yet-to-be released collection: Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse. The  fair runs 10-6 and at 11 a.m., we’ll be off for this:

Steampunk!
11:00am Boston Public Library Rabb Auditorium 700 Boylston Street

Is it a literary genre, an aesthetic style, or a way of life? It may be all of the above! Join Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, co-editors of the new Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, as well as Spiderwick Chronicles co-author Holly Black and steampunk creator Allison DeBlasio (aka Mrs. Grymm) for a discussion of all things steampunk, from goggles to gyrocopters. Wear a costume and you may win a prize or get to see the session while seated on stage. Moderated by Maya Escobar, Teen Librarian at the Cambridge Public Library.

Also attending the book fair: Karen Russell, Kate Beaton (read Kelly’s interview with her here), Francis Moore Lappe, Chris “Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop” Raschka, and, lo, the many more.

Also attending: Drawn & Quarterly, NYRB, Melville House, Godine, NESFA, Zephyr, Barefoot—or, 75 publishers and other groups of interest!

And: you can see Kelly’s panel from last year’s Book Fest (with Maria Tatar, Kate Bernheimer, and Kathryn Davis) here.


Temporary podcast starting soon

Thu 13 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Ooh! Julie Day, who came to us through the excellent offices of Jim Kelly and the Stonecoast MFA program, will be doing a podcast here for the next few weeks. Topics will be widespread!

Julie has lined up interviews with Elizabeth Hand, Michael J. DeLuca, Delia Sherman, and maybe a few others and there will be readings by them and a few others, too.

If you have questions, post them here. The podcast will be subscribable from here and (after the first one is up) on iTunes.


Delia’s doing readings

Thu 13 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

ETA: ARC giveaway!

Tonight(!) she’s on a panel as part of that fascinating Big Read series of events in New York City. Then, when The Freedom Maze comes out she has two readings arranged (and more TK we hope in Massachusetts):

Sunday, Nov. 13, 1 p.m — Multi-author reading
Books of Wonder, 18 W. 18th St., New York, NY
Delia Sherman, Tamora Pierce, John Connolly, and Rae Carson, read at the storied Books of Wonder.

Thursday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m. Young Adult Author Event
Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119
Readings and Discussion with Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Wisdom’s Kiss) and Delia Sherman (The Freedom Maze).

Set in the same world as her fantasy Princess Ben, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Wisdom’s Kiss offers a tale of adventure, plotting, angst, and romance, presented through documentary evidence — the journals of Princess Wisdom and her betrothed’s mother, Duchess Wilhelmina; the letters of the Queen Mother and the swordsman’s apprentice (but not to each other); memoirs of the swordsman and the orphaned seer Trudy; encyclopedia entries; even scenes from a play!

Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze takes a more serious tone. Slated to spend the summer on her family’s sugar plantation in Louisiana, 13-year-old Sophie wishes for a storybook adventure and is sent back in time by 100 years. In Sophie’s own 1960, there is no question of who is black and who is white. It has never occurred to her that in 1860, tanned and barefoot, she might be taken for a slave . . .


Thanks Steve

Thu 6 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Without him, this world would be less shiny, harder work. I’m writing this on an Apple computer—everything we’ve done at Small Beer (except some author tax forms from Staples which only worked on a pc!) has been done on a variety of Apple computers. I’ve only ever bought Apple computers because they were made with people like me in mind. I’m not the most technologically gifted person and I don’t have stacks of high powered computers available. I have tools that will do the job—and sometimes distract from the job, too. For a while the press was run off my and Kelly’s laptops. That we could do that is down to one guy.

Steve Jobs and his drive to bring the future into the present (I still like CDs!) sometimes drove me crazy but over the years the compatibility problems decreased and suddenly Apple users were everywhere. I liked that he was building a small house instead of a mansion—although maybe that was more to do with being seriously ill, than being a fan of small houses. I don’t have many of his recent machines (no iPhone, no iPad) but I love my 10-year-old iPod.

I never met him, I just miss him. He pushed and pushed and everything he did suggested that the world could be a better place. Awesome.


Library Journal says you might like this book

Fri 30 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

There was actual whooping in the office today when this came in!

Library Journal
October 1, 2011
Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic
Edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown, Small Beer Press,  9781931520317

“Encompassing a definition of fantasy that includes the extraterrestrial, the supernatural, the macabre, and the spectral, these stories are set in unusual locales and deal with bizarre characters. All are very short (some just two pages), and most offer a surprise twist at the end, though occasionally the only reaction these endings may elicit from the reader is “Huh?” The universal scope of the themes transcends the Mexican provenance; for example, one detects an apocalyptic influence in Liliana V. Blum’s “Pink Lemonade,” and Argentine Julio Cortázar’s “Bestiary” influences Bernardo Fernández’s “Lions.” Most of the volume’s 34 authors, half of whom are women, are relatively unknown to American readers, and for many of them, publication in this anthology represents their first exposure to an English-reading audience. The translations, several of which were done by the editors, convey the individuality, if not idiosyncrasies, of these tales. VERDICT This collection will appeal mostly to fans of fantasy and sf and, to a lesser degree, those interested in contemporary Mexican literature.”


If this is Saturday, it must be Baltimore

Thu 22 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We go to Baltimore. Please come by and say hello!

In fact: here are some newish events for Kelly and Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant . . . out now (well, Oct. 11, really): 14 stories! 4 starred reviews!

Saturday, Sept. 24, 6:30 PM: Baltimore Book Festival: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant lead a discussion about the Steampunk genre with Michael Kirby and Eden Unger-Bowditch. Come find out what Steampunk is all about! (Eek! Their description, not ours.)

October 5, 7 PM: Center for Fiction, NYC: “Why Fantasy Matters” with Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners) Felix Gilman (The Half Made World), Naomi Novik (the Temeraire series), and Lev Grossman (The Magicians) moderated by Laura Miller, a contributor to the online magazine Salon.

October 15, 11 AM: Boston Book Festival: Steampunk! with Gavin J. Grant, Holly Black and steampunk creator Allison DeBlasio (aka Mrs. Grymm). Moderated by Maya Escobar, Teen Librarian at the Cambridge Public Library.

November 3, 7 PM: Steampunk! event with Gavin J. Grant and Cassandra Clare, Odyssey Books, South Hadley, MA


Friendly

Tue 20 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Been meaning to post something in response to this guest post by Rachel Manja Brown and Sherwood Smith at Rose Fox’s Publishers Weekly Genreville blog “Say Yes to Gay YA.” To get to the essence of it: yes, we are open to all kinds of books with all kinds of characters.

To answer a few follow on questions:

  • Yes, we are open to submissions from anyone. (Hence we are always behind on reading, sorry.)
  • No, we don’t take electronic submissions—with only Kelly and I reading if we took electronic submissions all we would do is read, we wouldn’t ever have time for anything else.
  • Yes, I and/or Kelly read everything that comes in.
  • Yes, we publish first time authors, old hands, well known and unknowns. We love books, we love the books we publish. If we love your book, we’ll publish it. We are constrained by time and budget to 10-12 books per year. (Buy our books and help us publish more!)
  • Yes, we pay advances. The highest we’ve paid is in the low five figures, so, no, you are not going to get a huge offer from us.
  • Yes, we pay industry standard royalties (although our ebook royalty is twice industry standard: 50% of net receipts).
  • Yes, our books are for sale everywhere through the good people at our distributor, Consortium.
  • Yes, all our books are available in print and ebook editions: although no doubt soon we will start adding some ebook only titles.

But all that is by the by: mostly I just wanted to make it very open and obvious that we are open to submissions from everyone.

Posted this morning after watching this video (link from Metafilter):


Freedom Maze final cover

Mon 19 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It wraps round, see, so you need to see the whole big bright and shiny thing—now with added Gregory Maguire for joy.

Did we mention the first review it received was a starred review in Kirkus Reviews? Happy? Yes, indeedy!

Clickity click click!

https://smallbeerpress.com/images/Sherman-Freedom_Maze.gif


Oops. No Brooklyn after all.

Sun 18 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Oops. We will not be at the Brooklyn Book Fest today after all. So sad! So sorry to miss all the fun—and our panels—but Kelly isn’t well so c’est la vie.

And, we ever-so-sensibly shipped books down this year so if anyone feels like selling books, ping me!

Hope everyone there enjoys the lovely weather.


Book Fests! Baltimore

Thu 15 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Next Saturday we are doing a panel at the Baltimore Book Fest where they are also looking for people who want to dress up and partake up in steampunk fun: email Emma Casale (emma@thecbstore.com, 410-917-7262) if you’re interested!

Steampunk!: Clockwork, Invention, Adventure

September 24, 2011, 6:30PM

Location: Children’s Bookstore Stage

Kelly Link and Gavin Grant lead a discussion about the Steampunk genre with Michael Kirby and Eden Unger-Bowditch. Come find out what Steampunk is all about!

More About the Authors
Kelly Link Steampunk!
 Gavin Grant Steampunk!
Eden Unger Bowditch The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black
Matthew Kirby The Clockwork Three



Book Fests! Brooklyn

Thu 15 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight Kelly is in Brooklyn to read at the powerHouse Arena Tin House/Electric Literature party—her Steampunk! story, “The Summer People,” also appears in the new Ecstatic issue of Tin House,

Then on Sunday, Sept. 18, we will be at the Brooklyn Book Fest where we will be at table #124 and both Kelly and I have panels. Come on by and say hi! Don’t quite know if we will have the secret t-shirts we had at Readercon (maybe at some point they’ll be on sale here . . . ) or LCRW mugs but we have the new ish of LCRW, and books, books, glorious books!

12:00 P.M. Crashing Genres. Join authors whose work defies classification: crashing the genre borders of sci-fi / fantasy and the supernatural. Cory Doctorow (For The Win and NYT best-selling Little Brother), has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, Kelly Link, author of cult favorite stories in Pretty Monsters and Magic for Beginners and best-selling author Jewell Parker Rhodes, winner of the American Book Award, uses magical realism to examine race and memory in her New Orleans vampire trilogy Seasons, Moon, and Hurricane. Moderated by Stephanie Anderson.

5:00 P.M. Epic Adventures. Have you ever wanted to travel to the other side of the world to experience new places, really learn about other cultures, and maybe even find your true love in the process? Join graphic novelist Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) and author/illustrator team Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story) as they take you on two powerful journeys that really show what is like to be entirely somewhere else. Moderated by Gavin Grant, co-editor of Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories.

New Lydia Millet cover

Tue 13 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve just gotten a near final cover from Sharon McGill for Lydia Millet’s second middle grade novel, The Shimmers in the Night—the second book in the Dissenters series after The Fires Beneath the Sea. BTW, Lydia will be on a blog tour later this fall for Fires. Anyway: jacket!

https://smallbeerpress.com/images/9781931520782_big.gif


The Company We Keep – Under the Poppy takes to the road

Thu 8 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

A Guest Post from Kathe Koja:

An industrial art festival, throngs of hipsters, and bands, and Sailor Jerry rum…. And upstairs there was a Victorian townhouse, lovingly designed and painstakingly painted, hung about with deep red curtains, decorated with lavish lace and plump floor pillows and risque art. There was wine, and chocolates; there were flowers. There were curious glances as the curious audience—whose knowledge of Under the Poppy ranged from multiple devoted readings to “What’s this all about?”—made its way past the Poppy booth into the playing space.  And then the door closed behind them, and the show began.

“The company we keep
May keep us from our sleep
And keep us toss-and-turning till the morning …” Read more


Packing

Wed 31 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

What’s faster: packing or unpacking?


While we were away

Tue 30 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

some readers got back to us after reading Delia Sherman’s upcoming The Freedom Maze. They’re not lying, it’s an intense, fun, excellent book for readers of all ages:

“A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie’s coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family’s double-edged past.”
—N. K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“This is an absolutely fascinating story. The Freedom Maze draws you into a world of danger and mystery, of daring and change, at the dawning of the Civil War. Sophie’s adventures in the history of her family’s Louisiana plantation feel real, and lead her to a real understanding of racial truths she would never have caught a glimpse of without magic. Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and vévés and bitter, healing herbs.  The Freedom Maze is deep, meaningful fun.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

“Sherman’s antebellum story exposes a wide sweep through a narrow aperture, where the arbitrary nature of race and ownership, kindred and love, are illuminated in the harsh seeking glare of an adolescent’s coming of age.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A bold and sensitively-written novel about a supposed-white child, Sophie Fairchild returned magically to a time of her ancestors who were slavemaster and slaves in the old South. This book puts the lie to those today making loose political statements about happy, comfortable slave families of that brutal era while telling a strong story that will not let the young reader stop turning pages to see how things will work out for Sophie and her fellow slaves, especially the cook Africa, and house slaves Antigua and Canada. I was mesmerized.”
—Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic

“A riveting, fearless, and masterful novel. I loved Sophie completely.”
—Nancy Werlin, author of Extraordinary

“A subtle and haunting book that examines what it means to be who we are.”
—Holly Black, co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“Vividly realized and saturated with feeling.”
—Elizabeth Knox, author of DreamHunter


Housekeeping

Wed 10 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Our office will be closed for the rest of the month of August because of furnace repairs davenport ia and we will only be able to send out e-galleys to reviewers during that time.


Edinburgh book fest & more

Tue 9 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Stories of Your Life and Others cover - click to view full sizeTime for some updates before we shut down for the August recess. First a few quick reviews:

  1. Gary K. Wolfe in Locus on Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales: “In the best of Ryman’s fiction, the world unfolds in ways that are at once astonishing and thoroughly thought out, both radically disorienting and emotionally powerful.”
  2. Ted Gioia on Ted Chiang. (It’s a TedFest!) “The divide between genre fiction and literary fiction is, blurry at best . . . “
  3. Catch-up: Matt Kressel interviews Richard Butner for the Shirley Jackson Award site.
  4. Very sad to read about William Sleator’s death. Many years ago Kelly gave me a copy of his autobiographical collection Oddballs (it’s still one of the books she loves to give people), a hilarious book that only gets more fascinating as I see if from two sides, the child POV and the parental. I haven’t read much of his fiction, but

Ok, so the last two weren’t reviews, but go on, open up some tabs and read them.

Next: a reading! Vincent McCaffrey will read from A Slepyng Hound to Wake at the Brookline Booksmith at 7 PM on Thursday August 25th. We love Vince and we love the Booksmith (and their reading series, they have Lev Grossman there this week) so we are very sad we won’t be there. Slepying Hound is shipping out very nicely. If you want a signed copy, the Booksmith, Poison Pen, or Avenue Victor Hugo are your choices. (On AVH’s site on Biblio.com you can see what else Vincent has published . . . )

august coverNext: Locus! The August issue has:

  • an interview with Karen Lord—who can be heard on the Locus roundtable podcast here.
  • a review of Geoff Ryman’s collection (ok, that one’s linked above, but I liked having all this stuff together)
  • a review by Rich Horton of The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
  • and includes Lydia Millet’s The Fires Beneath the Sea in the Notable Books
  • and at some point soon, Locus will become available on Weightless

Next: travel! Next week Kelly will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival—apparently their website is down due to a lightning strike on their servers in Ireland!—where she and Audrey Niffenegger will have a lively chat at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 16th, and then Kelly will be part of what sounds like a great shindig of a night from 9 PM onward on Thursday the 18th. And since they are very sensibly headquartered in Edinburgh, we also get to go visit Kelly’s UK publisher for Pretty Monsters, Canongate!

Last! Clarion West. Kelly and I are excited to be among next year’s instructor’s at Seattle’s Clarion West:

We are very happy to announce that our instructors for the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop are Mary Rosenblum, Hiromi Goto, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, and Chuck Palahniuk, the 2012 Susan C. Petrey Fellow.

Although with that line-up, we might just see if we can sit in from week one . . .

Bye! We’re also off to visit family in Scotland, so will be offline for most of this month. We’ll be back—and starting to do events for Steampunk!—at the start of September.


I don’t know the author or the title…

Mon 8 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

But, look, it’s the #1 paperback best seller at the Harvard Book Store! How awesome is that? Screen shot below—where Kelly’s 3 Zombie Stories (actual title: I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It) holds back Alan Furst and Malcolm Gladwell from jousting for their usual spot.

I hope people are having fun asking for it!


About “Pink Lemonade”

Fri 5 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Three Messages and a Warning coverWe asked some of the writers from Three Messages and a Warning to tell us the story behind the story. Here’s the first installment . . . !

About “Pink Lemonade”
Liliana V. Blum

Although must of my writing has always been in the realistic side, I am an assiduous reader of dystopias. I love 1984, The Handmaid’s tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Day of the Triffids, for example. So I was happy to give it a try when I was invited to write a science fiction or fantasy short story for the anthology.

One of my deep and personal obsessions has always been food, and not in the bulimic or anorexic kind of way. I suffer a weird distress whenever I think about people not being able to eat, going hungry. Needless to say, when my children are sick and cannot hold food in their stomachs, I suffer more than with other common illness. When I watch a movie in which the characters can’t eat due to their fictional context (they’re in a war, or lost in the woods, or held prisioner), I grow anxious. Events like the Holocaust and famines, then, are my worst nightmares.

Since my husband, Ramón, is in the agro business, I am close to and more or less versed on the newest agrocultural trends and technologies. I am very aware of the antagonism of many people in this area. Curiously enough, everybody thinks the more technology in health, science, education, transportation, computers, gadgets, the better. But when it comes to agriculture, it suddlenly becomes satanized. It wouldn’t worry me, except because if agriculture worldwide would go “organic”and use zero-technology seeds, more than two thirds of the population would die of starvation, and most of the  forested areas in the world would have to be destroyed in order to make room for  those inefficient crops. So I decided to write about what would happen if these “green” groups would really have it their way. That’s how “Pink Lemonade” was conceived . . .

Liliana V. Blum (Mexico, 19xx) is not one of those women who refuse to reveal their date of birth; she just likes coincidences. So that she was born the same year that Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum was published, is a great one. She is a ginger gal who suffered through her Mexican childhood of pinch-the-redhead-in-the-arm-for-luck. Now she only suffers the sun. She was born in Durango (famous for its scorpions, revolutionaries and narcos) and currently lives in Tampico, Tamaulipas (famous for its crabs and narco-related violence). Despite the eight-legged creatures, the daily bread of bullets and mutilated bodies, and being the mother of a boy, a girl, a beagle and a guinea pig, she has managed to write five short-story collections; one of them, The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (Host Publications, 2007) was translated into English. Her work has been published in literary magazines in the US, Mexico, England, and Poland. One of her books will be reprinted for a reading-campaign in Mexico City, to give away for free in the subway. She is currently working on her first novel.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 27

Wed 3 Aug 2011 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

8.5 x 7 · 60pp · August 2011 · Issue 27 · Available in lovely finger-grabby paper edition or fast and flashy pdf, epub, and mobi.

It is traditional in the world of zines to apologize for the lateness of the latest issue to appear. This goes back to Bob, the first caveman to leave a couple of carved stone tablets with his musings on the politics of fire distribution and some great undiscovered band he saw in a cave a few hills over. His next carvings, were, of course, a bit delayed. You know how it is. A hunt goes long. The crop gets rain-delayed and the delay just rolls over everything else. Other projects—carving wheels, painting the walls—get in the way. Eventually Bob gets through the to-do list and starts getting a new issue of his zine out. Eventually we did, too.

Besides, we’re introducing a new columnist, Nicole Kimberling, who will write about food. This time, she starts us off with that most delightful of foods: brownies. (Read it here.)

Reviews

“Unusual and imaginative, with a distinct literary tone and a lot of characters on the far edge of sanity, if not beyond.”
—Lois Tilton, Locus Online

“This small black and white irregularly-published journal is much bigger inside than it is outside.”
—Terry Weyna, Fantasy Literature

SF Revu

Fiction

A. D. Jameson, The Wolves of St. Etienne
Jessy Randall, The Hedon-Ex Anomaly
K. M. Ferebee, Thou Earth, Thou
Karen Heuler, Elvis in Bloom
M. K. Hobson, A Sackful of Ramps
Carol Emshwiller, The Mismeasure of Me
David Rowinski, Music Box
Joan Aiken, The Sale of Midsummer
Sarah Harris Wallman, The Malanesian

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sending All Your Love—In the Form of Brownies Through the Mail
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
About these Authors

Poetry

Sarah Heller, Four Poems
Sarah Heller, Garden
David Blair, Five Poems

Cover

Kathleen Jennings

Made by: Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, Jedediah Berry, and Michael J. DeLuca.
Readers: Su-Yee Lin, Samantha Guilbert, Cristi Jacques, Hannah Goldstein, Matthew Harrison.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.27, August 2011. ISSN 1544-7782. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw

Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 17 of the paper edition or here). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO & Swets.

LCRW is available as an ebook through smallbeerpress.com, Weightless Books, and occasionally as a trade paperback and ebook from lulu.com/sbp.

Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Paper edition printed by the good people at Paradise Copies, 21 Conz St., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-0414.

As always, thanks for reading.

We wish Michael J. DeLuca were not leaving Small Beer East for Detroit but we wish him and Erin well and we’re very grateful for his time, his bread, beer, and good cheer. He’s provided more help than we could list in 60 pages, never mind in this note. Thanks, Michael.

About these Authors

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was born in Rye, England. After her first husband’s death, she sup- ported her family by copyediting at Argosy and worked at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She wrote for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, and Women’s Own, and over a hundred books—perhaps the best known of which are the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction, and was awarded an MBE. “The Sale of Midsummer” was first published in Ghostly Grim and Gruesome (Helen Hoke, ed., 1976) and was recently collected in The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories.

David Blair’s first book, Ascension Days, was chosen by Thomas Lux for the Del Sol Poetry Prize. He teaches at the New England Institute of Art.

Gwenda Bond lives in Lexington, KY, with her husband, the writer Christopher Rowe, and a number of pets, chilled bottles of champagne, books, and just the right number of screwball comedies.

Carol Emshwiller’s most recent books include The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1, a novel, The Secret City, and a collection, I Live with You. She lives in New York City.

K. M. Ferebee was bred, born, and raised in Texas. Currently she lives, more or less, in New York City. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer and The Brooklyn Rail. She has a strange obsession with the geography of London, and no great gift for gardening.

Sarah Heller received her BA from Bard College and her MFA in poetry from NYU. She teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University, and was the Executive Director of the Authors League Fund from 2000–2010, where she now serves as Executive Advisor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in RealPoetik, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, NextBook, The Temple/El Templo, Thin Air, The Apocalypse Anthology, The Literary Companion to Shabbat, and Hayloft. She has received fellowships or awards from the Drisha Institute, MacDowell Colony, Virginia Council for the Creative Arts, Centre D’Art I Natura (Spain), Vermont Studio Center, and Soul Mountain Retreat. She is on the Board of Directors of Nightboat Books and Triskelion Arts.

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in anthologies and in dozens of literary and speculative publications from Alaska Quarterly Review and Arts & Letters to Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Weird Tales. She has published two novels and a short story collection, and has won an O. Henry award. She lives in New York City with her dog, Booker Prize, and cat, Pulitzer.

M. K. Hobson’s short fiction has recently appeared in the Haunted Legends anthology, as well as in Realms of Fantasy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Postscripts. She is the author of two novels, The Native Star and The Hidden Goddess. She lives in Oregon.

A. D. Jameson is the author of the novel Giant Slugs and the prose collection Amazing Adult Fantasy. He contributes regularly to the group literary blog Big Other.

Nicole Kimberling resides in Bellingham, Washington with her epically long-time partner, Dawn Kimberling, two bad cats and a rotating assortment of houseguests. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Though currently the editor of Blind Eye Books, she has mostly made her money working as a professional cook.

Jessy Randall’s stories, poems, and other things have appeared in Asimov’s, Flurb, and McSweeney’s. Her young adult novel The Wandora Unit is about love and friendship in the high school literary crowd.

David Rowinski splits his time between Amherst with his sons and East Africa where his wife, Sali Oyugi, runs their bar and inn. He has taught English in Cairo, worked in a youth hostel in Athens, been a PCA in Zurich, a security guard in Boston, and is currently painting houses to pay the bills. Last year he found out he was adopted and is tracking down his half sister via the internet. All of this will find its way into the stories he has yet to write.

After stints in Arkansas, Nashville, Charlottesville, England, New York, and Pittsburgh, Sarah Harris Wallman settled in New Haven CT, where she teaches English and creative writing at Albertus Magnus College. She has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Her fiction and plays have previously appeared in Brooklyn’s L Magazine, readshortfiction. com, and once in a swimming pool atop a midtown Marriott.


Secret book revealed

Fri 29 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

in Harvard Book Store newsletter!

“Fabulous local author Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners) has created a special edition book on Paige (our book-making robot) entitled I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It. The hearts of booksellers and librarians everywhere will immediately be warmed by this title, but here’s a little note from Kelly that explains the unusual title choice:  “When you work at a bookshop, hopeful customers sometimes come up to the counter and say, “I don’t know the author or the title, but it’s red (green, blue, etc) and it has xxxxx in it.” (I’ve said it myself at least once or twice.) Anyway, for a couple of years, my husband Gavin and I have had a running joke about using this as the title of a collection. These three stories have appeared before, in other collections, but we were hoping that an all-zombie mini-book would make a good sampler for new readers. We designed the book and printed it in less than twenty-four hours. How amazing: to see your book made before your eyes! We’re now thinking about other projects for Paige M. Gutenborg.”  It’s a slim and gorgeous new book–and it’s currently only available at Harvard Book Store! Order your copy here.”


The Care and Feeding of Your New Homebrew Collection

Thu 21 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Michael

by Michael J. DeLuca

I’m moving to Michigan from Boston. Inside a car on a hot summer day for fourteen hours is about the worst place imaginable to store beer, and glass is dangerous to transport at the best of times, so in advance of the move, I’m giving a way a lot of homebrew. A lot: gallons and gallons of glorious mead, cider, cyser, barleywine, ale and stout. And for the most part, all this wonderful beer I had been hoping to drink in seasons to come is going to non-homebrewers. I worry: my beers are my babies. I want my friends to treat them right, both so they can get the best of their new collection and so if I ever come back to visit I can mooch a bottle or two. Hence this primer.

Read well, and reap the benefits.

Read more


LCRW August 2011 (aka #27) debuts this Thursday in Boston

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We made a secret book today at the Harvard Bookstore on Paige M. Gutenborg, their on demand printer. It was awesome. We did a tiny bit of work on it last night, finished it this morning and had finished books in hand by this afternoon! More on that when we get it organized!

But, also, what is now? Now is LCRW 27!

Available in print format by the end of the week, mailed out, next week, read and devoured from now until English she is no longer spoke.

And here is what it is:

Fiction

A. D. Jameson, The Wolves of St. Etienne
Jessy Randall, The Hedon-Ex Anomaly
K. M. Ferebee, Thou Earth, Thou
Karen Heuler, Elvis in Bloom
M. K. Hobson, A Sackful of Ramps
Carol Emshwiller, The Mismeasure of Me
David Rowinski, Music Box
Joan Aiken, The Sale of Midsummer
Sarah Harris Wallman, The Malanesian

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sending All Your Love
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
About these Authors

Poetry

Sarah Heller, Four Poems
Sarah Heller, Garden
David Blair, Five Poems

Cover

Kathleen Jennings


A Slepyng Hound to Wake

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9781931520263 · 288 pp · July 19, 2011 · trade cloth/ebook

In his second bibliomystery, Boston bookhound Henry Sullivan has a new girlfriend, a new apartment, and a shelfload of troubles.

Chaucer said “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.” Henry Sullivan, bookhound, is ready to be that sleeping dog: to settle down in his new apartment and enjoy life with his new girlfriend.

But the underside of the literary world won’t let him go. A bookscout sells Henry a book—and is murdered later that night. An old friend asks him to investigate a case of possible plagiarism involving a local bestselling author. To make matters worse, his violinist neighbor seems to have a stalker. And wherever Henry goes, there’s a cop watching him.

Henry can read the signs: to save those he loves he has to save himself.

“In 22 years of bookselling I find that readers remain endlessly fascinated with an insider look at the book business—an oxymoron right there.
Vincent McCaffrey offers a real insider’s view in A Slepyng Hound to Wake—a quote from Chaucer—the sequel to the splendid hit, Hound. I’d call them “biblio-noirs” rather than bibliomysteries: the deeds are dark even though bookhound Henry Sullivan becomes involved in what first seem academic rather than criminal matters. How likely is it that the possible ripping-off (OK, plagiarism) of a bestselling author could lead to murder? Dark, too, is Henry’s outlook on his professional world where centuries of tradition are daily eroded by digital publishing and internet bookselling. This gloom carries over into his relationships, freighting them in a classic noir fashion. Still, Henry is a character cut from Raymond Chandler: a modern knight on a mission to save those, and what, he loves.”
—Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen

“McCaffrey makes good use of his Boston setting. . . . Slepyng Hound provides an easy, intelligent read.”
—Gumshoe Reviews

“In McCaffrey’s compelling second mystery to feature Boston book dealer Henry Sullivan (after 2009’s Hound), Henry is unsettled by the murder of a fellow “book hound” down on his luck, Eddy Perry, who just sold Henry a rare volume of Lovecraft horror stories. Later, former girlfriend Barbara Krause, the owner of Alcott & Poe, an independent bookstore, asks Henry’s help in investigating a plagiarism case. Sharon Greene, one of Barbara’s employees, has accused a local literary heavyweight, George Duggan, of stealing from the work of the late James Frankowski, a little-known writer with whom Sharon lived for years. Meanwhile, Barbara struggles to keep Alcott & Poe afloat in an era of recession and e-commerce. A longtime bookstore owner himself, McCaffrey places less emphasis on crime solving than on the larger question of the printed word’s place in today’s world. Evocative prose and characterizations will remind many of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels.”
—Publishers Weekly

“There’s a Woody Allen tone to this one, and you’ll enjoy sharing it with bibliophiles or anyone who appreciates quirky characters. The plotting and weaving of story lines hide a clever puzzle, but most readers will forget they’re reading a mystery until all the pieces fall into place at the very end. Lisa Lutz fans could like this.”
—Library Journal

“Henry’s second (Hound, 2009) is not for those who require a fast and furious story line. The strong mystery is woven into a slow-paced, philosophical discussion of the painful demise of those special bookstores whose nooks and crannies once yielded fabulous finds.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Start reading:

Chapter One

The books were like corpses, the ink of lost dreams dried in their veins. On a bad day, Henry Sullivan felt like a mortician salvaging the moldering flesh of small decaying bodies to be preserved for a proper burial. But, on a good day, though there seemed to be fewer of those of late, he might save something which left him giddy.

Henry pulled the second box free from a mat of cat hair and dust beneath the bed, and peeked beneath the lid.

“Yes!”

The foul odor of the mattress too close to his face, made him swallow the word along with the impulse to gag.
A month before, after lifting the spoiled leaves of disbound volumes abandoned in a basement beneath the seep of a ruined foundation, he had uncovered loose pages sheltered by a collapsed box of empty Croft Ale bottles. Separating the layers until the fetor of mold had made him dizzy, he had salvaged a bundle six inches thick of cream colored rag paper broadsides, announcements, and advertisements, all in French. They had been discarded by a print collector interested only in the engravings originally meant to illustrate the words. And in the heart of that, Henry had found a first printing of ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.’

Those rare sheets were sold now to the highest bidder, but they were a part of the romance Henry imagined about himself. It was still his belief that long before Foucault and Derrida, when words still offered a common meaning, the world could be changed by the content of a few fragile pages. And this was why Henry Sullivan loved his job.

And this happened every once in awhile, more often to him than others he thought, because he had a nose for it.

Henry pushed a broom hand into the depths of the crevice below the bed frame. Again he heard the hollow strike on a box. . . .

Praise for Hound:

“There’s something charismatic and timeless about the way the story builds and McCaffrey opens Henry’s life to the reader . . . McCaffrey is . . . just telling a compelling, old-school yarn, the kind of story a man who knows his literature tells.”
—Time Out Chicago

“For the true bibliophile, this is a book you’ll love.”
—The Hippo

Cover by Tom Canty.

Vincent McCaffrey’s novel Hound was chosen as a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. He has owned the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop for more than thirty years. He has been paid to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. He has chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller. A Slepying Hound to Wake is his second novel and he is hard at work on the next novel featuring Henry Sullivan.


Ayize (San Francisco), Kelly et al (Boston), Geoff (NYC)

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Busy week for Small Beer readings:

Thursday, July 21, Ayize Jama-Everett is reading from The Liminal People (you can sign up here to get a free copy from LibraryThing) as part of an open reading at the “Black Futurists: Progressive Thought to Sci-Fi” exhibit:

African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC)
1410 Turk St, San Francisco, CA 94115 (Map)
(415) 922-2049

Jul 21st, 2011 (Thu)
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Open Mic – Hosted my D. Scot Miller

Location: Floor 1

D. Scot Miller welcomes featured Black Futurist readers and host open mic. Speculative and fantastic poetry and fiction that explores possible and alternate futures within and around the diaspora are welcome!

The same night (7/19, 7 PM) here in Boston, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (me!), David Blair, Michael J. DeLuca will be reading from the new issue of LCRW, #27, at the New England Institute of Art.

The Library Reading Room, Second Floor, Main Campus
New England Institute of Art, 10 Brookline Place West, Brookline, MA 02445-7295
1.617.739.1700 • 1.800.903.4425

And on Wednesday (7/20, 7 PM) down there in Gotham City, Geoff Ryman will be celebrating the release of his first short story collection, Paradise Tales, at the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series, held every month at the most excellent KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., NYC.

And then next Tuesday (7/26, 7 PM), in LA, Lydia Millet reads from her first children’s book, The Fires Beneath the Sea, at another most excellent venue, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California.

Hope you can get out to one of them. Photos always welcome!


Redemption in Indigo wins the Mythopoeic Awards!

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Redemption in Indigo coverCongratulations to Karen Lord, who, along with Megan Whelan Turner(!), Michael Ward, and Caroline Sumpter, are this year’s winners of the Mythopoeic Awards!

Wandering around the Mythopoeic Society site, I couldn’t resist looking at their complete list of award winners, which would make a pretty fine reading list for the past forty years of fantasy.

Congratulations again to Karen and thanks to the jury and the Mythopoeic Society for the work they do—and for such cheery news this morning!


Oops, oh well, sorry, and what’s TK

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry to announce that I am cancelling the 2012 Daily Planner. I’ve talked to Consortium, our distributor, and they’ll be passing the message through the official channels, so at some point soon it will disappear from your fave indie bookstore. All pre-orders will be refunded this week.

I will post what we have as an ebook for a nominal sum (99 cents?) and maybe put it on Lulu.com as a print on demand title, but for the most part this Planner won’t be coming out from us again.

I ran into too many obstacles and ran out of time. The 2013 edition was already problematical due to travel commitments in spring 2012. I apologize to those who were looking forward to it and, given the profusion of planners available, expect that they will find a decent substitute.

Here are the 99c ebook editions of the previous editions: 2012, 2011, 2010

It’s hard to admit that I have to put a stop on this title but this might be a good time to list a few upcoming titles: I’m in the middle of adding eight more titles to Consortium’s Summer 2012 catalog—including short story collections by Kij Johnson (At the Mouth of the River of Bees) and Nancy Kress (untitled as yet, maybe Fountain of Age), a huge fantastic debut by Sofia Samatar (A Stranger in Olondria), a paperback of the just-published Lydia Millet novel, The Fires Beneath the Sea and a hardcover of the second book in the series, Shimmers in the Night, paperback editions of The Serial Garden (which, although we have a few at the office, is pretty much sold out in hardcover), Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy, Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See, Geoff Ryman’s Unconquered Countries, and Laurie J. Marks’s Earth Logic.

And then this weekend at Readercon we talked to a couple of authors about putting out ebook editions of their backlist as well as putting out some new work. Can’t say who as that would be silly as then it would magically not happen and I would look even sillier than I do for having to cancel the Planner.

One project I’m happy to talk about is the potential Collected Stories of Joanna Russ. Graham Sleight talked to me about it on Sunday. Over the past couple of years, working with the much missed Joanna, Graham put together an approximately 900-page manuscript which includes preferred versions of all her stories in three collections, as well as what amounts to basically a whole new collection of stories. But rather than reprint the books, since some of the stories would be ever so slightly different, I think that once we’ve talked to the estate and the agent, unless someone else steps in (which is fine with me, as long as the books come out I will be happy), then we’ll work on putting it out in two huge paperbacks. Once the book starts to look more likely, we may be asking for help with transcription as it is a huge project and I hope there are enough fans of Joanna Russ with quick and accurate fingers who can help.

Anyway, that’s the news from this morning. Readercon report may yet follow, you never know.


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