Elephants on the website

Mon 17 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Free reads, LCRW, Thomas Israel Hopkins| Posted by: Gavin

LCRW may appear next month. We are optimistic. Determined. But we have been all those things before and other deadlines have pushed it aside like a saddle-stitched zine before a three hundred page book, if you get my drift.

SO. While we are considering whether to just publish the next issue of LCRW as a flavor or perhaps a scroll, in the meantime, here is a story, “Elephants of the Platte” by Thomas Israel Hopkins, from a somewhat recent issue, N0. 25, to be precise:

North from New York City up the Hudson; west out the Erie Canal through Utica and Syracuse; transfer at Rochester from a long, thin packet boat to one of the grand old Great Lakes passenger ships across Lake Erie via Cleveland to Toledo; up through Detroit, Lake Saint Clair, and Port Huron; farther north across Lake Huron to Mackinaw City; down the shores of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee and Racine; transfer again at Chicago; down the Tippecanoe to the Wabash to Terre Haute; out through Saint Louis and Kansas City on the Transcontinental Canal along the ruins of Interstate 70; turning up toward Casper and points west on the Nebraska Canal along the ghost map of the old Oregon Trail. The night this happened, that was as far as we’d come.

Great Lakes Cider & Perry Festival

Thu 13 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Literary Beer| Posted by: Michael

Hi all, I’m Michael. If you fit into the same tiny cross-section of sword/pen/pint-slinging we do, maybe you’ve come across Literary Beer, a blog series on homebrewing I used to write for Small Beer Press. Who knows, maybe I’ll write it again. In the meantime, what you need to know about me is that I really, really like cider, mead, cyser, lager, stout, an ancient style of herbed beer known as gruit, tequila, mezcal, bourbon, scotch, and all kinds of weird things in between, and may here subject you to ruminations on any of the above. I hope you enjoy.

I went to the Great Lakes Cider and Perry Festival last weekend. It’s held at Uncle John’s Cider Mill, among the farmlands just north of Lansing, Michigan. I brewed my first batch of Michigan cider, a cyser I bottled in January, with apples from Uncle John’s orchards. This year they lost their entire crop after the freak (read: new normal) 80 degree weather in March. The trees flowered prematurely, then the buds were all killed by frost–a tragedy. Cider made from this year’s crop will come dear, though that won’t stop me. Last year’s crop, anyhow, spent all this year maturing and was present and abundant in all its glory.

My old favorites Farnum Hill, West County and Albemarle were represented. I sampled ciders from Wisconsin, Oregon, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Spain, France, the UK. It was awesome.

I got cheery with a British expat cidermaker living in Ohio (that’s him on the right in the silly hat) whose ciders were really satisfying, a classic English style I’d been looking for since I moved out here. Griffin Cider Works is his label–”Burley Man” was my favorite, 7.5-8% alcohol with rich mouthfeel and sweetness to balance.

I tasted a hopped cider from the much-touted Wandering Aengus in Oregon, which I expected to dislike (hops are for beer!) but turned out to be quite a pleasant, gently bitter reprieve from all the sweet and dry.

Maybe the best American cider I tried was a bourbon barrel aged maple cider from Crow’s Hard Cider in Michigan–a single keg made just for this event, not available in stores.

I sampled a whole bunch of Spanish ciders all from one importer, a most eye-opening experience. They were peppery and funky like Belgian farmhouse ales, but light and richly tart, like nothing else I’ve tasted. Of course! Because they’re made from apple varieties I never knew existed. I drool at the thought. I can’t really get excited about wine or hop regions, but something about cider apples does it for me. Comes of once having lived next to Clarkdale Orchards in Deerfield, MA. I will never eat better apples, unless maybe I go to Spain.

For me, there is no buzz so heady as a hard cider buzz. There might be, but I’ll never be able to drink enough champagne to find out.

I hear after the tastings are over, the orchardists and cidermakers hang around until the next morning boozing and talking shop. That sounds like a pretty good time. Maybe next year I’ll try to crash, if there is a next year. I hope so.

Cheers!

Elephants of the Platte

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, Short Stories| Posted by: Gavin

Peter Dickinson in F&SF; Robert Reddick @ the library

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

How cool is this? Peter Dickinson’s story “Troll Blood” is the above the headline story in F&SF this month. As Gordon points out in the story intro, Peter was last in F&SF in 1955! “Troll Blood” is one of six stories in Peter’s new collection Earth and Air, forthcoming from Big Mouth House. It’s at the printer as I type so it won’t be too long until you can get your hands on it.

Next Saturday, Sept. 15, at 10:30 am one of our fave local authors Robert Redick (have you read The Red Wolf Conspiracy? It’s fab!) is doing a panel this weekend at the Florence library: Writing Fantasy: Reflections on Craft. More info on the Straw Dogs Writers Guild page.

Go read this interview with the one and only Kathleen Jennings by Rowena Cory Daniells. There’s also a giveaway you should enter: “A little ink drawing of a famous quote with a word replaced by “duck” (artist retains right of veto/negotiation on quote, because I don’t have time to draw 14 ducks again – you don’t realise how many ducks that is until you have to draw them, but it is a lot of ducks).”

Top Shelf Comix is having a huge sale.

And that’s it for the open tabs. Ok, there was this crazy NYT story (which I read because I was reading a follow-up story about a restaurant whose owner, Lucy, I worked with nearly 20 years ago(!) in a restaurant in California). The tech story is about a business owner whose CTO apparently tried to start a competing company while still working at the first place, then when he was fired, he tried to take down the company through all the software backdoors he’d built into the system, and when the police, etc., tried to track him down they found he was living off the grid: no taxes filed, no credit cards, etc. Wow.

Kij Johnson on tour

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

This week we’re celebrating readers all over the world enjoy Kij Johnson’s first (print) book of short stories, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, we’re happy to say that Kij is going to be out there doing some readings.

Should you not happen to be in Minneapolis, Lawrence, Salina, or Raleigh, you can listen to Kij chat with Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe on the Coode Street Podcast and with Patrick Hester at SF Signal and later this month on the Writers Voice.

9/14   DreamHaven Books, 2301 East 38th Street, Minneapolis MN 55406
9/18    7 p.m. The Raven, 6 East 7th St., Lawrence, KS, 66044
9/29    7 p.m. Ad Astra Books & Coffee House, 141 N. Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401
9/26    Writers Voice interview air date
10/9   Quail Ridge Books, Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, NC

Don’t have the book? We’ve got all your indie acquisition options here:

DRM-free ebook on Weightless

Guest post: A Raffle of Laughter on Solemn Occasions by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

Tue 11 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., guest post| Posted by: Gavin

We’re pleased to have this guest post from Daniel A. Rabuzzi to celebrate the publication of the second and concluding novel in his Yount series!

“For the appearance and names of these gods, there is a humorous as well as a serious explanation…for the gods are fond of a joke.
—Socrates in Plato’s Cratylus.

Humorists are not absent from modern fantasy fiction written in English: Terry Pratchett and Fletcher Pratt spring immediately to mind, followed quickly by Robert Asprin, Piers Anthony, Martin Millar. There are others. The main forms of humor, at least as practiced by those named above, are broad, even when elegantly executed: the farce, the parody, the screwball drama larded with puns and episodic slapstick. I have a weakness for such modes, but I wonder why the genre in general seems wary of humor and (for the most part) ring-fences the comic from the mainstream of fantasy’s serious purpose.

Of course, the comic sidekick is prevalent in modern fantasy, with Sancho Panza as one of several models. (“Samwise,” Tolkien tells us, means “half-wise, simple.”) And we have knaves, wisecrackers and tricksters a-plenty, drawing on traditions from around the globe. I am particularly partial to Cugel the Clever myself.

A few authors – Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor . . . Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury suffuse their work with mirth and whimsy, no matter that events described may be grim. Sparrowhawk and Vetch, Zahrah the Windseeker, Coraline (and Richard and Door), Max (and Mickey), Uncle Einar and the other Elliotts in the October Country…they are, as George Meredith in “An Essay on Comedy” wrote about Moliere’s Jourdain and Alceste, “characters steeped in the comic spirit. They quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of certain chapters of the Book lying open before us all.”

Otherwise, fantasy hews strenuously to an epic mode that seldom admits humor, except for a dash of rustic or burlesque to highlight the seriousness of the main endeavor. The diction is high, the tone earnestthere is, after all, a world to save, evil (“Evil”) to be destroyed or, failing that, banished for eons to come, sacrifice to be endured and salvation attained. When confronting the Sublime, the sacred, the mysterium fascinans, the genre brooks little laughter, certainly not of the mocking kind, no matter how gentle (except when clearly marked and marketed as such, with a sort of invisible disclaimer shrink-wrapped around the cover: “this is a parody, thus acceptable; file it separately, so as not to pollute the noble volumes it lampoons.”). The agon must be preserved in its purest, most noble essence.

For the genre tends to the conservative: order must be restored, history set right, the king must return. (Michael Moorcock critiques these tropes effectively in the chapter entitled “Epic Pooh,” in his Wizardry and Wild Romance; A Study of Epic Fantasy which also contains sharp insights on wit and humor in fantasy). Core elements of conservatism, alloyed or half-buried though they may be, run through newer variants of fantasy as well, e.g., urban fantasy or steampunk.

I miss the fantastical equivalents of the comedy of manners, the satire and the absurd, and the humor implicit in the morose and the somber.

The comedy of manners would seem an ideal theme for fiction of the fantastical. I was reminded of this by another passage in Meredith’s essay:

“Politically, it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the comic poet. He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions, the huge pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full activity; vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers, extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, sonnetteering marquises, highflying mistresses, plain-minded maids, interthreading as in a loom, noisy as at a fair.”

Sylvia Townsend Warner mined this milieu for her Broceliande stories. I catch a similar droll sensibility, an archness, in the work of Theodora Goss, and that of Diana Wynne Jones, and more distantly of Angela Carter and, in yet another vein, J.K. Rowling. Oh, and Joan Aiken, about whom Farah Mendlesohn wrote in Rhetorics of Fantasy: “The acknowledged master of the fantasy of irony must be Joan Aiken, whose short story collections use irony to construct cryptic riddles and English comedies of manners.” But we need more such, decanters of Erasmus and Moliere, of Dickens and Austen and the Shakespeare of Much Ado and Winter’s Tale. The tradition is rich outside of our genre (to name just a few: Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, Alison Lurie, Gary Shteyngart…Shteyngart probably qualifies as a genre writer with his Super Sad True Love Story), if that might act as a spur to writers from Within The Tradition.

The absurd and the satirical sit even less comfortably within fantasy, perhaps because the genre does not want to acknowledge the propinquity, for to do so would mar the image of high seriousness that the genre strains for. I think that is why works such as White’s Once and Future King, Crowley’s Little, Big and Brunner’s Traveller in Black stories are oddities like Gargantua and Pantagruel or Tristam Shandy, like The Man Who Was Thursday or Jurgen — honored in the breach but directly followed by few. China Mieville and Jeff VanderMeer each have a leg in this field, likewise Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Vandana Singh, Nathaniel Mackey, Steven Millhauser, David Nickle, Jedediah Berry.

Finally, a plea for a more Peakean approach within the genre, and praise for the absurdist, grave and melancholy humor epitomized by the Gormenghast trilogy. The ruler does not return in the Peakean world-view, in fact he abdicates, he flees. Chaos does not so much win as it is revealed to be the mainspring of the very Order upon which everything appeared to restthe sacrament reduced to dust, a bright carving in a neglected upper hallway of a castle that may or may not exist. That is cosmically funny, a folly, the lifted eyebrow of the gods, even if it is also possibly tragic.

——————

Daniel A. Rabuzzi [blog] studied folklore and mythology in college and graduate school, and keeps one foot firmly in the Other Realm.

ChiZine Publications published his first novel, The Choir Boats: Volume One of Longing for Yount, in 2009, and in 2012 brought out the sequel and series conclusion, The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount, described by reviewers as “Gulliver’s Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice,” and “a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy that, like Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, will appeal to both adult and young adult readers.”

Daniel’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Shimmer, ChiZine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Abyss & Apex, Goblin Fruit, Mannequin Envy, Bull Spec, Kaleidotrope, and Scheherezade’s Bequest. He has presented at Arisia, Readercon, Lunacon, and the Toronto Speculative Fiction Colloquium. He has also had twenty scholarly and professional articles published on subjects ranging from fairy tale to finance.

A former banker, Daniel earned his doctorate in 18th-century history, with a focus on family, gender and commerce in northern Europe. He is now an executive at a national workforce development organization in New York City, where he lives with his wife and soulmate, the artist Deborah A. Mills (who illustrated and provided cover art for both Daniel’s novels), along with the requisite two cats.

Novel preview links:

The Choir Boats [pdf]

The Indigo Pheasant [pdf]

At the Mouth of the River of Bees

Tue 11 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Books, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

trade paperback: 9781931520805 · ebook: 9781931520812
September 11th, 2012. Reprints: Nov. 2012, Oct. 2013, Nov. 2017, June 2018, Sep. 2021.
6th printing: Sep. 2024

World Fantasy & Locus Award finalist
Best of the Year: Publishers Weekly, Guardian, Shelf Awareness, Omivoracious
Chosen for the One Campus, One Book program at the University of Alaska Southeast. [video]
Interview: Locus

The wrenching and provocative debut collection from the author of The Fox Woman and Fudoki. Johnson’s stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards and, for three years running, the Nebula Award.

Johnson’s stories range from historical Japan (Sturgeon award winner “Fox Magic”) to metafictional explorations of story structure (“Story Kit”). Nebula award winners “Spar” and “Ponies” are perhaps most shocking and captivating, but each of the seventeen stories here is a highlight selected from Johnson’s more than two decades of work.

These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy.

At the Mouth of the River of Bees is one of the most anticipated debut science fiction short story collections in recent years.

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2012
PW interview.

Slate: Dan Kois’ 15 Favorite Books of 2012
“Wondrously strange and sinister stories of other worlds, future times, and everyday life gone haywire. Plus: A cat walks 100 miles through Heian-era Japan in the loveliest short story I read all year.”

The Guardian: Adam Roberts, Christmas gifts 2012: the best science fiction
“The best short-story collection I read this year was Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees (Small Beer Press). She is a writer who is always fresh, always dazzling.”

Shelf Awareness: Reviewers Choice 2012 Favorites
“Three Nebula-winning stories anchor Kij Johnson’s collection of stories, where psychological realism and hallucinatory vision combine to masterful effect. Johnson shifts easily from domestic dramas to conflicts on alien worlds, touching on small emotional moments that will linger in your memory as vividly as her fantastic imagery.” —Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com

Omnivoracious: The Best Fantasy and Science Fiction Collections of 2012
“Ranging from the more traditional to tales that push buttons and boundaries, from fantasy to science fiction and beyond.”

“Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind when you turn the pages of Kij Johnson’s first book of short stories, her debut collection is that impressive. The title piece has that wonderful power we hope for in all fiction we read, the surprising imaginative leap that takes us to recognize the marvelous in the everyday.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR

“For all the distances traveled and the mysteries solved, those strange, inexplicable things remain. This is Johnson’s fiction: the familiar combined with the inexplicable. The usual fantastic. The unknowable that undergirds the everyday.”
—Sessily Watt, Bookslut

“In her first collection of short fiction, Johnson (The Fox Woman) covers strange, beautiful, and occasionally disturbing territory without ever missing a beat. . . . Johnson’s language is beautiful, her descriptions of setting visceral, and her characters compellingly drawn. These 18 tales, most collected from Johnson’s magazine publications, are sometimes off-putting, sometimes funny, and always thought provoking.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[The] stories are original, engaging, and hard to put down. . . . Johnson has a rare gift for pulling readers directly into the heart of a story and capturing their attention completely. Those who enjoy a touch of the other in their reading will love this collection.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“When she’s at her best, the small emotional moments are as likely to linger in your memory as the fantastic imagery. Johnson would fit quite comfortably on a shelf with Karen Russell, Erin Morgenstern and others who hover in the simultaneous state of being both “literary” and “fantasy” writers.”
—Shelf Awareness

“The book overflows with stories that, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, can never be taken for granted; they change in your hands, turn and shift, take on new faces, new shapes. Their breathing grows heavy, soft, then heavy again. You lean in close.”—James Sallis, F&SF

“Kij Johnson has won short fiction Nebula awards in each of the last three years. All three winning stories are in this collection; when you read the book, you may wonder why all the others didn’t win awards as well. “Ponies”, to pick just one, is a shatteringly powerful fantasy about the least lovely aspects of human social behaviour… and also about small girls and their pet horses. Evocative, elegant, and alarmingly perceptive, Johnson reshapes your mental landscape with every story she writes.”
—David Larsen, New Zealand Herald

“The bizarre and persnickety tales, like bottled ships, in Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees include old Asian fables (a fox woman seduces a human) and future planets (though of backward cultures), often testifying to the survival of women in the face of random violence. . . . Apparently, Johnson publishes in fantasy and SF mags because they’re the only ones who’d have her, though New Yorker should be so lucky.”
—PopMatters

“Kij Johnson’s writing is sometimes elegant and graceful; sometimes deliberately raw. These stories range from the human to the frightening to the complicated to the self-referential to the moving, and some even manage to be all these things at the same time. At the Mouth of the River of Bees is an excellent reminder of what short fiction at its best can do.”
—Things Mean a Lot

“‘Ponies’ . . . reads like the sort of thing that might have happened if Little Golden Books had inadvertently sent a contract to Chuck Palahniuk. . . . It’s not surprising that [“The Man Who Bridged the Mist”] won the Nebula Award and garnered Hugo, Sturgeon, and Locus nominations, since it’s a stunning example of what Johnson does best – using the materials of SF, fantasy, myth, and even romance not as genres to inhabit, but as tools for building or, you could say, as a kind of story kit. ”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“A wonderful collection…. I was entranced.”
—San Francisco Book Review

“Speculative fiction at its unnerving best, as well as an illuminating lens on the tradition of folklore and its power.”
—The Ohio State University Journal

“These stories are filled with new ideas, new structures, and new ways of looking at the world. Kij Johnson has a singular vision and I’m going to be borrowing (stealing) from her.”
—Sherman Alexie

“It is in the stories of love and loss that Johnson writes her finest work.”
—Nerds of a Feather

Radio and podcasts:

Kij Johnson on Writer’s Voice: Writer’s Voice Drew Adamek spoke with Johnson about her new collection, the challenges facing women in science fiction and what new writers should do to break into the business.

Kij Johnson, Jonathan Strahan, and Gary Wolfe on the Coode Street Podcast.
Kij Johnson returns to Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe’s Coode Street Podcast.

Kij Johnson and Patrick Hester at SF Signal.

News

“Award-winning NCSU alum Kij Johnson returns to Triangle with new book”
—IndyWeek

Early Readers Responses

“The variety is tremendous, exhilarating. “26 Monkeys” is as different from “Chenting” as “Names for Water” is from “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” and each one is differently excellent.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

“This collection is a landmark. I can’t think of any other writer whose stories terrify me the way Johnson’s do. But they’re so intelligent and human and weirdly perfect, I can’t stay away.”
—Lev Grossman

“Kij Johnson’s first collection is a marvelous gift to the reader. Her stories are simultaneously playful and melancholic; expansive, but also finely detailed. They take us many places—to the past, to the future, to imaginary and exotic worlds. In each, Johnson shows us things we never dreamed of, but won’t now forget. A writer of range, originality, precision, and power. Enthusiastically recommended.”
—Karen Joy Fowler

“Nobody writes like Kij Johnson. Nobody. Nobody finds the interstices of a story the way she does. Nobody dives down into the deep pockets of a story, coming up with the change for the ending. Nobody.”
—Jane Yolen

“Not only has Kij Johnson mastered the tools of her craft but she has forged a few that the rest of us haven’t yet got. Read, for instance “Ponies” or “Story Kit” and ask yourself what other writer could have conceived them, much less carried them off. These wise, sometimes sad, always magical stories linger long after you turn the page. At the Mouth of the River of Bees is very possibly the most important collection of the year and Kij Johnson is a writer you need to know.”
—James Patrick Kelly

“Kij Johnson is one of the three or four best short fiction writers of the past quarter century. She is not, however, one of the most prolific, and she’d damned well better do something about that.”
—Mike Resnick

Table of Contents

At the Mouth of the River of Bees
26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss [read listen]
The Horse Raiders
Spar [read or listen]
Fox Magic
Names for Water [listen]
Schrodinger’s Cathouse
My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire
Chenting, in the Land of the Dead
The Bitey Cat
Dia Chjerman’s tale [read]
The Empress Jingu Fishes
Wolf Trapping
The Man Who Bridged the Mist [read or listen]
Ponies [read or listen]
The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles [read or listen]
The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change

Cover

Cover

Cover illustrations by Jackie Morris.

About the Author

Kij Johnson’s stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, Wizards of the Coast, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.

Previous Events

9/14   DreamHaven Books, 2301 East 38th Street, Minneapolis MN 55406
9/18    7 p.m. The Raven, 6 East 7th St., Lawrence, KS, 66044
9/26    Writers Voice interview air date
9/29    7 p.m. Ad Astra Books & Coffee House, 141 N. Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401
10/9   Quail Ridge Books, Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, NC
10/25 7 p.m. The Big Tent at The Raven, 6 East 7th St., Lawrence, KS, 66044
11/24 1 p.m. Uncle Hugo’s Books, 2864 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55407

Under the Poppy

Mon 10 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

October 26, 2010 · 9781931520706 · trade cloth / 9781931520881 · ebook
September 2012 · 9781618730275 · trade paperback
November 2015 · Out of Print.

Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner (see the award here.)
Longlisted for the IMPAC and the Independent Booksellers Choice Awards.

FROM A WARTIME BROTHEL to the intricate high society of 1870s Brussels, Under the Poppy is a breakout novel of childhood friends, a love triangle, puppet masters, and reluctant spies.

Under the Poppy is a brothel owned by Decca and Rupert. Decca is in love with Rupert but he in turn is in love with her brother, Istvan. When Istvan comes to town, louche puppet troupe in tow, the lines of their age-old desires intersect against a backdrop of approaching war.

Hearts are broken when old betrayals and new alliances—not just their own—take shape, as the townsmen seek refuge from the onslaught of history by watching the girls of the Poppy cavort onstage with Istvan’s naughty puppets.

With the war getting too close, Istvan and Rupert abandon the Poppy and find a place in high society where they try to avoid becoming more than puppets themselves in the hands of those they have helped before and who now want to use them again.

Under the Poppy is a vivid, sexy historical novel as delicious and intoxicating as the best guilty pleasure.

Kathe Koja on The Big Idea behind the novel:

“The theatre is the locus of ultimate fiction: the one place on earth where normal everyday people, people you might run into at the café or the grocery store, people you might even know (their names, their fears and loves, the way they toss their underwear not quite into the damn hamper)—people like you, in fact—become indisputably someone else, someone completely different, right before your very eyes. Change the lights, put on a mask, and voila: instant strange.” Read More

Read interviews with the author: Detroit Free Press · BookPage · Friskibiskit · The Outer Alliance · Pride Source

Read an excerpt on Scribd (embedded below).

“Koja can pack a lot Dickensian humor into a sentence . . . [she] takes a page from Victorian lit in her writerliness, and she reveals human nature like someone slipped her the manual.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“This book made me drunk. Koja’s language is at its poetic best, and the epic drama had me digging my nails into my palms. It’s like a Tom Waits hurdy-gurdy loser’s lament come to life, as sinister as a dark circus.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“Under the Poppy is unlike anything I’ve ever read, a world unto itself, spun out of fevered, sensual prose and vivid, compelling characters.”
—Lewis Shiner

“Koja has a ventriloquist’s skill when it comes to inhabiting the voices of her characters . . . A gothic, glam-rock take on love and sex and death that reads a little like what would happen if Sarah Waters and Angela Carter played a drunken game of Exquisite Corpse in a brothel, Under the Poppy will make you want to get out your very finest crushed velvet, drink a couple bottles of wine, and do something a little bit illegal with someone very good-looking. In other words, it’s a winner.”
—Tor.com

“All the elements of a great novel are present in Koja’s work: from suspense and intrigue to undying love and toxic jealousies, this highly developed read is brimming with imaginative flair and originality.”
—Lambda Literary

“This book is different, magical, seductive, and strange. However, there are books to which “Poppy” has ties, however wispy: think The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera mixed with The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek lightened with Fanny Hill by John Cleland and layered with The Satanic Verses, A Passage to India, and Mrs. Dalloway.”
—Bethanne Patrick, Beyond the Margins

“People will probably love this book or hate it–possibly both. But let me just say that it would take an author of extraordinary talent to open with a scene of a woman being sodomized by a ventriloquist’s dummy and make me want to keep reading.
“And Kathe Koja is that talented. Five stars.”
—Speak Its Name

“The velvet and brocade, the rips and tears, the music and theater, you see it all as you read about what the denizens of the Poppy do to stay in business, stay ahead of the tide, stay alive.”
—Colleen Mondor, Chasing Ray

“Frequently changing viewpoints and fluid segues in and out of flashback illuminate actions readers have already witnessed. Part of the fun is heading into the past after knowing the future; even when you know where the story will go, you wonder what will happen next.”
—Ann Arbor Observer

“The brothel of Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy requires no time and space coordinates. It is a fictional universe unto itself—rich and bawdy and violent and sad, with a beating human heart underneath. I love Koja’s daring and flair.”
— Louis Bayard (The Black Tower)

“I loved Under the Poppy. It pours like chocolate—laced with brandy; sexy and utterly compelling!”
—Ellen Kushner (Swordspoint)

“Throughout the story there is an undercurrent of darkness. I can think of no better way than this to describe it and it keeps you reading, pulls you on and on through the narrative. Tied into this sense of the creeping grotesque is the fact that Koja is skilled at depicting how close to insanity art can come. I have fond memories of the mad genius of Skin—how far Koja was willing to push her story and her characters for the sake of their art and there is a similar feeling here. Istvan is driven and he cannot be anything other than what he is—a player, an actor and puppeteer. At the same time, he is drawn to Rupert and Rupert to him. Their relationship is painfully real—nothing is perfect or sugar-coated. They hurt each other, they try to mend their rifts, attempt forgiveness and do their best to accept the other as they are. It’s superbly done.”
—Girl on Book Action

“I can highly recommend this novel to everybody who likes historical fiction and wants to read a bit different kind of a story. It can also be recommended to speculative fiction readers and readers who love literary novels. This novel will appeal to everybody, who’s willing to immerse himself/herself in a dark, erotic and entertaining story.”
—Rising Shadow

“Few books I’ve read about the theater capture its dazzle as luminously as this one does. The performances are integral to the plotline; one cares about the performances because one cares about the characters, and one cares about the characters in part because of how they perform. Intelligent descriptions and a compelling cast make reading Poppy an intense, lingering experience…. Each section was a burst of images. I wanted to read it as slowly as I might eat a rich meal—savoring each bite before taking another.”
—Rachel Swirsky, Cascadia Subduction Zone

“Despite all the trappings of puppets, sex shows, stabbings, and drawing-room treachery, this is a love story about how, sometimes despite themselves, Rupert, Istvan, and their friends have created a family. . . . she creates an atmospheric tale for those who like their historical fiction on the dark and lurid side. Those readers who enjoyed Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin or Sarah Water’s Fingersmith will find similar themes.”
—Library Journal

“A page turner with riveting language and close attention to sensory detail. Set in late 19th-century Brussels, the story follows the adventures of puppeteer Istvan and brothel owner Rupert who bond as friends and lovers.”
—Publishers Weekly

BoingBoing Gift Guide.

Kathe Koja’s books include The Cipher, Skin, and Extremities; YA novels include Buddha Boy, Talk, Kissing the Bee, and Headlong. Her work has been honored by the ALA, the ASPCA, the Parents’ Choice Award, and the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. Her books have been published in seven languages, and optioned for film. She’s a Detroit native and lives in the area with her husband, artist Rick Lieder, and their cats. Under the Poppy is currently being adapted for the stage.

An Under the Poppy story at a price

Thu 6 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

. . . of one photograph of you with your copy of Under the Poppy! Here’s Kathe’s full post:

As a celebration of the publication of the paperback edition of Under the Poppy, due out on 9/10 (and available now for preorder from Small Beer Press, B&N and Amazon, among others), I’m offering a PDF of never-before-published Poppy fiction, called “An Interlude of the Road”: the tale of a young Rupert and Istvan, and their encounter with Herr Nagler, the smiling herring-monger in the satrap’s robe.

To receive the story, all you need to do is send a picture of yourself and your copy of Under the Poppy: whether it’s in your hands or on your nightstand, you holding your e-reader, you waving a preorder paperback receipt (or the actual paperback). . . And if you’re somewhere sexy or singular, so much the better. Are you on the winding road? Or sipping some highbrow tea? Sporting at the gentlemen’s club (wink wink)? Hanging out with a puppet? Or, like acclaimed writer Sarah Miller here, reclining at your ease?

If you give permission, the picture will be happily posted here, and on the Under the Poppy Facebook page; otherwise your privacy will of course be respected.

This fiction will be available only through the Under the Poppy site, until 11/11/12, as a special thank you to those who have journeyed along with these two inseparable gentlemen of the road and their friends, and me.

Send your JPEG to underthepoppy AT gmail.com.

Blackwood, Indigo Pheasant, Electric Velocipede

Tue 4 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Hey,we have some books coming soon. Wooee! We are excited. And busy! So. In the next couple of weeks we will have a couple of guest posts. Our own Dear Aunt Gwenda, under her other name, Gwenda Bond, has her first novel, Blackwood, coming out this week. It’s all about the Roanoke disappearances and is getting great reviews. Gwenda has a Big Idea piece at Scalzi’s Whatever today. At some point in the next week or two we’ll have a post from Gwenda and meanwhile we are celebrating that we’ll be able to get our own copy signed in a couple of weeks when we’re down in Lexington for the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

A second post is set for next week from our friend Daniel A. Rabuzzi whose second novel—and sequel to The Choir Boats— The Indigo Pheasant comes out this month from ChiZine. Here’s an interview with Daniel from when The Choir Boats came out. I’m looking forward to seeing the book itself, too, as Daniel’s wife, woodworker Deborah Mills does beautiful work and with luck more of her art will be included in this edition.

Need another good thing to do with your hard earned cash? Back Electric Velocipede! John Klima and the EV team are doing a Kickstarter (with lovely Thom Davidsohn calendars available) and this is your chance to ensure their zine has a long and fruitful life!

Tonight, Kelly & Victor LaValle, Brooklyn

Wed 22 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookstores, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Tonight at 7:30 PM you can catch Victor LaValle and Kelly Link in conversation about LaValle’s latest book The Devil in Silver at Greenlight Books, 686 Fulton Street  (at South Portland) , Brooklyn, NY 11217 Click here for a map.

In other Kelly news, I might be reading this wrong but it looks like you could pick up the Sub Press limited edition of Stranger Things Happen 1/2-price in this sale(!). I’ve got a photo of a galley to post soon. So near actuality!

And two more quickly nearing events:

Kelly will join Karen Joy Fowler &c at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Lexington, KY, on September 21 – 22. And, we get to see Gwenda and Christopher wherein we will get to toast the talk of the town, Gwenda’s debut novel Blackwood!

And on the 5th – 7th of October Kelly is one of the guests (along with Peter Watts, Joe Abercrombie, Sara Bergmark Elfgren & Mats Strandberg, and Niels Dalgaard) at Kontrast in Uppsala, Sweden. Can’t wait to go! Afterward we are visiting family—and going to see museeeuuummmss in the Hague.

Stories of Your Life, 3

Thu 9 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ted Chiang| Posted by: Gavin

Just a quick note to note that we would like to note that, wait. Start again:

We just got copies of the third printing of Ted Chiang’s excellent debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Thanks to Ori Avtalio and other sharp-eyed readers for helping us with typos. This is a book that I can honestly give to just about anyone and say, “Read the title story,” and know they will love it.

Up on Poppy Hill

Wed 8 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Thank you someone (sorry I didn’t take note who it was!) on Twitter who linked to the lovely trailer for Studio Ghibli‘s new film, Up on Poppy Hill:

Small Beer Podcast 12: Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Sense and Sensibility”

Tue 7 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Benjamin Rosenbaum, Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, David Thompson, Julie Day, Podcastery, Sense and Sensibility, small beer podcast, The Ant King and Other Stories| Posted by: Julie

There are just so many lovely people in the world. That was my conclusion after talking with David Thompson, the co-editor and host of Podcastle. He just showed up one day and offered to read a story for our little podcast. Well, of course, we said yes.

I couldn’t be more thrilled with the pairing we’ve come up with: David Thompson reads Benjamin Rosenbaum. “Sense and Sensibility” is a wild mash-up of Jane Austin, the German comic-grotesteque and Gormenghast, a perfect story for the dog days of summer.

But wait, there’s more! Because we know one Rosenbaum story is just never enough, Small Beer is offering Benjamin’s collection, The Ant King and Other Stories, as a free Creative Commons licensed ebook download.

David’s first audiobook, Tim Pratt’s Briarpatch, will be coming out this fall while Benjamin’s latest story, “Elsewhere,” can be found at Strange Horizons. First though, I hope you’ll spend a little time with both David and Benjamin, a truly excellent pairing.

Episode 12: In which David Thompson read’s Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

The Freedom Maze wins the Mythopoeic Award

Mon 6 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Delia Sherman| Posted by: Gavin

Great news this weekend (2): Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze received the Mythopoeic Award!

Here’s more about the award (lifted from their website): the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for younger readers (from “Young Adults” to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia or that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings.” The winners of this year’s awards were announced during Mythcon 43 in Berkeley, California.

In other news for The Freedom Maze, the Listening Library unabridged audio edition is coming out soon. Listening Library are very excited about the book and we can’t wait to get our hands on a copy.

Redemption in Indigo wins the Parallax Award

Mon 6 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Karen Lord| Posted by: Gavin

Great news this weekend (1): Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo has received the Carl Brandon Parallax Award!

Here’s more about the award (lifted from their website):

the Carl Brandon Parallax Award is given to works of speculative fiction created by a self-identified person of color. The award includes a $1000 cash prize. Nnedi Okorafor received the Carl Brandon Kindred Award for her novel Who Fears Death and the honors list comprised: N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Anil Menon, The Beast with Nine Billion Feet, Charles Yu “Standard Loneliness Package.” The 2010 Carl Brandon Awards will be presented at Worldcon in Chicago, August 30 – September 12, 2012. The jury statements and full nominations list will be published at that time.

In other news about Karen, Redemption in Indigo is on the Not the Booker looonglist. She also has a lovely cover for the UK edition of her forthcoming book The Best of All Possible Worlds—it comes out next February and is great—AND, as if that is not enough, she (lifting from her blog) . . .

and Karen Burnham (NASA engineer by day, SF reviewer and podcaster by night) approached me to ask if I would be interested in doing a podcast with her, the ‘yes’ couldn’t fly out of my mouth fast enough. We have a lot in common, including a first name, a degree (BSc Physics) and a hobby (martial arts/fencing). I was eager to tackle my to-read list and take some recommendations and, more importantly, do so in a meaningful way that would expand my appreciation of the craft of writing and the literary and scientific merits of speculative fiction. And so the podcast SF Crossing the Gulf came to be.

You can find it here, kindly hosted by SF Signal, and it will also be available via RSS feed and iTunes.

The Sale of Midsummer

Wed 1 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Coming on Friday: Joan Aiken’s lovely story “The Sale of Midsummer” will be released on Consortium’s free Bookslinger short story app.

Back

Tue 31 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Clarion West, creepers, Elizabeth Hand, Readercon, Shirley Jackson Awards, travel| Posted by: Gavin

We’re back in the office after 2+ weeks away. Yay! Yesterday we flew back from Seattle: today I feel like the sludge left at the bottom of a cup of cowboy coffee. Did we miss anything? (Yes.)

There is a stack of mail, a box of packages, tons of orders (thank you!), many emails, a few phone messages, a sad lack of telegraphs, one beeping box (a toy!), and a number of deadlines looooming.

Before leaving, we were at Readercon for a couple of days and we owe many thanks to Jedediah Berry and the et al awesome people who ran our table when we left. We were offline the last few days so missed Readercon’s craptacular response to the craptacular behaviour spotlighed by Genevieve Valentine so we just signed Veronica’s petition. (I am not sure if the BoD should stand down, but only because I want to make sure the convention survives. If the Board stands down and new directors are elected [is that how it works?], then that’s great.) But over all, blech. And kudos to Genevieve for posting about her experience. Thank you for helping everyone by doing that.

Also, Elizabeth Hand (“Near Zennor”), Kelly (“The Summer People”), and Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse) won Shirley Jackson Awards. (And, I have the nominee rock to send to Joan Aiken’s estate’s agent!). Wish we had been there.

After Readercon, we went to Seattle to teach week 5 at Clarion West. This is a heads-up to editors and publishers everywhere*: the 2012 Clarion West class are coming for you! They are in a white hot heat of creation, revision, and submission, and you will be hearing from them soon. Wow, that was a week. The worst part about it was leaving on Saturday. We wanted to stay!

We owe huge thanks to the Clarion West organization for all their work and accommodations. We traveled as a party of four, Kelly, me, our daughter Ursula and Kelly’s mom, Annie (without whom it would not have been possible, so thanks to Annie, too) and the CW people didn’t blink. They put us up, they put up with us, they ferried us around (even acquiring car seats when needed!) to parties and more. Every time I’ve seen Clarion West in operation I’m impressed. (The 2013 instructors have been announced.) Also thanks to Nicole Kimberling (publisher of Blind Eye Books and LCRW food columnist) who visited the Clarion class and Eileen Gunn & John Berry and Greg Bear for wonderful parties. (I grew up reading Greg Bear but was able to speak 2-3 coherent sentences to him without my head exploding. Phew.)

Then we went to Portland (hello Powell’s and Reading Frenzy) and Vancouver (hello Naam!), both of which were lovely (and occasionally terrifying—eek!). While post-Clarion braindead in Vancouver we almost watched a movie in the hotel . . . but it was $15.99. Um. Internet was expensive and so avoided. Do people really pay prices like that?

Travel back was ok except that we would like to unthank the bridge that got stuck in the upright position meaning we had to drive from Vancouver to Seattle instead of take the lovely train. Bad bridge, bad! (Loved the train otherwise.) And: United Airlines has the smallest seats in the world. Boo! Also: on the way out they lost our stroller and we did not get it back for a whole week. Ever really missed something? We missed that stroller! I even tried tweeting United but I got no response. Oh well!

And now we are back in body if not in spirit. Emails will be returned soon-ish.

* I think every Clarion instructor always wants to send out this heads up but since this is the first time I have officially been one of the instructors I am adding my voice to the masses of other instructors.

April: A Stranger in Olondria

Thu 26 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

I know we announced A Stranger in Olondria for 2012 but we decided to add a simultaneous hardcover edition to the trade paperback and ebook editions as the behind-the-scenes excitement is building tremendously as more readers discover A Stranger in Olondria is a book to be treasured.

So now it is an April 2013 book. Ta da! We’ll be making a new round of galleys to reflect the changes which should be going out by the end of the month. Electronic review copies are going out, too. Leave a comment or ping us (ok, so we’re traveling this week, but still) if you’d like a copy.

Things Mean a Lot

Thu 12 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Gosh, this is nice.

Here we go to Readercon & Clarion West

Tue 10 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., conventions, Jedediah Berry, Kelly Link, Readercon, Vincent McCaffrey| Posted by: Gavin

This coming weekend we (me, Kelly, and our daughter, Ursula) will be at Readercon. I am on a panel on Oblique Strategies. Help! Kelly is on some panels, too, see below. Since we are leaving on Saturday morning for Clarion West (Writer Boot Camp ahoy! We do a reading on Tuesday night in Seattle!) even though the program sched says Kelly will be at the Shirley Jackson Awards, she won’t. And, Jedediah Berry has stepped up to man the Small Beer table. Phew! And Vincent McCaffrey (author of the Hound series) is on a panel about political fiction, Delia Sherman can be found on “When Non-Fantastic Genres Interrogate Themselves,” Greer Gilman is on “Mapping the Parallels,” and so on and on!

The bad news is that the con dropped us from two tables down to one, which means we can’t take as many titles from other publishers to sell: boo! That’s how we got our start with LCRW—people such as Mike Walsh (Old Earth Books) and Greg Ketter (DreamHaven, a real bookstore, how exciting that was!) sold the zine and then our chapbooks off their table, encouraging us to keep going back to the conventions and eventually it all snowballed into BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS! (It is a slippery slide!)

See you in Boston or Seattle!

Thursday

8:00 PM G Genrecare. Elizabeth Bear (leader), Kathleen Ann Goonan, Kelly Link, Shira Lipkin. In a 2011 review of Harmony by Project Itoh, Adam Roberts suggests that “the concept of ‘healthcare’ in its broadest sense is one of the keys to the modern psyche.” Yet Roberts notes “how poorly genre has tuned in to that particular aspect of contemporary life.” Similarly, in the essay “No Cure for the Future,” Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay write that “SF is a world almost never concerned with the issues of physical frailty and malfunction.” As writers such as Nalo Hopkinson, Tricia Sullivan, and Kim Stanley Robinson explore the future of the body, how is SF dealing with the concepts of health, medicine, and what it means to be well?

Friday

4:00 PM ME Oblique Strategies for Authors. Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, Gavin J. Grant, Glenn Grant (leader), Katherine MacLean, Eric M. Van, Jo Walton. In 1975 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a deck of cards called “Oblique Strategies.” Each card provides a cryptic directive—such as “Use an old idea” or “Honour thy error as a hidden intention”—intended to help an artist deal with a creative block or dilemma. While many of the original strategies are useful for writers of fiction, others (such as “The tape is now the music”) are perhaps only appropriate for musicians and visual artists. Let’s brainstorm a deck of Oblique Strategies specifically designed to provide unexpected creative kicks for authors who are in a jam.
Proposed by Glenn Grant.

Reselling the spider

Fri 6 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I must be too old. Hmm, deafening silence in response. Anyway, there’s yet another Spiderman movie coming and I swear there was a new one just last week, or was it last year? What? It was more than 3 or 4 years ago? Oh well then, it must be time to remake it . . .

You know what they should remake? The Avengers. That was fun and it came out ages ago now, so why not remake it and then we can enjoy it all over again.

Couple of nice reviews

Tue 3 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Just love to see our books finding readers. There was a very thoughtful (and fully linked) review of After the Apocalypse by L.S. Bassen on SF Signal. This intro paragraph signals (sorry) that it won’t read like the average review:

“Maureen F. McHugh’s collection of stories is an outstanding solo in the zeitgeist fiction chorus including Gods Without Men (Hari Kunzru) and The Truth and All Its Ugly (Kyle Minor) that at long last begins building the bridge between The Two Cultures invoked by C.P. Snow decades ago. In these stories, despite the title, destruction and despair are not the key motif: survival, even transcendence, is.”
—SF Signal

And then on Strange Horizons, T.S. Miller looks at Geoff Ryman’s collection Paradise Tales through the lens of the title:

“The stories gathered here from across Ryman’s career narrate paradise and its stories in ways that are far from conventionally utopian. Rather, Ryman’s paradises are not only largely intangible but often built on and out of loss. Reading his quasi-fairytales and other flights of passionate fantasy, we will always be reminded that these paradises, like all paradises, are places that can never be—except in fiction. For Ryman, however, this is an essential exception, as the power of story to heal and repair across time and across cultures becomes a recurrent theme in the collection…. By the end of Paradise Tales, however, the reader will understand that Ryman has already invented such a device: whether it is fantasy, science fiction, or some fiction in-between, the utopian, revelatory tool for Ryman is simply fiction itself.”
—Strange Horizons

Complicate my accounting, please

Fri 29 Jun 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., accounting joy, shipper's delight, spreadsheets of wonder, Yog's Law| Posted by: Gavin

If you have long wished to make a publisher’s life more complicated here’s your chance. June 30th—manana!—is the last day of this royalty period (here in spreadsheet land that’s a.k.a.Jan-Jun2011).

So go on, complicate our accounting and royalties by making all kinds of weird orders. Why, yes, now that you ask, subscription options were updated and new ones—Big Mouth, YBF&H, Col(Link)ection, Signed— added today.

It’s also the last day of the 3-month royalty period for Weightless, but royalties are so much easier there that we can usually pay within 10 days. Hmm!

We will thank you from the icy chambers of our hearts!

Apocalyptic summer

Tue 26 Jun 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Very nice to see Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse on this NPR list:

Summer’s Best Sci-Fi: Planets, Politics, Apocalypse

along with Kim Stanley Robinson, Saladin Ahmed, Tobias Buckell, and Mira Grant. There’s some good reading!

As you may know, Bob, After the Apocalypse is “. . . definitely one of the best works of science fiction you’ll read this year, or any thereafter.”

Yup!

A long time ago when the world was young and Maureen had only written a handful of novels (ha!) and stories we published her first collection, Mothers & Other Monsters. The most excellent Nancy Pearl*featured Mothers on Morning Edition (“Gorgeously crafted stories,” she said, I remember as if it were yesterday**). That was a little while ago now so it was refreshing to read a 5-star review of the collection this week:

“Fans of McHugh will adore Mothers & Other Monsters – and, if you’re not already one, Mothers & Other Monsters will make a fan out of you!”

It is lovely to find that the books we’ve published over the years keep finding readers. Thanks, y’all, for spreading the word, it’s appreciated.

In other news, I should start posting some of the other news about Things That Are Happening including being tempted to do a Kickstarter called the Kick-in-the-Behind LCRW Kickstarter to get the new ish out. Hmm. But paying work calls, gots to go do that first.

* Yeah, yeah, we know, she has an Amazon imprint. Who doesn’t these days? She’s doing what we’d love to do: get someone else to bring lots of books back into print. Wish she were doing it elsewhere, but no one else bit, c’est la vie.

** Except yesterday I didn’t almost fall off my chair at breakfast when someone on the radio started talking about one of our books.

A book, a book!

Mon 18 Jun 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Where? There!

Win free copies of Lydia Millet’s Dissenters books

Mon 11 Jun 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Free books, Lydia Millet| Posted by: Gavin

We just posted giveaways for both of Lydia Millet’s Dissenters novels on Goodreads. The first book, The Fires Beneath the Sea just came out in paperback and the second The Shimmers in the Night is now at the proofreader and will be out later this summer. Get ahead of the game and win an advance copy today!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Fires Beneath the Sea

by Lydia Millet

Giveaway ends June 18, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Shimmers in the Night

by Lydia Millet

Giveaway ends June 18, 2012. See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Clarion West reading series

Fri 8 Jun 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Clarion West, events| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, we’re going to teach week 5 at Clarion West in Seattle this year. We haven’t been to CW—or out west—for ages. Can’t wait!

While there we’ll do a reading at the fabby University Book Store—although you might also want to pick up tix for some of these other readings, too.

The readers for the 2012 Clarion West Summer Reading Series are:

Mary Rosenblum

Photo of Mary Rosenblum June 19, 7 p.m., University Book Store

Mary Rosenblum explores climate change, biotechnology, and class inequity in stories based on her profound knowledge of science and technology and her passion for sustainable living. Her first novel, The Drylands, won the 1994 Compton Crook Award, and in 2009 she received the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for her story “Sacrifice.”

Stephen Graham Jones

Photo of Stephen Graham Jones June 26, 7 p.m., University Book Store

Stephen Graham Jones has published eleven novels and over 140 finely-honed stories about innocents, unfairness, and scary truths. A Blackfoot Indian from Texas, a Professor of English at the University of Colorado, an NEA Fellow, and a Bram Stoker Award finalist, Jones can warm an audience to laughter or chill it with icily observed inevitabilities.

George R.R. Martin

Photo of George R.R. Martin July 3, 7 p.m., Town Hall Seattle

George R. R. Martin is the author of the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, basis for HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones.’ He has received four Hugos, two Nebulas, and many other major awards over his four-decade career. Martin was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of 2011. Note: Tickets for this reading are $10; they’re available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Connie Willis

Photo of Connie Willis July 10, 7 p.m., University Book Store

Connie Willis peppers her live appearances with humorous insights on everything from the Oscars to current elections. Willis has won more major awards than any other author, including most recently her eleventh Hugo for Blackout/All Clear, a time-travel novel about World War II London. She explores comic and tragic aspects of the human condition through characters that run the gamut from desperately likable to sweetly infuriating.

Kelly Link & Gavin Grant

Photos of Kelly Link & Gavin Grant July 17, 7 p.m., University Book Store

Kelly Link and Gavin Grant founded Small Beer Press, arguably today’s most important independent publisher of avant-garde fantasy. Link’s award-winning fiction was described as “an alchemical mix of Borges, Raymond Chandler and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’” by Salon.com. Grant’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons and The Christian Science Monitor. The pair’s editorial projects include the literary zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, several volumes of The Years’ Best Fantasy and Horror (with Ellen Datlow), and 2011’s Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories.

Chuck Palahniuk

Photo of Chuck Palahniuk July 24, 7 p.m., Town Hall Seattle

Chuck Palahniuk is known for his reclusive nature and his skillful hand with disturbing modern fables. His most recent book, Damned, references the young adult novels of Judy Blume as it follows a thirteen-year-old girl through Hell. Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club won critical acclaim and cult status before being turned into a major motion picture. Note: Tickets for this reading are $10; they’re available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

by Lydia Millet

Goodreads Book Giveaway

by Lydia Millet

Mary Rosenblum

Stephen Graham Jones

George R.R. Martin

Connie Willis

Kelly Link & Gavin Grant

Chuck Palahniuk

More University Book Store Readings

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