Tyrannia is coming!

Thu 24 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin

Watch out!

And in the meantime: “The Philip Sidney Game” is now live at Interfictions.

---

Jonathan Edwards, slave owner

Wed 23 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Spider in a Tree, Susan Stinson, Wikipedia| Posted by: Gavin

If you use Wikipedia as your source you will get a very strange take on slave ownership in the article about the preacher Jonathan Edwards:

In 1747 Edwards took in a slave, “a Negro girl named Venus”. He purchased the girl for 80 pounds from a man named Richard Perkins of Newport. Edwards was well known for such acts of charity and hospitality (from Glaros, A History of New England, 1997, no longer in print).

Edwards paid a whole year’s salary for the slave and then she worked for the family and was never freed. Slave owning has never been defined as an act “of charity and hospitality.” Who did this? Eeek?

Wikipedia. Needs editing!

---

Spider in a Tree gets a starred review from Booklist

Tue 15 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., starred review, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Great news for Susan Stinson: Spider in a Tree has just received its fourth trade review and the best was saved for last. Booklist’s starred review goes out today:

“As a Puritan preacher who suspends listeners above the sulfurous fires of hell, Jonathan Edwards commands center stage in this compelling historical novel. With mesmerizing narrative gifts, Stinson exposes readers to the full force of Edwards’ brimstone sermonizing. But she also lets readers hear Edwards’ voice in other registers, giving compassionate reassurance to his troubled wife, extending tender forgiveness to a despairing sinner, reflecting pensively on how God manifests his wisdom in a lowly spider. But the Edwards voice that most readers will find most irresistible is his inner voice, laden with grief at a young daughter’s death, perplexed at his spiritual status as master of a household slave. . . . An impressive chronicle conveying the intense spiritual yearnings that illuminate a colonial world of mud, disease, and fear.”

Kirkus did not love the book. C’est la vie! Publishers Weekly gave it a very strong review and picked it as an Indie Sleeper. And Library Journal also just reviewed the book this week:

“Famous theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) comes to life in this mid-18th-century story of the First Great Awakening, a revivalist movement that swept Protestant Europe and the American Colonies. . . . Weaving together archival letters, historical detail, and fictional twists, Stinson vividly resurrects this emotional historical period prior to the American Revolution.”

The book is flying off the shelves in the Pioneer Valley and now we are seeing it beginning to be picked up regionally and nationally. Yesterday Susan read at the Yale Divinity School (where Edwards studied—check that photo above!) and tonight she is reading at the Stockbridge Library (where Edwards also lived) and with luck she will get either to sit at or take a photo of Edwards’s desk.

The she is off to California—the most open of the events is at MCC-San Francisco before coming back here for readings at Amherst Books, Porter Square (with Kelly!), and KGB Bar and the Book Reading Series in NYC. Busy times!

October 15, 6:30 p.m. Stockbridge Library, Stockbridge, Mass.
October 23, 12 p.m., American Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
October 24, 4 p.m. Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
October 25, 7 p.m. MCC-San Francisco. Reading and reception,150 Eureka Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
October 30, 2 p.m. reading, talk, Q&A, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
November 13, 8 pm. Amherst Books, Amherst, Mass.
November 18, 7 pm. Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass. (with Kelly Link)
November 21, 7 p.m. Drunken Careening Writers series, KGB Bar, NYC (with Holly Hepp-Galvan and John Schuyler Bishop)
December 15, 5 p.m. Bloom Readings, Washington Heights, NYC

Author photo courtesy: Jeep Wheat.

---

Boston Boo Festival

Mon 14 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., naked commerce| Posted by: Gavin

Ok, perhaps it is the Boston Book Festival but doesn’t the Boston Boo Festival sound more October?

Ok, again, so: this Saturday October 19 we will be at the Boston Boo(k) Festival in Copley Square selling books from 10 am – 5 pm. 

Susan Stinson is coming with us: come and get a signed copy of Spider in a Tree!

Just as at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend we are intending on selling books cheap! We want these books in readers’ hands!

We’re going to be at Table 48 on Dartmouth Street (between Sisters in Crime and Arts Emerson).

Besides cheap, cheap, cheap backlist we will also have Howard Waldrop’s new collection Horse of a Different Color.

And!

For those who missed it at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend we’ll be giving away a free chapbook to all buyers:

“The two story chapbook, North American Monster Stories, will never be for sale. The stories are the title story from Nathan Ballingrud’s collection, North American Lake Monsters, and “Up the Fire Road,” a story from Eileen Gunn’s collection Questionable Practices.”

Should be fun, hope to see you there!

---

Steampunk!

Fri 11 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9780763648435 · 10/11/2011 · Published by Candlewick Press in a beautiful trade cloth edition, audio, and ebook.
9780763657970 · 2/12/2013 · trade paper.

An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

Orphans use the puppet of a dead man to take control of their lives. A girl confronts the Grand Technomancer, Most Mighty Mechanician and Highest of the High Artificier Adepts. Another girl, who might be from another universe, stuns everyone when she pulls out her handmade Reality Gun.

Welcome to a huge, beautiful anthology of fourteen steampunk visions of the past, the future, and the not-quite today.

Indies Choice finalist.
Locus Award finalist.
Los Angeles Times Best of the Year

Cover art by Yuko Shimizu.

More.

Reviews!

“Veteran editors Link and Grant serve up a delicious mix of original stories from 14 skilled writers and artists…Chockful of gear-driven automatons, looming dirigibles, and wildly implausible time machines, these often baroque, intensely anachronistic tales should please steampunks of all ages.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An excellent collection, full of unexpected delights.”
—Kirkus Reviews (*starred review*)

“Within these pages, there’s a little something for everyone…This exceptional anthology does great service to the steampunk subgenre and will do much to further its audience.”
— School Library Journal (starred review)

“Editors Link and Gavin treat fans, old and new, to an array of fantastically rich stories in this polished, outstanding collection…the result is an anthology that is almost impossible to put down… From rebellious motorists to girl bandits, the characters in this imaginative collection shine, and there isn’t a weak story in the mix; each one offers depth and delight.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“It is about time that steampunk short stories really got a focused and creative exploration in YA lit, and this anthology of fourteen pieces is an excellent start.”
— Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)

“In a genre based upon the re-imagining and reinvention of history, these authors manage to take their characters—and readers—to bold new frontiers, where, as contributor Dylan Horrocks writes, thanks to the “magic in technology,” things are “less drab, less logical, less straightforward. Everything’s a little more…possible.” ”
—Horn Book

Table of Contents

Introduction
“Some Fortunate Future Day” by Cassandra Clare
“The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”* by Libba Bray
“Clockwork Fagin”** by Cory Doctorow
“Seven Days Beset by Demons” (comic) by Shawn Cheng
“Hand in Glove” by Ysabeau S. Wilce
“The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” by Delia Sherman
“Gethsemene” by Elizabeth Knox
“The Summer People”*** by Kelly Link
“Peace in Our Time”**** by Garth Nix
“Nowhere Fast”**** by Christopher Rowe
“Finishing School”***** (comic) by Kathleen Jennings
“Steam Girl”****** by Dylan Horrocks
“Everything Amiable and Obliging” by Holly Black

* Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan
** Reprinted in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, edited by Halli Villegas & Sandra Kasturi
*** Shirley Jackson Award winner.
Locus Award finalist.
Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton
**** Reprinted in Steampunk Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer
**** Reprinted in Steampunk Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer
***** Ditmar Award winner
****** Sir Julius Vogel Award winner.
Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan

---

Kelly @ Random

Wed 9 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

So, the big news around here is that Kelly sold her next couple of books—and reprint rights to Magic for Beginners—to Noah Eaker at Random House. Yay!!

The first of the books is Get in Trouble*, Kelly’s first new collection of stories since Pretty Monsters (2008). Get in Trouble should be out in early 2015. It will be followed at some point by the second book, Novel As Yet Unwritten**.

Thanks as ever to Kelly’s fabby agent Renee Zuckerbrot of the Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency and to Kelly’s new foreign rights agent Taryn Fagerness who has already sold Get in Trouble to Francis Bickmore at Canongate Books—who did such a great job with Pretty Monsters.

Here is the proper and official announcement as reported in Publishers Marketplace:

Author of Magic for Beginners, which was a Time Best Book of the Year and on Best of the Decade lists from the Village Voice, Salon, and The Onion and Stranger Things Happen Kelly Link’s GET IN TROUBLE, another collection of short stories, and her first novel, to Noah Eaker at Random House, byRenee Zuckerbrot of Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency (NA).
Foreign rights: taryn.fagerness@gmail.com

* Kelly assures me the cover design will not feature the word “Get” in tiny letters inside a huge “Trouble.” I say wait and see.

** Not final title.

---

Nook Daily Find

Mon 7 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, Peter Dickinson, sale| Posted by: Gavin

Peter Dickinson’s Death of a Unicorn is the Nook Daily Find and is $2.99 today only at bn.com.

It has jumped up the charts throughout the day and now it is sitting pretty at #30 besides two of Nora Roberts’s books. Long may Lady MM rise!

ETA: #7!

It’s a Top Ten bestseller!

 

 

 

 

---

Ben Parzybok and Sherwood Nation at PNBA

Fri 4 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok| Posted by: Gavin

Next fall we are publishing Benjamin Parzybok’s second novel Sherwood Nation and I am very happy to say that PNBA booksellers can get a very advance galley copy at the PNBA Trade Show Author Feast at the Airport Holiday Inn, Portland, OR, on Monday.

Sherwood Nation is a huge, amazing, scarily timely novel about a drought-stricken Portland, Oregon, and a nascent attempt to rebuild society from the grassroots up. If you read Couch, you’ll already know that Ben is a hilarious and smart writer and in the five years(!) he worked on Sherwood Nation he’s only gotten better. Everything he cares about is here: community, families (born and made), love, bicycling, doing good work, and looking after self, community, and the land we live on.

You’ll be hearing more (ok, there’s more below) about the book as 2014 comes on. With luck—and help from readers like you!—it will be one of the big books of next year!

We’ll have more galleys and giveaways as the publication date approaches but I wanted to get the heads-up out there to the people who are most likely to read and love this book as much as we do.

---

Publication Day for Spider in a Tree

Tue 1 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

What a day! And tomorrow well be celebrating in style at First Churches here in Northampton, Mass., with Susan (and you, we hope!). The church (“a large stone Gothic cathedral”!) is at 129 Main St. and the reading is at 7 p.m.

On this day that part of the government has stepped away from its duties and shut down the government, it is a relief to read the history of the church:

“The American Baptist and United Church of Christ congregations joined together in June of 1988 to become The First Churches. The First Church of Christ of Northampton, is the oldest congregation in our city and was established in 1661. The First Baptist Church in Northampton was founded under the leadership of Rev. Benjamin Willard in 1826. Now, both churches share in worship, fellowship, educational classes, programs, and mission and act as one congregation.”

Two groups working together. It can be done!

Today has been a long time coming for Spider in a Tree. Susan has been writing this novel for ten years. It is a strong, fabulous book about life in 1740s Massachusetts and the frictions between belief and work, neighbors and preachers, church and town. Jonathan Edwards and his (large!) family are at the forefront but also their slaves—how could people who called themselves godly own slaves? It was a different time, a different mindset, very hard to comprehend from here. Susan does a wonderful job of putting the reader into the heads of many of the people who actually lived in this town back then. I’ll put a small taste of it below.

Hope to see friends and neighbors tomorrow at First Churches. The reading is the first in Forbes Library’s local reading series and Broadside Books will be there with the book—as well as tickets for Susan’s Bridge Street Cemetery Tour on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 1 p.m. But, mostly, congratulations to Susan for this fabulous book and thank you for sending it to us!

Chapter 1: June 1731, Newport to Northampton

The girl saw a tall, gaunt man look up from a slice of raisin pie (she had baked it, perfecting her hand with cold water crust) when she walked into Captain Perkins’s parlor with Phyllis close behind her. She could see that he was the one doing the buying. Phyllis put a hand on the small of her back to position her near the table where the men sat. The girl stared at the oozing, dark-flecked pie from which the buyer had spooned a tiny bite.

“Mr. Edwards, this is Venus.” Captain Perkins spoke smoothly. “I kept her as the pick of the lot when I unloaded most of the cargo in the Caribbean on my last voyage. I got a shipment of very good allspice, as well.”

“Impressive,” murmured someone.

The girl held her hands clasped and her back straight, but her legs were trembling. Phyllis kept a hand on her back. She had said that there would be others in the room, come to witness the sale over pie and rum punch. The girl barely took them in.

She raised her eyes and found Mr. Edwards looking at her face. She felt locked out of her own mind, both numbed and spinning, but she held his gaze. This was improper, but he kept looking himself, steadily, into her eyes. He was, perhaps, twice as old as she was, so still young. He had on a black coat with a beaver hat resting on his knee. She could see that he was a stranger, and his collar marked him as a preacher. Whatever else he might be, as a person to exchange glances with, he was uncommonly intense.

Captain Perkins spoke up from his chair. “She’s a dutiful girl. And she’s already had the small pox.”

. . . 

---

Spider in a Tree

Tue 1 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

October 2013 · 9781618730695 · trade paper · 336pp | 9781618730701 · ebook

Jonathan Edwards is considered America’s most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts.

In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Mr. Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all others: Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards’s young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards’ wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale.

Reviews and Notices

“Edwards sees evidence of divine grace everywhere, but in a world “haunted by work and sin,” the characters fight to sublimate their bodies and the natural environment, and their culture is shaped by a belief in the uselessness of earthly pleasure and inevitability of mortality and judgement. This combination of “absence, presence, and consolation” motivates the complicated inner lives of these well-realized characters, whose psyches Stinson explores in empathetic and satisfying depth.”
— Rain Taxi Review

“The book is billed as “a novel of the First Great Awakening,” and Stinson tries to do just that, presenting us with a host of viewpoints from colonists to slaves and even insects. She gives an honest imagining of everyday people caught up in extraordinary times, where ecstatic faith, town politics and human nature make contentious bedfellows. Although the novel was slow to pull me in, by the end I felt I had an intimate glance into the disparate lives of these 18th-century residents of Northampton, Massachusetts.”
—Historical Novel Review

Rick Kleffel interviews Susan Stinson (mp3 link).

“Ultimately, ‘Spider in a Tree’ is a lesson in what not to expect. Stinson eludes the clichés usually associated with religious extremism to peel away the humans underneath. We speak of a loving God, who asks us to embark upon a deadly war. We most easily see the sins in others that we are ourselves guilty of. Every ambition to perfect ourselves has a very human cost. As we reach for what we decide is the divine, we reveal our most fragile human frailties. Words cannot capture us; but we in all our human hubris, are quite inclined to capture words.”
—The Agony Column

The Mindful Reader: A wonderful read about Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening—Concord Monitor

Awakening Edwards: Jonathan Edwards in the hands of a Northampton novelist—Valley Advocate

Local author’s novel imagines life in Jonathan Edwards’ Northampton—Daily Hampshire Gazette

“As a Puritan preacher who suspends listeners above the sulfurous fires of hell, Jonathan Edwards commands center stage in this compelling historical novel. With mesmerizing narrative gifts, Stinson exposes readers to the full force of Edwards’ brimstone sermonizing. But she also lets readers hear Edwards’ voice in other registers, giving compassionate reassurance to his troubled wife, extending tender forgiveness to a despairing sinner, reflecting pensively on how God manifests his wisdom in a lowly spider. But the Edwards voice that most readers will find most irresistible is his inner voice, laden with grief at a young daughter’s death, perplexed at his spiritual status as master of a household slave. . . . An impressive chronicle conveying the intense spiritual yearnings that illuminate a colonial world of mud, disease, and fear.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

Interviews

New: Bookslut, Religion Dispatches

Lambda Literary, Writer’s Voice, Book Connection, Plum Journal, “How to Fall”

9/26/13 Springfield Republican: “Writer Susan Stinson of Northampton honors theologian with Bridge Street Cemetery tours”

Read more

---

MassHealth for Mass Health

Mon 30 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., MassHealth, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

This is the first week since our daughter, Ursula, was born in February 2009 that we will not have any home nurses coming in to help look after. This is a huge milestone and I cannot resist writing about it. We are filled with all the glee of parents of a newborn coming home for the first time. Sure, it also means life is complicated, but, hey, we knew that when we signed up for this gig.

Ursula is a very healthy four-and-a-half-year-old. She is in preschool 4 days a week (for all of 2 hours 15 minutes a day!) and loves tumble tots at the YMCA.

She still sees various specialists and physical (and other) therapists but for the most part when you talk to her she is just a great, smart, healthy kid who loves books and chocolate. We are so lucky and so grateful.

The home nursing came from the mighty MassHealth, which of course then-Governor Romney signed into law and then “RomneyCare” was used as the basis for the new Affordable Health Care/”ObamaCare.” Let me tell you, having a kid in hospital and being able to change insurance companies without being penalized for all her pre-existing conditions was huge. If we were living in a different US state by now we would be bankrupt and maybe living in Ursula’s Nana’s basement—which, I have to say, is a lovely basement. So, from the bottom of our hearts for now and forever: Thanks to all the politicians, backroom folks, grassroots activists, and healthcare professionals for MassHealth. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

---

Tomorrow!

Mon 30 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, tomorrow is publication day for Susan Stinson’s Spider in a Tree!

There will be stories in the newspapers, stories on the radio, streamers flying from the windows when Susan bikes through town, and readers’ mind blown as they consider the way 18th century theologians could also be . . . slave owners. Weird? Very weird.

Here’s one story about Susan’s graveyard tour (tickets still available!) Springfield Republican: “Writer Susan Stinson of Northampton honors theologian with Bridge Street Cemetery tours”

and here’s the info on Wednesday nights launch night.

Woohoo!

October 2, 7 pm, Launch party & reading, First Churches, Northampton, Mass. Sponsored by Forbes Library and Broadside Books.
— Writer’s Voice interview, WMUA

October 5, 1 pm, Bridge Street Cemetery Walking Tour. Tickets now available from Broadside Books.

---

Susan in the Republican; Smith College food service negotiations

Fri 27 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., podcasts, radio, Smith College, Susan Stinson, unions| Posted by: Gavin

There was a huge, great story about Susan Stinson in the Springfield Republican yesterday, “Writer Susan Stinson of Northampton honors theologian with Bridge Street Cemetery tours,” which included a couple of photos from a cemetery tour Susan took the author, Cori Urban, on. We’re going on the tour on Oct. 5—tickets available from Broadside Books (Hope to see you there!)

Bridge Street Cemetery was established in 1663. After the town voted that no more burials should take place next to the Meetinghouse, a portion of a 10-acre lot on the far edge of town, known as the “minister’s lott” at Pine Plain, was allocated for use as a burial ground, according to the website for Historic Northampton Museum and Education Center. In 1680, the bodies of those previously buried were moved to Bridge Street Cemetery.
The approximately 20-acre cemetery is an active non-denominational city cemetery.
A well-known theologian, Edwards has significant ties to the cemetery. He was minister at what is now First Churches in downtown Northampton from 1727-1750. Solomon Stoddard, his grandfather; Jerusha Edwards, his daughter; and other members of his family are buried in the cemetery.

Read more here.

Susan was also on the radio in Northampton on Bill Newman’s WHMP show:

Smith College food service employees speak out! Then, Susan Stinson on on her new book, “Spider in a Tree;” Rev Peter Ives & Annie Turner on Pope Francis.

The first interview with the Smith College food service employees is very much worth listening to. Smith College doesn’t see that it has an obligation to pay a living wage and hires lots of people into 32 hour jobs instead of full-time (defined by Smith as 37.5 hours/week) workers. Hmm. Hope the Smith College students take up with the employees.

Also, Susan will be on Writer’s Voice on October 2nd (the same day as her book launch!) and in the meantime Writer’s Voice Associate Producer Drew Adamek, in addition to the final episode in “The River Runs Through Us” series with artist and historian Russell Steven Powell, also includes highlights—including an interview with Susan—from previous episodes in the series. 

 

---

Monday: MFB CC no more

Fri 27 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Creative Commons, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Just a note to say that due to an upcoming change in the rights status, as of Monday, September 30th, we will be taking down the creative commons versions of Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners.

First I’d like to thank all the publishers who went along with this: Harcourt, HarperCollins UK, and also the ten other international publishers, thank you for your bigheartedopenmindedness! Because two stories from MFB also appeared in Pretty Monsters, the CC-version of MFB has always been 2 (er, somewhat circumventable) stories short of the published edition. (The ebook, which is available on Weightless and all the other usual spots, of course includes all the stories.)

Second, in the 5 years MFB has been available under the CC license there have been at least 125,000 downloads which is amazing! and we’d like to once again thank everyone for their CC-conversions . . . and also for CC-inspired work!

Kelly’s first collection, Stranger Things Happen, is still available under the CC-license (145,000 downloads and counting!) and we are still committed to the ideas behind it. All our ebooks are available DRM-free on Weightless and we are always open to the idea of releasing further titles under the CC-license in the future.

In the meantime if you’d like to download Magic for Beginners before we take it down on Monday: all the DRM-free versions are of course here.

---

Next Wednesday

Wed 25 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., cemetery woman, Northampton, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

We’ll be celebrating Susan Stinson’s book launch and reading at First Churches here in Northampton, Mass. Yes, this is a book set in Northampton written by a Northampton author and published by a company whose offices are in Easthampton, but whose principals live in Northampton. It’s a local book for local people! Well, in the sense that everyone is local somewhere.

Susan’s reading also kicks off the Forbes Library Local History/Local Novelists 2013/14 Reading and Lecture Series—the whole series info is below—and is leading a cemetery tour on Saturday, October 5 at 1 pm.

Hope to see you there!

October 2, 7 pm
First Churches, 129 Main St., Northampton, Mass.

October 5, 1 pm
Bridge Street Cemetery Walking Tour.
Tickets available from Broadside Books.

October 2	Spider in a Tree book launch Susan Stinson First Churches, 129 Main Street, Northampton co-sponsored by Small Beer Press, Broadside Books and First Churches
November 6	Celebration of Local Novelists, Part 1  John Clayton, novelist, Mitzvah Man Marisa Labozzetta, novelist, Sometimes It Snows in America Karen Osborn, novelist, Centerville
December 4	Hampshire County Memories: Historic Local Photographs  Faith Kaufmann and Dylan Gaffney, Forbes Library Special Collections
January 8	Journalists as Fiction Writers  Andrew Adamek Fred Contrada Bob Flaherty James Heflin Diane Lederman Mark Roessler
February 5	Quabbin J.R. Greene, author, The creation of Quabbin Reservoir: The death of the Swift River Valley Maryanne O’Hara, novelist, Cascade Gail Thomas, poet, No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley
April 9 (2nd Wed.)	Emily Dickinson/Quiet Charles Coe, author, All Sins Forgiven: Poems for My Parents Kevin Quashie, author, The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture Jane Wald, director, Emily Dickinson Museum
May 7	Celebration of Local Novelists, Part 2  Deborah Noyes, novelist, Plague in the Mirror Jacqueline Sheehan, novelist, Picture This Hilary Sloin, novelist, Art on Fire

Susan Stinson readings & events:

October 2, 7 pm, Launch party & reading, First Churches, Northampton, Mass. Sponsored by Forbes Library and Broadside Books.
— Writer’s Voice interview, WMUA
October 5, 1 pm, Bridge Street Cemetery Walking Tour. Tickets now available from Broadside Books.
October 14, 12 p.m. Edwards Room, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Mass.
October 15, 6:30 p.m. Stockbridge Library, Stockbridge, Mass.
October 23, 12 p.m., American Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
October 24, 4 p.m. Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
October 30, 2 pm, reading, talk, Q&A, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
November 13, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
November 18, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass.
November 21, 7 pm, Drunken Careening Writers series, KGB Bar, NYC (with Holly Hepp-Galvan and John Schuyler Bishop)
December 15, 5 pm, Bloom Readings, Washington Heights, NYC

Updated: October 2, 2013, is, by general agreement, a Wednesday, not a Tuesday. Oops!

---

Small Beer Podcast 18: Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals” & Cider

Tue 24 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Dusty Buchinski, Geoff Noble, Jennifer Abeles, Julie C. Day, Julie Day, Kelly Link, Podcastery, small beer podcast, Stone Animals| Posted by: Julie

Old friends never go out of style. Yet, somehow, too often they manage to slip into the dusty corners of our lives. Each time one pops up and disrupts my helter skelter schedule, I feel a frisson of rediscovery. “Yes, this is why we remember each other. This really is how it used to be.”

This latest Small Beer podcast is exactly such an old friend. Recorded a while back, I got nervous about the time involved in editing it down, then distracted by a number of non-podcast related deadlines, and finally let the recording slip into some forgotten crack. Dear, Lord, what was I thinking?!  The discussion is opinionated, amusing and thoughtful in just the right measure. Months later it makes me want to go back and reread “Stone Animals” all over again.

Spoiler Alert: The details of the story are discussed at length. If you have not yet read “Stone Animals” consider this your excuse to do so now. Not. One Wasted. Moment. I promise.  You can purchase the beautifully illustrated chapbook from Madras Press, knowing all proceeds go to the Fistula Foundation, or you can read it for free (under a Creative Commons license) as part of Kelly’s Magic for Beginners collection.

Episode 18: In which Julie C. Day, Jennifer Abeles, Dusty Buchins, & Geoff Noble discuss Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

---

Death of a Unicorn ebook sale

Mon 23 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, Peter Dickinson, sale| Posted by: Gavin

To celebrate the publication of our latest Peter Dickinson title (The Poison Oracle), we are putting the ebook of Death of a Unicorn on super sale this week: it’s 70% off, was $9.95, now only $2.99!

Get it here:

— Weightless
— Kobo
— iBooks
— Barnes & Noble

You can get it at all the usual places (we have sent the new price out to all the sites we can, some of them are slower to process the price change than others) and as always we recommend Weightless and your local bookshop (through Kobo) first.

 

---

Bookslinger: Pride and Prometheus

Fri 20 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bookslinger, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

New this week on Consortium’s Bookslinger app is John Kessel’s Jane Austen/Frankenstein mashup, “Pride and Prometheus,” reprinted from his collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence.

Previously on Bookslinger:

Kij Johnson’s “At the Mouth of the River of Bees”

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Delauney the Broker” (translated by Edward Gauvin) from the collection A Life on Paper.

Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper”

Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”

Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”

Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”

Download the app in the iTunes store.

And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE

---

More HBS fun

Thu 19 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, keep it indie| Posted by: Gavin

We had a ton of fun last Saturday at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend. Ok, so we only stayed one day, but, we were there the day the Fugu Truck was there. Total win!

There are three more weekends of it and man, I am tempted to go. We walked away with a box of books—and I think we got away lightly. And missed a ton of good books. Argh.

We were also gifted with some home brewed beer (4 different types!) from Thom Dunn, who we met this summer in at Clarion San Diego. That was a lovely surprise—the beer, not Thom. Thanks, Thom!

We were in between the lovely people at Ploughshares magazine and Cervena Barva Press, who were very kind. Of course anyone who compliments the kid is immediately a friend of ours. We had a lovely time, so, Boston area peeps: don’t miss out!

Saturday, September 21 and Sunday, September 22 (10am–6pm)
Local Flavors: Food Truck Favorites and Epicurean Treats

Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September, 29 (10am–6pm)
Local Innovation: From Science Fiction to Science Fairs

Saturday, October 5 and Sunday, October 6 (10am–6pm)
Local Craft: Workshops, Zines, Indie Comics, and more

---

Murder! Murder!

Tue 17 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Greer Gilman| Posted by: Gavin

We are very pleased to celebrate the publication day of Greer Gilman’s novella chapbook Cry Murder! in a Small Voice. There is no one who writes like Greer, as you may know if you’ve dreamt your way through Cloud & Ashes. Cry Murder! is a different beast, a mystery—of sorts—a tale of Ben Jonson and loss and longing in seventeenth century London. And we are very happy to note that the cover of Cry Murder! is by Kathleen Jennings who also created the beautiful cover for Cloud & Ashes.

Early readers say:

“I made myself portion this exquisite novella out over days, so I could savor the language, a lacework of Elizabethan poesy and paradigm spun with subtle modern thread to make it pleasing to the contemporary eye.” [1]

“Cry Murder is in fairly equal measures funny, heartbreaking, and downright eerie, sometimes within a sentence or even a phrase of each other.” [2]

“A delight. Greer Gilman’s Cry Murder! in a Small Voice is a highly original, thought-provoking and beautifully polished tale; a short story written in a chewy, glistening Jacobethan prose which is entirely the author’s invention.” [Oxfraud]

And you?

---

Cry Murder! in a Small Voice

Tue 17 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Books, Chapbooks| Posted by: Gavin

September 2013 · saddle-stitched paperback, 978-1-61873-077-0 · ebook, 978-1-61873-078-7
May 2014 · second printing
March 2016 · third printing

Shirley Jackson Award winner.

London, 1603.

Ben Jonson, playwright, poet, satirist . . . detective?

Someone is murdering boy players and Jonson, in the way that only Greer Gilman could write him — “Fie, poetastery.” — is compelled to investigate. Cry Murder! in a Small Voice is a dense poetic novella that mesmerizes, horrifies, and fascinates.

Reviews and Reactions

“Exceptional. . . . It’s a historical crime story, with a frisson of the fantastical bubbling at its edges. The hero is Ben Jonson, drawn some-what against his will to investigating the murder of a boy actor. . . . Jonson’s investigation, and eventual action against Oxford, with the help of another boy actor, is nicely told, with plenty of period atmosphere that rang utterly true to me (no expert, mind you). But, as we expect from Gilman, the real payoff is the prose. Gilman here is mimicking Elizabethan English, and as such I found the writing a bit more readily comprehensible than the remarkable but somewhat difficult prose of her Cloud stories. It’s also very funny at times, especially during Jonson’s conversation with Robin Armin, the actor who played the comic parts in Shakespeare’s later plays.”
—Rich Horton, Locus

“A brilliant, small, dense piece of work from a writer playing to great effect with a fascinating set of historical figures. The dualistic structure — a sort of two-faced narrative, a coin-flip of a story — lingers with me, the frightful mystery and the underlying presence in it alike. I wholeheartedly recommend investing some time and effort giving it a read, or two.”
—Lee Mandelo, Tor.com

“What is a story but the dance of words ? Greer Gilman’s language is always demanding : even short declarative sentences resonate with layers of meaning. The longer cadences are nimble, tricky on the tongue and in that place in the brain where deliberate allusions float like wisps of smoke on a winter morning or snap as flags in a furious gale. It is hugely ambitious to encode so much of the Elizabethan theater into a murder mystery staged upon the hinge of the modern world. That Gilman accomplishes this tale within the space of fifty-two pages is brilliant, contrarian, and wholly admirable.”
— Henry Wessells, The Endless Bookshelf, “The Best Book of 2013”

“This goes well beyond mere meticulous research. Gilman pulls us into the milieu with an intense immediacy, as if she had just stepped out of the Globe’s tiring-room . . . But the real richness here is the language. It is not Shakespeare’s language, not Jonson’s, but Gilman’s own unique and inimitable wordcraft . . . This is to savor.”
—Lois Tilton, Locus

“A jewel of a novella.”
—Strange Horizons

“A delight. Greer Gilman’s Cry Murder! in a Small Voice is a highly original, thought-provoking and beautifully polished tale; a short story written in a chewy, glistening Jacobethan prose which is entirely the author’s invention.”
—Oxfraud

Cover by Kathleen Jennings.

 An excerpt:

“The Devil is an ass, I do acknowledge it.”
—Ben Jonson

Venice, 1604

A coil of scarlet round the sweet boy’s neck: swan-white he lay, his whiter smock outspread as snow, his hand—O piteous!—imploring still. Venetia dead. Above her stood her lord and lover, still as if he held the loop of cord. A silence—

Mummery, thought Ben, remembering. The play was trash. Unworthy of the getting up, the less at court. ’Twas tailor-work: a deal of bombast and a farthing lace. And yet these shadows haunted him, foreshadows of an act unseen: the boy, not feigning now; the sullied smock; the cord. The Slip-Knott drew him in, inwove him in a play of shadows; now had tugged him halfway to Byzantium in its service. Enter Posthumus: a player-poet with a hand in Fate. Though he’d a quarrel to his fellow maker, History: that it wanted art. To lay a scene in Venice, helter-skelter—! Bah. The unities—But soft. On stage, the tyrant speaks. . . .

Greer Gilman’s mythic fictions Moonwise and Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales have (between them) won the Tiptree, World Fantasy, and Crawford Awards, and have been shortlisted for the Nebula and Mythopoeic awards. Besides her two books, she has published other short work, poetry, and criticism. Her essay on “The Languages of the Fantastic” appears in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. A graduate of Wellesley College and the University of Cambridge, and a sometime forensic librarian at Harvard, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She likes to quip that she does everything James Joyce ever did, only backward and in high heels.

---

Freebie

Fri 13 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Eileen Gunn, indie bookstore exclusives, keep it indie, Nathan Ballingrud| Posted by: Gavin

It’s true: tomorrow at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend we’ll be giving away a free chapbook to those who take full advantage of our pile-them-high-and-sell-the-cheap sale!

The two story chapbook, North American Monster Stories, will never be for sale. The stories are the title story from Nathan Ballingrud’s collection, North American Lake Monsters, and “Up the Fire Road,” a story from Eileen Gunn’s collection Questionable Practices. 

The whole weekend looks like fun. There are tons of great journals and publishers—as well as MBTA gifts and the all important food truck: Fugu Truck.

Here’s the whole list from the Harvard Book Store site:

Black Ocean – In addition to showcasing some of their stunning books, this press will host author signings and meet & greets throughout the day.
Boston Review – You can’t beat free issues of a great literary magazine with an email newsletter sign-up, and that’s just what you’ll get at Boston Review’s booth today.
Cervena Barva Press –  Founded in 2005, Cervena Barva Press (“Red Color” in Czech) publishes poetry, fiction, plays, translations and memoir from writers all over the world.
Fugu Truck – This awesome local food truck will be serving up Asian street food beloved by Bostonians.
Harvard Review – Calling all writers of short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction: Bring a few pages of your submission and get an on-the-spot assessment by Harvard Review Editor Christina Thompson (from 12:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M.).
Inman Review – A local literary journal with a great reputation, Inman Review will be discussing (and maybe even accepting) submissions today in addition to selling current and back issues.
MBTAgifts – Always a favorite, MBTAgifts offers old MBTA signs and memorabilia.
Ploughshares – This literary heavyweight offers up discounts on back issues and a free digital solo when you sign up for their newsletter.  They also promise to be charming and personable. No blank stares. EVER.
Q’s Nuts – A Somerville favorite, this artisan nut company will have you giving in to tempation once you try their line of sweet, savory and exotic flavors.
Rose Metal Press – Learn about hybrid genres when you visit the booth of this Brookline-based press, and pick up a book, button, or bookmark while you’re at it.
Small Beer Press – All the way from western Mass., this smashing husband and wife duo is planning to offer a very special giveaway, a great selection of remainders and zines for sale, and maybe even mugs!
Ward Maps – Harvard Book Store’s Park Street neighbor will feature antique and rare maps for sale.
Wilderness House Press – An imprint of Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Press will feature books for sale as well as author booksignings and giveaways.

Our Warehouse is located at 14 Park St. in Somerville, between Somerville Ave. and Beacon St., just outside of Union Square. The closest T stop is Porter Square, on the Red Line, and bus lines #83 and #87 have stops on Somerville Ave. near Park St.

And unlike at most parties… friends of friends are definitely encouraged to bring friends! See you there!

---

The Poison Oracle: conversation online for publication day

Tue 10 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Peter Dickinson, Sara Paretsky| Posted by: Gavin

To celebrate the publication of our latest Peter Dickinson mystery reprint, The Poison Oracle, we worked with the fine folks at Crimespree Magazine to put the whole conversation between two absolute legends of the mystery field online: Sara Paretsky and Peter Dickinson.

Originally published in 1982, The Poison Oracle is a strange and haunting novel, somewhat of its time, yet still fascinating (and, yes, haunting), and we are very happy to be able to put it in front of new readers. It is the second adult mystery novel of Peter’s that we have published—look out for an upcoming ebook sale on the also-excellent-but-very-different-first title, Death of a Unicorn—and we are planning on at least one more. 

We were incredibly happy that the the fabulous Sara Paretsky agreed to chat to Peter about the book and that conversation is included in our new paperback and ebook editions.

Here’s the start of the conversation, or you can jump here and read the whole thing.

When Gavin Grant asked if I would do a conversation with Peter Dickinson for The Poison Oracle, I jumped at the chance. Dickinson is one of the premier writers of the Twentieth Century. His language is meticulous, his narratives carefully thought out, his characters vivid and credible. I should have looked before I leapt: it’s one thing to be an admiring reader, another to conduct a conversation. Besides, the act or art of writing feels like a delicate watch, something like the handmade one with all the little moving parts that tennis great Rafael Nadal wore and lost. If you start tinkering with the mechanism, you destroy the watch.

Sara Paretsky: I first read The Poison Oracle when it was published in 1982. The novel is so rich with themes and nuances—language, clashes of cultures, how do we communicate across cultures? across species? What makes a moral person, what goads a person who thinks himself a coward to act?—that I’ve always put it on my own private best-ten list.

Peter Dickinson: That’s nice, but actually I don’t often think about that sort of thing when I’m writing. My focus is mainly on stuff like getting a character from one room into another. In a sense the plot—the story— is there to allow the big questions to happen up without actual ratiocination. Once there they have to be accommodated. Otherwise you start thinking of yourself as a Great Writer, which is death.

SP: The Poison Oracle is a book about many things, but language and communication lie at its heart….

Read on

---

Harvard Warehouse Weekend!

Tue 10 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

For the next four weekends the Harvard Book Store is opening up their Somerville warehouse and hosting 4 indie culture weekends. We will be there! Saturday, September 14, 10 am to 6 pm, we will be selling books, mugs, maybe even saltshakers! We may have even a giveaway.

What we will definitely have: incredibly cheap books!

Here’s all the info on the weekends taken directly from the HBS site including a list

Warehouse Weekends: Local Voices
Four Weekends of Books, Culture & Community
This Weekend: Small Presses and Literary Journals
10am to 6pm, Saturday, Sept. 14 and Sunday, Sept. 15

Date Saturday September 14, 2013 10:00 AM

LocationHarvard Book Store Warehouse 14 Park St., Somerville, MA DIRECTIONS »

TicketsThis event is free; no tickets are required.

We know you value local.

We know you make it a point to shop at independent businesses, dine at local restaurants, attend neighborhood events, support community organizations, and champion area artists.
That’s why we’re such good friends.

That’s also why you’re invited to join us this fall for Harvard Book Store’s Warehouse Weekends where local is the name of the game.  We’ve asked dozens of our favorite community cohorts to help us celebrate our collective ind(ie)pendence with bargain books, free samples, contests, workshops, and more!

From 10:00 A.M.-6:00 P.M.  today, our 6500 sq. ft. warehouse in Somerville will feature chapbook giveaways, consultations with literary editors, and many of the best literary magazines and small presses in New England.  And did we mention our 25,000 used, rare and remainder books available for your browsing pleasure?

Meet:

Black Ocean – In addition to showcasing some of their stunning books, this press will host author signings and meet & greets throughout the day.
Boston Review – You can’t beat free issues of a great literary magazine with an email newsletter sign-up, and that’s just what you’ll get at Boston Review’s booth today.
Cervena Barva Press –  Founded in 2005, Cervena Barva Press (“Red Color” in Czech) publishes poetry, fiction, plays, translations and memoir from writers all over the world.
Fugu Truck – This awesome local food truck will be serving up Asian street food beloved by Bostonians.
Harvard Review – Calling all writers of short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction: Bring a few pages of your submission and get an on-the-spot assessment by Harvard Review Editor Christina Thompson (from 12:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M.).
Inman Review – A local literary journal with a great reputation, Inman Review will be discussing (and maybe even accepting) submissions today in addition to selling current and back issues.
MBTAgifts – Always a favorite, MBTAgifts offers old MBTA signs and memorabilia.
Ploughshares – This literary heavyweight offers up discounts on back issues and a free digital solo when you sign up for their newsletter.  They also promise to be charming and personable. No blank stares. EVER.
Q’s Nuts – A Somerville favorite, this place will have you giving in to tempation once you try their line of sweet, savory and exotic flavors.
Rose Metal Press – Learn about hybrid genres when you visit the booth of this Brookline-based press, and pick up a book, button, or bookmark while you’re at it.
Small Beer Press – All the way from western Mass., this smashing husband and wife duo is planning to offer a very special giveaway, a great selection of remainders and zines for sale, and maybe even mugs!
Ward Maps – Harvard Book Store’s Park Street neighbor will feature antique and rare maps for sale.
Wilderness House Press – An imprint of Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Press will feature books for sale as well as author booksignings and giveaways.

Our Warehouse is located at 14 Park St. in Somerville, between Somerville Ave. and Beacon St., just outside of Union Square. The closest T stop is Porter Square, on the Red Line, and bus lines #83 and #87 have stops on Somerville Ave. near Park St.

And unlike at most parties… friends of friends are definitely encouraged to bring friends! See you there!

Be sure to keep your eye on this page for all new updates regarding our Warehouse Weekend partners. 

Here are the full list of weekend fun:

Saturday, September 14 and Sunday, September 15 (10am–6pm)
Local Voices: Small Presses and Literary Journals

Saturday, September 21 and Sunday, September 22 (10am–6pm)
Local Flavors: Food Truck Favorites and Epicurean Treats

Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September, 29 (10am–6pm)
Local Innovation: From Science Fiction to Science Fairs

Saturday, October 5 and Sunday, October 6 (10am–6pm)
Local Craft: Workshops, Zines, Indie Comics, and more

---

The Poison Oracle

Tue 10 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Books, Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

September 10, 2013 · trade paper · $16 · 978-1-61873-065-7 | ebook · $9.95 · 978-1-61873-066-4

“I think Peter Dickinson is hands down the best stylist as a writer and the most interesting storyteller in my genre.”
—Sara Paretsky, author of Breakdown

Take a medieval Arab kingdom, add a ruler who wants to update the kingdom’s educational facilities, include a somewhat reserved English research psycholinguist (an Oxford classmate of the ruler) invited to pursue his work on animal communication, and then add a touch of chaos in the person of Dinah: a chimpanzee who has begun to learn to form coherent sentences with plastic symbols.

When a murder is committed in the oil-rich marshes, Dinah is the only witness, and Morris has to go into the marshes to discover the truth. The Poison Oracle is a novel of its time that uses the everyday language people use to expose humanity’s thinking and unthinking cruelties to one another and to the animals with whom we share this earth.

Includes an author interview carried out by Sara Paretsky.

Peter Dickinson: “Flukes and Good Guesses”

Audio rights sold to Audible.

Praise for The Poison Oracle:

“Dickinson’s crime novels are simply like no other; sophisticated, erudite, unexpected, intricate, English and deeply, wonderfully peculiar.”
—Christopher Fowler, author of The Memory of Blood

“I have no idea if any of this talk and action is authentic, and I don’t care. Either way it’s marvellous.”—Rex Stout

“Intelligent, elegantly written . . . a thoroughly enjoyable read.”—Sunday Times

“Dickinson’s faceted intelligence provides thoughtful pauses along with the more traditional thriller accoutrements in this provocative tale of the Sultanate of Q’Kut, a tiny oil rich country where Arabs and primitive Marshmen coexist under an ancient treaty. When greed for the oil under the marshes begins to unravel the bond, a British psycholinguist, his experimental chimpanzee and a nubile young terrorist are caught up in the crosscultural currents. A complex dazzler with an extra gene of anthropological authenticity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“. . . the story is unique, ingenious, and full of surprises.”—Publishers Weekly

“Were there, as in chess, a brilliancy prize for crime action, this should win it . . . Dickinson’s best book.” —Observer

“Intelligent, elegantly written . . . a thoroughly enjoyable read.”—Sunday Times

The Poison Eaters
Chapter One

WITH AS MUCH passion as his tepid nature was ever likely to generate, Wesley Morris stared at Dinah through the observation window. He thought she looked incredibly beautiful, leaning against the heavy wire mesh on the far side, and watching the main group with that air of surprise which Morris knew to mean that she was apprehensive. She looked healthier than most of the others; her coarse black hair had a real sheen to it, and her eyes were bright with vitality.

The others were in a listless mood, though they ought by now to have got over the shock of their arrival; only Murdoch’s baby showed much life, making little exploratory forays away from his mother. Sparrow was gazing with sullen intensity at the air-conditioner; perhaps its thin whine got on his nerves; he couldn’t know how carefully it had been adjusted to produce a temperature and humidity at which he would thrive. The rest merely lolled and slouched. The darkening caused by the one-way glass in the observation window softened the concrete tree-trunks and metal branches, and gave the whole scene the look of a forest glade. Morris was both pleased and disturbed by this illusion of nature.

“Sparrow looks pretty unintelligent,” murmured the Sultan. “

“I don’t know,” said Morris.

“In fact I think he looks decidedly thick. Thicker even than Rowse.”

“You can’t judge them by Dinah—she’s exceptional.”

“So what? If she chooses one of the thick ones . . .”

“It doesn’t work like that. The odds are she’ll be completely promiscuous—she’s just made that way. When she has kids you’ll never know who the fathers were.”

The Sultan knew this perfectly well, but something in his heredity or culture made it hard for him to imagine a set-up in which the males were dominant but did not have exclusive rights to individual females. (Morris had to keep explaining the point to him.)

“Then we ought to start weeding out the thick ones,” he said. Morris recognised in his tone the dangerous moment when a notion was about to harden into a fiat.

“We don’t know which are the thick ones yet,” he protested. “I’ll try to set up a few tests, if I can think of how to do it without mucking up the whole idea. We’ve got plenty of time—Dinah won’t reach puberty for at least a year, so . . .”

“Can’t we speed it up, my dear fellow? Listen, down in the marshes they know a few things that your puritanical scientists have never caught on to. Some of the local aphrodisiacs . . .”

“Certainly not,” snapped Morris.

. . .

Praise for Peter Dickinson’s mysteries:

“He is the true original, a superb writer who revitalises the traditions of the mystery genre . . . incapable of writing a trite or inelegant sentence . . . a master.”—P. D. James

“He sets new standards in the mystery field that will be hard to live up to.”—Ruth Rendell

“He has an eye and a mind and a voice like no other.”—Donald E. Westlake

“A fresh triumph . . . a simultaneous insight into kids and their minders, and emerging nations, and the concept of freedom—all done with consummate storytelling skill.”—Peter Lovesey

“Brilliantly imaginative first detective story . . .wonderfully convincing.”—The Observer

“Mr Dickinson is the most original crime novelist to appear for a long, long time.”—The Guardian

“Brilliantly original, as always.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Wry, witty, irresistible.”—The Financial Times

“A literary magician controlling an apparently inexhaustible supply of effects . . . Craftsmanship such as this makes for compulsive reading.”—Penelope Lively

Peter Dickinson OBE has twice received the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger as well as the Guardian Award and Whitbread Prize. His fifty novels include Death of a Unicorn and A Summer in the Twenties. His latest book is a collection, Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures (Big Mouth House). He lives in England and is married to the novelist Robin McKinley.

---

Walking Tour of Bridge Street Cemetery

Mon 9 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

On October 5th at 1 pm, Susan Stinson will be giving a walking tour of Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton. Tickets are $5 and are available at Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street,  Northampton MA 01060, 413-586-4235.

Walking in this cemetery inspired Susan’s forthcoming novel, Spider in a Tree. (Don’t miss the launch party at First Churches (129 Main St., Northampton) on October 2nd at 7 pm!)

 

---

Reprints!

Mon 9 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Good news from here: we’re sending two books back to press, both of them first collections, both of them fantastic. The first is Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and the second is Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees.

Of course that means we’d love to hear from you if you’ve found any typose [sic!] in either of the books. And, sure, if you email us next week to tell us it will be too late and we will gnash our teeth, but, then, we’ll just wait for the next printing!

---

Some goings on, reviews, &c.

Fri 6 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Angelica Gorodischer, Kelly Link, Maureen F. McHugh, Naomi Mitchison, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 29 is out. Must write a prop’r post about that soon. Phew. It is a goody.

Things on the to-be-read pile: Duplex by Kathryn Davis. Alice Kim gave it a thumbs up which is good enough for me. Also, picked it up at Odyssey Books the other night after Holly Black’s reading.

Just came across this great review of Travel Light by Paul Kincaid from 2007 on SF Site.

“The enchantments of Travel Light contain more truth, more straight talking, a grittier, harder-edged view of the world than any of the mundane descriptions of daily life you will find in … science fiction stories.”

Sounds about right to me. We reprinted this book because I found myself buying more and more copies to give to people and now I am very glad we did as now readers have told me they pick up multiple copies to press on friends. Thus a good book is read!

Nerds of a Feather reviewed Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Unreal and the Real: Where on Earth: “You’ve probably guessed that I really liked this volume of short stories . . . ” (There’s an earlier review of Outer Space, Inner Lands here.) Nerds of a Feather is a great name.

If you subscribe to F&SF, you may already know this: Angélica Gorodischer’s “By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon” appeared in the May/June edition of F&SF.

A while ago Kelly did a podcast interview and reading with Hold That Thought with Rebecca King. Kelly in turn interviewed Readercon guest of honor Maureen F. McHugh and Scott Edelman posted it in two parts. And! Game reviewer VocTer posted a reading of “Magic for Beginners” on YouTube. This is part 1 and is an hour long!

---

« Later Entries in — Earlier Entries in »