On Sexual Harassment at Conventions — Elise Matthesen speaks out

Fri 28 Jun 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Thank you, Elise.

Posted on Mary Robinette Kowal‘s site and cross-posted at the blogs of Jim Hines, Seanan McGuire, Brandon Sanderson John Scalzi, and Chuck Wendig.

 


(Don’t) take your vitamins

Thu 13 Jun 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Read this, “Vitamins: stop taking the pills,” the other day in The Guardian and haven’t been able to get it off my mind. There are years of training, ads, articles, infographics, friends and family voices all saying “Take your vitamins!” and then there is the science:

“In October 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn’t. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer.”

Just two studies.

“At least 15 studies have shown that vitamin C doesn’t treat the common cold.”

But how dangerous can it be to just pop a pill? All my life I’ve heard that this is solid, preventative medicine, the one thing I can easily do (er, besides being aware of what I’m eating and doing some exercise) that will keep me healthy and enable me to enjoy a long life?

“In 1996, investigators from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle studied 18,000 people who, because they had been exposed to asbestos, were at increased risk of lung cancer. Again, subjects received vitamin A, beta-carotene, both or neither. Investigators ended the study abruptly when they realised that those who took vitamins and supplements were dying from cancer and heart disease at rates 28% and 17% higher, respectively, than those who didn’t.”

“In 2007, researchers from the National Cancer Institute examined 11,000 men who did or did not take multivitamins. Those who took multivitamins were twice as likely to die from advanced prostate cancer.”

Read the article: “Vitamins: stop taking the pills.” Might be time to chuck the supplements.

• This is an edited extract from Killing Us Softly: The Sense And Nonsense Of Alternative Medicine, by Dr Paul Offit, published on 20 June by Fourth Estate at £13.99. To order a copy for £11.19, including free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop.

In the USA it is being published by Harper under the title Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. 


Neko Case, “Man”

Tue 11 Jun 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Link


On Geoff Ryman

Mon 3 Jun 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s another post I meant to put up at some earlier point. Like, you know, when this fabby book was coming out. But, hey, it’s a fab book so this can go up any time:

Written for Readercon in 2011:

Publishing Geoff Ryman’s books—and reprinting his backlist—has been a fantastic experience, in most senses of the word. But first I should mention: Geoff Ryman is a busy guy which makes his email signature line actually worth reading: there’s always a new project or collaboration or a project he thinks is worth pushing. 

And pushing is what he’s good at. In his writing, he’s pushed across every boundary he’s ever come across from his very first stories right up to the present day, and, with luck, he’ll continue to do so for many more years. There are many of his stories where the reaction I’ve had has been, “No, please don’t go there! Don’t . . . oops.” Which is generally followed by “Wow.” There were readers who could not stand the thought of “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter,” but once a writer has an idea like that how could he resist writing the story? Forty-nine percent of the readership of “Omnisexual” probably winced along with me when something burst. And let’s not talk about “Birth Days.” Or, rather, let’s. It’s so uncomfortable, but so optimistic; so light to begin with, so huge by the end.

The way he pushes out beyond the comfort zone with his omnivorous gaze for the uncomfortable and telling detail makes for fascinating reading. Two of his recent stories, “The Film-makers of Mars” (first published on Tor.com) and “K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career)” (first published in Paradise Tales) capture something of the breadth of his writing. The former is a slow burn instant science fiction classic that by the impossible and inevitable end has the audience in the bleacher seats standing up and cheering for more. The latter is an intense, hard-hitting realistic story of a series of post-war interviews with a Kosovar family that could have been background for a piece right out of the New York Times. The story is not at all fantasy or science fiction, but it is pure Ryman: an uncomfortable story aired out with respect for all concerned, a very human weariness at the things we do to one another, and just a touch of humor.

We’re lucky to have someone who isn’t afraid to write such stories who also happens to be a great storyteller and I’m looking forward to reading many more of Geoff’s stories and novels with their unique mix of nitty-gritty human moments and mind-blowing ideas.


One Story Debutante Ball

Sat 25 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Small Beer Press is happy to be one of One Story magazine’s sponsors. Every year they have a  big party, the Literary Debutante Ball: A Celebration of Emerging Writers, and this year it’s in Brooklyn at Roulette on June 6th, 2013.

As sponsors we receive some tickets for the ball and yesterday we offered them to LCRW subscribers. The three lucky winners are Kris, Shveta, and Colin!

Hope the ball is tons of fun and thanks again for subscribing. We have a new issue coming in July and we will post the table of contents here next week.  


Celebrating Death of a Unicorn

Wed 22 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

As noted yesterday, this month published a new edition Peter Dickinson’s excellent sort-of-mystery Death of a Unicorn.

Death of a Unicorn is one of those English novels which at some point you realize is all about inheritance. Lady Margaret, who goes by Mabs, is older than her twin sister Penny by twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes mean that Mabs who will inherit their stately home, Cheadle, which as someone says, “Looks kind of like it was waiting to eat someone.” Cheadle looms in the background behind every family squabble and argument:

When Bartrand Millett built Cheadle in 1712 he effectively bankrupted all his heirs, in perpetuity. Looking through the account books I can see the same scrimping going on generation after generation. My mother and I are only the last two in a long line of cheeseparers. 

Death of a Unicorn starts off with Mabs bored at a party, “hiding from Mark Babington and trying to get squiffy.” She is surprised to received help from someone she does not know and that first meeting leads to all sorts of interesting complications between Mabs, her mother and her sister.

We’re following Death of a Unicorn with another Peter Dickinson mystery, The Poison Oracle, this summer. Book Groups take note: There’s a Reading Group Guide in Death of a Unicorn which we hope you will take advantage of and for The Poison Oracle we have an interview with Peter Dickinson carried out by none other than New York Times bestselling author of the V. I. Warshawski novels, Sara Paretsky!


Updatery

Tue 21 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Q. Is Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters  at the printer?

A. Yes! Review copies are going out and we are getting ready to receive complaints and plaudits. It is scary!

Q. Gavin, are you asking yourself questions?

A. You have no idea.

Q. So where can I get Nathan’s book signed?

A. Readercon, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and  Malaprop’s, both in North Carolina.

Ok, now I’m done with the Q&A.

What else? Peter Dickinson! We have just published a new edition of Death of a Unicorn, a fascinating novel in two parts, thirty years apart, which follows a young woman as she gets her first job and has her first affair. The book picks up 30 years later as truths unknown to said young woman surface.

Book Groups take note: There’s a Reading Group Guide in Death of a Unicorn which we hope you will take advantage of.

Next: the sky in Easthampton is so low that I can reach up and touch it. Blech!

After Ysabeau Wilce tweeted about finding her Led Zep albums:

I dug out my CDs—not as cool, but I got a boxed set of all the recordings a couple of years ago from my excellent wife. How luxurious they seem compared to the tapes of tapes we had as kids! (The CDs are not as well worn as those tapes were.) I am listening to Presence. I know I-IV better, so time to explore the later years.

But I am also wishing I were going to WisCon—all those people, going to have so much fun! I love Madison, too. One of these years we’ll get back there.

What else? I’ve sent off another draft of a contract (short story collection FTW!). Also trying to see if I can bend a contract for good for all (I’m down with it, will everyone else go for it?), sent off ebooks for a secret fun thing, working on Google ebooks (why are they so opaque? our books were there for a couple of years and now I find they haven’t been there since last summer. Argh.), and waiting for another contract to appear so that I can jump up, jump around and spread the good word. Jump? Who has the energy for that? Eek!


Dancing between the monoliths

Mon 20 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We live in interesting times where independent voices, even whole online communities, are subsumed into corporate monoliths. We do business with these monoliths to survive but our hearts are with other independent businesses. We hope our readers will support them. If there isn’t a good indie near you, we recommend indiebound.org.


Trunk Stories

Mon 20 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

In the mail today, copies of Trunk Stories, a zine from our friend William Smith of Hangfire Books. We’re going to be sending out copies with LCRW and other books. Extras that are excellent? Yay!

Trunk Stories


Bookslinger

Fri 17 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Darn it, haven’t kept up with the Consortium Bookslinger app! Every week they post a new story from one of the Consortium publishers and since we publish a fair number of short story collections, a fair number of those stories are from our books. We’ve got new stories scheduled to go out just about monthly.

Checkkkk it out:

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

 


Ground Control to Major Tom

Mon 13 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Is Col. Chris Hadfield the geekist astronaut ever? Has there ever been an astronaut who sang and played guitar? Do all the astronauts enjoy themselves this much? I don’t know, but this is fantastic! I think the best part are his special effects, which are just shots of his normal everyday life. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of his videos, some with our 4-year-old daughter, but today’s (via Amal, thanks!) is a headexplody pop culture mashup. Thanks Col. Chris!


Death of a Unicorn

Mon 13 May 2013 - Filed under: Books, Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

May 2013 · trade paper · $16 · 9781618730404 | ebook · $9.95 · 9781618730411

“Death of a Unicorn has nothing to do with unicorns or fantasies. … This is a mystery by Peter Dickinson….
“The thing about Peter Dickinson is that his books, one from the other, are totally different. … And this is a novel, a mystery, where the mystery doesn’t really happen. The event that is mysterious, the death — if you will — doesn’t really happen until probably two-thirds of the way through the book. And it’s written from the point of view of a young upper-class … woman in England and her relationship with the [financier] of a magazine very much like the New Yorker. …
“I think that this is one of those books that I hope will … introduce people to Peter Dickinson and then they’ll go and pick up all the rest of his books. … But I have to stress these are not for people who want fast-moving thrillers. These are not mysteries in the style of American private-eye stories. These are really character studies and studies of society at a particular place in a particular time.”
—Nancy Pearl, NPR

For bestselling author Lady Margaret, the past is no longer a pleasant memory. Her first lover’s mysterious death and the seeming inevitability of her inheriting the family’s stately home are cast in new light by secrets unwillingly revisited in Dickinson’s wonderful novel of family and friends, work and duty, and above all, love.

Reading Group Questions included.

“Mr. Dickinson has a nice dry wit and a talent for deft characterization.”
—New York Times

“Everything here is exactly right.”
—New Yorker

“Peter Dickinson is my own chosen demigod in the pantheon of crime fiction.”
—Laurie R. King

“The Tolkien of the crime novel.”—H.R.F.Keating

Death of a Unicorn is the first in a series of reprints of Peter Dickinson’s mysteries from Small Beer Press. This classic British mystery will win fans currently engrossed in Downton Abbey.

Read more


Locus awards & this month’s Locus

Thu 9 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

LocusLovely news from Locus that 2 (or 3, depending on how you count) Small Beer books are finalists for this year’s Best Collection Award. Any time something like this happens, I remember what an honor it is to be nominated. It is excellent and reassuring to know that there are readers finding these books. Congratulations to Kij Johnson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and all the nominees in all the categories. (Er, one note: come on world, there are some excellent women artists out there.)

When this month’s issue of Locus came in the mail I forgot to say that they have a fascinating indie publishing section where they asked the same couple of questions of many independent presses. I answered for Small Beer and am glad I did because it is awesome to be included with some of my favorite indies out there.  And, for a Locus trifecta, Rich Horton reviews Angélica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar and picks “Trafalgar and Josefina” as his favorite. (For instant gratification, you can pick up Locus from Weightless.)

COLLECTION

THE SMALL & INDEPENDENT PRESS 

Introduction • Small Beer Press • Lethe Press • PS Publishing • Earthling Publications • Cheeky Frawg Books • Fairwood Press • ChiZine Publications • Twelfth Planet Press • EDGE Books • Prime Books • Aqueduct Press • Tachyon Publications • Ticonderoga Publications • Subterranean Press • Night Shade Books

Susan’s lovely poem

Wed 8 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Susan Stinson writes about meal at Bela, one of about “forty-odd restaurants, bakeries, ice cream parlors and bars” that are “currently displaying poems by local poets as part of the Nourish the Body/Nourish the Soul project organized by Rich Michelson, Northampton’s Poet Laureate.” Susan has a poem, “Garden,” posted on the front door or Bela. Out of towners, you can read it here.

Susan is a force of nature (keep up with her here) and fittingly will be reading at Shape&Nature Press’s Summertime Reading and Music Party! along with many other readers on June 2nd 5-9pm, at Bishop’s Lounge in Northampton, 4th floor. They promise 8 amazing readers, 4 rockin’ musicians, and a raffle—which will include some books of ours.

Hey, go read the poem.


Solarize Massachusetts

Wed 8 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was one of 100+ people at the first Northampton Solarize Massachusetts meeting last night. Woohoo!

Solarize Massachusetts is a state program that uses group buying to bring down the installment cost of solar power. I’ve long wanted to add solar power at home—at work at the Paragon Arts building I don’t choose the electricity provider. But the cost, the cost. We are signed up for Greenstart so we are paying slightly more than the average but are buying into solar, wind, etc.—although it is mostly hydroelectric. (Not as good as the rest, but better than fossil fuels.)

Anyway. The first round of towns in the 2013 Solarize Massachusetts program are Bourne,Brookline, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lee, Medford, Medway, Newton, Northampton, and Williamstown. The program selects one solar power installer who does site checks and so on to see if the interested people (me!) can actually have panels installed. The installer offers the town a deal: the more people who buy in by the end of the program (September 30, 2013), the lower the price. The average savings in previous rounds of the program have been 20%. Not bad!

 

There are also Federal tax credits worth about 25% of the cost, a $1,000 Massachusetts income tax credit, “solar renewable energy credit” (SRECs), net metering (you get a credit if your solar panels generate more power than you need), and the possibility of a few other credits. Overall, if the town gets enough people into the program—and there were 100+ people there last night—the panels usually pay for themselves within 5-7 years.

Any Northamptonites interested in the program should email Susan Lantz at solarizenorthampton@gmail.com. Send that email!


Publication Day for A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Which makes it extra nice that the cover artist, Kathleen Jennings, posted her cover process sketches for A Stranger in Olondria. And did you see the cake one of Sofia’s friends made for her for the launch reading party at A Room of One’s Own? Nice! There will also be a party of some sort at WisCon next month. Wish we were going!

You can of course read an excerpt on Tor.com or download a pdf of the first 70 pages; read Sofia’s The Big Idea, and an Interview on the Qwillery. More reviews—yours?— will be coming soon. It’s a big beautiful book and we’re very happy to see it out there in the world being read. Raul M. Chapa of BookPeople in Austin, TX, gave us a great early boost when he sent us this note from reading a galley, thanks Raul!

If you’re curious for some of the inspirations for this huge book and the deep love of reading that thrums all through it, check out Sofia’s What Were They Reading post.

 


Gosh

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I do miss Goodreads.


A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

April 2013 · 320 pp · hardcover · 9781618730626 | trade paperback · 9781931520768 | ebook · 9781931520775
2nd tp printing: 12/14. 3rd: 6/17. 4th: 4/2022
Also by Sofia Samatar: The Winged Histories, Tender: Stories

World Fantasy Award winner · British Fantasy Award winner · Crawford Award winner

Nebula Award finalist · Locus Award finalist · Locus Recommended Reading
Sofia Samatar received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Rights sold: audio (Audible); France (nominated for the Prix Imaginales, Les Editions de l’Instant); Poland (MAG); Romania (Editura Art); India (Juggernaut Books); Japan (Tokyo Sogensha); Italy (Edizioni E/O Ne/oN Libri).

NPR: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade

“‘Have you ever seen something so beautiful that you’d be content to just sit and watch the light around it change for a whole day because every passing moment reveals even more unbearable loveliness and transforms you in ways you can’t articulate?’ asks judge Amal El-Mohtar. ‘You will if you read these books.'”

Time Magazine: 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

“The novel unfolds in waves of A Game of Thrones-level twists, all while its fantastical world-building pulls from South Asian, Middle Eastern and African cultures to offer a welcome departure from Eurocentric fantasy.”

Jevick, the pepper merchant’s son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home—but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire’s two most powerful cults. Even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of freeing himself by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that most seductive of necromancies, reading.

A Stranger in Olondria was written while the author taught in South Sudan. It is a rich and heady brew which pulls the reader in deeper and still deeper with twists and turns that hearken back to the Gormenghast novels while being as immersive as George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

Sofia Samatar: News and upcoming events.

Audio interviews: To the Best of Our Knowledge. The Big Idea. Interview on the Qwillery. Coode Street Podcast with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

Read: an excerpt on Tor.com.

Download: a pdf of the first 70 pages.

Reviews

“The best stories throw a wrench in our characters’ best-laid plans, and nobody throws a wrench quite like a ghost. Jevick is the stranger of the title, sold on tales of a wonderland called Olondria in much the way I was sold on the idea of that wonderland called New York. What Samatar does is pull us into a world so thoroughly strange yet so familiar that you think it’s one kind of story until it shoves you off course and becomes another. It’s about a man who has too much to learn and not much time to learn it, but it’s also about how a little knowledge really is a dangerous thing.”
— Marlon James

“Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria tackles one of my favourite genres: the bildungsroman, which is a fancy way to say coming of age. Feeling a bit like a Dickensian tale of a boy going to the big city, it soon morphs into a ghost story. Charming stuff.” — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Washington Post

“It’s the rare first novel with no unnecessary parts – and, in terms of its elegant language, its sharp insights into believable characters, and its almost revelatory focus on the value and meaning of language and story, it’s the most impressive and intelligent first novel I expect to see this year, or perhaps for a while longer.”
—Locus

“The excerpt from Sofia Samatar’s compelling novel A Stranger in Olondria should be enough to make you run out and buy the book. Just don’t overlook her short “Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” the best story about loss and love and selkies I’ve read in years.”
— K. Tempest Bradford, NPR

“Sofia Samatar’s debut fantasy A Stranger in Olondria is gloriously vivid and rich.”
— Adam Roberts, The Guardian, Best Science Fiction Books of 2013

“Books can limit our experiences and reinforce the structures of empire. They can also transport us outside existing structures. The same book may do both in different ways or for different people. Samatar has written a novel that captures the ecstasy and pain of encountering the world through books, showing us bits and pieces of our contemporary world while also transporting us into a new one.”
— Bookslut

“The novel is full of subtle ideas and questions that never quite get answered. It is those dichotomies that lie at the heart of this novel, such as what is superstition and what is magic? How much do class and other prejudices affect how we view someone’s religion? Jevick often believes himself above such things, as does the current religious regime of Olondria, but in a way both are haunted until they believe. . . . Samatar gives us no easy answers and there are no villains in the book — simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right.
— io9.com

“As you might expect (or hope) from a novel that is in part about the painting of worlds with words, the prose in Stranger is glorious. Whether through imaginative individual word choices—my favourite here being the merchants rendered “delirious” by their own spices . . . Samatar is adept at evoking place, mood, and the impact of what is seen on the one describing it for us.”
­— Strange Horizons

“Vivid, gripping, and shot through with a love of books.”—Graham Sleight, Locus

“A richly rewarding experience for those who love prose poetry and non-traditional narratives. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is a fine exemplar of bibliomancy.”
—Craig Laurence Gidney (Sea Swallow Me)

“With characteristic wit, poise, and eloquence, Samatar delivers a story about our vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”—Amal El-Mohtar, Tor.com

“If you want to lose yourself in the language of a book, this is the one you should read first. Samatar’s prose is evocative and immediate, sweeping you into the complex plot and the world of Jevick, a pepper merchant’s son.”
—xojane

“A journey that is as familiar and foreign as a land in a dream. It’s a study of two traditions, written and oral, and how they intersect. Samatar uses exquisite language and precise details to craft a believable world filled with sight, sound and scent.”
—Fantasy Literature

Advance Praise

“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)

“Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure.”
—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames

“A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy…. Samatar’s beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere.”
—Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX

“Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell

“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story.”—Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After

“Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.”
—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows.  Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.”
—Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes

Listen to Sofia read two of her poems on Stone Telling: “Girl Hours” · “The Sand Diviner”

Cover illustration by Kathleen Jennings.

About the Author

Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She is the recipient of the William L. Crawford Award, the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She teaches Arabic literature, African literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.


On Carol Emshwiller (from 2007, and belatedly celebrating her 92nd birthday!)

Wed 24 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Darn! I meant to post this to in celebrate Carol’s 92nd birthday earlier on April 12th. Ach! Well hell, here’s for celebrating Carol any time or any where.

Written for the 2007 World Fantasy Convention:

Working with Carol Emshwiller is one of the most unexpected and wonderful benefits of the foolishness that is our dance through the world of independent publishing.

Carol is everything that I could hope author to be: brilliant, hard working, gracious, polite, deeply knowledgeable and informed within and without her field, determined, willing to compromise, absolutely single-minded, intelligent, a teacher, and always open to learning. She is an inspiration—not only for her writing, in which she takes on the most trenchant problems of the day in politics, gender (and genre) relationships, and the ambiguities of everyday life—but also in her uncompromising dedication to others. For many years she has taught and taken part in workshops where she has shown her generosity and ability to see other writers’ visions of their stories. All the while, her own enthusiasm and commitment to writing burn ever brighter. Her latest novel, The Secret City, is a beautiful play on many of her favorite themes: innocence, how to live—alone or with others, and the simple and complex difficulties of communication.

These are salad days for fans of Carol’s work. In the last five years she has published three novels, The Mount (2002), Mister Boots (2005), and The Secret City (2007), as well as two collections, Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories (2002) and I Live with You (2005). And in that time she has been awarded the Philip K. Dick Award for The Mount, two Nebula Awards for short stories, “Creature” and “I Live with You” (both F&SF, 2002 and 2006), and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.

In other words: if you like science fiction and fantasy and you haven’t read her, perhaps now is the time?

Carol hasn’t been resting on her laurels. Her most recent publication (that I know of, she’s hard to keep track of) is “At Sixes and Sevens” in the October/November Asimov’s. She says she is too impatient to send stories out to magazine with long reading times, so I feel we are very lucky to have one of her stories, “Sanctuary,” for LCRW.

This covers only Carol’s recent years. I first remember reading her work when I read a Women’s Press edition of Carmen Dog in the UK and by the time I met her in the 1990s in New York, she was already in her seventies. (And she is still more energetic than most people I know.)

Other writers and friends will need to fill in her earlier years. I am very happy to have spent some time with Carol (although as yet I have not gone hill climbing with her!) and I hope that everyone who attends this convention will be able to spend at least a couple of minutes with her.


Another book!

Mon 22 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

9781931520485-96And, arriving now at all good indie bookstores near you . . . what is that I see? The paperback edition of Karen Joy Fowler’s fabulous third collection of stories, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.

The cover art is by one of our fave artists, Kathleen Jennings, and it looks crazy great on paper. Here online, it’s, yes, blacker than black, Spinal Tap “none more black”-level black. It’s all in the lamination, embossing, and something else along those lines, peeps. I’ll post some more photos that show the cover off properly soon.

And, next month Karen’s new novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes out. Remember: read the book, not the jacket or reviews. Not because the book depends on a twist, but it is a different read if you don’t know something that you’re told on the jacket.

Check out Karen’s “beast, bug, and bird blog” and go hear her read—she is one of the smartest, funniest readers (and writers!) out there.

ETA: Ta da: a photo of the new book showing the shiny shininess of it all.

What I Didn't See pb


New A. DeNiro story in debut issue of Spolia

Wed 17 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

SpoliaVery excited by this. Just got my copy (pdf, for those who like to know: it’s also available as an epub or mobi, but I like seeing what the pages look like) of the debut issue of Jessa Crispin’s new magazine, Spoila. A.’s story, “A Rendition” will be part of their new collection, Tyrannia and Other Renditions, coming out in October.

The Natalya Goncharova Portfolio is fabulous and I’m also looking forward to checking out the rest, including, bonus points!, two translations. Subscription is coming, here’s the manifesto, and please go get your copy here.

Table of Contents

Daphne Gottlieb, “Bess”

Peter Vermeersch, “Gone” (translated by Florian Duijsens)

Phil Sorenson, “December, December, Night, Night”

Jessa Crispin, Jane Pritchard interview

Leah Triplett, “Filling In the Archive: The Afterlife of Natalia Goncharova”

Natalya Goncharova Portfolio

Greer Mansfield, “A Natalia Goncharova Catalog”

Lightsey Darst, “Living with Art”

Olivia Cronk, “Four untitled poems”

A. DeNiro, “A Rendition”

Mikhail Shishkin, “Of Saucepans and Star-Showers” (translated from the Russian by Leo Shtutin)

Hoa Nguyen, “Mekong I, Cause the Shine, For Love Red, Hid”


Sofia Samatar’s debut novel arrives

Fri 12 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

This week the hardcover and paperback editions of Sofia Samatar‘s debut novel A Stranger in Olondria started going out into the world. Thank you, everyone who pre-ordered, always appreciated! The hardcover is going to be out of stock pretty soon although we may have copies here when the distro runs out. The ebook is out, too. Publication date is Tuesday, April 30.

I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while. I can’t wait to hear from readers. You can get a taste of the book on Tor.com or download the first 70 pages. It’s a huge, immersive, rich fantasy that circles around and away from and back to the transportation of reading.

People who’ve met Sofia or who have read advance copies of Olondria keep telling me that she’s a star in the making. I know! Since she sold this book, Sofia has had stories in Strange Horizons, Apex, and Clarkesworld, as well as poetry and reviews in Strange Horizons and is now the nonfiction and poetry editor for the new online journal Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts. How does she do it? I don’t know, but I am very happy that she’s also working on another novel.

If you live in or near Madison, WI, hie ye to the launch party on April 26th at 6 PM at A Room Of One’s Own Bookstore (315 W. Gorham St. Madison WI 53703). In May Sofia will be at WisCon, too—we will have a table there courtesy of our good friend David Schwartz.

You can read more about the book here and here’s one reviewer who really got it:

“Samatar’s richly woven debut fantasy takes us far from home. Growing up in the primitive isolation of the Tea Islands, Jevick has longed to travel to the spice markets in Bain, where the family’s pepper harvest is sold. He impatiently devours descriptions and stories when his imperious father returns every season, and the arrival of an Olondrian tutor only adds to the allure of the unknown land. When Jevick finally begins his own voyage, he discovers he is traveling down a perilous path of mystery, passion, and danger that no counsel could have foreseen. A chance meeting of a young woman traveling on a pilgrimage will change the course of Jevick’s life forever. VERDICT Jevick’s journey is an enchanting tale of wonder and superstition, revealing the power of books and the secret traditions of ancient voices. Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)


You don’t . . .

Thu 11 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

“You don’t pack books like other people, do you?

“Weeeeeellllll. It depends. We’ve been re-using old packaging this way, since, uh, a long time?”

“Pretty classy.”

“That’s us!”


A book!

Tue 9 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We has a new book arrived at the office: yay! Photos TK! Preorders will ship today, review copies, too. Which book is it? Wait, wait!


It is always time for Hipsway

Wed 3 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin


Kelly reading April 9, 7 pm, @ Pen Parentis, NYC

Tue 2 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly will be in NYC reading with Leigh Newman and Sarah Gerkensmeyer next Tuesday night as part of the Pen Parentis reading series. Here’s all the info:

DATE:  Tuesday, April 9, 2012

TIME: 7-9, with 3 readers (5-8 minute readings) and a Q & A session focused on writing and parenting to follow. Please plan on arriving at least 10 minutes before the event.

PLACE:  The Andaz, Wall Street 75 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005   212-590-1234

DIRECTIONS: 2,3,4,5,J,Z to 75 Wall Street. Corner of Wall & Water

Kelly Link is the author of three collections, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (“Because you can’t go through it.”) Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press. They have a three-year-old daughter, Ursula.

Leigh Newman returns to the Pen Parentis Salon as deputy editor ofOprah.com, where she writes about books and life and editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing. Premiered while still in manuscript format at one of the earliest Pen Parentis events, her hilarious memoir about her Alaskan childhood, Still Points North, is forthcoming from Dial in 2013. Her essays and short stories have appeared a variety of magazines and newspapers, including One Story, Tin House, Fiction, the New York Times, Modern Love. She believes in making her own popcorn, embarrassing her kids by writing I LOVE YOU in red frosting on their lunch sandwiches, and owning dogs that are just way too big to fit in the bed. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two boys and many, many light sabers. Her work can be found at leigh-newman.com    Read more of her work.

Sarah Gerkensmeyer‘s short story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories have appeared in Guernica, The New Guard Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Cream City Review, among others. Sarah, a mother of two little ones, is the 2012-13 Pen Parentis Fellow. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Fredonia.


Replacing Goodreads—

Sun 31 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Goodreads tells me I joined the site in December 2008 and that, weirdly, in 2009, 2011, and 2012, I added 70 books to the read shelf. (If I didn’t know myself better I’d think I was messing with the numbers!) I added older titles and then settled in to mostly keeping it up to date. I friended people I knew, some people I knew and didn’t friended me back, and I was fascinated to see what people were actually reading. I really enjoyed it and I’d been so proud to keep some of the Goodreads books in their database when they stopped using Amazon’s data!

And then last week Goodreads announced that Amazon had bought them. I was completely scunnered by the sale. Like Rob Spillman of Tin House I figure it’s kind of too late, Amazon have just bought the last 5 years of my reading history, but I’m deleting my account this week. (Already added my books to my LibraryThing account as a stopgap) I didn’t do it straight away as I wanted to think through my gut reaction of: “Oh No!” But a couple of days later, it’s still the same. So this week all the Goodreads widgets will be cut from the site. Through our distributor, we sell books through Amazon and in turn they’d like to run us and all other publishers into and under the ground for daring to publish books instead of all authors signing their horrible print contract. So for many years it has been our policy not to link to Amazon or (when I can keep all of them in mind, any of their many subsites, see next para) and the only time I pay for anything through Amazon is for Kickstarter.

Amazon own (bold = book related): Amazon Publishing, Amazon Web Services, Abebooks, Audible, Book Depository, BookSurge, BoxOfficeMojo, Brilliance Audio, CreateSpace, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDB, Lexcycle, 40% of Library Thing (through Abebooks—although this is apparently complicated), Mobipocket, Shelfari, Woot, Zappos. Etc.

Wikipedia notes: “In August 2005,[110] Amazon began selling products under its own private label, “Pinzon” . . . . AmazonBasics is a private-label consumer electronics product line.”

Amazon positives: their data mining is intellectually fascinating. They give out tiny halo-effect grants to literary organizations (so that everyone has to pay lip service to them). Their BreakThrough Novel Award (which is now their in house publishing competition). They pay sales tax in a few states now. Jeff Bezos, as millionaires have always done, follows his own weird (Blue Origin) with his investments.

But. Amazon wants to be everything to everyone. Some people have suggested they want to kill off public libraries (because kids need tablets instead of storytime and parents don’t need any free places to take their kids . . .) They want to make the product (cup, book, sheets, cable, movie, whatever) and sell it to you. Instead of inefficient towns and shopping centers, they’d rather everyone ordered online and got stuff delivered to them and in the end it will be Amazon and the delivery company left standing.

Sounds utterly vapid and uninspiring to me.

We spend our time publishing books we love and trying to get them into the indie bookstores we love so that readers can find them there. It mostly works. We expect we’ll be doing it for a while.

And then there is temptation. On Metafilter Open Library was mooted as an alternative user George_Spiggott posted “I would seriously pitch in time and technical effort to building a new site that everyone could simply pick up and move to. Because that would be a frickin’ brilliant outcome. Especially if the ToS at signup committed the site to remain nonprofit and to have no exclusive marketing agreements.”

Which is where temptation lies. I mentioned earlier today on Weightless that Michael and I were tempted to build an alternative to Goodreads:

” … building a new community reading site with books, reviews, comments, forums, all the things we liked about Goodreads, but without the all-encompassing Univac behind it. To keep it independent I figure we should make it a $4.99 annual subscription built along the lines Flickr uses: you could add up to 500 books for free then the oldest ones would disappear (from public view, not to you) unless you subscribed. Maybe there could be other subscriber only features, not sure, the site would do best if people use it for a while for free. If you’re seriously interested in kicking this idea around, email me!”

Kickstarter might be the way to fund it: obviously we’d need to pay for data feeds, storage and usage, and coding, coding, coding. Again, Wikipedia: “In December 2007, the site had over 650,000 members[3] and over 10,000,000 books had been added.[4] As of July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and 30 employees.[5]” That’s a lot of data going back and forward.

Goodreads was seven years old, ancient!, and had a lot of bells and whistles and if we do take this on, the new site should get out the gate as an attractive site that’s worth joining early and taking part in.

What I’d love to do is kick the idea around some more, hear what readers want, and see if this seems possible for a small group of underfunded readers. Internets?


Con or Bust: New Orleans style

Tue 26 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was the lucky winner in the recent Con or Bust fundraiser auction and I have to post this photo because the Care Package from New Orleans is one of the best packages I’ve ever gotten. It was stuffed full of goodies: some of the pralines are already gone gone gone (so rich, so tooth unfriendly, so gone!), and one set of beads has already been overplayed with by Ursula (so the rest might disappear for a bit until she’s more careful).

Everything’s vegetarian, yay!, although not everything scores high on the healthy index: beignets are healthy, right? Time to pull out the old deepfryer! And there’s lots of cajun spice mixes so everything’s going to be spicy for a while. Thank you, Con or Bust, and especially to superdonor Maria!

So, next year, when the Con or Bust auction comes around again, remember: don’t bid for the NOLA Care Package. Ha! In the meantime, if you missed the auction, pick up a Con or Bust T-shirt here.

Con or Bust auction FTW!


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