Free Prophecies. Also: Libel, Dreams.

Tue 23 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., audio, Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

We’ve been celebrating one of the local ~~Califa~~ California papers recognizing the brilliance of Ysabeau S. Wilce’s first collection of stories, Prophecies, Libels & Dreams.

“Ysabeau S. Wilce . . . writes like no one else. Her approach is playful and allusive, packed to the gills with clever wordplay, bizarre characters and outlandish events. Each tall tale is set in or around the Republic of Califa, an alternate, Aztec-influenced version of the Golden State from the 19th century, where magick is part of everyday life and wonders never cease.”

And now the news from Audible: the audio book is now available.

So: let’s have some pre-Christmas/Sunkiller/All Holidays fun. It’s almost too late to buy gifts (although downtown Northampton has been hopping the last couple of days) and way too late to ship things (unless you own Fedex or something) so a code to download an excellent audio book such as Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams may just be what the situation demands.

We have half a dozen(!) copies of the audio book to give away and we’re going to try and make it real easy:

Entry Rules:
Retweet the giveaway on Twitter, reblog on Tumblr, or comment on the post below to enter.
Please enter only once!
Giveaway is open to readers everywhere.
We’ll use random.org to pick winners on December 24th at 12 pm EST.
Good luck!

Retweet/comment to enter to win a Free Audiobook of Prophecies, Libels, & Dreams http://t.co/tmvgjUply9 @crackpothall

— Small Beer Press (@smallbeerpress) December 23, 2014

Dizzy

Tue 23 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., chuntering on, music, shipping, Sofia Samatar, Throwing Muses| Posted by: Gavin

This morning brought to you by the sun which refuses to shine. Perhaps it is annoyed about the arrow I shot it down with the other day. I apologized and explained I was worried it would go away forever and we’d end up in a very boring (and short) dystopic future. The sun said it was not down with that and after chatting with the moon it promised to spin things up a bit and add a few minutes back to each day. At this point the whole southern hemisphere of the planet said, “Oi!” and I hid behind some boxes of books until they went away.

This morning also brought to you by the second printing of Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria which arrived in the office and in the warehouse this week. At last and yay!

This morning is also brought to you by the Throwing Muses’s Hunkpapa (there are 4 comments on that page [where I think you can listen to the whole album!]: 1 offer to help with response, 1 comment, and 1 demand, which is a tiny look in at how people’s expectations and demands on performers have changed. Expectations: so high! Politeness, where did you go?). Anyway, Hunkpapa which was the only Muses I could find this morning in the office. Luckily I have a cassette player here(!). I think I have it because of the single “Dizzy” and also the year 1989. I’ve been reading Kristin Hersh‘s memoir Rat Girl which is pretty fantastic. It’s a real reminder that a writer (and a book) can have a voice unlike any other. There are sentences in there that read/sound like nothing I’ve read. The call out one-to-three line excerpts from the lyrics to her songs add a refractive perspective to the events. I’m almost done with the book and at that stage where I don’t want to be finished it — this is where series fiction/nonfiction wins! — but there’s no further memoirs, yet, so I’ll just have to stick it back on the shelf and re-read it sometime.

This morning also brought to you by a day where we’ve caught up on shipping again (yay! — just a couple of orders that came in after I left the office yesterday), a day in which we’ve reduced the submissions to a near-manageable 2-foot stack with plans for reducing even that, and the very, very cheery news that there is some solid forward movement on our our John Crowley project. Yay!

Caught up on shipping

Thu 18 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., sales, shipping| Posted by: Gavin

Friday morning update: Caught up again! usps.com says books shipped yesterday are scheduled to arrive Monday so you can still order today and fingers crossed they will arrive Tuesday!

Hey, we still have a couple of days — today and tomorrow — where the post office says that if you order from our site, since we’re upgrading all US book orders to Priority Mail, the books should arrive by December 24th. It’s been pretty great fun in the last week piling up the books and shipping them all out. The post office has been really busy!

Also: don’t miss these signed books:

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar paperback:

Questionable Practices by Eileen Gunn

(We also did quite a few ebooks!)

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by Greer Gilman

Stranger Things Happen (and other books) by Kelly Link

& even some random older books (After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh, Howard Who? by Howard Waldrop, oh I don’t know!) all shipping free Priority (if only I could spell that) free until December 20th

An excerpt from Sherwood Nation

Fri 12 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, Novel Excerpts| Posted by: Gavin

An excerpt from Sherwood Nation by Benjamin Parzybok.

Preface

How it happened:
It happened slowly. The fishermen called the rogue and unpredictable changes at sea El Pescadero. Winds came from differing directions, currents looped back on themselves, temperatures fluctuated. It wasn’t seasonal like El Niño, though at first everyone thought it was. It didn’t go away. Governments fought bitterly about whose fault was whose, and who ought to do what about it.
Along with El Pescadero came an increase in oceanic salinity. There were lots of theories there. When you swam in the ocean, the new buoyancy was subtle, but pleasurable.
The bone-dry summers of the west lingered deeper and deeper into winter. Everyone could see that the snow pack was melting. When was the snow pack not melting? All you had to do was look up at any of the balding mountains.
Then the great Deschutes River, elegant and fast, a river which cut across the Oregon desert like a streak of lightning across a dull gray sky, dried up in a single summer.
The farms that depended upon it followed suit. There were strikes and protests. Blood was spilled. Then, quickly, other rivers diminished.
Finally, the greatest of them all, the Columbia River, its sources choked in mud, leaked its deathsong through the gorge, and became only a scaly alligator skin of memory. In its wake, valleys turned to deserts, fertile farms to dust, and the great migration East began.
As the hordes of Droudies poured into the Midwest and Eastern United States and the last of the surface water seeped deep into the ground, anger over the millions of incoming refugees escalated. Finally, borders along the Rocky Mountains were sealed to Westerners and a meager aid strategy was conceived by the bankrupt government for the many millions abandoned to their dry fates out west. Read more

Free upgrade to Priority Mail shipping

Fri 5 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., free, free shipping, holidays, usps| Posted by: Gavin

We always include free domestic Media Mail shipping for Small Beer Press orders but from NOW until December 20th we’re going to upgrade that: all domestic book orders will be automatically upgraded to Priority Mail shipping. This only applies to US domestic orders as international prices have, as we all know, gone nuts in the last few years, sorry. See Weightless for excellent worldwide ebook prices.

Not sure what to order? How about some new new new books? We published all of these in 2014:

(We also did quite a few ebooks!)

As well as a chapbook and 2 issues of LCRW (these 3 always include free first class mail shipping):

Then, there are Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories, which were really just made for holiday presents:

Translations:

& even more more fabulous books . . . all shipping free Priority (if only I could spell that) free until December 20th:

2014 Holiday Shipping

Mon 1 Dec 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holiday, housekeeping, post office, shapping, shepping, shipping, shopping, shupping, usps| Posted by: Gavin

Here’s our quick annual note that holiday mail dates are coming up fast. Also, our office will be closed from December 24 – January 1, 2015 and, based on previous years, it is unlikely we will ship over that period. (Of course, Weightless is always open.)

Here are the 2014 last order dates for Small Beer Press — which are almost the same as every other biz else in the USA. Dates for international shipping are here.

We ship all books media mail for free in the USA. But: Media Mail parcels are the last to go on trucks. If the truck is full, Media Mail does not go out until the next truck. And if that one’s full, too, . . . you get the idea. So, if you’d like to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please add on Priority Mail.

Domestic Mail Class/Product	Cut Off Date
First Class Mail	Dec-20
Priority Mail	Dec-20
Priority Mail Express	Dec-23

The First Class and Priority Mail International Shipping deadlines are . . . tomorrow! Eek. We can still ship your books if you order today!

Ted Chiang and Eileen Gunn on To the Best of Our Knowledge

Mon 24 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Eileen Gunn, Ted Chiang| Posted by: Gavin

This weekend both Ted Chiang and Eileen Gunn were featured on WPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. Both were interviewed about their collections (Stories of Your Life and Others and Questionable Practices) and both read excerpts from their stories: lovely!

Where we are in the actual world

Tue 18 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Kim Stanley Robinson, Peter Dickinson, Thoreau| Posted by: Gavin

Kelly is off to Santa Cruz, California, where she’ll be on a panel on Thursday, November 20 at 4 p.m. with Karen Joy Fowler and Kim Stanley Robinson as part of Living Writers Series (free, open to the public from 4:00-5:45pm in Humanities Lecture Hall 206.)

Which reminded me of a thought provoking essay Robinson published on Slate recently, “The Actual World: “Mount Thoreau” and the naming of things in the wilderness.” Robinson reminded me that people are out there in the world (offline, really? Yes!) climbing, doing show and tell with Thoreauean objects on mountain tops, and getting out into the world. Slate — despite all the stickystickycruft on their site included many great photos which made the essay come alive as well as links (ah, the internet) throughout. The one I clicked and then left open as a tab for a week or so was this “Webtext on the Ktaadn passage from The Maine Woods.” I haven’t read The Maine Woods and am not sure I ever shall but this passage challenged me more to think about humanity and the world more than anything else I’ve read in a while:

I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, — that my body might, — but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them.

In other Small Beer book news, Peter Dickinson’s A Summer in the Twenties received a lovely review from the Historical Novels Review. Here’s a sample:

Dickinson shows us both the upper crust, with their carpeted manor houses and petty intrigues, as well as the working poor, who live in noisy, crowded conditions. Intergenerational strife abounds, as children of all classes disappoint their elders by not becoming what they were brought up to be; the exchanges are witty yet full of meaning, illuminating the shift of power away from the old class system toward something new and unproven. Dickinson conveys a lot of excellent historical material in a thoroughly engaging narrative with enough suspense to keep readers entertained on multiple levels.

Fascinating to see that the book is categorized as “Jazz Age” — since it is set in the 1920s. Given the subject of the book, it would be fun to come up with other names for the time, “Age of Labor,” something like that? Also, given that the LA Times just cut all their sick leave and vacation time, I figure it’s about time to enter another age of labor. He said, optimistically.

One week on: 2 starred reviews, 1 best of the year

Tue 18 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Delia Sherman| Posted by: Gavin

It’s been a great first week for Delia Sherman’s first collection, Young Woman in a Garden. It already had a starred review from Publishers Weekly but then just before pub date, it was selected as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year. Yay! Then we found out that in the current issue of Library Journal the book receives its second star! I didn’t find the whole review online, but part of it can be found here:

In this first collection from Sherman (The Porcelain Dove; The Freedom Maze), what seems ordinary consistently veers into the extraordinary and often downright surprising. . . . Ranging in length and style, these tales are captivating and odd, with characters and settings fully and memorably fleshed out.

More fun: Jason Heller gives the book a cracking review on NPR:

Real magic, right next door, indeed; each of the 14 stories in Young Woman in a Garden deals with some version of that equation, and it’s a testament to Sherman’s award-winning knack for fabulism that she pulls off such impossibilities with whimsy, dazzle and heart — not to mention a sharp edge of darkness.

Delia is reading in New York in a couple of weeks (more exactitude? On December 2 with Ellen Kushner) as part of the NYRSF reading series, this one guest hosted by Claire Wolf Smith.

Should you have gotten this far and begun to wonder where your next clickityinternetclick will be taking you, here’s a suggestion: one of Delia’s fabulous stories from this here book. Here’s “Nanny Peters and the Feathery Bride,” originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, in February 1990 and brought to you by the magic of The Internet Tubes.

Young Woman in a Garden: Stories

Tue 11 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

November 11, 2014 · paper · $16 · 9781618730916 | ebook · 9781618730923 · Edelweiss

A long anticipated first collection of fabulous stories with ghosts, fairies, artists, and even a merman.

Selected as one of Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year and recipient of 2 starred reviews.
Locus Recommended Books

Read the title story, “Young Woman in a Garden” and an interview in Uncanny Magazine.

In her vivid and sly, gentle and wise long anticipated first collection, Delia Sherman takes seemingly insignificant moments in the lives of artists or sailors—the light out a window, the two strokes it takes to turn a small boat—and finds the ghosts haunting them, the magic surrounding them. Here are the lives that make up larger histories, here are tricksters and gardeners, faeries and musicians, all glittering and sparkling, finding beauty and hope and always unexpected, a touch of wild magic.

“Real magic, right next door, indeed; each of the 14 stories in Young Woman in a Garden deals with some version of that equation, and it’s a testament to Sherman’s award-winning knack for fabulism that she pulls off such impossibilities with whimsy, dazzle and heart — not to mention a sharp edge of darkness.”
— Jason Heller, NPR

“Known primarily for her novels, Delia Sherman now graces us with her debut story collection, Young Woman in a Garden, and proves she is as adroit at shorter lengths as she is with longer narratives. . . . The only flaw in this collection is that there are not more stories on the table of contents. You need this in your library.”
— Paul Di Filippo, Asimov’s

“Some of the people you will meet in Delia Sherman’s collection of stories include a mysterious painter, a ghost, a woman who knows her way around a sea cucumber, a young man enthralled by a ship’s figurehead, the owner of a very unusual ruby, and a prickly choirmaster — all of whom encounter someone, something, or some place that doesn’t quite fit with the world as they think it ought to behave. The witches have an unreasonably large garden; the ghost breaks ghostly rules; the man who falls in love with a fairy doesn’t get what he bargained for. But all the characters in Sherman’s stories adjust their expectations — some easily, some with more difficulty — and go on to fall more in love with an endlessly surprising world. Young Woman in a Garden is a lovely reminder to look up, and over the wall, and around the corner, even when you think you know what’s there.”
— Words for Nerds

“Readers fond of good, solid fiction regardless of genre barriers, are going to greatly enjoy this fascinating collection.”
— SF Revu

* “Lightly flecked with fantasy and anchored in vividly detailed settings, the 14 stories in Sherman’s first collection are distinguished by their depictions of determined women who challenge gender roles in order to make their way in the world. In “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor,” a servant girl parlays her acquaintance with an ancestral ghost into a professional relationship with the descendant whose house it haunts. The title story toggles between present and past as an art history student researching the life of an Impressionist painter unravels the hitherto unknown role his model played in the creation of his art. Although Sherman (The Porcelain Dove) grapples with serious themes, she leavens a number of her tales with gentle humor, notably “Walpurgis Afternoon,” in which a pair of lesbian witches comically discompose an ordinary suburban neighborhood when their Victorian estate springs up in a vacant lot overnight. Readers who enjoy sophisticated modern fantasy fiction, both light and dark, will greatly admire Sherman’s skill with a variety of narrative forms and the gentle touch of her magic wand.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

* “In this first collection from Sherman (The Porcelain Dove; The Freedom Maze), what seems ordinary consistently veers into the extraordinary and often downright surprising. . . . Ranging in length and style, these tales are captivating and odd, with characters and settings fully and memorably fleshed out.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

Praise for Sherman’s previous books:

“Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Fantastic in every sense of the word, Sherman’s (Through a Brazen Mirror) second novel is a skillfully crafted fairy tale that owes as much to E.T.A. Hoffman as to Charles Perrault. . . . The Porcelain Dove is no dainty vertu but a seductive, sinister bird with razored feathers.”—Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents

“Young Woman in a Garden”
“The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor”
“The Red Piano”
“La Fée Verte”
“Walpurgis Afternoon”
“The Parwat Ruby”
“The Fairy Cony-Catcher”
“Sacred Harp”
“The Printer’s Daughter”
“Nanny Peters and the Feathery Bride”
“Miss Carstairs and the Merman”
“The Maid on the Shore”
“The Fiddler of Bayou Teche”
“Land’s End”

Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City. Her work has appeared most recently in the anthologies Naked City, Steampunk!, and Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. She is the author of six novels including The Porcelain Dove (a New York Times Notable Book), The Freedom Maze, and Changeling, and has received the Mythopoeic and Norton awards. She lives in New York City.

Congratulations to Sofia Samatar!

Sun 9 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Cons, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

We are so, so happy to celebrate Sofia Samatar’s novel A Stranger in Olondria receiving the World Fantasy Award. Congratulations and all joy to Sofia whose debut novel has been so widely recognized as a strong, inventive, and fabulous addition to the field. Besides the World Fantasy Award, Olondria has also received the British Fantasy and Crawford awards and was a Nebula and Locus finalist and Sofia won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Congratulations are due to all the nominees and the winners:

Life Achievement: Ellen Datlow and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Novel: A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
Novella: “Wakulla Springs”, Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
Short Fiction: “The Prayer of Ninety Cats”, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean Spring ’13)
Anthology: Dangerous Women, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Tor; Voyager)
Collection: The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean)
Artist: Charles Vess
Special Award – Professional: (tie) Irene Gallo, for art direction of Tor.com and William K. Schafer, for Subterranean Press
Special Award – Nonprofessional: Kate Baker, Neil Clarke, & Sean Wallace, for Clarkesworld

We spent the weekend in Arlington, VA, at the World Fantasy Convention catching up with many friends and meeting many new people. Our book haul was impressive! We came down from Massachusetts on the train with Kathleen Jennings whose illustration graces the cover of Olondria and throughout the weekend I was lucky enough to spend time with both Sofia and Kathleen. Part of the joy of the time was knowing that Sofia and Kathleen were comparing notes and that they were both looking forward to working on the cover of Sofia’s next novel, The Winged Histories, which, along with a short story collection, Small Beer Press will publish.

Once they’ve arrived back from Virginia, we’ll have a few signed copies of A Stranger in Olondria in stock (the hardcover will be out of print soon) as well as a few signed copies each of books from Ysabeau S. Wilce, Eileen Gunn, Nathan Ballingrud, Ted Chiang.

An Incomplete Report of the Events of the Past Weekend in the City of Crystals, somewhat near the Washington Which is Taxed But Without Representation.

Sun 9 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We set out on Wednesday, October 8th, 2014, with eight mules and two packhorses. The mules carried our pineapples, books, and other items of domestic needs (couches, toasters, &c.) while for the most part we walked or sometimes lay down and let the ants carry us. We slept wherever the early sunsets found us: Springfield, Bridgeport, Baltimore, other places that are forgotten except for the bottles of brandy imprinted with their names and the somewhat happy memory of exchanging a carton of relatively new books to a M. Sturgis in New Amsterdam for a fine pair of shoes.

We arrived in the Crystal City and joined a parade of Readers, Writers, Publishers, Editors, Artists, and All Others Associated With the Fantastical Arts, that was heading to the Regency Hyatt. A time portal had been erected in Union Station, wherein we could also acquire timely appurtenances for a weekend in the Regency: wigs, collars, clothing, and so on. One Ms. Valentine advised us on our wardrobe and was kind enough to dispose of many of the inappropriate outfits in our trunks.

Once through the portal a TaxiFunicular took us all through the city and showed us many of the night sights before retracing its way back to our rooming house. We thanked the driver politely. Our rooming house had a cold box which puzzled us. But we used it to store our new clothes overnight and were most pleased by how refreshing they were in the morning.

Refreshed and ready to join the celebrations of the fantastic in literature, instead we immediately fled everyone we ever knew and spent the next two or three months two floors beneath the earth in the subterranean caverns where the purveyors of literature had been banished. Of course somewhere over our long journey down from our Northern home a carton or two of books had been misplaced so we applied for and were granted a special case one-time use telepathy license. We gathered many friends and strangers and sat in a helix pattern on the richly carpeted floor and sent messages to whomsoever might hear to ensorcell flights of herons to deliver replacements for our missing books. M. Berry in Amherst, Massachusetts, and M. Brown of Consortium in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Snowlandia were projecting their spirits into the aether and were able to magick the herons. Many, many thanks are owed to them!

As to one M. DeLuca who helped us time after time. Thank you, M.

Sometime in the first month we began to meet up with friends and associates from city gatherings past. It had been many years since last we’d attended this particular traveling convention of like-minded readers and we shook many hands, drank many toasts, hugged many people, bought many books, ached and ached and talked of our so-long-missed late friend Jenna Felice, admired the art, sold many more books, and were generally astounded and amazed by how many people there were, how many we saw, and how many we did not.

Early one morning we took a mule with us and we went out into the city of Arlington and found that the government in this city there is entrenched in every aspect of life so much that they even control the grocery markets and severely limit what can be sold. The market stall we found would only sell us strongly fortified drinks from the far southern parts of this country such as Kentucky or from that beautiful northern outpost of civilization, Scotland. We begged and pleaded for solid sustenance and they put bags of chipped and fried potatoes or small sacks of boiled peanuts in our hands. Was this really Regency life, we wondered. We filled our panniers with tiny bottles of these highly flammable drinks and walked hungrily back to the rooming house. It was just breakfast time when we returned and a Ms. Jennings directed us to the stairs and after happily tramping up eighteen flights we found there was food aplenty after all and, as many others were, we were well looked after by the Saints of the Penthouse Suite.

The weeks passed and we were informed there was an outpost of Thai food little more than a day’s walk north. We did not even try to resist and found that although sober noodles could not be found, the drunken noodles sufficed.

One M. Rowe and Ms. Bond illustrated to us how to drink Kentucky Mashed Spirits and we found ourselves more and more happy to be educated in these esoteric spirits. Late one night we were shown the what was claimed to be Debbie Harry and Michael Lee Aday in a film together but how could we believe that such a thing existed that we’d never heard of? We did not.

As winter turned to spring we went forth less and less to the outside world. Down in the basement there were books, friends, fortified drinks full of cheer, energy, and future headaches, occasional snacks, tables to sleep under, and the never ceasing florescent lights. When high summer came one or two of the braver bookdealers packed up and took off for conventions that, so the rumor said, had bookrooms with windows. We were busy weaving our new pink T-shirts and did not pay attention and so we missed our chance to escape the basement.

Autumn came and one dark evening we were blindfolded and led to a charabanc. I do not know how long or how far we were driven but when it stopped we were all relieved to be taken into a house of Grecian wonders and our palates were amazed by four seasons of tastes. We were reminded of times and travels passed and also that we had left our families at home. We spent a week feasting and then the charabanc reappeared as if called by magic and we returned, as always, as if by a magnet in our souls, to the Regency. Oh that I could write of the wonders of the Regency. Even without a swimming pool it was a wonder of the world. Surrounded on all sides by huge and slightly similar rooming houses it stood silent and ready to stand down, waiting for the real monarch to appear, but always in place, ever ready to do the job thrust upon it.

By now we realized we must either fish or cut bait. Neither choice attracted us so we looked around and considered whether we should spend another winter in the Crystal City. We had by now found (and ridden and re-ridden and re-re-ridden the glass elevator) and had shared our excitement in it with the Rolling Thunder convention. We had sold many books, finished weaving the shirts and sold many of them. There were rumors: of Caribbean food in Union Station; that perhaps this fine convention might be winding down; that the time portal would close; that we had been outbid in the art show; that crystal miners were going to descend upon the Crystal City and mine it for crystal unicorns to sell at a thousand malls across the country. It was time to return home.

We said our goodbyes — and as always realized that we had missed many people: there are at least as many conventions as there are people — and packed up our last boxes of books. I will miss sleeping under that table but seeing the sun again more than made up for it.

After tears and hugs and promises that we will meet up again in some other past or future, Regency or otherwise, convention, we traded what we had left (tuppence and a pen that didn’t leak too badly) for seats in a nonfunicular Taxi and this time were sprinted directly to Union Station. We found the excellent restaurant and carried with us a feast.

We set off on our return trip, this time on a train, to Massachusetts at 12:30 pm on November 9th, 2014. Awards were given out while we traveled and the train was in a complete uproar of joy that only calmed once we reached Connecticut. They say our train is approaching Springfield and that in seventeen minutes we will be allowed once more to step on land. I hope we can still walk on the still and solid earth after all these weeks on this train. I hope my sense of time returns before tomorrow. It is very very dark and the train hurtles (of course) through it. We ride on rails and there is no stillness. Our hearts are full from the days, weeks, months away, and we miss everyone already. Goodbye, goodbye, hello, we hope to see you again soon. We go home now, so tired, but full of joy.

New LCRW? Yup!

Thu 6 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

Good news: a new LCRW is coming out! It’s #31, December 2014, and I’m pretty sure it’s made up of more than a hundred thousand letters, most of them in the right place. We’re taking some to WFC this weekend and once we recover from the con and the train trip back subscriber, reviewer, and bookstore copies will shoot out all over the world, some avec le chocolat, some without. The ebook will be available and go out to subscribers next week.

There are two huge — and very different — stories that make up most of LCRW 31: Kathleen Jennings’s “Skull and Hyssop” and Owen King’s “The Curator.” I’ll leave it to you to decide which one is more your cup of tea, or, if you’re more like Kelly and me, maybe it will be both. Earlier this autumn I was temporarily overwhelmed with fennel and so I asked for help from Chef in Chief Nicole Kimberling. She has many great tips in her latest column, “Crazy-Sexy Agriculture.” Keep it on file!

The cover is indeed by our 5-year-old daughter. She is much enamored of rats — Templeton from Charlotte’s Web was the first, since then the fascination has only grown. This is a picture of many people and many rats. If you’d like to see the full image, click this:

And in the meantime, here’s the table of contents:

Fiction

Jessy Randall, “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”
Goldie Goldbloom, “Never Eat Crow”
Kathleen Jennings, “Skull and Hyssop”
Owen King, “The Curator”
Sarah Micklem, “The Necromancer of Lynka”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, “Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA”
About the Authors

Poetry

Lesley Wheeler, “Four Poems”

Cover

Ursula Grant

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31

Thu 6 Nov 2014 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

8.5 x 7 · 60pp · December 2014 · Issue 31 · Ebook (ISBN 9781618731067) available from Weightless.

We’re almost sure this issue of LCRW is made up of more than a hundred thousand letters and can guarantee that most are in the right place. Two huge stories anchor the issue, Nicole Kimberling explains that CSA means Crazy-Sexy Agriculture, and although the zombie hordes, the vampires, the cannibals, and many other ghouls tried to slip under the door and squeeze themselves between the pages, it’s not all monstery monsters. Not all.

Surprise: Owen King’s new novel The Curator sprang from his story of the same name.

Reviews

“Wonderful.”
— Rich Horton, Locus

“A particularly accessible issue.”
— Lois Tilton, Locus

Owen King’s story “The Curator” was given an honorable mention in the Best American Short Stories 2015, edited by T. C. Boyle.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA
About the Authors

Poetry

Lesley Wheeler, “Four Poems”

Cover

Ursula Grant

About these Authors

Goldie Goldbloom is the author of The Paperpark Shoe, which won the AWP Novel Award and the Novel of the Year from the Independent Publishers Association, as well as a collection of short stories, You Lose These. Her story “The Chevra” won Hunger Mountain’s 2013 Non Fiction award. In 2014, she received both a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Brown Foundation Fellowship at Dora Maar House in France. Goldbloom teaches creative writing at Northwestern University and is a well-known speaker at international writing conferences. She is also an LGBT activist and the mother of eight children.

Or: Goldie Goldbloom likes to read, write, knit, sew, cook, mosaic, play Bananagrams and Scrabble, deliver babies (her own or other people’s), build houses, garden, travel to Italy, work with her students, sleep in, ride horses, defend the defenseless, walk barefoot in mud, swim in the ocean, make puns and play with her eight kids. This is not a definitive list. Things come up all the time. Occasionally she remembers to send out some of her stuff to try and get it published. She is fortunate in being able to say that it usually does.

Or: Goldie Goldbloom is Australian. She is old, fat and exceedingly forgetful. You will trip over all the books piled up everywhere if you ever visit her house, which she hopes you will. She’s very hospitable, in an Australian sort of way.

Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator from Brisbane, Australia. The fairytale of the Seven Ravens, which casts a shadow over this story, has long been one of her favourites. Her comic, “A Small Wild Magic” was published in Monstrous Affections, and her short stories have been published by Fablecroft Publishing, Peggy Bright Books and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and been selected to appear in the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2012.

Over the past 30 years, Nicole Kimberling has become an expert at disassembling plants of all kinds only to turn around and reassemble them into a item called “dinner.” She lives and works and in Bellingham, Washington.

Owen King is the author of the novel, Double Feature. He is married to the novelist Kelly Braffet.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet loves to receive change of address cards at 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027. Notices can also be sent by electronic mail to info@smallbeerpress.com and are always appreciated.

Miss Mandible is the Creative Director at the newly launched Living Dead Magazine.

Sarah Micklem is the author of two novels about a camp follower, Firethorn and Wildfire (Scribner, 2004 and 2009). “The Necromancer of Lynka” is from a series of tales set on the imaginary Isle of Abigomas. They were inspired by a small book called Realms of Fantasy: Folk Tales from Gozo by George Camilleri (Gozo Press, 1981). Many of Gozo’s real folk tales had unsatisfactory plots, which Micklem took as permission to write anti-climactic stories too.

Jessy Randall’s stories, poems, and other things have appeared in Asimov’s, Flurb, McSweeney’s, Theaker’s, and LCRW. Her latest book is Injecting Dreams into Cows.

Lesley Wheeler’s third poetry collection, The Receptionist and Other Tales is a Tiptree Award Honor Book; previous books include Heterotopia, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize, and Heathen. Her poems have been published in Slate, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is the Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

Masthead

Made by: Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link.
Readers: Julie Day, Jennifer Terpsichore Abeles.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31, December 2014. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731067. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is usually published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Our facebook page has been deactivated. Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 19 for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO & Swets. LCRW is available as an ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2014 the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. We are so happy to report that the paper edition continues to be printed at Paradise Copies, 21 Conz St., Northampton, MA 01060, 413-585-0414, and that Molly Gloss’s latest novel Falling From Horses is out now and should not be missed.

Ysabeau S. Wilce at WRITERS WITH DRINKS!

Wed 5 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

Press Release
When: Saturday, Nov. 22, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
What: WRITERS WITH DRINKS!
Who: Ysabeau S. Wilce, Polly Superstar, and Jasmine Wilkerson Sufi!
How much: $5 to $20, all proceeds benefit the CSC
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco

About the readers/performers:

Ysabeau S. Wilce’s new book is the story collection Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams: Stories. She’s also the author of Flora Segunda,
Flora’s Dare, and Flora’s Fury, and she has published work in Asimov’s, Steampunk!, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the James T. Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton Award.

Polly Superstar is the author of Sex Culture Revolutionary: A Memoir. She has dedicated her life to sexually progressive community as a latex fashion designer, a creator of arty, sexy parties, and a spokesperson for sex culture. er award-winning event, Kinky Salon, takes place in a dozen cities across Europe and North America.

Jaz Sufi is a poet, a Bay Area native, and the slammaster of the Berkeley Slam, the longest running poetry slam in California. She has competed for several teams at the National Poetry Slam and represented San Francisco at the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She was also a featured poet at the 2011 USF Creative Justice Art Show, and will be published in the upcoming Hurt to Hope Anthology.

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks has won numerous “Best ofs” from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7×7, Spin Magazine, and one of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The spoken word “variety show” mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.

Election Day 2014

Tue 4 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

If you can vote in today’s US elections, please do, thank you!

ETA: Voted!

Election Day Bake Sale: pretzel rolos [perhaps a Rolo squished between 2 square pretzels: yum!], blondies, chocolate chip cookies (as requested by 5-year-old), and some kind of maybe pumpernickel bread thing. All in all, a good day. I can get depressed about the results schmesults later.

SBP @ WFC 2014

Wed 29 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Andy Duncan, Benjamin Rosenbaum, conventions, Delia Sherman, Eileen Gunn, Ellen Kushner, Kathleen Jennings, Nancy Kress, Sofia Samatar, Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

What’s going on? Too much to say! We have tables (and, hopefully, you know, books for sale on those tables) in the dealer room, and many, many Small Beer authors will be there including (although to paraphrase what The New Yorker always says at the start of their gig listing: authors live complicated lives and sometimes plans don’t work out):

Nathan Ballingrud, Ted Chiang, Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Eileen Gunn, Kathleen Jennings (all the way from Australia, wooee!), Kij Johnson, Nancy Kress, Ellen Kushner, Kelly Link, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Delia Sherman, Sofia Samatar, Ysabeau S. Wilce.

Here’s some of what I saw on the program list the other week. If you’re going, drop by and say hi!

Thursday

E. Nesbit and Her Influence
Time: 4 p.m.-5 p.m., Thursday, Regency F
Panelists: Benjamin Rosenbaum (M), Ginjer Buchanan, Robert Knowlton, S. T. Joshi
Description: E. Nesbit published over forty children’s books, from the beloved The Railway Children to The Stories of the Treasure Seekers and Five Children and It. She also had a darker side, as seen in Something Wrong and Tales told in Twilight, collections of horror stories for adults. A writer of many sides, Nesbit had an influence on many writers, including C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and J.K. Rowling. The panel will discuss her work and why it continues to have an impact today.

Friday

Derived Myths: Making it Original
Time: 10 a.m.-11 a.m., Friday, Regency F
Panelists: Sandra Kasturi, Nick DiCharo (M), S. P. Hendricks, Ellen Kushner, Melissa Marr
Description: There is no denying that the influence of various mythologies on fantasy, which have been inspiration for Lord Dunsay, Elizabeth Hand, Barry Hughart and many more. With a wealth of examples, the panel will discuss when the myth inspiration is the center of the work to when it has lead to a whole new mythos.

Language and Linguistics in Fantasy
Time: 10 a.m.-11 a.m., Friday, Regency E
Panelists: Lawrence M. Schoen (M), C.D. Covington, Matthew Johnson, Sofia Samatar
Description: Foreign languages are often used in fantasy literature to add atmosphere, to show cultural backgrounds, and to bring a richness to the world, as can be seen in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and Richard Adams Watership Down. Some works rely on real languages. Others, such as Tolkien, have invented entire tongues of their own. Which stories incorporate other languages successfully, and where have authors stumbled, making too much of the work incomprehensible to the reader?

Reading: Nathan Ballingrud
Time: 10am-10:30am, Nov. 7, Fairfax

Adoption and Fostering in Fantasy
Time: 12 p.m.-1 p.m., Friday, Regency F
Panelists: Susan Dexter (M), Tina Connolly, Delia Sherman, Edward Willett
Description: Adoption or fostering is often used in fantasy and horror literature, from Oedipus to Jon Snow, from young Wart helping in the kitchens before that fateful day when he pulled a sword out of a stone in Londontown, to the most famous orphan of them all, Harry Potter. Dozens of fantasies feature young orphans who do not know their parentage, from Richard in Wizard’s First Rule, to Will from the Ranger’s Apprentice series, who is a ward of the state, to even Frodo, who was an orphan, albeit an older one, at the beginning of his adventures. There is even one beloved character, Taren from the Prydain Chronicles, who never learns his parentage, and this mystery itself proves to be his key to assuming the kingship. How does adoption, bastardy, mixed parentage, long-lost relatives all contribute to epic quests for self-knowledge in literature?

Beyond Rebellion in Young Adult Fantasy
Time: 2 p.m.-3 p.m., Friday, Regency F
Panelists: Ysabeau Wilce (M), Gail Carriger, Sarah Beth Durst,
Description: We all know the story of teen disaffection and rebellion, but there are plenty of Young Adult fantasies that maintain strong family ties, with rational adult role models, such as L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Stephen Gould’s Impulse, or even Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games. A look at books that don’t always have the hero with an unhappy home, discussion why this can also make an intriguing story.

Reading: Jeffrey Ford
Time: 5pm-5:30pm, Nov. 7, Arlington

Saturday

Fantasy Artists That Take Up the Pen
Time: 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Saturday, Tidewater 2
Panelists: Charles Vess (M), Kathleen Jennings, Greg Manchess, Ruth Sanderson
Description: There are authors who are know for doing artwork, such as Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling and Neil Gaiman, so it should be no surprise that artists can also be drawn to writing. The panel will discuss the impact of being both artist and writer and how these two creative forms interact.

Reading: Andy Duncan
Time: 11am-11:30am, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Reading: Kelly Link
Time: 11:30am-12pm, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Historical People in Fantasy
Time: 1 p.m.-2 p.m., Saturday, Tidewater 2
Panelists: Eileen Gunn (M), David B. Coe, Jack Dann, Jean Marie Ward, Rick Wilber
Description: When using Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, or perhaps on of the most used names, Nikola Tesla and other real people as characters in fiction, what liberties can an author take and what holes do they have to fill? How close to the real Jack Kerouac does Nick Mamatas get in Move Under Ground? What do creators owe to history, especially if the players are in a new world as in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series. The panel will discuss where historical truth meets literary license.

Lafferty as an American Fantasist
Time: 2 p.m.-3 p.m., Saturday, Tidewater 2
Panelists: Andy Duncan (M), Carrie Cuinn, Andrew Ferguson, Gordon Van Gelder, Don Pizarro, Cat Rambo
Description: R. A. Lafferty was known for his original use of language and metaphor. Drawing on storytelling traditions of the Irish and Native Americans, but with his own twists, as in The Devil is Dead and The Flame is Green. The panel will explore how Lafferty used American history, American landscapes, and American folklore/mythology in his work.

Reading: Nicole Kornher-Stace
Time: 2:30pm-3pm, Nov. 8, Fairfax

Sunday

Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Writers
Time: 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Sunday, Washington
Panelists: Catherine Montrose (M), Nancy Kress, Kevin Maroney, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Description: Some writers’ best work is the first thing they ever published. Others, like George R. R. Martin, get better with age. Others, such as Terry Pratchett, have maintained their quality over a span of decades. How does the age and/or generation of the writer affect the story? Also, does the age at which authors began to write matter? The bestselling Eragon was published by a young man of not yet twenty, while Tolkien did not get his first work published until he was forty-five. How does getting older affect an author’s work? How do they feel about their earlier works when they look back? Have our opinions, as readers, changed on this subject over time?

Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams: Stories

Tue 28 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

paper · $16 · 9781618730893 | ebook · 9781618730909 · Audiobook: Audible.

“Once upon a time, my little waffles . . .”

Fantastical stories of rockstar magicians, murderous gloves, bouncing boy terrors, vengeful plush pigs, blue tinted butlers, and a Little Tiny Doom set in an opulent quasi-historical world of magick and high manners that bears a striking resemblance to Gold Rush California.

These inter-connected stories are set in an opulent quasi-historical world of magick and high manners called the Republic of Califa. The Republic is a strangely familiar place—a baroque approximation of Gold Rush era-California with an overlay of Aztec ceremony—yet the characters who populate it are true originals: rockstar magicians, murderous gloves, bouncing boy terrors, blue tinted butlers, sentient squids, and a three year old Little Tiny Doom and her vengeful pink plush pig.

By turn whimsical and horrific (sometime in the same paragraph), Wilce’s stories have been characterized as “screwball comedies for goths” but they could also be described as “historical fantasies” or “fanciful histories” for there are nuggets of historical fact hidden in them there lies.

Reviews

“Sometimes the fantastic insists on imbuing the world with blunt meaning — the simplistic drama of good versus evil — but other times it unearths the sense that what individuals experience is far less than what is, a reminder that the world is bigger than us. For example, the fantastic is one of the best places in fiction to find the back-to-front story, in which the apparent events of a story turn out to be less important than what is hinted at behind them, happening just off the page. Wilce’s afterwords are of this variety, hinting at a history and social structure that the (fictional) author and (fictional) audience know well, while the reader gathers scraps about the Waking World, Elsewhere, praeterhumans, and the world that has grown up in their place since the Waking World and Elsewhere split and magick faded.”
— Bookslut

“The Republic of Califa — remarkably like the U.S. Old West, were it saturated with chaotic and cunning magic — is long past its glory days, but the wild stories remain. Wilce (the Flora Segunda series) leaps into this rollicking past with the “true” story of Springheel Jack in “The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror!” and only gets more fantastical from there. “Quartermaster Returns” demonstrates that great lengths are sometimes required to get someone to square their debts. In “Scaring the Shavetail,” Arizona soldiers invoke dangerous magic to rid themselves of a naive and inexperienced commander. Each rowdy and bloody story is followed by an afterword judging its historical and mythical merits, in one case determining that the work was “utter balderdash.” Magic and mundane mix and crash like a party falling in with a bar fight; sigils might be dug out of a mine alongside gold nuggets, and settlers die by daemon attack as often as by high-noon showdown or an Apache knife. Historical fantasy fans will want to saddle up with Wilce’s boisterous and skewed chronicle.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Califa: riotous carnival world of soldiers, drunks and magick (very) loosely based on California in the 1800s. Califa: marvel of ingenuity and purple prose. . . . Ribald, raucous, distressingly appealing, so steeped in its own world that readers may well be driven to find everything else Wilce has written—this won’t be for everyone, but oh, my precious pillows, what a joy for those who can handle it.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Part of Califa’s charm is that its roots are so familiar to us, so when we come across the inevitable sideways leap off the well-trodden path, we leap down the rabbit hole after Alice, as it were. The historical notes which follow are amusing – and as always contain that little pinch of historical fact to leaven the load of hooey.” — Finding Wonderland

Early reader reaction:

“Elegant, amusing, and enormously entertaining, Ysabeau Wilce’s newest sojourn to Califa is a journey to be savored by any reader who has visited Gormenghast, Earthsea, or Olondria. Pure delight for any lover of contemporary fantastika.”
—Elizabeth Hand

“Reading Ysabeau Wilce is like discovering a new language, dark and magical and far more fun than the one you grew up speaking. Califa and her denizens sizzle to life on the page in all of their blood-soaked, candy-colored glory; Prophecies, Libels and Dreams is a wonder.”
— Kelly Braffet, author of Save Yourself

“I would trade a year of my life, and things more precious still, to be transported for one hour to the sumptuous streets of Ysabeau Wilce’s Califa.”— Paul Witcover

“Those who have been yearning for another voyage through Califa — and who hasn’t? — will be delighted to plunge into the lives of General Hardhands and Tiny Doom, discover the mystery behind the Hand of Gory, and learn the truth of the Bouncing Boy Terror, Springheel Jack. Rich and intricate, clever and sexy, these tales never fail to deliver glorious adventure and transcendent worldbuilding. Wilce is truly a Queen among fantasists.” — Tiffany Trent, author of The Unnaturalists

“The Republic of Califa differs from the American West Coast in a number of small details, of course: the egregores and praterhumans, the Magick and Gramatica, the peculiar dynastic struggles of the Pontifexa Georgiana and her decadent postbears. But all these are the subtle and minuscule discrepancies of a parallel yet proximate reality, easily overlooked by the casual reader. Where Ms. Wilce shines is in her use of the larger effects—those of tone, style, and voice—which make her world so much richer than our own.” — Paul Park

“Ysabeau Wilce is an original American fantasist. Unique in vision, rare in quality, Califa is one of the few truly American fantasy worlds, owing as much to the Wild West, San Francisco Bay and Mexican folklore as to Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolkien. Read and enjoy!” — Ellen Kushner

Kelly Link interviews Ysabeau S. Wilce for BookPage.

A second Flora Segunda-era interview on the Harcourt site.

Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilce’s previous books:

“This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language and tantalizing glimpses of history.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Wilce has matters well in hand in this, her first novel. Thirteen-year-old Flora Segunda is a charming narrator, and her domain — the city of Califa — is an intriguing mix of the preindustrial and the post-multicultural, with a bracing dose of magic, martial life, time travel and family drama mixed in. The book is rich and odd, and only occasionally overprecious — like that run-on subtitle, which advertises dangers and delights just a bit too strenuously. The heroine is this novel’s strongest suit. Like Pullman’s Lyra Silvertongue or Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching, Flora Fyrdraaca is a descendant of Jo March rather than a fainting beauty who needs rescuing. These wayward, determined girls do the rescuing themselves, although not wisely or always too well.”
—New York Times Book Review

Table of Contents

The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror! [Lightspeed]
Quartermaster Returns [read an excerpt | listen to the Podcastle podcast]
Metal More Attractive
The Lineaments of Gratified Desire
Lovelocks
Hand in Glove
Scaring the Shavetail

The Author on the Book

I see myself as the historian of the Republic of Califa, with each story being a fragment of a larger whole. Although the stories do not always appear to be immediately interconnected they often have characters or situations in common, and they all take place in the same world, although sometimes at different points in time. I love to mix the fantastical with the historical: many of my characters are based on historical people, many of my settings are from history, but I don’t consider Califa to be an alternate history, per say, only a mash-up of the things I love best from the past (redingcotes, sabers, mules, lavish hair-styles, vengeful murders) combined with the elements of fantasy I adore (monsters, magick, vampires, stew). In this, I follow both T.H. White and Gene Wolfe—and William Shakespeare, for that matter, although I do not claim to be in any of these gentlemen’s league.

About the Author

Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum throughout Alaska, Spain, Mexico, Arizona, and Elsewhere. A lapsed historian, she turned to fiction when facts no longer compared favorably with the shining lies of her imagination. Prior to this capitulation, she researched various arcane military subjects and presented educational programs on how to boil laundry at several nineteenth century army forts. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the James T. Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton Award. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda, Flora’s Dare, and Flora’s Fury, and she has published work in Asimov’s, Steampunk!, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco.

Delia’s here — or at least her book is!

Fri 24 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Delia Sherman| Posted by: Gavin

Lovely, lovely it is, too. I still find myself wanting to check Delia’s bibliography to see if she published had a collection of stories at some point that I missed. But, no, Young Woman in a Garden does seem to be the first one. Which is fabulous news for us as Delia has many, many great and fun and odd and fantastic stories and to bring fourteen of them together in one book is an incredible assortment of riches.

Publication date is November 11 and as you can see the finished books are here in the office nicely on time — so, yes, we will have them at the World Fantasy Con in DC — and they will start showing up in your fave indie bookstores (etc.) soon.

In the meantime you can read two of the stories online: “Miss Carstairs and the Merman” (and an author spotlight interview) is on Fantasy Magazine — which was brought back to life for this special “Women Destroy Fantasy” issue, and “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” is on Tor.com.

So much news: 2015 edition!

Thu 23 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Angelica Gorodischer, Ayize Jama-Everett, Nicole Kornher-Stace| Posted by: Gavin

Here’s a large part of it: 4 new books for early 2015! Two of them are from Ayize Jama-Everett, The Liminal War (June) and The Entropy of Bones (August). You can read about how the covers came about today on Tor.com. The covers are both by John Jennings, check out his tumblr which is full of excellent art. You can read the first three chapters of Ayize’s first novel The Liminal People here. The books are all connected, but can also stand alone. More on these two pageturners soon-ish.

Two more books! First, another translation of an Angélica Gorodischer novel! Prodigies (translated by Sue Burke) is considered by the author and many others to be her best novel. After Sofia Samatar reviewed Kalpa Imperial so thoughtfully we asked her to have an early look at Prodigies and this is what she said:

“Gorodischer’s rhythmic and transparent prose reveals the violence underlying bourgeois respectability. Prodigies is both incisive and incantatory.”—Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria

The fourth book is the first Big Mouth House title of 2015, Nicole Kornher-Stace’s debut YA novel Archivist Wasp. It’s a dark, thrilling ride (wait, did I really write that? Yup. Sorry! But, you know: true!) set in a deeply imagined future. Just wait. Here’s a better description:

“Goes off like a firecracker in the brain: the haunted landscape, the sure-footed, blistering prose — and, of course, the heroine herself, the most excellent Archivist Wasp.” — Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

Brattleboro, here we come!

Thu 16 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., conventions, Monstrous Affections, readings| Posted by: Gavin

San Francisco, so lucky to have not one but at least FIVE Burmese restaurants. That shows there are a lot of smart people in that city because the food is fab. If, like me, there are no Burmese restaurants near you, please hie yourself to Yoma Boston’s site and order some tea salad. Yumtastic.

Why am I chuntering on about San Francisco? Because Ayize Jama-Everett (great news about him coming before the end of the month!) is taking part in the ongoing LitQuake celebration of books, readers, and writers and it looks Don’t-Miss-Fascinating.

We also just added a new Monstrous Affections reading with me, Kelly, and M. T. Anderson — and possibly more special guests To Be Announced. So here’s an update on what’s happening in the next couple of weeks:

NEW: Ayize Jama-Everett (The Liminal People)
We Are Mystic Detectives About to Make an Arrest: A Night of Afrosurreal Expression, 10/18, 7:15 pm
LitQuake, Aldea Home, 890 Valencia St. San Francisco, CA

M. T. Anderson, Sarah Rees Brennan, Joshua Lewis, Kelly Link, Gavin J Grant (Monstrous Affections), 10/22, 7 pm
Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA

NEW LOCATION: Ysabeau S. Wilce (Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams) & Garth Nix (Clariel), 10/25
SF in SF, The Women’s Building, Audre Lourde Room, 2nd Floor, 3543 18th Street, one block up from Valencia, San Francisco, CA 94110

Sarah Rees Brennan, Alice Sola Kim, Joshua Lewis, G. Carl Purcell, Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (Monstrous Affections), 10/28, 7 pm
McNally Jackson, NYC

NEW: M. T. Anderson, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (Monstrous Affections), 11/1, 4 pm
Mystery on Main Street, Brattleboro, VT

NEW: And! Many authors we have published will be at the rapidly approaching World Fantasy Convention. We’ll have tables in the dealer room and will have excellent books by: Nathan Ballingrud, Ted Chiang, Andy Duncan*, Jeffrey Ford*, Eileen Gunn, Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson, Nancy Kress, Ellen Kushner, Kelly Link, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Delia Sherman, Sofia Samatar, Ysabeau S. Wilce, and maybe even more, who knows!
World Fantasy Convention, Washington DC/Arlington, VA
* Forthcoming

North American Lake Monsters: 2nd printing

Fri 3 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Nathan Ballingrud, second printings, yeah!| Posted by: Gavin

Good news: the printer is about to ship us the second printing of the paperback Nathan Ballingrud’s Shirley Jackson award winning debut collection North American Lake Monsters.

And: the hardcover is about to be declared out of print, so get it while you can. We will have some here for a little while longer and are hoping to bring some to the World Fantasy Convention in DC where Nathan can sign them.

Also, should you already have devoured the book and now be demanding more Ballingrudian fiction, why, I am very happy to be able to help you with that. Check out Monstrous Affections (for which sometimes I affeckt an extra k), dig around, and you’ll find Nathan’s um, diabolical?, “The Diabolist.”

Get it from Powell’s here or your local bookshop here. More stories by Nathan is always a good thing.

Wednesday is the new Monday?

Wed 1 Oct 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok, Delia Sherman, Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

Holy bananas, Batman. Days go by, books explode out into the world (hello Gwenda!), leaves FALL FROM TREES, eek!

Did you hear Molly Gloss has a book out at the end of this month? I read it this week on my sickbed and it is so FABULOUS. It’s called Falling From Horses and you can pre-order signed copies from Powell’s! Which by all that is good in the world you SHOULD. Or, at least, strongly consider.

Susan Stinson says Spider in a Tree:

One year ago today was the pub date of my novel Spider in a Tree by @smallbeerpress. Beyond thrilling.Need one? Here: http://t.co/6J0oHzqqA1
— Susan Stinson (@susanstinson) October 1, 2014

But, but, that book just came out! Argh, time, is, passing! (Apologies for that comma.)

Over at Weightless you can get the new issue of Lightspeed which has a heck of an energetic story from Ysabeau S. Wilce (“The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror”) which not coincidentally can also be found in her debut collection — which comes out in 2 weeks! — Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams. In the same issues: stories by Kelly Link (“Water Off a Black Dog’s Back”), Daniel José Older, Megan Kurashige, along with excerpts from Paolo Bacigalupi’s new novel, THE DOUBT FACTORY and Ann Leckie’s ANCILLARY SWORD. That John Joseph Adams sure puts together quite the package!

Ever wondered* what distractions emperors and other mayors faced? How did they cope? Were they gamers? (Tricky Dicky, looking at you.) Click through for some great face to face comparisons for Winston “Angry Birds” Churchill and more as Benjamin Parzybok delves into “A Brief History of Video Games Played by Mayors, Presidents, and Emperors.”

Ben P. is reading (with Ryan Boudinot) at Oct. 15, 7 PM Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. And: the audiobook just came out.

Ysabeau’s book is now available to reviewers, bloggers, librarians, and booksellers on Edelweiss. The requests are coming in thick and fast.

And! Delia Sherman’s debut collection, Young Woman in a Garden, is up on Edelweiss, now, too.

More info on these two books — and 2015’s book, wow, so oncoming, such nearness — soon.

* Ben, not asking you.

PS Win a copy of Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams here.

PS x 2 Name your city and get a free audiobook of Sherwood Nation!

Where do the weeks go?

Mon 29 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok, Greer Gilman, Monstrous Affections, sick as dog but not eating sick ok, Susan Stinson, Ysabeau S. Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

Well, last week I caught a bug going round and was laid low. So low! Am still so low am very unimpressed with self. Hoping this week will improve but am still mostly horizontal. Sleep. Such a lovely thing.

This week: hilarity!
Still not well.
Unimpressed x 2.

Also: the our office building (which I have been to since last Monday…) is undergoing some kind of electrical reconnect and will have no power on Tuesday and Wednesday. If I had the energy, I’d find it ridiculous. Now, makes me want to nap.

Other things: Win the Audio edition of Sherwood Nation.

Throw your name in the hat for a copy of Ysabeau S. Wilce’s forthcoming collection, Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams.

READINGS! (first posted here)

Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others), 10/2, 10 am
Who and What Will Get to Think in the Future?
Future Tense, Washington, DC (livestream will be available)

Susan Stinson (Spider in a Tree), 10/8, 7 pm
Reading at Grace Episcopal in Amherst, Mass.

Greer Gilman, (Exit, Pursued by a Bear), 10/11
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich CT

Benjamin Parzybok (Sherwood Nation), 10/15, 7 pm
Elliot Bay Books, Seattle, WA

M. T. Anderson, Sarah Rees Brennan, Joshua Lewis, Kelly Link, Gavin J Grant (Monstrous Affections), 10/22, 7 pm
Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA

Ysabeau S. Wilce (Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams), 10/25
SF in SF, San Francisco, CA

Sarah Rees Brennan, Alice Sola Kim, Joshua Lewis, G. Carl Purcell, Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (Monstrous Affections), 10/28, 7 pm
McNally Jackson, NYC

Handy Small Beer calendar here.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear

Tue 23 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Books, Chapbooks| Posted by: Gavin

saddle-stitched paperback, 9781618730954 · ebook, 9781618730961

Ben Jonson has written the part of a lifetime for the Prince of Wales: he will play Oberon, the King of Faerie. It’s only theater. What could go wrong?

Welcome to Ben Jonson’s second adventure, courtesy of none other than Greer Gilman. Her first exceptional Jonson adventure, Cry Murder! in a Small Voice, was a Shirley Jackson Award winner. As with Cry Murder!, Exit is available as both a print chapbook and as an ebook.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear

Henry Stuart, heir to the British throne, is everything he should be; clever, handsome, a real hero. Unfortunately, he is also tone-deaf in his dealings with the Unseen World. Unbeknownst to him, his ambitious plans for a coming-of-age court masque taking Faerie as its subject have enraged his neighbor monarchs, Oberon and Titania, who perceive in Henry’s theatrical project a slight to their authority.

Seeking recompense, they assign the undead poet Kit Marlowe a task peculiarly suited to his wild imaginative powers: to bring them the heir to the throne, and rewrite the course of human history.

As supernatural storm clouds gather, the poet Ben Jonson must struggle both to execute the masque-commission set him by Prince Henry, and investigate the trail of unsettling events that has begun to surround rehearsals with a sinister and uncanny aura.

Actors go missing, the special effects can’t be counted on, and of course Henry would insist on a chariot pulled by live bears, but more worryingly: what are these dreams which shake royal performers and professional actors alike? Can Ben work out their portents in time, or will Kit Marlowe have the last laugh, after all?

For the bears, in septentriones sempiterne.*

Review

“The play’s the thing. . . . There’s no doubt from the opening page that Gilman (Cry Murder! in a Small Voice) understands how to write period-accurate dialogue, but it limits the appeal to those who deal regularly in the Elizabethan tongue. While there are clever puns worthy of Shakespeare, most readers will find it a lot of work to mull them over, and ostensible protagonist Jonson is upstaged by Marlowe’s tinkering, becoming more scenery than star except in one climactic moment.”
— Publishers Weekly

An excerpt:

At Whitehall, St. Stephen’s Day, 1610

Halfway in the air, the moon stuck fast.
“Boy,” said the Surveyor, wearily.
But already a fellow in a satyr’s netherstocks had swarmed the scaffolding with five or seven of his rout, all twitching at the shrouds.
And now she toppled on her back, lay hicketing and heaving toward an exaltation endlessly denied.
Ben Jonson–mere Poet to these Roman pomps–snorted. “I wrote her for a virgin; see, she labors.” . . .

Cover by Kathleen Jennings.

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.

* In the North stars eternally.

September 18, 2014

Thu 18 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., indyref, politics, Scotland| Posted by: Gavin

Very interested in seeing what happens today in Scotland’s independence referendum!

The polls close at 10pm in Scotland (in 5 hours time), giving the 97% of registered voters plenty of time to get to the polls, and then to have some fun before the results are announced. The count isn’t expected until something like 7 am — which is 2 am here in Western Massachusetts, early enough that I expect I’ll be up waiting to see what’s happened. Off to read more #indyref.

Sherwood Nation cometh!

Tue 9 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok| Posted by: Gavin

(Maybe it arriveth?) I read a great author interview yesterday — although it’s a bit weird to write that when the author speaks nicely about Small Beer, so skip that part and read the great stuff about The Joy of Cooking, Scrivener, measuring a book’s worth by its weight, and more with Ben Parzybok and Anne Rasmussen on the Late Night Library.

Also today, fab review of Sherwood Nation on Shelf Awareness:

“A group of idealists, led by a charismatic young woman, struggle to remake society in postapocalyptic Portland, Ore.”

What are they talking about? A book I’ve been looking forward to bringing out for the last couple of years. Maybe more than that, I don’t know how long ago it was that Ben mentioned he was writing a book about water. Given the ongoing water troubles (shortages, floods, sea levels rising) and Ben’s community-biased view of the world, this was always going to be a timely novel and when it came in it blew me away.

I hope to be talking about it and keep on spreading the news about this book for a while yet. You can get your copy at all indie bookstores (and all the other usual places), our site, or get the ebook right now on Weightless.

If you’re on the west coast, please consider going to get your copy here!

Sept. 16, 7:30 PM Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland, OR
Sept. 27, 8:30 PM PNBA Sweet & Greet (pdf), Hotel Murano, Tacoma, WA
Oct. 15, 7 PM Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 Tenth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122

Sherwood Nation

Tue 9 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Benjamin Parzybok, Books| Posted by: Gavin

paper · $16 · 9781618730862 | ebook · 9781618730879 · Audiobook

As drought-stricken, Portland, Oregon, falls apart, a new city rises from within.

2016 Silicon Valley Reads — download the booklet.
Listen to the kick-off event with Emmi Iteräntä and Benjamin Parzybok on the Commonwealth Club podcast.

Read now:
Read an excerpt.
Free pdf download: A Reader's Guide and Companion to Sherwood Nation (5273 downloads ) .

Audio Interviews:
Spokane (SPR): The Bookshelf
Portland (KBOO): Between the Covers · Author Interview · Old Mole Variety Hour
Seattle (KUOW): If Portland Collapsed, How Would The City Fare? (interview on “The Record”)

Text: The Rumpus · Josh Cook, Porter Square Books · Oregon Live · Street Books · Latenight Library interview by Anne Rasmussen · Writer, with Kids

&c: Largehearted boy book notes · Necessary Fiction: Research Notes

Dried out West Coast cities are crumbling and being abandoned by the East. In Portland, Oregon, water is declared a communal right and rations are down to one gallon per person per day. The Mayor is proposing digging a trench to the Pacific Ocean and hoarding and riots persist.

A water activist nicknamed Maid Marian is caught on film giving out water from a hijacked water truck and becomes a folk hero. She escapes into an ungoverned part of the city and rides her and becomes an icon to a city in need.

Even as Maid Marian and her compatriots build a new community one neighbor at a time, they make powerful enemies in the city government and the National Guard. Their idealistic dream is quickly caught up in a brutal fight for survival.

Sherwood Nation is a quirky, personal post-collapse non-apocalyptic novel of idealists taking charge. It is the rise and fall of a micronation within a city. It is a love story, a war story, a grand social experiment, a treatise on hacking and remaking government, on freedom and necessity, on individualism and community.

Read on.

Reviews

“Rich with haunting descriptions of a place once wild and now starved and poignant human dilemmas of basic survival, Sherwood Nation is a manifesto on how communities can work together to improve the greater good that does not shy from, sugarcoat, or exaggerate the corruptions of power and outcomes of rebellion. For a political treatise set in an imaginable apocalypse, Parzybok’s second novel is refreshing in its lack of heavy-handed allegory or pedantic utopian preaching. Maid Marian reaches beyond herself to create peace and solidarity in hopeless times. Threatened, others desire her demise and position. It is a clever, if cautionary tale.”
— Electric Literature

“Set in Portland Oregon after a massive drought has crippled American society west of the Mississippi, Sherwood Nation is a different kind of dystopian novel. No magic. No zombies. No tyrannical overlords ruling with iron fists and tournaments. It brings a fascinating realism to the genre, creating a uniquely human and tangible version of the apocalypse story. Sherwood Nation is about real people grappling with an all too real catastrophe in ways that reveal aspects of our culture today, while exploring the best, worst, and, most importantly, the vague middle between the two ideals, of what we could be.”—Josh Cook, Porter Square Books (interview)

“Parzybok’s achievements are manifold here. First, he tells a gripping story whose lineaments are never predictable. There are great suspenseful set pieces, like the theft of a water truck and a shootout in Sherwood. The entire action is compressed into about two weeks or so, but feels like a whole saga: birth, maturity, and death of a kingdom.”
—Locus

“A group of idealists, led by a charismatic young woman, struggle to remake society in postapocalyptic Portland, Ore.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Sherwood Nation has left me with memorable images that will, no doubt, be triggered over time. There’s something heavy real in its imaginings—something that almost compels me to pray for rain.”
—NW Book Lovers

“The gritty world in Sherwood Nation and the circumstances that changed a former barista into a figure of hope is a story that focuses more on the consequences of disaster rather than the disaster itself.”
— Geeky Library

“I finished Parzybok’s book not really feeling as though I’d read a work of fiction but more like a finely orchestrated prophecy with believable characters and likely scenarios. I certainly haven’t looked at water the same way and probably won’t ever again. Read Parzybok’s novel and prepare for battle. We have been duly notified.”
— New Pages

“With climate change and ever-increasing consumption, running out of water is a danger we don’t readily acknowledge, yet Benjamin Parzybok’s Sherwood Nation makes that danger vividly real. . . . Here we see how people behave in crisis—some better and some worse—and how idealism, self-concerned realism, and the personal hang in a balance; friends, alliances, and enemies are made, and, most effectively, Renee’s boyfriend, Zach, and Renee herself grow (and glow) as things get tough. Ben, who’s Portland-based, is the creator or co-creator of numerous projects, including Gumball Poetry and the Black Magic Insurance Agency, a city-wide, one night alternate reality game, so he knows about building community. He’s done a great job here, but let’s hope the richly detailed “Sherwood Nation” never really has to come to be.”
—Library Journal

“Parzybok is riffing on the Robin Hood story, to be sure, but he also layers on some astute social and political commentary, and he’s built a fully functioning and believable future world. Give this one to fans of Adam Sternbergh’s Shovel Ready (2014).”
—Booklist

“Benjamin Parzybok is one of our most imaginative literary inventors. In Sherwood Nation he gives us a vision of Portland’s rebellious indie spirit that goes deeper than the usual caricatures, revealing a city alive with conflict and possibility. This is playful, serious, and profoundly humanizing art.” — Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife)

“Benjamin Parzybok has reached into the post-collapse era for a story vital to our here and now. Sherwood Nation is part political thriller, part social fable, and part manifesto, its every page brimming with gonzo exuberance.”—Jedediah Berry (The Manual of Detection)

“Parzybok does this thing where you think, ‘this is fun!’ and then you are charmed, saddened, and finally changed by what you have read. It’s like jujitsu storytelling.”—Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse)

“Portland is a rare outpost, with a semi-functional municipality, but the burdens of relentless rationing and an increasingly apparent division between those who go thirsty and those who do not, make for prime tinder. It takes just one minor act of symbolic monkey wrenching to set this tale ablaze.
“Couch has remained in my consciousness because it goes “out there” to find its core (think Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, Gabriel Garcia Marquez). What makes Sherwood so compelling and, frankly, often terrifying, is how close to home it lives.
“This Portland is totally familiar, invoking the attitudes and spirit of today’s residents and details from the recent political landscape. It feels like the place we know — until a nightly power blackout or parade of National Guard water distribution tankers jars us with a reminder that this is, thankfully, a work of very good fiction.”
— Register Guard

Praise for Benjamin Parzybok’s first novel, Indie Next Pick, Couch

“Beyond the good old-fashioned story, Couch meditates on heroism and history, but above all, it’s an argument for shifting your life around every now and then, for getting off the couch and making something happen.”—The L Magazine

Author photo: Jodi Darby.
Cover illustration: Andi Watson.

Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novel Couch and has been the creator/co-creator of many other projects, including Gumball Poetry, The Black Magic Insurance Agency (city-wide, one night alternate reality game), and Project Hamad. He lives in Portland with the artist Laura Moulton and their two kids.

Follow him on twitter: @sparkwatson

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