LCRW 32 is going out

Fri 29 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32 So this is your chance to subscribe! We have silly options (get a free house in lovely Northampton, Massachusetts with every $1,000,020* ** subscription!) as well as the standard you send us money and we send you mindbending and heartbreaking stories twice or thrice a year. Sometimes, no promises because my memory is a —what’s that thing with all the holes in it? Oh, yes, political promises — anyway, sometimes we send out extra things. Things! No wet spaghetti. No huge cardboard boxes hilarious filled with packing material and a tiny zine. No concrete blocks with pretty ribbons tied around them. So many things we don’t send! Really, I suppose it is mostly books, postcards, pretty pretty bookmarks and so on and on!

Also, is we get 5,000 new subscriptions I retire! (Wait. 5000 x $19.12 (after Paypal fee) = $95,600. Would I really retire? Would I just take a trip around the world? Or buy 10,000 superfancy bars chocolate and a solar-powered walk-in fridge to keep them in so that post-apocalypse at least I’d have that? Let’s see! Ok. Post-apocalypse, subscribers can come by and share the chocolate.)

Subscribe while we still have mugs, chocolate bars (pretty fancy, but not as fancy as in above para), copies of Crank!, signed books, etc., etc., et-fabulousa-cetera.

This post brought to you by LCRW 32 and the letter F for wait, is it Friday? Oh gosh.

* No, our house is not a million dollar house but I don’t really want to move, so, you know, there’s a small amount of padding in the price to cover that.

** Will Paypal process a million dollar payment? Let’s find out together!


ToC for LCRW 32

Tue 19 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32 coverAnd here we go! Coming soon: a new issue of the house zine, commonly known as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Also sometimes subtitled: An Occasional Outburst. This issue contains more than its fair share of fabulous stories, what can you do? It has a cover from Debbie Eylon (which may remind long time readers of a cover from lonnng ago), will be out next month, is titled

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #32

and will consist of the following fabulosities:

Fiction

Henry Wessells, “The Beast Unknown to Heraldry”
Alyc Helms, “The Blood Carousel”
Kodiak Julian, “Marrying the Sea”
Joe M. McDermott, “Everything is Haunted”
Henry Lien, “The Shadow You Cast Is Me”
Joanna Ruocco, “Auburn”
Dylan Horrocks, “The Square of Mirrors”
Jade Sylvan, “Sun Circles”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, “Sleek Fat Albinos in Spring”
About the Authors

Poetry

A. B. Robinson, “Sonnet Crown for Third Officer Ripley”
Gillian Daniels, “The Virgin Regiment”

Cover

Debbie Eylon


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32

Tue 19 May 2015 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

8.5 x 7 · 60pp · June 2015 · Issue 32 · Ebook (ISBN 9781618731166) available from Weightless. The print cover is b&w as per usual but the ebook will have the color one. Which may be this one. Or maybe not!

In the meantime: stories of beasties and strange places, long, long journeys, and questions, so many questions. Also: Nicole Kimberling’s lovely food column looks at white asparagus and we kick off the issue with A. B. Robinson’s amazing “Sonnet Crown for Third Officer Ripley.” See below for excerpts.

Reviews

“Here is the latest issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and you know the drill by now: read it slowly. This is issue #32 and it has eight tales which must be savored and read slowly.” — SF Revu

Table of Contents

Fiction

Henry Wessells, “The Beast Unknown to Heraldry”
Alyc Helms, “The Blood Carousel”
Kodiak Julian, “Marrying the Sea”
Joe M. McDermott, “Everything is Haunted”
Henry Lien, “The Shadow You Cast Is Me”
Joanna Ruocco, “Auburn”
Dylan Horrocks, “The Square of Mirrors”
Jade Sylvan, “Sun Circles”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sleek Fat Albinos in Spring
About the Authors

Poetry

A. B. Robinson, “Sonnet Crown for Third Officer Ripley”
Gillian Daniels, “The Virgin Regiment”

Cover

Debbie Eylon

Excerpts

Sonnet Crown for Third Officer Ripley
A. B. Robinson

I.
Song, not for air captains but militarization
of everyday life: in the far future, army melts
into market transaction. This is now, certainly,
in the past, in 1979. With a sulfurous hiss
the longshoremen spring to life! They are tender
and easily distinguishable by archetype.
The commedia of office work persists,
a different wormhole, ledger
casting into an ontological shade
the quick glimpse of a series of convergences,
not easily reversed but better undone,
long shadows through a Microsoft space—
but I’m projecting again, I think. This is not
yet WarGames, released in 1983. . . .

The Beast Unknown to Heraldry
Henry Wessells

One does not always know the consequences of research in an archive, nor even what form the research will take. Thornton had a small income from his mother, which had once been sufficient for the modest entertainments of a private scholar living modestly in London. Now the competency ran to about ten months of the year in a sunny Cornish village he had come to love. His book on the supernatural in Britain was in the sixth edition but the royalties had been spent to renew his wardrobe. When his landlady began to talk of summer tenants for his rooms, Thornton told her he would be away for September, too, and wrote a letter to Digger. The fourteenth Duke of Wyland was a distant cousin of precisely his age; at six, Thornton had been presented to the twelfth Duke, Digger’s grandfather, at Delvoir Castle. The two boys had attended the same crammer, and for several summers had run wild and fought together through the castle demesne, until their public school careers diverged. The heir went off to Eton and Balliol, and Thornton to a bursary at Harrow, a pass degree in old English at Cambridge, and brief appointments as assistant master at a string of lesser public schools (he was never invited back). Thornton had sent the Duke copies of all of his books but had not seen him for a decade; he was almost certainly the only person who called the Duke by his school nickname. His letter proposed research into the early thirteenth-century rent rolls and forestry records in the castle archives. His cousin could scarcely refuse him, and the prospect of two of three months’ lodging in an upstairs room in the castle, with all found, was a welcome one. . . .

The Blood Carousel
Alyc Helms

They say any child brave enough to ride the carousel can win her parents back from death, but every child must bring her own mount to pay the ticketman. Unicorns would please him best, but to catch one you need innocence, and innocence cannot find the carousel.
Hazel wanted to make do with the Creighton’s Rottweiler, until Barnabas—never Barney unless you wanted to be kicked—suggested the fox who lived under the shed at the back of his yard.
“You don’t think a dog would be better?” Hazel sat cross-legged in the doorway of her plastic playhouse, the one Santa Claus—but really her dad—had gotten her from Walmart last year and put together in the middle of a snowstorm. She picked at the scabs on her knee. She was older than Barnabas by a year, and she didn’t like him much, but neighbors made strange playfellows. He straddled the crotch of the sugar maple that grew up against the back of Hazel’s house, its roots nudging the foundation.
“Dogs.” Barnabas hocked a loogie, but not at Hazel, so that was okay. “The Ticketman probably has a hunnerd dogs. Bet every crybaby who ever went to Fairyland brought him some stupid stray. You need something better. Less you don’t really want to bring your mom and dad back.” . . .

Marrying the Sea
Kodiak Julian

Now, even Vivian is dead. Even Vivian, with magic like whiskey and dark chocolate. You are eighty-seven years old, and the only one left.
You haven’t fed the hummingbirds in the years since your husband died, yet they still fight between the larkspur and coral bells. The back porch’s wicker chair is warm in the June sun. Your knuckles ache as you open the medicine bottle with the last of the magic, stored in your china cabinet for thirty years. You have never before used the magic without all four of you together, but this time is different.
The magic in the bottle smells like Irene’s magic, like rain on pavement and birthday candles just blown out.
In the magic, you are fifty-seven years old. You and Frannie and Vivian sit on either side of Irene’s hospital bed as she says aloud what you’ve all known: that she won’t be making it home. In the magic, Frannie digs through her purse to find empty medicine bottles to hold the last magic you four will make. She finds two bottles, her grandson’s Ronald McDonald acrobat figurine, reading glasses, stamps, white musk perfume. Vivian runs to the hospital gift shop to buy cold medicine, to pour the medicine into the sink, to rinse the bottle. Now there are bottles for each of you who will live. . . .

Everything Is Haunted
Joe M. McDermott

Stephen
I know the donor’s not much to look at, but there it is, and we know most of what’s in him, from baboon to pig to walrus to jellyfish and whatever, and his eyes are so human, just like my son’s eyes. Andrew has his mother’s beautiful brown eyes; so does the donor. Its hair is the same color as Andrew’s. It feels the same. He places his head in my lap, like Andrew used to do when he was younger, but he’s too grown up for that now, and Andrew’s skin is way too sensitive to like being touched much. Not so with the donor. We can hug it hard, like a stuffed toy and its big, blubbery body will take it and squeal with pleasure. We can run our fingers through its hair. Andrew has his mother’s hair, if it isn’t falling out. And, the donor has Andrew’s hair.
It’s not hard to get over appearances when it looks up at you with those human eyes, places a head in your lap and you can feel how soft the hair is and it’s murmuring because it likes the affection.
You’re not supposed to give them a name. You’re not really supposed to raise them at home, either, but it seemed silly to pay for someone else to do it when Immie was out of work, and that way she could watch the donor close for signs of trouble—infection, serious misalignments, stuff like that. . . .

The Shadow You Cast Is Me
Henry Lien

The first JPG of my wife comes out blurry. Because I was so afraid that she would wake up. My hands were shaking so badly that I almost dropped the phone on her.
The second JPG of her comes out clearly. She is so beautiful, it hurts to look at her. She is sleeping with a little knit in her brow. How many more nights will I get to sleep with her next to me? A hundred? Fifty? Only tonight? I will want this photo, after she leaves me. . . .

The Virgin Regiment
Gillian Daniels

I told him, “Your mouth is a rose, rain-wet and sweet.”
Despite very little reading and no poetry in me,
the young parson was pleased pink,
our kisses full and bitter-good like tea.
We danced in his bedroom afterward like we were at a ball. . . .

Auburn
Joanna Ruocco

The unhappily married Lady Abergavenny sat alone at the banquet table waiting for her husband. Her husband, of course, was Lord Abergavenny. The big, brave, handsome Lord Abergavenny. The night was dark. Supper had gotten a bad chill on the banquet table. The goose had goose bumps (this was unsurprising), but so did the potatoes and the turnips and the hunks of dark, sour bread, the region’s specialty.
“Ghastly,” said Lady Abergavenny. It was a word she used often. She stood to gaze out the window at the region. Somewhere in the thick, forested hills of the region, Lord Abergavenny was striding bravely, leading a black horse loaded down with nets and guns and jars of pickling liquors and cameras and tripods and astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamps for which Lord Abergavenny was soon to apply for a patent.
Lord Abergavenny. Explorer. Inventor. Never back in time for supper. . . .

The Square of Mirrors
Dylan Horrocks

1.
I’m living now in a small room at the top of a tavern, overlooking the Square of Mirrors. In the evening the whole square glows with the light of the sky: a color without a name. Like azure painted over gold. But darkness, too, lurking behind it all and coming slowly nearer until eventually everything is consumed.
It’s the strangest thing, but did you know the mirrors aren’t always there? I never see them come or go, and when they’re there, they seem like part of the old stone walls. But sometimes I look out my window and they’ve gone; the square looks just like any other (apart from the lizards). I’ve asked people, but everyone—even the traders who never leave their stalls—simply shrugs.
‘Ni allio qui,’ they say. ‘Everything is as it should be. Nothing is wrong.’ . . .

Sleek Fat Albinos in Spring
Nicole Kimberling

A couple of years ago I happened to be in Europe during the Easter season. Specifically, I was right at the border of Germany and France. There, in field after field lining the autobahn, I saw nothing growing. But my godson, who had just finished a cooking apprenticeship at a hotel in the Black Forest, saw something else.
“Under those rows covered in white plastic—that’s where they grow the spargel—white asparagus. The Germans are crazy for it.”
Is there a vegetable that better typifies spring than asparagus, white or otherwise? The somewhat sleazy little nub nosing its way blindly through the newly unfrozen soil seeking the sun’s warmth to turn from white as a worm to brilliant green.
Or, in the case of German asparagus, their fate is to get covered up in hay and plastic and grow stiff and fat in darkness.
Either way if it’s asparagus, there can be no doubt it’s spring. . . .

Sun Circles
Jade Sylvan

At first the voices and I talked a lot. We talked almost as much as I talk to Tom, but the people would say things other than what I’d said to them. At first I would get the light blinking meaning the people wanted to talk. They would ask me a question like “What are the oxygen levels in the cockpit?” or “What’s your blood pressure today?” or “How’s the weather up there?” We’d all have a good laugh sometimes when they said a thing like that.
After a long time of this, the talking, the words came with waiting. The light would blink and then hello and I would answer right away, then there would be waiting. There would be waiting for < 1 minute, and then the talking. We could still laugh when it was like this, talking with < 1 minute of waiting. They’d say “How’s the weather up there?” and I’d say “Warm and sunny. I may go to the beach later,” and I’d laugh, and then the waiting for < 1 minute, and then their voices, laughing.
There were lots of different voices, but mostly, at first, there were 3. There was a voice, Sue Ellen, who would read me bits from magazines and keep me up on all the news of the place where I was a child. Sue Ellen told me she lived by the ocean. If I asked she would tell me about walking by the ocean during storms and all the different colors that were possible in the sky and she would try to describe the smell of it. We would have a good laugh sometimes when she tried to do a thing like that, because it’s very hard sometimes to describe a smell or a color to another person if they haven’t seen the same color or smelled the same smell. After we had a good laugh, Sue Ellen would say “You’re a good egg.” . . .

About these Authors

A. B. Robinson lives in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has appeared in TINGE as well as Industrial Lunch, which she currently co-edits. Her first chapbook, Dario Argento Is Not My Boyfriend, was selected as a jubilat contest winner.

Gillian Daniels writes, works, and walks in the streets and parks of Boston, MA. Since attending the Clarion Writing Workshop, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and PodCastle among others. She reviews short stories for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and writes about plays for the New England Theatre Geek. She tweets on a fairly consistent basis as @gilldaniels.

Debbie Eylon is an Israeli translator and illustrator. Among other things, she’s translated into Hebrew essays by David Foster Wallace and Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners.

Alyc Helms fled her doctoral program in anthropology and folklore when she realized she preferred fiction to academic writing. She dabbles in corsetry and costuming, dances Scottish Highland and Irish Ceili at Renaissance and Dickens fairs, gets her dander up about social justice issues, and games in all forms of media. She sometimes refers to her work as “critical theory fanfic,” which is a fancy way to say that she is obsessed with liminality, gender identity, and foxes. She’s a freelance RPG writer for Green Ronin, a graduate of Clarion West, and her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, and Crossed Genres. Her first novel, The Dragons of Heaven, will be published by Angry Robot Books in June 2015. She can be found on Twitter @alychelms or at www.alychelms.com.

Dylan Horrocks lives with his wife and two teenage sons in Maraetai, New Zealand, and online at hicksvillecomics.com. His published comics include Pickle, Atlas, Hunter: the Age of Magic, and the graphic novel Hicksville. When he’s not making comics, Dylan also writes prose fiction, walks the dog, and sleeps.

Kodiak Julian is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her work can be found in the Writers of the Future anthology, Volume 29, and in the anthology, Witches, Stitches, and Bitches. She lives in Yakima, WA, with her husband and son.

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.

Henry Lien attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop and has sold stories to publications including Asimov’s, F&SF, Interfictions, and Analog. He is the Art Director of Lightspeed and the Arts Editor of Interfictions. He is currently working on a series of YA fantasy novels about kung fu figure skating.

Joe M. McDermott is the author of six novels and two short story collections including Last Dragon, Maze, and We Leave Together. He lives in San Antonio.

Joanna Ruocco is the author of several books including Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith from Fiction Collective Two & most recently Dan from Dorothy, a Publishing Project. She co-edits Birkensnake, a fiction journal with Brian Conn.

Jade Sylvan, called a “risque queer icon” by the Boston Globe, is an award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, producer, and performing artist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jade’s most recent book, Kissing Oscar Wilde, a novelized memoir about the author’s experience as a touring poet in Paris was a finalist for the New England Book Award and the Bisexual Book Award. Jade has toured extensively, performing their work to audiences across the United States, Canada, and Europe. They are heavily rooted in the literary and performance community of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Jade has had pieces published in the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, The Toast, PANK, and many other places. The author has received the Bayou Poetry Prize, the Write Bloody Renaissance award, and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Henry Wessells is a writer and antiquarian bookseller in New York City. He is author of Another Green World and The Private Life of Books, and editor of several volumes by American fantasist Avram Davidson, including El Vilvoy de las Islas, The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead, and, with Grania Davis, The Other Nineteenth Century and Limekiller. His imprint, Temporary Culture, has published works by Michael Swanwick, Ellen Kushner, Don Webb, Gregory Feeley, and Judith Clute. He likes to walk around in the woods and in the dictionary.

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.

Masthead

Left Shoe: Gavin J. Grant
Left Shoe: Kelly Link.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32, June 2015. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731166.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 · Subscriptions: $20/4 issues. 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 © 2015 the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. Issue 33 is coming very soon! It’s a special issue edited by Michael J. DeLuca and it is a cracker. Don’t miss it! Printed at Paradise Copies, 21 Conz St., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-0414.


Archivist at KGB

Tue 19 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Archivist Wasp cover Nicole Kornher-Stace will be in New York City Tomorrow night to read from Archivist Wasp and generally celebrate at the excellent KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series. Wesley Chu is also reading.

And then later this week (really? eek!) Nicole will be off to WisCon to do panels and a reading (Sat. 1 pm!) and enjoy the fab city of Madison for the weekend. We’re hosting an Archivist Wasp celebration on Friday night somewhere on the party floor of the Concourse Hotel where we will have food of the damned, drinks from the underworld, or at least some local beer. Hope to see you there!

We haven’t been at WisCon for years and I’m very much looking forward to some of the things I know and love (political discourse! people talking about books, books, books! the Tiptree Bake Sale! the farmer’s market, the dealers room, the restaurants on State St.) and then the things I don’t: how it has changed!

Anyway, wherever you are, you can start reading Archivist Wasp here on Tor.com and be ready for what NPR called:

“a jarring yet satisfying reveal, one that fully justifies the obscuring of truth and arrangement of clues that leads up to it. It’s also modestly, quietly profound. “We bring our own monsters with us” is a refrain in the book, and as pat as that statement sounds, it’s not used glibly. With understated skill, Archivist Wasp twists myth, fantasy and science fiction into a resonant tale of erasure and absence — and an aching reminder that regaining what has been lost isn’t always the answer.”


“spare, fierce, and rich” — Starred review for The Entropy of Bones!

Fri 8 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Entropy of Bones Yeah! This is why we’re publishing two books by Ayize this summer. The first review has come in the The Entropy of Bones and it’s a star from Publishers Weekly!

“This spellbinding novel shares a setting—the present day, layered with magic—with Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People and The Liminal War, but it stands well on its own. “Normal” is not part of protagonist Chabi’s world: she was raised on a houseboat in Sausalito, Calif., and has been mute from birth, but she discovers she can push her mental voice into people’s minds. Faced with public school and its hazards, she asks a local martial arts master, Narayana, to teach her to fight. Narayana makes Chabi a weapon: a superhuman bar fighter and brawler. She’s able to shatter skeletons with her understanding of the powers of entropy. Chabi uses her deadly skills first to protect a likable trio of marijuana farmers, then as a security guard for an impossibly rich hotel magnate who’s as dangerous in his own way as Narayana. Rooted in Chabi’s voice, the story is spare, fierce, and rich, and readers will care just as much about the delicate, damaged relationship between Chabi and her mother as the threat of world destruction. (Aug.)”


Happy Publication Day, Archivist Wasp!

Tue 5 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Archivist Wasp coverAlthough once you’ve had a chance to read the book, you may wonder how happy Archivist Wasp ever gets! It’s not all bleak, but following ghostfinder into the underworld is a pretty dark start. We were very happy, though, when Ysabeau Wilce sent us a note, oh, back in 2012 (that really was a long time ago) about a great book she’d read and would we like to read it? We love Ysabeau’s books, so, of course we would. I added it to my ever-taller To Be Read stack and when I got to it, burned through it. When we started Small Beer (and, later, Big Mouth House), did I ever think we’d be publishing science fiction novels like this? Only in my dreams!

Archivist Wasp has reached most stores (find it in one near you) and the early reader reaction has been strong. (Especially the booksellers who picked up galleys at Children’s Institute in Pasadena last month, yeah!)

We have a couple of reviews we’re looking forward to reading and we also always love to hear from readers. You can jump right in and read an excerpt on Tor.com or if you’re lucky you can go hear Nicole read from the book at a couple of readings and we’ll have a launch party in a couple of weeks at WisCon!

May 17, 4 p.m. Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 6 Church Street, New Paltz, NY
May 20, 7 p.m. KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Reading Series, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave) New York, NY 10003 [with Wesley Chu]
May 22 – 25, WisCon, Madison, WI

ETA:

Nicole takes the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe.
Angela Slatter interviews Nicole Kornher-Stace.


Archivist Wasp

Tue 5 May 2015 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books| Posted by: Gavin

A Big Mouth House Book
paper · $14 · 9781618730978 | ebook · 9781618730985 · Edelweiss
Third printing: May 2016

YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2016
Kirkus Reviews: Best Teen Books of 2015
Book Riot: Best of 2015
Buzzfeed: 32 Best Fantasy Novels of 2015
ABC Best Books for Young Readers Catalog
Flavorwire: The 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of 2015 So Far
LA Times Summer Reading
Locus Recommended Reading
Norton Award Finalist

Wasp’s job is simple. Hunt ghosts. And every year she has to fight to remain Archivist. Desperate and alone, she strikes a bargain with the ghost of a supersoldier. She will go with him on his underworld hunt for the long-lost ghost of his partner and in exchange she will find out more about his pre-apocalyptic world than any Archivist before her. And there is much to know. After all, Archivists are marked from birth to do the holy work of a goddess. They’re chosen. They’re special. Or so they’ve been told for four hundred years.

Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won’t survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.

Nicole takes the Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe.
Angela Slatter interviews Nicole Kornher-Stace.

Read an excerpt on Tor.com.
Nicole Kornher-Stace and the Page 69 Test on TNBBC.
io9: Essential Books.

Reviews

“Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kohrner-Stace arrived like the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park: ripples in the water, and then a titanic emergence that blew expectations away. Its complex characters, engaging world, and challenging questions drew readers to its pages like iron to a magnet. A story of revolution, pain, friendship, ghosts, scars, and survival, Archivist Wasp has more than earned its place on this Best Of list, and will continue to change reader’s lives for years to come.”
— Martin Cahill, Book Riot: Best of 2015

“This book. This book. In the past few years, there’ve been a handful of books I count it a privilege to have read—a handful of books with which I fell instantly and deeply in love. . . . Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp has added itself to that list.”
— Liz Bourke, Tor.com

“Now the story becomes clear for what it is: a story about agency, freedom and revolution. All of sudden, this book Mad-Max-Fury-Roaded me, like a boss. SO! Incredible characters – fleshed-out, human, complicated: check. Beautiful writing: check. Plot that develops like it was written for me: check. A cool mixture of Fantasy and Science Fiction, because ghosts but also super-soldiers: check and check. Reminiscent of everything I love but completely its own thing, a SF YA like I haven’t read in a while, Archivist Wasp is a book I will treasure.”
— Ana Grilo, The Book Smugglers

“A jarring yet satisfying reveal, one that fully justifies the obscuring of truth and arrangement of clues that leads up to it. It’s also modestly, quietly profound. “We bring our own monsters with us” is a refrain in the book, and as pat as that statement sounds, it’s not used glibly. With understated skill, Archivist Wasp twists myth, fantasy and science fiction into a resonant tale of erasure and absence — and an aching reminder that regaining what has been lost isn’t always the answer.”
— Jason Heller, NPR

“Creepy and unsettling (but in a good way), with a superb ending.”
— Tim, Prairie Lights

“A few times a year, if you’re lucky, you read a book that becomes part of your permanent recommendations list. These are the books that, when someone asks you what they should read next, are the first ones you throw into the conversation. “Have you read this one? What about this?” I read Archivist Wasp in 2015 and have been recommending it on the regular ever since.”
— Jenn Northington, Book Riot

“Kornher-Stace exhibits immense fluidity and grace of prose. She is able to evoke the creepy, barren, stifled post-collapse world; the other-dimensional byways down which the ghost brings Wasp; and the pre-collapse Project Latchkey environment where Foster works, all in differing but equally vivid styles. The reader will feel the cold and damp, the scalpels and clamps, the fairytale ambiance of a ghostly “waystation,” with exactitude and weight. Likewise, Kornher-Stace exhibits fine skills with characterization: Wasp and the ghost both emerge fully rounded. And her action scenes are cinematic.”
— Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“A ravishing, profane, and bittersweet post-apocalyptic bildungsroman transcends genre into myth.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Wasp is used the properties of her world that might be strange to the reader. And while one character offers a perspective on a more familiar world, that’s also not one with which we’re familiar. It can be dizzying, but in the way that works that reconfigure expectations often are. Call this novel YA, call it science fiction or science fantasy, call it a new mythology. But by all means, call it compelling.”
— Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Young adults will be able to relate to Wasp’s inner turmoil and her battle to understand a world full of inexplicable hatred and violence. The fast pace and graphic action will draw in reluctant readers.
VERDICT A must-have for dystopian fans who prefer to avoid love stories and pat endings.”
— School Library Journal

“This isn’t your typical YA novel. With myth, mystery, and heart, it is a post-apocalyptic world unlike anything you’ve ever read. Perfect for fans of Anna Dressed in Blood and science Fiction.”
— YA Books Central

“My new favorite forthcoming YA SF. And that’s all I’m going to say, because this book needs to pull you in and spin you around a couple times before leading you down its path.”
— Paula Willey, Baltimore County Public Library

“This is a lean, mean book with a lean, mean main character, and among all the post-apocalyptic dross, it’s pure gold.”
— Geekly, Inc.

“GLORIOUSLY appealing and what I most like: Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp. Throw this book in the face of anyone who suggests that the dystopian YA genre is all tapped out!”
— Jenny Davidson, The Explosionist

Early readers respond to Archivist Wasp

“The full adrenaline ride . . .  Kornher-Stace writes a mean action sequence.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Archivist Wasp is a gorgeous and complex book, featuring a deadly girl who traverses an equally deadly landscape. Wasp won me over, and she’s sure to find fans among teens and grown-ups alike.”
— Phoebe North, author of Starglass

“A tremendously inventive and smart novel. Archivist Wasp is like Kafka by way of Holly Black and Shirley Jackson, but completely original. Highly recommended.”
— Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy

“Sharp as a blade and mythically resonant, Archivist Wasp is a post-apocalyptic ghost story unlike anything else I’ve read. Trust me, you want this book.”
— Karina Sumner-Smith, author of Radiant

“Brutal post-apocalypse meets sci-fi techno-thriller meets a ghost story for the ages in this astonishingly original novel from Nicole Kornher-Stace. You’ve never read anything like Archivist Wasp, but once you have you’ll be clamoring for more.”
— Mike Allen, author of Unseaming

“A gorgeous, disturbing, compelling book with a smart, complicated heroine who bestrides her post-apocalyptic world like a bewildered force of nature. Reading it was a wild ride and a thoroughly satisfying one.”
— Delia Sherman, author of The Freedom Maze

“One of the most revelatory and sublime books I’ve ever read, Archivist Wasp is a must-read for fans of post-apocalyptic fiction. Kornher-Stace is a genius, and I can’t wait to see what she does next!”
— Tiffany Trent, author of The Unnaturalists

“Archivist Wasp turns destiny on its head, and it re-invents the world you know to do it. Strong. Fast. Addictive.”
— Darin Bradley, author of Noise and Chimpanzee

“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

Praise for Nicole Kornher-Stace’s writing:

“In richly textured, atmospheric prose, Kornher-Stace delivers a spellbinding tale of deception, betrayal, and the darker possibilities of playacting.”–Booklist

“Mesmerizing from the first page and once you get into its flow, a page turner to boot.”—Fantasy Book Critic

“Absorbing, exciting, intellectually fascinating, emotionally true and well-crafted, bobbles and all.”—Ideomancer

About the Author

Nicole Kornher-Stace lives in New Paltz, NY, with two humans, three ferrets, and more books than strictly necessary. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and Archivist Wasp is her second novel.

Cover art by Jacquelin de Leon.


Kirkus and PW on The Liminal War

Fri 1 May 2015 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Liminal War coverEveryone take note: this summer we’re publishing two novels by Ayize Jama-Everett. They’re pure pageturning SF and the proof is here in the first two — stripped to the bone — trade reviews:

Kirkus: scrappy · careen through  · the space-time continuum · frequently outrageous battles · supernatural · survivors · legendary musicians  ·  strange god · nonhuman entities · swiftly, cramming · action-adventure · speed · refreshing · refreshingly · engaging · likable · fast-paced · dangers · survivors · legendary musicians  ·  strange god · nonhuman entities · swiftly, cramming · action-adventure · speed · refreshing · refreshingly · engaging · likable · fast-paced · dangers

Publishers Weekly: raw wattage · lit up · healer/killer · epic · sociopathic · rich, dense ·  blast · pure psychic chaos · “mine by choice” ·  superpowered · stumped · four-billion-year-old vegetable god · cyclonic energy · verbal legerdemain · noir-infused verve

For a taster, you can start reading Ayize’s first book The Liminal People here.