Who Are The People in the Castle?

Tue 12 Apr 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

The People in the Castle cover - click to view full sizeIt has been eight years since we published our first Joan Aiken title, The Serial Garden, and five (where does the time go?!) since the second, The Monkey’s Wedding, was released. Today is the publication day for our third Joan Aiken collection, The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories.

The book came about because Kelly and I had been talking to Joan’s daughter, Lizza Aiken, for a while about what fun it would be to make a selection of favorite stories from across the many, many collections Joan published — there are twenty-eight collections listed in the front matter of The People in the Castle, and that does not include some of her kid’s collections. (See all Joan’s books here.)

So Kelly and I went back and read as many of the collections as we could, which was obviously the most enjoyable part of the project and something I recommend replicating — you can usually find loads of her books at the library. Kelly has a better memory than me, so she would say something like How about story “x” from this book? or I love story “y” from that book and I’d go back and read it yet again and soon Kelly and I and Lizza came up with dream lists of stories we’d like to include. Of course the lists were too long and there was some horse trading (how about we drop these two stories but add this one? etc.) and in the end we had a list that satisfied everyone of twenty dark, funny, oddball, sometimes heart-wrenching stories. And now: they are a book!

We received finished copies of the book from the printer just in time to take with us to the AWP Conference in LA and we had the great pleasure of selling out of it very quickly — that cover has the magic pick-me-up quality that all publishers and authors everywhere are always searching for.

Kelly wrote an introduction to the collection:

“The particular joys of a Joan Aiken story have always been her capacity for this kind of brisk invention; her ear for dialect; her characters and their idiosyncrasies. Among the stories collected in this omnibus, are some of the very first Joan Aiken stories that I ever fell in love with, starting with the title story ‘The People in the Castle,’ which is a variation on the classic tales of fairy wives.”

The whole introduction — as well as the title story — is available for your reading pleasure on the Tin House blog and Kelly’s introduction segues beautifully into Lizza’s introduction, “The Power of Storytelling: Joan Aiken’s Strange Stories”:

“Joan Aiken once described a moment during a talk she was giving at a conference, when to illustrate a point she began to tell a story. At that moment, she said, the quality of attention in the room subtly changed. The audience, as if hypnotised, seemed to fall under her control.
‘Everyone was listening, to hear what was going to happen next.’
From her own experience, whether as an addictive reader from early childhood or as a storyteller herself, learning to amuse a younger brother growing up in a remote village, by the time she was writing for a living to support her family, she had learned a great respect for the power of stories.”

 Publishers Weekly gave the book a boxed, signed review: “There’s so much to love about this slender collection… The juxtaposition of mundane and magical…feels effortless and fresh. The language is simply splendid, so evocative, as though the stories were actually very dense poems. And it brilliantly showcases Aiken’s affectionate, humorous, deft portrayals of female characters… Aiken’s prose is extraordinary, impossible to do justice to in this small space. Her skill with the language of folk tales—specifically the oral storytelling native to the British Isles—is unparalleled.”

If you’d like a taste, try “The Cold Flame” which is available on Tor.com. This story makes me shiver and laugh every time.

Get your copy today: Small Beer · Weightless · Powell’s · IndieBound

Sale options:

  1. The People in the Castle (hc) + The Monkey’s Wedding (hc): $38
  2. The People in the Castle (hc) + The Monkey’s Wedding (hc) + The Serial Garden (pb): $50

The People in the Castle

Tue 12 Apr 2016 - Filed under: Books, Joan Aiken| Posted by: Gavin

April 2016: trade cloth · 256 pages · $24 · 9781618731128 | ebook · 9781618731135
November 2017: trade paper · $18 · 9781618731449

LeVar Burton reads Joan Aiken

Washington Post Notable Book

Read the introduction and title story on Tin House.

Here is the whisper in the night, the creak upstairs, that half-remembered ghost story that won’t let you sleep, the sound that raises gooseflesh, the wish you’d checked the lock on the door before it got really, really dark. Here are tales of suspense and the supernatural that will chill, amuse, and exhilarate.

“The particular joys of a Joan Aiken story have always been her capacity for this kind of brisk invention; her ear for dialect; her characters and their idiosyncrasies. Among the stories collected in this omnibus, are some of the very first Joan Aiken stories that I ever fell in love with, starting with the title story “The People in the Castle,” which is a variation on the classic tales of fairy wives.”
— Kelly Link, from her Introduction

Reviews

“Renowned fabulist and children’s author Joan Aiken had a long and prolific career, and it’s easy to see why her career endured across decades. Her stories have a timeless feel, whether screwball romantic comedies about ghosts, or tales of confounded faerie royalty.”
— Joel Cunningham, B&N, The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Collections and Anthologies of 2016

“Though the late fantastical British writer is best known for her children’s literature, this short story collection, edited by Aiken’s daughter Lizza and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist Kelly Link, compiles tales of the surreal and supernatural suited for an adult audience. ‘A Leg Full of Rubies’ features a doctor whose own mortality is measured out by the grains of sand in an hourglass; ‘A Portable Elephant’ imagines a world where a live animal companion is required to buy passage across a border. ‘She was one of those writers who made me think you can be funny while telling a scary story,’ Link says. ‘You can still write really fresh contemporary takes on a classical ghost story.’”
—Ryan Porter, Toronto Star

“Renowned fabulist and children’s author Joan Aiken had a long and prolific career, and it’s easy to see why her career endured across decades. Her stories have a timeless feel, whether screwball romantic comedies about ghosts, or tales of confounded faerie royalty. If you’re an Aiken neophyte, this offers an amazing starting point, with stories running the gamut of fantasy, horror, comic fantasy, reimagined fairy tales, and legends. If you’ve experienced Aiken before, this is a selection of her best work. Either way, The People in the Castle is a great example of why her stories still hold up.”
Standout stories: “Sonata for Harp and Bicycle” “Some Music for the Wicked Countess”
— Barnes & Noble: 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

“[A] haunting and wondrous book.”
— Emily Nordling, Tor.com

“For readers unfamiliar with Aiken’s work, its ice-and-stars clarity, naturalism, and unerring dialogue can be described as hypnotic. . . . Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories by M.R. James, Henry James, Nugent Barker and similar others, and her textured prose certainly evokes dread and the uncanny, but there is a third aspect that can only be called “glamour” or enchantment. Easy comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Bradbury have been made, and Aiken’s fabulism (at least in my opinion) is of equal caliber, but less claustrophobic.”
— See the Elephant

“If you’re looking for speculative short fiction of a decided literary bent, it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying source than this assembly of fantastical work by the peerless, prolific Joan Aiken (who died in 2004), assembled from across her storied career. The magical and the everyday collide in these short, evocative tales, which, in marvelously efficient, elegant prose, find unsettling strangeness lurking just around the corner from normal (the ghost of a puppy is trapped in an abandoned storage box, fairy queen squat in overgrown forests). A slim, seriously moving collection.”
— Joel Cunningham, B&N SF&F

“Joan Aiken has been a favorite of mine since my childhood reading of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, a book that has stuck with me for decades. This collection is wonderful, full of undiscovered gems, and important. Joan Aiken is a classic.”
— Susan Buchman, Stonington Free Library

“A welcome anthology of fantasy stories by a 20th-century master. The author of the beloved classic gothic for children The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Aiken (1924-2004) also wrote hundreds of works of popular fiction that spanned the genres, from fantasy to horror to historical fiction, including several Jane Austen sequels. Naturally the tone of her books and short stories varies with their content, but its main notes include sophisticated, spritely satire and the darker moods of literary fairy tales. Fans of Wolves will recognize the honorable orphans and cruel guardians who populate these tales. Typically the wicked meet with fitting fates and the innocent triumph, though for Aiken, a good death counts as a happy ending. She plays with the contrast between the eldritch and modern culture and technology: ghosts and dead kings out of legend who contact the living by telephone, a doctor who writes prescriptions for fairies, a fairy princess who’s fond of Westerns. Her metaphors and similes surprise and delight: “the August night was as gentle and full as a bucket of new milk”; “He was tall and pale, with a bony righteous face and eyes like faded olives”; across a field, “lambs [followed] their mothers like iron filings drawn to a magnet in regular converging lines.” Sprightly but brooding, with well-defined plots, twists, and punch lines, these stories deserve a place on the shelf with the fantasies of Saki (H.H. Munro), Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Susanna Clarke.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“There’s so much to love about this slender collection… The juxtaposition of mundane and magical…feels effortless and fresh. The language is simply splendid, so evocative, as though the stories were actually very dense poems. And it brilliantly showcases Aiken’s affectionate, humorous, deft portrayals of female characters… Aiken’s prose is extraordinary, impossible to do justice to in this small space. Her skill with the language of folk tales—specifically the oral storytelling native to the British Isles—is unparalleled… These stories both feel very 20th century and somehow timeless.”
— Publishers Weekly, Boxed, signed review by Rose Fox, Senior Reviews Editor

Table of Contents

Introduction by Kelly Link [read it on Tin House]
“The Power of Storytelling: Joan Aiken’s Strange Stories” by Lizza Aiken
Cold Flame
The Dark Streets of Kimball’s Green
Furry Night
Hope
Humblepuppy
The Lame King
The Last Specimen
A Leg Full of Rubies
Listening
Lob’s Girl
The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick
The Mysterious Barricades [read it on Lit Hub]
Old Fillikin
The People in the Castle [read it on Tin House]
A Portable Elephant
A Room Full of Leaves
She Was Afraid of Upstairs
Some Music for the Wicked Countess
Sonata for Harp and Bicycle
Watkyn, Comma

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings, the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents’ divorce her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong.
Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories, All You’ve Ever Wanted was published in 1953. After her first husband’s death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at Argosy and working at an advertising agency before turning to writing fiction full time. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women’s Own, and many other magazines.
She wrote over a hundred books and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE.

Cover art “The Castle in the Air” by Joan Aikman, 1939. © Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis

Praise for Joan Aiken’s stories:

“Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising, this collection-like the mermaid in a bottle-is a literary treasure that should be cherished by fantastical fiction fans of all ages.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Darkly whimsical stories…Aiken writes with surpassing spirit and alertness, her elegant restraint and dry wit never fail to leave their mark.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Each story has a surprise or twist. Many are ironic, go-figure pieces. They are just like real life, only more so. VERDICT: This book will appeal to readers of short stories and literary fiction. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal

“Aiken’s pastoral meadows and circus chaos, gothic grotesques and quirky romances… have a dream-like quality executed with a brevity and wit that is a testament to her skill as a story-teller.” — California Literary Review

“From a bottled mermaid brought home from a sailor’s adventures at sea to a vicar reincarnated as a malevolent cat, fantasy is combined with magic, myth and adventure to form weird, wonderful and immersive tales.” — For Book’s Sake

Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband’s death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women’s Own, and many others. Visit her online at: www.joanaiken.com | The People in the Castle.


Who isn’t jealous of Jeff?

Fri 8 Apr 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, just sent us this!

“No one writes more beautifully about American nightmares and dreams. Every story is great but my favorites are “Word Doll,” “Rocket Ship to Hell,” “The Last Triangle,” and — especially — “The Prelate’s Commission.” Ford takes ideas that most writers would cling to and milk for three or four or five hundred pages and tosses them off left and right like they were nothing on his way to new worlds he seems to create out of thin air. If these stories weren’t so god damn enjoyable they’d make me jealous as hell.”


One for the Poets

Thu 7 Apr 2016 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Tor.com just posted a Joan Aiken story from The People in the Castle. It is creepy, funny, fantastic, and as Tor says, “darkly lyrical.”  It is for poets, would-be poets, for writers, I suppose, of all sort, and writers’ families . . .

“Patrick was a poet, perhaps I should explain. Had been a poet. Or said he was. No one had ever seen his poetry because he steadfastly refused to let anyone read his work, though he insisted, with a quiet self-confidence not otherwise habitual to him, that the poems were very good indeed. In no other respect was he remarkable, but most people quite liked Patrick; he was a lanky, amusing creature with guileless blue eyes and a passion for singing sad, randy songs when he had had a drink or two. For some time I had been a little in love with Patrick. I was sorry to hear he was dead.”