Start the Logic Series for Free

Tue 11 Dec 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Free books, Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin

Next month we’re bringing Laurie J. Marks’s first Elemental Logic novel, Fire Logic, back into print — it’s been available as an ebook for years but now you’ll be able to hold the new edition with Kathleen Jennings’s lovely lively art in your hands . . . and by summertime you’ll be able to have a matching set of all four novels.

To celebrate, this month we’re giving away 15 copies of Fire Logic on LibraryThing (US only due to mailing costs) as well as 15 copies of the second novel Earth Logic.

And: month we’ll give away 15 copies the third novel in the series Water Logic and . . .

yes,

at last,

15 copies of the final novel

Air Logic.

I can’t wait to getting Air Logic out into the world. It’s a huge series, heartbreaking, deeply immersive, thought-provoking, and satisfying. We’re also sending the last book out for blurbs and beginning to send it to reviewers —it’s up on Edelweiss, too, of course. I’ll leave it to Delia Sherman to have the last word here:

“If you’ve been looking for an exciting, thoughtful, queer, diverse, politically aware, complex, timely, beautifully written saga of a fascinating world and set of characters, here it is.”
— Delia Sherman

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Celebrating the NPR Best of 2018

Tue 27 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Claire G. Coleman, John Schoffstall, year's bests| Posted by: Gavin

Today NPR posted their endlessly fascinating year-end book concierge and I am elated to find that two of our titles are included.

But first, have you tried it? There are 32 filters and I am going to try every one of them, but not right now, as I have to ship ship ship books from our recent sale — so yay and thanks to everyone who ordered and I hope you enjoy the books!

But, look: who doesn’t need a Rather Short book sometimes? And then winter is great for Rather Long books. There are 3 or 4 books in the Comics I want to read and I love that Shobha Roa’s excellent Girls Burn Brighter is the first title that pops up in the Eye-Opening Reads. I could go on (and point out faves such as Sofia and Del Samatar’s Monster Portraits) but, really, NPR have set you up here. Hope you enjoy playing with it as much as I do.

The two Small Beer novels that are included are:

John Schoffstall, Half-Witch

Claire G. Coleman, Terra Nullius

I posted two tweets after finding out these two books were on the list. They are quite understated because if I tried to encapsulate my joy in discovery I would have exploded the 280-character limit and perhaps my laptop, too.

While I tend to think the books we publish are some of the best I read each year, I never know how the world will take them. Some books land well, some don’t. Some find their readership over years, not months. It is at once a joy, a vindication, a relief, and an inspiration to see these books read and put forward — among hundreds of other great books — as some of the best of the year.

We will raise a glass tonight to these authors and to all the authors who send us or let us publish their books. Thanks again, Claire and John, hope you celebrate, too!

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Viral Swedes

Tue 27 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I think this sentence smashing together two recent news stories is the most-read sentence I’ve written, at least so far. I wrote 2-3 versions in, say a minute, read it out loud, left the full stop/period off on purpose, and fired it off. Closed the twitter tab on Firefox, did some task at work. Checked on it five minutes later and maybe 3 people had liked it and I figured, ok, as per usual I thought that might have been more popular, but I guess not.

I finished up whatever work I was doing on October 25th (besides despairing about the USA and the world, which is an everyday rather than a specific day thing), drove home, and walked over to pick up our kid from school.

After dinner I looked at twitter and that tweet had 1.6k likes, which is something like 10 times more than 99.9% of everything posted and right then and there (after marveling over it and telling Kelly about it) I began to really understand how twitter makes money. Millions of people write on it for . . . free. I don’t support websites that ask writers to write for free and I think Facebook is a sucking deathhole that wants to kill the web and extract money from as many people as possible, but I so enjoy Twitter: I follow people I know, and many more that I don’t, an unwieldy slowly built-up group of writers, musicians, artists, booksellers, journalists, and many random people that I don’t know and can’t really remember why I follow them. I drop and add people (sometimes the same ones) all the time. I like the account that posts antique fruit paintings but I can’t take most of the satirical ones. Sometimes I use the phone app — although it really is the mindkiller — and sometimes I use the chronological bookmark someone made (thank you!). I usually open it at least once a day — although I spend a lot less time on my laptop during the weekend so sometimes I’ll happily skip a day or two — and see what’s going on. And all those smart, funny people are right there, writing things that will spread out from wherever they are and maybe — as the tweet below did for apparently 800,000+ people — pop up on twitter for me to enjoy. Lucky me.

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4-Day Sale

Fri 23 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., sale| Posted by: Gavin

What it says on the tin: 4-Day Sale: 25-80% off regular prices. Prices include shipping — so please order 2-100 titles!

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2018 by the Numbers

Mon 19 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, Andy Duncan, Claire G. Coleman, John Schoffstall, starred review, Su Wei, Vandana Singh, year's bests| Posted by: Gavin

Before this week disappears I wanted to post about the year in Small Beer. The year out in the world is very dark although I refuse to be pessimistic about the present and the future. I believe everyone rises together and that working with that in mind is the way to live. One of the ways I can deal with all the crap right wing antihumanists are throwing at us around the world — besides going to protests, calling politicians, tweeting in desperation, lying on the floor, donating to nonprofits, and listening to audiobooks instead of the news — is to keep making things. Some of those things go out into the world, some of them are breakfast, some of them are ephemeral toys me and my kid make. The biggest things I make, with Kelly and the work of many other people, come out from Small Beer Press.

Every year I want to look back and see that we’ve published stories I haven’t read before — seems like a good place to throw in a reminder that we’re always looking for work by women and writers of color; our submissions are always open and we still ask for paper subs because there are two of us and we want to read everything.

So, in 2018 we published 2 issues of our million-year-old zine — still the best zine named after Winston Churchill’s Cobble-Hill Brooklynite mother, Jennie Jerome — LCRW and 6 diverse and fascinating books. To break down the books a little:

7 starred reviews — feel free to grab the illo above and put it into the hands of Netflix, review editors, &c.
5 US debuts
3 novels, 3 short story collections
3 women, 3 men
1 translation
2 NPR Best Books of 2018
1 Washington Post Best of the Year
plus 4 reprints:
— Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands, 3rd printing, June 2018
— Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, 5th printing, June 2018
— Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen, 9th printing, November 2018
— Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light, short run reprint, November 2018
Somewhat related: 1 MacArthur Fellowship (so we had a sale — sort of still going)

The books:

Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories by Vandana Singh
“Magnificent.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review), Top 10 SF, Fantasy & Horror Spring 2018
“hopeful, enriching” — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

The Invisible Valley: a novel by Su Wei, translated by Austin Woerner
“pleasantly picaresque” — Publishers Weekly
“complex, colorful characters” — Kirkus Reviews
“shocking and gritty” — Library Journal
“lushly atmospheric and haunting novel” — Booklist

Half-Witch: a novel by John Schoffstall
NPR Best Books of 2018
“Genuinely thrilling.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“a marvel of storytelling” — Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories by Abbey Mei Otis
“A breathtaking reading experience.” — Booklist (starred review)
“An exciting voice. . . . dreamy but with an intense physicality.” — Washington Post “5 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2018”

Terra Nullius: a novel by Claire G. Coleman
NPR Best Books of 2018
Stella Prize finalist
“Imaginative, astounding.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

An Agent of Utopia: New & Selected Stories by Andy Duncan
“Zany and kaleidoscopic.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Evocative, playful, and deeply accomplished.” — Booklist (starred review)

The zine

fiction: 9 women, 3 men
nonfiction: 1 woman
poetry: 3 women, 2 men
2 first publications

So far next year, besides helping with the ongoing progressive revolution, we’re planning on making many Small Beer things including 2 (or maybe 3) issues of LCRW and at least 3 books:

1 debut
1 novel, 2 short story collections
2 women, 1 man
4 Reprints
— Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic, January 2019
— Laurie J. Marks, Earth Logic, February 2019
— Sofia Samatar, Tender: Stories, trade paperback, April 2019
— Sarah Rees Brennan, an, In Other Lands, trade paperback, September 2019

And one or both of us are planning to be at Boskone (Boston, February), AWP (Portland, OR, March), WisCon (Madison, WI, May), Readercon (Boston, July), Brooklyn Book Festival (September), & maybe more, who can say?

We published a lot of things to read this year and we know at least 2 people (us!) loved them. Hope you get a chance to read and enjoy them, too.

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Holiday Deadlines 2018

Thu 15 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., shipping news| Posted by: Gavin

Boom! Holiday Shipping Deadlines! Our office will be closed from December 21 – January 2, 2019. It is unlikely we will ship over that period. Weightless Books is there for you: 24/7/365.

tl;dr order now

Here are the last order dates for Small Beer Press — which, in case you’re thinking about waiting until the last minute to order some Vandana Shivas are about the same as every other biz in the USA. Dates for international shipping are also here.

All orders include free first class (LCRW) or media mail (books) shipping 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 Priority Mail:

Domestic Mail Class/Product	Deadline
Media Mail (estimate, not guaranteed)	Dec. 14
First Class Mail (LCRW only)	Dec. 20
Priority Mail	Dec. 20
Priority Mail Express	Dec. 22

Order a book today!

Just like to read a book, don’t care about a ding or two?

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A Star Sooner

Thu 15 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, starred review| Posted by: Gavin

The first trade review is in for Sarah Pinsker’s debut short story collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea and it is a star from Publishers Weekly! Next year’s going to be all Sarah, all the time: her debut novel Song for a New Day comes out later in the year from Ace. What fun! For the moment, here’s the review:

This beautiful, complex debut collection assembles some of Nebula winner Pinsker’s best stories into a twisting journey that is by turns wild, melancholic, and unsettling. In the opening story, an injured farmer adjusts to living with a cybernetic arm that thinks it is a stretch of road in Colorado. “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” tells the story of a woman piecing together her husband’s enigmatic past after a stroke leaves him speechless. “No Lonely Seafarer” pits a stablehand against a pair of sirens as he attempts to save his town from its restless sailors. In all of Pinsker’s tales, humans grapple with their relationships to technology, the supernatural, and one another. Some, such as Ms. Clay in “Wind Will Rove,” are trying to navigate the space between technology as preservation and technology as destruction. Others, such as Kima in “Remembery Day,” rely on technology to live their lives. The stories are enhanced by a diverse cast of LGBTQ and nonwhite characters. Pinsker’s captivating compendium reveals stories that are as delightful and surprising to pore through as they are introspective and elegiac.

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Andy Duncan, An Agent of Utopia

Wed 14 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Andy Duncan| Posted by: Gavin

A year or so ago when I scheduled the release date of An Agent of Utopia I didn’t realize it would coincide with one of the most stressful days of the year but now that the mid-term elections are mostly done (ha), here’s something I’ve been looking forward to writing on the release of Andy Duncan’s second North American/third collection:

Andy Duncan is one of those people in the background helping everyone along. He’s the hardest working man in show business! He’s a great teacher. He’s lively on social media and at conventions and conferences. He has been a local news reporter, written for trucking magazines, and has a fun book on Alabama Curiosities. Should you get a chance to hear him read you should take it as he is a fabulous storyteller. One year at the World Fantasy Awards everyone sang him a song. How many people has that happened to? One.

Enough chat? Listen to Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe chat with Andy on Episode 340(!) of the Coode Street Podcast.

Andy Duncan is not, he’ll happily admit, the fastest writer in the world and for a couple of years I kind of thought this book might be the one that got away. 

In March 2012 Kelly was the Guest of Honor at the ICFA conference in Florida and she and I chatted to Andy and Sydney and had a grand old time. (Sydney/ICFA arranged for babysitting so that I could go to the banquet: now that’s looking after people with kids in tow!) A few days later Andy messaged me on Facebook — perhaps the worst way (involving words) that I can be contacted; I’d be happy if FB disappeared completely — and mentions Beluthahatchie and Other Stories is out of print and maybe we could talk . . . so I emailed him and with a click and a zoom, eighteen months fly by and we have a signed contract. 

Eighteen months? I’m slow with contracts (I have to find time to stop and think about every word), but eighteen months is far longer than most of our contracts. Who can say why. Weren’t we all filled with joy and delight all through 2012, 2013, and 2014? Hmm. So at last it was signed, a check delivered, and I added the book to our schedule. Then . . . I pushed it back, and back, and eventually I moved it to the theoretical category until one happy day in August 2016 while we were visiting family in Scotland Andy emailed the title story and with that, suddenly, the book was done. 

An Agent of Utopia is a wide-ranging collection and, as Matthew Keeley notes in his Tor.com review, “The title story of the new collection is, oddly enough, perhaps the least characteristic in the collection.” He goes on to say “An Agent of Utopia must rank as one of this year’s best collections. It’s on bookstore shelves now and deserves to be on your shelves soon” a lovely sentiment I agree with. If you can’t get Andy Duncan to come and spin a dozen tales just for you, pick up the book instead.

Read a story:

Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse
Slow as a Bullet
Close Encounters

 

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Air Logic on Edelweiss + Updated Cover

Tue 13 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin

Laurie J. Marks’s final Elemental Logic novel will be going out to reviewers by the end of the month — reviewers who like electronic versions can go right now this very instant directly to Edelweiss.

And: Here’s Kathleen Jennings’s near-final cover for Air Logic. This series just knocks me over every time I go back to it. If it’s new to you, you have a huge immersive compulsively readable story to dig into. As Delia Sherman says,

The ebooks of the first 3 books are available now and the reprint dates (at last!) for the first two books, Fire Logic and Earth Logic, are below.

Reviewers, booksellers, librarians, lend me your ears! We are going to make a fuss about this series and this book!

Book 1 Fire Logic — January 22, 2019 — Edelweiss

Book 2 Earth Logic — February 19, 2019 — Edelweiss

Book 3 Water Logic — Edelweiss

Book 4 Air Logic —June 2019 — Edelweiss

And, fingers crossed, Laurie will be at WisCon to launch it!

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Vote? Vote!

Tue 6 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Hey readers in the USA, please go out and vote today!

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An Agent of Utopia

Tue 6 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 288 pages · $17 · 9781618731531 | ebook · 9781618731548

Signed copies available.

Locus Award finalist

“What might well be the collection of the year.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus, Recommended Reading List

“A wildly varied and consistently brilliant collection.”
— B&N, Favorite Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2018

Interviews:

• Lightspeed Interview by Christian A. Coleman
  
• Is Lord of the Rings Prejudiced Against Orcs? — Geeks Guide to the Galaxy

Andy Duncan has shamelessly told flat-out made-up stories for twenty years, and this book right here is the evidence.

In the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken—not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.

From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired “Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull” (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner “The Pottawatomie Giant” (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner “Close Encounters” to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” (first published in Eclipse) Duncan’s historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.

Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, “Joe Diabo’s Farewell” — in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show — and the title story, “An Agent of Utopia” — where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More’s head.

Table of Contents

An Agent of Utopia
Joe Diabo’s Farewell
Beluthahatchie
The Map to the Homes of the Stars
The Pottawatomie Giant (World Fantasy Award winner)
Senator Bilbo
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull
Zora and the Zombie
Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse
Slow as a Bullet
Close Encounters (Nebula Award Winner)

Advance Praise & Reviews of Andy Duncan’s Stories

“A sui generis author of speculative fiction, Andy Duncan gives us a beautiful new collection of stories in An Agent of Utopia. Hopping from Thomas More’s England to Flannery O’Connor’s South to Hell, Duncan’s charmingly colorful stories blur the lines between history, alternate history and the subtly fantastic.” — Angela Matano, Best Holiday Books, Campus Circle

“Andy Duncan – in what might well be the collection of the year – invoked everyone from Sir Thomas More to Zora Neal Hurston in An Agent of Utopia, which also brought together some of his most evocative tales about the hidden corners of Americana, from an afterlife for Delta blues singers to the travails of an aging UFO abductee.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Andy Duncan writes SF in a distinctive voice–big ideas hidden inside stories that read like tall tales told on the porch. But this collection shows that he has multiple strings to his bow.” — Benjamin Wald, SF Revu

“An essential introduction to one of the great tellers of fantastic tall tales.” — Graham Sleight (Ten books of the year, Locus)

“Andy Duncan’s charming and affable stories abound with hidden depths, and An Agent of Utopia is no different, with a dozen stories, including a pair of originals that are generating a lot of buzz.” — Tim Pratt, Locus

“Andy Duncan’s first North American collection since 2000, An Agent of Utopia (Small Beer) mixed new, recent, and older material in a book that showcased why he is a treasure.”
— Jonathan Strahan, Locus

“Reading Duncan can feel like being taken on a tour of your own dusty attic and being shown treasures you didn’t know you had.” — Chicago Tribune

“Must rank as one of this year’s best collections. It’s on bookstore shelves now and deserves to be on your shelves soon.” — Tor.com

“Whatever the topic, all of Duncan’s fictions are united by an evocative, playful, and deeply accomplished storytelling style. Highly recommended for fans of Kelly Link or other slipstream writers, and for any reader looking to lose themselves in an engaging and fun reading experience.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Zany and kaleidoscopic, the 12 stories in Duncan’s third collection draw on Southern traditions of tall tales and span time periods, continents, and the realm of human imagination to create an intricate new mythology of figures from history, literature, and American folklore. . . . This is a raucous, fantastical treat.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“There are few contemporary writers in any genre as immediately identifiable by voice alone as Andy Duncan. . . . with his wry sense of absurdity. . . . ‘The Map to the Homes of the Stars’ describes a pair of teen friends who cruise around listening to Aerosmith or the Beatles while mapping out the homes of girls as though they were Hollywood celebrities, until one of them unexpectedly escapes with one of the girls, leaving his friend, years later, to muse on the map his own life has followed. It’s not really fantastic at all, but it feels like the most personal tale in the book, and it captures, as movingly as anything in this brilliant collection, the distance between the dreams and legends we inherit and those that we make for ourselves.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“A rare book that blends fun with fury and tomfoolery with social consciousness.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Andy Duncan is a writer’s SFF writer—his short fiction has earned him a Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and three World Fantasy Awards and won him endless praise from genre giants like Gardner Dozois, Nancy Kress, Michael Swanwick, and Jonathan Strahan. Now, Small Beer press has assembled his most noteworthy stories—along with two new tales—into a wildly varied and consistently brilliant collection drawing from tall tales and legends of old, and featuring a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a yam-eating zombie, Harry Houdini, Thomas More, and more.”
— Joel Cunningham, B&N, Favorite Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2018

“An Agent of Utopia is all the proof you’ll need to see that Andy Duncan is one of the very best short story writers in Science Fiction, Fantasy, or anywhere else. It’s a sure bet that you’re holding in your hand the best story collection of the year.”
— Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell

“Duncan will get you to bust a gut laughing. He’ll make you teary, and put a shiver up your spine. But most importantly, his stories ask questions you might not know how to answer, and leave you looking inside yourself long after you’ve read the last line of his singing prose.”
— Lara Elena Donnelly, author of Amberlough

“Andy Duncan’s unique voice shines through in his third collection. You’ve not read him yet? Shame on you! Go out now and buy An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories. You’ll thank me.”
— Ellen Datlow, award-winning editor.

“Andy Duncan is one of the most hilarious and poignant writers of short stories that we have. He effortlessly forges dreamlike and nightmarish tales with wit and wisdom that rivals Mark Twain.”
— Christopher Barzak, author of Wonders of the Invisible World

“Andy Duncan is the Andy Duncan of Andy Duncanland, and we are all lucky to have access to that fabled locale via the portal between his brain and these pages. The stories in this collection drip with magic and mayhem and time and place and personhood, along with the most creative cussing this side of anywhere. Each one is a microcosm, a moment from our own history, real or imagined, passed along to us by a master storyteller.”
— Sarah Pinsker

“Andy Duncan is the best storyteller of our generation. Every page is breathtaking, down-to-earth magical.” — Ellen Klages

“Andy Duncan’s work bursts on the tongue. Every word is a rhythm, perfectly shaped to thrum in the throat, to twang in the mouth, to dance on beats of breath. His dialogue drums savory dialects. His prose is a brass instrument, trumpeting stories like songs. Like blues, like jazz, his stories are written to an American tempo, her checkered history, her bright syncopation, her Southern storytellers and conjuring women. He is a musician, magician, mythmaker, a raconteur of marvels.”
— Rachel Swirsky

“Mesmerizing.” — Ed Park, Los Angeles Times

“Duncan shows an hallucinatory grasp of idiom, of place-setting tact, an actor’s clarity at the rendering of voice.” — John Clute, Washington Post Book World

“There’s no good name for what Andy Duncan does. . . . Duncan’s imagination runs through that fertile ground previously tilled by artists such as Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson and Poe.” — Mark Hughes Cobb, The Tuscaloosa News

“Duncan’s short stories are marvels of setting and diction.” — Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“Virtually unclassifiable . . . as powerful as any from Richard Powers or Rick Moody, T. C. Boyle or Steve Erickson … a bizarre blend of Faulkner and Hemingway with touches of Tennessee Williams and Kurt Vonnegut.” — Gary S. Potter, Charleston Post and Courier

“You’re likely to be laughing one moment, in awe the next and perhaps horrified before the tale is done. Few authors can pull off such delicate tonal balances in a short story, although William Faulkner achieved it more than once … Will satisfy any reader brave enough to handle the strange places Duncan visits, the places between disturbing fantasy and ruthless reality.” — John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star

“Stunningly beautiful.” — Sean Melican, BookPage

“Duncan is often most comfortable when working in the rich tradition of the American folk tale, crafting shrewd and funny stories of the intersection between the modern world and folk traditions and superstitions, particularly those of Appalachia and the American South, but … he also has other strings to his bow, and a surprising depth of range as a stylist. … Whichever critical pigeonhole you try to push Andy Duncan into, he remains one of the best and most original writers in the business.” — Gardner Dozois

“Wonderful.” — Nancy Kress · “Wonderfully demented.” — Michael Swanwick · “Excellent.” — Rich Horton · “Superlative.” — Paula Guran · “Superb.” — Jonathan Strahan · Brilliant.” — Mary Anne Mohanraj · “Genius.” — Nick Gevers · “Irresistible.” — Ernest Hogan · “Knockout.” — Tim Pratt · “Powerful.” — Fiona Kelleghan · “Amazing.” — Patrick O’Leary · “Unique.” — Steven H. Silver

“Duncan has amassed a record of superior work out of all proportion to mere number of pages gathered between boards. He feels like an essential, towering part of the fantastika landscape, his every story eagerly awaited.” — Asimov’s Science Fiction

“Fantasist and folklorist, he takes premises that are not made up, or at least are not made up by Andy Duncan . . . and creates new and strange stories out of them, which nevertheless tell the truth about the way things happened.” — Christopher Cobb, Strange Horizons

“Duncan gives us the oldest form of fantasy, the legend, or folk tale: not just the childish folk legend of fireside entertainment but the one that has taken on enough mythic resonance to seem real.”  — Sherwood Smith, author of King’s Shield

“A new writer who, like Dylan, gathers up traditional materials and twists them into something new.” — Paul McAuley, author of Austral

About the Author

Andy Duncan’s short fiction has been honored with the Nebula, Sturgeon, and multiple World Fantasy awards. A native of Batesburg, SC, Duncan has been a newspaper reporter, a trucking-magazine editor, a bookseller, a student-media adviser, and, since 2008, a member of the writing faculty at Frostburg State University in the mountains of western Maryland, where he lives with his wife, Sydney.

 

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World Fantasy 2018

Fri 2 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons| Posted by: Gavin

Down in Baltimore the 2018 World Fantasy Convention is in full swing this weekend and I’m delighted to say that more than a handful of Small Beer authors and their books are there. Chris Logan Edwards of Tigereyes Books has the following titles in stock (along with all the other goodies that he carries!) and many of those authors will be stopping by to sign:

Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters
John Crowley, The Chemical Wedding
Andy Duncan, An Agent of Utopia
Jeffrey Ford, A Natural History of Hell
Eileen Gunn, Questionable Practices
Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees and The River Bank
Christopher Rowe, Telling the Map
Delia Sherman, Young Woman in a Garden

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Read Moonkids

Tue 30 Oct 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis| Posted by: Gavin

by Abbey Mei Otis. Now online at The Offing:

No denying it, though. Moonkids, they’re kind of stubby.
On account of them growing up on the moon. Your muscles
learn differently in moon gravity. Your bones form light like
a bird’s. Used to not even be possible to make the transition,
you’d touch down into earthpull and collapse like fast-melting
candles. Too many fractures for all the king’s horses and all the
king’s men. Way, way too many for Earth doctors to deal with.
(Earth doctors are known for not giving a shit.) Now, though,
they’ve got ways around it. They’ve got operations and stuff.
Every moonkid’s got incision scars in the same places.
Colleen likes that her friend Tesla works for Suzo too. Tesla
got promoted to assistant manager a couple weeks ago, because
she’s so bomb with the business side of things. Encouragement
is good for Tesla. The people side of things, she has more trouble
with.

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Startlingly Original and Deeply Familiar

Mon 8 Oct 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Schoffstall| Posted by: Gavin

I slept through most of Saturday due to having a cold, yay! Would I have slept the day away if it wasn’t the weekend, who knows? I could be a good bot and go to work and ship stuff out and infect everyone. But the question was moot, so sleep it was. Phew.

Sunday brought a relief from the cold and — ignoring for a moment the stupidity of the fools in charge — something good to read: the New York Times, which included a fantastic review by Amal El-Mohtar of John Schoffstall’s debut novel Half-Witch. Although if I’m honest, as per usual I read the business section first (I recommend the interview with Eileen Fisher) and the review section — where you owe it to yourself and this world to read Emma Gonzalez’s advice.

Later I found the review of John’s novel and took this photo with flowers that had been sent to Kelly in the background:

“John Schoffstall’s Half-Witch is one of those books that are simultaneously so startlingly original and deeply familiar I can’t quite believe they’re debuts. . . . Half-Witch is a marvel of storytelling, balancing humor, terror and grace. Lizbet is so earnestly good, in a way that I think has fallen out of fashion but that I loved reading. She and Strix are a perfect double act, and the shape and texture of the friendship they build is a joy to discover. . . . This is a book of crossing and mixing, of mashing and counter-mashing, with surprise and wonder the result. The ending suggests a sequel, which I hope comes about; the book’s last act is full of revelations (as it were) about the especially strange nature of Lizbet’s world that I’m keen to see Schoffstall develop and explore. But Half-Witch is also fully satisfying in and of itself.”
— Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

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MacWhat?

Thu 4 Oct 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Link: MacFound

Kelly Link!

<Keanu Reeves voice>Woah. </Keanu Reeves voice>

Um. ZOMG. Sale?

ETA: Yes, we did throw in an extra book to that order, thanks again!

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An Afternoon in Hanover, NH

Wed 3 Oct 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Award Season, Juan Martinez| Posted by: Gavin

On Monday I drove up to New Hampshire to attend a panel and reception with the winners of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award:

In the category of debut speculative fiction, the award goes to Best Worst American, by Juan Martinez (Small Beer Press, 2017). The co-winners of the inaugural prize in the open category are Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications, 2016), and On the Edge of Gone, by Corinne Duyvis (Amulet/Abrams, 2016).

I’d never been to the town of Hanover before and it seemed lovely and absolutely full of students. The panel and reception were held in the Filene Auditorium, which, of course, was in the basement. NYT bestseller and author of the recent hit The Mere Wife, Maria Dahvana Headley, the principle award judge for the award this year, was the chair of the panel (bad pre-panel pictures below, sorry!) and she had some fine questions for Martinez (who was brought in from Chicago) and Duyvis (who came in from Amsterdam) — Lavie Tidhar was travel-delayed as he came in from London and arrived in time for the reception.

After the panel, everyone enjoyed the buffet as the winners signed books and chatted with attendees, who included students, faculty, a local science fiction book club, and more. Besides being flown in and put up in a local hotel, the winners all received a check for $5,000 and a physical award — which maybe the university or one of the winners will post a picture of. All in all, it was a lovely first celebration and fingers crossed I’ll go up again in years to come.

ETA: Read more in The Dartmouth.

 

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2nd Star for Terra Nullius

Fri 28 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Claire G. Coleman, starred review| Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to see that Claire G. Coleman’s debut Terra Nullius has received its second starred review, this one from Library Journal! I saw it on Barnes & Noble, so go there to read the whole thing:

“Demonstrates Coleman’s promise as a creative storyteller. VERDICT Highly recommended.”
—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

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An Agent of Utopia gets a PW Star!

Mon 24 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Andy Duncan, starred review| Posted by: Gavin

Following the first pre-pub trade review for Andy Duncan’s An Agent of Utopia (“Stories that borrow from American folklore, history, and a plethora of literary sources to forge fantasy worlds that are intimately familiar. . . . A rare book that blends fun with fury and tomfoolery with social consciousness.” — Kirkus) here’s the second . . . and it’s a star from Publishers Weekly!

Zany and kaleidoscopic, the 12 stories in Duncan’s third collection draw on Southern traditions of tall tales and span time periods, continents, and the realm of human imagination to create an intricate new mythology of figures from history, literature, and American folklore. . . .  This is a raucous, fantastical treat. (Nov.)

Read the full review here.

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There Is No Nobody’s Land

Thu 20 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Claire G. Coleman| Posted by: Gavin

A year ago on September 7th I queried Hachette Australia about North American rights to Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius. I’d read Veronica Sullivan’s review in the Guardian and was immediately intrigued. Intrigued doesn’t quite catch the level of my curiosity, though. When I was a kid one of my favorite novels was John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids — which happily for me is in print from our friends at the New York Review Books — a post apocalyptic story of a kid who realizes that his differences puts him in danger. The Guardian review reminded me of The Chrysalids and when I looked for a US edition of Terra Nullius I was frustrated, then delighted, to find it did not yet exist.

When I reached out to Hachette Australia they first emailed then mailed me the book, the latter took some time thanks to Massachusetts being quite far from Australia, and on October 27th I made an offer on North American rights. By November 3rd negotiations were concluded and we were a go to publish. In the intervening eleven months we’ve sent review copies hither and yon throughout the US (and a few to Canada).

Terra Nullius starts with a kid, Jacky, running, and never stops. It is a page turner that will resonate uncomfortably for many readers in postcolonial countries and I believe it will be yet another in the many steps needed in the ongoing discussions of land ownership, land use, reparations, owning, belonging, home, &c. in North America the way it has in Australia.

When the book came out in Australia, Claire was featured at many book festivals and interviewed a lot. I’ve listened to most of these (links copied from her website, thanks, Claire!) and recommend leaving a tab open and listening to a few. Besides being a great writer, she is a live spark and well worth listening to:

Home Truths: Telling Australian Stories. Recoded at Sydney Writers festival, on ABC iView.

Radio National the Hub on Books Great Debate – Write What You Know on ABC Radio National.

I had a great chat with Andrew Pople on Final Draft, 2ser Sydney, you can hear it here.

The second episode of The Meanjin Podcast has me talking to Jonathan Green.

I spoke to Jonathan Green about Australia, the White Invaders and who the real nomads are on Blueprint for Living.

I spoke to Beverley Wang for It’s Not a Race Season 2 Episode 2 – For Us Happy Endings Feel Dishonest.

Panel at Melbourne Writers Festival 2017, facilitated by Adelle Walsh, featuring Samantha Shannon, Sami Shah, Garth Nix and Me – Reality and Fantasy (Youtube)

Rhianna Patrick interviewed some authors, including me, at Genrecon for her podcast.

The Wire – Reframing Australia’s History of Invasion. My interview with Bonnie Parker.

I was on ABC Brisbane on the 4th of July 2017 talking about my book and what inspired me to write it for NAIDOC weekhttp://www.abc.net.au/radio/brisbane/programs/evenings/evenings/8657932. I am on at about 1 hour and 29 minutes in.

Hear me talk about Aboriginal literature, family history and the frontier wars on Brisbane Murri Radiohttp://www.989fm.com.au/podcasts/lets-talk/claire-coleman/

I was interviewed by Triple J breakfast, it’s somewhere in this podcast: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/media/s4497391.htm

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Malaprop’s and Moon Palace

Wed 19 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, Nathan Ballingrud, readings| Posted by: Gavin

Do you live in Asheville or Minneapolis and just read Gary K. Wolfe’s review column and were wondering what Abbey Mei Otis’s stories sounded like? Good news pour vous! We’ve just added two more readings for Abbey Mei Otis in those very towns! The first is on Sunday, September 30 at 3 pm in the afternoon, where Abbey will be in conversation with Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters.

Sun., 9/30, 3 p.m. In conversation with Nathan Ballingrud
Malaprop’s
55 Haywood St., Asheville, NC
828-254-6734

And the second reading is at Moon Palace (yes, the store that just added LCRW!), where Abbey will read with Anya Johanna DeNiro:

10/23, 7 p.m.
Moon Palace Books
3032 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis MN  55406
612.454.0455

Recent Reviews

“Otis actually belongs with writers like Kelly Link, who freely borrow genre materials to construct elegant literary fictions far more about character than spectacle. . . . As odd as these worlds are, they are populated by sharply drawn characters we come to care about through Otis’ luminescent prose.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Chicago Tribune

“Otis doesn’t use science fiction to lift the veil of the familiar and peer at what’s beneath. Instead, with great shrewdness and courage and originality, she reveals that the veil was itself an illusion, and the familiar a construct of anything but.” — Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, IGMS

“Dreamy but with an intense physicality that belies the violence behind the longing.”— Everdeen Mason, Washington Post Book World

“It’s a collection that will keep your heart half in your throat and half in your toes, and I recommend it.” — Tor.com

“In these stories, yes, there are aliens, robots, sex dungeons, chicken puppets, ghosts, and blobs of unknown origin and nature. But there is also tenderness and the absence of it. There is prose that delights. There are plastic people, and people not sure if they can bleed. What these stories do best is sci-fi. What these stories do best is love. And if you need to distinguish between the two, then Abbey Mei Otis is here to deny you. For if barriers between what is ‘science fiction’ and what is ‘literature’ haven’t already broken down, then this collection is Abbey Mei Otis burying a glowing-neon hammer into that tired beige wall.”— Columbia Journal

“Many of the stories share an emphasis on physicality and embodiment, whether it be bodies distorted by alien environments or artifacts or people thrown into their own bodies through suffering at other, human hands. . . . highly recommended for anyone interested in weird fiction, sf, or just a breathtaking reading experience.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Abbey Mei Otis’s stories are incandescently dark, if you can imagine such a thing (but maybe only she can). Full of danger and strangeness, but written in carbonated and astounding prose that is all her own, these stories create worlds and will make you contemplate (and worry about) our own.” — Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“These are amazing, electric stories—you can feel the live wire sizzling in them from the first sentence, and you know you’re about to take a wild, unforgettable trip. Abbey Mei Otis is my favorite kind of writer: her worlds are uniquely strange yet eerily relatable, and she knows how to make you laugh and weep at the same time.” — Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

“Abbey Mei Otis deposits the reader in bargain bin worlds remaindered from the near futures of the more fortunate, worlds filled with space junk and toxic glitter, gel candy and gutted elk. These are stories for the many, for lovers and mourners, for those who want to split their minds from their bodies and those who know how to merge their organs in a single skin. In Alien Virus Love Disaster, language itself is in phase change. This book is a volatile, dangerous gift.” — Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

“After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.” — Sofia Samatar, author of Tender

“Abbey Mei Otis speaks for a generation of people with fractured futures and complicated hopes. It is a collection about right now.” — Maureen F. McHugh, author of After the Apocalypse

“The aliens have already arrived in ‘Blood Blood.’ Abbey Mei Otis has them visiting in a way we’ve seldom seen before in genre science-fiction: Not as hunters, conquerors or even ambassadors, but as wildlife observers. . . . As brilliant as this cosmos and narrative is, Otis also manages to supply rich characterizations. It’s a concept sci-fi piece that tries something new and succeeds on every level.” —Matt Funk, Full Stop

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Terra Nullius

Tue 18 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 320 pages · $17 · 9781618731517 | ebook · 9781618731524

Download Terra Nullius Reading Group Guide (4730 downloads ) .

In the near future Australia is about to experience colonization once more. What has been learned from the past? A daring debut novel from the winner of the 2016 black&write! writing fellowship.

“So smart, unexpected, and surprising. . . . Incredibly moving and eye-opening.”
— Hugh Jackman

“Deftly twists expectations. . . . a debut that leaves you excited for what’s next.”
— NPR Best Books of the Year

“A gut punch of a book in the style of Le Guin, Atwood, and Butler. Claire G. Coleman’s debut novel blazes with truth.”
— Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

Wikipedia: Terra nullius (/ˈtɛrə.nʌˈlaɪəs/, plural terrae nullius) is a Latin expression meaning “nobody’s land”,^[1] and is a principle sometimes used in international law to describe territory that may be acquired by a state’s occupation of it.^[2]

Nominated for the Dublin Literary Award 2019
Shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Reading Women Award, the Neukom Institute Debut Literary Arts Award, the ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writers, and the Aurealis Award.
Winner of the Norma K. Hemming & Tin Duck awards.
Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
Longlisted for the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction
Locus Recommended Reading List

Interview To Change the Dialogue: An Interview with Claire G. Coleman by Robert Wood on the Los Angeles Review of Books

Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from.

The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to bring peace to their new home, and they have a plan for how to achieve it. They will tear Native families apart and provide re-education to those who do not understand why they should submit to their betters. Peace and prosperity are worth any price, but who will pay it? This rich land, Australia, will provide for all if only the Natives can learn their place. Jacky has escaped the Home where the Settlers sent him, but where will he go? The Head of the Department for the Protection of Natives, known to Settlers and Natives alike as the Devil, is chasing Jacky. And when the Devil catches him, Sister Bagra, who knows her duty to the ungodly, will be waiting for Jacky back at Home. An incendiary, timely, and fantastical debut from an essential Australian Aboriginal writer, Claire G. Coleman. Do you recognize this story? Look again. This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history books. This Terra Nullius — shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize and Highly Commended for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards — is something new, but all too familiar.

Reviews

“What Claire Coleman does with the theme of colonialism is something the like of which I haven’t seen before, something that only speculative fiction can do. I’m tempted to elaborate, but I shall desist. Readers should experience the power of this astonishing book for themselves. As the words at the back of the book say, ‘Do you recognize this story? Look again.'”
— Vandana Singh, author of Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

“Terra Nullius is a striking debut from a new Australian Aboriginal voice. The speculative–fiction lens reframes European invasion, shifting and unsettling the reader’s perspective. The devastation of colonisation and displacement is explored with originality, compassion and insight.”
— State Library of Queensland Dublin Literary Award Nomination

“More than anything, a tireless belief in the promise of the future in the face of destruction, violence, and even genocide distinguishes the nature of survivance and the active gesture towards futurity contained in Indigenous storytelling — the power to animate science fiction with new knowledge, ideas, and experience,”
— Dr. Billy J. Stratton, LA Review of Books

“Coleman’s skillful use of science fiction elements enhances her story, causing readers to recognize the alien as something all too familiar. Terra Nullius possesses a universal impact and stands as one of the best novels addressing colonialism that we’ve ever read.” — Reading Women

“Fantastic. . . . Unbelievable.” — Liberty Hardy, Book Riot

“A difficult and powerful book.” — Catherine Rockwood, Reckoning

“Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius employs sci-fi tropes to challenge the reader’s identification with the story — and history.”
— Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project in the Sydney Morning Herald

“Terra Nullius is a moving, horrific, and confrontational exploration of Indigenous Australian experiences of the apocalypse wrought by British colonialism. The novel demands that Indigenous voices and knowledges are included in the formation of shared futures. As such, it is a deeply necessary text. Coleman is an exciting new voice who has taken SF’s flexibility, and its position as arguably the best literary mode for the fictioning of the otherwise, and gone some way to realising the genres under-tapped potentials. Her work signifies how the SF genre can address past injustice, through remembering rather than trying to forget, and thereby nurture new ways of being collectively. Coleman’s work challenges SF to be better, revitalising and compelling the genre to realise its political importance as an incubator for counterfutures, alternative imaginaries and as a home for the people yet to come.”
— Rachel Hill, Strange Horizons

“I thought I knew what to expect, going in to Terra Nullius.” — Adri, Nerds of a Feather

“Demonstrates Coleman’s promise as a creative storyteller. VERDICT Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal (starred Review)

“Coleman stuns with this imaginative, astounding debut about colonization. . . . Coleman universalizes the experiences of invaded indigenous populations in a way that has seldom been achieved. Artfully combining elements of literary, historical, and speculative fiction, this allegorical novel is surprising and unforgettable.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred Review)

“The novel, which was originally published in Australia and New Zealand in 2017, literally hits the ground running. Its opening sentence, introducing us to the fugitive who is one of the main protagonists, is ‘Jacky was running,’ and the pace never really lets up. . . . gripping, harrowing, but ultimately deeply humane tale.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Australian natives living under the oppressive brutality of forced colonization struggle to survive, let alone fight back. It’s little wonder that Australian Aboriginal writer Coleman has been praised and nominated for awards in her own country for her thoughtfully woke debut novel about an invasion of Australia by punishing settlers and the subsequent resistance by a native people. The title refers to an obscure legal principle used by Britain to justify the taking of Aboriginal territory—the term literally means ‘Nobody’s Land.’ This harsh scene of brittle détente in the Australian Outback, set during an ambiguous point in the country’s troubled history, is viewed through the eyes of several characters, all struggling in their own ways. Jacky is an orphaned boy, now a slave on the run, trying to get home even as trooper Sgt. Rohan hunts him through the desert. Sister Bagra is a cruel headmistress at a mission for native children, abusing her livestock with malicious glee. Esperance is a kind young woman who tries to protect her flock of starving refugees. A government official charged with the protection of natives is so evil even his own wife calls him “Devil,” like the natives do. By far the most interesting character is Johnny Star, a trooper who betrayed the colonizers and has accepted his fate as an outlaw traveling with a rough bunch of native comrades. It’s a cruel scene indeed, made more so by Coleman’s purposeful parallels to the evil treatment of native peoples during the British colonization of Australia in the 17th century. . . . Coleman doesn’t hurry in bringing these disparate characters together, but when it happens, a powerful myth comes to life before readers’ eyes.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The novel’s striking realism is productively complicated by its science fiction.” — BCCB

“Coleman’s timely debut is testimony to the power of an old story seen afresh through new eyes.” — Adelaide Advertiser

“In our politically tumultuous time, the novel’s themes of racism, inherent humanity and freedom are particularly poignant.” — Books + Publishing

“Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nulllius is an arresting and original novel that addresses the legacy of Australia’s violent colonial history. . . . Coleman’s punchy prose is insistent throughout, its energy unflagging. Terra Nullius is a novel for our times, one whose tone is as impassioned as its message is necessary.”
— Stella Prize Judges’ Report

“Noongar writer Claire Coleman’s debut novel, Terra Nullius, envisions a continent disturbingly familiar and worryingly futuristic. . . . It is a future beyond the boundaries of familiar 21st-century post-colonial settler discourse on reconciliation and ‘settlement’ in a nation founded on the dispossession of Aboriginal lands, and ongoing ‘unfinished business’ with the first people.”
— Sydney Morning Herald

“A powerful, sobering piece of writing that makes us face an Australia we try to forget, but should always remember.”
— Adelaide Review

“A speculative sci-fi struggle meaningfully grounded in Coleman’s own Indigenous culture, Terra Nullius offers something new — a skilfully constructed pastiche of colonisation, resistance and apocalyptic chaos with parallels that sit unsettlingly close to home.”
— Big Issue Australia

“Coleman makes a significant contribution to the emerging body of Aboriginal writers such as Ellen van Neerven and Alexis Wright who write spectral and speculative fiction to critique the vicious fiction of the colonial archive.”
— Canberra Times

“Witty, weird, moving and original.” — Weekend Australian

About the Author

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays and poetry while (mostly) traveling around the continent now called  Australia in a ragged caravan towed by an ancient troopy (the car has earned “vintage” status). Born in Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Melbourne. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. She has since won a Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship for that novel, Terra Nullius.

Originally published in Australia by Hachette Australia.
Cover Design by Grace West.

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Karen Joy Fowler @ Smith College

Mon 10 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Karen Joy Fowler| Posted by: Gavin

Last week Karen Joy Fowler was in town (so we have signed copies of What I Didn’t See) to read at Smith College as her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was this year’s First Year Experience Smith Reads choice.

She was joined on stage by Ruth Ozeki and they chatted and Ruth asked questions the students had emailed her. After the reading there was a rush as attendees lined up to get their books signed. I was delighted to take this panoramic shot of the line as a reminder of the enthusiasm of readers for this author and her book — click to enbiggen:

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One More Week to Terra Nullius

Tue 4 Sep 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Claire G. Coleman| Posted by: Gavin

We had a slight printer error and while I sort that out with them Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius will be delayed a little. Some initial copies have gone out so you may find it in stores and the ebook is available (DRM-free as ever from Weightless) in all the usual places.

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Not Like Anything I’ve Recently Read

Tue 28 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., CLRW, LCRW, Reviews, WCLW, WHAT, WLCR| Posted by: Gavin

Rich Horton included a couple of stories from this spring’s LCRW 37 in a recent short fiction roundup in Locus and since the reviews are now online I’ve reprinted them here because the stories are excellent and should be widely read. As I went to find Maria Romasco Moore’s twitter ID to tag her in the review I saw on her website that besides her fantastically titled forthcoming chapbook from Rose Metal Press, Ghostographs, this summer she sold her debut novel, congratulations, Maria!

Someone on twitter recently asked if we publish novellas and I answered that we sometimes do in LCRW — although if asked in person I usually add something to indicate that  a novella has to be as good as as 2-3 short stories. James Sallis’s “Dayenu” is. Last night I was looking at one of Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Bests Science Fiction and I very selfishly missed him again thinking that this was a story he would have enjoyed. It’s funny how much one person’s reading can influence so many others. Ach. Anyway, here are the reviews:

“Dying Light” by Maria Romasco Moore (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, March) is a strong story set on a starship carrying passengers in suspended animation, heading to a newly colonized world. The passengers live in “the light”, a virtual environment, to keep them mentally sharp. The narrator, Ruth, is worried about her wife, Mag, who has become self-destructive – an odd thing in the “light”, where one can do what they want to their virtual bodies without necessarily affecting their “real” body. The real problem is Ruth and Mag’s relationship, which the story foregrounds. It’s well enough executed, but what intrigued me was the backgrounded SFnal aspects – the “light” and how it works, the hints about the state of Earth society and how that affects the colony’s prospects. Neat stuff, even if I’m not quite sure I read it the way the writer intended.

Even better is a remarkable long story by James Sallis, “Dayenu“. It opens with the narrator doing an unspecified but apparently criminal job, and then fleeing the house he was squatting in, and meeting an old contact for a new identity. Seems like a crime story – and Sallis is primarily a crime novelist – but details of unfamiliarity mount, from the pervasive surveillance, to a changed geography, to the realiza­tion that the rehab stint the narrator mentioned right at the start was a rather more extensive rehab than we might have thought. Memories of wartime service are detailed, and two partners in particular – a woman named Fran or Molly, a man named Merrit Li. Page by page the story seems odder, and the destination less expected. The prose is a pleasure, too – with desolate rhythms and striking images. Quite a work, and not like anything I’ve recently read.

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Author exposes Scuppernong to ‘Alien Virus’

Mon 20 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis| Posted by: Gavin

Not our title, but a little irresistible: Ian McDowell reviews AVLD and interviews Abbey Mei Otis in NC’s YES! Weekly — obviously I am going to love any paper with an exclamation mark in the title —  Author exposes Scuppernong to ‘Alien Virus’.

If you’d rather listen to an interview, T. Hetzel interviewed Abbey for WCBN’s Living Writer series.

Also, Columbia Journal: “What these stories do best is sci-fi. What these stories do best is love. And if you need to distinguish between the two, then Abbey Mei Otis is here to deny you.”

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Whee!

Tue 14 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, readings, tour| Posted by: Gavin

And off it goes! Today we are publishing a fantastic first book of stories, Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis. This book tore into our hearts and then knocked our heads off. This is contemporary fiction through an sf&f lens. Things drop out the sky, there are aliens, there are crappy jobs, there are families doing what it takes to not lose the family house. Booklist gave it a starred review (you can read that here), Everdeen Mason liked it (as per the Washington Post Book World), and Brit Mandelo just reviewed it (“It’s a collection that will keep your heart half in your throat and half in your toes, and I recommend it”) yesterday on Tor.com.

At AWP this March Abbey was part of a huge group reading with Juan Martinez and a number of Black Ocean and Third Man Books poets and writers at a bar in Tampa, FL, and she was amazing. Being a young and enthusiastic author Abbey is on tour starting tonight. Later in autumn she’ll be reading at Malaprop’s and then — if all goes well — Moon Palace in Minneapolis. Don’t miss her!

You can read 3 stories now:

The title story — as recommended by Dan Chaon — on Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading.
“Blood, Blood” on Strange Horizons.
“Sweetheart” on Tor.com.
Prefer print? Read “Rich People” in the new issue of Tin House.

So here’s your chance to catch an author at the start of it all. Get ye to a bookstore and see Abbey Mei Otis’s August 2018 Debut Tour

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Alien Virus Love Disaster

Tue 14 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 248 pages · $16 · 9781618731494 | ebook · 9781618731500

Neukom Institute Debut Literary Arts Award shortlist
Philip K. Dick Award finalist
Booklist Top 10 Debut SF&F
Locus Recommended Reading List

“An exciting voice. . . . dreamy but with an intense physicality.” — Washington Post Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2018

Fiction that will inspire you to blow open the doors and kick out those supposedly in charge.

Listen Abbey Mei Otis is interviewed on KMSU’s The Weekly Reader.
Read An interview by Ian McDowell in YES! Weekly
Read “Rich People” in Tin House.
Read “Blood, Blood” on Strange Horizons.
Read “Sweetheart” on Tor.com.

Abbey Mei Otis’s short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, putting kids from the moon into a small beach town and then the putting the rest of the town under the microscope as they react in ways we hope they would, and then, of course, in ways we’d hope they don’t. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the twelve stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

Table of Contents

Alien Virus Love Disaster [Recommended by Dan Chaon on Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading]
Moonkids [The Offing]
If  You Could Be God of Anything Teacher [Watch the author’s reading at Flyleaf Books]
Blood, Blood [Strange Horizons]
Sex Dungeons for Sad People
Not an Alien Story
Sweetheart [Tor.com]
I’m Sorry Your Daughter Got Eaten by a Cougar [Guernica]
Rich People
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Evicted by Now
Ultimate Housekeeping Megathrill 4

Reviews & Praise for Abbey Mei Otis’s stories:

“Otis’s work always retains a dark humor and unique narrative sensibility; there are consistently shocking turns, and these stories often end in unexpected ways. Definitely a standout collection, one well worth revisiting for future reads.” — Asian America Literature Fans

“Otis actually belongs with writers like Kelly Link, who freely borrow genre materials to construct elegant literary fictions far more about character than spectacle. . . . As odd as these worlds are, they are populated by sharply drawn characters we come to care about through Otis’ luminescent prose.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Chicago Tribune

“Abbey Mei Otis is an exciting voice in contemporary science fiction. Her new book “Alien Virus Love Disaster” (Small Beer) is a short-story collection that explores those left behind in typical sweeping science fiction adventures — the children, discarded robots, school dropouts and blue-collar workers with the misfortune of being near something toxic. A stand-out story is “Moonkids,” about young humans from the moon who find themselves living and working on a beach town on Earth after being expelled from lunar society. Humans born on the moon end up becoming physically changed from the atmosphere, and if they fail a high-stakes exam, they are returned to Earth with nothing to do but be gawked at by normal people. Like many of Otis’s stories, it’s dreamy but with an intense physicality that belies the violence behind the longing.” — Everdeen Mason, Washington Post Book World

“It’s a collection that will keep your heart half in your throat and half in your toes, and I recommend it.” — Tor.com

“In these stories, yes, there are aliens, robots, sex dungeons, chicken puppets, ghosts, and blobs of unknown origin and nature. But there is also tenderness and the absence of it. There is prose that delights. There are plastic people, and people not sure if they can bleed. What these stories do best is sci-fi. What these stories do best is love. And if you need to distinguish between the two, then Abbey Mei Otis is here to deny you. For if barriers between what is ‘science fiction’ and what is ‘literature’ haven’t already broken down, then this collection is Abbey Mei Otis burying a glowing-neon hammer into that tired beige wall.” — Columbia Journal

“Otis is a writer of vision, attuned to the complexities of privilege and the ways technology married to capitalism tends to produce and exacerbate inequality.” — Evan Fackler, Entropy Magazine

“Abbey Mei Otis publishes in literary journals as well as SF magazines, so many of the weird SF and fantasy-infused stories in Alien Virus Love Disaster will be new and delightful for our readers.” — Tim Pratt, Locus

“Taut, freaky, unsettling speculative fiction where actual aliens, viruses, love, and disaster abound. So do great sentences. This book feels like the future. All hail the new writer generation.” — Chelsey Johnson, The Millions

“Otis doesn’t use science fiction to lift the veil of the familiar and peer at what’s beneath. Instead, with great shrewdness and courage and originality, she reveals that the veil was itself an illusion, and the familiar a construct of anything but.” — Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, IGMS

“Many of the stories share an emphasis on physicality and embodiment, whether it be bodies distorted by alien environments or artifacts or people thrown into their own bodies through suffering at other, human hands. . . . highly recommended for anyone interested in weird fiction, sf, or just a breathtaking reading experience.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Abbey Mei Otis’s stories are incandescently dark, if you can imagine such a thing (but maybe only she can). Full of danger and strangeness, but written in carbonated and astounding prose that is all her own, these stories create worlds and will make you contemplate (and worry about) our own.” — Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“These are amazing, electric stories—you can feel the live wire sizzling in them from the first sentence, and you know you’re about to take a wild, unforgettable trip. Abbey Mei Otis is my favorite kind of writer: her worlds are uniquely strange yet eerily relatable, and she knows how to make you laugh and weep at the same time.” — Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

“Abbey Mei Otis deposits the reader in bargain bin worlds remaindered from the near futures of the more fortunate, worlds filled with space junk and toxic glitter, gel candy and gutted elk. These are stories for the many, for lovers and mourners, for those who want to split their minds from their bodies and those who know how to merge their organs in a single skin. In Alien Virus Love Disaster, language itself is in phase change. This book is a volatile, dangerous gift.” — Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

“After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.” — Sofia Samatar, author of Tender

“The aliens have already arrived in ‘Blood Blood.’ Abbey Mei Otis has them visiting in a way we’ve seldom seen before in genre science-fiction: Not as hunters, conquerors or even ambassadors, but as wildlife observers. . . . As brilliant as this cosmos and narrative is, Otis also manages to supply rich characterizations. It’s a concept sci-fi piece that tries something new and succeeds on every level.” —Matt Funk, Full Stop

Cover art copyright © 2018 by Te Chao.

About the Author Abbey Mei Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller and a firestarter raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. She studied at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX and the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and now teaches at Oberlin College in Ohio. Her stories have recently appeared in journals including Tin House, StoryQuarterly, Barrelhouse, and Tor.com.

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Terra Nullius gets a Reading Group Guide

Mon 13 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Claire G. Coleman, Reading Group Guide| Posted by: Gavin

Not recommended until you’ve read it, but once you have read Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius and you really want to talk about it, we have you covered: you can come back here and download the Terra Nullius Reading Group Guide (0 downloads).

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