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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Washington Post Says

Fri 3 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis| Posted by: Gavin

This weekend, following quickly on the heels of the starred Booklist review, Everdeen Mason gives Abbey Mei Otis’s debut Alien Virus Love Disaster a standout review in the Washington Post Book World:

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.

The book comes out on the 14th and Abbey will be reading at the following five fantastic indie bookstores:

Tue., 8/14, 7 p.m.
Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
216.321.2665

Wed. 8/15 7:30 p.m.
Two Dollar Radio HQ
1124 Parsons Ave., Columbus, OH 43206
614-725-1505

Thu 8/16/18, 7 p.m.
Literati Bookstore
124 E Washington, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734.585.5567

Tues. 8/21/18, 7 p.m.
Scuppernong Books
304 S. Elm St.
Greensboro, NC 27401

Wed. 8/22/18 7 p.m.
Flyleaf Books
752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., Chapel Hill, NC 27514

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Up to Saving God?

Thu 2 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Schoffstall, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

Half-Witch by John Schoffstall, our latest title from Big Mouth House receives a lovely review by Colleen Mondor in the new issue if Locus.

There is something deeply satisfying about a traditional fantasy with plucky protagonists, nefarious villains, hungry goblins, tricky witches, and a dangerous and difficult quest. In John Schofstall’s Half-Witch, everything you expect to find is present, plus a lot of unlikely twists and turns that make this adventure a classic read. . . . As they continue their quest, Lisbet and Strix become the very definition of plucky, and it is hard not cheer them on. They are charming characters who overcome all sorts of fantastical obstacles and forge a powerful friendship.”

There’s more, including the note about saving God but you’ll have to get Locus to read that. In the meantime, pick up a copy of Half-Witch while you can still get a first edition hardcover . . . !

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