Questionable Utopias?

Thu 6 Aug 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

An Agent of Practices? An Agent of Utopia! Questionable Practices! Get these fabulous collections by Andy Gunn and Eileen Duncan Andy Duncan and Eileen Gunn as well as 8 more books by Chesya Burke, Tenea D. Johnson, Larissa Lai, JD Scott, Ginn Hale, Maurice Broaddus, and an anthology edited by Bill Campbell & Francesco Verso in the latest StoryBundle deal: the Innovative Worlds Bundle curated by Tenea D. Johnson:

Innovation can mean the difference between progress and stagnation, wonder and woe, seeing the return of dim days or a new age of enlightenment. An innovative world is one where you can immerse yourself and learn something new, see a trope turned on its head, meet characters that will frequent the passages of your mind, navigating by the spark of newness they carry through the gloom.
Innovative worlds can shine as an example of what to be or provide respite from what, if only temporarily, is. Or they can make you appreciate what ain’t broke.
One could make a strong case that innovation and its possibilities are in short supply at the moment.
But not here.


LCRW Forty-Extraordinary-One

Tue 30 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeHey, it is publication day for the new issue of LCRW! We are celebrating all day by relaxing by the seaside with mimosas. It is a sunny day with a breeze and the shade of the trees it hitting me just right. Later someone, not me, is going to produce a fruit plate. If you happen to call Book Moon and I answer the phone, that’s not me, that’s my semi-sentient personal AI who may be able to help you find a book or may check in on your feelings about the word pudding and the utility of graprefruit cannons as distractors for angry 11-year-olds.

The other day after mailing out all the LCRWs, I went to update the subscriber database so mark some subscriptions expired. Except! Ha! Made myself laugh! No subscriptions expired because this was a freebie to all the subscribers! So, thank you, subscribers! It is mostly great fun to make this zine and send it out into the world and it was delightful to send this issue out as a thank you for supporting the work.

It’s a big issue: we packed 2 novellas and a long story in there along with Nicole Kimberlings “Quarantine Pantry Challenge” column. And of course the fabulous cover illustration, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm,” is by Vicky Yuh.

Also, 2020 being so uneven, LCRW 41 is the first thing Small Beer has published this year. We’d meant to have Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss paperback out in April (it is printed, at the warehouse, and ready to roll out in August) and Elwin Cotman’s new collection, Dance on Saturday, out this month, but: COVID-19 meant we asked our booksellers at Book Moon not to come in to the shop, so we spent much of spring here. That may change a little in upcoming months, as we need to find new balances in the new world, or, it may not. Who knows how anything will go — except the chances of me getting on a plane this summer is near zero, so: more time for making books or more time in BKMN? The USA is doing such a terrible job of controlling the virus — which, you know, just means being polite enough to wear a mask in public — that we may remain in the equivalent of lockdown until there is a vaccine (eek).

All of which is to say, we are delighted to have actually published something in this the last day of the first half of 2020. We look forward to hearing readers’ reactions and to publishing many more things in the second half of the year.


Psychopomps Galore

Mon 29 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Psychopomp BundleThis is your chance to get a fabulous deal on a dozen books by writers who’ve chosen to investigate life (as it were) on the other side of the veil — including Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp, and the sequel, Latchkey.

This bundle lasts for the next two weeks or so:

The Crossing the Veil Bundle – Curated by Rhonda Parrish: I’ve spent the last several years curating and editing short stories and poetry for anthologies and this year I’m very excited to expand that into curating books for a StoryBundle. I’m excited to share my first ever StoryBundle which is all about psychopomps and crossing the veil.

A couple years ago I stumbled across a word I’d never heard before — psychopomp. When I looked up its meaning I discovered that I’d been aware of the concept of a psychopomp for a long time, I just hadn’t known the word for it. A psychopomp is a being which acts as a guide for the souls of the recently departed, helping them move from this world to the next and occasionally carrying messages between the two.

It’s kind of impressive that I went so long without knowing the word psychopomp because I’ve always loved stories that involve crossing over from the world of the living to that of the dead. Always. As a kid we took Greek Mythology in school and while all the stories interested me it was those set in Hades that really fascinated me. I would seek them out and devour version after version. And as I grew, that never really changed. I still love stories set in the places we go after we die, or featuring characters that can cross between those worlds, which made choosing that as the topic for this StoryBundle an easy decision.

That’s not all! Read more about the 12 books in the bundle here, and make sure to click on each cover for a synopsis, reviews and preview of each book.


And Go Like Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award Finalists

Wed 17 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

And Go Like This coverI’m delighted to see that John Crowley’s collection And Go Like This is a finalist along with many other fine novels and collections in the$5,000 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.

Award winners will be announced during the summer and the full list of finalists can be found on the Neukom Institute’s website.

 


2 x Buzzfeed

Wed 3 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Dance on Saturday cover - click to view full sizeWe moved Elwin Cotman’s forthcoming collection, Dance on Saturday, from this month to August since a lot of booksellers and reviewers were unable to receive their review copies in a timely fashion. But that just means more time for people to look forward to it!

Buzzfeed recently had it on 2 summer reading lists. Add it to yours!

“Cotman blends humor, emotional clarity, and wild imagination to bring life to stories about identity, power, and human nature.”
— Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 29 Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down

“Fantastically weird short stories infused with elements from Black culture. . . . Each story provides a singular and riveting reading experience.”
— Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed, 17 Summer Must-Reads For Fantasy Lovers


#BlackOutTuesday

Mon 1 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Small Beer Press and Book Moon will be closed tomorrow, June 2, 2020.

#BlackOutTuesday
#BlackLivesMatter


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41

Tue 26 May 2020 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

June 30, 2020. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685

This is issue Forty (Extraordinary) One of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet which is being published in June of 2020 and is being sent out free to subscribers as a bonus to add joy to this daily more complicated world. (Contributors were paid the usual rates.)

Readers who’d like to support the zine are encouraged to subscribe, mais oui, but also to donate to Color of Change, buy books through Black-owned bookstores such as Frugal Bookstore, and bookstores damaged or closed in the civil unrest as we try and change our world, including DreamHaven, Uncle Hugo’s, Magers & Quinn, and Moon Palace.

Read some excellent short fiction and reset your weary head. A handful of stories by authors known and unknown. Perhaps a poem or two.

Table of Contents

fiction

Rachel Ayers, “Magicians & Grotesques”
Holly Tamsin, “Fogdog Films”
David Fawkes, “Letterghost”

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Quarantine Pantry Challenge
About These Authors

cover

Vicky Yuh, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm”

About

This is Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 41, June 2020. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685.

Cover illustration “Mirrie in the Sea Storm” © 2020 by Vicky Yuh (vickyuh.com).

Made by

Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.
Proofreader: Jenny Terpsichore Abeles.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 41, June 2020. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 30 of this issue — or go here — for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2020 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Mirrie in the Sea Storm” © 2020 by Vicky Yuh (vickyuh.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers. In reasons to celebrate we have an LCRW story being reprinted in the Best American Short Stories. Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series was on the Otherwise Honor List. Sarah Pinsker’s collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea: Stories won the Philip K. Dick Award and is a Locus Award finalist. John Crowley’s collection And Go Like This: Stories is a Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award finalist. Margo Lanagan and Kathleen Jennings’s chapbook Stray Bats is an Aurealis Award finalist. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. No Justice: No Peace.

About these Authors

Rachel Ayers lives in Alaska, where she looks at mountains and daydreams a lot. She has a Creative Writing degree from Pittsburg State University.

David Fawkes is an Indianapolis writer whose stories have been slowly finding homes over the last few years. By day he works as an environmental scientist, which is a fancy term that means he gets hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and has to carry heavy things. He loves science fiction slightly more than coffee, soup, and heavy metal. All four at once make him very happy. He plays electric bass, and is working through the bass parts to some Motown tracks. He has a wife, a pack of feral cats, and a son who likes to get into everything.

Former pro cook, Nicole Kimberling now works as a fictional content creator and main author wrangler at Blind Eye Books. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Other works include the Bellingham Mystery Series, set in the Washington town where she resides with her wife. She also created and wrote “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” an audio drama podcast, which explores the day-to-day case files of Special Agent Keith Curry, supernatural food inspector. She is currently obsessed with citrus pickles.

Holly Tamsin, since tinier times, has always fashioned worlds from words and continues to do so today.


LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One

Wed 20 May 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeThe next issue of LCRW, no. 41, will be published in print and ebook form on June 16th, 2020, and will be known as LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One.

That cover there, that’s a place holder for a fabulous piece of art.

The page for it will go up soon but in the meantime: news!

LCRW 41 will be sent to print and ebook subscribers — and anyone who subscribes to LCRW before June 15 — for free.

We will check in with the lovely indie bookshops that usually carry LCRW and see if they are going to be open but many are in the same position as Book Moon which won’t be open for the forseeable future for anything but curbside pickup from May 27th at the earliest. So since this issue can’t find readers the usual way, maybe it will find a few more readers in a different way.

The Table of Contents includes two novellas which will take you to two very different places. Best of all, neither of those places is this one.

There are many subscription levels — my favorite remains the chocolate subscription (which is tough in warm weather as that price does not include cold packs) — and #10, the huge donation & a free chocolate subscription.


Otherwise Award Honor List

Tue 14 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

4 Logic coversThis weekend I was thrilled to see that Laurie J. Marks’s 4-book Elemental Logic series was one of nine titles on this year’s Otherwise Award Honor List — congratulations go to Akwaeke Emezi whose novel Freshwater is this year’s winner and to all the writers whose work is on this year’s honor list.

The Otherwise Award, Formerly Known As the Tiptree Award, is one of my favorite awards. It was begun in 1991 by Pat Murphy and Karen J. Fowler and is for encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender. One of the multitude of reasons I love the award is that there is an actual monetary prize — $1,000! — some of which is raised by bake sales, mmm, but that’s not all: the winner also receives a specially commissioned piece of original artwork, and (as always) chocolate.

Laurie’s third novel in the series, Water Logic, was also on the Honor List — as was her 1993 novel Dancing Jack.

Here’s what award jury member Debbie Notkin wrote about the Elemental Logic series:

“Laurie J. Marks’ Fire Logic was published 18 years ago, followed by Earth Logic in 2004, Water Logic in 2007, and Air Logic in 2019. The four Elemental Logic books reflect the author’s growth in skill and breadth over the nearly two decades, along with an extraordinary consistency in characterization and vision. The gender aspects of the story arc largely concentrated in the depth and detail of complex same-sex relationships, though Air Logic also ventures into the realm of treating autism-spectrum mindsets as a gender of their own. More subtly, while Marks does include heterosexual relationships in her story, she never centers the dynamics of those relationships, concentrating all of her relationship writing on same-sex couples. One crucial thing these books offer the contemporary reader is a vision of undermining and destabilizing polarized societies, focused on the long hard work of bringing factions that hate each other back into tenuous but respectful relationship – and perhaps that too is a form of exploring and expanding gender.”


Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

Mon 13 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea cover - click to view full sizeWe were delighted to see that Sarah Pinsker’s first collection of short stories, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is this year’s winner of the Philip K. Dick Award.

Congratulations, Sarah! Here’s one of the stories from the book which if you have not read it should keep you happily entertained for a little while: And Then There Were (N-One), originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

Sarah is having a (relatively) good month: her story “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye,” — also originally published in Uncanny, is a finalist for the Hugo Award. So congrats to all the nominees and fingers crossed for Sarah in August.


February’s Gone, But We Already Have Something to Look Forward to Next February

Wed 4 Mar 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Although 2021 seems far away and everything in the future gets blurrier every day we’re still slowly, slowly reading manuscripts for Small Beer Press and so we are already very much looking forward to next February when we will publish Isabel Yap’s as-yet-untitled debut collection of stories in trade paperback and ebook editions.

We’ve long enjoyed Isabel Yap’s fabulous stories and — as you can see from her website — she has published a good number of them over the years. Working with her on putting a collection together has been a joy for the two of us. Good news for all: there will be at least one, perhaps two, new stories in the book.

As time goes by we will add links to more stories (for example: “How to Swallow the Moon” from the Nov/Dec 2018 Uncanny Magazine)  and so on. There will be advance reading copies, reviewers can do their review thing, and at some point we will send a beautiful thing out into the world for you the reader to find.


Locus Recommended Reading List

Mon 3 Feb 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Issue 709 Table of Contents, February 2020Congratulations to all the writers whose work has been selected for this year’s Locus Recommended Reading List! I am especially delighted that in a year where we published 10 titles (2 collections, 2 novels, 1 chapbook, 5 titles reprinted in paperback), three of the five new titles are on the list:

And among all the stories on the list (I’d have added a few from LCRW, but, hey, bias) I’m glad that Kelly’s story in the final issue of Tin House made it to the list:

Congrats to one and all!


Happy New PKD Award Finalist

Fri 17 Jan 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea cover - click to view full sizeWe are delighted to note that Sarah Pinsker’s collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award — and the book also appeared on a couple of year-end lists (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Books of 2019; Booklist: Top 10 Debut SF&F). You can try a couple of the stories out here:

And We Were Left Darkling
In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind
No Lonely Seafarer
And Then There Were (N-One)


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