Kate Challis RAKA 2021 Commendation

Fri 19 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kim Scott| Posted by: Gavin

“The Kate Challis Ruth Adeney Koori Award, or RAKA, which means ‘five’ in the Pintupi language is awarded to an Indigenous artist in one of five categories annually, including: creative prose, poetry, script writing, drama and visual arts” and this year’s winner is Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield, a novel I read and highly recommend. Although I think all the awards it has piled up — including the Miles Franklin Award, sort of like the Australian Booker Prize — might be strong enough rec. Of the award, Ms. Winch says:

I’m a Wiradjuri woman, who grew up on Dtharawal country. I want to acknowledge the Country on which you read these words, and acknowledge my fellow writers whose beloved work was published in the last five years. I also want to recognise those writers commended, my mentors, colleagues and friends — Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Kim Scott. I feel as if I’m only still at the beginning of my career as an interrogator and questioner of the past, present and future of ourselves and our nation, so it is a distinction that I will endeavour to work to, and pay respect to, in my ensuing works and years.

Kim Scott’s novel Taboo is one of three commended novels. We published Taboo in North America and I was lucky enough to attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival and spend some time with Kim, one of the highlights of pre-pandemic time. Here’s a short video of him reading from Taboo during the panel.

The full commendation for the three novels can be found here and here’s an excerpt from the note on Taboo:

‘Takes the reader along a spiritual path deep into the land and its stories, with characters as earthy, as real, as stumbling, as flawed and enlightened, and as courageous as any characters you would want to find in an epic tale.’

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Second Interview in New Series

Thu 18 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alaya Dawn Johnson, Book Moon interviews| Posted by: Gavin

We recently posted a new interview with recent World Fantasy Award winner Alaya Dawn Johnson in our occasional Book Moon Small Beer author interview series. As with the first, the interview was carried out by the inimitable Franchesca Viaud.

Reconstruction: Stories is Alaya’s first collection of stories collecting stories from as far back as 2005 and as new as the eponymous title story that first appeared in the collection. “The Mirages” was going to be published for the first time in the book but the pandemic got the better of us, the book was moved to January of this year, and the story first appeared in Asimov’s last issue of 2020. In between those times Alaya has published many stories and novels, started a band, and moved to Mexico.

Alaya’s first novel, Racing the Dark, was published in 2007 by Agate and her latest, Trouble the Saints, that World Fantasy Award winner mentioned above, was published in 2020 by Tor with the paperback edition coming out just this past August. We have some signed bookplates at Book Moon will be included free with any of her books ordered from there.

Read the interview here.

Author photo by Armando Vega.

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An Essential Travelers’ Guide

Wed 17 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Richard Butner| Posted by: Gavin

Received by packet mail over the internet from a writer who knows a good travel book from the inside out — besides his award-winning fiction he is also the author of Alabama Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff — this note about Richard Butner’s The Adventurists:

“Richard Butner has taught me so much about the art of short fiction, and The Adventurists is an essential travelers’ guide to packing a small space with all the wit, craft, invention and heart needed for the journey. Thank you, Richard Butner — once again!”
— Andy Duncan, World Fantasy Award-winning author of An Agent of Utopia

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Full of love and pain

Tue 16 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap| Posted by: Gavin

Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever gets a shout out in this Book Riot very solid list of Out of This World SFF Short Story Collections:

Last but not least, this is another collection that mixes the magical and the horrific. It is full of urban legends, Filipino folklore, and immigrant tales that explore the lives of women and girls. Yap’s unique voice is oft-praised for a reason — her stories are unique and lyrical. Full of love and pain. They also include things like ghosts, vampires, androids, and elementals to name a few. Watch out especially for “A Spell for Foolish Hearts,” “Good Girls,” and the heartbreaking “Asphalt, River, Mother, Child,” which talks about the Philippine drug war.

Every reader pulls different favorites from a collection — for instance this reader highlighting Asphalt, River, Mother, Child. I’d like to highlight the three stories that appear in Never Have I Ever for the first time, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts,” “Syringe,” and “A Canticle for Lost Girls.”

“Syringe” — as the title promises — is a short sharp shock while the two other stories are much longer, albeit very different. They’re both stories about friendship, love, and magic but while the first is a sweetly seductive story the second is a much darker story that will stay with you long after you’ve put the book down.

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Hot Chocolate

Fri 12 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., chocolate, fundraiser| Posted by: Gavin

Me & our kid have just signed up again for the annual Hot Chocolate Run Walk fundraiser for Safe Passage. Is it true we only walk a couple of miles on a cold December morning so that we will get a mug of hot chocolate. No? No! We raises the money for the programs and we get hot chocolate. Win? Win!

We’ve been doing this fundraiser for the last few years — except 2020, which must have been virtual. I can barely remember although I just checked and Ursula raised $585 which is fantastic. Thanks to everyone who donated for that. Ursula has turned into a powerhouse fundraiser over the years — I am so glad she is older and I do not have to carry her part of the way anymore. Little does she know that soon she’ll have to carry me.

Anyway, back to posts about books and supple chains (pretty sure that’s what’s all over the news), and thanks again for support in the past and any and all donations for Safe Passage are welcome, thank you!

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Holiday Deadlines 2021

Wed 3 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holiday, housekeeping, shipping, shipping news, usps| Posted by: Gavin

Time for our annual posting of the USPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines.

I usually post these later but you may have seen in the news that all the manufacturers are expecting holiday shipping to be slow, more expensive, and unreliable this year. So far our experience at Book Moon has proven that to be correct. If you can order early for the holidays, go for it!

As usual, the Small Beer office will be closed from December 23, 2021 – January 3, 2022. However, we can still get books to you because what we most want to do, book-wise, is get books to readers:

1. Weightless Books is always there, 100% solid, 100% independent with DRM-free ebooks in the format of your choice. They can also be sent as gifts on the date you specify.
2. How about just any about old ebook in any genre? Got them here.
3. Audiobooks: we have them. (I love Libro.fm — it’s very simple to use and they have pretty much everything.)
4. Bookshop can ship books and toys to you or direct to your family and friends. We’re always adding book recs there.
5. Book Moon will be open.

So here are the last (domestic) order dates for Small Beer Press. (International.) Along with a reminder that orders include free first class (LCRW) or media mail (books) shipping in the USA.

And this year this annual reminder should probably just be bolded:

Media Mail parcels are the last ones 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 . . . it could be very late in December before there’s space. 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. 5
First Class Mail (LCRW/chapbooks)	Dec. 17
Priority Mail	Dec. 18
Priority Mail Express	Dec. 23

Here are the books we published this year:

 

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Trifecta

Tue 2 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Dropping today like a bear into a bookshop near you today is Elizabeth Hand’s third Cass Neary novel, Hard Light — Cass is in England, there’s murder, photography, bad behaviour (UK spelling this time, of course) and now all three have matching covers. If winter is coming down on you like a henge stone tipping over in a thousand-year storm these are the books to step into and escape.

TL;DR?

riveting tour-de-force . . .  mysterious death . . . Helsinki . . . stunning images . . . Reykjavik . . . corpse . . . vortex . . . ancient myth . . . betrayal, vengeance . . . Icelandic wilderness.

Here’s a picture of all three of them on the bench in Book Moon where all 3 of them are sitting on the shelf looking beautiful and appropriately scary. Come by or order them online today!

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Hard Light

Tue 2 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 320 pages · $17 · 9781618731920 | ebook · 9781618731937

Third in the Cass Neary series: Generation Loss · Available Dark · Hard Light

Punk photographer Cass Neary, “one of noir’s great anti-heroes” (Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love), rages back in the series that began with Generation Loss and Available Dark. Fleeing Reykjavik and a cluster of cult murders, Cass lands in London to rendezvous with her longtime lover Quinn, a person of interest to both Interpol and the Russian mob.

Only Quinn doesn’t show up. Alone in London and fearing the worst, Cass hooks up with a singer-songwriter with her own dark past, who brings her to the wrong party. Cass becomes entangled with the party’s host, Mallo Tierney, an eccentric gangster with a penchant for cigar cutters and neatly-wrapped packages, and a trio of dissolute groupies connected to a notorious underground filmmaker.

Forced to run Mallo’s contraband, Cass is suddenly enmeshed in a web of murder, betrayal, and artistic and sexual obsession that extends from London to the stark beauty of England’s Land’s End Peninsula, where she uncovers an archeological enigma that could change our view of human history―if she survives.

Strobe-lit against an apocalyptic background of rock and roll, rave culture, fast drugs and transgressive photography, Hard Light continues the breathless, breathtaking saga of Cassandra Neary, “an anti-hero for the ages. We’d follow Cass anywhere, into any glittery abyss, and do.” [Megan Abbot, author of The Fever]

Watch: Elizabeth Hand & Hannah Pittard & Library of Congress Book Festival
Elizabeth Hand presents Hard Light and Hannah Pittard presents Listen to Me in a panel discussion on suspense thrillers with Maureen Corrigan from NPR at the 2016 Library of Congress Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

“Hand’s supernaturally inflected Cass Neary crime novels make mincemeat out of the assumption—still held by many an unwary reader—that mysteries are mere diversions, designed to pass an empty hour and then be forgotten. No way that’s true of Hard Light: This third novel in the Cass Neary series fades away as stubbornly as a bloodstain.” — Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

“Nerve-jangling and addictive, Elizabeth Hand’s Hard Light offers up a signature Cass Neary tale of moral ambivalence, keen betrayal and a dark lushness that leaps off the page. And with Cass―relentless in her dangerous curiosity, her ruthless art of survival―Hand has created an anti-hero for the ages. We’d follow her anywhere, into any glittery abyss, and do.” —Megan Abbott

“Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary novels, rightly praised for their icy tension and remarkable darkness, are threaded, like the best of punk in any medium, on a bloodied yet admirably stubborn humanism.” —William Gibson

“As a huge mystery and noir buff, I love Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary novels―they’re tough-minded, beautifully written, and unique. One of the best series out there. In Hard Light, Hand has created another fascinating puzzle―and another instant classic. If you’re a fan of intelligent page-turners, this one’s for you.” —Jeff Vandermeer

“Brutal, elegant, rich and strange, Hard Light is noir at it’s very best. This fast paced marvel of a book beats with the exultant energy of Punk rock and hums with the mysterious beauty of a Delphic hymn. Elizabeth Hand is not only one of the great American novelists, her influence on a generation has changed the face of Literature. This novel will haunt your dreams.” —Cara Hoffman, author of So Much Pretty and Be Safe I Love You

“Brilliant! A punk-scene runaway train. Welcome to Liz Hand. Buy this book.” —Sarah Langan, author of The Missing and The Keeper

“Elizabeth Hand is quite simply one of our best living writers. Her Cass Neary books are the ne plus ultra of modern noir, and Hard Light is the best one far: A riveting story that gets going at nosebleed pace and never slows down, anchored by the voice of the iconic Cass Neary, the greatest main character in modern detective fiction. I never knew I had a thing for Scandinavian punk rock noir until Liz Hand showed me what’s up. Now I want more.” —Nick Antosca, author of The Girlfriend Game and Midnight Picnic

“Elizabeth Hand’s Hard Light is a pitch-perfect punk noir that makes a speed-fueled, mad-dash tour through an avant garde underbelly London and the lost landscape of rural England. It’s about the lost, the heartbreakingly ephemeral, and the melancholy timelessness of art and love and murder. It’s a tour de force. It’s a great goddamn book. If you haven’t met Cass Neary yet, do so before you get a well-deserved steel-toe to the knee.” —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Little Sleep

“Beloved scrapper, fight-picker, and trouble-finder Cass Neary returns for another installment in Elizabeth Hand’s gorgeous, searing, speed-fueled bender of a series. Both fearless and vulnerable, heroic and haunted, Neary is a heroine like no other: a punk-rock valkyrie whose fierce intelligence and harrowing quests, rendered in Hand’s flawless, ice-clear prose, have redefined a genre. Hard Light is Hand at her best, and I cannot think of any higher praise.” —Sarah McCarry, author of The Metamorphoses Trilogy

About the Author

Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of fourteen genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.

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