Book Moon Please Reduce Our Inventory 1-day Flash Sale!

Sat 31 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

---

CSA = Crazy-Sexy Agriculture

Fri 30 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., cooking, LCRW, Nicole Kimberling| Posted by: Gavin

Just added LCRW Cooking Columnist Nicole Kimberling’s fifth column for LCRW which was originally published in LCRW 31:

I think whoever invented the idea of paying a local farmer for a whole season of vegetables in advance, must have been some sort of subversive genius. . . .

[read on]

 

---

Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA

Thu 29 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, cooking, LCRW 31, Nicole Kimberling| Posted by: Gavin

This is LCRW Cooking Columnist Nicole Kimberling’s fifth column for LCRW and was originally published in LCRW 31. 

I think whoever invented the idea of paying a local farmer for a whole season of vegetables in advance, must have been some sort of subversive genius.

The weekly delivery of the CSA (community supported agriculture) box flies in the face of modern thinking about choice—which is that you should have it, always. Contemporary cooks are accustomed to asking the question, “What would I like to make?” and then expecting to be able to go and realize their dreams of out-of-season produce from far-flung lands at any major supermarket. The CSA puts food in front of you and says, “This is dinner. Make the most of it.” Read more

---

Starred Review for Lost Places!

Wed 21 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, starred review| Posted by: Gavin

We’re sending out review copies of Sarah Pinsker’s collection, Lost Places, coming in March, and now we get to share the good news that it has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly!

---

The 2022 I Knew

Thu 15 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, Long Covid, meh, the world, ugh| Posted by: Gavin

This is about my own year, not the press’s. 2022 was . . . constrained. I look at my steps recorded on my phone — and the watch I got this year to assuage worries about my heart rate — and from the ups and downs and the ever-so-slight rising line I think 2023 will be more of the same. It is hard to think of another year like this but I’ll be grateful if I improve. My resting heart rate is about 80. My standing heart rate is a joke, say 105.

I still spend most of my days lying down. I have learned resting and pacing, although truthfully I have learned it any number of times this year. I get up and I feel fine, I forget I am sick, I start to walk at my normal pace, I am reminded bodily that I am a new slower person. I have tried many supplements: I’m a skeptic but if a friend says a tincture or pill helped them, or I read some long covid study, I’ll try it. I had an MRI (clear!), a CT scan (yes, I have an odd bod but mostly ok and not the cause of this), and I even had an EMG test, needles stuck in me, woah, which was all clear. Now I hope to get a microclot blood test but that may take some months.

When, after an hour or so, I start to lose focus on my laptop, I play Asphalt 8+ on my phone or on the TV. I haven’t played videogames in years and this game is both boring and lightly exciting and sometimes literally circular. It passes time in which I can’t think about all the things I either have to do our would like to do. I have watched everything on TV and finished twitter. I did go start a Mastodon account for me and work — I think this will get you there.

I’d like to write both more and less here. I’ve gone away and come back to this a couple of times already today so maybe this is enough. I’ll be back in 3 months for another update.

In my teenage years I wasn’t at all sure adulthood would be worth the wait and while this year has been a somewhat similar very slow dragging out of time while waiting for things to improve I am grateful to my family for their patience and love and to friends near and far who have reached out and helped support us all during this.

There are so many, many crappy people and things and yet there are a lot of good people out there doing mitzvahs for others that are never publicized. I’m getting old and sometimes it’s all Vonnegut all the time in my head, just be kind, why don’t you.

 

 

---

Signed copies of White Cat, Black Dog

Mon 5 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Preorder your signed or personalized copy of White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link’s forthcoming collection of seven contemporary fairy tales illustrated by Shaun Tan.

Every pre-order placed by publication day — March 28, 2023 — will ship with a signed, limited edition not-for-sale specially made chapbook of a story from the book. Chapbooks will be added randomly to the packages but if you order more than one copy you won’t receive 2 copies of the same chapbook.

Get more of Kelly’s books here.

---

Holiday shipping 2022

Thu 1 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., free shipping, holiday, shipping| Posted by: Gavin

Here’s my annual reminder that holiday mail dates are coming up fast. Our office will be closed as usual from December 21 – January 2, 2023. (Of course, Weightless is always open.)

Media mail shipping is free. However, as per our usual warnings, the USPS doesn’t even give a last mailing date for media mail packages as they’re the last ones put on a truck. If the truck’s full, the media mail packages are put aside for the next one. And so on. If it’s really busy, those packages may arrive after the holidays. If you don’t care, yay! If you want to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please choose Priority Mail.

Here are the last order dates for Small Beer Press—which are not the same as everyone else, see note about the office being closed above.

USPS Retail Ground® Service	Dec. 17
First-Class Mail® Service	Dec. 17
Priority Mail® Service	Dec. 19
Priority Mail Express® Service2	Dec. 21

Happy holidays! Hope you get to rest and read a good book or two.

---

HOLIDAY30

Fri 25 Nov 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., sale| Posted by: Gavin

This is an automated post I wrote last Friday about a 30% off sale on all our available titles on Indiepubs, an ebookstore run by our distributor — so you can also add books from Secret Acres, PM Press, Haymarket, Spiegel and Grau, World Editions, and more.

Add as many books as you can want to the cart and then put the discount code (HOLIDAY30) in. The code applies to all our available books. Some publishers may not participate, so be careful of that, but if you’ve been thinking about stocking up or doing the most excellent thing of gifting SBP titles, now’s your chance to save some $$$!

HOLIDAY30

---

Devoured and Adored

Wed 16 Nov 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett| Posted by: Gavin

Ayize Jama-Everett’s forthcoming final Liminal novel Heroes of an Unknown World is scheduled to receive a great review in the December 1&15 2022 double issue of Booklist and while I can’t quote the whole thing here, I’m happy to drop just these lines:

“A prescient examination of issues pressing hard upon our actual reality, Heroes of an Unknown World is a necessary addition to the genre and will be devoured and adored by the most hardcore of readers.” — Sal A. Joyce, Booklist

We’ve also begun setting up events, first will be at a favorite west coast spot, City Lights Books on Feb. 16th, with more to come.

2023 is going to be Ayize’s year! His next graphic novel, The Last Count of Monte Cristo, illustrated by Tristan Roach, is coming out from Abrams/Megascope in April — can’t wait to read that — and he’s also working on A Table of Our Own: A Conference and Documentary for Black professionals working in the Sacred plant medicine space.

---

Plus ça change

Wed 16 Nov 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Meh.

---

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 46

Mon 7 Nov 2022 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

Last days of 2022. 61 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732101
Going out now, but very slowly.

A review on SFRevu.

What is on the inside?

Short stories, four poems from Marge Piercy, and a cooking column because once I read a zine with a cooking column and loved it. I thought it would be fun and interesting to ask Nicole Kimberling to write one and I’ve been delighted to read her columns ever since.

fiction

Mark Rigney, True Songs of the Pennyrile
Gillian Daniels, You’ll Never Get Away With This
Jennifer Skogen, A Fear and a Wish
Catherine Rockwood, Kleine Boot
Rachel Ayers, Snow’s Kingdom
A.B. Young, Terracotta Urn
Chris Kammerud, Goodnight, My Love. Tonight’s the Night.
Ellen Saunders, Baking a Traditional Funeral
S.E. Clark, The Fisherman’s Braid

poetry

Marge Piercy, Four Poems

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, How to Provide Shelter From the World

cover

Christine Larsen, October

——

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 46. December 2022. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732101. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November [missing from these pages is something about the delay but it is so uninteresting: Gavin, writing this, is chronically ill, slow at everything, and looking at 2023 and hoping there’ll be an improvement] by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw ·  twitter · Mastodon
Printed at Paradise Copies · 413-585-0414.
Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see here or the print issue for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO.
LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through WeightlessBooks.com, &c.
Contents © 2022 the authors. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration © by Christine Larsen (christinelarsenillustration.com).

About These Authors

Rachel Ayers lives in Alaska, where she writes and hosts shows for Sweet Cheeks Cabaret, daydreams, and stares at mountains. She has a Master’s in Library and Information Science which comes in handy at odd hours. Her fiction has recently appeared in Metaphorosis and Radon Journal, and she is a regular contributor at Tor.com. She shares speculative poetry and flash fiction (and cat pictures) at patreon.com/richlayers.

S.E. Clark is a writer and an artist living in a town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Her work is often inspired by the places and people around the North Shore and examines the relationship between the fantastical and the mundane. She runs Aprilarium.com, a home for haunted and honeyed work, and has been published in several magazines including Weird Horror, The South Shore Review and The Drum Literary Magazine. This is her second time appearing in LCRW.

Gillian Daniels’ poetry and short fiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than thirty other publications. She was born in Des Moines, Iowa, grew up in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, and she now writes, works, and haunts the streets in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts. She also makes comics and zines, searches out little-known horror and indie movies, and definitely wants to see pictures of your cat.

Chris Kammerud is a writer, teacher, and performer. Their work has been short-listed for the Calvino Prize and has appeared in, among other places, Strange Horizons, Phantom Drift, and Bourbon Penn. They are a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. They live in Brooklyn.

Nicole Kimberling has only just now started cooking dinner for guests again after almost two years without offering anyone except her wife a plate of food. She’s barely able to contain her excitement about it long enough to function in her day job as editor of Blind Eye Books. She also written several novels and even an audio drama podcast, Lauren Proves Magic is Real!, which, like her column in this zine, is also about food and cooking—just on the supernatural level.

Christine Larson is a Harvey Award nominated cartoonist and illustrator. She has created art for comics, book covers, stories, posters and websites; working with clients such as Dark Horse, Image, IDW, BOOM! Studios, Simon & Scheuster and Cartoon Network. An adjunct instructor at the University of the Arts, she teaches courses in sequential art and comics.

Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light (Knopf, 2020); seventeen novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; they brought out short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc and My Body, My Life. She has read at over 500 venues here and abroad.

Mark Rigney is the author of Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet), and his stage plays have been produced in twenty-three U.S. states (including off-Broadway) plus Australia, Austria, Hong Kong, Nepal, and Canada. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a past winner of the John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize, and the Panowski Playwriting Award (twice). His short stories have found print, in venues ranging from literary (Witness, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review) to fantasy and horror (Lightspeed, Tales from the Magician’s Skull, Cemetery Dance, Wyldblood, Black Gate). When not adding to his extensive collection of antique brewery items, he maintains lively outposts at his website and at the New Play Exchange.

Catherine Rockwood reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine, and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Her poetry chapbook, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion, is available from the Ethel Zine Press. Another mini-chapbook, And We Are Far from Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, is forthcoming from Ethel in 2023.

Ellen Saunders misses baking. She writes speculative fiction in the drippy part of the Pacific Northwest, sings in a women’s choir, serves as staff two three cats, and occasionally attempts to garden. She has been a member of Wordos in Eugene for more than a decade and has driven both of the more talented members of her older critique group into graduate school. Her work has been published in Daily Science Fiction and a ROAR anthology. You can find her avoiding revision by addictively tweeting at @MulletBraid, a handle that should explain her lack of fashion sense.

Jennifer Skogen is a writer from Washington state who is lucky enough to look at books all day as Managing Director of Book Buddy Media. She is the author of the young adult series, The Haunting of Grey Hills, with the first volume currently featured on Realm.fm. Her hobbies include tripping over her two cats (who totally trip her on purpose for sympathy treats, she has been gathering evidence), and going on long hikes with her husband.

A.B. Young writes uncanny fiction for sad queers, a demogaphic they also often teach in their capacity as a high school Media teacher. Their very first story was published in LCRW and went on to receive a 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Since then, they have also been published in Baffling Magazine and Heroines Anthology.

---

And Go Like This

Tue 1 Nov 2022 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

November 5, 2019 · trade cloth · 336 pages · $25 · 9781618731630 | ebook · 9781618731647
November 1, 2022 · trade paper · 336 pages · $18 · 9781618732040

Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award finalist
Chicago Tribune Notable Book
“Anosognosia” reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020, Rich Horton, ed.

Thirteen stories from a master of all trades.

Reading John Crowley’s stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the thirteen stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award winning story “Spring Break”. And in the previously unpublished “Anosognosia” the world brought about by one John C.’s high-school accident may or may not exist.

Michael Saler, Times Literary Supplement:
“And Go Like This is an eclectic sampler of his characteristic preoccupations cast in realist and fantasy modes. While many of the tales express a faith in existential possibilities being actualized by pragmatic decisions, a few are darker, dramatizing how ageing, disease and other impediments narrow options and constrain potential.”

---

Table of Contents

To the Prospective Reader
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines
In the Tom Mix Museum
And Go Like This
Spring Break
The Million Monkeys of M. Borel
This Is Our Town
Mount Auburn Street:
1. Little Yeses, Little Nos
2. Glow Little Glow-Worm
3. Mount Auburn Street
Conversation Hearts
Flint and Mirror
Anosognosia

Reviews

“There’s also ‘Anosognosia,’ the only story not previously published. It’s a terrific fantasia on a familiar Crowley theme — ‘There is more than one history of the world,’ as he put it in the tetralogy ‘Ægypt.'”
— Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune Notable Book

“Not quite like anything you have ever read, a sentiment that applies to so much of Crowley’s work. ‘And Go Like This’ is a distinguished, eclectic collection that deserves a large, appreciative audience. I hope it finds one.”
— William Sheehan, Washington Post

“The stories in And Go Like This are wise, compassionate, and deftly crafted. Rather than straining to hold an operatic note, they tend to hum. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself humming along.”
— Vince Czyz, Arts Fuse

“Accomplished, moving, and wise.” — Tor.com

“Haunting and gorgeously written.” — Locus

“The sort of book that’s perfect for the gathering darkness of November evenings by the fire.” — Amazing Stories

“A compassionate, ruminative eye frames the sepia-tinted worlds of the fifth collection from erudite fantasist Crowley (Ka). The stories are drawn from the last 20 years of Crowley’s long career and span the breadth of speculative and literary short fiction. . . . This collection’s recurring refrains—’pay attention,’ Shakespeare, injuries and aging, the agony of making choices—coalesce into a reading experience like a long afternoon spent with an intimate, excellent raconteur.”
— Publishers Weekly

Daily Hampshire Gazette

Praise for John Crowley’s fiction:

“Ka, is a beautiful, often dreamlike late masterpiece. Elegiacal and exhilarating, Ka is both consoling and unflinching in its examination of what it means to be human, in life and death. If, as Robert Graves wrote, “There is one story and one story only,” we are very lucky that John Crowley is here to tell it to us.” — Los Angeles Times

“John Crowley is one of the finest writers of our time.” — Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“One of the finest fantasy novels of the year, gains the power of a true epic.” — Chicago Tribune

“. . . a read that is simultaneously dry and bizarre, but it’s anything but tiresome. Its original uncanniness is only heightened by Crowley’s new edition, and the specificity of its historical moment made more familiar.” — Emily Nordling, tor.com

“Crowley and his collaborators have successfully mixed together disparate elements to create a strange literary concoction that fizzes with creative energy.” — Michael Berry, Portland Press Herald

“The Chemical Wedding is full of outlandish set pieces—candles that walk on their own; a queen’s gown so beautiful it can’t be gazed upon—that might suggest an allegorical reading. But their imagery, as Crowley points out in his footnotes, is inconsistent: any allegory is defeated by the book’s sheer incongruity.” — Peter Bebergal, The New Yorker

“Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust.” —Peter Straub

“A master of language, plot and characterization, Crowley triumphs in this occult and Hermetic tale, at once naturalistically persuasive and uncannily visionary.” —Harold Bloom

“Like a magus, John Crowley shares his secrets generously, allowing us to believe that his book is revealing the true and glorious nature of the world and the reader’s own place within it.” —Village Voice

“[Crowley] transforms the lead of daily life into seriously dazzling artistic gold.” —Newsday

“So rich and so evocative and so authentic.” —Tom Brokaw

“[An] intricate and stylish romp … both a Gothic extravaganza and a picaresque adventure.” —New York Times Book Review

“An eerily authentic simulation of Romantic literature … beautiful.” — Boston Globe

“Though it’s an impertinent undertaking, it’s also a beautiful success.” —Seattle Time

“A complex, nested novel of literary and biographical reconstruction. . . . A stunning, rewarding work.” —Vancouver Sun

John Crowley (johncrowleyauthor.com) was born in Presque Isle, Maine, and grew up in Vermont, Kentucky, and Ohio. He went to Indiana University and moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. His novels include the Little, Big, the Ægypt series, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, and a new edition of The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosenkreutz. He recently retired after teaching creative writing at Yale for twenty-five years. He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Mythopoeic, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. He lives in Conway, MA.

---

Limited edition:

The sold out third state of And Go Like This: Stories was limited to 26 lettered copies hand bound by Henry Wessells in patterned paper over boards, with printed paper labels, signed on the limitation leaf by the author John Crowley, and including a second tipped-in sheet of a handwritten passage from the book selected by Crowley.

---

2 Steps Forward

Tue 18 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, Long Covid, meh, the world| Posted by: Gavin

[Previously] A few months ago I was texting my hilarious, sardonic,  pragmatic doctor brother telling him I’d dropped off the slow improvement line I’d been on and he said something like, “Oh, that’s a shame . . . it’s the old two steps forward, one weekend in bed.” It was a throwaway line he didn’t remember a couple of months later — “uh oh, worrying when people listen to me” — and while at first it was a bit much to take in I’ve found it to be increasingly helpful this year especially times such as last week when I had my legs cut out from under me once again for no reason I could see and am in good running, as it were, for a gold medal in the Western Mass Couch Lying Event for a couple of days running.

Before that my daily steps report had been slowly rising and one day I spent 2 hours at Book Moon, not really doing anything but enjoying being there. Still a bit exhausting but also a little exhilarating. I was in as we had two people out, one with Covid (they tested positive for 18 days . . . ) and one sick. They’re both back now, phew, and Book Moon is getting busier, phew. All orders appreciated!

So now I’m slowly building my steps back up. Often times I think I am doing things slowly enough I am wrong and have to slow down again. It is incredibly frustrating. The difference between where I am and being able to pull 1,500 pounds of books on a pallet jack is unmeasurable. At the moment carrying a box of books upstairs is impossible, ack. Thankfully Small Beer tiptoes along as the booksellers at Book Moon are mailing out the Advance Reading Copies of Ayize Jama-Everett’s Heroes of an Unknown World this week and Kelly and I have a new cover for the Advance Reading Copy of Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places.

Over the weekend I read Naomi Novik’s fabulous pageturner The Golden Enclaves. I could not read it all at once, too tiring (woah, annoying), but it was great fun and much more than that. Highly recommended.

Do me a favor, wear a mask to protect yourself and everyone around you,

Cheers!
Gavin

---

Big, Ambitious, Wildly Inventive and Full of Heart

Thu 13 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett| Posted by: Gavin

We’re in the process of sending 100+ galleys of Ayize Jama-Everett’s forthcoming final Liminal novel Heroes of an Unknown World to indie bookshops — it’s also available through the Advance Access program, downloadable on Edelweiss, and there’s a 10-copy giveaway over on LibraryThing. You can get a start on the series  right here.

While all that’s going on I got a fabulous email from superstar Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling and many other good things (books, comics, TV!) which just jumpstarted my tiny slow heart. Here’s the latest word on the book — comes out in February:

“The Liminal Books deserve a place on the bookshelf alongside ambitious fantasy series like Marlon James’s Dark Star Trilogy and N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy. Big, ambitious, wildly inventive and full of heart. Heroes of an Unknown World displays the voice and verve that are staples of Ayize Jama-Everett’s work. Dive in, you will love what you discover.”
—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

---

Truly Original

Fri 7 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW, Locus| Posted by: Gavin

I enjoy reading Locus, finding books for Book Moon or for me, and generally keeping half an eye on what’s going on. This month Paula Guran reviewed the latest issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, #45, and said:

“If you are looking for unique literature, you can’t beat LCRW.”

 

---

First thing for the holidays

Fri 7 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holidays, Richard Butner| Posted by: Gavin

Woah it is too early for me to get my head around it but Publishers Weekly have published their Holiday Gift Guide and sharp eyes will note Richard Butner’s collection is included:

“This powerhouse fabulist collection melds ghosts, virtual futures, and the intricacies of friendship into 16 breathtaking, intimate stories that will delight readers of Ray Bradbury, John Crowley, and Sally Rooney alike. In these stories, Butner examines a broad range of interests—the aging process, acts of remembering, overreliance on technology—all in elegant prose, unique imagery, and with keen and generous human insight.”

---

Cracked Egg

Wed 28 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Long Covid| Posted by: Gavin

Yesterday Kelly drove me over to Book Moon — someone was out sick so we covered while Laura was out for lunch. Saying I covered anything is a complete exaggeration. I sat at the front, poked a little at our new point-of-sale software (great, complicated, beyond me at the moment), recycled some junk mail, admired the place, and really just sat and waited. Kelly brought in a new card rack (too heavy for me, meh), signed books, wrote a shelf talker, did a lot of work. A year ago I’d be getting into everything. I was so wrung out by sitting up and paying attention that when we came home I lay on the hammock (outside, easiest surface to reach — ground was closer but getting up and down seemed a challenge), lay on a couch, got up for dinner, lay on the couch.

The good news is that this morning I had the same amount of energy as yesterday morning. A few months ago a day like yesterday (leaving the house for at most a couple of hours) would knock me down for two-to-three days. I have no idea when I’ll be well — I am so glad I don’t have to go to the store (or the office, I miss the office) today. I can go in for 1/2 an hour, one day a week. I know people go to work 5 days in a row but from here that’s like watching Serena Williams play tennis, amazing. I never was that and will never reach it, but at least my watch says my step count is ever so slowly going up.

I got home and started reading (and stared at trees and read the news on my phone and drank coconut water — prescribed by doc, yay!) Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. I’m maybe sixty pages in but it is near unputdownable. I put some on order but we’re going to have to order more because if there’s anyone like me who missed, I want them to read it!

 

---

One of the Best

Tue 27 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, John Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

After yesterday’s quote from Elwin on Ayize Jama-Everett’s Heroes of an Unknown World, I’m fired up to say we received another excellent advance quote this time from John Jennings, bestselling graphic novel illustrator (Kindred, After the Rain, Parable of the Sower), professor, author,curator, Harvard Fellow, and all-around champion of Black culture.

Heroes is the fourth and final of Ayize’s Liminal novels. He self-published the first one, The Liminal People, in 2009 and Nalo Hopkinson suggested he send it out way. We published our edition in 2012 and then two more in quick succession in 2015. Now that the series is complete with Heroes — where a found family of Black superheroes has one last chance to save the world — it’s time to make some noise and celebrate the series, the stories, and the writer.

All 4 novels are downloadable by reviewers and booksellers on Edelweiss — and don’t ask me why but Am*zon has the first book on super sale at $1.99.

So here’s hoping we can get some momentum going with a little bit of Tuesday joy as we build up toward the pub date in February:

“Ayize Jama-Everett is a towering talent and one of the best genre-writers working today. His final installment of his masterfully told Liminal Series; HEROES OF AN UNKNOWN WORLD is a taut, textured feast for the minds of any ravenous reader who’s looking for something fresh and exciting to experience.”

---

Get Out!

Mon 26 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Elwin Cotman| Posted by: Gavin

We just received the kind of fantastic advance comment that publishers dream about when we send out books. Everyone is too busy, everyone is overloaded, yet sometimes writers find the time to read and respond to the unending stack of advance reading copies and floods of email. Thanks to all of them! That support is invaluable — and unpaid!

So here’s a bit of Monday joy from Elwin Cotman (Dance on Saturday, Hard Times Blues) on Ayize Jama-Everett’s Heroes of an Unknown World:

“A rollicking, irreverent action sci-fi filled with anime-esque feats, a deep appreciation for culture, and sparkling humanity. Jama-Everett’s final book in the Liminal series is the kind of grandiose battle against despair I’ll gladly sign up for. Put on your favorite record, crack this one open, and tell the darkness: ‘Fuck off!'”

And then we have the version that will go out onto other websites . . .

“A rollicking, irreverent action sci-fi filled with anime-esque feats, a deep appreciation for culture, and sparkling humanity. Jama-Everett’s final book in the Liminal series is the kind of grandiose battle against despair I’ll gladly sign up for. Put on your favorite record, crack this one open, and tell the darkness: ‘get out!'”

---

Podcastery Times 2

Thu 22 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., podcasts, Robert Freeman Wexler| Posted by: Gavin

Podcast week part 2: this week Robert Freeman Wexler was interviewed by Rick Kleffel on Narrative Species.

Rick has been interviewing people for many years  — here’s a podcast from 2007 with me, Kelly, and Karen: News Report; Gavin Grant, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link — but his enthusiasm for books still comes through along with a deep knowledge of writers, books and more. I have his recent chat with Kim Stanley Robinson lined up next.

Listen up here.

 

---

Could Have Had a Baby or 2 By Now

Wed 21 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, Long Covid, meh| Posted by: Gavin

tl;dr still out sick. This is my 3-month follow up my June post which was a 3-month follow up my March post:

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December [2021] with something — most likely post-viral fatigue . . .

and I am more frustrated with the thought of writing this (or another one in 3 months time, ugh) than anything since I don’t know — maybe since I was stuck trying to write poetry to order in high school and was only able to commit doggerel whereas of course otherwise I could write pages and pages of poetry/songs/ballads/epics.

Anyway, this post brought to you by the letters C, O, U, C again, and H, as well as H and P — Harvard Pilgrim, our family health insurance provider which we pay for, being self-employed and all that. My cheery Boston-based pulmonologist, whom I’ve spoken to twice by zoom, wants me to get a CT scan. Since I’ve had an ultrasound and a chest x-ray I was happy to try and collect the full set. Just got a call from the local hospital saying my insurance has denied the request to cover it. Here on the couch I am not filled with rage, who has the energy for that? Instead I am on the edge of tears. A side effect of either my age or condition: I’m getting much better at crying. Now the cheery pumonologist has called to do battle on my behalf. I wish him luck. [Later: nope, not covered. Appointment cancelled, dr. will try again. Will wilting but meh.]

He told me that whether or not I ever had Covid, he’s including me in the post-Covid cohort as my symptoms (basically fatigue or what I feel to be uselessness) fit. He does some testing for the groups associated with a fatigue study I just read about in New Scientist which is cheering. Resting, pacing, coconut water, more salt in my diet, and recumbent exercise are all on order. Apparently there may be some physiological changes in blood flow that can be picked up during an exercise test with a pulmonary catheter placed. If I could, I’d up and run away at the thought of that but that’s out the question so maybe I will get that done at some point. So it goes.

I am in two minds (at least, always) about how much to write. I may be improving as my phone says my step count is inching up but is that just me learning how to live with this? I am still immensely physically limited.

I can do some of the Small Beer and Book Moon work that I need to do and I can help our kid (from the couch) with her homework. I can make breakfast but actual standing around cooking for any length of time is too much — I sit down if I am chopping anything, etc. I’ve been to Book Moon twice for about 20 minutes each and hope to visit once a week but even the trip there (ooh, out the house!) is exhausting. Apparently my bandwidth, for lack of a better term, is still very limited. I haven’t been to the office but Kelly collects mail every couple of weeks. Kelly does way too many things! I can’t mail things out or move books — I can send emails and so on although even there at some point every day I realize I am done and need a break as I’m not comprehending what I’m reading or unable to type more than a word without a typo. I have taken up Asphalt 8+ to pass time. I don’t think I was a hugely active person before this but I did enjoy kicking to do things off lists, going places, seeing people. Maybe in the future.

Small Beer: I am just about to send an extended edition with bonus material of Ayize Jama-Everett’s 4th and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, to the galley printer. 100+ indie bookstores will be getting copies along with reviewers. All four novels should be available on Edelweiss. We’re really trying to get the completion of this series celebrated in February when it comes out. The Liminal books are pageturners, full of action and also the complicated dynamics of friends and family.

————

I have gone away from this and come back to it a couple of times and there’s a disappointing lack of narrative to it, sorry, but I am at the many typos stage again so that’s it for now. Next Monday I get another vaccine booster, woo.

In my ancient mariner way, supine on the couch, I recommend wearing a mask.

---

Podcastery Times 1

Wed 21 Sep 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., podcasts, Richard Butner| Posted by: Gavin

It’s podcast week — not at Small Beer, phew — or at least podcast day as Richard Butner was just interviewed by Gil Roth on his Virtual Memories show. A couple of weeks ago Gil posted his 500th show, it’s kind of amazing to pick through the archive to see who I could listen to.

This interview took place over some kind of electronic medium — Butner’s the engineer so he would know about that part; it was almost in person in August when Butner was in NYC and NJ for readings but the scheduling did not work out. I am glad they did in the end have a chat as I enjoyed the resulting conversation. Listen to it here.

 

---

The Business of Publication

Tue 23 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Today we’re celebrating the launch of Robert Freeman Wexler’s new novel, The Silverberg Business!

He and Jeffrey Ford will be at Two Dollar Radio HQ tonight and then he heads out on the road to Cincinnati, Austin, Houston, and Chicago. It’s a hell of a time to tour, fingers crossed everyone masks up.

Thank you to those who pre-ordered the book! They were mailed out last week by the fine people at Book Moon and the Consortium warehouse.

Robert’s been writing more about the genesis of this weird gem on his site.

---

The Silverberg Business

Tue 23 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 288 pages · $17 · 9781618732019 | ebook · 9781618732026 | Edelweiss

In 1888 in Victoria, Texas, for a simple job, a Chicago private eye gets caught up in much darker affairs and ends up in the poker game to end all poker games.

Read

» an interview by Tobias Carroll, Skulls, Detectives, and the Texas Surreal, in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
» an excerpt on Lithub.

Listen

» Robert interviewed by Rick Kleffel on Narrative Species
» Robert & Victor LaValle reading @ KGB Bar, NYC, 4/20/22
» Vick Mickunas interviews Robert on WYSO.

In 1888, Shannon, a Chicago private detective, returns home to Galveston, Texas for a wedding. Galveston’s new rabbi asks Shannon to find Nathan Silverberg, gone missing along with a group of swindlers who claim to be soliciting money for a future colony of Romanian Jewish refugees.

What seems to be a simple job soon pushes Shannon into stranger territory. His investigations lead him to a malevolent white-haired gambler, monstrous sand dune totems, and a group of skull-headed poker players trapped in an endless loop of cards and alcohol, who may be his only means to survive the business.

With The Silverberg Business, Robert Freeman Wexler has delivered a gloriously strange hard-boiled tale that crosses genres and defies expectations.

Reviews

“By subverting expectations in both genre and character, Wexler’s writing continually asked me to look closely, beyond initial expectations and surface observations—much like a detective must. This genre-defying novel works at many levels to consider what it means to live as an outsider in a landscape that holds a dark mirror to our contemporary era. And it’s not only deeply-layered: it’s a page-turner, a wild ride, and an immensely enjoyable read. The Silverberg Business is a mystery that kept me thinking about its deeper questions and haunting images long after the case was closed.”
— Melissa Benton Barker, Ancillary Review of Books

“It’s one of the mostly deeply weird novels I’ve read in some time, at times hallucinatory and dreamlike, at other times gritty and naturalistic. We’ve heard a lot in the past several years about genre-blending or ‘‘cross-genre’’ fiction, but Wexler starts out by combining two genres that seldom come up in these discussions: the western and the hard-boiled private eye mystery.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Steeped in the early history of Texas’s statehood and laced with eerie portents of supernatural horror, the outstanding latest from Wexler (The Painting and the City) impresses with its originality and inventiveness. In 1888, a Jewish private detective who goes by the name of Shannon travels from Chicago to Victoria, Tex., to investigate the disappearance of New Yorker Nathan Silverberg, who was sent with donor funds to buy land on the Texas coast for a settlement of Romanian Jewish refugees. Shannon discovers that Silverberg was first swindled, then murdered by a pair of con men, one of whom—a gambler named Stephens—wears an ornate ring with magic powers. When Shannon pursues Stephens, the ring’s magic transports him to an otherworldly “scratch land” populated by skull-headed beings whose rituals—involving card games and strange dancing—shape a cosmic context for catastrophic events that unfold in the human world. Wexler keeps his twisty plot refreshingly unpredictable and endows his characters—even the non-talking skullheads—with vividly realized personalities that enliven his surreal, atmospheric tale. This weird western packs a wallop.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A weird but oddly convincing creature feature.” —Kirkus Reviews

Early reader reactions

“Certainly the strangest book I’ve ever read, and strangeness is a thing that I take to. The grotesque horrors, the impossibilities, the shifting scenes, Silverberg’s skull, the skull-heads, the wooden house that turns into a mansion without the detective finding it particularly odd. It is in fact a book not like anything I’ve ever read.”
— John Crowley, author of Little, Big

“A haunting novel that traverses an American West inhabited by nightmarish characters, human and otherwise, The Silverberg Business evokes the unease of classic weird fiction with a contemporary gloss: William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land by way of Jim Jarmusch and Cormac McCarthy. Unnerving and unforgettable.” — Elizabeth Hand, author of Hokuloa Road

“Robert Freeman Wexler never fails to knock me out, and The Silverberg Business hits like a hurricane—there’s strangeness and beauty on every page. The novel is that rare thing, a weird western that’s truly weird, set in a Texas that’s simultaneously gritty, violent, and real, yet soaked in myth. Don’t miss this.” — Daryl Gregory, author of Revelator

“This philosophical Jewish-Texan retro-neo-noir—at once detective story, western, and ambling picaresque—is populated by a memorable cast of schemers, toughs, and oddballs, and rendered with a keen eye and ear for detail.” — J. Robert Lennon, author of Subdivision

Praise for Robert Wexler’s books

“An unusual, haunting tale from a distinctive new voice.” — Lisa Tuttle, London Sunday Times

“This complex, enthralling novel is concerned with relations between art and commerce, and nature and commerce; the importance of the past; the everyday oppression of capitalism; and how art may shape history.” — Booklist (starred review)

“As buoyant and airy as a center-ring trapeze act.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Quietly stunning.” — Asimov’s

“Wexler demonstrates a wonderful touch with his writing: to render Lewis’s lengthy inner journey through this dream-state without losing a sense of living, vital immediacy is an extraordinary accomplishment.”—New York Review of Science Fiction

“A fascinating, deeply bizarre adventure.”—Faren Miller, Locus

Also

» an interview on Good People, Cool Things.

Previously

Aug. 23, 8 p.m. Two Dollar Radio HQ, Columbus, OH — with Jeffrey Ford
Aug. 27, 8 p.m. The Emporium, Yellow Springs, OH
Aug. 29, 7 p.m. Joseph-Beth, Cincinnati, OH — in conversation with Rebecca Kuder
Aug. 30, 7 p.m. Book People, Austin, TX
Aug. 31, 6:30 p.m. Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
Sep. 13, 7 p.m. Book Cellar, Chicago, IL — with Jon Langford
Oct. 13, 6 p.m. Yellow Springs Library, Yellow Springs, OH — with guitar accompaniment by Brady Burkett of Stark Folk Band
Nov. 3-6, World Fantasy Convention, New Orleans, LA
Nov. 19, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Books by the Bank, Cincinnati, OH

About the author

Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel The Painting and the City has recently been released in paperback by the Visible Spectrum and his short story collection Undiscovered Territories: Stories is out now from PS Publishing. He was born in Houston, Texas and currently lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio with the writer Rebecca Kuder and their child. His website and blog are at robertfreemanwexler.com

Cover art by Jon Langford.

---

Indie Bookstore Silverberg Spectacular

Mon 22 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., readings, Robert Freeman Wexler| Posted by: Gavin

Write here, write now, Write Columbus.

I wish I were going to be at Two Dollar Radio HQ tomorrow night for Robert Freeman Wexler and Jeffrey Ford’s event (Aug. 23, 8 p.m.) where Robert will launch his new novel, The Silverberg Business, and Jeff will read from Big Dark Hole. An aside here, having been to many readings by Jeff over the years he is just as likely to pull out a sheaf of papers and read from something he has finished that day.

Tomorrow is the first night of Robert’s Indie Bookstore Silverberg Spectacular. If you get to go, do post photos and tag us on twitter — or even BKMN on instagram.

---

DRM-free Ghosts

Thu 18 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bundles, Mary Rickert, StoryBundle| Posted by: Gavin

I saw a poll on twitter yesterday asking when the Halloween season starts* and the answer is obviously right now with this Ghosts & Apparitions Storybundle where they have 4 books for $5 or all 10 books for $25 (you can pay more [or less] — and then the authors get more! [or less]) including Mary Rickert’s World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson award finalist collection You Have Never Been Here. Readers can also choose to donate a portion of their proceeds to Girls Write Now and Mighty Writers.

Get (or gift) your bundle here.

* Some say October 31.
Some say October 1.
Some say mid-September.
Some say it never goes away.

---

Heads up NY & NJ

Tue 16 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., KGB Fantastic Fiction, readings, Richard Butner| Posted by: Gavin

This week Richard Butner is traveling up from his home in Raleigh, NC, for a couple of New York City area readings:

Wednesday, Aug 17, 7 p.m. KGB Fantastic Fiction, KGB Bar, NY
Richard reads with our good friend Veronica Schanoes whose collection Burning Girls is now out in paperback

Thursday, Aug 18, 7 p.m. Little City Books, Hoboken, NJ

The most recent reviews for Richard’s debut collection The Adventurists are from Lyndsie Manusos on Book Riot:

“Richard Butner’s work explores the weird, uncanny corners of everyday life — from a theater kid who becomes the queen, to a tree who talks to just one person, to Death’s Fool, who you really shouldn’t ignore.”

and from rather legendary printer, papermaker, publisher, & poet John Dancy-Jones on his Raleigh Rambles site:

“Richard Butner’s new collection of SF stories is a wonderful look at his long-established but back-burner career as a writer of speculative fiction. Richard is beloved by many in Raleighwood for his quirky and often endearing local theatre roles, his championing of local music and its venues, and (among the cognoscenti) his loyalty to Modernist architecture. This review is overtly from the perspective of a Raleigh native who enjoys the many local references in these stories and the bits and pieces of RB rendered in the protagonists.”

Richard, as the reference to the theatre roles above attests to, is a good reader and I hope you’ll attend these events if you can!

---

Reconstruction is a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee!

Mon 8 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alaya Dawn Johnson, Award Season| Posted by: Gavin

We are delighted to see Alaya Dawn Johnson’s collection Reconstruction: Stories is a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee! Alaya probably does not need any introduction to readers here. She is a fabulous writer whose work we have long admired — as does Janelle Monáe who asked Alaya to be one of the co-writers in her fiction debut, The Memory Librarian.

Reconstruction has ten stories and to give you some idea of the range, here are a couple of stories, A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i and A Song to Greet the Sun, you can read online and an excerpt from the outstanding title story on Tor.com.

---

Earlier Entries in »