Get Lost — and enjoy it

Thu 28 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We started this week with the news that Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad had received the Ray Bradbury Prize at the LA Times Book Awards and we’re ending it with news that is perhaps equally exciting: on March 21, 2023, we are going to publish Sarah Pinsker’s second collection, Lost Places.

Since Sarah’s first collection, Philip K. Dick Award winner Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, came out, she has published 2 novels, A Song for the New Day and We Are Satellites, and has written enough short stories for this new collection, including a fabulous story that hasn’t been published elsewhere. What a treat!

It’s already up online at Greedy Reads, bn.com, etc., and some places even have the stand-in title but that’ll get replaced with the actual title soon.

Read more about the book and see the cover here.


Susan Stinson and Alison Bechdel celebrate the first ebook of Venus in Chalk

Wed 20 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Please join us at at 7 p.m. on as we host superstar Alison Bechdel in zoom conversation with Northampton’s own Susan Stinson as they celebrate the first ebook publication of Susan’s novel Venus of Chalk.

Alison Bechdel is the author of many fantastic graphic novels including most recently The Secret To Superhuman Strength — Susan and Alison have known and read each other for years and Alison had this to say about Venus of Chalk:

“This neatly-stitched tale of a latter-day home economist’s ‘glaring departures from sensible living’ is a religious experience. Under Susan Stinson’s microscopic needlework, the fabric of the phenomenal world shimmers with sublime beauty. A can of baking soda, a traffic pylon, a city bus—these things will never look the same again. Stinson lavishes the same minute reverence on her human subjects, discovering rich, sacramental meaning in their most banal small talk. This book unravels what you think you know about women and men, the freakish and the normal, shame and salvation—then mends it anew into a most surprising story.”
— Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

There is no print edition of Venus of Chalk but if you’d like signed copies of Susan’s novels, Martha Moody and Spider in a Tree, or her chapbook, Belly Songs — please order here and add your request in the comments, thank you!

*Register here*

 

poster for event


First Trade Review for Heroes

Fri 15 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Heroes of an Unknown World coverAnd it is such a good review! It comes from Publishers Weekly and I could pick out just about any line and put it on a shirt.

We’ve been working with Ayize on these books for the last 10 years and I can’t wait for this final book to come out. Ayize is so skilled at writing knock out action science fiction which also threads together the story of a found family, who are definitely not perfect, but who have their eyes on the prize: a life which is more than just survival for everyone, not just the fortunate/terrible few.

Here’s that first review:

Therapist and theologian Jama-Everett takes his group of Black superheroes from 1970s London to contemporary Morocco in the fascinating and action-packed final Liminal novel (after The Liminal War). Liminals possess supernatural powers, among them central figure Taggert’s ability to manipulate DNA to harm and heal; his adopted daughter Prentis’s empathy with animals; and wind spirit A.C.’s power over the elements. Taggert and his seven major allies must finally defeat the beautiful but monstrous Alters, who work to drive all of humanity to lemming-like suicide by creating a physically and spiritually depressed new world. In breathlessly paced adventures told from ever-shifting perspectives, Jama-Everett celebrates the power of family, community, and music to unite peoples and combat entropy, using dramatic flashbacks to illustrate the salvific power of self-sacrifice for a greater good. His fictionalization of the role psychedelics (here “manna,” the food of the gods) can play in mental health and clear conviction that writing can heal those whom mainstream culture has ignored add depth to the rip-roaring action. Series fans and new readers alike are sure to be drawn in.