Hallucinatory, Dreamlike, Gritty and Naturalistic

Wed 3 Aug 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

In the new issue of Locus Gary K. Wolfe reviews Robert Freeman Wexler’s The Silverberg Business who calls it “deeply weird” and goes on to say:

“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.”

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Fixed!

Fri 29 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Aaaaand after Paypal broke our old buy buttons Michael has fixed them: please, go try them here and see!

 

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Paypal?

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

Received an email today that said Paypal wasn’t working on this site, oops. It was working on Tuesday and my Paypal account is still working out fine. This is not the time for me to switch payment processors so I’ll look into it. Especially as we have a new book and a new issue of the zine both dropping sooooon.

This link does seem to say it all — what are the basic parameters the Paypal buttons are suddenly lacking? Wish me luck! (Or, send cash or order Small Beer books here.)

Another question from the floor: will there be a Small Beer sale this summer? Between me being mostly out of action and us changing websites at Book Moon next month the answer is no. Autumn sale? Who knows! I lie here on this couch and think who can think that far ahead?

ETA Friday: Friday update: the subscription page works. Double hmm.

ETA: Wondering if this is because Paypal wants me to add the Pay Later option which is hard coded into their new buttons — and I don’t want to add that. Hmm.

Gah, all my old saved buttons are inaccessible/gone. Whee. This link below leads to the apology, oops, no access page . . .

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Top 10 21st-Century Fantasy Novels

Tue 26 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

Brian Attebury’s new book Fantasy: How It Works comes out from Oxford University Press in October and in the run up to the publication date he wrote up a Top 10 21st-century Fantasy Novels for the Guardian. I’ve read seven books on the list — I should just complete it! — and was very happy to see Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria on the list:

5. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar (2013)
In this gorgeously written tour of a complex secondary world, Samatar explores ghosts, culture clashes and the effect of written language on a purely oral culture, while also providing engaging characters and a rousing adventure story. The imagined world of the fiction reflects Samatar’s own immersion in multiple cultures as the daughter of a Somali immigrant and a scholar of Arabic literatures with teaching experience in Sudan and Egypt.

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Backlist To The Future: Short Story-Style

Fri 22 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

Should you be a short story kick this weekend, Book Riot’s SFF Yeah’s podcast has you covered:

Jenn discusses two favorite speculative short story collections.

Tender by Sofia Samatar

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker

We are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

Follow the podcast via RSS here, Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here.
The show can also be found on Stitcher.

 

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The Silverberg Business OHTX Tour

Thu 21 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We just got a review of this book that called it something like weird and great and, really, aren’t they all, the books? Otherwise, what is the point? Well, I like many nonweird books, but of the ones I want to publish, a touch, a smidgeon, a skullwhat? is always welcome.

Robert is going to some of our fave indie bookstores and I hope if you’re near you can go, bring friends, be surprised! Also, Jon Langford, cover artist and legendary musician, is, amazingly!, opening for him at the Book Cellar which is way beyond my bingo card hopes for this life, yay!

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Congratulations World Fantasy Award finalists!

Wed 20 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, Jeffrey Ford| Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all of the World Fantasy Award finalists and especially to:

Isabel Yap for her collection Never Have I Ever
and her novella “A Canticle for Lost Girls”

Jeffrey Ford for his collection Big Dark Hole

Sarah Pinsker for her story “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” — originally published in Uncanny and collected in her 2023 collection Lost Places

The news came in just too late to put in the forthcoming late issue of LCRW which might even be mailed out this month, that part is out of my hands.

Anyway, congratulations to all the finalists, what fun!

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Susan Stinson on NEPM

Wed 13 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Every summer our local NPR station, NEPM, does a series on local authors with new books out and this summer one of the writers they are highlighting is Susan Stinson for the first ebook edition of her novel Venus of Chalk:

Northampton’s Susan Stinson wants to add ‘fat lesbian home economist’ to canon of literature themes

Stinson’s new e-book, “Venus of Chalk,” adds a new twist to the classic road-trip novel.

Listen here.

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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 45

Tue 5 Jul 2022 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

Last days of July, 2022. 64 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732071

May: gone. June: gone. July: moving fast. Here are gods, snakes, death, and demons. On the lighter, crunchier side: carrots and apples. Twice a year this zine slips out into this world, less internationally than it used to. Maybe I just need to stand at airports and offer it as in-flight reading? Maybe I can persuade an airline to make it their in-flight magazine? How refreshing it would be to pull LCRW out of the seat pocket. Since LCRW only comes out twice a year, that leaves 10 months to be filled in with other zines. Airlines, ping me. We can make this work.

Reviews

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

In the meantime, good things are here:

fiction

Anna O’Connor, The Rattling Seed
Ellen Rhudy, This World Will Be True
Julie A. Hersh, Snakes and God
Christopher Yin, The Crack
Robert P. Kaye, The Subrogation of the Internal Messenger
Olga Niziolek, To the Bottom
Laura Wang, Teenage Demons

poetry

Two Poems by Jessy Randall: Pandrosion of Alexandria (ca. 300-360) & Modern Day Folk Remedies
Neile Graham, The Goddess of Apples

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Are They Sweet?

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

This 2 minute 45 second issue is Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 45 and is going out in August 2022. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732071. 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 · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 13 of the print issue or PDF 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 “Nausicaa” © 2020 by Ashanti Fortson (ashantifortson.com).

Celebrating! Zen Cho’s LA Times Ray Bradbury Book Award for Spirits Abroad and Isabel Yap’s Ladies of Horror Awards for her story “Syringe” and her collection Never Have I Ever. We brought two titles out as ebooks recently: Susan Stinson’s novel Venus of Chalk and Howard Waldrop’s collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures. RIP Angélica Gorodischer and Geoffrey Goodwin.

Since December 2021 Gavin has been on the couch/working from home (not in the office or shop) with something along the lines of CFS or post-viral fatigue so everything Small Beer has & will be slowed down for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Laura, Kate, Beth,  Franchie, Diya, & Jess at Book Moon for shipping LCRW (&c) and running the bookshop like a dream.  We’re switching websites and point of sales systems  there so your orders and patience are much appreciated.

Please send submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

About the Authors

Ashanti Fortson is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, editor, and professor with a deep interest in difficult emotions, quiet moments, and the rifts and connections between human beings. Their work explores transience and reflection through a tenderhearted lens, and a good comic essay will always brighten their day. Ashanti lives in Baltimore with their spouse, their cat Miss Cheese, and at least three pet rats at all times. They’re the spider-saving sort. Ashanti’s short comic Leaf Lace won the 2021 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic, and was nominated in the categories of Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Online Comic. Ashanti also won a Prism Award as part of the Heartwood: Non-binary Tales of Sylvan Fantasy anthology. Ashanti is currently working on their debut graphic novel, Cress & Petra (HarperCollins).

Since stepping down from directing the Clarion West Writing Workshop Neile Graham has been slowly developing plans for her fantasy romance novel empire. Meanwhile, she has had poems in Mad Swirl and Polar Starlight, and her most recent collection, The Walk She Takes, came out in 2019, with poems about her travels in Scotland among all the stones (crofts, brochs, cairns, castles, and Neolithic villages). Several of the poems there appeared in earlier issues of LCRW.

Julie A. Hersh is a writer of speculative/odd fiction living in New York. She also works as an editor and practices martial arts. Her writing has appeared in journals including Visitant, Five on the Fifth, Monkeybicycle, Gone Lawn, and Menacing Hedge. She can be found at  and on twitter.

Robert P. Kaye’s stories have appeared in New Letters, Dark Lane, Jersey Devil, and the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review. He hosts the Works in Progress open mic at Hugo House in Seattle and is an editor at Pacifica Literary Review.

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 called “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” which, like her column in this zine, is also about food and cooking—just on the supernatural level.

Olga Niziołek is a Polish writer and literary translator. In her stories people infuse clothes with darkness or tame little tornadoes. She will not refuse coffee under any circumstances.

Anna O’Connor is an American writer and visual artist. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Copper Nickel, Travesties?!, The Scores, and elsewhere. She lives in Edinburgh.

Jessy Randall’s poems and stories have appeared in Poetry, McSweeney’s, Nature, and Scientific American. Gold SF at the University of London will publish her new book, Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science in September. She is a librarian at Colorado College.

Ellen Rhudy lives in Columbus, where she’s an MFA candidate at Ohio State. Her stories have appeared in LCRW #15 and #38, as well as Northwest Review, Story, and the Cincinnati Review. She’s currently working on a novel. You can find her on twitter.

Laura Wang is based in Brooklyn and Taipei, where she writes stories and talks to human beings about molecules. Her fiction has appeared in the Jellyfish Review and Pigeon Pages, her nonfiction has appeared in Catapult, and her random thoughts have appeared on twitter. She is frequently found in close proximity to delicious snacks.

Christopher Yin is a closet literature major wearing an engineering grad student’s clothing. Following the advice of Octavia Butler’s famous self-help books, he has escaped the fires and droughts of Southern California for Seattle. In his professional life he tries to keep cells from dying; in his nonprofessional life he reads too much/never enough. In fact, he is probably reading something right now, while also eating dumplings.

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21 today

Fri 1 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Apparently we published Ray Vukcevich’s collection Meet Me in the Moon Room 21 years ago today! (Eh, what a year.) Kelly and I were living in Brooklyn and if memory serves* we had a ticker tape parade, handed out exploding comets and moon suits to thousands of readers who danced with us all the way along Atlantic Avenue, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and up to Central Park where the lucky few discovered their suits were real-ish and floated off, I think to the moon. The west coast celebrations, which began in Ray’s hometown of Eugene, were reportedly wilder.

Read: Whisper · No Comet · Mom’s Little Friends

It’s another of those books like Carol Emshwiller’s Carmen Dog which I always find is weirder in its own way than I expect every time I go back to it. Every writer is unique but Ray really writes his own way through things.

And! I’m delighted to say that we just came across copies of the book so it’s available now again from here or Book Moon & so on and so forth for the first time in a couple of years.

The book was one of two we published that year, our first publishing season, woah! — the other book was Kelly’s first collection.

21 years ago in our apartment — very glad that Pathway were doing the actual shipping of books to bookstores and libraries — I had yet to do any royalty statements. Today I’ll start on Jan-Jun 2022 statements and, thanks to readers of the print and ebook editions, I’ll be sending Ray a check: thanks, all!

If you only click one link today and only read one spooky story, read this one: Whisper.

* Wellll

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Ladies of Horror

Thu 30 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Isabel Yap| Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Congratulations Isabel Yap and Hailey Piper whose collections Never Have I Ever and Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy were jointly awarded the 2021 Ladies of Horror Award for Best Collection.

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Locus Reading & Panel

Wed 22 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Jeffrey Ford, Kelly Link, Locus, readings, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

As part of the Locus awards readings and celebration, Kelly will do a zoom reading on Thursday June 23 with Michael Swanwick and be on a panel on Connie Willis and Gary K. Wolfe on Saturday, June 25:

Thursday, June 23 – 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. ET – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick

Saturday, June 25 – 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. ET – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe (bring your own donuts!)

Jeff Ford and Sarah Pinsker are two of the many readers and panellists. Should be fun. I’ve lifted the post from the Locus site so check here for updates.

Event links at Locus Awards Online 2022 will become live at their scheduled time. Here’s the full list of events from Locus:

LOCUS AWARDS SCHEDULE

Wednesday, June 22  –

4:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: José Pablo Iriarte and Nnedi Okorafor
5:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: Nalo Hopkinson and Catherynne M. Valente
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Fran Wilde

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Thursday, June 23  –

4:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick
5:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Suzanne Palmer and Wole Talabi
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Jeffrey Ford and Angela Slatter

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Friday, June 24 –

4:00 p.m PDT – Reading: Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Cat Rambo
5:00 p.m PDT – Reading: John Wiswell and Connie Willis
6:00 p.m PDT – Online Hangout with Connie Willis and Locus folks

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Saturday, June 25 –

10:00 a.m. PDT – PANEL: “Hauntings & Histories” with Akemi Dawn Bowman, TJ Klune, Darcie Little Badger, Sam J. Miller
11:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Power Dynamics in New Worlds” with Daniel Abraham, C.L. Clark, Fonda Lee, Sarah Pinsker
12:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Writing Rules and How to Break Them” with Charlie Jane Anders, Charles Payseur, Sheree Renée Thomas, A.C. Wise
2:00 p.m. PDT – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe
(bring your own donuts!)

3:00 p.m. PDT – LOCUS AWARDS CEREMONY with MC Connie Willis

 

*Memberships include a set digital subscription to the magazine, from our February 2022 issue (our Year-in-Review issue with Recommended Reading List and Poll and Survey) to August 2022 (with the Locus Awards photo coverage and writeup) and everything in between. Member subscription is non-transferable and does not affect or extend existing subscriptions.

Locus Supports Inclusivity! Thinking of attending? Please do. We encourage people of color, women, people with disabilities, older people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to attend. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, size, nationality, religion, culture, education level, and self-identification. Locus associate editor Arley Sorg will serve as our PoC/LGBTQQIA Ombudsman.  Feel free to reach out to him in advance at locus@locusmag.com subject: Arley Ombudsman. Our Code of Conduct is available here: Locus Science Fiction Foundation Code of Conduct.

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Not so shoddy

Tue 21 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

In preparation for the next issue of LCRW — we’re working on it, but, I’m a little slower than ever — we’ve read most submissions up to about a month ago. Responses, even to stories that are embarrassingly old which I have moved again and again into the maybe stack have either gone out by mail or email.

Reading for the next issue begins when this issue is out, if not before. Turns out reading subs (slowly, meh) on a hammock is one thing I can do these days.

I also tidied up the LCRW subscription page for the first time in a while. Got rid of an html table which was beginning* to look a bit too shoddy.** At some point a proper update is needed but thanks in the meantime to everyone who has ever subscribed through that page. I’ve tested the new version and all the links should work.

Now to the fun part: getting some more chocolate bars in!

* as of 2014 or so
** these yarns (cough) aren’t shoddy, they’re top notch!

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Such a punch!

Mon 20 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alaya Dawn Johnson, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

This week on on Book Riot’s Under the Radar SFF podcast Jenn and Sharifah discuss many interesting books (including Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel) and other things including a review of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Reconstruction: Stories.

Alaya was recently chosen to co-write the first story in Janelle Monáe’s New York Times bestselling first book The Memory Librarian.

I enjoyed he podcast so much I used the voice memo app on my phone and then the dictation app on my laptop to make this lightly edited transcript. It’s definitely not 100% accurate as I was looking to capture the description of this book I love more than keep it to 100% of what was said. You can listen to the full episode or subscribe here:

Alaya Dawn Johnson is a writer whose career I have been happily following for some times now. This collection is such a punch. From the opening story right on through it is putting you on notice. You’re gonna go some places here and you’re not gonna be able to look away. It’s an amazing collection.
The title story is the last story in the collection and the longest  in the collection. It takes place during the end of the Civil War in the United States. You’re following a black woman who is a laundress, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and now following a regiment of black soldiers. It’s really good. That character, Sally, is so justifiably angry but one of the through lines of the story is a breakdown of the different kinds of anger and what they do to you and why you cling to them and how they affect you and how you move through the world through these different forms of anger. It’s so insightful and perceptive and so visceral and present.
The first story is such a punch. It’s called “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawaii” and it imagines a world — sort of our time — in which vampires are in charge and have enslaved humanity and put them in camps and are breeding them as a food supply and our main character is an overseer who is a human working for the vampires. So it’s about coercion and collaboration, what does it mean to survive? What does it mean to try to carve out enough power to do the good that you can while knowing that you are perpetuating harm? It’s so intense. It’s beautifully written.
The stories are not easy and I think they’re not supposed to be. I think Johnson is doing so much in here. There’s a huge range of what speculative elements she’s using between the stories and the tones shift and the settings shift. Each story is very different. They are so good. She is such good short story writer — she’s also an excellent novelist — but you really feel the power of her short fiction in this collection. And there’s a really interesting author note at the end.

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Adventurists and Businesses on the Road

Fri 17 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., readings, Richard Butner, Robert Freeman Wexler| Posted by: Gavin

We’re busy with Robert Freeman Wexler setting up readings for his forthcoming novel The Silverberg Business as well as with Richard Butner setting up a couple of NYC area events for The Adventurists.

So far for the very strange historical Texas business book, there are two readings set up — the first at $2 Radio HQ, oh, how I’d love to get there with none other than short story superstar Jeffrey Ford, and ah, now there are 3! A Jo-Beth Cincinnati reading was just finalized. There should be a Chicago reading coming and then, of course, given the Texan nature of the business at hand, events in Austin, Houston, and maybe Galveston. More TK, as I am wont to say.

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

Richard Butner is leaving North Carolina — but only temporarily! — and will be in NYC at the fabled KGB Bar for the fantastic fiction series with a friend, New York city native, and excellent writer, Veronica Schanoes, and the second over the water (but not very far) in Hoboken, at the outstanding indie bookstore, Little City Books:

Aug 17, 7 p.m. Richard Butner & Veronica Schanoes, KGB Fantastic Fiction, KGB Bar, NYC
Aug 18, 7 p.m. Little City Books, Hoboken, NJ

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6 Months in a Leaky Boat

Wed 15 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, Long Covid, ugh| Posted by: Gavin

This is a 3-month follow up my March post:

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December with something — most likely post-viral fatigue. In the first week of December I had a small cold(?) and had multiple negative Covid results.

which was a 3-month update on me succumbing to some kind of post-viral something last December. The stunning accuracy of my self-diagnosis is the same as it was then.

Now it’s early summer and as I was then, I’m writing this lying flat on our couch. I can lie around and do a little bit of work but I can’t lift a box of books (ha ha ha. No chance) or do most of the things I’d usually do. I walk around very slowly. My max is about about 200 yards and then I regret having walked so far as going back takes twice as long. If I do anything physical or a lively phone or zoom call that will be me flat on the couch for 2-3 hours (or, worst case: 2-3 days, ugh) doing nothing. I haven’t worked at Book Moon — or the Small Beer office — since December and do I miss it.

I’m taking more vitamins and supplements than I ever have. Do they work? Don’t know. I’ll try just about anything now. Talked to my doc today who’s referring me to a post-COVID clinic in Boston — after previous cardio, rheumatology, and neuro referrals.

Small Beer: we’ve slowed down on publishing — Ayize’s 4th and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, was too much for me this month. It’s needs more energy behind it so we moved it to February. (Don’t ask me why as it’s not us, but the ebook is onsale at a certain website for $1.99.) We’re at the contract stage with a few more 2023/2024 titles and I’m working — even slower than usual — on the new LCRW.

I have no idea of my prognosis. Maybe this is middle age for me or maybe this is long covid. If it’s the latter (I am 2 x vaxxed, 2 x boosted), good golly, wear a mask.

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ETA: thank you for lovely emails, comments, support. I would be completely pancaked out on the floor but for Kelly’s patience, love, and advocacy — please spare her a thought as I lie here, yes, on the damn couch.

 

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Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominees

Fri 10 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Isabel Yap| Posted by: Gavin

Frightfully happy to see Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever on the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominee list for Best Collection and her story “Syringe” from her collection on the Best Short Fiction list. Congratulations to all the nominees!

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Never Have I Ever Again

Tue 24 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, reprinting!| Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to report that the second printing of Isabel Yap’s debut collection Never Have I Ever is now starting to wend its way back to bookshops. The book came out last February and has found a very happy readership, no doubt helped by it being a NYPL Best Books for Adults and on both the Locus and Crawford Award shortlists.

It turns out last year I sent eleven books back for reprints — one of those numbers that makes it more obvious why I felt so busy even though we only published six new titles: 4 short story collections and 2 Elizabeth Hand mystery novels in paperback. Even though it takes 2-3 times as long now to get a reprint as it did a year or two ago, running out of books is the best problem to have!

Anyway, here’s to our second reprint of the year — and I’m sending another book back this week and another back next week — may this reprint be the first of many for Never Have I Ever.

Want some more about the book?

• Here’s Isabel Yap interviewed by Megan Kakimoto at Full Stop.
• The Washington Post said the book: “overflows with life and magic, and if you are not familiar with the vibrant literary scene in the Philippines, let this serve as a worthy introduction.”
• And in their starred review Booklist ended by calling it “A joy to read.”
• You can also read some dark and fabulous stories: Good Girls, Milagroso, Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?
• & that fabulous cover illustration? That’s “Serpent’s Bride” by Alexa Sharpe.
• And here’s Isabel’s site.

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Signed Sofia Samatar Books

Mon 9 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

I wasn’t there so I can’t give the 100% accurate count of books or anything, but Sofia Samatar stopped by Book Moon on Saturday and signed copies her books. Use these links to order signed copies: A Stranger in Olondria, Tender, and The Winged Histories.

Her new book, The White Mosque, comes out in October from Catapult

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Celebrating Spirits Abroad Winning the Ray Bradbury Prize

Wed 4 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Zen Cho| Posted by: Gavin

I went to look up the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize and discovered that there are at least 3 awards with Ray Bradbury’s name on them. Only fitting as he made so many readers happy with his fantastic stories.

Anyway, we’re very happy that Zen Cho’s delightful collection of stories, Spirits Abroad — which was already a Crawford Award winner in its first Buku Fixi edition — received the LA Times Book Prize/Ray Bradbury Prize at this year’s LA Times Festival of Books.

We have a limited number of bookplates signed by Zen to go with copies at Book Moon.

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Get Lost — and enjoy it

Thu 28 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Forthcoming, Sarah Pinsker| 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.

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

Wed 20 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon, events, Susan Stinson| 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.

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First Trade Review for Heroes

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

And 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.

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Local Boy Makes Good

Fri 25 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Richard Butner| Posted by: Gavin

Richard Butner has been localized in the Raleigh area for some years — you can see pictures of him there and even in some other places here — although it’s our local paper here in Western Mass., the Daily Hampshire Gazette, that has a great review of The Adventurists today:

an excellent new collection of short stories . . . Butner, who lives in North Carolina, livens his writing with wry humor and moments of absurdity and surrealism, but his stories also explore the fraying of friendships and the sense of loss that the passage of time can bring.

What also anchors the 16 stories in the collection is Butner’s crisp, understated prose, a style that lets him quickly segue from straightforward descriptions of everyday life to off-kilter narratives.

I recommend the book, mais oui, and also subscribing to your local paper if possible!

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NoWP 2022

Thu 24 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, events, Long Covid, meh, the world| Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry not to be at AWP (ha) this week.

tl:dr I am out sick

Longer version:

I like tabling. I like talking to people about books, selling some, surprising people with LCRW (a paper zine? What?!), and the accessibility of being right there for people to ask questions about Small Beer/publishing/whatever. I like wandering the book fair and buying books and magazines from publishers new and old. I like going to an occasional panel and some readings — I especially like putting on or being involved with other presses putting on an offsite reading — and I really enjoy catching up with people I know, meeting new people, all that.

If we were there . . . we’d have a stack of Richard Butner’s new collection The Adventurists — it’s so good! It came out this week! We’d have books by Small Beer authors who are at the big show: Sofia Samatar’s world bestriding A Stranger in Olondria and her collection Tender; Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American — one of his stories is soon to be read on Selected Shorts at Symphony Space; and Elwin Cotman’s NPR Best of the Year Dance on Saturday. And we’d have all those pretty books in that picture below that came out oh just quite recently.

We aren’t there for 2 reasons: the first is Covid — which as far as I know I have never had. I have had all 3 of my vaccines. I’m delighted that AWP required vaccinations and masks. Science, FTW! But the idea of being in a book fair with up to 3,000 people is too much for me. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (updated 3/24/22) has the US covid fatality rate at 1.2%. The deaths are mostly among the unvaccinated and the immunocompromised — but risking my (and by extension my family’s) life on someone else’s masking choice when there is a 1 in 100 chance we might die is too high for me.

I am sorry not to be at AWP, but: I haven’t even been to the Small Beer office or Book Moon in more than 3 months because the second reason we’re not there is that I am out sick.

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December with something — most likely post-viral fatigue. In the first week of December I had a small cold(?) and had multiple negative Covid results. A week later I was in the ER. I’m improving — at a glacial rate. I have only left the house since then to see the doctor. I lie around all day, do a little work, watch Abbot Elementary and Better Things and sometimes read (including, for my sins, twitter) — although that brain fog made fiction too hard for a bit. So please accept my apologies for being slow at everything, including email. In early December I was running up the stairs from the Book Moon basement carrying boxes of books. Now a zoom conversation leaves me exhausted. (As in: I will lie flat for 3 hours and do nothing.)

Ugh, I did not want to have to write this but since I am missing a very enjoyable event and have been down for 3 months it seemed like time. I am 51 (when did that happen?) and despite having to lie around all the time (walking is a lot; running is woah so very far away) I feel very lucky, very well looked after at home. I’m not really looking for feedback — unless you have a similar experience with post-viral fatigue — and I apologize in advance for not keeping up as I’ve used much of today’s energy to write this. Although my prognosis is unclear, if all goes as it seems it might, it looks like I will be healthy again by summertime. Fingers crossed!

And if you just can’t help yourself and must buy some books, why, stop by here. Or: we have a tiny, mighty bookshop, Book Moon, with fabulous booksellers who can help you out Monday-to-Saturday 10-6.

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Happy Adventurists Day!

Tue 22 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Butner, Publication day| Posted by: Gavin

Happy publication day to Richard Butner whose debut collection The Adventurists comes out today and should be available at all your favorite indie (and other) bookshops! If you’d like a taster,  you can read or listen to Ash City Stomp [audio], or read Circa, or read Under Green which was just published this month in Uncanny.

It’s been fun to see the wide variety of places these stories were first published in: from Crimewave (“Holderhaven”) to F&SF (“Give Up”), LCRW (“Pete and Earl) to Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, (“Horses Blow Up Dog City”) — and of course there are a good number of new stories in the book. The first story, “Adventure,” also appears in the new issue of The Deadlands which came out three days ago. That story just gets better every time I read it.

We’ll have more about the book soon. All the pre-orders were sent out this week — thank you! Some are delivered, some still on their way — sorry about that, I usually try and have them arrive by or before publication day. But we did include a bonus book where we could so maybe that will make up a little.

The Adventurists is available with a lovely felted-paper cover and also as a DRM-free ebook from Weightless — and maybe a DRM’d edition everywhere.

Richard, who was just at ICFA this weekend, will be doing a couple of North Carolina readings — pre-order your signed copies here:

April 2, 6 p.m. Richard Butner, John Kessel, & Wilton Barnhardt, So and So Books, Raleigh, NC

May 17, 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC

And we’ll have more reviews and stories online and things to talk about in coming weeks. Kelly has been planning this for years and it is just great to have this book out. Enjoy!

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The Adventurists

Tue 22 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 320 pages · $17 · 9781618731944 | ebook · 9781618731951

A collection of stories written over a lifetime of looking forwards and backwards and sometimes even at the now.

Read

. . . Kelly Link interviews Richard Butner for Catapult “about the short story form, running the Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop, and the value of writing with other people.”
. . .  an interview by Christopher Rowe in the Subterranean Press newsletter
. . . “Adventure” in The Deadlands

Listen

. . . Gil Roth interviews Richard Butner for the Virtual Memories podcast about “his love of the short story as a form . . .writing & performing theater and how he balances that collaborative art with the solo process of writing” and a lot more.

The Adventurists

Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she’s become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There’s the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn’t resist going to see where it led.

Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them. You might want to get out of the way.

Butner’s allusive and elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life—where there are no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a tree might talk to just one person, where Death’s Fool is not to be ignored.

Reviews

“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.” — Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot

“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.”
— Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide

“Butner, who lives in North Carolina, livens his writing with wry humor and moments of absurdity and surrealism, but his stories also explore the fraying of friendships and the sense of loss that the passage of time can bring. What also anchors the 16 stories in the collection is Butner’s crisp, understated prose, a style that lets him quickly segue from straightforward descriptions of everyday life to off-kilter narratives. . . . Yet for all his off-hand tone and biting humor, Butner writes feelingly about human connection and loss, and about the challenge of moving forward without losing touch with the past.” — Steve Pfarrar, Daily Hampshire Gazette

“Gorgeously mesmerizing.” — Beatrice Toothman, San Francisco Review

“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.” — John Dancy-Jones, Raleigh Rambles

“Butner’s stories are wonder­fully insidious in a number of ways. He seldom works beyond traditional short story lengths, and the stories tend to be constructed in ways that first seem conventional, with conventional concerns: trying to recapture the past or reconnect with old friends, visiting sideshows and fairs, surviving in anonymous corporations, exploring a spooky old house. Butner also brings along some famil­iar furniture of fantastika, like magic portals, timeslips, and ghosts. But – more through the accumulation of sinister anomalies than through dramatic plot twists – we watch the world of the tale grow estranged around us. . . . Often haunted by a profound sense of loss. If not quite a new voice, Butner’s is one of the most distinctive and memorable I’ve encountered in quite a while.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Landscapes and memories alter, gentrify, and crumble in Butner’s flawless debut collection, which wends ghosts, virtual futures, and the intricacies of friendship into 16 breathtaking, intimate stories. “Holderhaven” slowly unfurls a country house museum’s ghostly mystery into a multifaceted examination of recreation’s limits, who is allowed agency, and the impossible truth behind the legend. “Ash City Stomp,” about an encounter with the devil, and “The Ornithopter,” set in a high-technology future, both imbue their speculative setups with vital humanity. The delicate “Adventure” holds a mirror to the aging process while still honoring a vividly alive present, and in “Sunnyside,” exes attend a successful artist friend’s virtual-reality wake in a breathtaking commentary on the act of remembering. Butner pairs clean, elegant prose with keen and generous human insight, unique imagery, and a broad range of interests, treating Renaissance faires, 1980s counterculture, and rich small-town worlds with the same loving deliberation. Readers of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney alike will find a home in this beautiful, grounded exploration of pasts and futures—and the people suspended between them.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Butner’s short stories are strange little vignettes of people’s lives, tales of the ways time and memory—both what we remember and what we don’t—affect the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us. The collection opens with ‘Adventure,’ with a long-overdue visit to an old friend and a tale told about a stranger, which may be just fantasy, but, setting the tone for the collection, the reality is not entirely clear-cut. There are tales about history like ‘Holderhaven,’ in which a house-turned-museum has plenty of secrets hidden by both the stories the family who owns it tell and in the architecture of the building itself, and tales in which the past is all too real, like the nostalgia-riddled ‘Delta Function.’ Sometimes Butner ventures into near-future speculation, as he portrays people clinging to corporate life in the decaying office park of ‘The Ornithopter’ and climbing the virtual backyard Everest of ‘Give Up.’ All in all, a worthwhile collection of not entirely comfortable stories exploring the past, the present, and the future.” — Booklist

“Butner has a knack for a quirky, eye-catching premise. . . . The stories’ arch tone, offbeat scenarios, and folkloric elements bear a resemblance to George Saunders’ and Carmen Maria Machado’s work, though Butner has his own thematic obsessions. . . . In his best stories, Butner effectively merges the strange setups with a bracing mix of humor and dread.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Grounded by concrete pop culture details, each strange narrative makes what’s familiar seem eerie.” — Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“I’ve been enjoying this debut collection of short fiction by Richard Butner. It’s New Fabulist fiction in the vein of Amber Sparks, Kelly Link, and Aimee Bender but with a flavor all its own.” — Craig Laurance Gidney

“This astonishing story collection stars protagonists with special gifts such as telepathy, time travel, and traversing parallel worlds. A few other stories employ fantastic futuristic technologies to great effect. Butner stretched my brain this way and that and quite possibly reactivated some long-unused circuits. I see a second reading in my not-too-distant future.” — Kay, Boswell Books

Advance Praise for The Adventurists

“Consistently one of my favorite short story writers.”
— Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“My heart isn’t large enough to contain all these stories at once.”
— Christopher Rowe, author of Telling the Map

“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

“Richard Butner’s stories are funny, scary, personal, dispassionate, satirical, and heartfelt, if those incompatible adjectives can be assembled to describe the same work. He writes about the subtle losses we suffer (often without noticing) as we get older, about love and loyalty, about how the past is never completely past and can come sweeping back over you at the slightest opportunity like a tidal wave, so you’d better be ready lest you drown.” — John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus

“At last, one of the contemporary masters of the uncanny and darkly humorous, Richard Butner, has his stories in one place where we can get at them. With a toe (just a toe) in the literary pool, and the rest of him splashing happily in the spec fic/sci-fi/surreal swimming hole, Butner’s tales deal in the deadly habits of nostalgia, and the surprises waiting for the wistful and the obsessive whose march forward obliges a look backward. Linkean, Barthelmean, Saundersean . . . hm, okay, these guys do NOT lend themselves to sonorous adjectivization but, nonetheless, they’ll have to welcome a new storyteller beside them on the shelf.”
— Wilton Barnhardt, author of Emma Who Saved My Life and Lookaway, Lookaway

“A Richard Butner story is an invitation to discovery alongside his characters. It’s a left turn off of reality’s highway and into its old business district: defiantly shabby, casually weird, and occasionally surreal, perfect in every grounding detail. Every story zigs when you expect it to zag. You only think you know where they are going, but it turns out you are on the same adventure as the protagonist, discovering as you go that the world is stranger than it was the minute before, and the minute before that. Well worth the journey.”
— Sarah Pinsker, author of We Are Satellites

“Richard Butner writes gorgeous, heartfelt stories that are completely his own, each propelled by an inner logic that may or may not match consensus reality, each ringing utterly true. He is unafraid of tough questions and even tougher answers. His characters sweat, grieve, exult, and struggle for understanding, and even when they terrify, they never fail to touch me.”
— Lewis Shiner, author of Outside the Gates of Eden

Table of Contents

Adventure
Holderhaven
Scenes from the Renaissance
Ash City Stomp [listen]
Horses Blow Up Dog City
The Master Key
Circa
At the Fair
Pete and Earl
The Ornithopter
Stronghold
Delta Function [Read an excerpt on Tor.com]
Give Up
Chemistry Set
Under Green
Sunnyside

Reviews of Richard Butner’s stories:

“Captivating and gripping.”— Bookotron

“In the face of even the most absurd scenario, Butner’s writing remains cool and understated; he treats the bizarre as if it were commonplace, eventually convincing the reader that nothing is too far from the real. Indeed, many of the stories’ most bizarre moments are simply exaggerations of the inanities of our world, thrust into the forefront of the plot as a sort of social criticism. . . . Butner picks up the absurdities of high-speed America and throws them back in its face, reveling in the wild, wonderful mess he creates.”— New Pages Review

“A powerful story of obsession.” — Lois Tilton, Locus

“The saddest ghost story you’ll read this year.” — Charlie Jane Anders, Gizmodo

“Haunting and heartbreaking.” — iHorror.com

“Wry, caustic, calculated, impulsive…. Gems of gorgeous weirdness.”— Asimovs

“Finely wrought fiction that earns its effects. Evocative and passionate, meaningful and filled with wonders.” — SF Site

“Butner’s meticulous prose lays a cool surface over some twisty terrain. Understated and profound, deft and smooth, these stories sneak up on you and then don’t let go. Boxes within boxes, wheels within wheels.”— Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“If you let Richard Butner’s sideways fiction into your brain it will slice you to ribbons so quietly that you won’t even know why you’re laughing, or crying. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” — John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus

“In the work of writers who have truly burrowed in, often I’ve a sense of there being not many stories but one continuous, ongoing story, ever growing, ever increasing, turning this way and that in shifting light — which is how I feel about Richard Butner’s.” — James Sallis, author of Sarah Jane

Previously

March 16-20, 2022: ICFA, Orlando, FL
April 2, 6 p.m. Richard Butner, John Kessel, & Wilton Barnhardt, So and So Books, Raleigh, NC
May 17, 6 p.m. Richard Butner & Nathan Ballingrud, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC
Aug 17, 7 p.m. Richard Butner & Veronica Schanoes, KGB Fantastic Fiction, KGB Bar, NYC
Aug 18, 7 p.m. Little City Books, Hoboken, NJ
March 15-18, 2023: ICFA, Orlando, FL
April 10, 6 p.m. Richard Butner, Karen Heuler, Randee Dawn, Leopoldo Gout, #YeahYouWrite, Someday Bar, 364 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Richard Butner‘s short fiction has appeared in Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, been shortlisted for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Fountain Award, and nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. He has written for and performed with the Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, Aggregate Theatre, Bare Theatre, the Nickel Shakespeare Girls, and Urban Garden Performing Arts. His nonfiction, on topics ranging from computers to cocktails to architecture, has appeared in IBM Think Research, Wired, PC Magazine, The News & Observer, Teacher, The Independent Weekly, The North Carolina Review of Books, Triangle Alternative, and Southern Lifestyle. He lives in North Carolina, where he runs the annual Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference. He and Harry Houdini have used the same trapdoor.

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Prix Bob Morane Finalist

Mon 14 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Carol Emshwiller| Posted by: Gavin

Lovely to see in Locus that the French edition of Carol Emshwiller’s novel The Mount published by Argyll éditions is a Prix Bob Morane Finalist. We’ve had low stock on our edition for a while on this one — I was going to reset it at some point but got distracted so one of these Sunday afternoons I’ll get that done — but we always keep copies of the cheap, handy, and very portable Penguin Firebird mass market edition in stock at Book Moon.

Should you read it? On io9 MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders have it on a list that says yes: 10 Ultra-Weird Science Fiction Novels that Became Required Reading.

The Mount was one of the first books we published that picked up a major award. Kelly’s stories had received awards before her collection was published in 2001 and, of course, so had some of Carol’s stories that were collected in the second of her books we published in 2002, Report to the Men’s Club — she played off Kafka’s A Report to an Academy for her collection title — what a book that is! Even if you just read the first (“Grandma”) and last (“After All”) stories, you’re going away a winner. These two books by Carol (our 3rd and 4th published titles) comprise the whole of our second year of book publishing — we also did 2 chapbooks and 2 issues of LCRW.

Both Carol’s novel The Mount and her collection Report to the Men’s Club were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award and The Mount was the winner. It was also a Nebula finalist, an Impac Award nominee, and included in Best of the Year lists by Locus, Village Voice, and Book Magazine. and you can Read Chapter One here. Maybe it will add the Prix Bob Morane, maybe not, as with many awards, it is an honor that the book is nominated, congratulations Argyll éditions!

I still miss Carol. She was incredibly fun to work with — even if I spent the next decade asking her if she had more work and she kept ignoring me — and while writing this I was delighted to be reminded of Matt Cheney’s 90th birthday present to Carol, the Carol Emshwiller project.

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