Not the Delaware Attorney General

Thu 21 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Not to be missed in all of this, in January we’re publishing Kathleen Jenning’s first collection of stories, Kindling.

The printer, Maple Press in York, PA, is about to ship the hardcover and trade paperbacks to our distro, Consortium, whose main warehouse in an Ingram one in Jackson, TN. Once they’re received and sorted, Consortium will start shipping the books out to bookstores, libraries, me(! — well, Book Moon), and so on, and everyone in the whole world will get ready to celebrate the publication day, January 23rd, by setting the world on fire, overthrowing repressive governments, installing solar power and batteries, buying more bikes, and reading this collection of modern folk and fairy tales.

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Halting Subs, But Going On (and On)

Thu 21 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Covid, Long Covid| Posted by: Gavin

Thank you, Vanessa Armstrong, for this news story about Small Beer on Tor.com.

The article led to a small flood of men emailing manuscript submissions and queries, showing that no matter how clear a headline is (“Small Beer Press Is Halting New Publications” is very clear), some people don’t think it applies to them.

I’m 2 years into long Covid. I’ve written updates since March 2022. I never tested positive for Covid. I’ve since had another 3 or 4 vaccines/boosters. I only see people unmasked once they’ve done a Covid test.

From my two years on this couch, I beg you to wear a mask in public/when traveling, etc. Insist on better filters at work or school. Build Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for meet-ups or home.

The Covid virus can attack many different parts of the body. This is a mass disabling event I do not want you to be part of.

I’ve added to the statement below. I realize I go on so please skip to here and pick up some books for yourself/someone you know.

We closed Small Beer to submissions in March 2023 and only published four books this year: two novels and two collections of stories. After 20+ years of reading submissions it’s been very strange to know there are good books I am missing but c’est la vie.

In December 2021 I came down with something unknown. I never tested positive for Covid but in 2022 I was diagnosed with Long Covid. I am a very different person now: I can’t carry boxes of books around, I don’t drive, I can’t read as much as I used to, I lie on the couch most of the day because walking or even sitting up for too long wipes me out. I have tried many anecdotally successful supplements and medicines — none of which have done any good. In the last two years I only see people who have are masked or have tested negative. Kelly drives me into our bookshop, Book Moon, once a week or so where people are unmasked but we run 2 Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and I am always masked. I literally would not wish this on my worst enemy — although I don’t really have one except maybe the soul crushing companies that would like to run all the small presses and indie businesses out of town.

We’d contracted our 2023 titles over the past few years. We have one more title under contract but I’m not sure if we can publish it as I think it’s too much work for me. I emailed with our authors about my limitations and occasionally talked on the phone but phone calls or zooms wipe me out and then I can’t do anything else.

In 2022 we only managed to publish two books. This year we published four and here at the end of the year I see how much these books missed the old me. Sarah Pinsker’s second collection Lost Places was selected for Slate’s Best Books of the Year which is something to celebrate. It’s always hard for small or indie presses to get coverage and no one expects to be on Best of the Year lists but I always hope our books will at least be considered for lists and awards. This year that was more difficult as I wasn’t able to send books out as widely or follow up. Publicity is part of my job and following up takes a fair amount of energy which I don’t have. So unless we want to change our habits and start being unfair to authors, we have to stop.

I haven’t even mentioned our September title, Anya Johanna DeNiro’s short, amazing, difficult, transcendent science fiction novel OKPsyche — the review I enjoyed most was Jake Casella Brookins in Locus which started off, “I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is” — or our final book, Kij Johnson’s long awaited, decade in the making second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending. 

Kelly recently took a two-year position at Smith College so now we will get health insurance there — then we’ll have to work out what to do after that. Kelly’s novel, The Book of Love, comes out in February, and at some point next year we’ll publish a limited edition. That’s been fun to work on and if it goes ok maybe we will do more. Or maybe we will just keep our zine, LCRW, going — although even there we only managed one issue this year. I can’t mail it out anymore so it’s harder to do. I love paper zines, so the intention is there. I’ve been very lucky to have support in the past two years. It is pretty crappy to see the ground cut away from under my feet but I know it could be worse.

In 2010 a friend, Michael J. DeLuca, and I started a DRM-free ebook website, WeightlessBooks.com, and my disability meant I had to step away from that last year.

I’d thought that with cutting down on other things (we don’t travel anymore: no more book fairs and conferences; no more Weightless; a lot less Book Moon; fiction is now quite hard to write) there was a chance I could keep Small Beer going but it is too much. As long as the authors are happy, we’ll keep the books in print — or sell them on where possible: Random House just released the cover for their new 2024 edition of Karen Lord’s debut novel Redemption in Indigo. 

My expectations for Small Beer was that Kelly and I would keep publishing books we enjoyed basically until we dropped dead, preferably a long time from now. So now I have the whole anger and grief that besides not being able to go sledding (if it snows, thanks Shell/Exxon/climate change), or walk the dog more than 1.5 blocks out and back, there’s also no more dancing — I miss dancing. My inner self often has music of my own or others playing and I am often dancing. I am so slow now.

Mine is not a long Covid story where I was once a marathon runner and now I lie on the couch. I liked lying on the couch preferably with comics, champagne, and bonbons. Ok, so that didn’t happen very often, but still.

Anyway. Everyone who is wearing a mask is helping everyone else. You are the helpers and I thank you. I appreciate all the notes from friends and strangers and am replying slowly. It is much easier to be flippant on Bluesky. I keep up with long Covid news.

We have pushed some great and weird books out into the world in the last 20 years, some further than others, but never a book we thought wasn’t odd and great and worth being a physical object in the world. No one knows the impact of a book that has sold 300 or 30,000 copies — it may change the world for one reader. It happened to us time and time again. I look forward to reading more good, odd books from other publishers in the future.

 

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Top 5 Bestsellers 2023

Tue 19 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Bestsellers, Kij Johnson, Nathan Ballingrud, Sarah Pinsker, Sarah Rees Brennan| Posted by: Gavin

Here are our top 5 bestsellers so far this year by numbers shipped from our distributor:

1. Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places
   
2. Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters
3. Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending
4. Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche
5. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

In 2023 we published the Liminals series capper from Ayize Jama-Everett, Heroes from Another World. Ayize had an amazing year: he published 3 books (including a great Afrofuturistic graphic novel The Last Count of Monte Cristo) and put out a documentary, A Table of Our Own: “an extraordinary and thought-provoking documentary that delves into the rich tapestry of the African-American experience, exploring the intersection of psychedelic substance use, spirituality and the pursuit of social justice.”

We followed Ayize’s novel with Sarah Pinsker’s second collection which was included in Slate’s Best Books of the Year.

Then came Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche — I think the review I enjoyed most was Jake Casella Brookins in Locus which started off, “I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is” and leapt off into the kind of review that I alwayshope to read of a book I love.

Our final book of the year was Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending. 10 years in the making, it’s a weird and wide-ranging collection and was recently reviewed in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda.

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Laurie J. Marks is Writing Again

Fri 15 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin

Anyone who has read the deep and excellent Elemental Logic series will rejoice with me to see that Laurie J. Marks is writing again. In a post today she writes about it, about the grueling years she and her wife Deb have gone through, the unexpected choices that she’s made, and, after a year of being retired, taking up writing again.

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LeVar Burton Reads The Court Magician

Wed 13 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., audio, LeVar Burton, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

LeVar Burton is variously and widely recognized as a champion of all things literary for books and one of the ways he shares his joy and love of narrative is through his podcast. He recently chose Sarah Pinsker’s story “The Court Magician” — listen here (or wherever you access Podcastia).

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Never Have I Ever Polish Edition

Fri 8 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, translations| Posted by: Gavin

Good news for Polish readers: we just received the on-signing contract payment from MAG Jacek Rodek for Polish rights to Isabel Yap’s award winning debut collection Never Have I Ever. That’s the first international rights sale for that title.

In other news, Isabel and Alyssa Wong will be anchor instructors for the final two weeks of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego next summer. Applications are now open.

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LibroFM Bundles

Wed 6 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., audio books, sale| Posted by: Gavin

Get 10% off audiobook credit bundles at LibroFM for the next couple of days — they only run this sale once a year. I use Libro and like it, easy to use, huge library, etc., etc.

 

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Slate: The 10 Best Books of 2023

Wed 6 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, year's bests| Posted by: Gavin

Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places gets lovely review in Dan Kois’s list of Slate’s 10 Best Books of 2023.

How to explain what’s so graceful about this collection of fantasy stories by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Pinsker? . . .  Every story is surprising, delightful, and very human, and left me excited to read more from this writer, who is both finely attuned to the language and rituals of modern life and in touch with some real deep-magic weirdness.

See the list and read the full recommendation.

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Indiepubs sale

Tue 5 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Indiepubs, sale| Posted by: Gavin

Our distro’s nice, fast Indiepubs site — where you can get books from 100+ indie publishers — has a ton of our books at 50% off for one week. The discount is automagically added in cart as per the screenshots below and shipping is free for orders over $40.

 

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Holiday shipping 2023

Fri 1 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., free shipping, holiday, shipping| Posted by: Gavin

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Celebrating the Visionary Stories of Kelley Eskridge

Wed 29 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelley Eskridge| Posted by: Gavin

Delighted to come across Dangerous, Hopeful Futures: Celebrating the Visionary Stories of Kelley Eskridge by Jonathan Thornton on Tor.com this week:

Kelley Eskridge is not a prolific author, but she has nevertheless produced a body of work remarkable for its subtlety and depth. Eskdrige’s short stories are marvels of character-focused SF, where speculations are explored through the interactions of everyday people. They frequently centre queer characters and explore ideas around gender. Similarly, her lone novel Solitaire (2002), is an underrated and pioneering work of queer cyberpunk that thoughtfully explores the potential uses of VR technology for incarceration.

Kelley is an excellent writer. We brought Solitaire back into print a few years ago. Her collection, Dangerous Space, is also available from Aqueduct. Definitely recommend if you’re looking for sf that takes on the current moment in gender, incarceration, family, politics, and more.

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Room of One’s Own Holiday Catalog

Tue 28 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

In previous years we’ve celebrated books being in the NPR Best Books lists and others and I’m still somewhat optimistic that some of the books will appear here or there but with me being less able to reach out to reviewers I suspect some books sent out did not always reach their target. C’est la vie. I’ve said before I always expect our books to win every award and be in every list (“What’s the world coming to? Our book is not in [incredibly niche list the book might tangentially have fit]? Oh no!”) and sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

We published 4 books (& a zine) this year: 2 collections, a series capping novel, and a short novel — the good news today is that two of those books (along with Kelly’s White Cat, Black Dog) are in A Room of One’s Own Holiday Catalog: Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending and Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche‘s highlighted on the trans fiction page:

“This novel tore my heart up—in the very best way. Our narrator is a semi-recently-out trans woman in her forties, she is an ex-wife, a mother separated from her son, and largely between stable work (a former writer, whose metafictions pepper the text). Friendships real and imagined provide a mirror of reflection in which our narrator turns the mundane into profound. This is a portrait of a woman who has so much love in her heart, and slowly learns to afford herself some of that love.” — Charlie

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Brew & Forge Book Fair

Mon 27 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book fairs, good things| Posted by: Gavin

If you have some Small Beer books on your to-read list, see if you can get them at the Brew and Forge Book Fair where multiple copies of four of our books are available. Coincidentally, if you buy 4 books at the fair, you get a free notebook . . .

The fair opened today and runs until December 8. Authors voted for the tenth book fair to benefit the Palestinian Feminist Collective which “is committed to achieving Palestinian social and political liberation by confronting systemic gendered, sexual, and colonial violence, oppression, and dispossession. Read more about their work here.“

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Brindles?

Fri 24 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bundles, sale| Posted by: Gavin

Discounted Bundled Books for You & Your Reader Friends:

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What about Small Beer?

Sat 18 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Long Covid| Posted by: Gavin

As a follow up to my last post, ugh, I did go on, I wanted to give a clearer idea of what is happening with the press.

Of course, since we have the obfuscatorily named zine, the story isn’t 100% clear.

There are many things I can do for the press lying here on this couch. There are many I can’t and sometimes all I can do is watch TV or read the internet.

We have one book under contract that was just delivered. Because it is a different kind of thing it would take normally about 3 years to bring to publication. I am not sure how long it will take now.

Other than that, we have Kathleen Jennings’s collection of stories, Kindling, coming in January. The proofs just arrived from the printer and when I return them I’ll find out if we’re still on schedule. I don’t think we’ve only ever had one book in that forthcoming page before. Weird to see. Glad this dictation thing is working well today.

We hope to publish a limited edition of Kelly’s novel at some point next year. There would be some kind of poetry if that were our last book. Although I’m a big fan of accessibility, so it would be sad if our last book is a limited edition.

We closed completely to submissions in March and given that I have not improved, I do not expect to reopen anytime soon. The way I am now I could not do justice to any book that we bought. It is very strange not to read submissions after 20 years.  I’m going to try and keep the zine going. However, I’m not up to mailing it, and some days I’m not up to reading. This year we managed one this year.* Next year, who knows.

 

* Rather than correct the sentence I’m going to leave it to sure the basic level of brain fog detail missing that I know have. I’ve never been the best writer (I’ve published some of them, ha!), but at least I was able to string a sentence together and I enjoyed writing fiction, nonfiction, reviews, etc. I didn’t expect to write like this until I was 85 or so. What can I say, I’m ahead of my time.

 

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This Sauce Is Weak

Sat 18 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Long Covid| Posted by: Gavin

I have — hilariously to me — just had my first cold in 3 years or so. Having a cold while having long covid. Phew, I do not recommend it.

To get the generally unsaid part over with now rather than at the end (my own tl;dr), no matter when I die, mine will be a Covid-related death. To be brought so low by a basic cold demonstrated that my defenses/immune system/resources are weak sauce indeed and one energetic butterfly flapping its wings in a nearby town will be enough to tip me over. It sounds melodramatic but I’m over 50 and I read new studies every week about long Covid’s effects on my age group. So far, so not great. Check out the drop in my already low number of daily steps on the tiny chart. On the other hand, I am reading my first Vita Sackville-West novel, All Passion Spent, about an 88-year-old widow and very much enjoying every slow minute of her looking around and back at her life.

Anyway. What about lying around feeling even more rubbish than usual was hilarious? Just the very fact of picking up a cold despite taking the same Covid precautions as we’ve done for the last 3 years.

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve only seen people who are either masked or people who test for Covid when they arrive. Last week I saw some friends — wait, I know how this often goes, but this story doesn’t go that way: we hadn’t dropped our guards, everyone tested negative and then we took masks off. So, no, since they tested negative and I did daily tests Sunday to Wednesday, it seems unlikely I had Covid23.

But despite all that, despite testing whenever seeing friends, despite me masking if I go to Book Moon (I go to so few places, it’s a curtailed world, but at least I can read and write about it), after all that care, I caught a simple cold, ha! The less hilarious part was how it absolutely flattened me. So stop reading here if you don’t like icky stuff about bodies. Which is me, I’d like to stop reading.

Colds, as I learned during this pandemic, are also coronaviruses. On Thursday morning, which I think was Day 5 of the cold, I started improving. Those five days were a grind on the household. I stayed in bed a lot more or, as is usual, on the couch. Not that different from my new normal, but without my usual ability to potter around the kitchen and put together a quick meal. That morning I made some porridge and felt that sitting at the table to eat (instead of lying on the couch — how often I have to type those words; almost as often as I . . . ) was a huge and difficult accomplishment. I’m expecting a congratulatory telegram from the president to arrive any time. Maybe tomorrow.

After, as I shuffled — these feet would not be lifted — to the couch, my watch was showing my heart rate at 118 and when I lay down it was ~95. I was lying here doing nothing, resting after a 10-yard shuffle, thinking about picking up my laptop, looking at our dog, unimpressed with me as I was not scratching her, on the other of the couch, then . . . I started sweating, and sweating more until I was wiping sweat off my forehead. Or fivehead as our kid likes to say. I was a whole gleaming ball of fivehead.

Was I moving a pallet of books per the photo above from a few years ago (I do order optimistic print runs) or the terrible selfie in the cargo lift (ugh, too lazy to shave) from October 2021? Nope. I was lying around. Maybe working out the poisons? I had a few sessions of sweating it out this morning and now I’m improved.

I wrote somewhere in a previous long Covid post about my new ability to lie around and not do anything and this week I levelled that up. When I was sick as a kid I remember being so bored lying in bed. Now, despite not going to sleep, I could look out the window — or more likely, at a wall, the window being too stimulating — for a while. When I’m sick(er than my new normal, etc.) I often feel I could do what needs to be done. Walk the dog? Of course. Do this, do that? I could, but the lever (pick your own mechanical, literal, or technological metaphor) won’t flip. I could do it and there’s no impatience as to the why not, it’s just I don’t. There’s no Bartleby, no draft card or bra burning, just seeing what needs to be done and being aware that I am not doing it.

I became a different person 23 months ago. Curtailed, diminished, disabled. When I caught the cold I’d roll between the high point of perhaps if I kick this my body will return to what it used to be and the low point of what if this is my new, new normal? Every day I wake up curious to see what’s happened and it’s not until I stand up and my heart rate jumps that I find out how I am. Meh.

Looking at what’s to come leaves a little to be desired. It’s taken a couple of days to write this because there’s no good ending. I answer a some work emails and just I run out of juice. When I walk, I shuffle and this new, new normal is a bit painful. I watch TV and try not to miss walking or running or singing or dancing. When I walk I feel as if I have worked hard all day. Step count, faithful step count, proves me wrong. It is a bleak series of thoughts to take into the darkening of the year. There are millions like me, trying different meds (yep, still am), masking when they see anyone, unable to do most of what they used to. Kelly described me as profoundly changed. My vulnerability has placed huge limits on what she and our kid can do. I am chronically disabled and now it looks like I am one good infection away from real trouble.

How annoying. How are we — all of us, not just this household — supposed to live? Well, I certainly don’t have a neat and tidy answer to that.

If you read this far and want to help:

— Please wear a mask in public.
— Or: we publish good, slightly weird books that make great presents and my PR efforts are a bit weak this year.
— Or: donate & support our kid and Kelly’s mum who will be doing the annual Hot Chocolate Walk in a week or two.

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Hot Chocolate Walk 2023

Thu 9 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., donations, Hot Chocolate, Long Covid| Posted by: Gavin

It is almost time for the annual Safe Passage Hot Chocolate Walk (or run, for the more lively among us) here in Northampton. A while ago a friend persuaded me to take part and me and our kid did quite a few years together. We started long enough ago that I was pushing the pram around. Now the kid could push me around. This year our kid and Kelly’s mum are walking while I am raising money from this here couch.

Any donations are welcome with the understanding that everyone is stretched and has their own things they like to support. If you’re of a mind, I’d love your to support either our kid’s page and Annie’s, thank you!

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Austin Woerner in Ploughshares

Thu 9 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Austin Woerner, Su Wei| Posted by: Gavin

Austin Woerner has an essay in the new issue of Ploughshares. The issue is edited by Ladette Randolph and also features prose by Anthony David, Parul Kapur, John Keeble, Diane Hinton Perry, Nafis Shafizadeh, Wiam El-Tamami, Jamie Lyn Smith, and Jim Shepard. I haven’t seen it yet but Austin’s essay is apparently about the Chinese writer Su Wei. We published Austin’s translation of Su Wei’s first novel to appear in English, the weird and fascinating The Invisible Valley. 

More about Austin:

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An Uneasy Stage

Wed 8 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

Happy to note that Kirkus just posted a review of Anya’s OKPsyche and it will be in their December 1st issue. Here’s how it begins:

An unnamed trans woman is at an uneasy stage in her metamorphosis. She has finally cast off the male persona that never fit her, but she has yet to become the woman she dreams of being. Part of her discomfort is physical—she does not have the body she wants—but much of it is social and emotional. She knows that most strangers do not see her for what she is. Her ex-wife is still adjusting to what is, for her, a surprising new reality. Her mother deadnames her. And, most importantly, her young son is shutting her out. DeNiro’s significant achievement here is making palpable the excruciating, inescapable self-consciousness of her main character. Her decision to narrate in the second person is a bold one; this move will help some readers immerse themselves in the story, but it will just as likely alienate others.

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OKPsyche in Locus

Tue 7 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Locus, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

The new issue of Locus has a roundtable on short fiction with Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik and an interview with superstar Carmen Maria Machado, both of which I’m looking forward to seeing when my print issue arrives. But the first thing I read in the pdf was Jake Casella Brookins’s review of Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche. I can’t reprint the whole thing but it is worth reading before and after you read the book. It starts off:

I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is. Told in second person by a carefully unnamed narrator, the novel blends fantasy, science fiction, and absurdism; it’s also a very grounded and personal work. The narrator, a trans woman trying to reconnect with her young son, trying to find friendship and love in a hostile world, is aided by magical figures and contraptions, but it’s her voice that stands out. This is absolutely brilliant writing: raw and unflinching in how it portrays transphobia and self-doubt, sweeping and dynamic in its use of language and imagery.

And all I can say is that I am so glad the reviewer read the same book I did and hope many people will pick up the book and see how strong it is.

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Kij’s book on BookBrowse

Mon 6 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

BookBrowse’s review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending and their Beyond the Book article, Dream Interpretation are featured today in their “Top Picks.”

During the week or so that the book is featured, everyone can read the review and article in full. After that, only members can read in full, everyone else sees an abbreviated version, so clickity click!

Excerpt:

This collection of speculative stories feels like being in a vivid dream that you don’t want to wake up from. Kij Johnson’s imaginative narratives are utterly surreal and somewhat dark, yet laced with wit. Their language is highly literary, almost poetic, and draws the reader deeper into Johnson’s world.

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The Manna Is a Super-Consciousness

Fri 3 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Interviews, Liminals| Posted by: Gavin

FanFiAddict posted an interview with Ayize Jama-Everett on the closing up of his Liminals shop with the publication of the final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World. (Start the first novel here.)

That was four novels written over 10+ years with which cover more ground than expected: time travel, racism, slavery, inequality, family: blood and found, and more. They’re fast-paced and furious and I love them. Here’s a taster of the interview:

Q. Heroes of an Unknown World is the final Liminal novel. When you began in 2009, did you see the story spinning out ahead of you?

AJE: The Liminal people was a truncated version of a side character’s story that I wrote in frustration when a novel I was sending out was getting excellent rejection slips. I thought it would be a bullet aimed at the heart of Afrofuturisms more utopian aspects.
read on

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The Real Challenge

Thu 2 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Poets & Writers, writing| Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro contributed a short recommendation to Poets & Writers magazine for what to do as a writer when stuck or when the mind is lodged somewhere not useful. Read it here:

Whenever I get stuck I don’t go to one single thing to unlodge myself. . . .

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A Locus Bestseller

Wed 1 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bestsellers, Locus, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

Bestseller lists are weird things. None of them turn out to be as simple as I’d expect — except, I suppose the ones I make for Book Moon because that they are what they say they are: a list of bestselling books in the store.

Anyway, this hardly a thought never mind an exploration of the concept comes from celebrating Sarah Pinsker’s recent collection Lost Places just slipping onto the August bestseller list as reported in the new issue of Locus.

Have other Small Beer titles been Locus bestsellers? Could this be our first bestseller? Can we get it to appear on other lists? I have no idea! In the meantime, we’ll celebrate having possibly the only short story collection on the list this month!

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Speeches Not Delivered

Tue 31 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Jeffrey Ford, travel, World Fantasy Awards| Posted by: Gavin

I’ve written a few acceptance speeches that didn’t have to be given — although in 2015 I did not write one when Monstrous Affections was up for the World Fantasy Award as the ballot was so strong. Ellen had won the award before, George and Gardner had won the year before, Michael Kelly happily won this year, and Long Hidden is a spectacularly good book. I didn’t even notice that Gordon Van Gelder was leading me back from a playdate for our kids to the awards in time for the announcement. Anyway, I was surprised and a little embarrassed to be the person throwing out random words instead of organized.

So this year I got ahead of things and a week before the convention I wrote this speech with Kelly and emailed it to Jeff Ford who kindly agreed to accept on our behalf. The award went to Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, which looks like a great book. If I have to writer one of these, it’s usually along the lines of thanks to the writers, the readers, the booksellers, and librarians.

This year’s version is here:

First, thanks to the marvelous Jeff Ford for accepting this award for us. And huge thanks to the writers we published over the years, but especially Richard Butner and Robert Freeman Wexler, whose books we published in 2022, and the contributors to 2 issues of our zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

We are sorry not to be here in person: Gavin never tested positive for Covid but after an brief illness in December 2021 he has now has something which seems to be long Covid/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This has much diminished his physical capacities. This is also why we are publishing many fewer books. We still wear masks everywhere we go.

We have mixed feelings about missing conventions, this one in particular. Missouri has passed anti-trans and anti-lgbtq laws that mean it is not a safe place for many people. Can we support these inequalities with our tourist dollars? Also, how would we have travelled here? By plane? With climate change we find it harder to justify getting on a plane for anything these days. Even so, we miss being here so a last thanks to this gathering, in person or online, for making community out of some great, very weird books.

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Kij @ World Fantasy

Thu 26 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., conventions, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

While we won’t be at World Fantasy, some of our books will be, and, even better, some of the authors: starting with one of the guests of honor, Kij Johnson. I just grabbed her schedule from this page so if you’re there, hope you will get to see some of this and maybe get a signed copy of her new new new book The Privilege of the Happy Ending.

Thursday
Reading; 4PM, Chicago A
Spotlight: Kij Johnson; 5PM, Empire A/B
Opening Ceremony; 8PM, Atlanta/New York
Work/Work Balance: Writing With A Day Job; 10PM, Empire A/B

Friday
Animals in Fiction; Noon, Empire A/B
The Mythology and Fantasy of the Fox; 4PM, Atlanta/New York

Saturday
Kaffeeklatsch; 1PM, Dragon’s Den
Stories Without Stories: Non-Narrative Fiction; 3PM, Empire A/B

Sunday
Ad Astra Presentation; 10AM, Chicago A

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New Book Day!

Tue 24 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

When we published our first book by Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, an amazing wide-ranging collection of stories, I had no idea that eleven years later we’d be publishing our third: The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small/Medium/Large Stories. This time we accompanied the trade paperback with a small hardcover run to give people —and libraries — the choice. I’ve seen copies of At the Mouth read to death so I am sure some people will prefer the hardcover. One of the stories in that first book, Ponies, was reprinted in a text book so many, many readers had the rather staggering experience of that story. With luck some of those readers will be looking for more unexpected oddities and weirdness and the new book has all that and more. Looking forward to getting it out into the world and reading people’s reactions.

Kij launches the book tonight at 7 p.m. at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, and will be one of the guests of honor later this week (10/26-29) at the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO.

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The Privilege of the Happy Ending

Tue 24 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 304 pages · published simultaneously in trade paper (9781618732118), ebook (9781618732125), and a limited hardcover run (9781618732163)

The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories is award-winning writer Kij Johnson’s long-awaited second collection, following the celebrated At the Mouth of the River of Bees. Contained here is Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade, ranging in form from classically told tales to playfully post-modern work drawing on medieval dream manuals, Icelandic spell books, and the OuLiPo manifesto.

The collection includes the two World Fantasy Award-winning stories “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as the illustrated book of signs, “The Apartment Dweller’s Stavebook,” and two never-before published works. Here you will encounter dreamlands, talking chickens, stranger beasts, and also the ghastly spectre of Toad Hall.

Reviewed in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda.

Read the title story on Clarkesworld.

Read an associated article: Dream Interpretation by Jillian Bell.

Table of Contents

Tool-Using Mimics
Mantis Wives
Butterflies of Eastern Texas
Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers
Ratatoskr
Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead
The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall
Certain Lorebooks for Apartment Dwellers
— Bestiary
— Stavebook
— Alphabetical Dreambook
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
Noah’s Raven
Crows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One Joke
The Privilege of the Happy Ending

Reviews

“Johnson’s work imagines a world of mythic possibility where the tension between name and feeling isn’t a problem but rather, an entry point into our fuller selves. A door.”
— M. L. Clark, Strange Horizons

“Two of her most promi­nent publications have invoked writers as wildly divergent as H.P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Gra­hame, and some of the short fiction included in The Privilege of the Happy Ending is about as experimental in form as anything I’ve seen in genre venues for some time. . . . Enigmatic, allusive, poetic, fragmentary, and sometimes oddly moving – but with some assembly required.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“This collection of speculative stories feels like being in a vivid dream that you don’t want to wake up from. Kij Johnson’s imaginative narratives are utterly surreal and somewhat dark, yet laced with wit. Their language is highly literary, almost poetic, and draws the reader deeper into Johnson’s world. . . . It’s immersive and supernatural enough to appeal to diehard fantasy fans, but also addresses universal themes like family relationships and loss. The literary prose and character-driven stories (you won’t find hard magic systems here) mean it might make a good introduction to the fantasy genre for those who usually read more grounded contemporary works. It’s simultaneously creepy and cozy, making it perfect to curl up with on a crisp autumn day.”
— Jillian Bell, BookBrowse

“In these strange and speculative stories, Johnson, who teaches fiction writing at the University of Kansas, plays with form and narrative voices in a way that’s designed to raise questions about how much we really know about one another, the past, or the nature of stories themselves.” — Daily Hampshire Gazette

★ “While the entries are uniformly excellent in pacing and prose, the standouts may be the collection’s opener and closer. ‘Tool-Using Mimics’ spins out a half-dozen explanations for a vintage photo of a young girl with tentacles that lead to piercing questions about how much we can know about the past, other species, and each other. The titular novella, which also won a World Fantasy Award, is a compelling fairy tale about a little orphan girl and her talking hen that poignantly interrogates the ways we determine which stories take center stage. A strange and glimmering jewel for any genre fiction collection.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

★ “Hugo and Nebula award winner Johnson (The River Bank) returns with 14 dazzling speculative shorts. . . . The devastating title tale follows another young girl and her cherished talking hen as they barely escape a swarm of monsters who devour anything with flesh. Johnson’s keen eye for the mysteries of human nature shines as her characters experience love, loss, growth, and betrayal, all made delightfully strange. These boundary-pushing, magic-infused tales are sure to wow.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Praise for Kij Johnson’s stories:

“Wondrously strange and sinister stories of other worlds, future times, and everyday life gone haywire.” — Dan Kois, Slate

Cover art by Sophia Uceda.

Previously

9/8: Campus visit, Kansas State University
10/14, 11 a.m. Twin Cities Book Fest, Fine Arts Stage, Minneapolis, MN
10/24, 7 p.m. Raven Bookstore, Lawrence, KS
10/26-29: World Fantasy Convention, Kansas City, MO
11/12: Other Skies Books, St. Paul, MN
4/19 – 4/21: Guest of Honor at Constellation 13, Lincoln, NE

About the Author

Kij Johnson writes speculative and experimental fiction, and has won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards (among others). She also writes gaming material, puzzles, and nonfiction. She teaches creative writing, novel development, and science fiction and fantasy, for her own Novel Architects group, the Ad Astra Institute, and various universities. For many years, she was the associate director for the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

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