Sooner or Later in New StoryBundle

Fri 31 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Sarah Pinsker’s award-winning debut collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is one of thirteen books in Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott’s newly launched Pay-What-You-Want 2024 Pride Bundle.

The bundle is available for 31 days — today + Pride month! The 4-book basic bundle is $5, and is really 5 books as it includes both volumes of Ginn Hale’s Champion of the Scarlet Wolf. The real deal is at $20 (or more, seems to top out at $100, challenge activated?) where you get all 13 titles.

Every buyer chooses how their payment is split between the authors and the platform (StoryBundle) and can choose to donate 10% to the charity Catherine and Melissa selected, Rainbow Railroad whose mission is to help at-risk LGBTQI+ people get to safety.

Hope you enjoy the bundle and any help spreading the word over the next month would be much appreciated.


Kathleen at the Brisbane Writers Festival

Thu 30 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen will be on a couple of panels at the Brisbane* Writers Festival this coming weekend. We went to that festival I think a couple of times and loved it. Kathleen is on not just one but two panels with Naomi Novik whose Scholomance books I wholeheartedly recommend. Shelley Parker Chan is also on both of those panels and Angela Slatter — to whom Kindling is dedicated — is also on the Gothic Tales panel.

For a little more about Kathleen’s stories, she just posted notes on each story in Kindling.

* Friends (lovingly) called Brisbane BrisVegas and it stuck for me. Maybe one day they’ll have a BrisVegas Writers Fest.


10 Great Fantasy Book Series Without Romance

Thu 30 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Love to see Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp (and its sequel, Latchkey) on this list of 10 Great Fantasy Book Series Without Romance by Mary Kassel on Screenrant along with books such as The Goblin Emperor, and books by Pratchett, Le Guin, and more.


They [Do Not] Come in Peace: On Claire G. Coleman’s “Terra Nullius”

Wed 29 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I recently came across Dr. Billy J. Stratton’s LA Review of Books article on Claire G. Coleman’s novel Terra Nullius, They [Do Not] Come in Peace: On Claire G. Coleman’s “Terra Nullius” LA Review of Books and I’m happy to say it references one of my favorite teen movies, John Carpenter’s They Live, as well as Coleman’s  2021 work of Aboriginal anticolonial history, Lies, Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation.” Low culture, high culture, it’s all culture!


Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for Jennings, et al.

Tue 28 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings, along with Helen Marshall and Jo Anderton, received the Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for their article “Science fiction for hire? Notes towards an emerging practice of creative futurism”! (read here)


eLCRW in the EU

Mon 20 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Over at Weightless Michael has found a way — with help from our friends at Interzone — to make LCRW available as an ebook in both the EU and the UK using Payhip. I am very grateful to everyone that 1) there’s a solution and 2) it was implementable.

I am sorry we can’t send chocolate over with the e-subscriptions. I’d say one of these days, but I kind of hope we don’t all end up with food printers in our kitchens so I hope you can get a good snack wherever you are to go with the zine. Is it really an issue of LCRW, anyway, if there aren’t chocolatey fingerprints on it/the ereader?


Kathleen Jennings at the Brisbane Square Library

Fri 17 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Brisbane Square Library has booked Kathleen Jennings for a local launch event for her debut collection, Kindling on Friday 14 June, 6 p.m.* AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

Meet Kathleen Jennings - Brisbane Square Library

* Flat Earthers please note the time is local, no matter where you live.


Lost Places is a Locus Award Finalist

Tue 14 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Lost Places cover - click to view full sizeDelighted to see Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places is a finalist for the Locus Award for best short story collection — along with one of her stories and one novelette.* Small Beer is a finalist which I take it to mean that all of our 2023 titles were much enjoyed by readers.

Congratulations to all the finalists! — including Kelly, for her collection White Cat, Black Dog, and her story “Prince Hat Underground” which are also finalists.

The Locus Awards weekend is June 19-22 live in — and online from — Oakland, CA.

* Still funny to write that instead of two short stories. When does one get used to the names for the various short  categories?


Mass MoCA & Me

Mon 6 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

me wearing my mask sitting in a wheelchair in a room with a rainbow painted around the door.

This past weekend Kelly and I and our kid (cropped out of photo above) went to Mass MoCA. I think this might be the first museum I’ve been to since the start of the Covid pandemic and the first time I’ve been to a museum since I came down with Long Covid.

Mass MoCA opened 25 years ago and it is a fabulous place to visit. It sprawls out over a series of old warehouses, there are weird and great permanent exhibitions, and always intriguing new ones. There are many floors with long hallways to get between them and stairways and, thankfully, elevators. They have two bookshops — Storey Publishing is in the same complex — and some great restaurants. And all the usual good things of a destination museum. I love it and was both anxious and delighted about going back.

I got an Apple watch a couple of years ago so that I could believe what I was being told by doctors: no, I wasn’t having a heart attack, something else was going inside my chest. It’s also been useful to show me how many steps I can take per day without wiping myself out: ~4,000 is my max. Sounds great! Except the stepcounter doesn’t quantify the part when I lie down for an hour+ after each meal or any tiny bit of doing anything. My body has calmed down somewhat (if my anger hasn’t), but I can’t walk around a museum all day, or half the day, or, really, for much at all. I go to Book Moon once a week or so and the big thing there is for me to remember to sit down and not spend all my energy at once.

Mass MoCA has free wheelchairs available so Kelly (and occasionally our kid) pushed me around so I was able to visit the museum and see two James Turrells again (and miss another) as well as some by Laurie Anderson and a fascinating exhibit, Like Magic, which I strongly recommend to any readers here who can see it.

I have not used a wheelchair since I first came down with this, but, I have also been incredibly limited in what I can do. I don’t know that I’ll get one (mobility scooter, here I come), but even though it was tiring (to be pushed around, ha), it was a relief to actually be able to go out and do something. My thanks to Mass MoCA for the wheelchair and to everyone who has ever fought for accessibility. I recommend currently able bodied try it (I say that because you never know how long that will last) wholeheartedly for a couple of hours: don’t stand up, see what it’s like to be wheeled around.

Anyway, now we’re home and I’m lying on our damned and blasted (and comfortable) couch. I’m still slowly piecing together our limited edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love and I’m wishing I’d been able to do more for the books we published in the last couple of years — I did most of what I’d usually do but there’s always more that can be done — and I’m grateful for the understanding shown by our authors. We’re not taking on new books but we’re supporting those we have, submitting them for awards as per usual (I generally believe, until announcement day, all our books will win all awards), submitting them for ebook sales and lists and so on, keeping them in print, working on international sales. And we recently received an intriguing email that might change the future of Small Beer. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m going to work a little on the next LCRW. After much taste testing, I think I have found the chocolate bar to go with the new issue.

 


Anya in New York

Thu 2 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro will be in New York next week for two readings from her novel OKPsyche, both of which are with top notch readers. John Wiswell will be reading from his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, on Wednesday at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Series and then on Thursday Anya will be in conversation with Astoria Bookshops bookseller and author Nino Cipri. Don’t miss these!

Wed. 5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY, with John Wiswell
Thu. 5/9, 7 p.m. Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY, with Nino Cipri

Astoria Bookshop logo