Sareen McLay is Writer of the Week at the People’s Friend

Sat 3 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sareen McLay| Posted by: Gavin

My sister Sareen McLay is Writer of the Week at the The People’s Friend. If you’re in the UK you’ll know the mag, the “world’s longest running weekly women’s magazine and number one for quality fiction every week.” Long term LCRW readers might remember her poem “Illumination” about climbing and caving in the north of England in the third issue. I’m toasting Sareen this morning with this mug of tea!

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Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List

Thu 1 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Kij Johnson, Locus, Sarah Pinsker, year's bests| Posted by: Gavin

In 2023 we (only) published four books and I’m happy to see three of them are on the Locus Recommended Reading list. The one title missing is Ayize Jama-Everett’s series capper Heroes of an Unknown World—at least The Last Count of Monte Cristo, his great Afrofuturist graphic novel, is listed.

As ever, congratulations to everyone whose work made the list! Do I think more of the list makers should read LCRW? Well of course! How could they miss our monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, semiannual, dammit, annual issue from last year? (I mean, maybe they all read it and didn’t enjoy any of the stories, but, come now, how likely is that?)

The three titles, which if you are reading this you may be familiar with, that did make the list are:

Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories

Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places: Stories & the original story novelette first publisher there, “Science Facts!”

Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche

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Kij @ Prairie Lights Tomorrow

Wed 31 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson, readings| Posted by: Gavin

Get your skates on: Kij Johnson reads from her new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Prairie Lights in Iowa City — or just order a book and get it personalized there!

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Book Riot Best of 2023

Mon 29 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, year's bests| Posted by: Gavin

Catch up note on a best of list I missed: Sarah Pinsker’s collection Lost Places was selected as one of Book Riot’s 20 of the Best Fantasy Books of 2023. It’s a good, solid, wide-ranging list, and I completely agree with the write-up for Sarah’s book:

“All SFF fans should be reading Sarah Pinsker, and this is a great place to get started.”

Read it now and get your preorder in for her new novella, Haunt Sweet Home, coming from Tor.com in September.

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Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023

Fri 26 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, libraries| Posted by: Gavin

I spy with my little eye* Anya Johanna DeNiro‘s OKPsyche on the Seattle Public Library Picks for the best LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023. There are 33 titles there, it would make a great reading list.

* DuckDuckGo

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Re: Formats

Thu 25 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, reports, sales| Posted by: Gavin

I’ve updated my chart of the ratio of formats Small Beer titles (including chapbooks and LCRW) sell in.

Print books (in red on the chart) were 90% of sales in 2010 — we started selling ebooks in 2005 — and dropped to a low of 49% in 2014 (or: we sold a lot of ebooks that year).

The 2023 breakdown was 65.36% print and 34.64% ebooks. I’ve never tracked audio books, mostly because the half dozen audio book publishers all send statements at different times and they are somewhat hard to extract numbers from. I think audio sales would be about 2-3% of the total. Although I prefer print or audio, I’m format agnostic as a publisher, especially knowing how useful ebooks are for books such as ours where there are no large type editions. I’d like people to read Small Beer books and I know that people enjoy different types of books in different formats: for some fiction only works on audio or short stories only work in print, etc. Anyway, every year when I get to this point in Jul.-Dec. royalty calculations I like to stop and look at the format percentages, see if there’s anything I’m missing, any books I should be reminding people exist. Oh wait, all of them!

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Sparks

Tue 23 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

Today is the official publication day for Kathleen Jennings’s first collection of short stories, Kindling. Kathleen has illustrated many of our book covers over the last 15 years. She worked with Kij Johnson and did the cover and many interior illustrations for The River Bank; she provided covers for two issues of our zine, LCRW; and also did the cover and interior illustration for Margo Lanagan’s chapbook Stray Bats.

As a writer, she contributed comics to each of our Candlewick Press anthologies Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections, as well as two stories to LCRW. Both of those stories were reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. And now, at last!, we are elated to publish Kathleen’s debut collection, Kindling, in both hardcover and paperback. Kindling collects a dozen fantastic tales including “Annie Coal” which is published here for the first time.

Book Riot includes the book on a list of good books out today and Charlotte’s review just went up on her Library. If you’re new to Kathleen’s writing here are two completely different stories, The Present Only Toucheth Thee published in Strange Horizons and The Heart of Owl Abbas originally published on Tor.com.

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Kindling

Tue 23 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

Published simultaneously in trade cloth (9781618732170), trade paper (9781618732132), & ebook (9781618732149) · 288 pages

World Fantasy and Aurealis Award shortlists

A fabulous debut of folk tales and fantasies by an award winning author and illustrator.

Small fires start in the hearts of Kathleen Jennings’s characters and irresistibly spread to those around them. Journeys are taken, debts repaid, disguises put on, and lessons offered — although not often learned — in these fantastic tales. Jennings’s confident voice lulls readers into stepping off the known paths to find “Undine Love,” “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” and further unexpected places and people.

Read a story: Undine Love

Table of Contents

The Heart of Owl Abbas
Skull and Hyssop
Ella and the Flame
Not to Be Taken
A Hedge of Yellow Roses
The Tangled Streets
The Present Only Toucheth Thee (story; podcast)
On Pepper Creek
Annie Coal
Undine Love
Kindling
The Splendour Falls

Read Kathleen’s story notes.

Reviews

“A real treat. There is a kindling in each character’s heart throughout this collection of fantastical stories, as well as throughout Jennings’s whole oeuvre.”
— Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot

“But sinking into each story, to delight in the rhythms of the words and the delightful worlds created: That’s giving this collection what it deserves.”
— Alexandra Pierce, Locus

“A range of strange tales, from the myth-like to settings in suburban and outback Australia.”
— Steve Pfarrer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

“If you are looking for lovely fantastical short stories, such as a perfect for savoring on a cold winter night (or hot summer day if you are antipodal), I enthusiastically recommend Kindling, by Kathleen Jennings.” — Charlotte’s Library

“Fantasy writer and illustrator Kathleen Jennings (Flyaway) offers 12 glittering, fantasy-inspired short stories in Kindling. In ‘Ella and the Flame,’ three women and one child tell each other stories to comfort themselves while their neighbors burn them alive as retribution for a mysterious crime. Flipping the fantasy script by placing a boggart rather than suspected witches at its center, ‘On Pepper Creek’ tells the story of a boggart who is brought to a new land against his will in a family trunk and who exacts his revenge in return. And while the titular ‘Kindling’ centers the unexpected intuition behind a barmaid’s observations of her clientele, ‘Splendour Falls’ shows the much more nefarious manipulations of a mysterious young woman who enchants a young man gifted with special sight.
Jennings’s plots are refreshingly never straightforward, and her tone and subject matter never the same. For example, ‘Ella and the Flame’ casts a wistful spell with its oral-storytelling conceit and angle of feminist tragedy. Meanwhile, ‘Undine Love’ is a complex balancing act between a cautionary tale and dark humor, using its narrator’s outside perspective to infuse humor in the plight of its doomed “hero.” Though recognizable folk tales and fairy tales appear in fragments — ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in ‘A Hedge of Yellow Roses’; ‘The Frog Prince’ in ‘Undine Love’; ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ in ‘Splendour Falls’ — they never play out the way readers expect. Throughout, like the scraps of old tales, characters’ motivations flicker in and out of view, making the true magic of these stories the simultaneous predictability and unknowability of the people and creatures at their centers.” — Alice Martin, Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Women with guts and men of good fortune in search of their personal treasures.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Following her debut, Flyaway (2020), Jennings here compiles a collection of 12 of her previously published short stories. Samplings of her elegant fantasies include “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a beautifully detailed tale of a lonely songwriter who sends anonymous compositions to a recently arrived virtuoso, which unfortunately brings her presence to the attention of their dissipated ruler. In ‘Ella and the Flame,’ three sisters and a child spin wondrous tales while awaiting their cruel neighbors’ unjustified vengeance, and in ‘Not to Be Taken,’ the survivor of a murdered family returns home after decades away intent on finding a place for her burgeoning collection of poison bottles. As a riff on ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘A Hedge of Yellow Roses’ has a fully-awake but abandoned lady faire hoping for rescue by the unwitting knight who stumbled into her thorn- encrusted compound. The title story, ‘Kindling,’ links six customer scenarios to a clumsy but intuitive barmaid and her lovelorn admirer. Offer to fans of lyrically descriptive prose.”
— Lucy Lockley, Booklist

Praise for Kathleen Jennings’s books:

“An unforgettable tale, as beautiful as it is thorny.” —The New York Times Book Review

“In spellbinding, lyrical prose Jennings lulls readers into this rich, dreamlike world. Lovers of contemporary fairy tales will find this a masterful work.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“I love the imagery, the atmosphere, the incredible tactile quality of the world as described, the structure. . . . Some of the best prose I’ve ever read.”—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

“Part ghost story, part murder mystery and part fairy tale, Flyaway feels like a perfect combination of all Jennings’ experiences and imagination.”—Book Page

“An entrancing and unforgettable debut.” — The Southern Bookseller Review

“Jennings’s debut novella is pure, poetic Australian gothic, filled with haunting emotions, fairy-tale action, and sharp prose.” — Library Journal

“A deliciously mysterious Gothic fairy tale wrapped in elegantly descriptive prose.” — Booklist

“Half mystery, half fairy tale, all exquisitely rendered and full of teeth.” — Holly Black, author of Book of Night

“A fairytale wrapped about in riddles and other thorny bits of enchantments and stories, but none of them quite like any you’ve heard before. Kathleen Jennings’ prose dazzles, and her magic feels real enough that you might even prick your finger on it.” — Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog

“A superbly told tale of folklore-infused fantasy, full of rising dread, set in a sharply observed Australian outback town.” — Garth Nix

“A darkly enchanting and unexpected tale. A gothic Alice in Wonderland meets Picnic at Hanging Rock. With Flyaway Jennings takes old threads and weaves them into something new and exciting.” — Angela Slatter

“I feel as if a very new voice has whispered a very old secret in my ear, and I’ll never be able to un-hear it. Nor will I ever want to.” — C. S. E. Cooney

Cover art by Kathleen Jennings.

About the Author

Kathleen Jennings is an illustrator and writer based in Brisbane, Australia. As an illustrator, she has received the World Fantasy and Ditmar awards and has been shortlisted for the Hugo and Locus awards. As a writer, she has won a British Fantasy and Ditmar awards and has been shortlisted for World Fantasy, the Courier-Mail People’s Choice Book of the Year Award, the Crawford, and Aurealis awards.

Previously

Fri, 14 June, 6 p.m. AEST, Meet Kathleen Jennings, Brisbane Square Library, 266 George Street Brisbane City, QLD 4000 Australia

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Howard Waldrop, R.I.P.

Mon 15 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin

Brought low by the news that Howard Waldrop died yesterday, January 14, at the age of 77.

We delighted in bringing his first collection, the still well and hilariously named Howard Who?, back into print in 2006 and then publishing a later collection, Horse of a Different Color in 2013. Each of those books has at least one of my favorite stories in them: the award-winning “The Ugly Chickens” in the former and the holy grail/vaudeville mashup title story in the latter.

In 2014 we published ebooks of two selections of his works, Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction and Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction, which were published in trade cloth and trade paper by Michael Walsh of Old Earth Books. Then in 2022 we re-released his Wheatland Press/Electric Story collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, his “movie (‘dream factories’) and television (‘radio pictures’) stories from his first four collections, as well as a new article and a new story.”

That’s the publishing part. More on the man himself, one of my most faithful correspondents, later. For now, he is much missed. Here’s his best known story, The Ugly Chickens.

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The Book of Love Limited Edition

Thu 11 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

A limited edition of Kelly’s first novel, The Book of Love, to be published later this year by Small Beer Press, courtesy of Random House who published the novel in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook on February 13, 2024.

The Book of Love is a huge beautiful novel about love in its many forms. The Random House edition is 640 pages and 2.1 pounds in weight. Read more

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OKPsyche in MN & WI

Thu 11 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro just confirmed two more events for her novel OKPsyche:

(Postponed) 1/20/24 from 3 -5 p.m. at Avant Garden, 215 E. Main St., Anoka, MN 55303

and

3/25/24 at A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI.

I haven’t been to Room for years — long enough that they’ve changed hands and location since I was last there. I hope at some point to make it over because the people who own and run it are fun, admirable, and great booksellers — they also make great maps of book recommendations which they post on social media so I recommend following them. One of these days! In the meantime, if you’re in the area, hope you can get to one of these events.

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2 Weeks Until Kindling

Wed 10 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kindling| Posted by: Gavin

On a very snowy, wet, dreich day it is funny to write about a book called Kindling but the spark in Kathleen Jennings’s collection is bright enough to shine even in weather like this. (I realize weather is localized and that it is incredibly hot, but still wet!, in Brisbane, Queensland where Kathleen lives.)

Warehouse-wise the book is in a liminal state — either On Hand or about to be — and hopefully not in a frozen-in-a-truck state somewhere between Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Preorders will be going out soon and those placed on this site go out with a bonus backlist title. Most likely from us, but maybe from another press if the pack and pickers at the Jackson warehouse start having fun.

Over in Portland, OR, Rachael P. has the right idea on how to read this book in Powell’s 2024 Book Preview: The First Quarter:

Kindling
by Kathleen Jennings

When the words “gothic” and “folk tales” come up in a book description, I will always get excited. This anthology promises the creepiness of classic folk tales and lush, dreamlike settings. I’ve seen many reviews raving about the elegance of the prose, which, fittingly for folk tales, verges into the poetic. I can’t wait to read these stories under a warm blanket this winter. — Rachael P.

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Preorder The Book of Love

Mon 8 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We just added a page on the BKMN website for preorders for signed or personalized copies of Kelly’s forthcoming debut novel The Book of Love.

If you’d like your book(s) personalized, once it’s in your cart, put the name of the person you’d like it personalized for in the “notes” field.

Every pre-order (including those before the page went up) placed by publication day — February 13, 2024 — will ship with a signed, limited edition not-for-sale specially made 5″ square broadside.

Books will be shipped Media Mail beginning February 11th. If you’d like your book to arrive sooner, please ask for a quote on Priority Mail shipping.

Kelly is doing some in-person and online events. She is tentatively planning to be at Book Moon on the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 17, if you’d like to pick up your copy then.

More of Kelly’s book.
Kelly recommends some books.

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SBP BS Bestsellers 2023

Fri 5 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

2023 was the another odd year for the press. Since I did the top 14 (BS = Bookscan, now called Circana) bestsellers last year (for a reason that eludes me now), here are the past year’s top 15 — look at all those short story collections!

 

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The Heart of Owl Abbas

Thu 4 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, read| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s new book, Kindling, her first collection of stories, is being trucked from printer to distributor and from there on its way to shops, cafes, backpacks, bedside tables, ship’s libraries, and a few to alternate worlds. One of those worlds might be the one where her story The Heart of Owl Abbas is set:

Cautious even in despair, Excelsior shredded the gossamer spell into cheap sentiment and tramping rhythm, and sent it by nip-fingered courier below where, unintended, the words fell like fire-inches, like sparks in kindling.

The rooms of roses burn,
The lanterns are turned high.
Petty Street, long starved for light,
Lifts a ravening eye.

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DeNiro on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans

Wed 3 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Interviews| Posted by: Gavin

Something good to start the new year with: Anya joins Mary Anne Mohanraj and Benjamin Rosenbaum on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans for a conversation about her novel, OKPsyche. The conversation roves all over: on genre, gender, writing, history, poetry, and more — not to be missed.

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