Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 42

Fri 28 Aug 2020 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

November 17, 2020. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731791

LCRW 42. After all this time, here’s the answer?

Or: a fabulous and topical new novella from Sarah Langan with a few more delights added.

This is the latest issue of our twice-annual zine — 25% of subscribers (not too many in warmer climes) choose the chocolate version — in which we have fictions, poetries, a cooking column (extra useful in these times), and sometimes a few odd other things.

Peace!

Reviews

“Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has been one of my favorite magazines for a long time, always publishing work unlike anything you’ll read else­where. The November issue is largely given over to a novella from Sarah Langan, ‘You Have the Prettiest Mask’. . . . sometimes horrific, sometimes traditional YA, and in the end striking and moving. This issue also has a fine piece from Stewart Moore, ‘Madeline’s Wings’. . . . Another unexpectedly charming piece is ‘Bright and Shabby Buses’, by Jack Larsen.”
— Rich Horton, Locus

“Sarah Langan’s novella ‘You Have the Perfect Mask’ in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #42 is a showstopper. Set among the elite of a near-future New York City, it’s both a thoughtful tale of conscience and an examina­tion of the sociocultural world of 12-year-old/turning-13 girls. Mean Girls meets Socrates, but so much more. The latest pandemic, the Y-Plague, has gruesomely killed 20 million worldwide. Both women of childbearing age and men contract the disease, but only men die from it. The virus is now mostly controlled, but only by various levels (depending on national custom, convention, and, subsequently, law) of female containment. It is now the law – and a celebrated part of popular culture – in the US for girls age 13 and above to wear face masks, even though pubescent girls have been proven to not be carriers. Three girls resolve to resist. That description doesn’t do justice to a nuanced story that is as immersively entertaining as it is reflective. In other words: you have to read it.
“Of the four remaining stories in LCRW, ‘Mad­eline’s Wings’ by Stewart Moore should also be noted. Madeline makes wings. Gregory, an old man, commissions her to fabricate some very special dragon wings. He repays her in coin of the realm and in a much more wondrous way. It’s a delightful little tale.” — Paula Guran, Locus

“Read it slowly and savor the language.” — Sam Tamaino, SF Revu

Table of Contents

fiction

Sarah Langan, “You Have the Prettiest Mask” [read an excerpt on Lit Hub]
Vandana Singh, “Sticky Man”
Stewart Moore, “Madeline’s Wings”
Jack Larsen, “Bright and Shabby Buses”
Kristin Yuan Roybal, “Separation Theory”

poetry

Holly Day, Two Poems

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Cooking Column: “The Stories We Tell”

Made by

Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link
Proofreader: Franchesca Viaud

About

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 42, September 2020. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731791. 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.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 43 of this issue — or go here — for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2020 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Janus-headed bottle,” ca. 1760, Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory, Gold Anchor Period, 1759–69, (metmuseum.org). Thank you authors, artists, and readers. In reasons to celebrate an LCRW story will be reprinted in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020 Edition; Sarah Pinsker’s collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea: Stories is a World Fantasy Award finalist. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. No Justice: No Peace.

About these Authors

Joe Biden is the President Elect of the USA. What a relief to have a competent person in this office. Inevitably he will disappoint and make mistakes but I don’t expect him to be corrupt and live a life of daily lies.

Holly Day’s newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I’m in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), and Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing).

Kamala Harris is the Vice President Elect of the USA and the present and future face of the country. What a contrast to the disastrous Pence.

Nicole Kimberling is a writer, creator of the “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” audio drama podcast and the editor of Blind Eye Books. Her first publication was in the Letters to the Editor section of the Rocky Mountain News. Her first play was staged in a barn by the members of a 4-H Club. She once won the Lambda Literary Award. Her younger sister was born while she attending her sixth birthday party, which was hosted at Shakey’s Pizza by her Aunt Lynette because her mom couldn’t be there.

Sarah Langan holds an MS in Environmental Toxicology from NYU and an MFA from Columbia University, and is a three-time recipient of the Bram Stoker Award. She’s the author of three previous novels, including The Keeper, a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and Good Neighbors, forthcoming from Atria in 2021.

Jack Larsen is a writer and student living in Wellington, New Zealand. His short fiction has appeared in a previous issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Saint Jerome watches over him, and so do various mammals.

Stewart Moore has published a nonfiction book, Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt (Brill, 2014), and has published short fiction in anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow (The Beastly Bride) and Paula Guran (Halloween), as well as in Mysterion, Diabolical Plots, and Pseudopod (forthcoming). He lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter, mother-in-law and an odd number of cats.

Kristin Yuan Roybal (she/they) is most likely somewhere along the West Coast where there are redwoods, possibly Northern California or Oregon. Their work has been featured in places such as Mojo, M-BRANE SF, Subtopian Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Jersey Devil Press, and The Gateway Review, and their debut novel, The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence, was released in 2018 by Unsolicited Press under the pen name Corin Reyburn. They earned an MFA from Oregon State University, during which they were fiction editor of 45th Parallel magazine from 2019-20. Kristin co-produces the speculative fiction podcast SubverCity Transmit. She enjoys transmuting cosmic energy and the use of unconventional instruments in rock n’ roll music, and of course owns a cat—a chubby Siamese named Isis.

Vandana Singh was born and raised mostly in New Delhi, India and currently lives in the United States near Boston, where she professes physics and writes. Her short stories have appeared in numerous venues and several Best of Year anthologies including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy and she is a recipient of the Carl Brandon Parallax award. She is the author of the ALA Notable book Younguncle Comes to Town and the short story collections The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories and Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories.

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Dance on Saturday

Tue 25 Aug 2020 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 336 pages · $17 · 9781618731722 | ebook · 9781618731739

Philip K. Dick Award finalist
NPR Best Books of the Year
Locus Notable Books

Planted deeply in the dark, musical fantastic heart of American storytelling, Cotman’s half dozen tales are ripe for the picking.

In the title novella, Cotman imagines a group of near-immortals living in Pittsburgh in an uneasy truce with Lord Decay. Their truce is threatened when one of them takes pity on a young woman who knows their secret. In “Among the Zoologists,” a game writer on their way to a convention falls in with a group of rogue Darwinists whose baggage contains a great mystery. A volleyball tournament devolves into nightmare and chaos in “Mine.” In Cotman’s hands, the conventions of genres from fairytales to Victorian literature to epic fantasy and horror give shape to marvelously new stories.

NPR Best Books of the Year
“Elwin Cotman’s third collection of short fiction is only six stories long, but each story is packed with rich depth, like jeweled fruits glinting in wet loam. Mixing mythic and contemporary, humor and horror, melancholy and optimism, Cotman’s stories range from present-day Pittsburgh to fantasy Africa, with a beautifully flexible polyvocal prose. My two favorite stories make up about half the book: ‘Seven Watsons’ and the title story both deliver all the sophistication and complexity of a novel at a third of the length, and center Black joy and endurance.”
— Amal El-Mohtar, book critic and co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War

Nonfiction

Why Are We Learning About White America’s Historical Atrocities from TV? on Electric Lit

To Be Black in This Country Is to Live a Life of Trespass on Buzzfeed

Read “The Son’s War” on The Offing

Reviews [BookMarks]

“Cotman wields a compelling literary voice packing both a wallop and a deft touch.” — Fred Shaw, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Karen Russell’s cover blurb praises Cotman as ‘a synthesizer … of lewd dialect and high lyricism.’ I’ll speak instead of Cotman’s high dialect and lewd lyricism, of how his fashioning of character voices is superbly disciplined, lit from within, while his lyricism is the realm of bawdy jokes and opacity, a kind of literary trolling. “She was tall and wide like a sonnet,” one character notes — and you’ll just have to trust me on the contrast with the bawdy bits, none of which my editor will let me cite.
“The core of the book is a cleareyed survey of the complexities of Black American experience, distilled in a few lines from the title story: ‘I hated the powers for what they had done. But I learned the pride. That I was of a people who could take all the hate and poison of this world, and laugh, and go dance on Saturday.’”
— Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

“Cotman utilizes the entire spectrum of fantasy and speculative fiction to write powerful stories on race, power, and human nature. The title novella is particularly stellar, about a group of immortals in Pittsburgh who can extend their life (and limbs) by growing and consuming certain fruit. It’s a timely collection filled with wit and beautiful language.”
— Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot

“The landscapes of Elwin Cotman are mythical, searching, and stimulated by haunting fanaticism. Among his third and most ambitious story collection are tales of magical scope—they do more than simply spellbind; they seduce, invite, crack open the extraordinary. . . . In the mold of Octavia Butler and Karen Russell, Dance on Saturday is a bold leap of speculative fiction.”
— Jason Parham, Wired, Ultimate Summer Reading List

“Cotman blends humor, emotional clarity, and wild imagination to bring life to stories about identity, power, and human nature.”  — Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 29 Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down

“Fantastically weird short stories infused with elements from Black culture. . . . Each story provides a singular and riveting reading experience.” — Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed, 17 Summer Must-Reads For Fantasy Lovers

“Above all, Cotman is not afraid to combine the grotesque and surreal with the mundane and emotional. The result is a collection that rebels against the pigeonhole design of genres and creates something original and enlightening.” — Julia Romero, October Hill 

“It should sit on your shelves.” — Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“Cotman (Hard Times Blues) wields biting wit, powerful emotion, and magic large and small throughout these six superlative stories. From the epic fantasy ‘The Son’s War,’ which wrestles with themes of imagination and greed as a prince creates two automaton companions, one out of diamond and one out of jade, and soon favors one over the other, to the claustrophobic social thriller ‘Mine,’ set at a high school volleyball tournament in Hell as the teen girl players become increasingly cruel and the behavior of the adults around them increasingly inappropriate, Cotman utilizes genre conventions to examine racism, sexism, power imbalances, and hypocrisy. ‘Among the Zoologists’ is a sexually charged fever dream about a zoology conference that blurs the line between humans and animals. The title story is the strongest, imagining a group of immortals with the ability to extend their lives by growing and consuming fruit, in prose that ranges from humorous (‘[She] grabbed the first three Mariah Carey LPs for maximum positive energy’) to lyrical (‘She adored the sight of melons hanging like rotund trapeze artists from their own vines’). Readers will be blown away by this standout tale, which grapples with the responsibility of holding power, and whether that power can, or should, be shared. Cotman’s bold and timely speculative fiction marks him as a writer to watch.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Fun, inventive fiction that refreshes the fantasy genre with elements of black heritage and culture.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Inventive, incandescent stories, rich in strangeness. Elwin Cotman’s writing is a tonic to ward off drabness and despair.”
— Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

Table of Contents

Dance on Saturday
Seven Watsons
Mine
The Son’s War [The Offing]
Among the Zoologists
The Piper’s Christmas Gift

Reviews & Praise for Elwin Cotman’s stories:

“Elwin Cotman is one of the most original new voices you will encounter—he is a synthesizer of the domestic and the fantastic, of soaring myth and the grittiest realities, of lewd dialect and high lyricism. His stories are profound engagements with suffering of every stripe—they will also make you hoot with laughter. I was amazed by the force of Mr. Cotman’s pinwheeling imagination.” — Karen Russell, author of Orange World

“Remarkable stories that are as ambitious as they are personal. Cotman is a first-class stylist with a heart and a wit to match.” — Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song

“With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction.” —Elizabeth Hand, author of Errantry

“With hyperbolic, technicolor imagery and engrossing characters that radiate intrigue, these modern tales comprise a new book of essential fables for our time—read it, close your eyes, and delight in the words still glowing hot inside your brain.” — Alissa Nutting, author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

“Starbursts of talent . . . and a knack for biting and imaginative language.” — Lauren O’Neal, The Rumpus

“Proves that magic and grit don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” — Christine Stoddard, Quail Bell Magazine

“Cotman’s interests are wide-ranging: Punk rock intersects with D.C.’s Dominican community, African-American folktale intersects with Greek myth, Goth teen suburban angst in 1990s Ohio sits side by side with racist atrocity in the pre-Civil Rights South . . . Yeah, there’s magic in some of these stories, but the real magic is in Cotman’s words themselves—stark and deadpan one moment, lushly descriptive the next.” — Michael S. Begnal, author of Ancestor Worship

“This is not always a comfortable book to read, but it is a magnificent one. The Jack Daniels Sessions EP: A Collection of Fantasies is comprised of short stories and vignettes that flow into one another like the Mississippi rushes over the Delta. Elwin Cotman is a writer, an activist, a performance artist and above all, an impeccable storyteller. . . . With raw and sometimes shocking authenticity, Cotman turns the ordinary into the sublime. There is no pretension here, just a million-watt light shining into corners of the human condition that many people would prefer forgotten, with a large helping of fantastic creatures, classical myth, and modern mayhem.” — Erzebet YellowBoy, Cabinet des Fées

“Elwin Cotman’s carefully wrought, gracefully accomplished, and lyrical narratives range in tone and style from picaresque and carnivalesque to elegiac, ironic, and melancholy. Yet, while tonally distinctive and aesthetically vivid, his stories are not so much driven by style or voice, as they are by love in the largest sense. For love does not exclude chaos nor avoid the vicissitudes of history and neither do Cotman’s socially engaged, brilliantly crafted stories.” — Miranda Mellis

Cover art “Actaeon” copyright ©2020 by Christopher Myers.

About the Author

Elwin Cotman is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Dance on Saturday and two previous collections of short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. In 2011 he was nominated for a Carl Brandon Society Award. He has toured extensively across North America and Europe. He is at work on his first novel.

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Generation Loss

Tue 25 Aug 2020 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

Hardcover · 9781931520218 | August 2020 · new trade paper edition · 9781618731746

Generation Loss · Available Dark · Hard Light

Shirley Jackson Award Winner
Believer Book Award finalist

generation loss: the loss of quality between subsequent copies of data, such as sound recordings, video, or photographs.

Cass Neary made her name in the 1970s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But thirty years later she’s adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.

• Read the first chapter.

Reviews

“Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary series began in 2008 with Generation Loss, a startling and addictive novel that introduced a protagonist fueled by drugs and post-punk irreverence.”
— Danielle Trussoni, New York Times Book Review

“The mood here is dark, gritty, and bleak, just like the bitterly cold seaside Maine winter it’s set in. If you enjoy unlikable yet compelling queer characters written without even a whiff of concern about respectability politics, this is the mystery for you.”
— Casey Stepaniuk, Autostraddle

“One of the most interesting writers working today. Cass is an incredible character who is really smart, really obstinate, really gifted.”
— Sara Gran

“Sharp, clear, and mercilessly lean. Not only did that style fit Cass, it fit Hand: The author, roughly the same age as her character, was also a part of the punk scene in her youth. Generation Loss rasps with gritty authenticity, from the copious references to artists like Iggy Pop and the Ramones to the way Cass’ hardcore attraction to damage and destruction propels her deep into the book’s maze of murder and secrets.”
— Jason Heller, NPR

“Although it moves like a thriller, it detonates with greater resound. A dark and beautiful novel.”
—Washington Post Book World

“Cass is a marvel, someone with whom we take the difficult journey toward delayed adulthood, wishing her encouragement despite grave odds.” — Los Angeles Times

“Hand’s terse but transporting prose keeps the reader turning pages until Neary’s gritty charm does, finally, shine through.” (B) — Entertainment Weekly

* “Hand (Mortal Love) explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A riveting page-turner.” — Valley Advocate

“The novel crackles with energy: it is alive.” — Nicholas Rombes, (The Ramones and New Punk Cinema)

“Intense and atmospheric, Generation Loss is an inventive brew of postpunk attitude and dark mystery. Elizabeth Hand writes with craftsmanship and passion.” — George Pelecanos

“Lucid and beautifully rendered. Great, unforgiving wilderness, a vanished teenager, an excellent villain, and an obsession with art that shades into death: what else do you need? An excellent book.”
— Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain

More Reviews + Quotes

About the Author

Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of fourteen genre-spanning novels, including Mortal Love and, most recently, Curious Toys, and five collections of short fiction, including Errantry, and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.

• Longer author bio.

On the web:

• Elizabeth Hand‘s site
• Bookslut interview
• Interview on YouTube.
• Authors with tattoos.
• Music for Generation Loss on Largehearted Boy.

Credits

• Hardcover edition cover images © Jacob McMurray.
• Author photo © Norm Walters.
• Download cover for print.
• Download author photo for print.

Generation Loss was originally published in hardcover by Small Beer Press. Harcourt Harvest published it in paperback and now Small Beer will reprint it in paperback.

Note: An excerpt from Generation Loss appeared in 2005 in Gargoyle 50, edited by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody.

Camera Lucida: Reflections On Photography by Roland Barthes, translation by Richard Howard, translation copyright 1981 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.
” sister morphine” from Babel by Patti Smith, copyright © 1978 by Patti Smith. Used by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Other covers:

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Questionable Utopias?

Thu 6 Aug 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, StoryBundle| Posted by: Gavin

An Agent of Practices? An Agent of Utopia! Questionable Practices! Get these fabulous collections by Andy Gunn and Eileen Duncan Andy Duncan and Eileen Gunn as well as 8 more books by Chesya Burke, Tenea D. Johnson, Larissa Lai, JD Scott, Ginn Hale, Maurice Broaddus, and an anthology edited by Bill Campbell & Francesco Verso in the latest StoryBundle deal: the Innovative Worlds Bundle curated by Tenea D. Johnson:

Innovation can mean the difference between progress and stagnation, wonder and woe, seeing the return of dim days or a new age of enlightenment. An innovative world is one where you can immerse yourself and learn something new, see a trope turned on its head, meet characters that will frequent the passages of your mind, navigating by the spark of newness they carry through the gloom.
Innovative worlds can shine as an example of what to be or provide respite from what, if only temporarily, is. Or they can make you appreciate what ain’t broke.
One could make a strong case that innovation and its possibilities are in short supply at the moment.
But not here.

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LCRW Forty-Extraordinary-One

Tue 30 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, it is publication day for the new issue of LCRW! We are celebrating all day by relaxing by the seaside with mimosas. It is a sunny day with a breeze and the shade of the trees it hitting me just right. Later someone, not me, is going to produce a fruit plate. If you happen to call Book Moon and I answer the phone, that’s not me, that’s my semi-sentient personal AI who may be able to help you find a book or may check in on your feelings about the word pudding and the utility of graprefruit cannons as distractors for angry 11-year-olds.

The other day after mailing out all the LCRWs, I went to update the subscriber database so mark some subscriptions expired. Except! Ha! Made myself laugh! No subscriptions expired because this was a freebie to all the subscribers! So, thank you, subscribers! It is mostly great fun to make this zine and send it out into the world and it was delightful to send this issue out as a thank you for supporting the work.

It’s a big issue: we packed 2 novellas and a long story in there along with Nicole Kimberlings “Quarantine Pantry Challenge” column. And of course the fabulous cover illustration, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm,” is by Vicky Yuh.

Also, 2020 being so uneven, LCRW 41 is the first thing Small Beer has published this year. We’d meant to have Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss paperback out in April (it is printed, at the warehouse, and ready to roll out in August) and Elwin Cotman’s new collection, Dance on Saturday, out this month, but: COVID-19 meant we asked our booksellers at Book Moon not to come in to the shop, so we spent much of spring here. That may change a little in upcoming months, as we need to find new balances in the new world, or, it may not. Who knows how anything will go — except the chances of me getting on a plane this summer is near zero, so: more time for making books or more time in BKMN? The USA is doing such a terrible job of controlling the virus — which, you know, just means being polite enough to wear a mask in public — that we may remain in the equivalent of lockdown until there is a vaccine (eek).

All of which is to say, we are delighted to have actually published something in this the last day of the first half of 2020. We look forward to hearing readers’ reactions and to publishing many more things in the second half of the year.

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Psychopomps Galore

Mon 29 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bundles, Nicole Kornher-Stace| Posted by: Gavin

This is your chance to get a fabulous deal on a dozen books by writers who’ve chosen to investigate life (as it were) on the other side of the veil — including Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp, and the sequel, Latchkey.

This bundle lasts for the next two weeks or so:

The Crossing the Veil Bundle – Curated by Rhonda Parrish: I’ve spent the last several years curating and editing short stories and poetry for anthologies and this year I’m very excited to expand that into curating books for a StoryBundle. I’m excited to share my first ever StoryBundle which is all about psychopomps and crossing the veil.

A couple years ago I stumbled across a word I’d never heard before — psychopomp. When I looked up its meaning I discovered that I’d been aware of the concept of a psychopomp for a long time, I just hadn’t known the word for it. A psychopomp is a being which acts as a guide for the souls of the recently departed, helping them move from this world to the next and occasionally carrying messages between the two.

It’s kind of impressive that I went so long without knowing the word psychopomp because I’ve always loved stories that involve crossing over from the world of the living to that of the dead. Always. As a kid we took Greek Mythology in school and while all the stories interested me it was those set in Hades that really fascinated me. I would seek them out and devour version after version. And as I grew, that never really changed. I still love stories set in the places we go after we die, or featuring characters that can cross between those worlds, which made choosing that as the topic for this StoryBundle an easy decision.

That’s not all! Read more about the 12 books in the bundle here, and make sure to click on each cover for a synopsis, reviews and preview of each book.

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And Go Like Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award Finalists

Wed 17 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, John Crowley| Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to see that John Crowley’s collection And Go Like This is a finalist along with many other fine novels and collections in the$5,000 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.

Award winners will be announced during the summer and the full list of finalists can be found on the Neukom Institute’s website.

 

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2 x Buzzfeed

Wed 3 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elwin Cotman| Posted by: Gavin

We moved Elwin Cotman’s forthcoming collection, Dance on Saturday, from this month to August since a lot of booksellers and reviewers were unable to receive their review copies in a timely fashion. But that just means more time for people to look forward to it!

Buzzfeed recently had it on 2 summer reading lists. Add it to yours!

“Cotman blends humor, emotional clarity, and wild imagination to bring life to stories about identity, power, and human nature.”
— Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 29 Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down

“Fantastically weird short stories infused with elements from Black culture. . . . Each story provides a singular and riveting reading experience.”
— Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed, 17 Summer Must-Reads For Fantasy Lovers

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#BlackOutTuesday

Mon 1 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Small Beer Press and Book Moon will be closed tomorrow, June 2, 2020.

#BlackOutTuesday
#BlackLivesMatter

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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41

Tue 26 May 2020 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

June 30, 2020. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685

This is issue Forty (Extraordinary) One of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet which is being published in June of 2020 and is being sent out free to subscribers as a bonus to add joy to this daily more complicated world. (Contributors were paid the usual rates.)

Readers who’d like to support the zine are encouraged to subscribe, mais oui, but also to donate to Color of Change, buy books through Black-owned bookstores such as Frugal Bookstore, and bookstores damaged or closed in the civil unrest as we try and change our world, including DreamHaven, Uncle Hugo’s, Magers & Quinn, and Moon Palace.

Read some excellent short fiction and reset your weary head. A handful of stories by authors known and unknown. Perhaps a poem or two.

Table of Contents

fiction

Rachel Ayers, “Magicians & Grotesques”
Holly Tamsin, “Fogdog Films”
David Fawkes, “Letterghost”

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Quarantine Pantry Challenge
About These Authors

cover

Vicky Yuh, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm”

About

This is Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 41, June 2020. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685.

Cover illustration “Mirrie in the Sea Storm” © 2020 by Vicky Yuh (vickyuh.com).

Made by

Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.
Proofreader: Jenny Terpsichore Abeles.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 41, June 2020. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731685. 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.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 30 of this issue — or go here — for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2020 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Mirrie in the Sea Storm” © 2020 by Vicky Yuh (vickyuh.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers. In reasons to celebrate we have an LCRW story being reprinted in the Best American Short Stories. Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series was on the Otherwise Honor List. Sarah Pinsker’s collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea: Stories won the Philip K. Dick Award and is a Locus Award finalist. John Crowley’s collection And Go Like This: Stories is a Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award finalist. Margo Lanagan and Kathleen Jennings’s chapbook Stray Bats is an Aurealis Award finalist. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. No Justice: No Peace.

About these Authors

Rachel Ayers lives in Alaska, where she looks at mountains and daydreams a lot. She has a Creative Writing degree from Pittsburg State University.

David Fawkes is an Indianapolis writer whose stories have been slowly finding homes over the last few years. By day he works as an environmental scientist, which is a fancy term that means he gets hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and has to carry heavy things. He loves science fiction slightly more than coffee, soup, and heavy metal. All four at once make him very happy. He plays electric bass, and is working through the bass parts to some Motown tracks. He has a wife, a pack of feral cats, and a son who likes to get into everything.

Former pro cook, Nicole Kimberling now works as a fictional content creator and main author wrangler at Blind Eye Books. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Other works include the Bellingham Mystery Series, set in the Washington town where she resides with her wife. She also created and wrote “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” an audio drama podcast, which explores the day-to-day case files of Special Agent Keith Curry, supernatural food inspector. She is currently obsessed with citrus pickles.

Holly Tamsin, since tinier times, has always fashioned worlds from words and continues to do so today.

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LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One

Wed 20 May 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

The next issue of LCRW, no. 41, will be published in print and ebook form on June 16th, 2020, and will be known as LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One.

That cover there, that’s a place holder for a fabulous piece of art.

The page for it will go up soon but in the meantime: news!

LCRW 41 will be sent to print and ebook subscribers — and anyone who subscribes to LCRW before June 15 — for free.

We will check in with the lovely indie bookshops that usually carry LCRW and see if they are going to be open but many are in the same position as Book Moon which won’t be open for the forseeable future for anything but curbside pickup from May 27th at the earliest. So since this issue can’t find readers the usual way, maybe it will find a few more readers in a different way.

The Table of Contents includes two novellas which will take you to two very different places. Best of all, neither of those places is this one.

There are many subscription levels — my favorite remains the chocolate subscription (which is tough in warm weather as that price does not include cold packs) — and #10, the huge donation & a free chocolate subscription.

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Otherwise Award Honor List

Tue 14 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Laurie J. Marks, Otherwise Award| Posted by: Gavin

This weekend I was thrilled to see that Laurie J. Marks’s 4-book Elemental Logic series was one of nine titles on this year’s Otherwise Award Honor List — congratulations go to Akwaeke Emezi whose novel Freshwater is this year’s winner and to all the writers whose work is on this year’s honor list.

The Otherwise Award, Formerly Known As the Tiptree Award, is one of my favorite awards. It was begun in 1991 by Pat Murphy and Karen J. Fowler and is for encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender. One of the multitude of reasons I love the award is that there is an actual monetary prize — $1,000! — some of which is raised by bake sales, mmm, but that’s not all: the winner also receives a specially commissioned piece of original artwork, and (as always) chocolate.

Laurie’s third novel in the series, Water Logic, was also on the Honor List — as was her 1993 novel Dancing Jack.

Here’s what award jury member Debbie Notkin wrote about the Elemental Logic series:

“Laurie J. Marks’ Fire Logic was published 18 years ago, followed by Earth Logic in 2004, Water Logic in 2007, and Air Logic in 2019. The four Elemental Logic books reflect the author’s growth in skill and breadth over the nearly two decades, along with an extraordinary consistency in characterization and vision. The gender aspects of the story arc largely concentrated in the depth and detail of complex same-sex relationships, though Air Logic also ventures into the realm of treating autism-spectrum mindsets as a gender of their own. More subtly, while Marks does include heterosexual relationships in her story, she never centers the dynamics of those relationships, concentrating all of her relationship writing on same-sex couples. One crucial thing these books offer the contemporary reader is a vision of undermining and destabilizing polarized societies, focused on the long hard work of bringing factions that hate each other back into tenuous but respectful relationship – and perhaps that too is a form of exploring and expanding gender.”

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Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

Mon 13 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

We were delighted to see that Sarah Pinsker’s first collection of short stories, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is this year’s winner of the Philip K. Dick Award.

Congratulations, Sarah! Here’s one of the stories from the book which if you have not read it should keep you happily entertained for a little while: And Then There Were (N-One), originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

Sarah is having a (relatively) good month: her story “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye,” — also originally published in Uncanny, is a finalist for the Hugo Award. So congrats to all the nominees and fingers crossed for Sarah in August.

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February’s Gone, But We Already Have Something to Look Forward to Next February

Wed 4 Mar 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Forthcoming, Isabel Yap, new books| Posted by: Gavin

Although 2021 seems far away and everything in the future gets blurrier every day we’re still slowly, slowly reading manuscripts for Small Beer Press and so we are already very much looking forward to next February when we will publish Isabel Yap’s as-yet-untitled debut collection of stories in trade paperback and ebook editions.

We’ve long enjoyed Isabel Yap’s fabulous stories and — as you can see from her website — she has published a good number of them over the years. Working with her on putting a collection together has been a joy for the two of us. Good news for all: there will be at least one, perhaps two, new stories in the book.

As time goes by we will add links to more stories (for example: “How to Swallow the Moon” from the Nov/Dec 2018 Uncanny Magazine)  and so on. There will be advance reading copies, reviewers can do their review thing, and at some point we will send a beautiful thing out into the world for you the reader to find.

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Locus Recommended Reading List

Mon 3 Feb 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, Laurie J. Marks, Locus, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all the writers whose work has been selected for this year’s Locus Recommended Reading List! I am especially delighted that in a year where we published 10 titles (2 collections, 2 novels, 1 chapbook, 5 titles reprinted in paperback), three of the five new titles are on the list:

• Air Logic, Laurie J. Marks (Small Beer)
• And Go Like This, John Crowley (Small Beer)
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer)

And among all the stories on the list (I’d have added a few from LCRW, but, hey, bias) I’m glad that Kelly’s story in the final issue of Tin House made it to the list:

• The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear, Kelly Link (Tin House ’19)

Congrats to one and all!

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Happy New PKD Award Finalist

Fri 17 Jan 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Sarah Pinsker| Posted by: Gavin

We are delighted to note that Sarah Pinsker’s collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award — and the book also appeared on a couple of year-end lists (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Books of 2019; Booklist: Top 10 Debut SF&F). You can try a couple of the stories out here:

And We Were Left Darkling
In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind
No Lonely Seafarer
And Then There Were (N-One)

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Holiday Deadlines 2019

Wed 4 Dec 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holiday, housekeeping, shipping news, usps| Posted by: Gavin

Shipping times have slowed down over the last few days due to big storms everywhere — shout out to all those shoveling snow! So here are the USPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines.

The Small Beer office will be closed from December 23 – January 2, 2019. It is unlikely we will ship over that period. Weightless Books is there for you: 24/7/365. (And Book Moon will be open . . . !)

Here are the last (domestic) order dates for Small Beer Press. Dates for international shipping are also here.

All orders include free first class (LCRW) or media mail (books) shipping in the USA.

But this is your annual reminder that Media Mail parcels are the last ones to go on trucks. If the truck is full, Media Mail does not go out until the next truck. And if that one’s full, too . . . it could be very late in December before there’s space. So, if you’d like to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please add Priority Mail:

Domestic Mail Class/Product	Deadline
Media Mail (estimate, not guaranteed)	Dec. 14
First Class Mail (LCRW/chapbooks)	Dec. 20
Priority Mail	Dec. 21
Priority Mail Express	Dec. 23

Order a book today!

Just like to read a book, don’t care about a ding or two?

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Kathleen Jennings Live Sketching

Wed 20 Nov 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., event, Kathleen Jennings| Posted by: Gavin

This Friday evening we’re looking forward to Grrl’s Night Out on Cottage Street in Easthampton — we’re celebrating the publication of Kathleen Jennings’s & Margo Lanagan’s chapbook, Stray Bats, with an exhibition of her original illustrations (for the chapbook & more) and an eggnog-and-snacks-fueled reception:

Art Show Reception with On-the-Spot Sketching from 7 – 8 p.m.

Sketches Available for Purchase by acclaimed visiting Australian artist & illustrator Kathleen Jennings. Art exhibit with original illustrations for books by Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Kij Johnson, Margo Lanagan, and more.
Event date: Friday, November 22, 2019 – 5:30pm to 9:30pm
Event address: Book Moon, 86 Cottage Street, Easthampton, MA 01027

Order your chapbook here or watch the Book Moon site to get an opportunity to pick up some of Kathleen’s amazing originals!

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Stray Bats

Tue 5 Nov 2019 - Filed under: Books, Chapbooks| Posted by: Gavin

saddle-stitched paperback · 68 pages · 9781618731753 · ebook, 9781618731760

Number 13 in the Small Beer chapbook series.

Aurealis Award finalist

Dachshund droids, sinister crones, shapeshifting children, a plethora of witches, dragonstalkers, familiars, slithering eels and, of course, bats, flit and fly through these pages, aided and abetted by Kathleen Jennings’s inspired pencil drawings. Stray Bats is a madcap miscellany consisting of fifty vignettes based on poems by Australian women. Lanagan delights in playing with language, rhyme, and rhythm.

This could be the perfect gift for that slightly otherworldly person in your life—or for yourself, when you need a moment of magic, a dip into darkness, a spark of light.

For the reader who would like to explore further, there are a list of poems that inspired the author and notes on where those poems might be found.

Reviews

“What a breath of fresh air this chapbook collection is. From start to finish I was enthralled with the wildly original takes Margo Lanagan has on storytelling. . . . Highly recommended.” — Charles de Lint, F&SF

“Those who, like me, feel the occasional need for an infusion of Margo Lanagan’s visceral, sometimes knotty, and always elegant prose could do no better than to wander through the 50 short pieces of Stray Bats, many of them inspired by the work of Aus­tralian women poets.” — Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“The 50 very short impressionistic stories in this evocative collection from Lanagan (Yellowcake) take inspiration from the works of a wide range of Australian female poets, each of whom is credited in the acknowledgements. In flash fiction pieces that occasionally read like character sketches or prose poems themselves, Lanagan conjures eerie ghostly girls, travelers lost in strange lands, and, most frequently, fey folk and spellcasters on the fringes of society. Lanagan fully inhabits the characters, conveying short bursts of intimate emotion and precise psychologies in rich, sensuous prose: the shapeshifter of “Foxwife” inhales nocturnal scents “of star and moth, earth and fungus, corpse and sister, frog and scuttling mouthful;” the witch narrator of “Flight School” describes flying “between hill- and cloudscape… the wind in our teeth.” Kathleen Jennings’ delicate line drawings provide perfect complements to Lanagan’s fairy tale imagery.” — Publishers Weekly

About the author

Margo Lanagan has published two dark fantasy novels, and Stray Bats is her eighth short story collection. She collaborated with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti on the New York Times-bestselling YA superheroes trilogy, Zeroes. Her work has won four World Fantasy Awards, nine Aurealis and five Ditmar Awards. Her books and stories have been translated into 19 languages. Margo lives in Sydney. Her twitter is @margolanagan.

About the illustrator

Kathleen Jennings is an illustrator and writer in Brisbane, Australia. She is a Hugo Award finalist and has been shortlisted three times for the World Fantasy Award and has received the E. G. Harvey Award for Australian SF Art and several Ditmar Awards for professional and fan art. Many of her illustrations and incidental drawings appear on her blog tanaudel.wordpress.com and she tweets @tanaudel.

Table of Contents

A Wind Age
Kites in the fog
Constellation
Maiden
More Information to Help You Get to Rookwood
Sail Away
Maiden Flight
Stray Bats
Readying
Shrunken Alice
Flight to Loreto
Familiars
Shore
Party to an Invocation
Emplotment
Hag-Hunter
Flight School
The Axe
Win
Foxwife
Being Summoned
Spirit Girl
Dragon Bride
Wyrm-Witch
Ingratitude
Interlacing
Aged Caring
Buff-house Review
Passed Master
Hand Magic
Digs
Getting There
Costumier
Those Women
Unchosen
Kez the Gardener
Tower View
Pounce
Invitations
Rabbit’s Foot
A Small Affair
Spring Visitor
Dormitory
Witches of a Certain Age
To a Mentee
The Evidence
Dragon
Fritzel
Feejee Mermaid
Peeping

 

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Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 40

Mon 28 Oct 2019 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

November 19, 2019. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731623

News: Frances Rowat’s “Ink, and Breath, and Spring” will be reprinted in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020.

Fracking? Secret International Conspiracy to Topple Democracy? Rotten to the Core?

Nope.

The contents of occasional outburst of hope and joy and fabulous fiction were produced under pressure and are the stronger for it.

Reviews

“Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a strange and fantastic magazine, and I recommend a subscription to anyone who is on your list but also difficult to predict.”
— Vernacular Books

“This year my favorite story [from LCRW] was Frances Rowat’s ‘Ink, and Breath, and Spring’, a lovely, mysterious, and sad mystery story, about a murdered and flensed man found in the gardens of a strange library, and the way a groundskeeper somewhat unwillingly finds out what happened.”
— Rich Horton, Locus

Table of Contents

fiction

Frances Rowat, “Ink, and Breath, and Spring”
Fred Nadis, “The Giant Jew”
Amber Burke, “In Pictures”
T. S. McAdams, “Duck Circles”
Margo Lanagan, “More Information to Help You Get to Rookwood”
Mary Cool, “The Fruit That Bears the Flower”
Lisa Martin, “Seat Belt On, Falling”
Jeff Benz, “The Stone People”
Michael Byers, “Sibling Rivalry”

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling
About These Authors

poetry

D. A. Xiaolin Spires, “Planetary Refuse: A Flurry of Haiku”

cover

Cat Mallard, “Moon Garden”

About

This is Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 40, November 2019. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731623. 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 · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Print subscriptions: $20/4 issues. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2019 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Moon Garden” © 2019 by Cat Mallard. Thank you authors, artists, and readers. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Peace.

About these Authors

Jeff Benz lives in Long Island and works as a freelance court reporter in Manhattan. “The Stone People” is adapted from a chapter of his novel, Over a Thousand Sleepless Nights.

Amber Burke is a graduate of both Yale and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She lives in New Mexico, where she teaches writing, yoga, and coordinates the Holistic Health and Healing Arts Program at UNM Taos. She is a regular contributor to Yoga International and her stories and essays have been published in The Sun, The Superstition Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Raleigh Review, Essays and Fictions, Sky Island Journal, and The Pinch, among others.

Michael Byers has taught creative writing at the MFA program of the University of Michigan since 2006. He is the author of The Coast of Good Intentions (stories) and two novels, Long for This World and Percival’s Planet. His stories have been anthologized several times in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards, and his novella “The Broken Man” was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.

Mary Cool is editor in chief of Ducts literary magazine at ducts.org and hosts the Trumpet Fiction reading series in New York City. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the journals Hogglepot, Storychord, and Barely South Review. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.

Nicole Kimberling lives in Washington state.

A deep love of both stories and nature have been with Cat Mallard since childhood, she credits this to being an only child spending time either outdoors or at the large city library. She is a life long Florida resident and studied art at the University of Florida. She lives in North Florida in a wooded area with her family and little pup. You can find more of her work at catmallard.com.

Lisa Martin lives in San Francisco where she works at book shop and attends City College to study journalism and graphic design. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in Make: Magazine, but this is the first time her fiction has appeared in print. You can find her on twitter at @ReesesMartin.

T. S. McAdams lives with his wife, son, and bullmastiffs in the San Fernando Valley, where he is not working on a screenplay. His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Madcap Review, Santa Monica Review, Pembroke, Jersey Devil Press, Sierra Nevada Review, Exposition Review, and Faultline.

Fred Nadis has been a limousine driver, college professor, and dried fig bandit (he’d give them back if he could). He has published pieces in the Atlantic, Vanity Fair online, and many literary journals. He is the interviewee for wired.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast #182. His book, The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey was a Locus Nonfiction Award Finalist in 2014.

Frances Rowat lives in Ontario with her husband, their dog, and a not-quite-startling number of cats. She was born in Canada, and while growing up spent time in England, Algeria, and Switzerland. She spends most of her time behind a keyboard, where she frequently gets lost in details. She enjoys earrings, fountain pens, rain, and post-apocalyptic settings, and can be found online on Twitter @aphotic_ink or at aphotic-ink.com.

D. A. Xiaolin Spires steps into portals and reappears in sites such as Hawai’i, NY, various parts of Asia and elsewhere, with her keyboard appendage attached. Her work appears or is forthcoming in publications such as Clarkesworld, Analog, Strange Horizons, Nature, Terraform, Grievous Angel, Fireside, Galaxy’s Edge, StarShipSofa, Andromeda Spaceways (Year’s Best Issue), Diabolical Plots, Factor Four, Shoreline of Infinity, LONTAR, Mithila Review, Star*Line, Polu Texni, Eye to the Telescope, and numerous anthologies. Her stories are available or forthcoming in German, Vietnamese or Estonian translation. She can be found on Twitter: @spireswriter and on her website: daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com.

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Stray Bats in Los Angeles

Mon 28 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons, Kathleen Jennings, Margo Lanagan| Posted by: Gavin

If you are heading to LA this weekend for the 2019 World Fantasy Convention don’t miss your chance to get both Guest of Honor Margo Lanagan and Kathleen Jennings to sign your copy of their new chapbook Stray Bats.

We won’t be there (cf Book Moon) but I am happy to say — and very appreciative of their generosity — that it will be available from two lovely dealers in the dealers room, Patrick Swenson of Fairwood Press and Greg Ketter of DreamHaven.

As usual Kathleen will have work in the Art Show and she will also have extra copies of Stray Bats with her.

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Hot Chocolate Walk 2019

Fri 25 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

On December 8 me and our kid, Ursula (now 10-years-old), and my mother-in-law, Annie, are all going to be doing the Hot Chocolate Walk for Safe Passage. Should you be up for it, please do consider sponsoring either one of us or donating. It’s a fun morning: usually cold, we do the walk, not the run, and Ursula doesn’t really love hot chocolate but we usually walk with friends, everyone has a great time. 6,000 people turn out and they raise something like $600,000, which is amazing. Thanks for any support you can give!

Here’s the kid at the end of 2017 walk — bravely trying the hot chocolate, delighted by the free sunglasses, and proudly wearing the red hat they give to people who raise over $150:

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Half-Witch

Tue 22 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books| Posted by: Gavin

A Big Mouth House Book
hardcover · 7/17/18 · 320 pages · $18.99 · 9781618731401 | ebook · 9781618731418
paperback · 9781618731678 · October 22, 2019 · audio: March 29, 2019

NPR Best Books of the Year
“A marvelous blend of whimsy, terror and deep feeling.”

Locus Award finalist
Crawford Award finalist
Junior Library Guild Selection
Locus Recommended Reading

Kind-hearted Lizbet and witch girl Strix embark upon a perilous quest where even the fate of Heaven is at stake.

In the world in which Lizbet Lenz lives, the sun still goes around the earth, God speaks directly to his worshippers, goblins haunt every cellar and witches lurk in the forests. Disaster strikes when Lizbet’s father Gerhard, a charming scoundrel, is thrown into a dungeon by the tyrant Hengest Wolftrow. To free him, Lizbet must cross the Montagnes du Monde, globe-girdling mountains that reach to the sky, a journey no one has ever survived, and retrieve a mysterious book.

Lizbet is desperate, and the only one who can help her is the unpleasant and sarcastic witch girl Strix. As the two girls journey through the mountains and into the lands of wonder beyond, on the run from goblins, powerful witches, and human criminals, Lizbet discovers, to her horror, that Strix’s magic is turning Lizbet into a witch, too. Meanwhile, a revolution in Heaven is brewing.

Reviews

“John Schoffstall’s Half-Witch is one of those books that are simultaneously so startlingly original and deeply familiar I can’t quite believe they’re debuts. . . . Half-Witch is a marvel of storytelling, balancing humor, terror and grace. Lizbet is so earnestly good, in a way that I think has fallen out of fashion but that I loved reading. She and Strix are a perfect double act, and the shape and texture of the friendship they build is a joy to discover. . . . This is a book of crossing and mixing, of mashing and counter-mashing, with surprise and wonder the result. The ending suggests a sequel, which I hope comes about; the book’s last act is full of revelations (as it were) about the especially strange nature of Lizbet’s world that I’m keen to see Schoffstall develop and explore. But Half-Witch is also fully satisfying in and of itself.”
— Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review

“John Schoffstall’s Half-Witch is the darkest of the dark horses, the most out there of the outliers, and the traditional review venues haven’t given this a lot of attention—one lonely star from Kirkus, one tepid review from School Library Journal. But look a little deeper and you’ll find high praise coming from the New York Times, NPR, and Locus Magazine, as well as literary fantasist Kelly Link and others. This is a strange book, one that involves God and witches and brims with humor that will appeal only to some readers. It’s slightly episodic, set in a strange fantasy world—a little medieval, a little gothic, a lot unexpected—with an unlikely pair of heroines, one deeply religious and one a witch. It’s hard to know how to take this; is it blasphemous, or deeply spiritual? Is it high fantasy or low? The odds of consensus are so slim, it’s almost not worth speculating about the chances—yet this is an odd, fizzily delightful read, with a strong setting, well-developed characters, and rich themes, that makes readers work for understanding even as they wander with Strix and Lisbet. Plus, the sentence-level writing is seamless. In other words, this has everything a winner needs—except maybe readers.”
— Sarah Couri and Karyn Silverman, School Library Journal

“Thoroughly delightful. . . . It embraces the absurdity of its medieval setting, with cheeky devils and superstitious townsfolk and even Jesus popping in for a chat, but the emotional core is anything but silly. These girls may only be half witches, but they’re each fully awesome.”
— Christina Ladd, Geekly Inc.

“Other highly recommended titles are Half-Witch from John Schoffstall, a traditional fantasy except that the sun orbits the world and God takes part as a not-very-helpful character . . .”
— Laurel Amberdine, Locus

“This book was a delight. Schoffstall’s writing is dazzlingly clever, funny, and heartfelt. The world he creates is familiar yet unique and, like all the best books, it takes a piece of you and replaces it with something else, something stronger. A scar healed, a bone mended, a pair of birch tree legs that can cover the most treacherous terrain so long as you have a friend like Strix by your side.”
— Eric Bosarge, Vernacular Books

“Plenty for all to chew on in its vision of a magic-inflected Europe and a protagonist with a direct (if interference-riddled) line to God.”
— Graham Sleight, Locus “Ten books of the year”

“A picaresque fantasy debut in the mode of L. Frank Baum, in which witches and magic and God and goblins populate a world that is possibly just next door to our own. Lizbet and the witch girl Strix are delightful company in which to set out on the road.”
— Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“Fourteen-year-old Lizbet Lenz is used to not getting close to anyone and having to flee in the middle of the night thanks to her father’s penchant for getting in over his head. When he gets thrown into jail for causing a rain of mice it’s up to Lizbet to rescue him by scaling mountains everyone claims are impassable. As she travels, she gains a companion in Strix, a witch who doesn’t believe in friendship but looks out for Lizbet as she gets into trouble. This fantasy adventure has strong spiritual undertones, where God is not a distant unreachable figure, but someone who people can have a conversation with when they take Communion. Lizbet wrestles with her religious views as she is propelled into a world of goblins and demons in order to free her father and stop herself from being sent to an orphanage. The world feels like an antiquated version of our own—albeit with magic—though the exact time period is not clearly defined. Almost every movement made by Lizbet and Strix gets them into some kind of difficulty, which maintains a quick-paced plot and the threat of danger around every corner. Characters are initially childish in their beliefs and stubborn when those beliefs come into question. However, both Lizbet and Strix manage to grow over the course of the narrative.” —School Library Journal

Previously

July 12-15: Readercon, Quincy, MA

July 21, 1 p.m.  The Lahaska Bookshop, Peddler’s Village Store, 162 Carousel Ln & Rte 263 A, Lahaska, PA 18931 ·  First bookstore signing!

July 26, 7 p.m. Farley’s Bookshop, 44 S Main St, New Hope, PA 18938

John Schoffstall has published short fiction in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Strange Horizons, and other venues. He is a physician, and once practiced Emergency Medicine. Now he follows Candide’s advice and tends his own garden. He lives in the Philadelphia area.

Cover art by kAt Philbin.

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Lianna Fled to the Moon

Mon 21 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon, Jedediah Berry| Posted by: Gavin

This Thursday we’re hosting our first ever event at Book Moon (formerly White Square Books) in Easthampton: an evening with GennaRose Nethercott, award-winning author of Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog.

A spooky story told entirely in fold-up cootie catchers, Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog transforms a traditional children’s game into an interactive fable of cruel beasts, daring thieves, lost sweethearts, and a family on the run. The cootie catchers (also known as fortune tellers, salt cellars, chatterboxes, etc.) are lavishly illustrated by artist Bobby DiTrani. Each features eight possible endings—but the endings are also beginnings, complications, transformations, and jumping-off points for other parts of the story.

Come see GennaRose Nethercott conduct a journey through this haunted, magical tale.

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Next Tuesday is Half-Witch Tuesday

Fri 18 Oct 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Schoffstall| Posted by: Gavin

Coming next Tuesday: the paperback edition of Half-Witch. I love having this on the table at book fairs and conventions. The title speaks to so many people who pick up the book and say something along the lines of “I’m a bit of a witch . . . ” Pick it or here, you know, from Book Moon!

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Coming Soon: Book Moon

Wed 25 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon| Posted by: Gavin

Here’s a project we’ve been working on for a bit and will be, with luck, working on daily for a long time to come: Book Moon!

ETA: Shelf Awareness story. Now in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

 

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Kim Scott on The Vintner’s Luck

Wed 25 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Book Riot just posted this week’s episode of their Recommended podcast and one of the authors featured is Kim Scott who recommends Elizabeth Knox’s novel The Vintner’s Luck [transcript].

Kim is the second author on the show. The first is Jackson Bird (@jackisnotabird), who recommends The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Bird’s memoir, Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place, is now available.

I highly recommend this Recommended podcast!

Good news for those that like signed books: we’re stocked up on signed copies and are shipping them out for website orders of Kim Scott’s novel Taboo, Andy Duncan’s collection An Agent of Utopia, and a few others.

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News

Tue 24 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, LCRW, The Moon| Posted by: Gavin

We have some news coming tomorrow. It’s not about announcing a new short story collection coming next summer which will provoke much fainting and sharing on the sosh meeds. It’s not about the next issue of LCRW, coming together, should be out in November, as per usual, fingers crossed for a yay. Neither is it about a John Crowley reading in Easthampton in November, but that should be happening. We haven’t been unlawfully prorogued, so it’s not that. More manana!

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