Wolf Children

Wed 20 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Pop, YouTube| Posted by: Gavin

From an ad on this video (17-year-old Biggie Smalls freestyling) linked from here (17-year-old LL Cool J plays a Maine gymnasium in 1985: rap! beatbox! sing! snap! ping! pow!) both from Kottke, via Eileen Gunn:

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We all live in Tyrannia

Tue 19 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin

I’ve been looking forward to this day for a year! Well, not the one where we all live in Oceania with the all-seeing government watching us from the cameras in our laptops (all the NYT journalists cover the cameras with yellow stickies now . . . ), rather the day where A. DeNiro‘s new collection Tyrannia and Other Renditions comes out and blows everyone’s minds. A.’s stories are about the person on the ground (or the monster on the motorbike) affected by the weird goings-on in politics, for ecstatic poets, worried artists, table top adventurers, and should be required reading for all politicians.

Booklist said: “With just one novel and one story collection under [their] belt, DeNiro has already garnered a reputation as a genre-bending experimental author with an indescribably quirky but captivating prose style.” Of all the trade reviewers, they really seem to get their writing.

The cover map of the (ok, imaginary) Tyrannian lands and the typography is by Kevin Huizenga, and it was so right that we carried it on through the book. And then there is A.’s incredible new author portrait by Shelly Mosman. I love A., but they are the weensiest bit scary here.

You can get A.’s book in all good bookstores, the usual online slavedriving warehouses, or from here. And of course you can always get our DRM-free ebooks here on Weightless.

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Tyrannia and Other Renditions

Tue 19 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Alan DeNiro, Books| Posted by: Gavin

November 2013 | trade paper · 9781618730718 | ebook: 9781618730725 | Out of print.

In these 11 stories—and the weird spaces in between—people of all kinds struggle to free themselves from conventions and constraints both personal and political. Places ranging from the farthest reaches of outer space to the creepy abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere become battlegrounds for change and growth—sometimes at a massive cost.

Tyranny takes many forms, some more subtle than others, and it is up to the reader to travel along with the characters, who improvise and create their own renditions of freedom.

Poet and fiction writer DeNiro uses language like no other. This second collection of stories explores our relationship to art, history, and looks at how everyday events, personal and political, never cease to leave us off balance.

Listen

KMSU Audio interview

Reviews

“This collection is slim but never slight, and just when you think DeNiro must have run out of renditions, they tilt the idea of tyranny just enough that each story feels new, unique, and important.”
—Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com

“The pitch-dark yet often comic stories in Tyrannia, the second collection and third book by Twin Cities writer DeNiro, throw the reader headfirst into strange, menacing worlds whose contours only gradually become clear (or, perhaps, more complexly mysterious). We sometimes seem to be in a dystopian, totalitarian future, sometimes in a brutal present, sometimes in eerie borderlands.”
—Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Minnesotan DeNiro gives us large hunks of riveting weirdness in these 11 stories.”
—Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Most of Tyrannia‘s rambunctious, immensely entertaining stories — seven of them science fiction — blend bizarre speculations with intermittent humor. When there isn’t humor, there’s weirdness — often extreme weirdness, funny in its own right. Fair warning: what I’m about to describe might not always make sense. That’s in the nature of this highly unconventional collection.”
—Will George, Bookslut

“Wildness, fierceness, and anarchic imagination are traits, then, to be prized in this book, above beauty, order, and sense—or, in classical terms, the Dionysian over the Apollonian—and process.”
— Strange Horizons

“There’s no other writer like DeNiro working today.”
— Tim Pratt, Locus

“DeNiro has already garnered a reputation as a genre-bending experimental author with an indescribably quirky but captivating prose style.”—Carl Hays, Booklist

“DeNiro (Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead) has crafted the rare work whose setting is the realm of pure imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Quirky, unconventional and outlandish short fiction, bordering on the surreal—and sometimes crossing the border.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents

Tyrannia
A Rendition
Cudgel Springs
(*_*?)~~~~(-_-):TheWarpandtheWoof
Plight of the Sycophant
Dancing in a House
Highly Responsive to Prayers
Walking Stick Fires [excerpt on tor.com | audio version from StarShipSofa]
The Flowering Ape
Moonlight Is Bulletproof
The Wildfires of Antartica [Theodore Sturgeon award finalist]
Tyrannia (II)
The Philip Sidney Game

Cover by Kevin Huizenga.

About the Author

Anya Johanna DeNiro lives and writes in Minnesota. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, One Story, Strange Horizons, Persistent Visions and elsewhere, and she’s been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She currently writes YA novels about the adventures of trans women. She can be found online on Twitter, usually, at @adeniro.

Praise for DeNiro’s books:

“There aren’t many writers who take weirdness as seriously as DeNiro does, and fewer still who can extract so much grounded emotion, gut-dropping humor, and rousing adventure from it. A dizzying display of often brilliant, always strange, and definitely unique storytelling”
—Booklist (starred review)

“A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Macy’s adventure is engaging and absorbing, but it doesn’t make much sense. For those conditioned to the logic of classic science fiction, “Total Oblivion’s” rule-breaking can be frustrating. But readers who are willing to let go will be swept away.”
—Los Angeles Times

“DeNiro’s novel moves the reader along at a lively and crazy pace, engaging interest in Macy and her fate while making subtle references to the sad past and giving frightening glimpses of a scarier future.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Unsettling and never boring, ‘Total Oblivion’ should interest older teens who are hooked on vampires and other dark fantasies. They’ll cheer for Macy, whose courage increases as she does dangerous things she never dreamed of when she was in her safe high school in St. Paul—before everything collapsed.”
—St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Macy narrates this story in a delightful, lighthearted voice that stiffens only a little as she realizes that she will never have a senior year.”
—Denver Post

“Chock-a-block with adventure, suspense, and surprise. Apocalyptic family values, too! Recommended to all.”
—Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

“DeNiro’s excellent debut novel . . . is the very rare novel that satisfies on a multiple of levels.”
—Bookpage

“Wow! This is a wonderfully weird, fun, touching, heartfelt and memorable novel. Imagine if Huck Finn had been living in post-apocalypse America, and Terry Pratchett had been promoted to God, with George Saunders as his avenging angel. The world of this book is a little like that. In this case, the role of Huck is played by a sixteen-year-old-girl named Macy, whose smart, mordant, utterly convincing voice grounds our journey through this crazy landscape. Macy reminds us that no matter how surreal things get, there is still resilience and hope in the human spirit. DeNiro has created a hilarious and terrifying dream world.”
—Dan Chaon (Await Your Reply)

“DeNiro lifts the modern family drama and sets it down in the middle of a wildly inventive post apocalyptic landscape. The insulated life of Middle America may be a thing of the past, but DeNiro finds a way to lead readers into a future full of humor, imagination, and hope.”
—Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief)

“Deeply weird, sometimes challenging, but always smart and affecting.”
—Locus (Notable Books)

“Endlessly imaginative.”
—Venus

“DeNiro’s greatest gifts are those of a poet.”
—Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago

“Maybe the future of sf. . . . The title story here, set in twenty-third-century Pennsylvania, is its nameless-till-the-last-sentence narrator’s university-application essay, numbered footnotes and all, which explains why not to expect him on campus anytime soon; he is in love and considering getting gills. Maybe DeNiro is the future of alternate history: in “Our Byzantium,” a college town is invaded by horse-and-chariot-led soldiers who demolish cars, wheelchairs, and other machines; reestablish Greek as the lingua franca; and otherwise conquer. . . . The long closer, “Home of the,” about Erie, Pennsylvania, now and then, is as laconic and associative as its title is elliptic. Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff.”
—Ray Olson, Booklist

“A commitment to experimental structure and oddball elements provides this debut collection’s consistency…. The collection argues for DeNiro as a writer to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Many of these stories unfold like dreams, startling in their detail but elusive in their meaning. Yet, the prosaic as well as the poetic features in these stories as characters attempt to create a detailed but incomplete record, like a dream book of their own histories. Objects such as a college entrance essay, maps, postcards, outdated computer disks, the provenance of a chess set, all become documents which convey the fragility of histories”
—Greenman Review

“I’m not ordinarily an editor, so finding stories for the first six issues of Fence magazine was a guilty pleasure, and the subsequent work by formerly unknown Fence writers like Kelly Link and Julia Slavin has made me look like a prognosticator, or maybe an annoying drunk guy on a streak. Now here’s DeNiro, whose Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead was always my favorite. I’m thrilled to see him in bookstores at last.”
—Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude)

“Reading DeNiro’s new collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, made me feel like a dog that twists its head a bit to the side on hearing a whistle too high for humans to hear. The dog is perplexed and intrigued by the sound — it knows where it’s coming from but not really. Familiar enough, but maybe not. So too with these strong, out of kilter stories. DeNiro blows his own distinctly different sounding whistle and once you’ve heard it, you can’t help but stop and take real notice.”
—Jonathan Carroll (Glass Soup)

“The wholly original, carefully crafted tales that comprise Deniro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead are like colorful pinatas full of live scorpions — playful, unexpected, and deadly serious.”
—Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)

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Susan and Kelly, tonight, Cambridge, Mass.

Mon 18 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Are you curious about how a manuscript becomes a book? Get ye to the Porter Square Bookstore tonight! Susan Stinson and Kelly Link read and talk about the writing and editing of Susan’s novel Spider in a Tree. 

Here’s the info from the bookstore website:

Our Next Event

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Where’s Sofia?

Fri 15 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin

Sofia Samatar’s debut novel A Stranger in Olondria got an excellent review recently from Nic Clarke on Strange Horizons. 

But, where is Sofia? She’s in California and on Saturday, November 30, she’ll be handselling some favorite books at the excellent Borderlands Books in San Francisco from 1 to 4 pm. (You can check out a map of all the authors and booksellers on the Indies First page.)

 

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Howard Waldrop, 2013

Thu 14 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin

Yesterday Martha Grenon was kind enough to take some new author photos of Howard Waldrop. Howard refused any attempt to style him but something of his cheeriness comes through anyway. For those of us in the cold, cold north, it’s nice to see someone standing there warm enough with just have a shirt (with rolled-up sleeves!) instead of layers, baby, layers.

This is probably a good time to link to “Three Ways of Looking at Howard Waldrop (and Then Some)” by Jed Hartman, et alia.

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Howard Waldrop, King of Where-I-Go

Tue 12 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin

Hey! It’s been eight years since Howard Waldrop’s last collection, Heart of Whitenesse. Too long! We’re very happy to be publishing Horse of a Different Color: Stories today. (Howard promises us we’ll have more to publish soon.)

Long time readers of Howard’s amazing stories will know (and new readers will find out from his introduction to Horse) that a couple of years ago Howard’s health took a turn for the worse. The good news is the VA and his family and friends have looked after him (are still looking after him!) and he is hard at work. And he promises to be back harder at work once he gets eye surgery. He’s always been a great reader and we have great plans to get Howard to do the audio editions of his books. Great plans! but they do depend on him being able to read in comfort without the 4x microscope he used at Readercon this year.

Anyway. This book includes the best piece of Esperanto-based fiction I’ve read, “Ninieslando,” first published—as so many of Howard’s stories are in an anthology (Warriors) edited by his good friends, Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin.

It’s a story of missed chances, as a few of these stories are, and sometimes I argue that Howard’s career is one of missed chances. Not his: everyone else’s. Why I’m not sitting down to Howard Waldrop’s Missed Chances every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. I don’t know. Well, nothing in the way of TV and movies ever goes easily. Fingers crossed Craig Ferguson will read the title story, love the pantomime horse act, get Howard on The Late Late Show and off Howard’s career will go, boom, on a rocket, into space.

Whether that happens or not, we’re very glad to be bring you these 10 stories of wolf-men, actors, pirates, fairy tales and more from the one and only literary mashup master, Howard Waldrop.

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Horse of a Different Color

Tue 12 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

November 12, 2013 · $24 · trade cloth (9781618730732) · ebook (9781618730749)

Austin Chronicle profile: Howard Waldrop, Upright & Writing

“What’s most rewarding in Mr. Waldrop’s best work is how he both shocks and entertains the reader. He likes to take the familiar — old films, fairy tales, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas — then give it an out-of-left-field twist. At least half the 10 tales in his new collection are prime eccentric Waldrop . . .  as he mashes genres, kinks and knots timelines, alchemizing history into alternate history. In “The Wolf-man of Alcatraz,” the B prison movie rubs fur with the Wolf-man; “Kindermarchen” takes the tale of Hansel and Gretel and transforms it into a haunting fable of the Holocaust; and “The King of Where-I-Go” is a moving riff on time travel, the polio epidemic and sibling love.
“Among the most successful stories is “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode In On),” an improbable confluence of vaudeville (two of the main characters perform in a horse suit) and the Arthurian Grail legend that manages to name-check Señor Wences, Thomas Pynchon, “King Kong” and more as Mr. Waldrop tells of the Ham Nag — “the best goddamned horse-suit act there ever was.” It’s certainly the best horse-suit-act story I’ve ever read.”
—New York Times

Howard Waldrop’s stories are keys to the secret world of the stories behind the stories . . . or perhaps stories between the known stories. From “The Wolfman of Alcatraz” to a horrifying Hansel and Gretel, from “The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew” to the Vancean richness of a “Frogskin Cap,” this new collection is a wunderkammer of strangeness.

The title story, “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)” is a masterpiece that crashes together aged-vaudevillian Manny Marks (who changed his name from Marx so that his brothers couldn’t ride to success on his coattails), “the best goddammed horse-suit act there ever was,” and the story of two men and their hunt for the holy grail. It’s a uniquely American take on the Arthurian legend that Waldrop takes to places (theaters, diners, resthomes) that he could do.

Howard Waldrop also provides an introduction to the book in his inimitable manner as well as Afterwords to most of the stories.

Reviews

Locus Recommended Reading

“Waldrop combines erudition with authentic folksiness, optimism with a cold clear vision of life’s pitfalls and false paths.”
—BN Review Best of the Year

“Filled with the same joie-de-vivre, sense of wonder, ingenious invention and eternally youthful appreciation for the weird and magical rollercoaster ride that is existence.”
—Paul Di Filippo, Locus Online

“I didn’t quite know what to expect going into this collection, and in a way I still don’t. Waldrop’s writing is impossible to characterize, and almost as difficult to describe. He is a unique voice, and I regret that I didn’t discover him sooner–I certainly intend to seek out more of his work now that I have tried it. I highly recommend this book, and I hope it’s publication will win Waldrop new fans.”
— SF Revu

Table of Contents

Introduction: Old Guys With Busted Gaskets

Why Then Ile Fit You
The Wolfman of Alcatraz [excerpt on tor.com]
“The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew…”
Kindermarchen
Ninieslando
Frogskin Cap
Avast, Abaft!
Thin, On the Ground
The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)
The King of Where-I-Go

About Howard Waldrop’s books

“The most startling, original, and entertaining short story writer in science fiction today.”
—George R. R. Martin

“”If Philip K. Dick is our homegrown Borges (as Ursula K. Le Guin once said), then Waldrop is our very American magic-realist, as imaginative and playful as early Garcia Marquez or, better yet, Italo Calvino…. Calvino once said that he was ‘known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself.’ Much the same could be said of Howard Waldrop. You never know what he’ll come up with next, but somehow it’s always a Waldrop story. Read the work of this wonderful writer, a man who has devoted his life to his art—and to fishing.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“Waldrop subtly mutates the past, extrapolating the changes into some of the most insightful, and frequently amusing, stories being written today, in or out of the science fiction genre.”
—The Houston Post/Sun

“You want funny? Howard’s got funny. You want weird? Howard’s got weird. You want mind-bending? You’re about to get it.”
—Cory Doctorow

“It always feels like Christmas when a new Howard Waldrop collection arrives.”
—Connie Willis

“There’s no better writer alive than Howard Waldrop.”
—Tim Powers

“Three Ways of Looking at Howard Waldrop (and Then Some)”
Jed Hartman (et alia)

About Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and Readercon Award-winner A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Locus Award-winner Night of the Cooters, Other Worlds, Better Lives, and Things Will Never Be the Same. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.” In 2021 Waldrop was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.

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Busy week coming

Mon 11 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro, Howard Waldrop, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

First, tomorrow, the lovely (well, in the USA), 11/12/13, we celebrate publication day of Howard Waldrop’s Horse of a Different Color: Stories.

On Wednesday there are two readings for you to drop all and get your plane tickets for. How will you decide which to go to? Flip a coin?

For those nearer Massachusetts, Susan Stinson will be reading from Spider in a Tree at 8 pm at Amherst Books in Amherst. The Concord Monitor just chimed in with a lovely review that captured the same sense of surprise I found in myself when I was grabbed by this novel of life in 1740s Northampton:

Massachusetts author Susan Stinson’s Spider in a Tree: a Novel of the First Great Awakening surprised me. I knew the basic history of the period, including a bit about Jonathan Edwards, and frankly, thought it dull. But Stinson takes readers into Edwards’s home, into the lives of his family, their slaves, neighbors, relatives, and yes, even the spiders and insects of colonial Northampton, Mass. Suffering and joy, religious ecstasy and secular sorrow, the conflict between formal theology and individual conscience all make vivid fodder for Stinson’s story, which follows Edwards’s trajectory from 1731, during the religious revival that gripped New England, to 1750, when his congregation dismissed him.

and you can read an interview with Susan on Bookslut.

For those in the middle or left side of the country, A. DeNiro is also reading on Wednesday night. They are reading at 7 pm at SubText: a Bookstore in St. Paul, MN. A.’s second collection, Tyrannia and Other Renditions comes out next week and you can read an excerpt from “Walking Stick Fires” on tor.com.

Make your choice!

Susan Stinson
8 pm, Amherst Books, Amherst, Mass.

A. DeNiro
7 pm, SubText: a Bookstore, St. Paul, Minn.

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Indies First!

Fri 8 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Nathan Ballingrud, Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Since Sherman Alexie first threw the Indies First idea out into the world, more than 375 authors have signed up to try their skills at handselling books at 300 bookstores.

Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria, will be Borderlands Books in San Francisco from 1-4 pm and Kelly Link will be at the Harvard Book Shop in Cambridge (where you can get Three Zombie Stories).

Some companies want to be your always and everything, these shops want to find you a good book. Ok, maybe sell you a mug, too!

Why are we posting this? Because we love the indie bookshops!

More here.

ETA: And Nathan Ballingrud will be at the excellent Malaprop’s in Asheville!

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A. DeNiro on “The Philip Sidney Game”

Thu 7 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to see A. DeNiro’s new story “The Philip Sidney Game” is up on Interfictions. When I asked A. for more about the story, this is how they replied (posted with A.’s permission, of course):

Diving into the writing of “The Philip Sidney Game” was a strangely autobiographical process. I had to let my wife Kristin know that I was writing her as a character in the story. After she read it, she said that she didn’t sound like herself. I probably didn’t sound like myself either, but there was a version of me within the core of that story that was added to the many other layers of “me.” That, too, is a speculation, just as much as Philip Sidney’s use of magic. But as the rails fell off the story (by design) near the end, I entered a place where I wanted to write directly, as A. DeNiro, to my readers — and a poem seemed to be the best way to do that. So it was fun to be able to incorporate that other side of me into a story.

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Where are they now: Katharine Duckett

Tue 5 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Katharine Duckett, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

In the years since reading slush and mastering the art of all-day tea drinking as a Small Beer Press intern, I’ve spent two years in Kazakhstan, two years in New York City, and a handful of months in climes between. It turns out that if you want to break into publishing, you should move to Central Asia, drink lots of vodka, and learn valuable, hands-on life skills, like how to rescue a dog from a trash pit using only an old door and a curtain. (You never know when you’ll need to whip that one out at a job interview.) Then move to New York and start eavesdropping on well-respected authors at readings, which, if done correctly, will turn out to be more charming than creepy when they offer youa job as their assistant. That’s how I ended up handling publicity for the lovely duo of Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, and eventually segued into my current position coordinating book and author coverage for Tor.com, the rocket ship division of Macmillan Publishers.

These days I’m engaged to a recent Oxford grad; we’re taking Spanish classes in preparation for our Costa Rican honeymoon and painting our new Brooklyn living room a cozy shade of “yam.” Around New York City, I write and read stories, perform in the occasional theater piece, and relive the glory of my post-Soviet days with trips to Brighton Beach and experimentation with borscht and dolma recipes.

Read more in the Where Are They Now series.

Photos (“Coney Island” and “Hyde Park”) courtesy Laura Lamb.

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Clamor

Mon 4 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., magazines, VIDA, Zines| Posted by: Gavin

This post is inspired by two things: first, reading Anne Elizabeth Moore’s fabulous zine Cambodia Grrl and an Indiegogo campaign to digitize the Clamor backlist.

I was just wondering the other day if there are magazines today similar to some I really miss: Clamor, Herbivore, Punk Planet, Venus. Not to mention Peko Peko, dammit!

I liked their mix of politics, food, and music. And since my New Yorker subscription is coming to an end and (boo hoo!) I’m not renewing it because of their pathetic Vida scores [Bylines, Briefly Noted, Overall], I’m looking around to see if I can find indie magazines coming from the edges of things, rather than bam! in the center.

I read a fair number of mags, but any suggestions are welcome because one thing I know, I am missing a lot, too!

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John Crowley, The Chemical Wedding

Fri 1 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, Theo Fadel| Posted by: Gavin

We are very happy to note that work continues apace on John Crowley’s The Chemical Wedding, a book that in his introduction John calls “the first science fiction novel.” His aim in producing this new version, he says, “was simply to make this, one of the great outlandish stories in Western literature, accessible to readers in the context of no context.”

In January of this year John introduced us to the weird and fascinating woodcuts and prints of Theo Fadel and since then Theo has completed most of the illustrations (one for each day that passes) for the book.

We expect to publish The Chemical Wedding in 2016 (making it an 400th Anniversary Edition) in a number of states: 1) a slipcased signed, limited edition accompanied by a unique woodcut, and 2) a trade cloth edition. Depending on interest, we may produce a signed, lettered state with a portfolio of sketches and prints from the artist.

We will start taking preorders once we have the whole book in hand.

In the meantime, here is the full title page:

THE CHEMICAL WEDDING by CHRISTIAN ROSENCREUTZ
A Romance in Eight Days
By
Johann Valentin Andreae

In a new version
by
John Crowley

Illustrated by

Theo Fadel

May 2016: Kickstarter exclusive editions (lettered, numbered, and hardcover) and trade paperback edition and ebook editions announced. The Kickstarter will go live in late April and will be announced here. Edition pricing will be available then.

Update: pricing added.

4/22/16 update: The Kickstarter is expected to launch in the first week of May. We will send an email to all commenters on this page as soon as it launches.

6/3/16 update: Kickstarter funded!

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East Ghost lunch interviews

Thu 31 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Nathan Ballingrud, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

We hear there’s an excellent review of Nathan Ballingrud’s book coming up in Locus which reminded me that a great interview (and a story) with Nathan just went up. Which reminded me about two more good interviews. Luckily it’s lunchtime here on the East Coast (today aka the East Ghost), a great time to sit down and enjoy an interview with your brains/candy/sweets/actual lunch:

Nathan Ballingrud at the Weird Fiction Review:

I think of horror as the literature of antagonism, and this is why it’s so valuable to us. For me – and of course I speak entirely of my own preferences – a good horror story is upsetting. It does not reinforce the status quo. It’s an act of hostility to some cherished assumption, whether it’s the durability of familial bonds, the presumed benevolence of God, or even the basic decency of our own hearts. Horror fiction should harshly interrogate everything that makes us feel content. It’s the devil’s advocate of literature. We absolutely need that, and that’s why it abides, whether we call it horror, or Gothic, or strange, or weird. It’s all an interrogation.

Kelly Link at Gigantic:

I think I’ve hit a point with TV shows, maybe less so with books, where as soon as I have an idea of where the show is going, I would rather be doing something else. I’m not really so interested in shows that are realistic, or what passes for realistic depictions of how men are figuring out to be men, if the women are secondary characters: which rules out Mad Men, Breaking Bad.

Susan Stinson at Lambda Literary:

All of the characters in the book are outside of my time. As a white woman writing across lines of racial identity, I know that I have built-in biases that I’ve acquired from the culture. I think we all do, and that’s one of the legacies of slavery. I didn’t know when I started writing the book that Jonathan Edwards was a slave owner. Once I knew that, it became clear that I needed to enter as deeply as I could into the minds and lives of the characters who were slaves in the household. Anything else would be a terrible omission based on fear. Several characters in the book are slaves. Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, a historical fact that Edwards enthusiasts sometimes ignore. So, I did my best.

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Where are they now: Felice Ling

Tue 29 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Felice Ling, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

After graduation, I started teaching first-grade at a charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. That was a bit of a struggle… As a result of the school’s financial problems, I only actually taught there for about half a year. The second half of that year, I took my magic, turned it into a street show, and brought it out onto the streets of Memphis. (I didn’t quite join a circus—though I did befriend a clown—but it was a lot of fun). On a similar vein, I used that experience (more recently) to write an article for Genii, an international magic magazine for magicians, titled “Women Street Performers: We Know Who We Are In.” That article is currently in review.

From Memphis, I flew all the way to Baoding, China (just south of Beijing) to teach English at a university. I was there for two years, traveling, teaching, and learning. In China, I quickly picked up on the presence of park performers: dancers, musicians, tai chi practitioners, Chinese yoyo enthusiasts, and—once—I even witnessed a group of five men tossing heavy sandbags among themselves.

So now I’m at the University of Chicago, working towards my Masters in Social Sciences, mainly because I am extremely curious about the lives of street performers in the US and in China. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing next – but I guess that’s what your 20’s are all about. I’m still writing (always) and still performing magic (always, as well). I’ve even started learning how to cook (or attempting to) so that I don’t have to eat sandwiches everyday. That’s actually what I miss most about SBP—lunches together and the tales we told while huddled over Easthampton cuisine.

 

Photo credits:
“Magic” (Felice Ling performing at the First Annual Shelby Forest Spring Fest) by KimbaWayne Photography.
“Street Food Stands,” Felice Ling, Baoding, China.

———

Read more in the Where Are They Now series.

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Local author’s novel imagines life in Jonathan Edwards’ Northampton

Thu 24 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Great, huge article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette about Susan Stinson and her 10-years-in-the-writing novel Spider in a Tree.
What the interwebs version does not show is the lovely picture of Susan and her book.

Two more items about Susan today, one good, one not so!

The not so good news: we shipped some copies of Spider in a Tree to Susan in California for her readings this week. When she told me they hadn’t arrived I checked with UPS and saw something I’d never seen in the “Activity” column: Train derailment(!). Hope all is well but I do not know if we will ever see those books again! Hmm.

The second, much better item, was an interview with Susan by her good friend Sally Bellerose on Lambda Literary. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Susan and I enjoyed this one the most!

Here’s an excerpt from the article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette to go on with:

The experience led Stinson, who works as a writing coach and has published three previous novels, to begin lengthy research on Edwards, on local history, and on daily life in Colonial America. One of the novel’s most interesting aspects is its portrait of a very different Northampton, with its abundant meadows and crops, its dusty (or muddy or icy) roads, and a smelly tannery, for some reason located in the center of town, just down the street from the Edwards house.

Edwards himself is something of an absent-minded professor, a man who lives a good deal of the time in his head, writing for hours and often neglecting his appearance. He’s fascinated by science and nature, both charming and perplexing his wife in one scene in which a spider crawls onto his finger: “He was regarding the spider almost tenderly … with the look of a boy scratching the nose of his first horse. He was dear to her, but so strange.”

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Tyrannia is coming!

Thu 24 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin

Watch out!

And in the meantime: “The Philip Sidney Game” is now live at Interfictions.

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Jonathan Edwards, slave owner

Wed 23 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Spider in a Tree, Susan Stinson, Wikipedia| Posted by: Gavin

If you use Wikipedia as your source you will get a very strange take on slave ownership in the article about the preacher Jonathan Edwards:

In 1747 Edwards took in a slave, “a Negro girl named Venus”. He purchased the girl for 80 pounds from a man named Richard Perkins of Newport. Edwards was well known for such acts of charity and hospitality (from Glaros, A History of New England, 1997, no longer in print).

Edwards paid a whole year’s salary for the slave and then she worked for the family and was never freed. Slave owning has never been defined as an act “of charity and hospitality.” Who did this? Eeek?

Wikipedia. Needs editing!

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Spider in a Tree gets a starred review from Booklist

Tue 15 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., starred review, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

Great news for Susan Stinson: Spider in a Tree has just received its fourth trade review and the best was saved for last. Booklist’s starred review goes out today:

“As a Puritan preacher who suspends listeners above the sulfurous fires of hell, Jonathan Edwards commands center stage in this compelling historical novel. With mesmerizing narrative gifts, Stinson exposes readers to the full force of Edwards’ brimstone sermonizing. But she also lets readers hear Edwards’ voice in other registers, giving compassionate reassurance to his troubled wife, extending tender forgiveness to a despairing sinner, reflecting pensively on how God manifests his wisdom in a lowly spider. But the Edwards voice that most readers will find most irresistible is his inner voice, laden with grief at a young daughter’s death, perplexed at his spiritual status as master of a household slave. . . . An impressive chronicle conveying the intense spiritual yearnings that illuminate a colonial world of mud, disease, and fear.”

Kirkus did not love the book. C’est la vie! Publishers Weekly gave it a very strong review and picked it as an Indie Sleeper. And Library Journal also just reviewed the book this week:

“Famous theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) comes to life in this mid-18th-century story of the First Great Awakening, a revivalist movement that swept Protestant Europe and the American Colonies. . . . Weaving together archival letters, historical detail, and fictional twists, Stinson vividly resurrects this emotional historical period prior to the American Revolution.”

The book is flying off the shelves in the Pioneer Valley and now we are seeing it beginning to be picked up regionally and nationally. Yesterday Susan read at the Yale Divinity School (where Edwards studied—check that photo above!) and tonight she is reading at the Stockbridge Library (where Edwards also lived) and with luck she will get either to sit at or take a photo of Edwards’s desk.

The she is off to California—the most open of the events is at MCC-San Francisco before coming back here for readings at Amherst Books, Porter Square (with Kelly!), and KGB Bar and the Book Reading Series in NYC. Busy times!

October 15, 6:30 p.m. Stockbridge Library, Stockbridge, Mass.
October 23, 12 p.m., American Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
October 24, 4 p.m. Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
October 25, 7 p.m. MCC-San Francisco. Reading and reception,150 Eureka Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
October 30, 2 p.m. reading, talk, Q&A, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
November 13, 8 pm. Amherst Books, Amherst, Mass.
November 18, 7 pm. Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass. (with Kelly Link)
November 21, 7 p.m. Drunken Careening Writers series, KGB Bar, NYC (with Holly Hepp-Galvan and John Schuyler Bishop)
December 15, 5 p.m. Bloom Readings, Washington Heights, NYC

Author photo courtesy: Jeep Wheat.

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Boston Boo Festival

Mon 14 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., naked commerce| Posted by: Gavin

Ok, perhaps it is the Boston Book Festival but doesn’t the Boston Boo Festival sound more October?

Ok, again, so: this Saturday October 19 we will be at the Boston Boo(k) Festival in Copley Square selling books from 10 am – 5 pm. 

Susan Stinson is coming with us: come and get a signed copy of Spider in a Tree!

Just as at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend we are intending on selling books cheap! We want these books in readers’ hands!

We’re going to be at Table 48 on Dartmouth Street (between Sisters in Crime and Arts Emerson).

Besides cheap, cheap, cheap backlist we will also have Howard Waldrop’s new collection Horse of a Different Color.

And!

For those who missed it at the Harvard Book Store Warehouse Weekend we’ll be giving away a free chapbook to all buyers:

“The two story chapbook, North American Monster Stories, will never be for sale. The stories are the title story from Nathan Ballingrud’s collection, North American Lake Monsters, and “Up the Fire Road,” a story from Eileen Gunn’s collection Questionable Practices.”

Should be fun, hope to see you there!

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Steampunk!

Fri 11 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9780763648435 · 10/11/2011 · Published by Candlewick Press in a beautiful trade cloth edition, audio, and ebook.
9780763657970 · 2/12/2013 · trade paper.

An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

Orphans use the puppet of a dead man to take control of their lives. A girl confronts the Grand Technomancer, Most Mighty Mechanician and Highest of the High Artificier Adepts. Another girl, who might be from another universe, stuns everyone when she pulls out her handmade Reality Gun.

Welcome to a huge, beautiful anthology of fourteen steampunk visions of the past, the future, and the not-quite today.

Indies Choice finalist.
Locus Award finalist.
Los Angeles Times Best of the Year

Cover art by Yuko Shimizu.

More.

Reviews!

“Veteran editors Link and Grant serve up a delicious mix of original stories from 14 skilled writers and artists…Chockful of gear-driven automatons, looming dirigibles, and wildly implausible time machines, these often baroque, intensely anachronistic tales should please steampunks of all ages.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An excellent collection, full of unexpected delights.”
—Kirkus Reviews (*starred review*)

“Within these pages, there’s a little something for everyone…This exceptional anthology does great service to the steampunk subgenre and will do much to further its audience.”
— School Library Journal (starred review)

“Editors Link and Gavin treat fans, old and new, to an array of fantastically rich stories in this polished, outstanding collection…the result is an anthology that is almost impossible to put down… From rebellious motorists to girl bandits, the characters in this imaginative collection shine, and there isn’t a weak story in the mix; each one offers depth and delight.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“It is about time that steampunk short stories really got a focused and creative exploration in YA lit, and this anthology of fourteen pieces is an excellent start.”
— Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)

“In a genre based upon the re-imagining and reinvention of history, these authors manage to take their characters—and readers—to bold new frontiers, where, as contributor Dylan Horrocks writes, thanks to the “magic in technology,” things are “less drab, less logical, less straightforward. Everything’s a little more…possible.” ”
—Horn Book

Table of Contents

Introduction
“Some Fortunate Future Day” by Cassandra Clare
“The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”* by Libba Bray
“Clockwork Fagin”** by Cory Doctorow
“Seven Days Beset by Demons” (comic) by Shawn Cheng
“Hand in Glove” by Ysabeau S. Wilce
“The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” by Delia Sherman
“Gethsemene” by Elizabeth Knox
“The Summer People”*** by Kelly Link
“Peace in Our Time”**** by Garth Nix
“Nowhere Fast”**** by Christopher Rowe
“Finishing School”***** (comic) by Kathleen Jennings
“Steam Girl”****** by Dylan Horrocks
“Everything Amiable and Obliging” by Holly Black

* Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan
** Reprinted in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, edited by Halli Villegas & Sandra Kasturi
*** Shirley Jackson Award winner.
Locus Award finalist.
Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton
**** Reprinted in Steampunk Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer
**** Reprinted in Steampunk Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer
***** Ditmar Award winner
****** Sir Julius Vogel Award winner.
Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Kelly @ Random

Wed 9 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

So, the big news around here is that Kelly sold her next couple of books—and reprint rights to Magic for Beginners—to Noah Eaker at Random House. Yay!!

The first of the books is Get in Trouble*, Kelly’s first new collection of stories since Pretty Monsters (2008). Get in Trouble should be out in early 2015. It will be followed at some point by the second book, Novel As Yet Unwritten**.

Thanks as ever to Kelly’s fabby agent Renee Zuckerbrot of the Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency and to Kelly’s new foreign rights agent Taryn Fagerness who has already sold Get in Trouble to Francis Bickmore at Canongate Books—who did such a great job with Pretty Monsters.

Here is the proper and official announcement as reported in Publishers Marketplace:

Author of Magic for Beginners, which was a Time Best Book of the Year and on Best of the Decade lists from the Village Voice, Salon, and The Onion and Stranger Things Happen Kelly Link’s GET IN TROUBLE, another collection of short stories, and her first novel, to Noah Eaker at Random House, byRenee Zuckerbrot of Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency (NA).
Foreign rights: taryn.fagerness@gmail.com

* Kelly assures me the cover design will not feature the word “Get” in tiny letters inside a huge “Trouble.” I say wait and see.

** Not final title.

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Nook Daily Find

Mon 7 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, Peter Dickinson, sale| Posted by: Gavin

Peter Dickinson’s Death of a Unicorn is the Nook Daily Find and is $2.99 today only at bn.com.

It has jumped up the charts throughout the day and now it is sitting pretty at #30 besides two of Nora Roberts’s books. Long may Lady MM rise!

ETA: #7!

It’s a Top Ten bestseller!

 

 

 

 

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Ben Parzybok and Sherwood Nation at PNBA

Fri 4 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok| Posted by: Gavin

Next fall we are publishing Benjamin Parzybok’s second novel Sherwood Nation and I am very happy to say that PNBA booksellers can get a very advance galley copy at the PNBA Trade Show Author Feast at the Airport Holiday Inn, Portland, OR, on Monday.

Sherwood Nation is a huge, amazing, scarily timely novel about a drought-stricken Portland, Oregon, and a nascent attempt to rebuild society from the grassroots up. If you read Couch, you’ll already know that Ben is a hilarious and smart writer and in the five years(!) he worked on Sherwood Nation he’s only gotten better. Everything he cares about is here: community, families (born and made), love, bicycling, doing good work, and looking after self, community, and the land we live on.

You’ll be hearing more (ok, there’s more below) about the book as 2014 comes on. With luck—and help from readers like you!—it will be one of the big books of next year!

We’ll have more galleys and giveaways as the publication date approaches but I wanted to get the heads-up out there to the people who are most likely to read and love this book as much as we do.

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Publication Day for Spider in a Tree

Tue 1 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin

What a day! And tomorrow well be celebrating in style at First Churches here in Northampton, Mass., with Susan (and you, we hope!). The church (“a large stone Gothic cathedral”!) is at 129 Main St. and the reading is at 7 p.m.

On this day that part of the government has stepped away from its duties and shut down the government, it is a relief to read the history of the church:

“The American Baptist and United Church of Christ congregations joined together in June of 1988 to become The First Churches. The First Church of Christ of Northampton, is the oldest congregation in our city and was established in 1661. The First Baptist Church in Northampton was founded under the leadership of Rev. Benjamin Willard in 1826. Now, both churches share in worship, fellowship, educational classes, programs, and mission and act as one congregation.”

Two groups working together. It can be done!

Today has been a long time coming for Spider in a Tree. Susan has been writing this novel for ten years. It is a strong, fabulous book about life in 1740s Massachusetts and the frictions between belief and work, neighbors and preachers, church and town. Jonathan Edwards and his (large!) family are at the forefront but also their slaves—how could people who called themselves godly own slaves? It was a different time, a different mindset, very hard to comprehend from here. Susan does a wonderful job of putting the reader into the heads of many of the people who actually lived in this town back then. I’ll put a small taste of it below.

Hope to see friends and neighbors tomorrow at First Churches. The reading is the first in Forbes Library’s local reading series and Broadside Books will be there with the book—as well as tickets for Susan’s Bridge Street Cemetery Tour on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 1 p.m. But, mostly, congratulations to Susan for this fabulous book and thank you for sending it to us!

Chapter 1: June 1731, Newport to Northampton

The girl saw a tall, gaunt man look up from a slice of raisin pie (she had baked it, perfecting her hand with cold water crust) when she walked into Captain Perkins’s parlor with Phyllis close behind her. She could see that he was the one doing the buying. Phyllis put a hand on the small of her back to position her near the table where the men sat. The girl stared at the oozing, dark-flecked pie from which the buyer had spooned a tiny bite.

“Mr. Edwards, this is Venus.” Captain Perkins spoke smoothly. “I kept her as the pick of the lot when I unloaded most of the cargo in the Caribbean on my last voyage. I got a shipment of very good allspice, as well.”

“Impressive,” murmured someone.

The girl held her hands clasped and her back straight, but her legs were trembling. Phyllis kept a hand on her back. She had said that there would be others in the room, come to witness the sale over pie and rum punch. The girl barely took them in.

She raised her eyes and found Mr. Edwards looking at her face. She felt locked out of her own mind, both numbed and spinning, but she held his gaze. This was improper, but he kept looking himself, steadily, into her eyes. He was, perhaps, twice as old as she was, so still young. He had on a black coat with a beaver hat resting on his knee. She could see that he was a stranger, and his collar marked him as a preacher. Whatever else he might be, as a person to exchange glances with, he was uncommonly intense.

Captain Perkins spoke up from his chair. “She’s a dutiful girl. And she’s already had the small pox.”

. . . 

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Spider in a Tree

Tue 1 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

October 2013 · 9781618730695 · trade paper · 336pp | 9781618730701 · ebook

Jonathan Edwards is considered America’s most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts.

In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Mr. Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all others: Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards’s young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards’ wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale.

Reviews and Notices

“Edwards sees evidence of divine grace everywhere, but in a world “haunted by work and sin,” the characters fight to sublimate their bodies and the natural environment, and their culture is shaped by a belief in the uselessness of earthly pleasure and inevitability of mortality and judgement. This combination of “absence, presence, and consolation” motivates the complicated inner lives of these well-realized characters, whose psyches Stinson explores in empathetic and satisfying depth.”
— Rain Taxi Review

“The book is billed as “a novel of the First Great Awakening,” and Stinson tries to do just that, presenting us with a host of viewpoints from colonists to slaves and even insects. She gives an honest imagining of everyday people caught up in extraordinary times, where ecstatic faith, town politics and human nature make contentious bedfellows. Although the novel was slow to pull me in, by the end I felt I had an intimate glance into the disparate lives of these 18th-century residents of Northampton, Massachusetts.”
—Historical Novel Review

Rick Kleffel interviews Susan Stinson (mp3 link).

“Ultimately, ‘Spider in a Tree’ is a lesson in what not to expect. Stinson eludes the clichés usually associated with religious extremism to peel away the humans underneath. We speak of a loving God, who asks us to embark upon a deadly war. We most easily see the sins in others that we are ourselves guilty of. Every ambition to perfect ourselves has a very human cost. As we reach for what we decide is the divine, we reveal our most fragile human frailties. Words cannot capture us; but we in all our human hubris, are quite inclined to capture words.”
—The Agony Column

The Mindful Reader: A wonderful read about Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening—Concord Monitor

Awakening Edwards: Jonathan Edwards in the hands of a Northampton novelist—Valley Advocate

Local author’s novel imagines life in Jonathan Edwards’ Northampton—Daily Hampshire Gazette

“As a Puritan preacher who suspends listeners above the sulfurous fires of hell, Jonathan Edwards commands center stage in this compelling historical novel. With mesmerizing narrative gifts, Stinson exposes readers to the full force of Edwards’ brimstone sermonizing. But she also lets readers hear Edwards’ voice in other registers, giving compassionate reassurance to his troubled wife, extending tender forgiveness to a despairing sinner, reflecting pensively on how God manifests his wisdom in a lowly spider. But the Edwards voice that most readers will find most irresistible is his inner voice, laden with grief at a young daughter’s death, perplexed at his spiritual status as master of a household slave. . . . An impressive chronicle conveying the intense spiritual yearnings that illuminate a colonial world of mud, disease, and fear.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

Interviews

New: Bookslut, Religion Dispatches

Lambda Literary, Writer’s Voice, Book Connection, Plum Journal, “How to Fall”

9/26/13 Springfield Republican: “Writer Susan Stinson of Northampton honors theologian with Bridge Street Cemetery tours”

Read more

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MassHealth for Mass Health

Mon 30 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., MassHealth, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

This is the first week since our daughter, Ursula, was born in February 2009 that we will not have any home nurses coming in to help look after. This is a huge milestone and I cannot resist writing about it. We are filled with all the glee of parents of a newborn coming home for the first time. Sure, it also means life is complicated, but, hey, we knew that when we signed up for this gig.

Ursula is a very healthy four-and-a-half-year-old. She is in preschool 4 days a week (for all of 2 hours 15 minutes a day!) and loves tumble tots at the YMCA.

She still sees various specialists and physical (and other) therapists but for the most part when you talk to her she is just a great, smart, healthy kid who loves books and chocolate. We are so lucky and so grateful.

The home nursing came from the mighty MassHealth, which of course then-Governor Romney signed into law and then “RomneyCare” was used as the basis for the new Affordable Health Care/”ObamaCare.” Let me tell you, having a kid in hospital and being able to change insurance companies without being penalized for all her pre-existing conditions was huge. If we were living in a different US state by now we would be bankrupt and maybe living in Ursula’s Nana’s basement—which, I have to say, is a lovely basement. So, from the bottom of our hearts for now and forever: Thanks to all the politicians, backroom folks, grassroots activists, and healthcare professionals for MassHealth. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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