Solarize Massachusetts

Wed 8 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was one of 100+ people at the first Northampton Solarize Massachusetts meeting last night. Woohoo!

Solarize Massachusetts is a state program that uses group buying to bring down the installment cost of solar power. I’ve long wanted to add solar power at home—at work at the Paragon Arts building I don’t choose the electricity provider. But the cost, the cost. We are signed up for Greenstart so we are paying slightly more than the average but are buying into solar, wind, etc.—although it is mostly hydroelectric. (Not as good as the rest, but better than fossil fuels.)

Anyway. The first round of towns in the 2013 Solarize Massachusetts program are Bourne,Brookline, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lee, Medford, Medway, Newton, Northampton, and Williamstown. The program selects one solar power installer who does site checks and so on to see if the interested people (me!) can actually have panels installed. The installer offers the town a deal: the more people who buy in by the end of the program (September 30, 2013), the lower the price. The average savings in previous rounds of the program have been 20%. Not bad!

 

There are also Federal tax credits worth about 25% of the cost, a $1,000 Massachusetts income tax credit, “solar renewable energy credit” (SRECs), net metering (you get a credit if your solar panels generate more power than you need), and the possibility of a few other credits. Overall, if the town gets enough people into the program—and there were 100+ people there last night—the panels usually pay for themselves within 5-7 years.

Any Northamptonites interested in the program should email Susan Lantz at solarizenorthampton@gmail.com. Send that email!


Publication Day for A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Which makes it extra nice that the cover artist, Kathleen Jennings, posted her cover process sketches for A Stranger in Olondria. And did you see the cake one of Sofia’s friends made for her for the launch reading party at A Room of One’s Own? Nice! There will also be a party of some sort at WisCon next month. Wish we were going!

You can of course read an excerpt on Tor.com or download a pdf of the first 70 pages; read Sofia’s The Big Idea, and an Interview on the Qwillery. More reviews—yours?— will be coming soon. It’s a big beautiful book and we’re very happy to see it out there in the world being read. Raul M. Chapa of BookPeople in Austin, TX, gave us a great early boost when he sent us this note from reading a galley, thanks Raul!

If you’re curious for some of the inspirations for this huge book and the deep love of reading that thrums all through it, check out Sofia’s What Were They Reading post.

 


Gosh

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I do miss Goodreads.


A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

April 2013 · 320 pp · hardcover · 9781618730626 | trade paperback · 9781931520768 | ebook · 9781931520775
2nd tp printing: 12/14. 3rd: 6/17. 4th: 4/2022
Also by Sofia Samatar: The Winged Histories, Tender: Stories

World Fantasy Award winner · British Fantasy Award winner · Crawford Award winner

Nebula Award finalist · Locus Award finalist · Locus Recommended Reading
Sofia Samatar received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Rights sold: audio (Audible); France (nominated for the Prix Imaginales, Les Editions de l’Instant); Poland (MAG); Romania (Editura Art); India (Juggernaut Books); Japan (Tokyo Sogensha); Italy (Edizioni E/O Ne/oN Libri).

NPR: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade

“‘Have you ever seen something so beautiful that you’d be content to just sit and watch the light around it change for a whole day because every passing moment reveals even more unbearable loveliness and transforms you in ways you can’t articulate?’ asks judge Amal El-Mohtar. ‘You will if you read these books.'”

Time Magazine: 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

“The novel unfolds in waves of A Game of Thrones-level twists, all while its fantastical world-building pulls from South Asian, Middle Eastern and African cultures to offer a welcome departure from Eurocentric fantasy.”

Jevick, the pepper merchant’s son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home—but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire’s two most powerful cults. Even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of freeing himself by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that most seductive of necromancies, reading.

A Stranger in Olondria was written while the author taught in South Sudan. It is a rich and heady brew which pulls the reader in deeper and still deeper with twists and turns that hearken back to the Gormenghast novels while being as immersive as George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

Sofia Samatar: News and upcoming events.

Audio interviews: To the Best of Our Knowledge. The Big Idea. Interview on the Qwillery. Coode Street Podcast with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

Read: an excerpt on Tor.com.

Download: a pdf of the first 70 pages.

Reviews

“The best stories throw a wrench in our characters’ best-laid plans, and nobody throws a wrench quite like a ghost. Jevick is the stranger of the title, sold on tales of a wonderland called Olondria in much the way I was sold on the idea of that wonderland called New York. What Samatar does is pull us into a world so thoroughly strange yet so familiar that you think it’s one kind of story until it shoves you off course and becomes another. It’s about a man who has too much to learn and not much time to learn it, but it’s also about how a little knowledge really is a dangerous thing.”
— Marlon James

“Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria tackles one of my favourite genres: the bildungsroman, which is a fancy way to say coming of age. Feeling a bit like a Dickensian tale of a boy going to the big city, it soon morphs into a ghost story. Charming stuff.” — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Washington Post

“It’s the rare first novel with no unnecessary parts – and, in terms of its elegant language, its sharp insights into believable characters, and its almost revelatory focus on the value and meaning of language and story, it’s the most impressive and intelligent first novel I expect to see this year, or perhaps for a while longer.”
—Locus

“The excerpt from Sofia Samatar’s compelling novel A Stranger in Olondria should be enough to make you run out and buy the book. Just don’t overlook her short “Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” the best story about loss and love and selkies I’ve read in years.”
— K. Tempest Bradford, NPR

“Sofia Samatar’s debut fantasy A Stranger in Olondria is gloriously vivid and rich.”
— Adam Roberts, The Guardian, Best Science Fiction Books of 2013

“Books can limit our experiences and reinforce the structures of empire. They can also transport us outside existing structures. The same book may do both in different ways or for different people. Samatar has written a novel that captures the ecstasy and pain of encountering the world through books, showing us bits and pieces of our contemporary world while also transporting us into a new one.”
— Bookslut

“The novel is full of subtle ideas and questions that never quite get answered. It is those dichotomies that lie at the heart of this novel, such as what is superstition and what is magic? How much do class and other prejudices affect how we view someone’s religion? Jevick often believes himself above such things, as does the current religious regime of Olondria, but in a way both are haunted until they believe. . . . Samatar gives us no easy answers and there are no villains in the book — simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right.
— io9.com

“As you might expect (or hope) from a novel that is in part about the painting of worlds with words, the prose in Stranger is glorious. Whether through imaginative individual word choices—my favourite here being the merchants rendered “delirious” by their own spices . . . Samatar is adept at evoking place, mood, and the impact of what is seen on the one describing it for us.”
­— Strange Horizons

“Vivid, gripping, and shot through with a love of books.”—Graham Sleight, Locus

“A richly rewarding experience for those who love prose poetry and non-traditional narratives. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is a fine exemplar of bibliomancy.”
—Craig Laurence Gidney (Sea Swallow Me)

“With characteristic wit, poise, and eloquence, Samatar delivers a story about our vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”—Amal El-Mohtar, Tor.com

“If you want to lose yourself in the language of a book, this is the one you should read first. Samatar’s prose is evocative and immediate, sweeping you into the complex plot and the world of Jevick, a pepper merchant’s son.”
—xojane

“A journey that is as familiar and foreign as a land in a dream. It’s a study of two traditions, written and oral, and how they intersect. Samatar uses exquisite language and precise details to craft a believable world filled with sight, sound and scent.”
—Fantasy Literature

Advance Praise

“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)

“Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure.”
—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames

“A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy…. Samatar’s beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere.”
—Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX

“Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell

“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story.”—Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After

“Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.”
—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows.  Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.”
—Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes

Listen to Sofia read two of her poems on Stone Telling: “Girl Hours” · “The Sand Diviner”

Cover illustration by Kathleen Jennings.

About the Author

Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She is the recipient of the William L. Crawford Award, the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She teaches Arabic literature, African literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.


On Carol Emshwiller (from 2007, and belatedly celebrating her 92nd birthday!)

Wed 24 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Darn! I meant to post this to in celebrate Carol’s 92nd birthday earlier on April 12th. Ach! Well hell, here’s for celebrating Carol any time or any where.

Written for the 2007 World Fantasy Convention:

Working with Carol Emshwiller is one of the most unexpected and wonderful benefits of the foolishness that is our dance through the world of independent publishing.

Carol is everything that I could hope author to be: brilliant, hard working, gracious, polite, deeply knowledgeable and informed within and without her field, determined, willing to compromise, absolutely single-minded, intelligent, a teacher, and always open to learning. She is an inspiration—not only for her writing, in which she takes on the most trenchant problems of the day in politics, gender (and genre) relationships, and the ambiguities of everyday life—but also in her uncompromising dedication to others. For many years she has taught and taken part in workshops where she has shown her generosity and ability to see other writers’ visions of their stories. All the while, her own enthusiasm and commitment to writing burn ever brighter. Her latest novel, The Secret City, is a beautiful play on many of her favorite themes: innocence, how to live—alone or with others, and the simple and complex difficulties of communication.

These are salad days for fans of Carol’s work. In the last five years she has published three novels, The Mount (2002), Mister Boots (2005), and The Secret City (2007), as well as two collections, Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories (2002) and I Live with You (2005). And in that time she has been awarded the Philip K. Dick Award for The Mount, two Nebula Awards for short stories, “Creature” and “I Live with You” (both F&SF, 2002 and 2006), and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.

In other words: if you like science fiction and fantasy and you haven’t read her, perhaps now is the time?

Carol hasn’t been resting on her laurels. Her most recent publication (that I know of, she’s hard to keep track of) is “At Sixes and Sevens” in the October/November Asimov’s. She says she is too impatient to send stories out to magazine with long reading times, so I feel we are very lucky to have one of her stories, “Sanctuary,” for LCRW.

This covers only Carol’s recent years. I first remember reading her work when I read a Women’s Press edition of Carmen Dog in the UK and by the time I met her in the 1990s in New York, she was already in her seventies. (And she is still more energetic than most people I know.)

Other writers and friends will need to fill in her earlier years. I am very happy to have spent some time with Carol (although as yet I have not gone hill climbing with her!) and I hope that everyone who attends this convention will be able to spend at least a couple of minutes with her.


Another book!

Mon 22 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

9781931520485-96And, arriving now at all good indie bookstores near you . . . what is that I see? The paperback edition of Karen Joy Fowler’s fabulous third collection of stories, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.

The cover art is by one of our fave artists, Kathleen Jennings, and it looks crazy great on paper. Here online, it’s, yes, blacker than black, Spinal Tap “none more black”-level black. It’s all in the lamination, embossing, and something else along those lines, peeps. I’ll post some more photos that show the cover off properly soon.

And, next month Karen’s new novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes out. Remember: read the book, not the jacket or reviews. Not because the book depends on a twist, but it is a different read if you don’t know something that you’re told on the jacket.

Check out Karen’s “beast, bug, and bird blog” and go hear her read—she is one of the smartest, funniest readers (and writers!) out there.

ETA: Ta da: a photo of the new book showing the shiny shininess of it all.

What I Didn't See pb


New A. DeNiro story in debut issue of Spolia

Wed 17 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

SpoliaVery excited by this. Just got my copy (pdf, for those who like to know: it’s also available as an epub or mobi, but I like seeing what the pages look like) of the debut issue of Jessa Crispin’s new magazine, Spoila. A.’s story, “A Rendition” will be part of their new collection, Tyrannia and Other Renditions, coming out in October.

The Natalya Goncharova Portfolio is fabulous and I’m also looking forward to checking out the rest, including, bonus points!, two translations. Subscription is coming, here’s the manifesto, and please go get your copy here.

Table of Contents

Daphne Gottlieb, “Bess”

Peter Vermeersch, “Gone” (translated by Florian Duijsens)

Phil Sorenson, “December, December, Night, Night”

Jessa Crispin, Jane Pritchard interview

Leah Triplett, “Filling In the Archive: The Afterlife of Natalia Goncharova”

Natalya Goncharova Portfolio

Greer Mansfield, “A Natalia Goncharova Catalog”

Lightsey Darst, “Living with Art”

Olivia Cronk, “Four untitled poems”

A. DeNiro, “A Rendition”

Mikhail Shishkin, “Of Saucepans and Star-Showers” (translated from the Russian by Leo Shtutin)

Hoa Nguyen, “Mekong I, Cause the Shine, For Love Red, Hid”


Sofia Samatar’s debut novel arrives

Fri 12 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

This week the hardcover and paperback editions of Sofia Samatar‘s debut novel A Stranger in Olondria started going out into the world. Thank you, everyone who pre-ordered, always appreciated! The hardcover is going to be out of stock pretty soon although we may have copies here when the distro runs out. The ebook is out, too. Publication date is Tuesday, April 30.

I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while. I can’t wait to hear from readers. You can get a taste of the book on Tor.com or download the first 70 pages. It’s a huge, immersive, rich fantasy that circles around and away from and back to the transportation of reading.

People who’ve met Sofia or who have read advance copies of Olondria keep telling me that she’s a star in the making. I know! Since she sold this book, Sofia has had stories in Strange Horizons, Apex, and Clarkesworld, as well as poetry and reviews in Strange Horizons and is now the nonfiction and poetry editor for the new online journal Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts. How does she do it? I don’t know, but I am very happy that she’s also working on another novel.

If you live in or near Madison, WI, hie ye to the launch party on April 26th at 6 PM at A Room Of One’s Own Bookstore (315 W. Gorham St. Madison WI 53703). In May Sofia will be at WisCon, too—we will have a table there courtesy of our good friend David Schwartz.

You can read more about the book here and here’s one reviewer who really got it:

“Samatar’s richly woven debut fantasy takes us far from home. Growing up in the primitive isolation of the Tea Islands, Jevick has longed to travel to the spice markets in Bain, where the family’s pepper harvest is sold. He impatiently devours descriptions and stories when his imperious father returns every season, and the arrival of an Olondrian tutor only adds to the allure of the unknown land. When Jevick finally begins his own voyage, he discovers he is traveling down a perilous path of mystery, passion, and danger that no counsel could have foreseen. A chance meeting of a young woman traveling on a pilgrimage will change the course of Jevick’s life forever. VERDICT Jevick’s journey is an enchanting tale of wonder and superstition, revealing the power of books and the secret traditions of ancient voices. Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)


You don’t . . .

Thu 11 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

“You don’t pack books like other people, do you?

“Weeeeeellllll. It depends. We’ve been re-using old packaging this way, since, uh, a long time?”

“Pretty classy.”

“That’s us!”


A book!

Tue 9 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We has a new book arrived at the office: yay! Photos TK! Preorders will ship today, review copies, too. Which book is it? Wait, wait!


It is always time for Hipsway

Wed 3 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin


Kelly reading April 9, 7 pm, @ Pen Parentis, NYC

Tue 2 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly will be in NYC reading with Leigh Newman and Sarah Gerkensmeyer next Tuesday night as part of the Pen Parentis reading series. Here’s all the info:

DATE:  Tuesday, April 9, 2012

TIME: 7-9, with 3 readers (5-8 minute readings) and a Q & A session focused on writing and parenting to follow. Please plan on arriving at least 10 minutes before the event.

PLACE:  The Andaz, Wall Street 75 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005   212-590-1234

DIRECTIONS: 2,3,4,5,J,Z to 75 Wall Street. Corner of Wall & Water

Kelly Link is the author of three collections, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (“Because you can’t go through it.”) Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press. They have a three-year-old daughter, Ursula.

Leigh Newman returns to the Pen Parentis Salon as deputy editor ofOprah.com, where she writes about books and life and editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing. Premiered while still in manuscript format at one of the earliest Pen Parentis events, her hilarious memoir about her Alaskan childhood, Still Points North, is forthcoming from Dial in 2013. Her essays and short stories have appeared a variety of magazines and newspapers, including One Story, Tin House, Fiction, the New York Times, Modern Love. She believes in making her own popcorn, embarrassing her kids by writing I LOVE YOU in red frosting on their lunch sandwiches, and owning dogs that are just way too big to fit in the bed. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two boys and many, many light sabers. Her work can be found at leigh-newman.com    Read more of her work.

Sarah Gerkensmeyer‘s short story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories have appeared in Guernica, The New Guard Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Cream City Review, among others. Sarah, a mother of two little ones, is the 2012-13 Pen Parentis Fellow. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Fredonia.


Replacing Goodreads—

Sun 31 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Goodreads tells me I joined the site in December 2008 and that, weirdly, in 2009, 2011, and 2012, I added 70 books to the read shelf. (If I didn’t know myself better I’d think I was messing with the numbers!) I added older titles and then settled in to mostly keeping it up to date. I friended people I knew, some people I knew and didn’t friended me back, and I was fascinated to see what people were actually reading. I really enjoyed it and I’d been so proud to keep some of the Goodreads books in their database when they stopped using Amazon’s data!

And then last week Goodreads announced that Amazon had bought them. I was completely scunnered by the sale. Like Rob Spillman of Tin House I figure it’s kind of too late, Amazon have just bought the last 5 years of my reading history, but I’m deleting my account this week. (Already added my books to my LibraryThing account as a stopgap) I didn’t do it straight away as I wanted to think through my gut reaction of: “Oh No!” But a couple of days later, it’s still the same. So this week all the Goodreads widgets will be cut from the site. Through our distributor, we sell books through Amazon and in turn they’d like to run us and all other publishers into and under the ground for daring to publish books instead of all authors signing their horrible print contract. So for many years it has been our policy not to link to Amazon or (when I can keep all of them in mind, any of their many subsites, see next para) and the only time I pay for anything through Amazon is for Kickstarter.

Amazon own (bold = book related): Amazon Publishing, Amazon Web Services, Abebooks, Audible, Book Depository, BookSurge, BoxOfficeMojo, Brilliance Audio, CreateSpace, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDB, Lexcycle, 40% of Library Thing (through Abebooks—although this is apparently complicated), Mobipocket, Shelfari, Woot, Zappos. Etc.

Wikipedia notes: “In August 2005,[110] Amazon began selling products under its own private label, “Pinzon” . . . . AmazonBasics is a private-label consumer electronics product line.”

Amazon positives: their data mining is intellectually fascinating. They give out tiny halo-effect grants to literary organizations (so that everyone has to pay lip service to them). Their BreakThrough Novel Award (which is now their in house publishing competition). They pay sales tax in a few states now. Jeff Bezos, as millionaires have always done, follows his own weird (Blue Origin) with his investments.

But. Amazon wants to be everything to everyone. Some people have suggested they want to kill off public libraries (because kids need tablets instead of storytime and parents don’t need any free places to take their kids . . .) They want to make the product (cup, book, sheets, cable, movie, whatever) and sell it to you. Instead of inefficient towns and shopping centers, they’d rather everyone ordered online and got stuff delivered to them and in the end it will be Amazon and the delivery company left standing.

Sounds utterly vapid and uninspiring to me.

We spend our time publishing books we love and trying to get them into the indie bookstores we love so that readers can find them there. It mostly works. We expect we’ll be doing it for a while.

And then there is temptation. On Metafilter Open Library was mooted as an alternative user George_Spiggott posted “I would seriously pitch in time and technical effort to building a new site that everyone could simply pick up and move to. Because that would be a frickin’ brilliant outcome. Especially if the ToS at signup committed the site to remain nonprofit and to have no exclusive marketing agreements.”

Which is where temptation lies. I mentioned earlier today on Weightless that Michael and I were tempted to build an alternative to Goodreads:

” … building a new community reading site with books, reviews, comments, forums, all the things we liked about Goodreads, but without the all-encompassing Univac behind it. To keep it independent I figure we should make it a $4.99 annual subscription built along the lines Flickr uses: you could add up to 500 books for free then the oldest ones would disappear (from public view, not to you) unless you subscribed. Maybe there could be other subscriber only features, not sure, the site would do best if people use it for a while for free. If you’re seriously interested in kicking this idea around, email me!”

Kickstarter might be the way to fund it: obviously we’d need to pay for data feeds, storage and usage, and coding, coding, coding. Again, Wikipedia: “In December 2007, the site had over 650,000 members[3] and over 10,000,000 books had been added.[4] As of July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and 30 employees.[5]” That’s a lot of data going back and forward.

Goodreads was seven years old, ancient!, and had a lot of bells and whistles and if we do take this on, the new site should get out the gate as an attractive site that’s worth joining early and taking part in.

What I’d love to do is kick the idea around some more, hear what readers want, and see if this seems possible for a small group of underfunded readers. Internets?


Con or Bust: New Orleans style

Tue 26 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was the lucky winner in the recent Con or Bust fundraiser auction and I have to post this photo because the Care Package from New Orleans is one of the best packages I’ve ever gotten. It was stuffed full of goodies: some of the pralines are already gone gone gone (so rich, so tooth unfriendly, so gone!), and one set of beads has already been overplayed with by Ursula (so the rest might disappear for a bit until she’s more careful).

Everything’s vegetarian, yay!, although not everything scores high on the healthy index: beignets are healthy, right? Time to pull out the old deepfryer! And there’s lots of cajun spice mixes so everything’s going to be spicy for a while. Thank you, Con or Bust, and especially to superdonor Maria!

So, next year, when the Con or Bust auction comes around again, remember: don’t bid for the NOLA Care Package. Ha! In the meantime, if you missed the auction, pick up a Con or Bust T-shirt here.

Con or Bust auction FTW!


Email

Mon 25 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We are in the process of moving webhosts so I expect there will be some email disruptions—sorry! If you need a quick response, you can always leave a comment here and if you don’t hear back by the end of the week, do drop us a line again. Thanks for understanding.


The State of the Book in the Digital Age

Thu 21 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to say that on Friday April 26th I’m on a panel at the Massachusetts Library Association conference—although I’m gutted I’ll miss the library cart drill teams on Wednesday. The conference runs from 4/24 – 26 at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge and our (Western Mass. transplants!) panel is:

9:15 – 10:30am

The State of the Book in the Digital Age

What’s up with books these days? Books are ordered online, created on demand, and distributed in digital form to individuals and libraries. Many bookstores have closed in recent years, and publishers have had to drastically downsize, retool or go out of business. How have individuals and businesses responded to this new environment? Are books giving a last gasp or being reinvented? An author, a book artist, a publisher and a bookstore owner will give their thoughts on the changing environment for books.  Co-presented by the Western Massachusetts Library Advocates

Speakers:  Susan Stinson, Author, Writer in Residence at Forbes Library, Northampton; Daniel E. Kelm, Book Artist;  Gavin J. Grant, Publisher, Small Beer Press; Nancy Felton, Co-owner, Broadside Bookshop.


Read an excerpt from A Stranger in Olondria

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

One of the real pleasures of the last year has been spreading the word on Sofia Samatar’s debut novel A Stranger in Olondria. It is an incredibly rich novel, dense, and welcoming and from the very first time I read it, I loved it and it reminded me to slow down and enjoy all parts of the novel: the story, writing, the characters, the world, the poetry, the language, and always the story. Sometimes it’s hard to step back and take that time: there are so many things that need or must be done and then there are all the shiny things out there.

Now you can read an excerpt on Tor.com and if you’d like more, you can download a pdf of the first 70 pages from Weightless.

 


AWP

Sun 10 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

UntitledI never managed to catch up with all the people I hoped to, I enjoyed the bookfair so much I didn’t see any panels, I didn’t manage to arrive on time 2 out of 3 mornings, but besides all that, AWP was, somewhat unexpectedly, a ton of fun! We have a pile of new books from a few quick trips around the fair—including a new subscription to Tin House and more poetry than I’ve gotten in ages. It was invigorating to spend three days with 13,000(!) people who care deeply in one way or another about words on pages. (Not as much chat about ebooks as expected, none about the possible horrors of the used ebook market, yay!)

Tin HouseWe stayed with friends (to whom we are very grateful!) and Kelly’s mom looked after Ursula (and brought her in on Saturday when the fair was open to everyone) which made the whole thing much more relaxed.

Friday there was a snowstorm so I was late. On Saturday morning smoke started coming out of the ceiling of the T at Fenway. “Driver, there’s smoke in here,” someone shouted. Doors opened: we all trooped out. Looked like a long wait, walked in.

Our neighbors in the fair were the very lively H_ngm_n Books on one side and our real-life near neighbors, the excellent Perugia Press. I am very happy to say that somewhere in that 13,000 people there is a contingent who read books from H_ngm_n, Small Beer, and Perugia.

We talked to hundreds of people and I owe apologies to some people for the times when I could not stop my anti-Am*zon invective: sorry. (They really do want to put everyone else out of business and all the fun out of life. Ya boo sucks to them.)

We sold out of LCRW on the second day: awesome! Wish I had brought more but it was—again—invigorating to meet so many readers.

Malarky, indeed.I can’t even begin to list the excellent people I met. Wait, I can. People from: Paris Press, One Story, Milkweed, McNally Jackson, Porter Square Books, Coffee House (got a copy of Raymond McDaniel’s new superhero-themed poetry collection(!) Special Powers and Abilities and Geronimo Johnson’s excellent sounding New Orleans novel, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts—which is one of two Coffee House titles, the other being Laird Hunt’s Kind One, up for the Pen/Faulkner Award!), Shape & Nature, Eleven Eleven, Unstuck, Biblioasis, oh, wait, no I can’t list everyone. Sore hands and: Lists = I will miss people, sorry friends! And! We just added Puerto del Sol over on Weightless so while I met tons of people from New Mexico State U., I am kicking myself for missing the Puerto del Sol table. Argh, mea culpa. Didn’t take photos. Argh x 2.

A few of the goodiesIt turns out tons of our books are being taught in schools around the country, including Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s A Life on Paper, Ted Chiang’sStories of Your Life and Others, and others including pretty much all of Kelly’s books. For which I say to all those teachers: it was awesome and heartening to hear that you are reading and teaching and studying these books. Thank you!

And that’s it. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi. Hope you got home ok and that you too went home with some books you’re looking forward to reading.


VIDA 2012

Tue 5 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

For those publishers and editors who look at their part of the literary world and see no discrimination, the VIDA Count for 2012 is in. I find myself quickly scrolling down through it just looking at the red and blue shapes, rather than the numbers. It is incredibly effective use of graphics, and incredibly depressing. When I came out of university in 1991 I knew a lot of stuff and expected the world to be different and better than it is now. I knew that women and minorities in this country were paid significantly less than men for the same work. I didn’t expect that to be true 20 years later. Bah.

I was looking at the VIDA count last night with Kelly and we wondered for the first time if we should cancel our subscription to the New Yorker. I love their long articles and who doesn’t love Anthony Lane, Hilton Als (educating me about theater against my will with his great writing, damn him), Emily Nussbaum, et al. But if week after week, month after month, year after year the editors don’t see that what they are producing is a magazine that consistently doesn’t see one half of the world’s population’s experiences, then is it worth our money? Maybe not.

Time to put our money where our mouths are. I don’t expect them to notice one lost subscriber, but I’ll write and tell them why. And then instead of being sad about the imbalanced table to contents each week, I’ll wait and check the VIDA numbers and see if they improve. Oh, New Yorker, how I will miss you.

I’m not exactly up on the state of my subscription (I can check the cover, I think, when I get home) but when renewal time comes around, I think we’re going to pass.


That AWP thing

Mon 4 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, Thursday through Saturday of this week we will be participating in the annual literary scrum commonly known as AWP. This year it’s in Boston where the weather should be a comfy 40 degrees (or 5 centigrade) with maybe rain and snow TK. Yay! Bring your boots!

Before I forget: on Saturday the book fair is OPEN TO EVERYONE! Come on by! It’s in Exhibit Halls A, B, & D,  Plaza & Level 2. Phew.

We haven’t been to AWP since 2009 and it will be awesome and overwhelming to catch up with everyone and see  all the new flashy things that people are up to. Woohoo! Kelly is teaching at UMass Amherst on Wednesday afternoon, so we drive to Boston in the evening—already missing out on the early parties! Oh well. Thursday or Friday early in the evening she is part of a UNCG alumni reading somewhere in Cambridge (details TK). Other than that, not sure how many things we’ll be doing. Would love to see Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott in conversation . . . But there may have to be strategic withdrawals as we are old, and, of course, parents!

The best thing about the whole bedazzling thing: it’s being held at the Hynes Convention Center. Ok, that’s not soooo fab, but it is within a quick T/bus/taxi/car ride to Yoma Burmese restaurant and Pho Saigon (both in Allston), the latter of which is in the Super 88 Hong Kong Supermarket food court  and they have the best banh mi sandwichs. Otherwise, sure there are plenty of restaurants around the convention center. The worst thing: the Other Side Cafe closed last year. Oh I am so sad.

Anyway, the conference is expected to be brutal. Woohoo! We will be at table L26 in the book fair—no doubt behind a pillar, under the a/c, so far from where it’s all happening, man, that when we look around we are actually in New Hampshire. But, hey, we will have books on sale! Or, books for sale at discount prices? Something like that. Also, we like trades, so bring them on!

Kelly is on one panel at 9 am on Thursday morning with two local-to-us writers, John Crowley and Jane Yolen, one used-to-be-local writer, Kate Bernheimer, and one new-to-me writer, Anjali Sachdeva:

Room 107, Plaza Level

R108. Modern Fairy Tales and Retellings. (Anjali Sachdeva, John Crowley, Jane Yolen, Kelly Link, Kate Bernheimer) Many of us grew up reading the same stories our grandparents read when they were children. But contemporary writers are also creating their own fairy tales or crafting surprising variations on traditional stories, for both children and adults. In this panel, authors who have written modern retellings of old tales will discuss the need for fables in modern society and the literary marketplace, as well as the writing process they use to go beyond archetype and tradition to create new tales.

(Here’s the schedule. Note, that’s just Thursday. AWP is a just little huge.)


International shipping

Wed 27 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Wow. We just caught up with the recent changes in international shipping costs. Basically the price of mailing one book outside the USA is now = Ouch. The cost of mailing 2 books = 4 x Ouch. Anything more than 2 books = Wow, wait, that really hurt!

Man, does this suck. First they got rid of M-Bag shipping and now it costs $23.95 to ship a book priority mail.

We’ll continue to ship books abroad—we’re very happy that readers from all over the world find Small Beer and LCRW—but, Ouch!—we won’t be surprised if you switch to ebooks instead.


Worldreader: Books for All

Tue 26 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Just read the Worldreader Annual Report and was fascinated by the results of an external study looking into their impact:

“For girls, one year with Worldreader is like five years of regular schooling.”

This is amazing and an absolute world changer.

We’re very proud to be part of it. Publishers and authors, please donate your ebooks here, thank you!
World Reader Annual Report


Lookit

Tue 26 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, peeps, they are a-reading the new issue of LCRW.

Also, it is now in many shops. Indies bookshops who carry LCRW, listen up: We Love You! We appreciate your mad passions! You are It for us, now and forevers!

“Always happy to see a new issue of this occasional story outburst. I grope for a term to suggest the nature of the highly imaginative fiction here; “weird” will not do; “fabulist” is wrong; “odd” might fit, but I think I’ll settle on “strange”. Yes, these are strange stories, in which even experienced explorers of genre terrain may occasionally find themselves on uneven footing; there are few overworn trails here.”
—Lois Tilton, Locus Online

“The entire issue made me smile. I’m looking forward to the next issue, whenever it may come.”
—Fantasy Literature

“Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is the kind of magazine that you want to read slowly. Read a story. Put the magazine down. Absorb what you have just read. Then, after a while, read another story. Repeat. After more than a year’s absence here is issue #28 with more of their very different stories.”
—SF Revu

 


Trafalgar, here, there, everywhere

Thu 21 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Trafalgar cover - click to view full sizeThanks to translator extraordinaire Amalia Gladhart, I’m very happy to be celebrating the first English language publication of Angélica Gorodischer’s novel Trafalgar. The credit for this book coming out also goes back to Ursula K. Le Guin whose translation of Kalpa Imperial opened our eyes to this excellent writer. I am so glad I put this rather optimistic line in our About page:

We are seriously interested in more translations — especially of Angelica Gorodischer. However, we are monolingual (sorry) which makes the editorial process difficult. If you are a grad student looking for a translation project which may be of interest to us, we recommend Gorodischer’s Trafalgar and Prodiges.

We heard from a few translators of Gorodischer’s work in the ten years(!) since we published Kalpa Imperial but nothing panned out so when I received an email in June 2011 from Amalia I didn’t know whether to get excited or not. She had published a couple of previous translations, The Potbellied Virgin and Beyond the Islands, both by Alicia Yánez Cossío of Ecuador, which seemed like a good sign. But I still wasn’t sure, of course, until I got the book.

The first story, “By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon,” is great and really off the wall—check it out in Fantasy & Science Fiction this spring—so I was on edge, wondering where the book was going. But the second story, “The Sense of the Circle,” blew me away and I knew we were going to publish the book.

When it was announced that Angélica was one of the two winners of the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award, I had a mad thought that we could get the book—or at least a chapbook—out in time for the convention. Ha. Did not happen. But in the meantime Kelly found Ron Guyatt‘s fabulous travel poster “Caloris Basin – Mercury” and we worked with him to use it for the cover.

And now the book is out!

Two of the stories are already online: “The Best Day of the Year” (on Tor.com) and “Trafalgar and Josefina” (on Belletrista), and just today “Of Navigators” went up on the lit journal Eleven Eleven’s new site (their print edition will be available here). And reviews are coming in from all over. The Willamette Week (“a thing of digression and casual wonderment”) liked that Trafalgar was translated by an Oregonian. Abigail Nussbaum, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, called it “A novel that is unlike anything I’ve ever read, one part pulp adventure to one part realistic depiction of the affluent, nearly-idle bourgeoisie, but always leaning more towards the former in its inventiveness and pure (if, sometimes, a little guilt-inducing) sense of fun.”

Trafalgar is hard to describe, which is part of the fun of it. Put the coffee on and join in.


Death stars to electric cars

Thu 14 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I find it hard to believe that so many people fell for the White House’s announcement that they aren’t building a Death Star. Of course that’s what they’d say.

Are you going to be in Chicago on Sat. April 6th? Check out the Caxton Symposium: OUTSIDERS: Zines, Samizdat, & Alternative Publishing. Looks like a good day.

I was sad to note the recent death of Ralph G. Martin, “The author or co-author of some 30 books, Mr. Martin was perhaps best known for Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, a two-volume biography of Winston Churchill’s beautiful American-born mother, the former Jennie Jerome.” Nice books, I recommend them if you haven’t read them.

Speaking of the Times, did you see Karen Russell on the cover of the Book Review this week? Can’t wait to read Vampires in the Lemon Grove, although I will probably pick it up and have to put it aside until all the excitement dies down and I can read it in peace.

Other Small Beer stuff: No, we did not post eligible books/stories or whatever for various awards. It never quite seems like the right thing for us to do. But we do like awards and reviews and so on, including this review of LCRW 28 in Locus Online from Lois Tilton, who enjoyed most of the zine. LCRW‘s out at most of the bookstores it goes to now. Thank you for giving our tiny zine space on your lovely shelves, indie bookstores!

There’s one bookstore with a 10-year-old invoice for chapbooks. On the 10th anniversary, in September, maybe I will post the invoice online and see if payment appears!

Did you see Linda Nagata has a new SF novel coming out next month. Ch-ch-ch . . . you know what to do.

AWP is in Boston this March. See you there?

Looks like an interesting show starting soon in NYC: Ann.

Who’s right, who’s wrong? NYT vs. Tesla! The writer reports he skipped regular charging stations because he wanted to use only the superchargers. Because that is a rational decision any driver would make . . . ? Er, no. Sorry. Can’t wait for the driving in circles explanation.


How about 9 books in a box?

Thu 14 Feb 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

No, not a sale. We should do one of those someday, shouldn’t we? Some day when we’ve caught up with things.

Anyway! The annual Con or Bust auction is on and this is what we put up. At the moment, the bid is $25. Bid it up!

  1. Poppy Z. Brite, Second Line
  2. Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, A Life on Paper: Stories (hardcover, trans. by Edward Gauvin)
  3. Kelley Eskridge, Solitaire
  4. Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories(hardcover)
  5. Angélica Gorodischer, Trafalgar (paperback, trans. by Amalia Gladhart)
  6. Julia Holmes, Meeks (paperback)
  7. Eduardo Jimenez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (paperback)
  8. Laurie Marks, Water Logic (paperback)
  9. Benjamin Parzybok, Couch (paperback)

Olondria Winners

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

To the 5 lucky readers who Goodreads selected: Your copies of A Stranger in Olondria are on their way!


Trafalgar

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

February 12, 2013 · 256pp · 9781618730329  · trade paper · $16  | 9781618730336 · ebook · $9.95

Locus Recommended Reading

When you run into Trafalgar Medrano at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club and he tells you about his latest intergalactic sales trip, don’t try to rush him. He likes to stretch things out over seven double coffees. No one knows whether he actually travels to the stars, but he’s the best storyteller around, so why doubt him?

Trafalgar, a novel-in-stories, was originally published in Argentina in 1979. It starts off light and refreshing right from the very first short Who’s Who in Rosario listing for Trafalgar, although there are occasional clouds that pass through Trafalgar Medrano’s bright and happy stories.

Excerpts available in F&SF, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Belletrista, and Eleven Eleven.

Read an interview with Angélica Gorodischer on Lightspeed.

“Trafalgar and Josefina” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton.

Reviews

“Elegantly constructed images and smooth narrative twists make “Trafalgar’s” enchanting oddness all-encompassing and unforgettable.”
—Seattle Times

“Perhaps the strangest thing about these tales is how easily one forgets the mechanics of their telling. Medrano’s audiences are at first reluctant to be taken in by yet another digressive, implausible monologue about sales and seductions in space. But soon enough, they are urging the teller to get on with it and reveal what happens next. The discerning reader will doubtless agree.”
—Review of Contemporary Fiction

“Gorodischer’s fecund and playful sense of invention is dazzling here, especially in the roll call of perfectly contrived larksome proper names. Her style is more jaunty and modern, less baroque than in Kalpa Imperial, giving the sense that Trafalgar is right at your elbow, hoisting a beer. The banter between Trafalgar and his interlocutors, particularly his female Boswell, is sprightly and fun. . . . At age 84, perched atop a major canon, Angélica Gorodischer deserves to loom high in the ranks of contemporary fantasists.”
—Paul Di Filippo, Locus Online

“Had I to choose five words to describe it, I would call it: quiet, contemplative, provoking, bizarre—and brilliant. Quite, quite brilliant.
“It is not the kind of thing I would normally choose to read.
“But now that I’ve read it, I am at liberty to inform you I found it delightful. Thought-provoking. Impressive. Brilliant.”
—Liz Bourke, Tor.com

“A novel that is unlike anything I’ve ever read, one part pulp adventure to one part realistic depiction of the affluent, nearly-idle bourgeoisie, but always leaning more towards the former in its inventiveness and pure (if, sometimes, a little guilt-inducing) sense of fun.”
—Abigail Nussbaum, Los Angeles Review of Books

“A thing of digression and casual wonderment.”
—Willamette Week

“The narrative of this compilation draws the reader into the story of an ordinary man traveling to alternative worlds. Gorodischer creates an atmosphere where fascinating stories take on the ordinariness of everyday life.”
—Reforma 

“This understated and impressive story cycle, written in 1979 by Argentinean author and World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Gorodischer (Kalpa Imperial), relates the adventures of intergalactic trader and coffee addict Trafalgar Medrano. When he meets with the unnamed narrators, he tells of his attempts to raise money by selling goods and services on other planets; most of his efforts end in improbable, hilarious disaster, such as being mistaken for Mandrake the Magician or finding a world that looks exactly like Earth—in 1492. The tropes are well-worn, but Gorodischer takes them in entertaining directions that both evoke their golden age roots and transcend them with a layer of absurdism. Gladhart’s translation spotlights Trafalgar’s dryly comic statements, like “I changed the course of history; nothing more than that.” Trafalgar’s adventures build on each other nicely, creating a collection that’s a joy to read.”
—Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents

By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon
The Sense of the Circle
Of Navigators
The Best Day of the Year
The González Family’s Fight for a Better World [audio]

–Interval with my Aunts
Trafalgar and Josefina
–End of the Interval

Mr. Chaos
Constancia
Strelitzias, Lagerstroemias, and Gypsophila
Trafalgar and I

Read more


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