The Ugly Chickens Trailer

Tue 19 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The trailer for The Ugly Chickens, the third of three half-hour films based on Howard Waldrop’s short stories has gone up. According to George R.R. Martin, the film will be touring film festivals and so on. I am glad Howard got to see a rough cut of the film as I always hope people will be celebrated while they’re alive. Even after all these years that story is a kick. The trailer looks great and I can’t wait to see the finished film.

Youtube is being odd about embedding it at the right size here, so watch over there if easier.



Anya DeNiro: Madison, Marshall, & NYC

Thu 14 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover Anya Johanna DeNiro has some new readings lined up this spring for her book OKPsyche. We also found recently that it is a finalist in the Blurred Boundaries (how great!) category of  The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards.

Here are the readings and one more may be added in New York on Friday 5/10:

3/25, 6 p.m. A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI
4/11, 8 p.m. Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN
5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY



Richard Butner @ KGB Bar

Fri 8 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Richard Butner has stepped in to read next Wednesday evening with Moses Ose Utomi at KGB Bar in New York City.

A flyer advertising Richard Butner & Moses Ose Utomi, reading March 13th, 7pm at the KGB Bar.



Kathleen & Kelly Tomorrow

Mon 4 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

We have a unique intercontinental event coming up tomorrow at 5 p.m. Central Time with Kathleen Jennings and Kelly Link talking about their first collection, Kindling: Stories (Kathleen), and first novel, The Book of Love (Kelly).

We’ve worked with Kathleen for about 15 years. I think the first project was the striking and beautiful cover for Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes.

Before Kindling, the biggest projects we worked with her on were the 2012 edition of our Working Writer’s Daily Planner* and illustrating Kij Johnson’s Wind in the Willows follow-up, The River Bank. Both books were complicated, unusual, and extraordinarily interesting and fun to work on which meant that when she queried us on her first collection we were very familiar with her work and also her ways of working. So despite her coming to the end of her PhD program(!), we knew she’d be responsive and proactive — two things I struggle more and more with!

Anyway, all of which is to say, hope you will join this event tomorrow:

 

* I looked at the Daily Planner for the first time in years for this post and I am still charmed and entertained seeing Kathleen’s art all through it. She did monthly headers and spot illustrations — I’ve added a few screenshots below. I still really enjoy those planners. I don’t know if someone is making something like them now, hope so.

I ran out of time to do our edition — our kid was 2-3 years old and keeping the press running was enough for me. The final death knell was in waiting for the pre-orders to come in from Am*zon. The Planners were full color throughout and we printed them in the US. I had to get them to the printer quite early but Am*zon — who sold a good number of the 2011 edition — would not give our sales reps their order for the 2012 edition.

That year we published our two-volume “Best of” Ursula K. Le Guin short stories, collections by Kij Johnson, Elizabeth Hand, and Nancy Kress, a chapbook from Hal Duncan, Ayize’s first novel, and more. The friction and uncertainty of not getting the number was too much and although I loved the project I had to drop it. I printed what was needed through Lulu and that was it. I’d like to say I never regretted it but while that’s not true it’s also not a big thing. I’m glad we did it, that people enjoyed it, and it proved again that Kathleen was a great person to work with on a complicated project.

4 illustrations by Kathleen Jennings — birds holding leaves, person in mug, Alice-like woman, person walking with dog



West Coast Link

Mon 26 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly is off to the west coast for 3 quick readings then one in Atlanta. If you go, please mask up! Info below or here.

List of events from Kelly's site



The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle

Tue 20 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Mike Allen has put together a great StoryBundle, The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle, which includes not just one but two Small Beer titles, Isabel Yap’s award-winning debut, Never Have I Ever and Elwin Cotman’s Dance on Saturday. It’s a good time to check out Elwin as his next book, Weird Black Girls, comes out April 16 from Simon & Schuster.

There are books by Angela Slatter, Eugen Bacon, Theodora Goss, two books from C. S. E. Cooney, and more. You can pay whatever you want, direct some of your payment to Girls Write Now, and no matter how much you pay, you’re going to end up with some great books:



Kelly @ Book Moon Tomorrow

Fri 16 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly will be at Book Moon tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 17, from 3-5 p.m. signing The Book of Love (and so on), saying hello, and passing out cookies. Drop by if you can!

More events. (Cambridge, Natick, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, online.)



Heroes: One Year On

Wed 14 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We published Ayize Jama-Everett’s 4th and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, a year ago today.

Good and thoughtful review by Jenny Hamilton just recently popped up on Strange Horizons:

The decision is shocking, and it highlights one of the key themes of the book: we are all imperfect, broken, compromised. The salvation of the world has fallen to Taggert and his team, and they are choosing to answer the call—but neither they nor the reader should be under any illusion that this makes them good guys. They’re not good now, and maybe they never can be. It’s just that they’re all they’ve got. Taggert and Tamara and Prentis are powerful, sure, but the most important thing they are is passionate

What does it take to save the world — even if it’s not as you know it? Friends, frenemies, family, sacrifice, and a hell of a party.



Happy Publication Day to a Great Novel(ist)

Tue 13 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight, weather willing, Kelly will launch her new book, her first novel, The Book of Love, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn. (All her tour dates .) It is an amazing novel, has received the kind of reviews an author might dream of and I love the framing of 20+ years of nope, no novel, nope then oh, ok, HUGE novel. What a treat for me and everyone else. I meant to write about it in the run up to publication but other things kept getting in the way.

Now here I am on publication day, lying on a couch in a hotel in NYC while Kelly has gone off to her a reading and I have run out of juice so here are a few links. Some people will have seen some of them, with luck they are wide enough scattered that they might intrigue many different readers. With Kelly away, I’ll go listen to her talk to Beth Golay on KMUW’s Marginalia.(Later: I strongly recommend this!) I enjoyed, even if I disagree about the book’s length, Michael Patrick Brady’s review on WBUR. My favorite thing that came out today was Riza Cruz’s Shelf Life piece on Elle where Kelly gets to recommend some favorite reads.

Before today, Ron Charles reviewed the novel in the Washington Post, Steve Pfarrer chatted with Kelly and reviewed the book in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and yesterday Amal El-Mohtar’s review — such a review to bring tears to one’s eyes — arrived in the New York Times.

Kelly’s posted her Book of Love playlists — Apple; Spotify — and if you can’t get to any of the readings, there’s now an online event: Kelly & Kathleen Jennings read from and discuss their new books, The Book of Love and Kindling respectively and Moon Palace will have signed book plates to go with orders.



AWP 2024

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Some years ago I got a positive result on my test to see whether they will print anything in the AWP listings of exhibiting publishers:

Our listing says: Small Beer Press. We bring the books, you bring the beer?

On Wednesday afternoon I realized the 2024 AWP Conference & Bookfair would just be beginning. Pre-pandemic, pre-long Covid I’d have been taking 8-10 boxes of books into the conference center either on a tiny hand truck I took along or asking people if I could borrow one. Thanks again Coffee House, Copper Canyon, and the many other kind people over the years who lent me one when I didn’t bring one or just plain forgot.

The conference moves around so occasionally Kelly and I drove to it, other times we flew. We often mailed books to friends’ houses and that gave me a good way to catch up with people. I sometimes sent them to a nearby UPS or Fedex — once I tried to UPS some boxes to a Fedex office and apparently that is a Spy vs Spy level no-no-no! Had to change the delivery address. Then I’d pick up the boxes in a (very surprised) taxi, get them to the place, get them on the dolly/hand truck, and walk them in. It was way too expensive for us to use the official shipper and the conference haulers.

I think I reserved a table in the bookfair in 2023 because, really, how sick could I be in 2022 that I would not be able to go? Silly me. AWP is going to be back in LA next year, what a great place for it. The lunches I was able to walk out and find when we were there! Anyway, doubt we will be there.

We occasionally co-hosted parties. Sometimes great fun. Excellent to be able to pay back and pay forward other people who hosted some great dance parties over the years.

I liked to set up a reading on the Wednesday evening if possible — we had one at the Last Bookstore and one at Politics & Prose — so after the Wednesday morning flight, or maybe Tuesday night if I was feeling fancy, we’d be hustling around to get ready. Kelly would read along with as many Small Beer authors as were at the conference. Abbey Mei Otis read in DC along with We’d ask them to sign at the bookfair table at some point, too. Woah, imagine if we went this year with Kelly’s book coming out. Not sure I could lift that many boxes.

Abbey Mei Otis, Sofia Samatar, Juan Martinez, & Kelly Link @ Politics & Prose, February 2017

Abbey Mei Otis, Sofia Samatar, Juan Martinez, & Kelly Link @ Politics & Prose, February 2017

I really liked tabling at events, being right there seeing what people like to read, seeing the covers they like, seeing if they like short stories or if they’re just looking for a place to sell their memoir. (We were a great nonfiction market for older woman writers of weird fiction from Oregon.) There’s nothing like being available to writers and readers and people who don’t know you from Adam and have questions, so many great questions. I’d sometimes get to panels but I’d find it hard to skip meeting friends and strangers in the bookfair. I usually brought home 15-20 books and magazines at least?

Karen Joy Fowler & Juan Martinez, Portland, OR, March 2019

Karen Joy Fowler & Juan Martinez, Portland, OR, March 2019

Anyway, we’re not there this year and neither will we be at the ABA Winter Institute in Cincinnati next weekend. Good golly that’s a level of frustration. I’d love to be there: went to my first one in Baltimore in January 2020, four months after we’d opened Book Moon, met some great people, learned a lot. Kelly was going, too, but on the train down we got a call from her mom that our kid, who had a bad cold, had gotten worse. Could we come back? Kelly has an incredible knowledge of our kid when sick and an ability to know what they need so we talked about both of us going back or just one of us, and soon enough she was on her way back. It’s ok, we thought, we’ll both go in 2021.

The kid recovered, Kelly and I got slight colds; something was going around. We don’t think it was Covid, but there weren’t tests, so like everyone else, it’s a maybe. We’re not going to Boskone this weekend — but Kate & her husband are tabling for Small Beer & Book Moon for their first time there. If you’re there, please say hello! Hope they’ll have fun, meet good people, sell some books. We last went to Boskone in 2020 and our kid had a great time. We didn’t catch Covid there, even though some people from Boskone went to the Boston superspreader international biotechnology conference that same weekend. Everything comes back to Covid these years. Since it’s the reason we’re not doing any of these things this year, I suppose that’s ok.

Anyway, off to read some LCRW submissions for the next zine!



Dammit, I Missed the 20-year Anniversary of Our Oldest Unpaid Invoice

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Excellent that the search function, while messy, thanks Google, still works well enough for me to find this rather than having to page down through the Not Journalling Updates Page. I was putting together the Book Moon monthly bestseller list for Locus when I remembered that I’d posted a while back about the 10-year anniversary of our oldest invoice.

Ten years? A blink of a fruit fly’s eye! Twenty years? Now we’re getting somewhere. I long ago figured the bookstore mustn’t have sold any copies of the zine or the chapbooks — they should have ordered copies of Kelly’s chapbook 4 Storiesmaybe they did, I’m not going to go find out — but they could have returned them. I’d be happy to have a few extra copies around.

Anyway, as with everything (except wishing death to stingy billionaires and those who declare who is human and who isn’t), time has removed any sting from this and now it’s just here to amuse. 20 years? A dog’s yawn! Looking forward to 30.



Kelly’s Book of Love Tour

Wed 7 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s new (first!) novel, The Book of Love (reviewed today by Ron Charles in the WaPo) comes out next Tuesday and very appropriately she will be at Books Are Magic with Hilary Leichter in Brooklyn to launch it.

Since we don’t host readings at Book Moon, she’ll do a local reading (with Yvette Lisa Ndlovu) on Thursday with our friends over at the Odyssey in South Hadley, and then will do a drop-in signing at Book Moon on Saturday. The next week she’s off to the Harvard Bookstore and the B&N in Natick before a quick jaunt over to the West Coast. One extra day in Atlanta, then home.

Here’s a link to all the events — there will be a virtual event with Kathleen Jennings open to all hosted by Moon Palace on March 5 — and if you do manage to go, please do wear a mask.



Isabel Yap @ KGB Bar

Wed 7 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Next Wednesday Isabel Yap will be reading in New York as part of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading series hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel:​​​

Isabel Yap & Randee Dawn, February 14th, 2024, 7pm ET.

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
(Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)



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

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

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



Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List

Thu 1 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

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

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

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

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

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

Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche



Kij @ Prairie Lights Tomorrow

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

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



Book Riot Best of 2023

Mon 29 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

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

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

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



Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023

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

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

* DuckDuckGo



Re: Formats

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

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

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

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



Sparks

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

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

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

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



Kindling

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

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

World Fantasy, Locus, Ditmar, and Aurealis Award shortlists

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

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

Read a story: Undine Love  Read more



Howard Waldrop, R.I.P.

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

Howard Waldrop holding a copy of his collection Night of the Cooters in 2018Brought low by the news that Howard Waldrop died yesterday, January 14, at the age of 77.

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

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

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



The Book of Love Limited Edition

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

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

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



OKPsyche in MN & WI

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

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

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

and

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

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



2 Weeks Until Kindling

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

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

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

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

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

Kindling Kindling by Kathleen Jennings
by Kathleen Jennings

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



Preorder The Book of Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



SBP BS Bestsellers 2023

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

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

North American Lake Monsters Nathan Ballingrud Lost Places: Stories Sarah Pinsker Travel Light Naomi Mitchison The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories Kij Johnson Spirits Abroad: Stories Zen Cho In Other Lands Sarah Rees Brennan Stranger Things Happen: Stories Kelly Link Never Have I Ever: Stories Isabel Yap Kalpa Imperial: the Greatest Empire That Never Was Angélica Gorodischer At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories Kij Johnson Okpsyche Anya Johanna Deniro Fire Logic: an Elemental Logic Novel Laurie J. Marks A Stranger In Olondria Sofia Samatar Tender Sofia Samatar

 



The Heart of Owl Abbas

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

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

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

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



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