The Company We Keep – Under the Poppy takes to the road

Thu 8 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

A Guest Post from Kathe Koja:

An industrial art festival, throngs of hipsters, and bands, and Sailor Jerry rum…. And upstairs there was a Victorian townhouse, lovingly designed and painstakingly painted, hung about with deep red curtains, decorated with lavish lace and plump floor pillows and risque art. There was wine, and chocolates; there were flowers. There were curious glances as the curious audience—whose knowledge of Under the Poppy ranged from multiple devoted readings to “What’s this all about?”—made its way past the Poppy booth into the playing space.  And then the door closed behind them, and the show began.

“The company we keep
May keep us from our sleep
And keep us toss-and-turning till the morning …” Read more


Packing

Wed 31 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

What’s faster: packing or unpacking?


While we were away

Tue 30 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

some readers got back to us after reading Delia Sherman’s upcoming The Freedom Maze. They’re not lying, it’s an intense, fun, excellent book for readers of all ages:

“A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie’s coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family’s double-edged past.”
—N. K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“This is an absolutely fascinating story. The Freedom Maze draws you into a world of danger and mystery, of daring and change, at the dawning of the Civil War. Sophie’s adventures in the history of her family’s Louisiana plantation feel real, and lead her to a real understanding of racial truths she would never have caught a glimpse of without magic. Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and vévés and bitter, healing herbs.  The Freedom Maze is deep, meaningful fun.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

“Sherman’s antebellum story exposes a wide sweep through a narrow aperture, where the arbitrary nature of race and ownership, kindred and love, are illuminated in the harsh seeking glare of an adolescent’s coming of age.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A bold and sensitively-written novel about a supposed-white child, Sophie Fairchild returned magically to a time of her ancestors who were slavemaster and slaves in the old South. This book puts the lie to those today making loose political statements about happy, comfortable slave families of that brutal era while telling a strong story that will not let the young reader stop turning pages to see how things will work out for Sophie and her fellow slaves, especially the cook Africa, and house slaves Antigua and Canada. I was mesmerized.”
—Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic

“A riveting, fearless, and masterful novel. I loved Sophie completely.”
—Nancy Werlin, author of Extraordinary

“A subtle and haunting book that examines what it means to be who we are.”
—Holly Black, co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“Vividly realized and saturated with feeling.”
—Elizabeth Knox, author of DreamHunter


Housekeeping

Wed 10 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Our office will be closed for the rest of the month of August because of furnace repairs davenport ia and we will only be able to send out e-galleys to reviewers during that time.


Edinburgh book fest & more

Tue 9 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Stories of Your Life and Others cover - click to view full sizeTime for some updates before we shut down for the August recess. First a few quick reviews:

  1. Gary K. Wolfe in Locus on Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales: “In the best of Ryman’s fiction, the world unfolds in ways that are at once astonishing and thoroughly thought out, both radically disorienting and emotionally powerful.”
  2. Ted Gioia on Ted Chiang. (It’s a TedFest!) “The divide between genre fiction and literary fiction is, blurry at best . . . “
  3. Catch-up: Matt Kressel interviews Richard Butner for the Shirley Jackson Award site.
  4. Very sad to read about William Sleator’s death. Many years ago Kelly gave me a copy of his autobiographical collection Oddballs (it’s still one of the books she loves to give people), a hilarious book that only gets more fascinating as I see if from two sides, the child POV and the parental. I haven’t read much of his fiction, but

Ok, so the last two weren’t reviews, but go on, open up some tabs and read them.

Next: a reading! Vincent McCaffrey will read from A Slepyng Hound to Wake at the Brookline Booksmith at 7 PM on Thursday August 25th. We love Vince and we love the Booksmith (and their reading series, they have Lev Grossman there this week) so we are very sad we won’t be there. Slepying Hound is shipping out very nicely. If you want a signed copy, the Booksmith, Poison Pen, or Avenue Victor Hugo are your choices. (On AVH’s site on Biblio.com you can see what else Vincent has published . . . )

august coverNext: Locus! The August issue has:

  • an interview with Karen Lord—who can be heard on the Locus roundtable podcast here.
  • a review of Geoff Ryman’s collection (ok, that one’s linked above, but I liked having all this stuff together)
  • a review by Rich Horton of The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
  • and includes Lydia Millet’s The Fires Beneath the Sea in the Notable Books
  • and at some point soon, Locus will become available on Weightless

Next: travel! Next week Kelly will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival—apparently their website is down due to a lightning strike on their servers in Ireland!—where she and Audrey Niffenegger will have a lively chat at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 16th, and then Kelly will be part of what sounds like a great shindig of a night from 9 PM onward on Thursday the 18th. And since they are very sensibly headquartered in Edinburgh, we also get to go visit Kelly’s UK publisher for Pretty Monsters, Canongate!

Last! Clarion West. Kelly and I are excited to be among next year’s instructor’s at Seattle’s Clarion West:

We are very happy to announce that our instructors for the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop are Mary Rosenblum, Hiromi Goto, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, and Chuck Palahniuk, the 2012 Susan C. Petrey Fellow.

Although with that line-up, we might just see if we can sit in from week one . . .

Bye! We’re also off to visit family in Scotland, so will be offline for most of this month. We’ll be back—and starting to do events for Steampunk!—at the start of September.


I don’t know the author or the title…

Mon 8 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

But, look, it’s the #1 paperback best seller at the Harvard Book Store! How awesome is that? Screen shot below—where Kelly’s 3 Zombie Stories (actual title: I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It) holds back Alan Furst and Malcolm Gladwell from jousting for their usual spot.

I hope people are having fun asking for it!


About “Pink Lemonade”

Fri 5 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Three Messages and a Warning coverWe asked some of the writers from Three Messages and a Warning to tell us the story behind the story. Here’s the first installment . . . !

About “Pink Lemonade”
Liliana V. Blum

Although must of my writing has always been in the realistic side, I am an assiduous reader of dystopias. I love 1984, The Handmaid’s tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Day of the Triffids, for example. So I was happy to give it a try when I was invited to write a science fiction or fantasy short story for the anthology.

One of my deep and personal obsessions has always been food, and not in the bulimic or anorexic kind of way. I suffer a weird distress whenever I think about people not being able to eat, going hungry. Needless to say, when my children are sick and cannot hold food in their stomachs, I suffer more than with other common illness. When I watch a movie in which the characters can’t eat due to their fictional context (they’re in a war, or lost in the woods, or held prisioner), I grow anxious. Events like the Holocaust and famines, then, are my worst nightmares.

Since my husband, Ramón, is in the agro business, I am close to and more or less versed on the newest agrocultural trends and technologies. I am very aware of the antagonism of many people in this area. Curiously enough, everybody thinks the more technology in health, science, education, transportation, computers, gadgets, the better. But when it comes to agriculture, it suddlenly becomes satanized. It wouldn’t worry me, except because if agriculture worldwide would go “organic”and use zero-technology seeds, more than two thirds of the population would die of starvation, and most of the  forested areas in the world would have to be destroyed in order to make room for  those inefficient crops. So I decided to write about what would happen if these “green” groups would really have it their way. That’s how “Pink Lemonade” was conceived . . .

Liliana V. Blum (Mexico, 19xx) is not one of those women who refuse to reveal their date of birth; she just likes coincidences. So that she was born the same year that Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum was published, is a great one. She is a ginger gal who suffered through her Mexican childhood of pinch-the-redhead-in-the-arm-for-luck. Now she only suffers the sun. She was born in Durango (famous for its scorpions, revolutionaries and narcos) and currently lives in Tampico, Tamaulipas (famous for its crabs and narco-related violence). Despite the eight-legged creatures, the daily bread of bullets and mutilated bodies, and being the mother of a boy, a girl, a beagle and a guinea pig, she has managed to write five short-story collections; one of them, The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (Host Publications, 2007) was translated into English. Her work has been published in literary magazines in the US, Mexico, England, and Poland. One of her books will be reprinted for a reading-campaign in Mexico City, to give away for free in the subway. She is currently working on her first novel.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 27

Wed 3 Aug 2011 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

8.5 x 7 · 60pp · August 2011 · Issue 27 · Available in lovely finger-grabby paper edition or fast and flashy pdf, epub, and mobi.

It is traditional in the world of zines to apologize for the lateness of the latest issue to appear. This goes back to Bob, the first caveman to leave a couple of carved stone tablets with his musings on the politics of fire distribution and some great undiscovered band he saw in a cave a few hills over. His next carvings, were, of course, a bit delayed. You know how it is. A hunt goes long. The crop gets rain-delayed and the delay just rolls over everything else. Other projects—carving wheels, painting the walls—get in the way. Eventually Bob gets through the to-do list and starts getting a new issue of his zine out. Eventually we did, too.

Besides, we’re introducing a new columnist, Nicole Kimberling, who will write about food. This time, she starts us off with that most delightful of foods: brownies. (Read it here.)

Reviews

“Unusual and imaginative, with a distinct literary tone and a lot of characters on the far edge of sanity, if not beyond.”
—Lois Tilton, Locus Online

“This small black and white irregularly-published journal is much bigger inside than it is outside.”
—Terry Weyna, Fantasy Literature

SF Revu

Fiction

A. D. Jameson, The Wolves of St. Etienne
Jessy Randall, The Hedon-Ex Anomaly
K. M. Ferebee, Thou Earth, Thou
Karen Heuler, Elvis in Bloom
M. K. Hobson, A Sackful of Ramps
Carol Emshwiller, The Mismeasure of Me
David Rowinski, Music Box
Joan Aiken, The Sale of Midsummer
Sarah Harris Wallman, The Malanesian

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sending All Your Love—In the Form of Brownies Through the Mail
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
About these Authors

Poetry

Sarah Heller, Four Poems
Sarah Heller, Garden
David Blair, Five Poems

Cover

Kathleen Jennings

Made by: Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, Jedediah Berry, and Michael J. DeLuca.
Readers: Su-Yee Lin, Samantha Guilbert, Cristi Jacques, Hannah Goldstein, Matthew Harrison.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.27, August 2011. ISSN 1544-7782. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw

Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 17 of the paper edition or here). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO & Swets.

LCRW is available as an ebook through smallbeerpress.com, Weightless Books, and occasionally as a trade paperback and ebook from lulu.com/sbp.

Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Paper edition printed by the good people at Paradise Copies, 21 Conz St., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-0414.

As always, thanks for reading.

We wish Michael J. DeLuca were not leaving Small Beer East for Detroit but we wish him and Erin well and we’re very grateful for his time, his bread, beer, and good cheer. He’s provided more help than we could list in 60 pages, never mind in this note. Thanks, Michael.

About these Authors

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was born in Rye, England. After her first husband’s death, she sup- ported her family by copyediting at Argosy and worked at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She wrote for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, and Women’s Own, and over a hundred books—perhaps the best known of which are the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction, and was awarded an MBE. “The Sale of Midsummer” was first published in Ghostly Grim and Gruesome (Helen Hoke, ed., 1976) and was recently collected in The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories.

David Blair’s first book, Ascension Days, was chosen by Thomas Lux for the Del Sol Poetry Prize. He teaches at the New England Institute of Art.

Gwenda Bond lives in Lexington, KY, with her husband, the writer Christopher Rowe, and a number of pets, chilled bottles of champagne, books, and just the right number of screwball comedies.

Carol Emshwiller’s most recent books include The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1, a novel, The Secret City, and a collection, I Live with You. She lives in New York City.

K. M. Ferebee was bred, born, and raised in Texas. Currently she lives, more or less, in New York City. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer and The Brooklyn Rail. She has a strange obsession with the geography of London, and no great gift for gardening.

Sarah Heller received her BA from Bard College and her MFA in poetry from NYU. She teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University, and was the Executive Director of the Authors League Fund from 2000–2010, where she now serves as Executive Advisor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in RealPoetik, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, NextBook, The Temple/El Templo, Thin Air, The Apocalypse Anthology, The Literary Companion to Shabbat, and Hayloft. She has received fellowships or awards from the Drisha Institute, MacDowell Colony, Virginia Council for the Creative Arts, Centre D’Art I Natura (Spain), Vermont Studio Center, and Soul Mountain Retreat. She is on the Board of Directors of Nightboat Books and Triskelion Arts.

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in anthologies and in dozens of literary and speculative publications from Alaska Quarterly Review and Arts & Letters to Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Weird Tales. She has published two novels and a short story collection, and has won an O. Henry award. She lives in New York City with her dog, Booker Prize, and cat, Pulitzer.

M. K. Hobson’s short fiction has recently appeared in the Haunted Legends anthology, as well as in Realms of Fantasy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Postscripts. She is the author of two novels, The Native Star and The Hidden Goddess. She lives in Oregon.

A. D. Jameson is the author of the novel Giant Slugs and the prose collection Amazing Adult Fantasy. He contributes regularly to the group literary blog Big Other.

Nicole Kimberling resides in Bellingham, Washington with her epically long-time partner, Dawn Kimberling, two bad cats and a rotating assortment of houseguests. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Though currently the editor of Blind Eye Books, she has mostly made her money working as a professional cook.

Jessy Randall’s stories, poems, and other things have appeared in Asimov’s, Flurb, and McSweeney’s. Her young adult novel The Wandora Unit is about love and friendship in the high school literary crowd.

David Rowinski splits his time between Amherst with his sons and East Africa where his wife, Sali Oyugi, runs their bar and inn. He has taught English in Cairo, worked in a youth hostel in Athens, been a PCA in Zurich, a security guard in Boston, and is currently painting houses to pay the bills. Last year he found out he was adopted and is tracking down his half sister via the internet. All of this will find its way into the stories he has yet to write.

After stints in Arkansas, Nashville, Charlottesville, England, New York, and Pittsburgh, Sarah Harris Wallman settled in New Haven CT, where she teaches English and creative writing at Albertus Magnus College. She has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Her fiction and plays have previously appeared in Brooklyn’s L Magazine, readshortfiction. com, and once in a swimming pool atop a midtown Marriott.


Secret book revealed

Fri 29 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

in Harvard Book Store newsletter!

“Fabulous local author Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners) has created a special edition book on Paige (our book-making robot) entitled I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It. The hearts of booksellers and librarians everywhere will immediately be warmed by this title, but here’s a little note from Kelly that explains the unusual title choice:  “When you work at a bookshop, hopeful customers sometimes come up to the counter and say, “I don’t know the author or the title, but it’s red (green, blue, etc) and it has xxxxx in it.” (I’ve said it myself at least once or twice.) Anyway, for a couple of years, my husband Gavin and I have had a running joke about using this as the title of a collection. These three stories have appeared before, in other collections, but we were hoping that an all-zombie mini-book would make a good sampler for new readers. We designed the book and printed it in less than twenty-four hours. How amazing: to see your book made before your eyes! We’re now thinking about other projects for Paige M. Gutenborg.”  It’s a slim and gorgeous new book–and it’s currently only available at Harvard Book Store! Order your copy here.”


LCRW August 2011 (aka #27) debuts this Thursday in Boston

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We made a secret book today at the Harvard Bookstore on Paige M. Gutenborg, their on demand printer. It was awesome. We did a tiny bit of work on it last night, finished it this morning and had finished books in hand by this afternoon! More on that when we get it organized!

But, also, what is now? Now is LCRW 27!

Available in print format by the end of the week, mailed out, next week, read and devoured from now until English she is no longer spoke.

And here is what it is:

Fiction

A. D. Jameson, The Wolves of St. Etienne
Jessy Randall, The Hedon-Ex Anomaly
K. M. Ferebee, Thou Earth, Thou
Karen Heuler, Elvis in Bloom
M. K. Hobson, A Sackful of Ramps
Carol Emshwiller, The Mismeasure of Me
David Rowinski, Music Box
Joan Aiken, The Sale of Midsummer
Sarah Harris Wallman, The Malanesian

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sending All Your Love
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
About these Authors

Poetry

Sarah Heller, Four Poems
Sarah Heller, Garden
David Blair, Five Poems

Cover

Kathleen Jennings


A Slepyng Hound to Wake

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9781931520263 · 288 pp · July 19, 2011 · trade cloth/ebook

In his second bibliomystery, Boston bookhound Henry Sullivan has a new girlfriend, a new apartment, and a shelfload of troubles.

Chaucer said “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.” Henry Sullivan, bookhound, is ready to be that sleeping dog: to settle down in his new apartment and enjoy life with his new girlfriend.

But the underside of the literary world won’t let him go. A bookscout sells Henry a book—and is murdered later that night. An old friend asks him to investigate a case of possible plagiarism involving a local bestselling author. To make matters worse, his violinist neighbor seems to have a stalker. And wherever Henry goes, there’s a cop watching him.

Henry can read the signs: to save those he loves he has to save himself.

“In 22 years of bookselling I find that readers remain endlessly fascinated with an insider look at the book business—an oxymoron right there.
Vincent McCaffrey offers a real insider’s view in A Slepyng Hound to Wake—a quote from Chaucer—the sequel to the splendid hit, Hound. I’d call them “biblio-noirs” rather than bibliomysteries: the deeds are dark even though bookhound Henry Sullivan becomes involved in what first seem academic rather than criminal matters. How likely is it that the possible ripping-off (OK, plagiarism) of a bestselling author could lead to murder? Dark, too, is Henry’s outlook on his professional world where centuries of tradition are daily eroded by digital publishing and internet bookselling. This gloom carries over into his relationships, freighting them in a classic noir fashion. Still, Henry is a character cut from Raymond Chandler: a modern knight on a mission to save those, and what, he loves.”
—Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen

“McCaffrey makes good use of his Boston setting. . . . Slepyng Hound provides an easy, intelligent read.”
—Gumshoe Reviews

“In McCaffrey’s compelling second mystery to feature Boston book dealer Henry Sullivan (after 2009’s Hound), Henry is unsettled by the murder of a fellow “book hound” down on his luck, Eddy Perry, who just sold Henry a rare volume of Lovecraft horror stories. Later, former girlfriend Barbara Krause, the owner of Alcott & Poe, an independent bookstore, asks Henry’s help in investigating a plagiarism case. Sharon Greene, one of Barbara’s employees, has accused a local literary heavyweight, George Duggan, of stealing from the work of the late James Frankowski, a little-known writer with whom Sharon lived for years. Meanwhile, Barbara struggles to keep Alcott & Poe afloat in an era of recession and e-commerce. A longtime bookstore owner himself, McCaffrey places less emphasis on crime solving than on the larger question of the printed word’s place in today’s world. Evocative prose and characterizations will remind many of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels.”
—Publishers Weekly

“There’s a Woody Allen tone to this one, and you’ll enjoy sharing it with bibliophiles or anyone who appreciates quirky characters. The plotting and weaving of story lines hide a clever puzzle, but most readers will forget they’re reading a mystery until all the pieces fall into place at the very end. Lisa Lutz fans could like this.”
—Library Journal

“Henry’s second (Hound, 2009) is not for those who require a fast and furious story line. The strong mystery is woven into a slow-paced, philosophical discussion of the painful demise of those special bookstores whose nooks and crannies once yielded fabulous finds.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Start reading:

Chapter One

The books were like corpses, the ink of lost dreams dried in their veins. On a bad day, Henry Sullivan felt like a mortician salvaging the moldering flesh of small decaying bodies to be preserved for a proper burial. But, on a good day, though there seemed to be fewer of those of late, he might save something which left him giddy.

Henry pulled the second box free from a mat of cat hair and dust beneath the bed, and peeked beneath the lid.

“Yes!”

The foul odor of the mattress too close to his face, made him swallow the word along with the impulse to gag.
A month before, after lifting the spoiled leaves of disbound volumes abandoned in a basement beneath the seep of a ruined foundation, he had uncovered loose pages sheltered by a collapsed box of empty Croft Ale bottles. Separating the layers until the fetor of mold had made him dizzy, he had salvaged a bundle six inches thick of cream colored rag paper broadsides, announcements, and advertisements, all in French. They had been discarded by a print collector interested only in the engravings originally meant to illustrate the words. And in the heart of that, Henry had found a first printing of ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.’

Those rare sheets were sold now to the highest bidder, but they were a part of the romance Henry imagined about himself. It was still his belief that long before Foucault and Derrida, when words still offered a common meaning, the world could be changed by the content of a few fragile pages. And this was why Henry Sullivan loved his job.

And this happened every once in awhile, more often to him than others he thought, because he had a nose for it.

Henry pushed a broom hand into the depths of the crevice below the bed frame. Again he heard the hollow strike on a box. . . .

Praise for Hound:

“There’s something charismatic and timeless about the way the story builds and McCaffrey opens Henry’s life to the reader . . . McCaffrey is . . . just telling a compelling, old-school yarn, the kind of story a man who knows his literature tells.”
—Time Out Chicago

“For the true bibliophile, this is a book you’ll love.”
—The Hippo

Cover by Tom Canty.

Vincent McCaffrey’s novel Hound was chosen as a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. He has owned the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop for more than thirty years. He has been paid to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. He has chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller. A Slepying Hound to Wake is his second novel and he is hard at work on the next novel featuring Henry Sullivan.


Ayize (San Francisco), Kelly et al (Boston), Geoff (NYC)

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Busy week for Small Beer readings:

Thursday, July 21, Ayize Jama-Everett is reading from The Liminal People (you can sign up here to get a free copy from LibraryThing) as part of an open reading at the “Black Futurists: Progressive Thought to Sci-Fi” exhibit:

African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC)
1410 Turk St, San Francisco, CA 94115 (Map)
(415) 922-2049

Jul 21st, 2011 (Thu)
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Open Mic – Hosted my D. Scot Miller

Location: Floor 1

D. Scot Miller welcomes featured Black Futurist readers and host open mic. Speculative and fantastic poetry and fiction that explores possible and alternate futures within and around the diaspora are welcome!

The same night (7/19, 7 PM) here in Boston, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (me!), David Blair, Michael J. DeLuca will be reading from the new issue of LCRW, #27, at the New England Institute of Art.

The Library Reading Room, Second Floor, Main Campus
New England Institute of Art, 10 Brookline Place West, Brookline, MA 02445-7295
1.617.739.1700 • 1.800.903.4425

And on Wednesday (7/20, 7 PM) down there in Gotham City, Geoff Ryman will be celebrating the release of his first short story collection, Paradise Tales, at the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series, held every month at the most excellent KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., NYC.

And then next Tuesday (7/26, 7 PM), in LA, Lydia Millet reads from her first children’s book, The Fires Beneath the Sea, at another most excellent venue, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California.

Hope you can get out to one of them. Photos always welcome!


Redemption in Indigo wins the Mythopoeic Awards!

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Redemption in Indigo coverCongratulations to Karen Lord, who, along with Megan Whelan Turner(!), Michael Ward, and Caroline Sumpter, are this year’s winners of the Mythopoeic Awards!

Wandering around the Mythopoeic Society site, I couldn’t resist looking at their complete list of award winners, which would make a pretty fine reading list for the past forty years of fantasy.

Congratulations again to Karen and thanks to the jury and the Mythopoeic Society for the work they do—and for such cheery news this morning!


Oops, oh well, sorry, and what’s TK

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry to announce that I am cancelling the 2012 Daily Planner. I’ve talked to Consortium, our distributor, and they’ll be passing the message through the official channels, so at some point soon it will disappear from your fave indie bookstore. All pre-orders will be refunded this week.

I will post what we have as an ebook for a nominal sum (99 cents?) and maybe put it on Lulu.com as a print on demand title, but for the most part this Planner won’t be coming out from us again.

I ran into too many obstacles and ran out of time. The 2013 edition was already problematical due to travel commitments in spring 2012. I apologize to those who were looking forward to it and, given the profusion of planners available, expect that they will find a decent substitute.

Here are the 99c ebook editions of the previous editions: 2012, 2011, 2010

It’s hard to admit that I have to put a stop on this title but this might be a good time to list a few upcoming titles: I’m in the middle of adding eight more titles to Consortium’s Summer 2012 catalog—including short story collections by Kij Johnson (At the Mouth of the River of Bees) and Nancy Kress (untitled as yet, maybe Fountain of Age), a huge fantastic debut by Sofia Samatar (A Stranger in Olondria), a paperback of the just-published Lydia Millet novel, The Fires Beneath the Sea and a hardcover of the second book in the series, Shimmers in the Night, paperback editions of The Serial Garden (which, although we have a few at the office, is pretty much sold out in hardcover), Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy, Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See, Geoff Ryman’s Unconquered Countries, and Laurie J. Marks’s Earth Logic.

And then this weekend at Readercon we talked to a couple of authors about putting out ebook editions of their backlist as well as putting out some new work. Can’t say who as that would be silly as then it would magically not happen and I would look even sillier than I do for having to cancel the Planner.

One project I’m happy to talk about is the potential Collected Stories of Joanna Russ. Graham Sleight talked to me about it on Sunday. Over the past couple of years, working with the much missed Joanna, Graham put together an approximately 900-page manuscript which includes preferred versions of all her stories in three collections, as well as what amounts to basically a whole new collection of stories. But rather than reprint the books, since some of the stories would be ever so slightly different, I think that once we’ve talked to the estate and the agent, unless someone else steps in (which is fine with me, as long as the books come out I will be happy), then we’ll work on putting it out in two huge paperbacks. Once the book starts to look more likely, we may be asking for help with transcription as it is a huge project and I hope there are enough fans of Joanna Russ with quick and accurate fingers who can help.

Anyway, that’s the news from this morning. Readercon report may yet follow, you never know.


Paradise Tales

Tue 12 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Books, Geoff Ryman| Posted by: Gavin

Trade paper/ebook · 9781931520645/9781931520447 · 320 pp · July 12, 2011

Sunburst Award Winner
Lambda Award Finalist

Geoff Ryman writes about the other and leaves us dissected in the process. His stories are set in recognizable places—London, Cambodia, tomorrow—and feature men and women caught in recognizable situations (or technologies) and not sure which way to turn. They, we, should obviously choose what’s right. But what if that’s difficult? What will we do? What we should, or . . . ?

Paradise Tales follows the success of Ryman’s most recent novel, The King’s Last Song, and builds on that with three Cambodian stories included here, “The Last Ten Years of the Hero Kai,” “Blocked,” and the exceedingly-popular “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter.” Paradise Tales includes stories selected from the many periods of Ryman’s career including “Birth Days,” “Omnisexual,” “The Film-makers of Mars,” and a new story, “K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career).”

Small Beer Press has also reprinted two of Ryman’s novels, The Child Garden and Was, with new introductions or afterwords to continue to build the readership of one of the most fascinating writers exploring the edges of being, gender, science, and fiction.

Geoff Ryman Locus interview.

Reviews

“Paradise Tales includes one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in the last 10 years.”
—New York Times

“In the best of Ryman’s fiction, the world unfolds in ways that are at once astonishing and thoroughly thought out, both radically disorienting and emotionally powerful.”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“The stories gathered here from across Ryman’s career narrate paradise and its stories in ways that are far from conventionally utopian. Rather, Ryman’s paradises are not only largely intangible but often built on and out of loss. Reading his quasi-fairytales and other flights of passionate fantasy, we will always be reminded that these paradises, like all paradises, are places that can never be—except in fiction. For Ryman, however, this is an essential exception, as the power of story to heal and repair across time and across cultures becomes a recurrent theme in the collection…. By the end of Paradise Tales, however, the reader will understand that Ryman has already invented such a device: whether it is fantasy, science fiction, or some fiction in-between, the utopian, revelatory tool for Ryman is simply fiction itself.”
—Strange Horizons

“A prophet of the flesh, Geoff Ryman is fascinated by biology, our human capacity (shared with the rest of squishy creation) for bodily transcendence, degeneration and metamorphosis. Whether contemplating the genetics of homosexuality (“Birth Days”), the lives of transgenic sophonts (“Days of Wonder”), or the humiliating transformations attendant upon aging (“VAO”), he brings a kind of saintly compassion and insight to his characters. But not all the entries in Paradise Tales conform to this paradigm. There are cosmopolitan explorations, such as the Cambodian-centric “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” and “Blocked.” And there are densely speculative cyber-forecasts like “The Future of Science Fiction.” But all benefit from Ryman’s economical yet lapidary prose.”
—Asimov’s

“I recommend this collection to both Ryman’s existing fans and those new to his work. It is a beautiful and challenging treasure of a book.”
—Cascadia Subduction Zone

“Short-form speculative fiction doesn’t get much better than this.”
— J. J. S. Boyce, AESciFi—the CanadianScience Fiction Review

* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes. “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter,” a Cambodian ghost story, and “The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai,” a samurai-style narrative, have the delicacy of Asian folktales or lyrical fantasies. By contrast, “V.A.O.,” about a future society destabilized by prohibitively expensive health care, and “The Film-makers of Mars,” which suggests that Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter stories were drawn from life, are set in futures that credibly extrapolate current scientific and cultural trends. Ryman (The King’s Last Song) frequently explores human emotional needs in heartless environments, as in “Warmth,” which poignantly portrays a young boy’s bond with his robot surrogate mother. Readers of all stripes will appreciate these thoughtful tales. ”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Contents

The Film-makers of Mars
The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai
Birth Days
V.A.O.
The Future of Science Fiction
Omnisexual
Home
Warmth
Everywhere
No Bad Thing
Talk Is Cheap
Days of Wonder
You
K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career)
Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter
Blocked

Praise for Geoff Ryman’s most recent novel:

“[Ryman] has not so much created as revealed a world in which the promise of redemption takes seed even in horror.”
—The Boston Globe

“Inordinately readable . . . extraordinary in its detail, color and brutality.”
—The Independent (UK)

Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels The King’s Last Song, Air (a Clarke and Tiptree Award winner), 253, Lust, and The Unconquered Country (a World Fantasy Award winner). Canadian by birth, he has lived in Brasil, resides in the UK and is a frequent visitor to Cambodia.


Kelly’s new story Valley of the Girls

Mon 11 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

is up in Gwenda Bond’s YA issue of Subterranean Online—which has had some knockout stories in it. Anyway, the link to the new Link is here.

Fiction: Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link

http://subterraneanpress.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/subterraneanpress/images/header.gif


Hell of a week

Mon 11 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Paradise Tales coverFirst: a new interview with Karen Joy Fowler! That is one smart person. (Two, since Charles Tan did the interview.)

This week we have a new book out. What? You didn’t know? It’s true that Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales was delayed a couple of times, but, Bam! Here it is. What a book. More on that later. Later this week, that is. Later this month, two series books (from me, who loves standalone titles!), Hound 2, as we call A Slepyng Hound to Wake and the first book in Lydia Millet’s new series for kids, The Fires Beneath the Sea.

Geoff’s one of the Guests of Honor at Readercon so we’re going to give him a beer and get him to sign a ton of books. If you would like them personalized, we;ll see what we can do.

Readercon begins for us on Friday when we take some books &c* in to the dealer’s room where we get to catch up with some friends—and buy some books from them. Should be a busy time as, yes, we are bringing our daughter Ursula, so we’ll see how well this works.

Here’s my tiny Readercon Schedule:

LCRW Stainless Water Bottle 0.6L2:00 PM NH    Three Messages and a Warning group reading. Chris N. Brown, Michael J. DeLuca, Gavin J. Grant. Gavin Grant (publisher), Chris N. Brown (editor) and Michael J. DeLuca (translator) read from the anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, forthcoming from Small Beer Press.

3:00 PM Vin.    Kaffeeklatsch. Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link.

And I will post Kelly’s when I’m more sure of it.

* What can the &c be? We’ve heard tell of t-shirts. Maybe. Water bottles? No. Drinkables? Surely not?


On a happier note (signed books galore)

Thu 7 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

we have copies of two new books in stock! Lydia Millet’s first book for kids, The Fires Beneath the Sea (our third Big Mouth House title), and Geoff Ryman’s long-delayed new collection, Paradise Tales. One for the kids, one for the adults!

Los Angeles News Flash! We just confirmed a reading for Lydia on July 26th at 7 PM at the most excellent indie Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

Boston, not a news flash: Geoff is one of the Guests of Honor at Readercon in Boston next week (and is reading at KGB in NYC after that) so we will have stacks of his books for your enjoyment. We’ll also have some signed copies in the office after the con.

Which reminds me of one of the things we should make more of a fuss about . . . we have signed copies of a bunch of our books! Order here and they’re yours (free shipping in the US & Canada as usual):

Alan DeNiro · Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead (5)

Carol Emshwiller · The Mount (5); Carmen Dog (2)

Greer Gilman · Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales (2)

Julia Holmes · Meeks (6)

John Kessel · The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (5 hardcovers)

Kelly Link · Stranger Things Happen (5)

Kelly Link · Magic for Beginners (5)

Laurie J. Marks · Water Logic (7)

Vincent McCaffrey · Hound (5)

Maureen F. McHugh · Mothers & Other Monsters (8 pb, 4 hc)

Benjamin Parzybok · Couch (5)

Geoff Ryman · The King’s Last Song (2)

Sean Stewart · Mockingbird (1);  Perfect Circle (4)

Jennifer Stevenson · Trash Sex Magic (2)

Howard Waldrop · Howard Who? (7)


InDesign bottleneck

Thu 7 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Dum de dum, new issue of LCRW, dum de dum, redoing a galley, dum de dum, finishing a book, dum de dum, all on hold!

Bugger. The things I can do with technology—and not good things. The “paragraph styles” have disappeared in InDesign on my laptop. I hate re/installing InDesign, it takes foreeeever. So I tried contacting them since I can’t find anything about this problem online.

Good part: they responded in one day instead of the promised three (3 days? really? must be busy people) and they apologized for the trouble.

Bad part: despite paying $$ for InDesign 4—a good but annoying program which won’t even open files properly made in ID3—it turns out to get support I need to buy a support contract. (Ever looked for something on Adobe’s site? Ack!)

Hmm. Let’s check this week’s mail: submissions to LCRW, queries to the press, bills from printers and assorted vendors, random check for $175 to cover a year of support? Er, no. Darn. Morning becomes reinstallation and a prayer, I spose.

Oh well. Aimee Mann has come up on random shuffle and that seems about right.


Soul Available

Wed 6 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Eek! Maureen McHugh sent us an updated bio for After the Apocalypse:

Maureen F. McHugh was born in what was then a sleepy, blue collar town in Ohio called Loveland. She went to college in Ohio, and then graduate school at New York University. She lived a year in Shijiazhuang, China. Her first book, China Mountain Zhang, was published in 1991. Since then she has written three novels and a well received collection of short stories. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has attempted to sell her soul to Hollywood.


Liminal People giveaway

Thu 30 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Git git git over to Goodreads and git yourself a copy of this science fiction thrill-ill-iller! We’re publishing it in December but we have 20 copies for going-to-be-happy readers to enjoy long before that cold cold month comes along.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett

The Liminal People

by Ayize Jama-Everett

Giveaway ends July 07, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win


Independents Week: July 1–7

Wed 29 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Celebrate Independents Week with independent businesses across the country—and around the world as the movement grows. Shopping at local independent businesses pays wages to people in your area—who can then afford to buy books: maybe even yours!

Check out the American Independent Business Alliance for more information. In celebration of Independents Week, visit your local bookshop—remember most books are still bought at brick and mortar bookshops. Even chosing to buy one or two more books per year locally will make a difference to the viability of your local bookstore.

We all shape our towns by choosing which stores to shop at: we hope you will choose your local indie bookshop!

If you don’t have a great local indie, then here are a few suggestions from our ever-expanding list of favorites (use indiebound.org to find more near you):

Starting in Massachusetts (since that’s where we are) in Boston there’s the Brookline Booksmith, Harvard Bookstore, Porter Square Books, the Brookline Village Children’s Bookshop. Farther out there’s Back Pages in Waltham and Storybook Cove in Hanover. In Western Mass., we like Broadside Books (Northampton), Odyssey Books (South Hadley), Amherst Books (Amherst), as well as the utterly unique Bookmill in Montague (converted from an old mill, and gorgeous).

Down south of us in New York City there are fantastic general and specialty bookshops including St. Mark’s Bookshop, McNally Jackson, Shakespeare & Co., Hue-Man Books & Cafe, and (especially irresistible with its cupcake cafe!) Books of Wonder, as well as the Drama Book Shop, Asia Store, Idlewild, and Kitchen Arts and Letters—and don’t miss Word and Greenlight in Brooklyn. Upstate we recommend the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and the Spotty Dog in Hudson—dear to our hearts as they also serve beer.
Since we’ve already run out of space on this page before we left the northeast (and what about RiverRun in Portsmouth, NH, or all those lovely shops in Vermont?) we obviously can’t list every bookshop we’ve enjoyed visiting here (even those above are heavily edited) so please add your favorite bookshops in the comments.

And if you’re in D.C. don’t miss Politics & Prose. Or Quail Ridge in Raleigh, N.C., Skylight in L.A., Powell’s (or Murder by the Book or Reading Frenzy) in the other Portland . . . you get the idea Keep it indie this week, and every week!

Originally published in A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011.


New audio books

Wed 29 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Just in: Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo.

Coming soon: Julia Holmes’s Meeks, Holly Black’s The Poison Eaters and Other Stories.

Coming down the pike: Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series plus three more books. All of which means soon you will be able to take a Virgin Galactic ride into space and listen to Small Beer books all the way!


2011 Catalog & more

Mon 27 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

The Child Garden coverWe have a new catalog! It’s up on Scribd already and at some point there may even be a print edition. Don’t know if it will be color glorious color thoughout, so you have to look there to see all the lovely lovely bookcovers we have this year. The cover is Kathleen Jennings’s picture from the cover of The Child Garden. The back cover art is a secret. Well, until you look at it. More secrets inside. Mostly on page 28. Completists can see or download all our catalogs here.

Nice: Patrick Ness won the U.K.’s Carnegie medal for Monsters of Men (the third Chaos Walking book).

What’s coming up? Joan Aiken stories! “Spur of the Moment” in Eleven Eleven. “Hair” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. “Reading in Bed” on Tor.com.

Karen Joy Fowler’s collection is on the (quite!) long Frank O’Connor Award longlist.

If we had been faster on the draw, this story by Christine Sneed would have been in the next LCRW—which approacheth completion! Honest, guv. Christine didn’t simultaneously submit it, rather she sent us a nice postcard withdrawing her story after we’d had it for too long. Shame on me! I am trying to read faster, but the eyes, they can’t do it. In the meantime, I recommend this story of “Fortune“:

His plan was small but ambitious. He began by designing business cards on his computer, using purple ink on white paper and Clip-art pictures of Merlin’s hat, a crystal ball, and a spray of stars that arced upward from his name.

We were luckier with other stories! We’re already buying for next spring. Of note, since I was adding some new titles to Weightless Books: 12.6% (or 1/8, near as just about) of subscribers to LCRW now subscribe to the ebook edition. Hmm! But we like print, so until it’s the other way around, I think we’ll keep with the paper edition.

Back to the new issue: we have a cover from Kathleen Jennings, who we love.

Go get it: Small Beer Press 2011 Catalog


Inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award

Mon 20 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

A Life on Paper: Stories coverWe’re immensely honored to pass on the news that the inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award for long-form work has gone to A Life on Paper: Stories by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin. The awards were presented at the 2011 Eurocon in Stockholm (winners and honorable mentions below).

The full announcement on the awards—and the wonderful and generous jury comments—is here, along with statements from the winners. We’re honored and humbled and would like to thank the the jury and the award administrators—what a job, trying to corral all those books from publishers all over the world to a similarly scattered jury!

A Life on Paper is a great book and our publishing it is all down to the translator, Edward Gauvin: thanks Edward!

Long Form Winner

A Life on Paper: Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer Press). Original publication in French (1976­-2005).

Long Form Honorable Mention

The Golden Age, Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive Press). Original publication in Czech as Zlatý V?k (2001).

Short Form Winner

“Elegy for a Young Elk”, Hannu Rajaniemi, translated by Hannu Rajaniemi (Subterranean Online, Spring 2010). Original publication in Finnish (Portti, 2007).

Short Form Honorable Mention

“Wagtail”, Marketta Niemelä, translated by Liisa Rantalaiho (Usva International 2010, ed. Anne Leinonen). Original publication in Finnish as “Västäräkki” (Usva (The Mist), 2008).


Not all media is mediocre

Fri 17 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We recently watched the last episode of the British TV series Downtown Abbey which was a hit earlier this year. It was a fun soap, but the last episode was such a big soft pudding that my strong recc. (for those with the stomach to watch Edwardian-era upper class goings-on) drops to: Meh, maybe, but go walk the dog instead of watching the last episode. Blech. Wikipedia says there’s another season being made. Wonder if it too will be full of people holding themselves stiffly away from one another, doing the right thing, and jolly well getting what they deserved. Especially as this season ended with the Great War being declared. Hmm.

On the other end of the spectrum I was searching on YouTube for sign language videos (I am learning a tiny bit of sign language, but sooo slowly!) and found this Pearl Jam concert video of “Given to Fly” filmed in St. Louis in 2000, where, apparently to Eddie Vedder’s surprise, there was a sign language interpreter signing the songs. I am a casual fan of theirs (never seen them live) and can’t really say if this is a good rendition of the song (musically or ASL-ly) but every time I watch it I’m moved to tears. Silly me. Even Vedder’s silly dancing with her at the end isn’t enough to break it. Whoever set that up, I love the idea. Anyone who ever wants to sign any reading or panel of ours: you’re on. Video pasted in below.

Redemption in Indigo

Guess what showed up at the office? (Not me, sorry!) The absolutely new and shiny Recorded Books audiobook edition of Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo. Heartily recommended!

You can hear Karen herself here: Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe have a nice thing going with their weekly podcast. A couple of weeks ago they talked with Karen Lord and even though Skype dropped the call a few times it was still lovely to hear them talking about Redemption in Indigo and much more.


Patricia Anthony?

Tue 7 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Does anyone have current contact info for Patricia Anthony?


Catching up a little

Mon 6 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

with orders and shipping having not managed to get into the last week due to it being sunny outside and spending all my time in a beer garden a small cough which managed to throw a wrench in many plans! Sorry about that.

What do we have in the office?

Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden!

Which comes with a new introduction by Wendy Pearson and a lovely new cover by Kathleen Jennings. The Child Garden was supposed to come out after Paradise Tales but logistics has held that book up so much that now it comes out in July. So, in the meantime: damn, what a book! If you haven’t read it you can start reading it right now here. It’s a weird, great, heartbreaking book. Can’t wait for the 3D movie. I mean, come on, why not? Polar bears playing piano. Who doesn’t want to see that?

What else do we have in the office? A surprise copy of The Night Circus by Erica Morgenstern—sent by the author after she saw my oh-so-sad post last week! Wow, don’t know if anyone’s done that before: thanks Erica!

Also in the office: a contract from an author! But, I’m not going to say anything about it until I confirm that they get my signed copy back in the mail.

One piece of good news from the last week is that we’ve sold about half the run of the limited edition of Hal Duncan’s A-Z of the Fantastic City. Maybe we should always do limitedssss? Also: thank you everyone who wrote or posted about it. You really are lovely people, aren’t you? We kind of needed a wee boost like that and it was wunnerful, you have our thanks.

Looks like next Sunday’s Franciscan Hospital for Children’s 5K walk/run has already raised $90,000! We can’t take part this year but encourage anyone who can. Or, just send them some money! What else were you going to today? Pick up yet another Apple toy?


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