Tue 11 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Listen to Ben Parzybok on kboo.fm today at 1.30 EST (10.30 PST).

  • SciFi Dimensions is having their annual auction—so you can go pick up some good books and support the site, including Couch and The King’s Last Song.
  • Tamora Pierce on Pretty Monsters; PM is a Staff Pick at Powell’s; Creative Commons blog; what about that YA label; a book collector writes about PM and The Serial Garden;  an illustration for Stranger Things Happen.
  • A week late: slow zombies, please: “Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.”
  • Go on: declare yourself Indiebound.
  • Leslie & the Badgers “Old Timers” is sweet.
  • Garrison Keillor (sorry Alan!) gives the Pres-Elect some good advice.
  • A review of LCRW 21 on Xerography Debt. The good news from Davida is that the print edition will keep going by partnering with Microcosm for printing and distribution (so keep sending zines in for review!):
  • “I very much enjoyed reading LCRW #21; it’s primarily fiction but also includes poetry, nonfiction, and comics. The layout and design is impeccable: crisp, clean, beautifully formatted. Carol Emshwiller is a regular contributor and the material itself covers a wide range, from odd boarding schools to a strange co-worker writing code (I don’t want to say much more for fear of giving it away), and there isn’t a single wrong note in here.”
  • Michelle Tea, Jess Arndt, Andrea Lawlor, Miel Rose, Sara Jaffe read in Northampton on Friday, 11/14, 8 PM, at Pride & Joy.

Circuit City: why does none of the coverage of CC’s bankruptcy cover the part where they fired all their long-term staff and hired people who didn’t know anything about what they were selling and sales, duh, fell?

Duh again: The government doesn’t want to prop up the car companies: yay! These same companies have been selling more fuel-efficient cars in Asia and Europe than here. And now they’re surprised to find that this may have been a mistake.


Pub Day!

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

CouchYes, it is the day to get ye to the pub. And whether you do or don’t, we recommend taking a copy of Benjamin Parzybok’s debut novel Couch with you. It’s publication day for Couch: yay! Ben starts a bi-coastal for the books on Friday at Powell’s (should be a party!)

Ben posted a Big Idea on Scalzi’s Whatever and got a trigger-pulling response, gave a cool-headed (inspired by our Pres-Elect??) reply, and everything ended well.

Order your copy here. If you’d like a signed or personalized copy and can’t get to one of the readings, you can order one from Powell’s or: send us a note and we will make sure your copy gets signed.

Ben Parzybok on tour:

Friday, November 14, 7:30 PM
Powell’s Books
1005 W. Burnside, Portland, OR

Monday, November 17, 7:30 PM
Elliott Bay Book Company
101 S Main St., Seattle, WA, 98104

Wednesday, November 19, 7:00 PM
KGB Bar (with Caitlin R. Kiernan)
85 E 4th St, New York, NYC

Thursday, November 20, 8:00 PM
Amherst Books
8 Main Street, Amherst, MA 01002

Friday, November 21, 7:00 PM
Raconteur Books
Metuchen, NJ

Tuesday, November 25, 7:00 PM
Pandemonium Books
4 Pleasant St., Cambridge, MA 02139

Thursday, December 04, 3:00 PM
The Willamettte Store
900 State Street, Salem, OR, 97301

Friday, December 05, 5:00 PM
Waucoma Bookstore
212 Oak St., Hood River, OR, 97031


Aiken on Salon

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s good news: Laura Miller including The Serial Garden in Salon‘s critics picks:

The Serial Garden“The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories” by Joan Aiken
Throughout her life, Aiken, one of the 20th century’s greatest authors of children’s fiction, wrote stories about the Armitage family: a mother, father, sister and brother whose lives in a rural British village are routinely disrupted by magic — mostly on Mondays. Unicorns overrun the garden, the Board of Incantation attempts to requisition their house for a school for wizards, and the annoying kids next door get turned into sheep. The delicious unflappability of the parents is one of the most amusing aspects of these tales. Mrs. Armitage barely looks up from her knitting when her husband observes that the two children are riding broomsticks in the backyard: “I think it’s much better for them to get that sort of thing out of their systems when they’re small.” Buy it to read to your kids, and you’ll find yourself sneaking tastes on the sly; a little Aiken is a fine thing to have in your system at any age. — Laura Miller


Couch – Competition

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our couch photo competition: Gina Teh and Lea Deutsch, both of whom will be receiving copies of Couch.

Gina Teh:
Couch

Lea Deutsch:
Couch At the office

And a bonus shot of Will Ludwigsen:
Will Ludwigsen's couch Will Ludwigsen ponders the ineffable

Also: a fun link (via Scott Beeler).

Thanks to everyone who emailed in pics and those who spread the word. If you come across any, we’re always interested in more couch-carrying or weird couch pics.

Original rules:

  1. Carry a couch somewhere unexpected: take a picture of it. (Or, take a picture of a couch in a weird place.)
  2. Email your picture (or a link) to us by November 30, 2008 and we will send a couple of winners copies of Couch and maybe some other books.

Couch – Reviews

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

CouchReviews of Couch
Benjamin Parzybok

“Meet Erik, Tree and Thom, three unlikely new roommates sharing a Portland apartment with an inherited handmade gigantic orange couch. Here’s the plot: the three, thrown out on the street after a freak flooding of their apartment, and told to take the couch with them, appear to be compelled to carry their possibly “magical” couch on a journey of the couch’s making through the streets of Portland west to the Pacific and a different reality thousands of miles away. Quirky doesn’t begin to describe it. Parzybok, in his debut novel, sketches the three roommates and the various characters they encounter with an amazingly sure hand for one so new to the trade, and the outrageous storyline (is the couch really the “seat of power” spoken of in ancient South American legend? Is there really an ancient but still vibrant hidden civilization that is calling the couch to itself?) provides a fascinating framework on which Parzybok hangs his social and political observations and off-the-wall humor. A perfect Portland fantasy.”
—Willamette Live

“Couch hits on an improbable, even fantastic premise, and then rigorously hews to the logic that it generates, keeping it afloat (at times literally) to the end.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Couch shouldn’t be half as entertaining as it is…. In the end [Parzybok] pulls it off, even though he shouldn’t be able to.”
—Adrienne Martini, Locus

“Once upon a time, Donald Barthelme, Jonathan Lethem, and Umberto Eco attended a film festival together. The featured flicks were Kiss Me Deadly, Fitzcarraldo, and Repo Man. Inspired by this odd bill of fare, the trio set out to collaborate on a novel. The result was Benjamin Parzybok’s debut, Couch.”
—The Barnes & Noble Review

“Couch is a quick and funny read, a short fable that ensnares us in its quixotic intentions and encourages us to believe for a short time in something magic, even if it is just a couch.”
—About.com

“A fun adventure with a seductive premise.”—Popmattters.com

“My wife has a set of stories that she describes as ‘guy stories,’ a category that contains such notable tales as Easy Rider, City Slickersand Deliverance. In such a story a group of young males decide to set them selves to some inconsequential task. The journey is filled with adversity, strife, joy and tragedy as the men struggle to finish their quest. In the end the characters discover who they really are. Couchby Benjamin Parzybok is one of these stories with a healthy dose of magic realism added for seasoning.”
—SF Site

“The essential message of Couch appears to be that the world and our lives would be better if we all got off our couches (literal and metaphorical) a bit more often.”
—The Zone

“The world of furniture has been given an Odysseus. I was completely swept into the story of three loafers who burden themselves with a couch and are given a chance to risk everything and maybe save the world a little. It’s easy to look at the world today and feel a sense of hopelessness, but Couch reminds us that there is still magic in the world and that we are the heroes of our own stories.”
— Mara Lynn Luther, Chapter One Book Store, Hamilton, MT

“Beyond the good old-fashioned story, Couch meditates on heroism and history, but above all, it’s an argument for shifting your life around every now and then, for getting off the couch and making something happen.”
—The L Magazine

“The book succeeds as a conceptual art piece, a literary travelogue, and a fantastical quest.”
—Willamette Week

“Hundreds of writers have slavishly imitated—or outright ripped off—Tolkien in ways that connoisseurs of other genres would consider shameless. What Parzybok has done here in adapting the same old song to a world more familiar to the reader is to revive the genre and make it relevant again.”
—The Stranger

“Delightfully lighthearted writing. . . . Occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the enthusiastic prose carries readers through sporadic dark moments . . . Parzybok’s quirky humor recalls the flaws and successes of early Douglas Adams.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A lot of people are looking for magic in the world today, but only Benjamin Parzybok thought to check the sofa, which is, I think, the place it’s most likely to be found.Couch is a slacker epic: a gentle, funny book that ambles merrily from Coupland to Tolkien, and gives couch-surfing (among other things) a whole new meaning.”
—Paul La Farge

“One of the strangest road novels you’ll ever read. It’s a funny and fun book, and it’s also a very smart book. Fans of Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore should enjoy this.”
—Handee Books

“It is an upholstered Odyssey unlike any other you are likely to read. It is funny, confusing in places, wild and anarchic. It is part Quixote, part Murakami, part Tom Robbins, part DFS showroom. It has cult hit written all over it.”
—Scott, Me and My Big Mouth

“An amazing debut novel about three roommates who get evicted and take their couch with them on a journey that becomes a epic quest that becomes one of the most truly weird and original books I’ve read in ages.”
—Karen, A Stranger Here Myself

Reviews of “The Coder” (LCRW 21)

“My favorite story in the issue was “The Coder” by Benjamin Parzybok. Set at a software company, Brian is given the job of taking care of the one actual programmer who writes code that no one really understands but somehow works. This is pure fantasy but the story felt like myth.”
—SF Revu

“A simple enough story about a mystical programmer who produces perfect code for Nebbets Inc. and their apparently petty software. The Coder is a hermit-like figure who lives on Nebbets Inc.’s roof and who deals only with Brian Gorman, the story’s narrator. Brian modestly exploits his unique position for his own benefit—though less than others might—and his job largely involves delivering food, collecting screeds of handwritten code, and hiding from everyone, except the company’s most senior managers, the fact that the entire organisation exists on the whim of a madman on the roof. The end of “The Coder” will hardly come as a surprise, but it is nicely handled, and it maintains a neat air of mystery and irony.”
—The Fix


Benjamin Parzybok Bio

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Benjamin ParzybokBenjamin Parzybok is the creator of Gumball Poetry, a (now defunct) journal published through gumball machines, the Psychic Book Project and the Black Magic Insurance Agency, a city-wide mystery/treasure hunt. His projects have twice been selected as Best of Portland for the Willamette Week: “Best Guy Who Walks His Talk” and “Best Quarter’s Worth of Culture.”

Parzybok’s previous jobs include: congressional page, ghostwriter for the governor of Washington, web developer, Taiwanese factory technical writer, asbestos removal janitor, potato sorter, advertising copywriter, waiter, house painter, caterer, UPS unloader, alphabetizer, grocery clerk, and carpenter’s apprentice. Besides freelancing, his most recent start up is Walker Tracker, a walking community for pedometer enthusiasts.

He received a BA in Creative Writing from the Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA. He has lived in Central America, Taiwan, R.O.C., Ecuador, up and down the Pacific Northwest, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with the writer Laura Moulton and their two children.


Couch

Mon 10 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

Ebook now contains an excerpt from Benjamin Parzybok’s second novel, Sherwood Nation.

trade paper · 9781931520546 | ebook 9781931520973

COUCH. A novel. An odyssey. An epic furniture removal. A road trip. An exuberant and hilarious debut in which an episode of furniture moving gone awry becomes an impromptu quest of self-discovery, secret histories, and unexpected revelations.

Download A Reader's Guide and Companion to Couch (7993 downloads ) .

The Oregonian: “Oregon Benjamin Parzybok and the art of couch-moving”

Thom is a computer geek whose hacking of a certain Washington-based software giant has won him a little fame but few job prospects. Erik is a smalltime con man, a fast-talker who is never quite quick enough on his feet. Their roommate, Tree, is a confused clairvoyant whose dreams and prophecies may not be completely off base.

After a freak accident floods their apartment, the three are evicted—but they have to take their couch with them. The real problem? The couch—huge and orange—won’t let them put it down. Soon the roommates are off on a cross-country trek along back roads, byways, and rail lines, heading far out of Portland and deep into one very weird corner of the American dream.

Or:

A freak flood evicts three unlikely roommates from their apartment forcing them to get up off the couch . . . and start carrying it. The couch, though, has designs of its own and the roommates—uncertain of their own paths—follow the couch’s will as it leads them out of contemporary Portland and straight to ancient trouble. A once successful computer hacker with girl problems, Thom looks to science to explain the couch; Erik, a bumbling con man, hopes to capitalize on it; and Tree’s curious dreams make him the group’s truest believer.

Parzybok creates a world in which the most domestic of objects transports the reader into magical and foreign lands. He offers a welcome antidote to the doom and gloom of the television news, cheering every adult who still hopes to discover adventure lurking in the living room.

Read more about Benjamin Parzybok.

Reviews

“Beyond the good old-fashioned story, Couch meditates on heroism and history, but above all, it’s an argument for shifting your life around every now and then, for getting off the couch and making something happen.” —The L Magazine

“Delightfully lighthearted writing. . . . Occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the enthusiastic prose carries readers through sporadic dark moments . . . Parzybok’s quirky humor recalls the flaws and successes of early Douglas Adams.”
—Publishers Weekly

Two views from The Daily Evergreen:

“What I like about the novel is its epic scope and the constant, unapologetic insistence that there is something magical about this inanimate piece of furniture.” —Andrew McCarthy

“Benjamin Parzybok’s debut novel elevates this common piece of furniture from the stuff of everyday magic to something much more powerful.” —Jessica Schubert McCarthy

“A lot of people are looking for magic in the world today, but only Benjamin Parzybok thought to check the sofa, which is, I think, the place it’s most likely to be found. His book Couch is a slacker epic: a gentle, funny book that ambles merrily from Coupland to Tolkien, and gives couch-surfing (among other things) a whole new meaning.” —Paul La Farge

“Stylistically brilliant, Couch is also by turns hilarious, poignant, tender, and energizing.”
—Grasslimb

“This novel made me think, laugh, cringe, and question. It doesn’t get much better than that in what I look for in a book! Highly recommended!” —Stephanie, Twenty-Third Avenue Books

“One of the strangest road novels you’ll ever read. It’s a funny and fun book, and it’s also a very smart book. Fans of Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore should enjoy this.” —Handee Books

“It is an upholstered Odyssey unlike any other you are likely to read. It is funny, confusing in places, wild and anarchic. It is part Quixote, part Murakami, part Tom Robbins, part DFS showroom. It has cult hit written all over it.” —Scott, Me and My Big Mouth

“An amazing debut novel about three roommates who get evicted and take their couch with them on a journey that becomes a epic quest that becomes one of the most truly weird and original books I’ve read in ages.”
—Karen, A Stranger Here Myself

In the world and on the web

  • Bookslut interview: “I used to read exclusively fantasy fiction for years. I loved Ursula Le Guin, the Earthsea Trilogy, The Sword of Shanara — David Eddings was a grocery checker at a local grocery store in Spokane where I grew up. I remember reading the Belgariad and then going to visit him in the store where he still checked groceries and being so amazed that this man had written those books (and that he was still checking groceries!) It was a humbling and inspiring experience. I believe David Eddings went on to do rather well — but at the same time it was a nice introduction to the writer’s life.”
  • Featured in the PNBA Holiday Catalog (Best of the Northwest)
  • Video Interview at Library Journal
  • Benjamin Parzybok
  • ISFDB | Wikipedia | Library Thing | Goodreads
  • Find Couch in a library near you.
  • Competition winners
  • Ben was on tour in late 2008 and early 2009. If you missed it, download the  Tour Flier (PDF).
  • An interview about Gumball Poetry.

Credits

  • Cover art © Andi Watson.
    Download cover for print.
  • Author photo © Laura Moulton.

King & Russo

Fri 7 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Last night we went to see “The Odyssey Bookshop and The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts present A Conversation with Stephen King and Richard Russo moderated by Joe Donahue, host of ‘The Roundtable‘ on WAMC” at the Chapin Auditorium at Mount Holyoke College. The event raised more than $18,000 for the Food Bank and the Odyssey—one of our great local(ish) bookshop—gave them a huge check which made everyone laugh. We also supported local coffee roaster Pierce Roasters (mm, cookies) as they were donating all monies to the Food Bank. Odyssey are celebrating their 45th anniversary, not bad! Next week Rosamond Purcell is coming and the week after it’s Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies is the next title in their First Edition Club, which has more than 250 members. Wow.

Anyway: King and Russo were great fun. There were 900 people and the mics were acting up so there was some technical (and other) monkeying around (as well as some spooky feedback), but for the most part it was two pros talking about writing and the writing life.  They talked about novels vs. short stories (King’s new book is a collection, Just After Sunset) and about grounding work in the everyday details. Richard Russo (Bridge of Sighs just came out in pb) talked about something he’d been told, “You can’t jump from air to air,” which seemed to catch something right about writing. Joe Donahue (we will get one of our authors on that show!), the moderator, was very good, too. At the end he asked them a question he isn’t allowed to ask on public radio, “What’s your favorite curse word?” King talked about colloquialisms (“I wouldn’t give a tin shit for that”). Gales of laughter.

It was most excellent to see so many people at the reading. Both King and Russo signed books. The bookstore had numbered the tickets so that readers came up in blocks of 50. There are famously fast signers out there but Stephen King is up there with them, it took maybe an hour to reach our tickets, which were numbered in the 400s.


Kelly in France

Thu 6 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Wonderful news from France: La Juene Detective et Autres Histoires Estranges received the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for Nouvelle Etrangere. The translator, Michelle Charrier, also won an award:

4) Nouvelle étrangère
 ► La Jeune détective et autres histoires étranges (recueil) de Kelly Link (Denoël)

6) Prix Jacques Chambon de la traduction
► Michelle Charrier pour La Jeune détective et autres histoires étranges (de Kelly Link) (Denoël)

Everything about this edition is great: the story titles (“Plans d’urgence antizombies”), the cover, everything. It’s a mix of stories from Kelly’s first two collections and it means that Pretty Monsters will probably come out over there soon.

There’s a new interview with Kelly in BoldType:

BT: What was the first story that truly scared you?

KL: . . . My sister and I both loved a picture book called Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman. There was a drawing of a house in a forest surrounded by a fence made of human bones, and another drawing of the witch’s long, long fingers reaching out toward the bed where Teeny Tiny was supposed to be sleeping. We spent a lot of time poring over those pages. There was another picture book written and illustrated by Tomi Ungerer, called The Beast of Monsieur Racine, and we loved finding all of the bizarre details in the illustrations — a man with an axe stuck in his head in a crowd scene; a woman with a green face.

Green Man Review likes Pretty Monsters and Amazon chose it as one of the Best Teen Books of ’08.


Free Obama stickers

Thu 6 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

obama coffee stickersBlogged at Bookslut about David Erik Nelson’s fabby stickers and now Move On are giving some away:

Want a free Obama sticker to celebrate our victory? It’s designed by Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the iconic HOPE poster. And MoveOn’s giving them away totally free–even the shipping’s free. I just got mine. Click this link to get your free Obama sticker:

http://pol.moveon.org/shepstickers/?id=-8902779-LAKJEZx&rc=


The future is here

Thu 6 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

This is an amazing time to be alive. President Barack Hussein Obama. Yay! As Alisdair Gray quotes in many of his books: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”

Boo to California (and Florida and Arizona) for officially being Anti-Love States.

Some other things:

  • Christopher on spelling (and it makes us all weepy).
  • Jack is fascinated that Rahm Emanuel’s “brother is Ari Emanuel, the real-life inspiration for Ari Gold, the Hollywood agent played by Jeremy Piven on HBO’s Entourage.”
  • NYTimes on an Ecuadorian cocoa-growing coop that apparently makes great chocolate bars under the Kallari name. You can bet we are going to try this. (Ecuador is on our minds these days.)
  • Read a great science fiction YA novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, which won the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize. It has a very old-school (think John Wyndham, Heinlein, The Giver) set-up with a boy growing up in a village cut off from outside contact. As the world gets filled in it becomes clear that things have not gone well on this recently-settled world. Also: talking dogs! (To paraphrase: “Todd. Todd. Need a poo, Todd.”)
  • Jenny on Armitage Mondays.
  • PW looks at two presses we like a lot: Featherproof Books and Two Dollar Radio and the idea that indie presses can make beautiful objects that are also books.
  • Speaking of Two Dollar Radio, we both get a little bit of love in the latest issue of Details, sadly not from cover boy Keanu Reaves, but lovely to get a shout out along with Two Dollar and the magnificent Dalkey Archive. Is this the first time John Crowley (or at least one of his books) has appeared in Details?
  • The new LCRW is in the process of being assembled (a leg from here, and arm or three from there) and let’s just say how much fun it is to get a great nonfiction piece from Ted Chiang.

Don’t know why this version of WordPress hates pictures being aligned and insists on them being freestanding. Oh well.

Updated: King Rat made us check the html—this visual editor is weird. The image above has a weird “float” tag, so changed that and it went in on the right ok. The one below, the lovely Two Dollar tattoos (they’re real: see them at the Indie Press Book Fair in NYC in December) can stay where it is.


On voting today

Tue 4 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Thanks to everyone who bought books from Small Beer Press and helped us donate money to the Obama Campaign. We donated $539, $138.60, $144.80, $30, for a total of $852.40. Thank you.

Living in Northampton, Mass., our votes don’t really matter. Obama won this town in the state primaries and will win it again. The state will mostly vote for the Democratic party and John Kerry, despite his utterly useless campaign 4 years ago, will get re-elected. The next couple of years don’t look pretty here. The state is making cuts, the city is making cuts, our local hospital is letting go 75 people today. No one is expecting that in an Obama presidency great things will happen immediately (apart from the great thing of him being elected) but everyone knows that he is a much better choice than 4 more years of McCain/Bush.

It won’t make a difference, yet everyone knows voting matters. So this morning we walked down to the voting station at the local elementary school. We had our water bottles and something to read in case there was a queue. We were ready to wait in line (thanks Gwenda) to make our marks and take part in this amazing day.

Voting goodiesBut there was no wait. There were two voting booths open and we took them. In all it took maybe five minutes to get in and out the door—and that includes a couple of minutes wandering up and down the bake sale fundraiser for the defense department (now that all the government monies are being redirected to education and health, wait, maybe that happens next week, so maybe this was a fundraiser for the school).

We did our part for them (that apple walnut bar was verrry good) and ate our chili and corn bread outside basking in the late autumn sun and enjoying the sound of the kids chanting “Obama!” How about you? How was your vote?


Poets in the world

Mon 3 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

From an interview with Dana Gioia about the Big Read, Ursula Le Guin, etc., at the Clarion blog (via Locus):

Q. You have recently announced that you will be leaving the NEA in January, although both parties seem to want you to stay. Looking back, what do you hope people will see as your legacy at the NEA?

Gioia: I hope I am remembered as a good writer who put his own work aside for six years to help heal his country’s culture in a dark and divisive time. It’s important for a nation to have a few poets in its history who have played a role in civic life.


On Voting

Mon 3 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Democracy is an experiment that changes with the times. If the people choose not to vote, it opens the door to a different system of government—something I’d rather not see.

I don’t believe in the Electoral College and I don’t agree with many people who will vote tomorrow but damned if I don’t believe everyone has a right to vote. In fact, I’d rather it were like Australia here and people had to vote. If I were king (or President, I suppose) I’d go further and declare the first Tuesday in November a Federal Holiday—who doesn’t need a holiday before winter comes in?

Please vote. It is a right that few people now or ever have had.

Thanks Colleen.


Win a copy of Couch

Sun 2 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

A little fun to keep us going this month:

  1. Carry a couch somewhere unexpected: take a picture of it. (Or, take a picture of a couch in a weird place.)
  2. Email your picture (or a link) to us by November 30 and we will send a couple of winners copies of Couch and maybe some other books.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 23

Sat 1 Nov 2008 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

stapled ·  8.5 x 7 ·  60pp · $5

Made by Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, Jedediah Berry, Kendell Diane Richmond, Michael J. DeLuca, Sara Majka, Danielle Baldassini, and Anna Brenner.

Fiction

Nick Wolven, “The LoveSling”
Kat Meads, “The Emily(s) Debate the Impact of Reclusive on Life, Art, Family, Community and Pets”
Susan Wardle, “The Chance”
Alex Wilson, “A Wizard of MapQuest”
Jodi Lynn Villers, “In the Name of the Mother”
Daniel Lanza, “Holden Caulfield Doesn’t Love Me”
Kirstin Allio, “Marie and Roland”
William Alexander, “Ana’s Tag”
Mark Rich, “The Leap”
Angela Slatter, “The Girl With No Hands”

Nonfiction
Ted Chiang, “The Problem of the Traveling Salesman”

Poetry
Kim Parko, “Sailor,” “Shiny Hair,” “Schoolgirl”
Christa Bergerson, “Heliotrope Hedgerow”

Comics
Abby Denson, “Jingle Love”

Cover

Kevin Huizenga

Reviews

“Carruthers, put that bloody thing down. I think I heard a …”

About the Authors

Kirstin Allio‘s novel Garner (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award for First Fiction. She was selected one of “5 Under 35” writers to watch (and hopefully read) by the National Book Foundation. She lives in Seattle, WA, with her husband and sons.

William Alexander lives in the middle and writes on the side. This particular story is dedicated to Kelly, both of them, the sister and the author and the editor. His stories have appeared in Zahir, Weird Tales, and Postscripts, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008. He contributes to Rain Taxi Review of Books.

Jedediah Berry‘s debut novel, The Manual of Detection, comes out in February 2009 from The Penguin Press.

Christa A. Bergerson is a guardian of Nature and all of her wondrous inhabitants, even those who writhe betwixt the veil. In twilight hours, she finds pleasure traversing the wilds of Illinois and beyond. She is a Luddite, a bibliophile and suffers from occasional bouts of Chronophobia. Her poetry has appeared in Quantum Pulp, The Candor, Open Ways, Faerie Nation Magazine, and Balticon 42. She was a finalist in The Mattia Family 11th International Poetry Competition. Her poem “Sekhmet Upon the Horizon” garnered third place in the 2008 B.S.F.S. Poetry Contest.

Ted Chiang is a mild-mannered reporter by day, but at night he dons a costume and commits crime. Or fights crime. Or is a victim of crime. History will be the judge.

Abby Denson is a cartoonist and rock’n’roller in NYC. She is the creator of Tough Love: High School Confidential, Dolltopia, and Night Club, among others. She has scripted Powerpuff Girls and comics for Nickelodeon. She has webcomics on gurl.com and a dessert comic column in The L Magazine.

Daniel Lanza was born and raised in Northern California, but currently resides across country while he finishes a Masters in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. His work has appeared in Toasted Cheese Literary Quarterly and Zephyr. Like half the known world, he is currently at work on a novel. He is also collaborating on a graphic novel which will, at some point, have a website.

Kat Meads‘s most recent book publication is a novel, The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan (Chiasmus Press). She lives in California.

Chris Nakashima-Brown lives in Austin, TX. His most recent story is in the anthology Fast Forward 2.

Kim Parko is a writer, visual artist, and seasoned worrier who lives in Santa Fe, NM with her husband and dog. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 3rd bed, The Bitter Oleander, Caketrain, Diagram, and 5AM.

Mark Rich has two new fiction collections: Edge of Our Lives (RedJack) and Across the Sky (Fairwood). New stories are in Talebones, Tales of the Unanticipated, Zahir, and Analog. He is working on two books for McFarland, one on C.M. Kornbluth and what that author says about us, the other on Modern-century science fiction toys, and what they say about us. He and Martha Borchardt and Scottie Lorna, an avid squeak-toy aficionado, live in the Wisconsin coulee region.

Anna Sears is a writer/artist currently employed as a migrant holiday store worker in Staten Island, NY. She hopes to settle down soon and adopt a cat.

Angela Slatter is a Brisbane-based writer studying for a PhD in Creative Writing. Her stories have appeared in Shimmer, ONSPEC, Strange Tales II, and Twelfth Planet’s 2012. Three of her stories gained honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 20; her story “The Angel Wood” was short-listed for the Aurealis Award, and she was short-listed for the Ditmars Best New Talent award in 2008.

Jodi Lynn Villers has her MFA from North Carolina State University. She lives in downtown Raleigh with a beagle named Turtle and has written a novella about a rehabilitation camp for girls who have killed their parents. Her short-shorts have also appeared in Staccato and Quick Fiction.

Susan Wardle is a graduate of Clarion South. Her fiction has been published in the Shadow Box e-anthology, Overland, Andromeda Spaceways, Antipodean SF, Fables & Reflections, Shadowed Realms, Ticonderoga Online, and The Outcast to name a few. Susan currently lives between Sydney and the South Coast (Australia) and spends her daylight hours (and some of her night time hours) working for local government.

Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov’s, The Rambler, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Outlaw Territory II (Image), and elsewhere. He runs the audiobook project Telltale Weekly and publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art.

Nick Wolven‘s short fiction has appeared recently in Asimov’s and Paradox. He lives in Brooklyn.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.23, A Celebration, November 2008 (but actually December—and very much looking forward to January 20, 2009). ISSN 1544-7782. Text in Bodoni Book. Titles in Imprint MT Shadow. Since 1996, LCRW has usually appeared in June and November from Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA 01027 · info@smallbeerpress.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw

Subscriptions: $5 per single issue or $20/4. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library and institutional subscriptions available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as an ebook through Weightlessbooks.com and lulu.com, and as a trade paperback 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. Printed by Paradise Copies, 30 Craft Ave., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-0414.

Thanks for reading.


Chuck and the inexplicable longing

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Chuck Taylor has inspired two feelings in me with their latest anniversary shoes: a weird blind consumerist lust as well as a mild case of self-loathing for feeling same. The shoes are either truly inspired or incredibly goofy. Wait, they’re both that and more (and less).

I’m discounting the leather pair because they are ugly but mostly because at this point in the decadent western world there is no reason to kill animals for clothing. “Fairies Wear Boots” is the nominal inspiration for the yucky strappy leathery shoes. It’s such a weird great happy song, I loved it as a kid—it is awesome (and I am awed) that I can watch it on YouFabbyTube now. Luckily everyone else at the office today enjoyed it (a couple of times), too.

Now the other two designs. First is really number four and features Ozzy from the cover of Sabbath’s fourth album, the brain shaker* and intellectually-titled Volume Four. If I wear these, will I be cool? No. I might wonder if Ozzy is going to climb up my trousers and bite my head off. So these are probably out. Unless they are under the xmas tree on Dec. 25th when I will dance into the snow with them on.

The third pair are even goofier. Demon logos (designed by…?) are cool but still: “Inspired by 1978 World Tour T-shirt featuring the demon logo, Distressed print on cotton to replicate vintage tour t-shirt”—which just says lazy designer to me. And the ’78 tour (which I’d have loved to see but while my parents were ok on sending 8-year-old boys off to the beach they weren’t so much into sending us off to see stuff like this), well, it’s not exactly Sabbath at the top of their game is it? Ozzy’s almost able to stand but none of the rest can stand him and soon he’s out to be replaced by Mighty Mouse. (We still love you RJD!)

So: lust, self-loathing. Got to give props to a company who can create and exploit a need (Black Sabbath . . .  shoes!) from absolute zero. Giving into that blind lust? Hopefully not. But don’t hold me to that if they turn up in the Vegan Store.

Oops. Made a mistake. Googled “1978 black sabbath tour demon logo design” to see if I could find out whether it was designed for them or ripped off. Decided I should stop and go back to work (pitch, pitch!) but not before finding that teenagers of all ages can get as much Sabbath merch as their wallet and fashion sense (and spouse) will allow here.

Black Sabbath Chuck Taylor All Star Hi Top - Black/White/GoldBlack Sabbath Chuck Taylor All Star Hi Top - Parchment/White

*This is misleading. Sabbath sound so happy and occasionally even poppy now (especially AOR hymn-to-pubescence “Changes”) compared to all those Masters of Modern Metal Mayhem.


Sitting down with terrorists

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

From the Huffington Report (and carried everywhere except our local paper) Apparently John McCain spent New Year 1986 on holiday in Chile—and managed to fit in meeting with the country’s dictator, Pinochet.

Classy.


Surprises

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

  • Down in Greensboro, NC, the News-Record reports on a new bookshop we’re looking forward to visiting, Glenwood Community Bookshop—check out the pic of the owner (via Shelf Awareness).
  • Great interview in the Twin Cities Daily Planet (what a great name!) with Allan Kornblum of Coffee House Press—a stand up guy who has helped us out in a jam more than once or twice.
  • If you’re wondering what to get us for Christmas (or Halloween), one of these pieces by Eva_Rønnevig would be much appreciated (via the acknowledgements in Couch!). They are just fabulous and perhaps just out of our range. Oh well.
  • William Smith, one of le fave bloggers, found “an interesting bit of NYC ephemera. This edition of Treasure Island was published by and given gratis to guests of Hotel Taft.” (We are very open to any hotels who want to do special editions of our books.)
  • Just the other day listened to Terri Windling and Howard Gayton reading at the KGB Bar in June on Veronica Schanoes’s guest hosted Hour of the Wolf. (MP3 link)
  • Very sad that the Christian Science Monitor has stopped its print edition (via everywhere). That there is a good paper that deserves a wide readership.
  • Listening to Sam Phillips in concert on NPR, how lovely.

That Sam Phillips link reminded us to go check the All Songs Considered Podcast. Up until now there was one show in the list that had been downloaded: Jenny Lewis a while ago. Today, went to iTunes, chose Refresh after making sure the Preferences were to include all the missed shows. Rather than download them all, they all came up as a choice to download: plethora of riches! Right now being downloaded: Antony and the Johnsons, Byrne & Eno (should we go see them on December 2 here?), Tilly & the Wall, Circulatory Sustems, Thom Yorke’s guest dj spot (listening to a Radiohead concert, although it’s not on the auto-download list), Dengue Fever, Iron and Wine, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Rilo Kiley, Bjork, and a Few More.

Jens Leckman is doing a solo show at Northampton High School on Saturday November 1 as a fundraiser to help with costs not covered for a local teenager who was hit by a drunk driver.


Joan Aiken Bio

Tue 28 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin


Joan AikenJoan Aiken (1924—2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings, the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents’ divorce her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong.

Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories, All You’ve Ever Wanted (which included the first Armitage family stories), was published in 1953. After her first husband’s death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at Argosy and working at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women’s Own, and many other magazines.

She wrote over a hundred books (including The Way to Write for Children) and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her contributions to children’s literature.

Author photo by Rod Delroy.

About Lizza Aiken

Born into a family of writers (grandfather Conrad Aiken, mother Joan Aiken) Lizza rebelled by becoming a mime and going to study in Paris with master teachers Etienne Decroux and Jacques LeCoq. She toured with fringe theatre groups appearing at International Theatre Festivals all over Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, performing with Hesitate and Demonstrate at London’s ICA Theatre and for Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre New York. Married to osteopath David Charlaff, and then mother of two she settled in Highgate, London and directed Youth Theatre groups and wrote screenplays for Children’s BBC TV based on Joan Aiken’s popular Arabel & Mortimer stories. Lizza is now curating the Joan Aiken literary estate and designing the official website for this much loved writer at www.joanaiken.com

About Andi Watson

Andi Watson (lj, Flickr) grew up in Yorkshire. He wanted to be a mechanic when he grew up but having no aptitude for anything practical, drew and drew and drew instead. He drew at school, at college and for his degree. Then he began drawing comics, which required even more drawing but with the added difficulty of writing.

When he isn’t drawing comics he’s drawing illustrations.

He likes to draw and lives with his wife and daughter in Worcester, England.


Mock the Week

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Recommended by family in the UK this is not at all for anyone who does not enjoy sweary words. For those who don’t mind, a tea break (do not drink tea during this tea break if you are watching this clip):


Unbelievable, yet

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Working at the satellite office (as compared to the 70 storey underground moonbase where everyone else is) in Easthampton today (it’s a somewhat easier commute). The old mill we work in is (see LA Times below) “a refurbished New England mill that looks like something out of Blake, surrounded by trees that burst into violent color in the fall.” True. What isn’t mentioned is that some of the refurbishment, well, it’s more simple and whoever did it took a colorful attitude to what really needed to be done. So for instance high up in the corners between this space and the next there are gaps in the drywall around the pipes which run through the building (which carry, er, who knows? The liquified algae being turned into biofuel on the floor below us?).

trapped birdAnd one of our neighbors has left a window open. How do we know? Because this morning there was the too-familiar fluttering sound of tiny wings. Nope, not a fairy nor an angel. Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, we have a trapped birdie. No cameras here today (besides the ones on the Macs—we’ll keep trying with Photo Booth) so no pics yet….

Weekend review update:

Scott Timberg writes about Kelly in the LA Times and we have a new quote about Small Beer Press (thanks Scott!), we’re a “Hip house”!

Beam Me Up eats up The Ant King and Other Stories, “for me it was like the desert cart, each amazing bite building on what came before and promising so much more in the future.”

A summary of Geoff’s week at Omnivoracious.

Missed a review of The King’s Last Song which ran in the Washington DC City Paper in time for Gaylaxicon.


Powell’s: redesigned

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Powell’s has a clean and spiffy redesign—although all those nice bright colors will be missed. We link to them and to IndieBound bookstores so that we can encourage readers to go try the pure variety and idiosyncrasy of local bookshops around the country—and so that we can get a tiny cut of the sales!

So what do people from our site buy at Powell’s? Recently there’s an odd lack of financial titles—maybe everyone is too broke to read about going broke?—it’s more usually fiction, a mix of our books (The Best of LCRW, Interfictions, Pretty Monsters, Generation Loss) and other titles: Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Before You She Was a Pit Bull, Poppy Brite’s Liquor. Thanks to everyone for clicking through!


Signs of the depression

Sun 26 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Eek! Scotland, say it cannot be so! “Sales of beer slump by 7% as recession takes hold.”


Kelly and Holly Black in Albany on Sunday

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly and Holly Black will be taking a late autumn trip out to Albany, NY, tomorrow to read at Flights of Fantasy Bookshop at 4 PM or so. This Kelly’s last reading for a bit—you can order signed copies of Pretty Monsters from Flights of Fantasy or here.

“The Specialist’s Hat” is up for discussion at A Curious Singularity and recent Pretty Monsters reviews include two gazettes: the Montreal Gazette (Claude Lalumiere likes the weirder stories) and the Oklahoma Gazette (says, as part of a Halloween roundup, “She’s a true original”). The Brooklyn Paper has a piece on Brooklyn girls (see the comments for those who take things a mite seriously) and what they read:

Books: When Brooklyn girls hit the books, they devour the surreal short stories of contemporary writers like Kelly Link — whose latest is “Pretty Monsters.” “Whenever people buy her book, they smile at the cash register like they are buying some delicious type of ice cream or something,” said Emily Vaughn of Community Bookstore in Park Slope.


sparrow + chimney 4ever

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

The Saturday nap schedule was thrown out of whack when one after another three birds flew down our woodstove chimney today. We opened all the windows and the back door and then opened the stove top. The first bird took about an hour to get out the house—it flew from the top of one bookshelf to another before smacking itself dazedly into a window and crawling under a piece of furniture. At this point it could be picked up and set outside and after a bit it gathered itself together and flew away looking mostly ok. (Pictures of this one may at some point be uploaded.)

We don’t think that that bird came right back down another couple of times but straight after the first sparrow  flew away, a much more active one came down—luckily it was warm today and we didn’t have a fire on in the stove. (But hopefully they’re smart enough not to fly down into a fire!) Again with the windows and the doors but this time the bird flew immediately away. There was much celebration and wondering what was up with the silly birds and whether this was some rite of passage. After all, the chimney has a cap the birds aren’t meant to clamber through.

Then, the dreaded sound of little wings and claws coming down the chimney again. Damn! The actions from above were repeated and this bird, after one glancing bounce of a window, went out the back door. So then we went up to the roof and duct-taped a fringe-y thingymajig onto the chimney that should make it harder for all but the most skilled of sparrows to get in.

So far, so good.


Liz Hand in the NYTimes

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Generation LossIn the NYTimes, Terrance Rafferty’s horror column focuses on women writers beginning with the mother of the genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and going on to say “men — as is their wont — have coolly taken possession of the genre, as if by natural right, some immutable literary principle of primogeniture” and then that the modern populist streak of horror writing known as paranormal romance is “unreadable” for most males. (Not entirely true, there are many Laurel Hamilton fans.)

But rather than continue with these fighting words, he then takes a thoughtful look at a couple of prizewinners and novels from the literary end of the genre: Sara Gran’s Come Closer, Alexandra Sokoloff’s The Price, Sarah Langan’s Bram Stoker Award winner The Missing, and Liz Hand’s Generation Loss (on sale here)—which is listed as an Editor’s Choice—he describes as:

“Startling, unclassifiable. . . . There’s nothing supernatural in “Generation Loss,” but it’s full of mysteries — all originating in its characters’ troubled psyches — and full of terrors that can’t be explained.”


Likes teaching, traveling.

Thu 23 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Geoff Ryman, The King's Last SongGeoff Ryman has been blogging, or so, through the magic of Jeff VanderMeer on Amazon’s Omnivoracious. “Or So” because Geoff isn’t sure about blogging. He wonders if it’s just self promotion — and inspired a great conversation between Gwenda and Ted about the thing itself — and says he’ll stay quiet until he has something to say.

Don’t miss his engrossing pieces on visiting Cambodia (“It gets in your blood, Cambodia, I say. It’s the stories, he says, everybody has a story.”) that partially inspired The King’s Last Song.

This semester Geoff is teaching at UC San Diego (lucky students!) and his latest essay (post?) is on arriving in San Diego (“A tall woman in jeans and fluttery print shirt walks my way, smiling. Her face says both You can’t fool me and Isn’t this fun? It is the face of my generation”) and finding it worryingly enjoyable.

Check out the book on Google Books.


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