Robert Hoge—one of the extraordinary team of organizers (and a World Fantasy Award judge this year, poor guy!)—reminds us that the deadline for applications to the Clarion South Writers Workshop is June 30 (Monday!). This is the 2009 tutor line up:
Hey, you’re a winner! We put little red tickets in to all the subscriber copies of LCRW #22 that just went out (and John Klima lost his so we added a new one to the stack for him) and randomly picked a winner who will receive galleys of Ben Rosenbaum’s The Ant King and Other Stories and Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters. So if you received ticket 2970067, send us an email with your address and these will be off to you!
We’ll give the winner a week to contact us. If this doesn’t work, maybe next time we will tape the labels to the zine. Picking out a random ticket was fun. Maybe we will pick some more.
it is because we are fat old executives who are soon going to be filled with team spirit (and covered in paint) so we may be at home recovering after this:
Thanks to Ben P. we now have a new thing (functionality!) on this page. (But nowhere else on the site. Ha!) During our gremlins’ tea break we installed a “Subscribe to Comments” plugin so that you, the commenter can choose to receive an email when someone else comments on your comment. It’s not just a Facebook wall for graffiti, people are reading! Cough.
Another thing: a little while ago Michael* took some pics of some of our books and now they are online. At some later point there may be more. In the meantime:
* Michael’s got a solstice gardening story here — with a picture linked in the comments that is just right for you, Mr. Rowe.
Google and Vistaprint (cheap postcards!) sent us $100 credit for Google Adwords so we’re looking for suggesting for which words* we should use. The words should apparently be enticing, or, er, seductive (perhaps filthy-as-all-get-out would be the way to go?), and something which will encourage people not at all like you (ie they have no idea who either you or us are) buy books.**
Suggestions in the comments, please. Best suggestion(s) within the next couple of days will receive an uncorrected proof of Ben Rosenbaum’s The Ant King and Other Stories.
*or: keywords!, so much more important and sexy than regular words.
** The Small Beer HQ was rocked by laughter at this point as thousands of editors, designers, typesetters, etc., chuckled heartily at the thought of people buying books. Who does that anymore? Ha ha ha.
without having to think up a question (“Um, someone or other says science fiction is pap for the weak-minded masses who can’t deal with the present, um, what’s your favorite color?”).
Ed Park—whose first novel Personal Daysis not only dark and funny but is a must for writers to see someone pull off some incredible virtuoso writing—gets search-engined:
one of our catalogs bounced back to us. The surprising thing here is it isn’t the new one, it’s one mailed on June 20, 2007. Rebecca Malgeri, if you’re out there and want a catalog, drop us an email.
There were lots of bills in the mail, not as many checks. Doh.
over here where they have neat stuff. Yes, it’s Strange Horizons and their yearly fund drive. We were late to the party sending them prizes but they should be added this week. Looks like this year there are even more ways to get prizes: bonus prizes as certain totals are reached, prizes for blogs who link to it (come on LA Times, you know you want the 5 CD Escape Pod set too!), and, you know, for sending money.
If you’d like an advance reading copy of Ben Rosenbaum’s debut collection, The Ant King and Other Stories, or Kelly’s new collection, Pretty Monsters, or would like the chocolate-bar LCRW subscription, go donate and maybe these prizes will become yourn.
Sun 1 Jun 2008 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin
There are 60 pages in this zine. It was put together on a couple of MacBooks and an iMac using InDesign. No CEOs were fired during the production of this zine. At least, not here. One copy was printed on gold leaves and buried in a blatant attempt to copy The King’s Last Song. This web page was written using an Old copy of DreamWeaver. One of these days we’ll update the software and the website. One of these days. In the meantime we keep producing high-quality low-cost paper zine in part because 1) we’ll keep doing this until the subscribers stop subscribing and the writers stop sending us good weird shit and 2) if we can do it, so can you.
masthead
Made in the May of 2008 by:
Gavin J. Grant · Kelly Link
Jedediah Berry · Michael Deluca · Katharine Duckett · Margaret Kinney · Sara Majka · Julia Botero
Fiction
William Alexander, “Away”
Charlie Anders, “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word”
Becca De La Rosa, “Vinegar and Brown Paper”
Kristine Dikeman, “Dearest Cecily”
Carol Emshwiller, “Self Story”
Alex Dally MacFarlane, “Snowdrops”
Maureen F. McHugh, “Going to France”
Jeremie McKnight, “The Camera & the Octopus”
Mark Rigney, “Portfolio”
David J. Schwartz, “Mike’s Place”
Jodi Lynn Villers, “The Honeymoon Suite”
Caleb Wilson, “American Dreamers”
Cara Spindler, “Escape”
Miriam Allred, “To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ”
Poetry
Eileen Gunn, “To the Moon Alice”
Nonfiction
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
Comics
Abby Denson, “Snake Slayer”
Michael DeLuca, “The Freddie Mercury Challenge”
William Alexander lives in Minneapolis with spouse and cat. His stories have appeared in Zahir, Weird Tales, and Postscripts, and one will be reprinted in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008. He contributes to Rain Taxi Review of Books. In the summer of ’06 he attended the Clarion Workshop. It was fun.
Miriam Allred has a BA in Comparative Literature and French from Brigham Young University and an MA in English from Cleveland State University. She lives in Salt Lake City, near many supportive friends and family members, where she earns a living writing about routers and wireless networks. She also writes stories.
Gwenda Bond is writing young adult novels on a tin machine that has no internet access.
Becca De La Rosa has recently had fiction published in Strange Horizons and the Fantasy Magazine anthology, among other places. She is currently studying English at an art college in Ireland.
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, “The City Sweet Tooth†(citysweettooth.com) in The L Magazine. abbycomix.com
Kristine Dikeman lives in NYC. Her work has appeared in The Many Faces of Van Helsing, The Book of Final Flesh, Sybil’s Garage, and All Hallows. She is working on a novel, Eating Manhattan, a lighthearted romp through New York, with zombies.
Carol Emshwiller‘s most recent books are a novel, The Secret City, a young adult novel, Mr. Boots, and a collection, I Live with You. Small Beer published her novel The Mount and her collection, Report to the Men’s Club as well as reprinting her first novel, Carmen Dog.Recent awards include a couple of Nebulas for short stories, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. She lives in New York City.
Alex Dally MacFarlane has been writing ever since the discovery of computer games made her think that if stories could be found on a 32-bit cartridge, why not in the mind of an 11-year-old girl? Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Electric Velocipede, Shimmer, Sybil’s Garage, Farrago’s Wainscot, and a few other places. Her longer fiction is still being kick-polished.
Maureen F. McHugh‘s most recent book is a collection of short stories, Mothers & Other Monsters. She writes novels and Alternate Reality Games. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Jeremie McKnight was born under the restless skies of Ohio farm-country where he began his storytelling at an early age. By high school he was a published and award-winning author. And then he stopped. He now lives in Pittsburgh PA., and this is his first story in over a decade. It has made him very happy.
Mark Rigney is the author of Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical. His short fiction has appeared in Shadow Regions, Talebones, The Bellevue Literary Review, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, &c. His plays for the stage have won national contests and been performed in six states. Having worked as a zookeeper, he is now proud to be a stay-at-home father.
David J. Schwartz is all around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship. His first novel, Superpowers, is in stores as you are reading this. He is allergic to midichlorians.
Cara Spindler likes apples, broccoli, and eel, but hates ham and cantaloupe. She likes strolling, running, swimming—but hates to sit. And she still has five continents to visit before she dies.
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.
John Kessel just finished a round of readings in North Carolina with Greg Frost. His next reading is at KGB Bar in New York in July, then he’ll be at Readercon. Here’s a few perspectives on John Kessel’s The Baum Plan on the web and in the papers this week:
Updated with this possibly contentious line from Seattle’s The Stranger: “A pleasant callback to the days when science-fiction authors read more than just science fiction.”
Strange Horizons: “It is a testament to Kessel’s skill that my criticism is so specific and, really, not an indictment so much as a statement of preference.”
The Fix: “Invest. Invest now…. Your returns will be multitudinous.”
And just posted tonight, Time Out Chicago: “Anyone who thinks genre writing can’t be literary deserves to have Kessel’s hefty new collection of stories dropped on his or her head.”
We’re off traveling — with lots of exciting things in hand (will try and post pics!) — for a couple of weeks.
The zine is at the printer—Paradise Copies here in Northampton who are in the middle of moving into a great new building and yet are managing to keep juggling all the jobs thrown at them.
However, if you want to read LCRW now, you can download it from Lulu—and soon on Fictionwise—or order the nice perfectbound version. Preview it here. (By the way, everything on Fictionwise is on sale).
We’ll be picking up the zine tomorrow then flying out at some godawful early time on Thursday to Wiscon where we’ll be celebrating Maureen F. McHugh and L. Timmel Duchamp, dancing, drinking, wandering the farmer’s market, and going to see some readings and even an occasional panel.
Subscribers will get their copies in June—after our Book Expo extravaganza. More on that sooner to it—jus, if you’re going, stop by our booth to get a key to many exclusive freebies from many cool presses!
Thanks to Angus MacAbre (Scotland’s Funniest Zombie Comedian!) this will no doubt be the place to visit during WisCon.
Sadly they do not seem to have haggis on the menu. But we trust the chef can put one together. Best part of the menu is the beer list: all the usual suspects (with a complete lack of Scottish beer, but, they do have their own Tilted Kilt lager!) as well as the well-loved Franchise Options 1 to 4. Mmm!
Here’s a relaxed and mellow seven-minute cartoony version (with title cards) of Kelly’s story “The Specialist’s Hat” made by a team of student artists for “ENC1142 final project at FSU”:
John Kessel and Greg Frost are on the road this week (no this isn’t an APB) reading at three great North Carolina bookshops (damn, wish we were there! but they’ll be up here are Readercon which will come soon enough):
Washington DC is rightly excited to have a new bike rental program up and running. But if you live in or visit Lexington, Kentucky, for the second year in a row you take part in the program for a mere $10 (or free if you paid your $10 last year). Rumors that Christopher Rowe takes part in this just to ladies wearing little black dresses and heels “pedaling one down Main Street” are unsubstantiated and would not be repeated in any journal worthy of the public trust.
Shake Girl, a collaborative graphic novel based on real life experiences of Cambodian women attacked with acid.
Jacob MacMurray not only posted his annual Clarion West poster, but also—and this is wild (although it would be even better if VW were making a new hybrid/greaserunning van)—pics of his design for a VW van. (So now we will go buy Pacifico beer because any company that does this kind of thing has to make good beer.)
Interested in how one art intersects and inspires another? This week the Interstitial Arts Foundation, celebrating the one-year anniversary of publishing the anthology Interfictions, begins an auction of jewelry inspired by the stories in the anthology. And it’s beautiful stuff.
There is a new piece going up every couple of days (auctions only last 4-7 days, so keep checking in) and the prices begin at all of $10. These are all donations to the IAF and any monies raised go to funding the recently-announced next anthology.
Participants include artists Elise Matheson, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Mia Nutick, Kris McDermott, and many more. And, most remarkably, some of the authors themselves have created unique pieces based on their own work! Keep an eye on IAFAuctions.com to see wearable interpretations of their own work by Interfictions authors Leslie What, Rachel Pollack, and K. Tempest Bradford.
What we are doing: a new catalog, galleys of 2 books for BookExpo, a game for BookExpo, a zine, a chapbook for BookExpo, Sales Conference this weekend, sending forth review copies of The Ant King, enjoying the reviews of John Kessel’s book and sending that out further, the Phil. Book Festival next weekend. Maybe other stuff? Who knows.
Coming soonish on a website, a bike, a firecracker near you: the zine known as LCRW. And what will be in it? Pomegranates! Of course. Also, mostly fiction. This will go to the printers devils in a week or two. Here’s what’s it is:
William Alexander, “Away”
Charlie Anders, “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word”
Becca De La Rosa, “Vinegar and Brown Paper”
Kristine Dikeman, “Dearest Cecily:
Carol Emshwiller, “Self Story”
Eileen Gunn, “To the Moon Alice” (poem)
Alex Dally MacFarlane, “Snowdrops”
Maureen F. McHugh, “Going to France”
Jeremie McKnight, “The Camera & the Octopus”
Mark Rigney, “Portfolio”
David J. Schwartz, “Mike’s Place”
Jodi Lynn Villers, “The Honeymoon Suite”
Caleb Wilson, “American Dreamers”
Cara Spindler, “Escape”
Miriam Allred, “To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ”
Gwenda Bond, “Dear Aunt Gwenda”
Abby Denson, Comic
Tickle your ears today with the sound of “The Ant King”—the title story of Ben Rosenbuam’s upcoming collection—the fifth in the new fantasy-flavored PodCastle (a castle in a pod: how science fictional!):
Sheila split open and the air was filled with gumballs. Yellow gumballs. This was awful for Stan, just awful. He had loved Sheila for a long time, fought for her heart, believed in their love until finally she had come around. They were about to kiss for the first time and then this: yellow gumballs.
Stan went to a group to try to accept that Sheila was gone. It was a group for people whose unrequited love had ended in some kind of surrealist moment. There is a group for everything in California.
Rated PG. Contains surrealism, involuntary cohabitation, strong language and characters with unconventional genders. Also, an extremely large number of geek culture easter eggs.
First (after we send some initial contributor names and our bios for the St. Martin’s Press catalog) we send Jim Frenkel the story and poem selections (Jim does all the contract parts, puts the book together, manages it, herds cats and sphinxes, etc.), then we send the story introductions (brief, easy!), and then the honorable mentions. Which are neither brief nor easy.
Lastly we send the Summation. This year it came in at 12,000 or so (dense, worked over) words. This is the fifth year we’ve edited this book (and the 6th year is already 1/3 over!). The Summation has ranged from 12-17,000 words as we’ve looked at different parts of the field and changed it up a little each year. The most fun part is arguing (no!) over what books go into the Favorite Books of the Year section. Researching what’s been coming out from where, who’s doing what, and so on doesn’t seem to stop. We are curious about which parts people enjoy most or whether they find anything missing (or think anything should be cut!).
First (after we send some initial contributor names and our bios for the St. Martin’s Press catalog) we send Jim Frenkel the story and poem selections (Jim does all the contract parts, puts the book together, manages it, herds cats and sphinxes, etc.), then we send the story introductions (brief, easy!), and then the honorable mentions. Which are neither brief nor easy.
Lastly we send the Summation. This year it came in at 12,000 or so (dense, worked over) words. This is the fifth year we’ve edited this book (and the 6th year is already 1/3 over!). The Summation has ranged from 12-17,000 words as we’ve looked at different parts of the field and changed it up a little each year. The most fun part is arguing (no!) over what books go into the Favorite Books of the Year section. Researching what’s been coming out from where, who’s doing what, and so on doesn’t seem to stop. We are curious about which parts people enjoy most or whether they find anything missing (or think anything should be cut!).
No free books this week! Making more books, LCRW (hey, we still put out a zine!), a catalog, und, yes, so weiter, is getting in the way. Also: we are planning a fun thing for BookExpo, hee hee. Cough. (Sounds look weird in WordPress. May need to add sound.)
ARCs of Ben Rosenbaum’s collection are on their way to the secret masters of the universe who will declare it a bestseller. Yes, they are in touch with the public’s unending appetite for short story collections.
Kelly is reading next week at the South Street Seaport in NYC as part of the NYRSF reading series with Jennifer Stevenson whose sexy new novel The Brass Bed is about to about to about to arrive.
Hey, in February we sold a couple of books on the Kindle. Who knew! Asked Amazon if they would send us a Kindle to see what the reading experience was like. They demurred. People should always feel free to send us expensive gifts. We are not public servants. (Neither are we savants.) We do not fear the gifting. We are just very bad at the return part.
Just a note that our distributor is running out of the hardcover of John Kessel’s collection. We have some in stock for conventions and so on but if you want one from a store, sooner is better than later.
If you’d like a signed copy, John’s got some more signings coming up.
And: here’s a pic of Jed in LA just before the book festival madness began!
Jedediah Berry will be manning the Small Beer booth at the LA Times Book Fest this weekend so if you’re in the area go say hello (and congratulate the man!) at Booth # 1023 in Zone: J – Moore Hall Grass, UCLA campus.
Small Beer are splitting a table with the wonderful Coffee House Press. Drop by and say hi to some of their authors, and meet other local stars such as Cecil Castellucci and more authors than a forest could shake sticks at. Admission to the Festival of Books is free. Parking is $8.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, that forest will not be shaking sticks at Kelly Link who will not be there after all. Maybe next year.
Do they deliver to Massachusetts? How about to Edinburgh, since we’re there in August?
If you are after mung beans and carrot sticks, look away now. Amanda Powley, Terre à Terre’s creative force, does not believe vegetarianism has to mean abstinence. “For me our food is all about indulgence”, she tells me. “It’s not about sacrificing anything, it’s about gaining something.”
This has nothing to do with Trickster gods (excepting The Coyote Road, which has lots to so with it). Instead it is just a tricky headline to make you wonder what we’re on about now. It’s Locusfinalist celebration day—thanks to John K. for the heads-up!
The finalist list is a reminder that 2007 was a strong year, especially for men writing in this genre. That’s not snarky, look back at the list. Congratulations to Elizabeth Bear (“Tideline,” Asimov’s Apr/May 2007) and Connie Willis (“All Seated on the Ground,” Asimov’s Dec 2007;The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Subterranean), the only women in short fiction. SF novels are all men, then Fantasy, YA, and Debuts are all pretty mixed—and all are very strong categories (below the cut). Too much work to look at more except perhaps there should be a PR campaign by any women artists in the genre?
It will be fun to see who wins but the real winners, said without cheesiness—especially after serving on award juries—are readers who use this as a reading list to see what’s good out there at the moment.
Here comes the lunch truck? Nope. The boat? Nope. Benjamin Rosenbaum’s collection? Ping! We have a winner!
Ben doesn’t know this yet (because we are evil, or, maybe because we’ve been busy giving away free books?) but we just received the advance reading copies of his debut collection, The Ant King and Other Stories. So today (besides cursing the errors—they’ll be gone by August) we’ll be sending it out to reviewers and maybe sending a few to Ben over there in Switzerland.
How does it look? Who cares? Does it go well with beer? You decide.
