Free Mothers, Other Monsters

Tue 22 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Creative Commons, Maureen F. McHugh| Posted by: Gavin

Hot on the heels of last week’s Creative Commons release of John Kessel’s collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence (5,000 downloads and counting—and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-, yay!) Small Beer Press is proud to announce their third Creative Commons release, Maureen F. McHugh’s collection Mothers & other Monsters.

When we asked Maureen if she was interested in releasing her collection this way she took a moment out from working on Top Secret Gaming Things to say go for it. It is awesome to work with authors like Maureen and John who are so enthusiastic about this.

Come back next week for another CC-release!

The thirteen stories in McHugh’s “gorgeously crafted” (Nancy Pearl, NPR, Morning Edition) collection include her her Hugo Award winner “The Lincoln Train” as well as a reading group guide. Mothers & Other Monsters was a Story Prize finalist and a Book Sense Notable Book.

Although we think our paper editions are of course prettier than these downloads, please pass the word along. The further out these CC-licensed books go (especially from our site where we can count them) the higher chance there is of persuading other authors of doing the same with their books.

Mothers & Other Monsters is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license allowing readers to share the stories with friends and generally have at them. The collection is provided in these formats: low-res PDF, HTML, RTF, and text file. We encourage any and all conversions into other formats.

The paper edition is much nicer, although not free:

Hey hey

Tue 22 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books| Posted by: Gavin

How excited are we? Very! Congratulations Jed!

As far as we know he’ll be back in the office later this week. Or, could it be true that he is right this moment partaking of a well-earned vacation on a sunny island in Indonesia? Who can say, without consulting The Manual of Detection!

reading

Fri 18 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books| Posted by: Gavin

Update: approaching 5,000 downloads of John Kessel’s collection. More good news on the Creative Commons front here next Tuesday. Ladies, Fish, and Gentlemen, could this be a regular thing?! Publishers Weekly notes John’s book here. There are a couple of new download options to add (you people are Awesome!).

John did his first reading for The Baum Plan at Quail Ridge in Raleigh and about 100 people turned out: Yay!

We are just sending off LCRW-with-green-eyeshadow, the most inventive subscription request we’ve received yet.

Will has a great post on findings at a recent library sale (and also a call to action for New Yorkers). Will’s blog is a must-read.
Alan DeNiro’s review of The New Space Opera at Rain Taxi is the basis for a conversation on SF Signal. Then it got picked up by io9. Then a huge spaceship appeared over the Twin Cities and uploaded Alan, Kristin, and Rain Taxi. Good luck out there!

Somehow completely missed that there was an online discussion of Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle which included Sean. Sean’s new book, Cathy’s Key: If Found, Call (650) 266-8202, is hitting stores right about Now.

Tiptree

Fri 18 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to Sarah Hall for the Tiptree Award for The Carhullan Army. (published in the US as Daughters of the North.) It’s an excellent book and Gavin hopes there will be something that good this year as he is one of the judges!

We mentioned the other day that Interfictions was on the Honor List and we are incredibly proud and happy to note that Laurie J. Marks‘s novel Water Logic was also on the Honor List: pick up the book from us, by mail order, or Powells, BookSense.com, or on Fictionwise.

It’s been fun to see the reaction to the question “are awards worthwhile?” over the last week. How about: it depends? (The answer to everything!) It depends on: whether you trust the jury for some awards; if you follow the will of the populace (online or otherwise); whether you think a self-limited interest group of some sort will produce an interesting list of books. The Tiptree Award seems worthwhile in that the jury redefines the definition every year and produces some great reading lists—as well as the occasional head scratcher.

Laurie’s book—and the rest of the Honor List—is a book which, besides being a dark, thoughtful , entertaining pageturner, makes people think. It’s a noisy world and anything that encourages people to stop and think is excellent.

Here’s the full Honor List (via Gwenda):

“Dangerous Space” by Kelley Eskridge, in the author’s collection Dangerous Space (Aqueduct Press, 2007)
Water Logic by Laurie Marks (Small Beer Press, 2007)
Empress of Mijak and The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller (HarperCollins, Australia, 2007)
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Hyperion, 2007)
Interfictions, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss (Interstitial Arts Foundation/Small Beer Press, 2007)
Glasshouse by Charles Stross (Ace, 2006)
The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (Harper Collins 2007)
Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Pia Guerra (available in 60 issues or 10 volumes from DC/Vertigo Comics, 2002-2008)
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt, 2007)

Wed 16 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Interstitial Arts| Posted by: Gavin

It’s been almost a year since the Publication Day of the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first anthology Interfictions: how about an update?

Yesterday it was announced that the book was one of 9 on the Tiptree Award Honor List, which is great news and retrospectively seems very fitting that an anthology intent on ignoring all kinds of borders would be recognized by an award that seeks to expand our understanding of gender. (Read “expand our understanding” as “blow your mind.”)

And then on Friday Christopher Barzak announced that he and Delia Sherman will be editing the second Interfictions. The editors will be reading this October and November and the book will be published some time in 2009. Get ye to your thinking chair or get out your pencils and papers (or whatever your tools of interstitial fiction production are) and get to it.

Wed 16 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Interstitial Arts| Posted by: Gavin

It’s been almost a year since the Publication Day of the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first anthology Interfictions: how about an update?

Free Kessel Free

Tue 15 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Creative Commons, ebooks, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

It’s Tax Day here in the USA and in between the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and renting of garments and DVDs, we are celebrating the Publication Day of John Kessel‘s new collection, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories.

How are we celebrating?

With John’s blessing we’re setting his book free into the world:

Today, April 15, 2008, is tax day in the USA and we all need cheering up. We’re celebrating at Small Beer Press by publishing John Kessel‘s first collection of short stories in ten years, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, as well as releasing it as a free download in a number of completely open formats—with, of course, no Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The Baum Plan includes Kessel’s Tiptree Award winning “Stories for Men” (gender inequality meet Fight Club . . . on the moon), “Pride and Prometheus,” a mashup of Frankenstein and Jane Austen, and “Powerless,” an amazing mix of pulp fictions, paranoia, and academia.

The Baum Plan is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license allowing readers to share the stories with friends and generally have at them in any remixing/interpretation/Web 2.0 huddly-cuddly noncommercial manner.

The collection is provided in these formats: low-res PDF, HTML, RTF, and text file. We encourage any and all conversions into other formats. Read more, download, and or order the collection here.

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories

Tue 15 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

April 15, 2008 · trade cloth | trade paper · 9781931520508 · $16 | ebook · $9.95

A BookSense Pick.
Reversible dustjacket.

John Kessel, ever at the forefront of fiction, mashes up Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein and comes up with a huge win: “Pride and Prometheus,” which received the Nebula and Shirley Jackson awards and was nominated for many others. The fourteen stories in this astonishing, long-awaited collection intersect imaginatively with literary classics (The Wizard of Oz, Flannery O’Connor) and history. The Baum Plan also includes Kessel’s modern classic “Lunar Quartet” sequence about life on the moon, one of which, “Stories for Men,” won the Tiptree Award.

By turns satirical, horrific, funny, and generous, these stories showcase the manifold gifts of the modern-day master of the screwball science fiction novel Corrupting Dr. Nice, a writer Publishers Weekly has called “capable of the most artful and rigorous literary composition, but with a mischievous genius that inclines him toward speculative fiction . . . he writes with great subtlety and wit . . . and his craftsmanship is frequently absolutely brilliant. Plus, his sense of comedy is remarkable.”

An ex-con finds himself falling, once more, under the spell of a seductive, amoral woman. A hidden door in the closet of a summer house leads to a land of plenty. The life of an inventor converges with the pulp fiction he reads in “Powerless.” In “Pride and Prometheus,” the Bennett sisters encounter Victor Frankenstein and his monster. And, in his acclaimed and award-winning Lunar Quartet, John Kessel explores the gender dynamics, politics, and long-term sustainability of a matriarchal lunar colony.

“A sustained exploration of the ways gender dynamics can both empower and enslave us. Kessel’s wit sparkles throughout, peaking with the most uproariously weird phone-sex conversation you’ll ever read (“The Red Phone”).” A-
—Entertainment Weekly

Table of Contents

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence [audio]
Every Angel is Terrifying [audio]
Downtown
The Last American
The Invisible Empire
A Lunar Quartet
– The Juniper Tree
– Stories for Men
– Under the Lunchbox Tree
– Sunlight or Rock
The Snake Girl
It’s All True
The Red Phone
Powerless
Pride and Prometheus [part 1 | part 2]

Hardcover dustjacket easter egg:

Reviews
— Metro Arts
— Foreword
— Dependable Erection(!)
— Podcasts

“One of the best collections of the year.” — Locus

“These well-crafted stories, full of elegantly drawn characters, deliver a powerful emotional punch.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Kessel is a deft stylist and a master of all his tools, whose range is nearly limitless.”
— SciFi.com

“John Kessel’s writing exists at the edge of things, in the dark corner where the fiction section abuts the science-fiction shelves, in the hyphen where magic meets realism. Reading Kessel’s wonderful fabulations is like staying out too late partying and seeing strange angels while stumbling home in the dawn’s first light. This is one of those too rare short story collections that you can recommend with confidence to both the literary snob and the hard-core computer geek.”
— Rich Rennicks, Malaprop’s Bookstore, Asheville, NC

“Critics were all excited to see another anthology from Kessel … not only did Kessel pull off these stories with gusto but he did so in such a way that readers can enjoy his tales even if they have not read the original authors.”
— Bookmarks Magazine

On the web:

Strange Horizons interview (2001)
Locus Interview, Hour of the Wolf (w/Jim Kelly) (1997)
Interview (1993)
IMDB | ISFDB | Wikipedia | Library Thing
Find The Baum Plan in a library near you.

About the Author

Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel is the author of the novels Good News from Outer Space, Dr. Nice, and The Moon and the Other, and, in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, Freedom Beach. His short story collections are Meeting in Infinity (a New York Times Notable Book), The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence. Kessel’s stories have received the Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and James Tiptree Jr. awards.

His story “A Clean Escape””was adapted as an episode of the ABC TV series Masters of Science Fiction. With Jim Kelly, he has edited five anthologies of stories re-visioning contemporary short sf, most recently Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology. Kessel holds a B.A. in Physics and English and a Ph.D. in American Literature. He helped found and served as the first director of the MFA program in creative writing at North Carolina State University, where he has taught since 1982. He lives and works in Raleigh, NC.

Credits

Cover art © Nathan Huang.
Download cover for print.

Interrogate them

Fri 11 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world| Posted by: Gavin

Confirming what everyone knew all along but the government were too lily-livered to admit:

Cheney, Others OK’d Harsh Interrogations
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and PAMELA HESS
Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) — Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

Cheney et al knew it was right for the USA to use torture but they also knew it was right that no one should know it was them who ok’d it. Double standard? Sure. But who cares about that. What we care about is that torture-porn like 24 aside, if they wanted porn they should´ve watched some Gay Furry Porn. These methods are inefficient, morally questionable, and has probably helped throw the USA into recession because the whole world looks at the USA differently now. And not different-is-good.

Hope Cheney (et al) gets prison time before his robo-heart gives out.

Sluttery

Fri 11 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world| Posted by: Gavin

I’ll be posting some over at Bookslut for the next week and a bit so send me your hot tips, bitchy stories (all names redacted, mais oui), and so on.

Otherwise you know it will be all Alisdair Gray and Ursula K. Le Guin all the time.

Which sounds quite good, actually.

Podcast: Kessel 3!

Thu 10 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

Two things! A thoughtful and wide-ranging review/interview in Metro Magazine in Raleigh, NC (Kessel’s hometown—unless you count his football homeland, Buffalo):

Kessel proves himself again a master not just of science fiction, but also of the modern short story, crafting compelling characters and following them through plots that never fail to please — or to defy prediction.

Second Thing:

In preparation for the actual publication day (April 15) next week, we’ve got more free audio fiction from John Kessel: this week it’s his fantastic 19th century mash-up, “Pride and Prometheus,” first published in the January 2008 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction:

Miss Mary Bennet, the bookish younger sister of Elizabeth Darcy, meets a mysterous and handsome scientist from the continent come to Regency England on a matter of life-and-death.

Pride and Prometheus, Part 1 (1:02.25)

Pride and Prometheus, Part 2 (27:52)

——————

Previously:

“The Baum Plan for Financial Independence”

“Every Angel is Terrifying”
(read by Gregory Frost, author of Shadowbridge)

LA to NY in 4 minutes

Wed 9 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., YouTube| Posted by: Gavin

Old fun YouTubery:

New Fowler

Fri 4 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books| Posted by: Gavin

Karen Joy Fowler’s new novel Wit’s End is out this week—you can read the first chapter here and an interview here. There’s also a video of that interview if you have a WSJ log-in.

You can also pre-order a signed copy from Powell’s (and pick up a signed copy of Ursula K. Le Guin’s new novel, Lavinia, at the same time!).

Wit’s End is great.

That’s all.

More? Ok. Great fun, hilarious in parts, heartbreaking, and filled with Fowlerian grace notes. It’s one of the first novels to really look at the author’s place in this overheated Web 2.doh atmosphere. There’s more politics in it than The Jane Austen Book Club, which is a good fit as Fowler is one of the most acute and informed political observers we know. And now we can play the Casting the Movie game.

Also, here’s her new web site and upcoming events (via Gwenda).

John and Kate Beckinsale

Thu 3 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

From a short interview with Kessel on Foreword this Week. Spot the odd one out:

If you could have any five people over for dinner, who would they be?

Herman Melville, Jane Austen, Orson Welles, Richard Feynman, and Kate Beckinsale.

Podcast: Kessel 2!

Thu 3 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

Greg Frost is a multi-talented (and sharp-dressed) man. Here’s his IMDB page and his latest novel, Shadowbridge (the second part of the duology is due this summer), is a celebration of storytelling in all its forms.

This week John Kessel posted Greg’s reading of his story “Every Angel is Terrifying”:

Railroad is a murderer and a man haunted by God. What happens in the aftermath of his latest crime, when the pet cat of his last victims offers him a chance ot change his life? (With apologies to Flannery O’Connor).

Every Angel is Terrifying (39:05)Read by Gregory Frost, author of Shadowbridge. First published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Copyright © 1998

——————

Previously:

“The Baum Plan for Financial Independence”

13 days early

Wed 2 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

Arrived! The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories is a real and actual physical object even outwith that bandwidth one thinks of as one’s reading brain.

We’ll have more about it as the publication date (April 15) approaches including a nice surprise for peeps everywhere.

It’s already in some stores (especially those John is reading in) and should be arriving at your local book store soon.

Indie book shops may have it in their Book Sense section, chains will have it in New Books, Excellent Books, Short Story Collections by Extremely Smart People, or in the Tall section.

Carol: such hard good sentences. (and)

Wed 2 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller| Posted by: Gavin

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats loves Black Sabbath (but who doesn’t) and has a book out on them soon. Interviewed on io9, he showed amazing good taste:

When I was a kid I pretty much worshiped Harlan Ellison and I still think he’s a good writer. Through his interviews & his introductions in the Dangerous Visions books I got into James Sallis & Carol Emshwiller, and I’m still a big Emshwiller fan to this day — she writes such hard good sentences.

Maybe he’s the reason The Mount has been selling so much recently?

———–

Update: Missed this until the kind people at The Stranger mailed us a real, paper copy. (We love paper, so there internets!) This was from Paul Constant’s Constant Reader column where he wrote a lovely piece about why people should go to Norwescon:

The best reason to pay attention to Norwescon is the Philip K. Dick Awards, an annual ceremony dedicated to celebrating a “distinguished original science-fiction paperback published for the first time during the award year in the USA.” Unlike most book awards, the PKD Awards almost always single out an excellent book. Of the last five years’ worth of PKD winners, three of them—Life by Gwyneth Jones, Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, and The Mount by Carol Emshwiller—are books that, in a world unprejudiced to genre, would wind up on almost any critics’ annual best-of lists.

The Mount, particularly, is a marvel; originally published by a tiny Massachusetts art-house publisher, this novel—about a distant future wherein humans are content to be the transport animals (complete with bits and saddles) for tiny aliens who have enslaved us—is so refreshingly weird and allegorical that it evokes some of the earliest masters of the genre, like Orwell and Verne. If the PKD awards didn’t recognize The Mount, it’s doubtful that anyone else would have, either, which means that they’re possibly the only book awards in the world that actually do exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Generation Loss – Chapter One

Tue 1 Apr 2008 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, Novel Excerpts| Posted by: Gavin

There’s always a moment where everything changes. A great photographer — someone like Diane Arbus, or me during that fraction of a second when I was great — she sees that moment coming, and presses the shutter release an instant before the change hits. If you don’t see it coming, if you blink or you’re drunk or just looking the other way — well, everything changes anyway, it’s not like things would have been different.

But for the rest of your life you’re fucked, because you blew it. Maybe no one else knows it, but you do. In my case, it was no secret. Everyone knew I’d blown it. Some people can make do in a situation like that. Me, I’ve never been good at making do. My life, who could pretend there wasn’t a big fucking hole in it?

KGB

Mon 31 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., KGB Fantastic Fiction| Posted by: Gavin

A bloodless revolution, a changing of the guard. Yay for Matt Kressel! The series is funded out of Matt and Ellen’s pockets (unless you’d like to throw some $$$ their way?) so why not buy them a drink next time you see them?

New co-host of Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series

Ellen Datlow is proud to announce that she has a new co-host, writer/editor Matthew Kressel, for the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series.

Kressel, publisher of Senses Five Press and Sybil’s Garage, is taking over for Gavin J. Grant as co-host of the monthly reading series at the famed KGB Bar in New York City.

Terry Bisson and Alice K. Turner started the reading series in the late 1990s, attempting to bring together mainstream writers with writers of speculative fiction in order to show, in Alice Turner’s words, “that at a certain level they were plowing exactly the same field.” In the spring of 2000 Ellen Datlow took over for Alice K. Turner and in August 2002 Gavin J. Grant, publisher of Small Beer Press, stepped in for Bisson when he moved to California.

For six years Gavin has co-hosted the series with Ellen. We wish to thank him for the bang up job he’s done, for the dedication he has shown to the authors and their work.

The KGB Fantastic Fiction readings—in addition to showcasing many of the major voices of the field—regularly bring together the members of New York City science fiction, fantasy, and horror communities where writers, editors, and readers can mingle and promote excellent fiction.

The readings (which are always free) are held on the third Wednesday of each month at 7 PM at KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Upcoming readers include P. D. Cacek, Jack Ketchum, James Patrick Kelly, Cassandra Claire, Christopher Barzak, Jeff Somers, Stefan Merrill Block, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and John Kessel.

For a full schedule visit:
http://www.sensesfive.com/kgb.php

KGB Bar website:
http://www.kgbbar.com

Subscribe to our mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/join

To submit materials for consideration please send titles to:

Ellen Datlow

KGB Readings
PMB 391
511 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011-8436

and

Matthew Kressel
Senses Five Press
307 Madison St, Apt 3L
Hoboken, NJ 07030-1937

Camberwick Green

Sat 29 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., YouTube| Posted by: Gavin

The first half of the second season of Life on Mars is pants, mince, rubbish, etc. The 5th episode instead of just featuring the rightly-scary test card girl also featured Camberwick Green:

That 800lb gorilla

Fri 28 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, Publishing| Posted by: Gavin

From today’s Shelf Awareness a note that’s going to affect a ton of indie presses:

Amazon has notified publishers who print books on demand that they will
have to use Amazon’s POD facilities if they want to sell their books
directly on Amazon.com, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“The move signals that Amazon is intent on using its position as the
premier online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of
bookselling and manufacturing,” the Journal continued. Amazon “has
evolved into a fully vertical book publishing and retail operation. Most
recently, Amazon acquired audiobook seller Audible Inc. Amazon also
sells its own ebook reader called the Kindle.”

Publishers will have to use Amazon’s BookSurge POD subsidiary. Among
competitors are Ingram’s Lightning Source and lulu.com.

Read the whole piece here (put in any WSJ headline into Google News and you can read the whole thing).

Is Greater Than

Mon 24 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books| Posted by: Gavin

Some of the fine people from the much-missed Punk Planet have a new website, Is Greater Than, looking at all things indie, leftish, and interesting from fine foods (the all-veggie KFC Famous Bowl) to the ongoing Afghan War. They’ve been running a series on independent presses and have featured Tin House, Featherproof Books, and now Small Beer Press.

Not sure about the 3rd one there, but the first two are definitely worth checking out. (Or rather, check in from your zoned out state and see what they are up to.)

Tin House, well, we know you know. Fantastic journal and now putting out some wild books.

Featherproof are a newish press coming straight out of the Pork Center of the Americas, Chicago. Jonathan Messinger’s collection Hiding Out should just have enough weirdness to keep you happy. Or you could try their first step into the YA field with Susannah Felt’s novel This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record (great title!).

Swanwick & Keck

Wed 19 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books| Posted by: Gavin

Tonight’s Fantastic Fiction reading at the KGB Bar in NYC will be hosted by Matt Kressel, the man behind the curtain at Senss Five Press (publisher of the zine Sybil’s Garage and a new anthology, Paper Cities). Tonight’s reading, beginning at 7 PM features Michael Swanwick (The Dragons of Babel) and David Keck (In a Time of Treason).

Amtrak question

Tue 18 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., travel| Posted by: Gavin

OK, so is there an arm of Amtrak (the Amtrak Foundation?) or Rail Canada which gives grants to writers (or, er, indie presses) who want to, just to pick a wild example out the air (or, more appropriately if less of an actual fit, off the land), for instance take the train across the USA, up to Vancouver, and then across to Calgary. (Or at least to Edmonton, since Calgary doesn’t seem to have a train connection.)

It would be great publicity for the train companies….

Synth Loops

Tue 18 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., poetry, YouTube| Posted by: Gavin

This is just fantastic (lifted whole cloth from Bookslut):

Christian Bök performs part of “The Cyborg Opera: Synth Loops” & “The Aria of the 3-Horned Enemy” (from R. Murray Schafer’s The Princess of the Stars). Kamau Brathwaite reads from Born to Slow Horses.

Podcast: Kessel

Thu 13 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

Here’s John Kessel reading the title story of his new collection:

“The Baum Plan for Financial Independence”

Ex-con Sid and his sometime girlfriend Dot break into a house in the Blue Ridge Mountains and open a door to a world that changes everything.

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence (33:03)

First published in SciFiction.

Updated again with a link to a “sneak preview” of the story in the Raleigh News and Observer. John will be reading in Raleigh in a couple of weeks: see the events calendar over there on the right (a direction that makes no sense in your blogreader of choice) or here.

Kessel reviewers

Fri 7 Mar 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, John Kessel| Posted by: Gavin

We are running very low on galleys and won’t have copies of The Baum Plan for Financial Independence for a couple of weeks (see previous post). If any writer, blogger, etc. would like a PDF copy of the book for review, please either email or leave a request in the comments field.

Baum Plans for book stores

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

It’s almost all go on John Kessel’s new collection, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence. The book is at the printer , the proofs have been ok’d, it’s just a matter of ink being lathered onto paper then washed carefully off to leave the notes (or “letters” as John likes to call them) that you can take home and sing. Will the book be ready in time for John’s first reading at Quail Ridge Books? We are on the edges of our seats! (See more of John.)
Will you be able to find The Baum Plan in your local bookshop? Yes! The American Booksellers Association just announced their April bookseller picks and they’ve included Kessel’s book. Here’s what they had to say about this book (and a few others):

THE BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE and Other Stories by John Kessel
“John Kessel’s writing exists at the edge of things, in the dark corner where the fiction section abuts the science fiction shelves, in the hyphen where magic meets realism. This is one of those too rare short story collections that you can recommend with confidence to both the literary snob and the hard-core computer geek.”
—Rich Rennicks, Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe, Asheville, NC

THE SHADOW YEAR by Jeffrey Ford
“I loved The Shadow Year. In this story of the secrets of a 1960s Long Island suburb, Ford’s writing is hypnotic, as he examines the dark side of living in a small town through the lives of three siblings.”
—Roberta Rubin, The Book Stall At Chestnut Court, Winnetka, IL

Other books on the list include new collections from Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth) and Kevin Brockmeier (The View from the Seventh Layer); Jack O’Connell’s novel THE RESURRECTIONIST (which has already been highly recommended by a couple of readers we trust); the anthology of the moment, THE NEW WEIRD, edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer; and finally ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Between these and some of the rest of the list, that’s more than a month’s reading. Unless you are a book-a-day monster and then we are green and envious and trying not to be small about it all.

Free Mothers, Other Monsters

Hey hey

reading

Tiptree

Free Kessel Free

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories

Interrogate them

Sluttery

Podcast: Kessel 3!

LA to NY in 4 minutes

New Fowler

John and Kate Beckinsale

Podcast: Kessel 2!

13 days early

Carol: such hard good sentences. (and)

Generation Loss – Chapter One

KGB

Camberwick Green

That 800lb gorilla

Is Greater Than

Swanwick & Keck

Amtrak question

Synth Loops

Podcast: Kessel

Kessel reviewers

Baum Plans for book stores

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