Weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories

Wed 16 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories | Posted by: Gavin

INever Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizen February we’ll publish Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever. This week we’re going to post some early reactions from those who’ve had a chance to read an early edition:

“Isabel Yap’s fiction channels the wary energy of meeting places: schools, hospitals, offices, hotels. In her work, the spaces of everyday life brim with weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender


Mailing Deadlines

Tue 15 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Mailing Deadlines | Posted by: Gavin

If you order books from now on and choose free media mail shipping there is very little chance they will arrive before the holidays, or maybe this year. Please add Priority Mail shipping if you’d like there to a chance(!) for them to arrive this year.


LCRW Prices Rising in 2021

Mon 7 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on LCRW Prices Rising in 2021 | Posted by: Gavin

As announced in November, LCRW print and digital subscription prices will be rising on January 1, 2021, but now I have the actual numbers:

The single issue digital price will be $3.99.
The 4-issue digital subscription price will be $12.99.

The single issue print price will be $6 (USA),  $8 (Canada), and $11 (World).
The 4-issue print subscription price will be $24 (USA),  $32 (Canada), and $44 (World).

Subscribe now to get ahead of the game. Subscribe then for fun. Donate to your fave charity if you can.
Cheers!
Gavin


Welcome Back, Martha Moody

Tue 1 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Welcome Back, Martha Moody | Posted by: Gavin

IMartha Moody cover - click to view full sizet’s (re)publication day for Susan Stinson’s novel Martha Moody! Join us on Thursday at 7 p.m. for an online celebration with Susan and Elizabeth McCracken. This is the 25th anniversary of the original edition from Spinsters Ink and we’re delighted to bring this sexy historical novel to a new generation of readers.

We are shipping preorders this week. For the curious, here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

One

I was crouched next to the creek baiting my hook with a hunk of fat when I heard a rustling on the bank upstream. I turned my head and saw Martha Moody looking into the water.
She was a heavy woman bound up with dry and perishable goods, the owner of Moody’s General Store. Her red hair was pulled into a bun and she wore a black dress with jet buttons that reflected light.
I was embarrassed to be caught fishing on Sunday with mud on my skirt, so I hid behind a cottonwood. Martha leaned over, unlaced her shoes, and rolled down her stockings. I watched as she tucked them beneath the root of a tree, then bunched her skirt up in one hand and stepped into the water.
Dirt trickled into my collar from the bank, but I stood still. I could see the white blurs of her feet as she waded towards me. She moved with calm propriety: a large, plain, respectable woman from the nape of her neck down to her knees. She dropped her skirt. It floated and plastered itself to her shins, a changed, molded thing.
Martha moved more slowly as her skirt got soaked, but she was not ponderous, the way she was behind the counter at the store. When Martha said, “Don’t lean on the glass,” even the sheriff jumped back. Now she kicked at her hem, splashing herself a little and nearly slipping on a rock.
She stopped within breathing distance of me, at a spot where the water took a drop over rocks. Fish hid in the deep place behind the falling water, and I had been luring them onto my hook. Martha tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, squatted down and went over face first. I put my mouth against the tree bark to keep from calling out as she passed me, covered with white foam and scraping sand. She came up spitting and laughing, and grabbed the bank to hold herself under the falls.
I heard her say, “Frowsy,” then laugh more. She sat in the stream bed with the water rushing down, rushing over her. The sky was blue against the hard edge of the bank. I opened my creel, seized a fish, and threw it back into the water. It skidded past her. She turned her face and another one slapped her neck, then washed on past. She got on her knees, sinking in the soft bottom, and fish after fish swam past her. Big silver, small brown.
Martha stood. I stepped into an open spot on the bank so she could see me reaching into the creel and tossing another fish into the water with a high arc. I straightened the bow at the waist of my old calico, then tilted the creel towards Martha to show her that it was empty except for a few wet rushes on the bottom.
She stared at me, dripping water, as silver flashed over her feet. “Mrs. Linger, why are you throwing fish?” Her tone was cool. I felt like a kid caught with a pocketful of lemon drops I hadn’t paid for.
I walked down the bank to her, wiping my hands on my skirt. I couldn’t think of a good lie. The truth was, I wanted to add those shining bits of life to the picture Martha Moody was making with the water. I knew when a moment was ripe, which was how I came to be fishing when most decent women were getting supper on the table. “Why are you in the creek?”
Martha touched her glistening buttons. “For the poetry of the moment.”
I nodded and reached to help her onto the bank. She grabbed my fingers so hard that I thought she was going to pull me into the water with her, but she just held on and dug her feet deeper into the mud. “I’m not ready to get out, Amanda Linger. Are you coming in?”
I pulled my hand away and stuck it in my dry pocket. I never rose to a dare. Martha stood there like she was a tree that had been bending the water around her since before Jesus walked in his own thunder and waves. I could see the outline of her corset through the fabric of her dress. I picked up my fishing pole. “I have to get to my milking.”
Martha pulled one foot loose from the mud and held it under the fall to rinse it. I could smell the wet fabric of her skirt. Her hair was still knotted away from her face. “Milk. Yes.” Her chin was soft and white. “Good day, then, Mrs. Linger.”
I climbed the bank, inspired. “Good day.”
After I left Martha Moody standing in the water, I hurried to the barn without going to the house. Miss Alice was waiting for me at the fence, bawling and looking at me with her yellow-flecked eyes. Her days had a strict rhythm, and she hated it when I was late.
I walked towards her with a cow swagger, swishing my pole behind me like a tail, bawling in answer. I opened the gate and she lowered her head to butt against my hip. “All right, Alice, yes, Pretty Alice, I know you’re hungry.”
I brought her a bucket of oats, then stood next to her with my hands in my armpits to warm them before I pulled up the stool. I rubbed my face against her hide. She smelled live and pungent.
Miss Alice gave more milk if I had a story to tell. We had been through most of the Bible, with special attention to mentions of kine and golden calves, as I squatted next to her mornings and evenings working her teats. I talked to help Miss Alice let her milk down. If she held back, it soured her bag for the next milking.
That night I told her the history of Martha Moody as I understood it from the conjectures of the ladies of the town.
Before she founded Moody, Martha had been a woman who liked a good apple pie with thick cream, but didn’t have the grass to feed a cow. She had dried milk, but never cream, and she had suffered from grasshoppers and sparseness of joy.
Martha herself had never been sparse. She had been a fat city girl with red hair, acquainted with the Bible but also with the pleasures of ices and store-bought tarts. She had eaten turtle soup. She had dressed in white to shoot a bow and arrow, and had hit the mark. Her prowess in the fashionable sport of archery pleased her father, who was a lapsed Methodist with a gold watch fob and social ambitions. But Martha had met Wilbur Moody in a dry goods store, and he had come around the counter to hand her a bolt of cornflower blue cloth. She was married to him in a dress of that material in the spring. She didn’t miss the grey city she left with Wilbur, toting dry goods, but she did miss cream. She liked the West. She nodded at the big sky. She asked nothing of the mountains, except that they keep her pointed straight away from the city and let her survive the pass. She came a good distance, then said it was enough. She was walking beside the wagon, singing to herself in a dry voice that had carried her across a lot of country. Wilbur was up on the seat, driving the oxen. They reached a creek. Water was news and a reason to stop. There were some small trees, maybe from a seed dropped by some other traveller. Martha looked at the sharp limbs and grey bark, and decided that this was enough to satisfy her need for company. She would winter here. Wilbur was gold-hungry and land-bored. He’d seen enough water in the East, although he filled every container he could find with the stuff. The rest of the party put their wagons in a circle, built fires, and spoke against leaving Martha for dead. But she had provisions, time to dig a sod house before the ground froze, and she had gone as far as she was willing to go. Wilbur knew better than to speak of love, but he did mention family honor. The sound of the water bordered the night.
She took some bolts of material, and the panes of glass she had packed with good quilts for padding, because she thought windows were worth the trouble and cold they leaked. She took a barrel of beans and a barrel of meal, and the dried milk. Wilbur poured half of each packet of seed into its own tin cup and lined them up in front of her on the ground.
“Martha,” he said, “you can’t live on seeds and water, so I hope you can live on your fat.”
“I’ll need Shakespeare and the Bible,” she said. He gave her a hand digging a hole for a shelter, shoring it up with posts that came off the siding of the wagon. The rest of the party was already a morning ahead, so he looked into her brown eyes, wishing they were cornflower blue, gave her a kiss and rode off, rattling.
Martha picked up her shovel, thinking of barrel tables and barrel chairs, without a thought of who she might be cheating in claiming this land or who she might be seeding in her dry goods store by the stream. She didn’t bother with naming, either, but people passing, and those staying, said “Moody” to tell where they were.


Against the man baby’s tantrums

Sun 29 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Against the man baby’s tantrums | Posted by: Gavin

On November 3, 2020, the US held their four year general election and in a relatively easy manner the Biden-Harris administration was voted into the White House. I look forward to having actual humanist leaders, even if I know I will disagree with some of their policies and appointments.

The election would have been all over and done with by the next morning had the mailed and early votes been allowed to be counted in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. The “result” wasn’t agreed on (by rational beings) until four (very long) days later — and even yet the president, his lackeys, and his republican party are still trying to pretend it is worth dragging out and fighting.

Four years of Tr*mp and his rotating band of corrupt cronies, unelected family members, acting cabinet members, mealy-mouthed mouthpieces, and quiet and not-so-quiet racist and fascist supporters has been awful and I’d like every one one of those acting cabinet members and family and mouthpieces investigated — so many of them are in jail or have done time that I am sure there are a few of the others who should be doing time along with them.

The republican party, led by the nose by Tr*mp and Mitch McConnell, has been as useful a bulwark against Tr*mp’s small-minded bigotry as expected: they did nothing. A few people quit the party and occasionally Mitt Romney or literally one or two others would speak against his rotten ways but for the most part everyone in the party went along with it — the same way for eight years they followed the party’s instructions to obstruct government rather than work with the Obama-Biden administration.

So when members of the republican party start to say they, too, were anti-Tr*mp let them point to their records, let them show where they stood up against Tr*mp’s oh so terrifying twitter feed. The senators and the house members who somehow never saw the news about this terrible thing and that terrible thing and somehow never managed to answer when queried, they can go fly a kite. The world asked them to stand up as adults against a squealing man baby’s tantrums. They refused. And we won’t forget.


Tuesday & Thursday: Martha Moody Days

Fri 27 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Tuesday & Thursday: Martha Moody Days | Posted by: Gavin

Martha Moody cover - click to view full sizeNext Tuesday is a big day, pun intended, around here: it’s publication day for our new, 25th anniversary edition of Susan Stinson’s novel Martha Moody.

Martha Moody was a hit the first time around when it came out from Spinster’s Ink and the Women’s Press in the UK — just check out some of the reviews. — Time Out London said “Stinson’s follow-up to the utterly fantastic Fat Girl Dances with Rocks is so bloody good it made me want to run naked through a meadow.”

I realize that December in the northern hemisphere may not be running naked through the meadow weather (for most, who knows?), but it is indicative of the joy oozing from this book.

We’ll be celebrating the publication of the book online through Book Moon on Thursday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. with the fabulous Elizabeth McCracken. Hope you will join us, it is sure to be a relaxed and fun time and Susan will be signing books. See you there!


Get Immersed in the Monstrousness

Wed 25 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Get Immersed in the Monstrousness | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeWhile we’re a bit transfixed by the ongoing democratic paroxysms of effort to get rid of the monstrous occupants of a certain White House, we’ve been working away on a different, much more enjoyable type of monstrousness: Isabel Yap’s Feb. 2021 collection, Never Have I Ever. A few advance readers have sent us reactions which we’ll share next week and the book just received its first strong trade review from Publishers Weekly:

“Yap’s impressive debut collection of 13 fabulist, sci-fi, and horror shorts explores themes ranging from monstrousness, shared trauma, and systemic violence to friendship and the ambiguity of love. Yap is at home with whatever topic she puts her hand to, easily immersing readers in the perspectives of high schoolers, ancient goddesses, androids, and witches. . . . Yap is a powerful new voice in speculative fiction.”


LCRW 42 & a Price Raise

Tue 24 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on LCRW 42 & a Price Raise | Posted by: Gavin

And out it went last week — the 26.79% of subscribers who go for the chocolate option received a range of chocolate bars this time due to me not getting an order in to our supplier. All Fair Trade though, I think and I did try most of them and one I doubted turned out to be delicious, so, thanks, subscribers for giving me an opportunity to try another delicious thing.

You can still read the first section of Sarah Langan’s “You Have the Prettiest Mask” on Lit Hub’s Daily Fiction section. That was great fun to see.

Big news: LCRW subscription prices will be rising on January 1, 2021.

Printing and mailing costs have risen and we raised the pay rate to writers (I’d like to raise that again) and the price of LCRW has been the same since June 2004, when we raised it from $4 a pop to $5.

I really liked the zine being $5 since five dollar bills are easy to handle, change is easy, it’s cheap. But in 2004 LCRW was the same price as The New Yorker (and we still have it beat in weird fiction and delivering chocolate with each issue). Now The New Yorker is $8.99 per issue, so, yep, if we want to pay people a decent amount of money for their work it’s time to add a dollar to the zine cover price.

I expect the new cover and subscription prices will last a few years — and some readers have subscribed for 20 issues (10 years? Wow.) at the current discounted price so that’s a possible deal. Subscribe now, save a few dollars. Subscribe January 2021 and celebrate the new year, sure to be awful in its own way but better than the alternative, as our old friend Bill Desmond used to say.


Holiday Deadlines 2020

Mon 23 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Holiday Deadlines 2020 | Posted by: Gavin

Time for our annual posting of the USPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines.

First: LCRW subscription prices will be rising on January 1, 2021.

Second: the Small Beer office will be closed from December 23 – January 4, 2021. It is unlikely we will ship over that period. Need books? We can still help:

  1. Weightless Books is always here for you with DRM-free multi-format ebooks — which can hadily be sent as gifts on the date you specify.
  2. Want more ebooks? We can help you with that.
  3. Audiobooks: we have them.
  4. Bookshop can ship books and toys to you or direct to your family and friends. We’re always adding book recs there.
  5. Book Moon will be open.

So here are the last (domestic) order dates for Small Beer Press. (International shipping deadlines.) Along with a reminder that orders include free first class (LCRW) or media mail (books) shipping in the USA.

And the annual reminder:

Media Mail parcels are the last ones to go on trucks. If the truck is full, Media Mail does not go out until the next truck. And if that one’s full, too . . . it could be very late in December before there’s space. So, if you’d like to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please add Priority Mail:

Domestic Mail Class/Product Deadline
 Media Mail (estimate, not guaranteed) Dec. 12
 First Class Mail (LCRW/chapbooks) Dec. 18
 Priority Mail Dec. 19
 Priority Mail Express Dec. 23

What are we talking about? Ordering books. (And we always have a few of these around.)


All Your Questions Answered

Fri 13 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on All Your Questions Answered | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 42 cover - click to view full sizeNext week the new issue of LCRW goes out with all your questions answered and, for some people, a chocolate bar. Perhaps we should be sending out LCRW masks but the responsibility of readerly enjoyment is quite enough for us. The responsibility for the lives of our readers is fainting couch material.* Thanks everyone who wears a mask in public.

All your questions? Since everything comes down to What Is The Point Anyway? Yes. We are going with Douglas Adams’s answer, pushing it further from funny to unfunny and perhaps back to funny.

The zine comes out the same as Obama’s A Promised Land. Wonder which one will sell more?

You may have read an excerpt from Sarah Langan’s “You Have the Prettiest Mask” on Lit Hub. It is a huge, dark novella and as ever I am looking forward to hearing what people think of it. Masks being something we give more thought to every day.

The full table of contents is now up:

Sarah Langan, “You Have the Prettiest Mask” [read an excerpt on Lit Hub]
Vandana Singh, “Sticky Man”
Stewart Moore, “Madeline’s Wings”
Jack Larsen, “Bright and Shabby Buses”
Kristin Yuan Roybal, “Separation Theory”

poetry

Holly Day, Two Poems

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Cooking Column: “The Stories We Tell”

The zine will be in the mail at some point next week and the ebook will go out on Weightless on Tuesday. (Not as sure about other ebook sites.) It is very cheering to put a zine out in the middle of the pandemic. To take stories from writers and send them out to readers. To imagine a readership with the mail piled up untouched for 3 days for pandemic/magical thinking reasons, and then taking the zine from the pile, putting feet up, getting comfortable, digging in.

* What makes good fainting couch material is something we often ponder from our chaise lounges. Something soft, something forgiving. Something not made of thinly sliced trees. Something like a hammock or a panda.


Congratulations, Joe & Kamala!

Sun 8 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Congratulations, Joe & Kamala! | Posted by: Gavin

What a relief. Lots of work to do, but let’s have that moment of joy and then head down and back to work and bending that moral arc once again toward justice for all.


Congratulations, Kathleen!

Wed 4 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Congratulations, Kathleen! | Posted by: Gavin

We are so delighted that among all the crappiness of an uncertain election and millions of people somehow choosing Tr*mp despite the last 4 years there is the lovely news that Kathleen Jennings received this year’s World Fantasy Award for best artist.

Delighted, not only because last year we published Margo Lanagan’s chapbook, Stray Bats, illustrated by Kathleen and Laurie J. Marks’s Air Logic with a cover by Kathleen (which completed a fabulous piece of interlocking art she created over 5 years or so), and recently we published Kij Johnson’s The River Bank with a cover and illustrations by Kathleen as well as Christopher Rowe’s Telling the Map with a cover by Kathleen, but because she is a delightful person who adds joy to any day in which you see her. So, congrats to all the winners and especially this time to Kathleen.

      


Zen Cho

Fri 23 Oct 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Zen Cho | Posted by: Gavin

It’s true, in April we’ll publish a new, expanded edition of Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad and Other Stories. For now you can read more about it here.


Oct. 21, 7 p.m. Nathan Ballingrud & Elizabeth Hand

Mon 12 Oct 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Oct. 21, 7 p.m. Nathan Ballingrud & Elizabeth Hand | Posted by: Gavin

Good news for those enjoying visiting the literary part of October country, we have an online event coming up with two favorite authors whose books are definitely on the darker and spookier part of the spectrum.

Join us on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. EST  as we welcome Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters (aka Monsterland, a new TV series available now on Hulu) & Elizabeth Hand, author of many fabulous books including her new novel, fourth in the Cass Neary series (which begins with Generation Loss), The Book of Lamps and Banners to the online space occasionally generated on this planet by the gravity of Book Moon for a reading and discussion of their latest books.

Register for this Book Moon event HERE — and please do help spread the word. See you there!

Monsterland: (a Hulu Series) Cover Image The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary #4) Cover Image


Catch Monsterland Now on Hulu

Sat 3 Oct 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Catch Monsterland Now on Hulu | Posted by: Gavin

Monsterland: (a Hulu Series) Cover ImageCatch Monsterland on Hulu and get the book right here from the publishers.
Monsterland? What’s that?
So glad you asked. Here’s a lovely article from Saturday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette.


Online Events (links TK)

Wed 16 Sep 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Online Events (links TK) | Posted by: Gavin

There are a few online events featuring Small Beer authors planned in the next couple of weeks and there are more TK but here are the first few:

September 16, 7 p.m. PST
Elwin Cotman (Dance on Saturday)
Register here.

September 24, 7:30 p.m. EST
Pre-register for the inaugural event of the Strange Light Reading Series (originally planned to take place at Book Moon) hosted by Alexandra Manglis & Yvette Ndlovu with Karen Lord (Redemption in Indigo 10-year anniversary reading) & Tess

a Gratton (Night Shine).

October 18, 6:30 p.m. EST

Elwin Cotman (Dance on Saturday)
The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD 21209
Register here.

 


Questionable Utopias?

Thu 6 Aug 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Questionable Utopias? | Posted by: Gavin

An Agent of Practices? An Agent of Utopia! Questionable Practices! Get these fabulous collections by Andy Gunn and Eileen Duncan Andy Duncan and Eileen Gunn as well as 8 more books by Chesya Burke, Tenea D. Johnson, Larissa Lai, JD Scott, Ginn Hale, Maurice Broaddus, and an anthology edited by Bill Campbell & Francesco Verso in the latest StoryBundle deal: the Innovative Worlds Bundle curated by Tenea D. Johnson:

Innovation can mean the difference between progress and stagnation, wonder and woe, seeing the return of dim days or a new age of enlightenment. An innovative world is one where you can immerse yourself and learn something new, see a trope turned on its head, meet characters that will frequent the passages of your mind, navigating by the spark of newness they carry through the gloom.
Innovative worlds can shine as an example of what to be or provide respite from what, if only temporarily, is. Or they can make you appreciate what ain’t broke.
One could make a strong case that innovation and its possibilities are in short supply at the moment.
But not here.


LCRW Forty-Extraordinary-One

Tue 30 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on LCRW Forty-Extraordinary-One | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeHey, it is publication day for the new issue of LCRW! We are celebrating all day by relaxing by the seaside with mimosas. It is a sunny day with a breeze and the shade of the trees it hitting me just right. Later someone, not me, is going to produce a fruit plate. If you happen to call Book Moon and I answer the phone, that’s not me, that’s my semi-sentient personal AI who may be able to help you find a book or may check in on your feelings about the word pudding and the utility of graprefruit cannons as distractors for angry 11-year-olds.

The other day after mailing out all the LCRWs, I went to update the subscriber database so mark some subscriptions expired. Except! Ha! Made myself laugh! No subscriptions expired because this was a freebie to all the subscribers! So, thank you, subscribers! It is mostly great fun to make this zine and send it out into the world and it was delightful to send this issue out as a thank you for supporting the work.

It’s a big issue: we packed 2 novellas and a long story in there along with Nicole Kimberlings “Quarantine Pantry Challenge” column. And of course the fabulous cover illustration, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm,” is by Vicky Yuh.

Also, 2020 being so uneven, LCRW 41 is the first thing Small Beer has published this year. We’d meant to have Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss paperback out in April (it is printed, at the warehouse, and ready to roll out in August) and Elwin Cotman’s new collection, Dance on Saturday, out this month, but: COVID-19 meant we asked our booksellers at Book Moon not to come in to the shop, so we spent much of spring here. That may change a little in upcoming months, as we need to find new balances in the new world, or, it may not. Who knows how anything will go — except the chances of me getting on a plane this summer is near zero, so: more time for making books or more time in BKMN? The USA is doing such a terrible job of controlling the virus — which, you know, just means being polite enough to wear a mask in public — that we may remain in the equivalent of lockdown until there is a vaccine (eek).

All of which is to say, we are delighted to have actually published something in this the last day of the first half of 2020. We look forward to hearing readers’ reactions and to publishing many more things in the second half of the year.


Psychopomps Galore

Mon 29 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Psychopomps Galore | Posted by: Gavin

Psychopomp BundleThis is your chance to get a fabulous deal on a dozen books by writers who’ve chosen to investigate life (as it were) on the other side of the veil — including Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp, and the sequel, Latchkey.

This bundle lasts for the next two weeks or so:

The Crossing the Veil Bundle – Curated by Rhonda Parrish: I’ve spent the last several years curating and editing short stories and poetry for anthologies and this year I’m very excited to expand that into curating books for a StoryBundle. I’m excited to share my first ever StoryBundle which is all about psychopomps and crossing the veil.

A couple years ago I stumbled across a word I’d never heard before — psychopomp. When I looked up its meaning I discovered that I’d been aware of the concept of a psychopomp for a long time, I just hadn’t known the word for it. A psychopomp is a being which acts as a guide for the souls of the recently departed, helping them move from this world to the next and occasionally carrying messages between the two.

It’s kind of impressive that I went so long without knowing the word psychopomp because I’ve always loved stories that involve crossing over from the world of the living to that of the dead. Always. As a kid we took Greek Mythology in school and while all the stories interested me it was those set in Hades that really fascinated me. I would seek them out and devour version after version. And as I grew, that never really changed. I still love stories set in the places we go after we die, or featuring characters that can cross between those worlds, which made choosing that as the topic for this StoryBundle an easy decision.

That’s not all! Read more about the 12 books in the bundle here, and make sure to click on each cover for a synopsis, reviews and preview of each book.


And Go Like Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award Finalists

Wed 17 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on And Go Like Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award Finalists | Posted by: Gavin

And Go Like This coverI’m delighted to see that John Crowley’s collection And Go Like This is a finalist along with many other fine novels and collections in the$5,000 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.

Award winners will be announced during the summer and the full list of finalists can be found on the Neukom Institute’s website.

 


2 x Buzzfeed

Wed 3 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on 2 x Buzzfeed | Posted by: Gavin

Dance on Saturday cover - click to view full sizeWe moved Elwin Cotman’s forthcoming collection, Dance on Saturday, from this month to August since a lot of booksellers and reviewers were unable to receive their review copies in a timely fashion. But that just means more time for people to look forward to it!

Buzzfeed recently had it on 2 summer reading lists. Add it to yours!

“Cotman blends humor, emotional clarity, and wild imagination to bring life to stories about identity, power, and human nature.”
— Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 29 Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down

“Fantastically weird short stories infused with elements from Black culture. . . . Each story provides a singular and riveting reading experience.”
— Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed, 17 Summer Must-Reads For Fantasy Lovers


#BlackOutTuesday

Mon 1 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on #BlackOutTuesday | Posted by: Gavin

Small Beer Press and Book Moon will be closed tomorrow, June 2, 2020.

#BlackOutTuesday
#BlackLivesMatter


LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One

Wed 20 May 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeThe next issue of LCRW, no. 41, will be published in print and ebook form on June 16th, 2020, and will be known as LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One.

That cover there, that’s a place holder for a fabulous piece of art.

The page for it will go up soon but in the meantime: news!

LCRW 41 will be sent to print and ebook subscribers — and anyone who subscribes to LCRW before June 15 — for free.

We will check in with the lovely indie bookshops that usually carry LCRW and see if they are going to be open but many are in the same position as Book Moon which won’t be open for the forseeable future for anything but curbside pickup from May 27th at the earliest. So since this issue can’t find readers the usual way, maybe it will find a few more readers in a different way.

The Table of Contents includes two novellas which will take you to two very different places. Best of all, neither of those places is this one.

There are many subscription levels — my favorite remains the chocolate subscription (which is tough in warm weather as that price does not include cold packs) — and #10, the huge donation & a free chocolate subscription.


Otherwise Award Honor List

Tue 14 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Otherwise Award Honor List | Posted by: Gavin

4 Logic coversThis weekend I was thrilled to see that Laurie J. Marks’s 4-book Elemental Logic series was one of nine titles on this year’s Otherwise Award Honor List — congratulations go to Akwaeke Emezi whose novel Freshwater is this year’s winner and to all the writers whose work is on this year’s honor list.

The Otherwise Award, Formerly Known As the Tiptree Award, is one of my favorite awards. It was begun in 1991 by Pat Murphy and Karen J. Fowler and is for encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender. One of the multitude of reasons I love the award is that there is an actual monetary prize — $1,000! — some of which is raised by bake sales, mmm, but that’s not all: the winner also receives a specially commissioned piece of original artwork, and (as always) chocolate.

Laurie’s third novel in the series, Water Logic, was also on the Honor List — as was her 1993 novel Dancing Jack.

Here’s what award jury member Debbie Notkin wrote about the Elemental Logic series:

“Laurie J. Marks’ Fire Logic was published 18 years ago, followed by Earth Logic in 2004, Water Logic in 2007, and Air Logic in 2019. The four Elemental Logic books reflect the author’s growth in skill and breadth over the nearly two decades, along with an extraordinary consistency in characterization and vision. The gender aspects of the story arc largely concentrated in the depth and detail of complex same-sex relationships, though Air Logic also ventures into the realm of treating autism-spectrum mindsets as a gender of their own. More subtly, while Marks does include heterosexual relationships in her story, she never centers the dynamics of those relationships, concentrating all of her relationship writing on same-sex couples. One crucial thing these books offer the contemporary reader is a vision of undermining and destabilizing polarized societies, focused on the long hard work of bringing factions that hate each other back into tenuous but respectful relationship – and perhaps that too is a form of exploring and expanding gender.”


Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

Mon 13 Apr 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award | Posted by: Gavin

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea cover - click to view full sizeWe were delighted to see that Sarah Pinsker’s first collection of short stories, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is this year’s winner of the Philip K. Dick Award.

Congratulations, Sarah! Here’s one of the stories from the book which if you have not read it should keep you happily entertained for a little while: And Then There Were (N-One), originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

Sarah is having a (relatively) good month: her story “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye,” — also originally published in Uncanny, is a finalist for the Hugo Award. So congrats to all the nominees and fingers crossed for Sarah in August.


February’s Gone, But We Already Have Something to Look Forward to Next February

Wed 4 Mar 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on February’s Gone, But We Already Have Something to Look Forward to Next February | Posted by: Gavin

Although 2021 seems far away and everything in the future gets blurrier every day we’re still slowly, slowly reading manuscripts for Small Beer Press and so we are already very much looking forward to next February when we will publish Isabel Yap’s as-yet-untitled debut collection of stories in trade paperback and ebook editions.

We’ve long enjoyed Isabel Yap’s fabulous stories and — as you can see from her website — she has published a good number of them over the years. Working with her on putting a collection together has been a joy for the two of us. Good news for all: there will be at least one, perhaps two, new stories in the book.

As time goes by we will add links to more stories (for example: “How to Swallow the Moon” from the Nov/Dec 2018 Uncanny Magazine)  and so on. There will be advance reading copies, reviewers can do their review thing, and at some point we will send a beautiful thing out into the world for you the reader to find.


Locus Recommended Reading List

Mon 3 Feb 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Locus Recommended Reading List | Posted by: Gavin

Issue 709 Table of Contents, February 2020Congratulations to all the writers whose work has been selected for this year’s Locus Recommended Reading List! I am especially delighted that in a year where we published 10 titles (2 collections, 2 novels, 1 chapbook, 5 titles reprinted in paperback), three of the five new titles are on the list:

And among all the stories on the list (I’d have added a few from LCRW, but, hey, bias) I’m glad that Kelly’s story in the final issue of Tin House made it to the list:

Congrats to one and all!


Happy New PKD Award Finalist

Fri 17 Jan 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Happy New PKD Award Finalist | Posted by: Gavin

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea cover - click to view full sizeWe are delighted to note that Sarah Pinsker’s collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award — and the book also appeared on a couple of year-end lists (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Books of 2019; Booklist: Top 10 Debut SF&F). You can try a couple of the stories out here:

And We Were Left Darkling
In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind
No Lonely Seafarer
And Then There Were (N-One)


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