The Poison Oracle: conversation online for publication day

Tue 10 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on The Poison Oracle: conversation online for publication day | Posted by: Gavin

To celebrate the publication of our latest Peter Dickinson mystery reprint, The Poison Oracle, we worked with the fine folks at Crimespree Magazine to put the whole conversation between two absolute legends of the mystery field online: Sara Paretsky and Peter Dickinson.

Originally published in 1982, The Poison Oracle is a strange and haunting novel, somewhat of its time, yet still fascinating (and, yes, haunting), and we are very happy to be able to put it in front of new readers. It is the second adult mystery novel of Peter’s that we have published—look out for an upcoming ebook sale on the also-excellent-but-very-different-first title, Death of a Unicorn—and we are planning on at least one more. 

We were incredibly happy that the the fabulous Sara Paretsky agreed to chat to Peter about the book and that conversation is included in our new paperback and ebook editions.

Here’s the start of the conversation, or you can jump here and read the whole thing.

When Gavin Grant asked if I would do a conversation with Peter Dickinson for The Poison Oracle, I jumped at the chance. Dickinson is one of the premier writers of the Twentieth Century. His language is meticulous, his narratives carefully thought out, his characters vivid and credible. I should have looked before I leapt: it’s one thing to be an admiring reader, another to conduct a conversation. Besides, the act or art of writing feels like a delicate watch, something like the handmade one with all the little moving parts that tennis great Rafael Nadal wore and lost. If you start tinkering with the mechanism, you destroy the watch.

Sara Paretsky: I first read The Poison Oracle when it was published in 1982. The novel is so rich with themes and nuances—language, clashes of cultures, how do we communicate across cultures? across species? What makes a moral person, what goads a person who thinks himself a coward to act?—that I’ve always put it on my own private best-ten list.

Peter Dickinson: That’s nice, but actually I don’t often think about that sort of thing when I’m writing. My focus is mainly on stuff like getting a character from one room into another. In a sense the plot—the story— is there to allow the big questions to happen up without actual ratiocination. Once there they have to be accommodated. Otherwise you start thinking of yourself as a Great Writer, which is death.

SP: The Poison Oracle is a book about many things, but language and communication lie at its heart….

Read on


Harvard Warehouse Weekend!

Tue 10 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Harvard Warehouse Weekend! | Posted by: Gavin

For the next four weekends the Harvard Book Store is opening up their Somerville warehouse and hosting 4 indie culture weekends. We will be there! Saturday, September 14, 10 am to 6 pm, we will be selling books, mugs, maybe even saltshakers! We may have even a giveaway.

What we will definitely have: incredibly cheap books!

Here’s all the info on the weekends taken directly from the HBS site including a list

Warehouse Weekends: Local Voices
Four Weekends of Books, Culture & Community
This Weekend: Small Presses and Literary Journals
10am to 6pm, Saturday, Sept. 14 and Sunday, Sept. 15

Date

Saturday

September 14, 2013

10:00 AM

 LocationHarvard Book Store Warehouse

14 Park St., Somerville, MA

DIRECTIONS »

 TicketsThis event is free; no tickets are required.

We know you value local.

We know you make it a point to shop at independent businesses, dine at local restaurants, attend neighborhood events, support community organizations, and champion area artists.
That’s why we’re such good friends.

That’s also why you’re invited to join us this fall for Harvard Book Store’s Warehouse Weekends where local is the name of the game.  We’ve asked dozens of our favorite community cohorts to help us celebrate our collective ind(ie)pendence with bargain books, free samples, contests, workshops, and more!

From 10:00 A.M.-6:00 P.M.  today, our 6500 sq. ft. warehouse in Somerville will feature chapbook giveaways, consultations with literary editors, and many of the best literary magazines and small presses in New England.  And did we mention our 25,000 used, rare and remainder books available for your browsing pleasure?

Meet:

Black Ocean – In addition to showcasing some of their stunning books, this press will host author signings and meet & greets throughout the day.
Boston Review – You can’t beat free issues of a great literary magazine with an email newsletter sign-up, and that’s just what you’ll get at Boston Review’s booth today.
Cervena Barva Press –  Founded in 2005, Cervena Barva Press (“Red Color” in Czech) publishes poetry, fiction, plays, translations and memoir from writers all over the world.
Fugu Truck – This awesome local food truck will be serving up Asian street food beloved by Bostonians.
Harvard Review – Calling all writers of short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction: Bring a few pages of your submission and get an on-the-spot assessment by Harvard Review Editor Christina Thompson (from 12:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M.).
Inman Review – A local literary journal with a great reputation, Inman Review will be discussing (and maybe even accepting) submissions today in addition to selling current and back issues.
MBTAgifts – Always a favorite, MBTAgifts offers old MBTA signs and memorabilia.
Ploughshares – This literary heavyweight offers up discounts on back issues and a free digital solo when you sign up for their newsletter.  They also promise to be charming and personable. No blank stares. EVER.
Q’s Nuts – A Somerville favorite, this place will have you giving in to tempation once you try their line of sweet, savory and exotic flavors.
Rose Metal Press – Learn about hybrid genres when you visit the booth of this Brookline-based press, and pick up a book, button, or bookmark while you’re at it.
Small Beer Press – All the way from western Mass., this smashing husband and wife duo is planning to offer a very special giveaway, a great selection of remainders and zines for sale, and maybe even mugs!
Ward Maps – Harvard Book Store’s Park Street neighbor will feature antique and rare maps for sale.
Wilderness House Press – An imprint of Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Press will feature books for sale as well as author booksignings and giveaways.

Our Warehouse is located at 14 Park St. in Somerville, between Somerville Ave. and Beacon St., just outside of Union Square. The closest T stop is Porter Square, on the Red Line, and bus lines #83 and #87 have stops on Somerville Ave. near Park St.

And unlike at most parties… friends of friends are definitely encouraged to bring friends! See you there!

Be sure to keep your eye on this page for all new updates regarding our Warehouse Weekend partners. 

Here are the full list of weekend fun:

Saturday, September 14 and Sunday, September 15 (10am–6pm)
Local Voices: Small Presses and Literary Journals

Saturday, September 21 and Sunday, September 22 (10am–6pm)
Local Flavors: Food Truck Favorites and Epicurean Treats

Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September, 29 (10am–6pm)
Local Innovation: From Science Fiction to Science Fairs

Saturday, October 5 and Sunday, October 6 (10am–6pm)
Local Craft: Workshops, Zines, Indie Comics, and more


Walking Tour of Bridge Street Cemetery

Mon 9 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Walking Tour of Bridge Street Cemetery | Posted by: Gavin

On October 5th at 1 pm, Susan Stinson will be giving a walking tour of Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton. Tickets are $5 and are available at Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street,  Northampton MA 01060, 413-586-4235.

Walking in this cemetery inspired Susan’s forthcoming novel, Spider in a Tree. (Don’t miss the launch party at First Churches (129 Main St., Northampton) on October 2nd at 7 pm!)

cemetery tour ticket

 


Reprints!

Mon 9 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Reprints! | Posted by: Gavin

Good news from here: we’re sending two books back to press, both of them first collections, both of them fantastic. The first is Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and the second is Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees.

Of course that means we’d love to hear from you if you’ve found any typose [sic!] in either of the books. And, sure, if you email us next week to tell us it will be too late and we will gnash our teeth, but, then, we’ll just wait for the next printing!


Some goings on, reviews, &c.

Fri 6 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Comments Off on Some goings on, reviews, &c. | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 29 is out. Must write a prop’r post about that soon. Phew. It is a goody.

Things on the to-be-read pile: Duplex by Kathryn Davis. Alice Kim gave it a thumbs up which is good enough for me. Also, picked it up at Odyssey Books the other night after Holly Black’s reading.

Just came across this great review of Travel Light by Paul Kincaid from 2007 on SF Site.

“The enchantments of Travel Light contain more truth, more straight talking, a grittier, harder-edged view of the world than any of the mundane descriptions of daily life you will find in … science fiction stories.”

Sounds about right to me. We reprinted this book because I found myself buying more and more copies to give to people and now I am very glad we did as now readers have told me they pick up multiple copies to press on friends. Thus a good book is read!

Nerds of a Feather reviewed Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Unreal and the Real: Where on Earth: “You’ve probably guessed that I really liked this volume of short stories . . . ” (There’s an earlier review of Outer Space, Inner Lands here.) Nerds of a Feather is a great name.

If you subscribe to F&SF, you may already know this: Angélica Gorodischer’s “By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon” appeared in the May/June edition of F&SF.

A while ago Kelly did a podcast interview and reading with Hold That Thought with Rebecca King. Kelly in turn interviewed Readercon guest of honor Maureen F. McHugh and Scott Edelman posted it in two parts. And! Game reviewer VocTer posted a reading of “Magic for Beginners” on YouTube. This is part 1 and is an hour long!


Oldest unpaid invoice 10-year anniversary is coming

Fri 6 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

And since we are optimists we still hope it will be paid! This invoice, no. 145* is for all of …  $29.40. If I get it together I’ll post a scan of it as it is, er, fun (maybe only to me?) to see that it was supposed to be for $32.40, but 1 copy of Judith Berman’s Lord Stink chapbook was misbound. Oh, the thrill of it all!

Since the invoice was only for ~$30, we never bothered following up until 2008 when we tried to tidy up all our unpaid invoices. Most of them are/were for bookstores that take LCRW on consignment (argh, the paperwork!) and it was great to suddenly get all these tiny checks. Invoice no. 145 languished. However, it was not alone!

As you can see below in the pasted in info, this bookstore asked for “a standing order for 5 copies of our chapbooks and LCRW.” Yay! Now we could just ship out 5 copies each time we published a zine or chapbook. Pretty sweet. If said bookstore paid said invoices for zines, etc.

Instead this arrangement lasted exactly 1 issue of LCRW and 2 more chapbooks. Silly me. A couple more unpaid invoices later (unpaid balance: $74.40, ooh!) and we realized we should probably stop sending them stuff.

Come on chaps, pay a zinester!

This is one of the big reasons we love our book distributor, Consortium. They deal with all the shipping out and returns and invoices and credits and reinvoicing and shipping and all that and every day I am grateful I don’t have to do it.

We still send LCRW out to some stores that only pay every 2-3 years, but, hey, they pay. This store never did. But they do order our books from Consortium and from wholesalers.

So we sent them reminders in 2008, 2010, and 2012 (and maybe other times, but that’s what’s written on it), and then I realized that our little oldest unpaid invoice was going to turn 10 years old on September 16, 2013. I can hear it now, 10 more years! 10 more years!

Invoice  00145

September 16, 2003

Title                                                                Price        Quantity    Discount    Total
Foreigners and Other Familiar Faces    $5                 3                 40%        $9
Lord Stink                                                      $5                 1                 40%        $3
Rosetti Song                                                  $5                 3                 40%        $9
LCRW 12                                                        $4                 3                  40%        $5.40
Total                       $29.40

As of now you have a standing order for 5 copies of our chapbooks and LCRW.
Thanks for ordering our books from Ingram or directly from Pathway Book Service.

Invoice  00151
November 8, 2003

Title                        Price        Quantity    Discount    Total
LCRW 12                $5               5                     40%        $15
Total                       $15
Sorry—our new chapbooks have been delayed at the printer. We will get them to you as soon as we get them.

Invoice  00172
December 4, 2003

Title                                  Price        Quantity    Discount    Total
Bittersweet Creek            $5                 5                  40%
Other Cities                       $5                 5                  40%
Total                       $30

At last!

* Not all of invoices number 1 to 144 were paid. A few zine and bookstores closed without paying, c’est la vie. You publishes your zines and you takes your chances!

1/14/15, ETA: Added chapbook links and tidied up the post.

Unpaid invoices? $74.40
Amusement over the years? Priceless. Variable!


Coming next week

Thu 5 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Coming next week | Posted by: Gavin

To celebrate publication day of our latest Peter Dickinson reprint: next week Crimespree Magazine will publish a conversation about The Poison Oracle between two fabulous novelists: Sara Paretsky and Peter Dickinson.

 


PW on Tyrannia

Wed 4 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on PW on Tyrannia | Posted by: Gavin

Great review of A. DeNiro’s forthcoming Tyrannia in Publishers Weekly:

“DeNiro (Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead) has crafted the rare work whose setting is the realm of pure imagination.” Read it here.


An American Beer Nerd in Edinburgh 2

Fri 30 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Michael

The Pentland Hills, with Wall

The Pentland Hills, with Wall

Part Two: The North Is Coming

If you haven’t, read part one.

“The North is coming!” cry the beer nerds of Scotland and Northern England, in shameless reference to those bold, glory-seeking fictional beer nerds from Beyond the Wall. In the North, I learned, a brewing renaissance is underway. The dominance of CAMRA-established uniformity I talked about in part one cracks steadily under the small but building onslaught of US-influenced, globally inspired nano- and microbreweries. Edinburgh is full of tiny, endlessly cross-pollinating knots of brewing brilliance, a beer microculture not entirely unlike those I’ve found surrounding Boston and Detroit.

Below I review a lot of bars in no particular order, though I did save some of the best for last. One week, fourteen pubs (plus repeats), miles and miles of walking over hill and under dale, too many pints to count, and thanks in great part to all that low ABV I raved about in part one, only one hangover! The fish and chips and bangers and mash blurred together; the beers and the bartenders did not. I prepared an insufficiently researched beer tour map ahead of time; it  got thrown to the wind. What I found instead was better. I have updated the map—open it in another window and follow along.

Read more


Tyrannia isn’t a geographical location

Tue 27 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Tyrannia isn’t a geographical location | Posted by: Gavin

Spolia #1

As Gus Iversen notes on the Spolia magazine intro page to A. DeNiro’s story “A Rendition”

Tyrannia isn’t a geographical location as much as a frame of mind. 

Read the intro (“Tyrannia: Population: A. DeNiro“) here and the full story here.

 


Bookslinger: At the Mouth of the River of Bees

Fri 23 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Bookslinger: At the Mouth of the River of Bees | Posted by: Gavin

New this week on Consortium’s Bookslinger app is the title story from Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees.

Previously on Bookslinger:

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Delauney the Broker” (translated by Edward Gauvin) from the collection A Life on Paper.

Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper”

Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”

Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”

Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”

Download the app in the iTunes store.

And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE


PW on Spider in a Tree

Wed 21 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on PW on Spider in a Tree | Posted by: Gavin

Publishers Weekly gave a lovely review to Susan’s forthcoming (at the printer now!) novel Spider in a Tree:

“Stinson restores personhood and complexity to figures who have shriveled into caricature. . . . the payoff is not just the recovered history but the beautifully evoked sense of lives lived under the eye, not only of prying neighbors, but of God, with all the terror and possibility that entailed.”

Read the whole thing here.

If you’re in Western Mass., don’t miss Susan’s launch party/reading on October 2nd and then the her cemetery tour (tickets available at Broadside Books) on October 5th. We’re still adding events, but here’s what we have at the moment:

October 2, 7 pm, Launch party & reading, First Churches, Northampton, Mass. Sponsored by Forbes Library and Broadside Books.
October 5, 1 pm, Public Cemetery Tour. Tickets will be available this autumn.
October 8, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
(Late October: San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley)
December 15, 5 pm, Bloom Readings, Washington Heights, NYC


Where are they now: Michael J. DeLuca

Tue 20 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Where are they now: Michael J. DeLuca | Posted by: Gavin

Cat! the viewMy archery skills have severely deteriorated. I no longer get paper cuts. I haven’t mistakenly spent too much money mailing anything to Germany in quite some time. The mail room employees at the Easthampton post office have very likely forgotten what I look like.

I moved away from Western Mass, first to Boston, then Detroit, where I meet fewer pagans on a daily basis and not everyone agrees with my politics. I own a house now (real estate: significantly cheaper outside the Valley) and have begun accumulating books once again after a long stretch of itinerant downsizing, but despair at ever getting my house to the enviable state of the Small Beer office in 2005, where one expected any day to die of internal injuries following a tragic book cave-in.

I still write (I will always write) but am less afraid of writers. I still listen to and enjoy indie chamber-pop, but less of it. It has been years since I’ve opened a piece of mail with a tiny cutlass. Through a great stroke of luck and generosity, I once again on occasion get to look at a medicinal mushrooms poster. I still eat wild mushrooms procured from local woods and have not yet died of it. I still drink lots of quite good tea, but eat slightly less amazing chocolate. I ride 100% fewer freight elevators and no longer have much use for a pallet jack.

Otherwise, life remains much the same.

Michael J. DeLuca lives in Michigan. His short stories have been published in Urban Green Man, Abyss & Apex, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.


Tyrannia, free?

Mon 12 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Tyrannia, free? | Posted by: Gavin

Good news! We have 15 copies of A. DeNiro’s excellent new collection, Tyrannia and Other Renditions to giveaway* on LibraryThing.

A.’s stories are like no one else’s.* Tyrannia—with a fab cover by Kevin Huizenga—has eleven stories that have been published in Asimov’s, Caketrain, Strange Horizons, Spolia, and other fine books and magazines. This book will knock you over and if you’re lucky, it will do it for free.

Good luck!

* Yes, we used to do Mehgoodreads giveaways but since they got bought by Amazon I closed my account. Bitter? Me? No. Yes, LT are part-owned by the evil empire, too. Meh.

** Yes, I know this is true of everyone. But it’s more true of A.!


One Campus, One Book @ University of Alaska Southeast

Tue 6 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

One Campus, One Book @ University of Alaska Southeast

We’re excited to see how it goes this later this year at the University of Alaska Southeast where Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees has been chosen for their One Campus, One Book program. Check out the huge rendering of Jackie Morris*’s great bee. You can keep up the university and community events on the OCOB facebook page.

Kij will be visiting the campus from November 6-8:

November 8, 2013, 7:00 pm, UAS Egan Library
An Evening with Kij Johnson
Sponsored by OCOB and UAS Evening at Egan lecture series.

November 9, 2013, 1:00-4:00 pm, Douglas Public Library
Community Fiction Writing Workshop with Kij Johnson
Sponsored by the Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries

April 2014, Location TBA
Narrative in Drawing
UAS Student Art Exhibit featuring works based on ‘At the Mouth of the River of Bees’

* Don’t miss Jackie’s pictures of her garden (which is really underselling this link). Flowers? Check. Interesting garden gate? Check. Cat? Check. Unique windows in garden wall? Check. Cornucopia of beauty? Check.


Dr. Capaldi

Mon 5 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, I am a huge fan of The Thick of It, but come on, this is getting ridiculous. I thought last time the Doctor Who writers picked a new actor (er, regenerated) they’d be on the side of the rest of the world, you know, not just white guys from England and Scotland. My mistake. Instead they chose 28-year-old Matt Smith. Huh, we all said.

Surely, the world thought, next time they will go with someone who is not a young white guy.

Well, they picked Peter Capaldi of Local Hero and The Thick of It. A brilliant actor and who can blame him for taking the gig? And, note, he is almost twice Matt Smith’s age! Is that not . . . different! Ta da!

Er, no. Why did they not pick a woman and/or someone who is not white?

For a TV show that’s been running 50 years, this is getting beyond silly and into embarrassing. (Conspiracy theorists note: the next actor will be the Unlucky 13th Doctor. Ooh. Maybe they will pick me only to kill me off in my first episode?)

The Doctor—hey, I know someone will correct me if I’m wrong—is an alien with two hearts who comes from somewhere rather far away and who gets to Time Lord it all up and down the timestream. Yet, somehow, so far he can only be played by (sorry, “regenerate into”) yet another white guy?

Some alien. Blah, blah, blah.


LCRW 29 table of contents

Thu 1 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Coming next month, maybe sooner to subscribers, the latest issue of our occasional outburst, Lady Churchill’s Rather Late Wristlet. The table of contents is as below. This might even be the right order. Seems a bit farfetched to have the ToC out but not the zine. Heck, there is even a cover.

Fiction

“Smash!” Jennifer Linnaea
“The Groomsmen,” Sarah Blackman
“Fairy Skulls,” Nina Allan
“Yaga Dreams of Growing Up,” Eileen Wiedbrauk
“Dietus Interruptus,” Ian Breen
“Good Keith!,” J. Brundage
“Three Rights Make a Left,” Rhonda Eikamp
“EGGS,” Claire Hero
“Disaster Movies,” Christopher Stabback
“Four Phoebes,” Maya Sonenberg

Nonfiction

“How to Seduce a Vegetarian,” Nicole Kimberling

Poetry

“Re-load,” Kara Singletary
“Noise,” David Galef
“Ksampguiyaeps—Woman-Out-To-Sea” and “Hermitage,” Neile Graham

Cover photo

Dawn Kimberling

 

 

 


Where are they now: Christian N. Desrosiers

Tue 30 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Where are they now: Christian N. Desrosiers | Posted by: Gavin

Boorama, a city in western Somaliland.

Boorama, a city in western Somaliland

I’ve been all over the place, both geographically and career-wise—I’ll do my best to be concise and still interesting. I interned at SBP during my junior year at Amherst College. At the time, I was an English major who was solely interested in literature and making a career in literature. I went on from SBP to a summer internship at the Hudson Review and, in my senior year, I wrote a literary-historical thesis on poverty in Appalachia and applied for a Fulbright scholarship to Indonesia.

My time in Indonesia taught me a lot about myself and my interests. I wrote and published a few pieces in the Hudson Review and other publications—a major coup after a seemingly endless stream of thanks-but-no-thanks emails from journals—but also grew more interested in social justice causes. Writing took too much of my time and what I ended up with seemed like too little to justify all those hours spent writing alone and in a constant state of frustration. I traveled a bit in Southeast Asia—Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar—and subsequently found a job with an educational non-profit in Somaliland, the autonomous region in northwest Somalia. After working there for a year, I started two companies in Somaliland: a logistics company for the fisheries sector (which barely got off the ground) and a renewable energy development firm (still making headway, follow us at www.qoraxenergy.com).

After making some inroads, I’ve left most of the daily operations of Qorax Energy to my co-founders as I prepare to start a master’s program at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. A long way from what I envisioned my future only three years previous as an undergraduate. We’ll see where life takes me next . . .


The Seventh Raven

Mon 29 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on The Seventh Raven | Posted by: Gavin

Cancelled

A Notting Hill children’s opera is suddenly on the world stage when terrorists try to kidnap one of the children.

Phoenix Award Winner from the Children’s Literature Association
“Going Round by the Byways” (pdf). Acceptance Speech for the Phoenix Award, Buffalo, New York, June 8, 2001

Too old to take part in the annual children’s opera, seventeen-year-old Doll Jacobs makes a place for herself as a junior member of the “opera mafia” who run the show. There are always exactly one hundred children’s roles, but an exception is made for Juan O’Grady, the son of the ambassador from a small South American country, Matteo.

When Mattean terrorists attempt to kidnap him, Juan is hidden amongst the other children and a tense standoff unfolds as the terrorists hold the cast and crew hostage and search for him. Dickinson’s philosophical investigation of whether we can defend “art for art’s sake” is also a taut thriller that will hold readers of all ages to the very end.

“This steady, sober hostage story is not quite a thriller . . . but anyone . . . can be engaged by the argument and enveloped in Dickinson’s carefully textured citadel.”—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Peter Dickinson’s children’s books:

“One of the real masters of children’s literature.”
—Philip Pullman

“Peter Dickinson is a national treasure.”—The Guardian

“Magnificent. Peter Dickinson is the past-master story-teller of our day.”
—Times Literary Supplement

Peter Dickinson OBE is the author of more than fifty books, including many books for children and young adults such as Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures, Kin, Eva, The Dancing Bear, Emma Tupper’s Diary, and  Michael L. Printz honor book The Ropemaker. He is a two-time winner of both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award and winner of the Guardian and Horn Book Awards. He spent seventeen years working at the magazine Punch. Find out more at peterdickinson.com.


Where, etc

Fri 26 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Where, etc | Posted by: Gavin

As I hoped, the Where Are They Now posts are interesting! We posted Sara’s on Monday and next week we will post a second one, from Christian N. Desrosiers. More, as ever, TK!


Audio book news

Tue 23 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Comments Off on Audio book news | Posted by: Gavin

We sent out the following note this morning. More below:

EASTHAMPTON, MA, July 23, 2013 — Small Beer Press is delighted to announce that audio rights to seven new and forthcoming titles have been acquired by Audible.com.

The first release will be award winning North Carolina writer Nathan Ballingrud’s debut collection, North American Lake Monsters: Stories. Also forthcoming within the next year are:

Gavin J. Grant, Publisher of Small Beer Press stated, “We love the books we publish and getting audio editions out there is becoming more important day by day. We’ve worked with many of the best audio publishers and are happy to add Audible to the mix.”

Audible, Inc., is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible is also the preeminent provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes® Store.

Small Beer Press is a Massachusetts based independent publisher headed by the husband and wife team of Gavin J. Grant and award winning author Kelly Link. Small Beer publishes a dozen or so select titles per year and also runs the DRM-free ebooksite, http://weightlessbooks.com. For more information, visit our website at https://www.smallbeerpress.com.

————–

This should be good news for authors and audio fans everywhere. Previously we’ve worked with

And we were very happy when Brilliance did the audiobook of Steampunk! and Recorded Books did Kelly’s collection Pretty Monsters.

Audiobooks are a growing part of the book business and we want our books read—or listened to—so I expect we will be selling more titles to Audible in the future but we will also shop them around to make sure we do well by our authors and readers.

And if none of this is fast enough for you and you want to listen to a good story right now, then I recommend our podcast which you can listen to here or subscribe to using iTunes or the service of your choice:

 rss feed


Where are they now: Sara Majka

Mon 22 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Where are they now: Sara Majka | Posted by: Gavin

Sara's apartmentLet’s see . . . after my time with Small Beer Press I spent seven months living in Provincetown as a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center.  From there I moved back to Northampton, MA to start at the University of Massachusetts MFA program.  I graduated from UMass a semester early because I couldn’t wait to move to New York City. That enthusiasm seems funny to me now, but here I am, living in Brooklyn, temping for the summer, saving money before starting the life of an adjunct in the fall. It’s hot here; the subway is unbelievably crowded on my morning commute. I finished a collection of short stories that I’m starting to shop around. I was lucky to be able to go on a lot of trips over the past few years—to Poland, Berlin, cross country by train, small mid-western cities by bus. I’ve begun to think, though, that a more established daily routine would be helpful.

When I volunteered with Small Beer, I think I was testing out publishing work as a potential future, but life seems to have funneled me towards teaching. Still, it was a good time to form relationships that I’m glad to have. It was also good to learn what the slush pile is like, what goes into making a book, and to get an intimate look at a press that’s there to publish books that otherwise might go unpublished.

Sara Majka lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her short stories have been published in The Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and A Public Space, among others. 


Where are they now?

Fri 19 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Where are they now? | Posted by: Gavin

I thought it would be interesting to see where some of our once-were-interns or volunteers are these days so a couple of weeks ago I emailed some of them to ask if they wouldn’t mind updating us on where they’ve been and where they are now.

In part it was curiosity since some of these people really helped out at various times: it’s no fun to mail the zine by myself, it’s much better with company! But I also thought it might be interesting to readers and students and anyone who is interested in working in publishing. The path to (or through) publishing is not simple nor singular, there are an infinite number of ways people enter, enjoy, live, and leave the field.

I’ll post the first one, from Sara Majka, on Monday, and then will post more as and when they come in. With luck we’ll do this again every seven years . . . well, maybe every now and then.


Publication Day: North American Lake Monsters

Tue 16 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Publication Day: North American Lake Monsters | Posted by: Gavin

Well, much to my regret I did not get to buy Nathan Ballingrud a tea or a beer at Readercon this past weekend. I saw him here and there, he looked pretty happy and I hope he is as this weekend we celebrated—a couple of days early—the publication of his first short story collection, the bleak, terrifying, heartrendingly brilliant North American Lake Monsters. We did manage to get him by the table to sign some copies of his book, so order soon if you’d like one. (We shipped out the personalized copies today.) Nathan is reading at the KGB Bar in New York City tomorrow night with his good friend, Dale Bailey—not coincidentally the co-author of one of the stories in his book, “The Crevasse.”

Early reaction to the book is strong, not surprising given the strength of the stories here. There’s an interview and a story coming up on Weird Fiction Review and reviews coming in some major newspapers and sites and we’re always curious to hear what readers think of our books. This one is excellent, but, oh so harsh!

Here’s where you can see and hear Nathan in the next month or two:

July
28 – Aug. 3, Shared Worlds, Wofford College, SC

August
3, 7 pm, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC (Bull Spec 3rd annual summer speculative fiction event)
28, 7 pm, Malaprop’s, Asheville, NC

“Ballingrud’s work isn’t like any other. These stories are full of sadness and sorrow, but they’re not merely sad. Like Tom Waits, Ballingrud is an expert at teasing out every delicious shade and nuance, every fine gradation of misery and pain. It’s a heady and fantastic cocktail mixed from roughnecks and down-and-outers and flawed people who find in their ordinary and terrible world monsters, magic, and the strange. Ballingrud’s fantastic elements are never seen full on, but always out of the corner of your eye, and it makes them all the more haunting.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A good horror story stays with you long after reading it. A great horror story doesn’t simply stay with you, it haunts you, and Nathan Ballingrud’s fiction does just that. He breathes life into rough, blue-collar characters and places them in some of the best dark fiction being written today. Every single story in this collection is an emotional gut punch.  The despair that saturates these tales is rich, and often it is not the supernatural elements in these tales that is horrific.”
—Arkham Digest

“For those willing to go down the dark road that’s laid out here, and those willing to feel complex patterns of sympathy, disgust, and horror for (often bad) people, this is an interesting collection. Uncomfortable a read as it is, it has the tinge of reality to it: a reality that often we’d rather not look at.”
—Brit Mandelo, Tor.com


Bookslinger: Delauney the Broker

Fri 12 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Bookslinger: Delauney the Broker | Posted by: Gavin

New this week on Consortium’s Bookslinger app is French legend Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Delauney the Broker” (translated by Edward Gauvin) from the collection A Life on Paper.

Previous Small Beer stories on Bookslinger:

Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper”

Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”

Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”

Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”

Download the app in the iTunes store.

And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE


Readercon: more signed books

Thu 11 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

This weekend we are off to Readercon and the program tells me I am on one panel (below) and Kelly will be interviewing guest of honor Maureen F. McHugh. We will also have a couple of tables in the bookshop—along with many friends from far away, yay!

I was going to paste in all the panels various Small Beer authors or connected peeps will be on but it got unwieldy. Program!

This also means you can order signed or personalized books by:

Nathan Ballingrud (new book!), Greer Gilman (yes, that new chapbook!), Elizabeth Hand, Maureen F. McHugh (we will have copies of the limited edition of Mothers & Other Monsters at a rather excellent price), John Crowley, Ted Chiang, John Kessel, Vincent McCaffrey, Howard Waldrop, Kelly Link, and maybe more? Just leave a note in the comments (or we will just suppose that’s what you want anyway).

Saturday

9:00 AM    VT    Reading: Jedediah Berry. Jedediah Berry. Jedediah Berry reads “The Family Arcana,” a story in cards.

9:00 AM    NH    Reading: Elizabeth Hand. Elizabeth Hand. Elizabeth Hand reads Flash Burn, the in-progress third Cass Neary novel.

10:00 AM    VT    Reading: Michael J. DeLuca. Michael J. DeLuca. Michael J. DeLuca reads “Remorse and the Pariah,” a mini-epic poem published in Abyss & Apex.

12:00 PM    RI    The Works of Maureen F. McHugh. Nathan Ballingrud, Dennis Danvers, Gavin J. Grant, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Charles Oberndorf (moderator). As Jo Walton said in a review ofMission Child, Maureen F. McHugh’s work explores “chewy ideas rather than shiny ones.” This is true of her novels, such as the Tiptree Award–winning China Mountain Zhang; her intense short stories, each of which contains an astonishing amount of narrative and conceptual complexity; and her alternate reality games, including the groundbreaking “I Love Bees.” McHugh’s work introduces the reader to communities large and small (families, subcultures, towns, nations, planets) and describes them with compassion, affectionate humor, and honesty. This panel will endeavor to give her rich, nuanced writing the close reading it deserves.

1:00 PM    NH    Reading: John Crowley. John Crowley. John Crowley reads unpublished work.

1:00 PM    CL    Kaffeeklatsch. Ken Liu, Maureen F. McHugh.

5:00 PM    F    Maureen F. McHugh Interviewed by Kelly Link. Kelly Link, Maureen F. McHugh

10:00 PM    F    Reading: Howard Waldrop. Howard Waldrop. Howard Waldrop reads from a work to be determined.

Sunday

10:00 AM    NH    Reading: John Kessel. John Kessel. John Kessel reads from the novel-in-progressSunlight or Rock.

12:00 PM    VT    Reading: Nathan Ballingrud. Nathan Ballingrud. Nathan Ballingrud reads fromNorth American Lake Monsters: Stories, published by Small Beer Press, which will debut at Readercon.


An American Beer Nerd in Edinburgh

Wed 10 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on An American Beer Nerd in Edinburgh | Posted by: Michael

100_1835

Edinburgh from Holyrood Park

Part 1: Culture Shock

I spent a week in lovely, misty, craggy, beery Edinburgh, Scotland, walking everywhere and drinking everything. This was my first time in the UK as a full-fledged beer nerd, engaging immersively with the beer culture that is perhaps dearest to my heart. I’d visited London and Dublin years before; I’d researched as extensively as might be considered reasonable from the other side of the ocean. So I wasn’t completely oblivious. Indeed, I thought myself quite well-prepared. I thought I knew what to expect.

Not so.

Read more


Holly Black’s book is in the 2nd Humble Ebook Bundle

Wed 10 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Holly Black’s book is in the 2nd Humble Ebook Bundle | Posted by: Gavin

The 2nd Humble Ebook Bundle now includes Holly Black’s dark and delicious short story collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories.  A couple of the extras were included with the 1st bundle in case you missed them but Holly’s collection and Machine of Death are new. Humble Bundle says:

“If you have already purchased the bundle, these refreshing reads should automatically show up on your download page. New customers can access them by paying more than the current average on the site. All four books are available DRM-free in PDF, MOBI, and ePub formats — perfect for your computer, eBook readers, and tons of mobile devices!”

Also, a bunch of the Humble Bundle authors will be taking part in a group Reddit AMA on Thursday, July 11 at 12:30 EST.

You choose how your purchase is divided: between the authors, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child’s Play Charity, or the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and the Humble Bundle peeps themselves.

We say: go forth and acquire 10 new DRM-free ebooks including books by Cory Doctorow, Will Wheaton, Cherie Priest, Robert Charles Wilson, Peter Beagle, and, yes, more!


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