Mass MoCA & Me

Mon 6 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., chocolate, Long Covid | Comments Off on Mass MoCA & Me | Posted by: Gavin

This past weekend Kelly and I and our kid (cropped out of photo above) went to Mass MoCA. I think this might be the first museum I’ve been to since the start of the Covid pandemic and the first time I’ve been to a museum since I came down with Long Covid.

Mass MoCA opened 25 years ago and it is a fabulous place to visit. It sprawls out over a series of old warehouses, there are weird and great permanent exhibitions, and always intriguing new ones. There are many floors with long hallways to get between them and stairways and, thankfully, elevators. They have two bookshops — Storey Publishing is in the same complex — and some great restaurants. And all the usual good things of a destination museum. I love it and was both anxious and delighted about going back.

I got an Apple watch a couple of years ago so that I could believe what I was being told by doctors: no, I wasn’t having a heart attack, something else was going inside my chest. It’s also been useful to show me how many steps I can take per day without wiping myself out: ~4,000 is my max. Sounds great! Except the stepcounter doesn’t quantify the part when I lie down for an hour+ after each meal or any tiny bit of doing anything. My body has calmed down somewhat (if my anger hasn’t), but I can’t walk around a museum all day, or half the day, or, really, for much at all. I go to Book Moon once a week or so and the big thing there is for me to remember to sit down and not spend all my energy at once.

Mass MoCA has free wheelchairs available so Kelly (and occasionally our kid) pushed me around so I was able to visit the museum and see two James Turrells again (and miss another) as well as some by Laurie Anderson and a fascinating exhibit, Like Magic, which I strongly recommend to any readers here who can see it.

I have not used a wheelchair since I first came down with this, but, I have also been incredibly limited in what I can do. I don’t know that I’ll get one (mobility scooter, here I come), but even though it was tiring (to be pushed around, ha), it was a relief to actually be able to go out and do something. My thanks to Mass MoCA for the wheelchair and to everyone who has ever fought for accessibility. I recommend currently able bodied try it (I say that because you never know how long that will last) wholeheartedly for a couple of hours: don’t stand up, see what it’s like to be wheeled around.

Anyway, now we’re home and I’m lying on our damned and blasted (and comfortable) couch. I’m still slowly piecing together our limited edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love and I’m wishing I’d been able to do more for the books we published in the last couple of years — I did most of what I’d usually do but there’s always more that can be done — and I’m grateful for the understanding shown by our authors. We’re not taking on new books but we’re supporting those we have, submitting them for awards as per usual (I generally believe, until announcement day, all our books will win all awards), submitting them for ebook sales and lists and so on, keeping them in print, working on international sales. And we recently received an intriguing email that might change the future of Small Beer. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m going to work a little on the next LCRW. After much taste testing, I think I have found the chocolate bar to go with the new issue.

 

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Anya in New York

Thu 2 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, KGB Fantastic Fiction, readings | Comments Off on Anya in New York | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro will be in New York next week for two readings from her novel OKPsyche, both of which are with top notch readers. John Wiswell will be reading from his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, on Wednesday at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Series and then on Thursday Anya will be in conversation with Astoria Bookshops bookseller and author Nino Cipri. Don’t miss these!

Wed. 5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY, with John Wiswell
Thu. 5/9, 7 p.m. Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY, with Nino Cipri

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Big Moods

Tue 16 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings | Comments Off on Big Moods | Posted by: Gavin

Every month is cruel yet April still tries to claim the mantle of cruelest. Why the big mood? Powell’s is digging into it with a Big Mood Sale: Feel the love, or the angst, or the joy, or all the feelings, as long as they’re BIG. Enjoy big savings on new fiction that delivers the full range of human emotions, as only a great book can! Part of this sale: Kindling by Kathleen Jennings as well as new books from Scarlett Thomas, Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irina Rey, and more.

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New Elwin Cotman: Weird Black Girls

Mon 15 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elwin Cotman | Comments Off on New Elwin Cotman: Weird Black Girls | Posted by: Gavin

Good news for short story readers: Elwin Cotman’s new collection Weird Black Girls comes out tomorrow from Scribner. WBG has seven stories, including the long title story, which go deep and wide into weird and, to keep you on your toes, not-so-weird places. Kirkus Reviews not only gave it a starred review (and called it “spendidly strange”) but also — knowing that you personally, you enthusiast, read about 240 books per year — included it in a list of 20 Best Books to Read in April.

Michael Kleber-Diggs, in the Star-Tribune, captures what I love about Elwin’s writing — not knowing what’s coming next and it being both deeply imaginative as well as feeling grounded — and this new collection:

Weird Black Girls is an exceptional work of magical realism. As Cotman hops effortlessly from year to year and city to city, seeing each age and place distinctly and well, his stories remain of another world.

They are imaginative places where readers are always one sentence away from something unexpected. They’re also grounded in sharp, concise truths that illuminate moments and generations. Impossible occurrences coexist naturally with real life in a very real America where weird things seem to be happening a lot lately.

Elwin’s going to on tour so I hope you can catch him reading in San Francisco, LA,DC, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Providence, and New York. Don’t miss his City Lights launch event with Lisa D. Gray either live or on Zoom tomorrow night at 7 p.m. PST.

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New Vandana Singh Book — from Routledge

Wed 10 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., climate change, Vandana Singh | Comments Off on New Vandana Singh Book — from Routledge | Posted by: Gavin

I just came across Vandana Singh’s recently published textbook Teaching Climate Change: Science, Stories, Justice. You can read the introductory chapter and part of chapter two on the Routledge page and I’ve pasted in their description of the book below. Despite not being a teacher, I was drawn in — I’m interested in just about anything Vandana is interested in enough to write about.

Teaching Climate Change: Science, Stories, Justice shows educators how climate change can be taught from any disciplinary perspective and in a transdisciplinary way, drawing on examples from the author’s own classroom.

The book sets out a radical vision for climate pedagogy, introducing an innovative framework in which the scientific essentials of climate change are scaffolded via three transdisciplinary meta-concepts: Balance/Imbalance, Critical Thresholds and Complex Interconnections. Author Vandana Singh grounds this theory in practice, drawing on examples from her own classroom to provide implementable ideas for educators, and to demonstrate how climate change can be taught from any disciplinary perspective in a transdisciplinary way. The book also explores the barriers to effective climate education at a macro level, focusing on issues such as climate misinformation/misconception, the exclusion of social and ethical concerns and a focus on technofixes. Singh uses this information to identify four key dimensions for an effective climate pedagogy, in which issues of justice are central: scientific-technological, the transdisciplinary, the epistemological and the psychosocial. This approach is broad and flexible enough to be adapted to different classrooms and contexts.

Bridging the social and natural sciences, this book will be an essential resource for all climate change educators practicing in both formal and informal settings, as well as for community climate activists.

“This highly original and radical book addresses the rapidly growing need for an accessible climate pedagogy which represents the different dimensions of the climate-change challenge and can be adapted to a variety of contexts.”

 

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Kij Johnson at Constellation

Wed 3 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, Kij Johnson | Comments Off on Kij Johnson at Constellation | Posted by: Gavin

There’s a new review of Kij Johnson’s collection The Privilege of the Happy Ending in Strange Horizons by M. L. Clark — the kind of review I’d love to just paste the whole thing in instead of excerpting a strong line. Anyway, if you’ve not read the book, go for it, and if you’ve read the book you might enjoy it as much as me.

Kij will be one of the Guests of Honor at Constellation in Lincoln, NE, in a couple of weeks. Set out now, arrive by April 19:

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A Naomi Mitchison Bibliography

Mon 1 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Naomi Mitchison, Readercon | Comments Off on A Naomi Mitchison Bibliography | Posted by: Gavin

Naomi Mitchison is this year’s Memorial Guest of Honor at Readercon so I’ve been trying to find a way to write a little about her. I never met her and didn’t read her until I was in my 20s. I’m not sure where I first picked up a Virago paperback copy of Travel Light. Avenue Victor Hugo? Somewhere on  a used bookshop trip with Kelly? I loved it and bought copies to give to people. How happy I was to find $4 used paperbacks I could press on someone new.

Anyway, while fiddling around, I found Beccon Press’s deep and comprehensive Naomi Mitchison – Towards a Bibliography, what a gift to find this online. I’d been looking up a Mitchison title Kelly recently gave me, What the Human Race is Up To (1962). If I read that I’ll be completely up to date, although not to today’s date.

I’ve been to Readercon many times, although not since 2019, and always enjoyed catching up with and meeting new people. This year Kate from Book Moon will be tabling for BKMN and Small Beer. I don’t have it in me to attend, damn it, but I am so tempted to go along anyway and maybe get a wheelchair to save enough energy to listen to a panel or two about Mitchison or the guests, Rebecca Roanhorse & Amal El-Mohtar. Unlikely, but a nice dream.

If you’ve read Travel Light and would like to read more Mitchison, I recommend The Fourth Pig, in part because it’s in print and mostly because it’s fun.

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Ayize Jama-Everett in Boston for A Table of Our Own & at Book Moon

Mon 25 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Book Moon | Comments Off on Ayize Jama-Everett in Boston for A Table of Our Own & at Book Moon | Posted by: Gavin

Ayize Jama-Everett is coming over from Oakland to Boston on Wednesday March 27 for a showing of his documentary, A Table of Our Own: A Documentary About Black People and Psychedelics. I’ll put the trailer below.

Since we don’t do events at Book Moon, I’ve set up an informal drop-in with him to sign books this coming Friday Thursday at 2 p.m.

If you don’t know Ayize, he was born in Harlem, has traveled a fair bit, holds three Master’s degrees (Divinity, Psychology, and Creative Writing), and has worked as a bookseller, professor, and therapist. Besides the Liminal series of novels, he has published three graphic novels with Rosarium and Abrams Press, and has written for The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Racebaitr.

His Liminal novels are fast-paced alternate now (and then: alternate reality) science fiction which pack a punch in many different social and speculative dimensions. Hope to see you there.

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The Ugly Chickens Trailer

Tue 19 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., film, Howard Waldrop | Comments Off on The Ugly Chickens Trailer | Posted by: Gavin

The trailer for The Ugly Chickens, the third of three half-hour films based on Howard Waldrop’s short stories has gone up. According to George R.R. Martin, the film will be touring film festivals and so on. I am glad Howard got to see a rough cut of the film as I always hope people will be celebrated while they’re alive. Even after all these years that story is a kick. The trailer looks great and I can’t wait to see the finished film.

Youtube is being odd about embedding it at the right size here, so watch over there if easier.

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Anya DeNiro: Madison, Marshall, & NYC

Thu 14 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, KGB Fantastic Fiction, readings | Comments Off on Anya DeNiro: Madison, Marshall, & NYC | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro has some new readings lined up this spring for her book OKPsyche. We also found recently that it is a finalist in the Blurred Boundaries (how great!) category of  The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards.

Here are the readings and one more may be added in New York on Friday 5/10:

3/25, 6 p.m. A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI
4/11, 8 p.m. Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN
5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY

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Richard Butner @ KGB Bar

Fri 8 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, KGB Fantastic Fiction, Richard Butner | Comments Off on Richard Butner @ KGB Bar | Posted by: Gavin

Richard Butner has stepped in to read next Wednesday evening with Moses Ose Utomi at KGB Bar in New York City.

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Kathleen & Kelly Tomorrow

Mon 4 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Working Writer's Daily Planner | Comments Off on Kathleen & Kelly Tomorrow | Posted by: Gavin

We have a unique intercontinental event coming up tomorrow at 5 p.m. Central Time with Kathleen Jennings and Kelly Link talking about their first collection, Kindling: Stories (Kathleen), and first novel, The Book of Love (Kelly).

We’ve worked with Kathleen for about 15 years. I think the first project was the striking and beautiful cover for Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes.

Before Kindling, the biggest projects we worked with her on were the 2012 edition of our Working Writer’s Daily Planner* and illustrating Kij Johnson’s Wind in the Willows follow-up, The River Bank. Both books were complicated, unusual, and extraordinarily interesting and fun to work on which meant that when she queried us on her first collection we were very familiar with her work and also her ways of working. So despite her coming to the end of her PhD program(!), we knew she’d be responsive and proactive — two things I struggle more and more with!

Anyway, all of which is to say, hope you will join this event tomorrow:

 

* I looked at the Daily Planner for the first time in years for this post and I am still charmed and entertained seeing Kathleen’s art all through it. She did monthly headers and spot illustrations — I’ve added a few screenshots below. I still really enjoy those planners. I don’t know if someone is making something like them now, hope so.

I ran out of time to do our edition — our kid was 2-3 years old and keeping the press running was enough for me. The final death knell was in waiting for the pre-orders to come in from Am*zon. The Planners were full color throughout and we printed them in the US. I had to get them to the printer quite early but Am*zon — who sold a good number of the 2011 edition — would not give our sales reps their order for the 2012 edition.

That year we published our two-volume “Best of” Ursula K. Le Guin short stories, collections by Kij Johnson, Elizabeth Hand, and Nancy Kress, a chapbook from Hal Duncan, Ayize’s first novel, and more. The friction and uncertainty of not getting the number was too much and although I loved the project I had to drop it. I printed what was needed through Lulu and that was it. I’d like to say I never regretted it but while that’s not true it’s also not a big thing. I’m glad we did it, that people enjoyed it, and it proved again that Kathleen was a great person to work with on a complicated project.

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West Coast Link

Mon 26 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, readings, tour | Comments Off on West Coast Link | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly is off to the west coast for 3 quick readings then one in Atlanta. If you go, please mask up! Info below or here.

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The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle

Tue 20 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elwin Cotman, Isabel Yap, StoryBundle | Comments Off on The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle | Posted by: Gavin

Mike Allen has put together a great StoryBundle, The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle, which includes not just one but two Small Beer titles, Isabel Yap’s award-winning debut, Never Have I Ever and Elwin Cotman’s Dance on Saturday. It’s a good time to check out Elwin as his next book, Weird Black Girls, comes out April 16 from Simon & Schuster.

There are books by Angela Slatter, Eugen Bacon, Theodora Goss, two books from C. S. E. Cooney, and more. You can pay whatever you want, direct some of your payment to Girls Write Now, and no matter how much you pay, you’re going to end up with some great books:

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Kelly @ Book Moon Tomorrow

Fri 16 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon, events, Kelly Link | Comments Off on Kelly @ Book Moon Tomorrow | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly will be at Book Moon tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 17, from 3-5 p.m. signing The Book of Love (and so on), saying hello, and passing out cookies. Drop by if you can!

More events. (Cambridge, Natick, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, online.)

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Heroes: One Year On

Wed 14 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Liminals | Comments Off on Heroes: One Year On | Posted by: Gavin

We published Ayize Jama-Everett’s 4th and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, a year ago today.

Good and thoughtful review by Jenny Hamilton just recently popped up on Strange Horizons:

The decision is shocking, and it highlights one of the key themes of the book: we are all imperfect, broken, compromised. The salvation of the world has fallen to Taggert and his team, and they are choosing to answer the call—but neither they nor the reader should be under any illusion that this makes them good guys. They’re not good now, and maybe they never can be. It’s just that they’re all they’ve got. Taggert and Tamara and Prentis are powerful, sure, but the most important thing they are is passionate

What does it take to save the world — even if it’s not as you know it? Friends, frenemies, family, sacrifice, and a hell of a party.

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Happy Publication Day to a Great Novel(ist)

Tue 13 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Comments Off on Happy Publication Day to a Great Novel(ist) | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight, weather willing, Kelly will launch her new book, her first novel, The Book of Love, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn. (All her tour dates are here.) It is an amazing novel, has received the kind of reviews an author might dream of and I love the framing of 20+ years of nope, no novel, nope then oh, ok, HUGE novel. What a treat for me and everyone else. I meant to write about it in the run up to publication but other things kept getting in the way.

Now here I am on publication day, lying on a couch in a hotel in NYC while Kelly has gone off to her a reading and I have run out of juice so here are a few links. Some people will have seen some of them, with luck they are wide enough scattered that they might intrigue many different readers. With Kelly away, I’ll go listen to her talk to Beth Golay on KMUW’s Marginalia.(Later: I strongly recommend this!) I enjoyed, even if I disagree about the book’s length, Michael Patrick Brady’s review on WBUR. My favorite thing that came out today was Riza Cruz’s Shelf Life piece on Elle where Kelly gets to recommend some favorite reads.

Before today, Ron Charles reviewed the novel in the Washington Post, Steve Pfarrer chatted with Kelly and reviewed the book in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and yesterday Amal El-Mohtar’s review — such a review to bring tears to one’s eyes — arrived in the New York Times.

Kelly’s posted her Book of Love playlists — Apple; Spotify — and if you can’t get to any of the readings, there’s now an online event: Kelly & Kathleen Jennings read from and discuss their new books, The Book of Love and Kindling respectively and Moon Palace will have signed book plates to go with orders.

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AWP 2024

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Some years ago I got a positive result on my test to see whether they will print anything in the AWP listings of exhibiting publishers:

On Wednesday afternoon I realized the 2024 AWP Conference & Bookfair would just be beginning. Pre-pandemic, pre-long Covid I’d have been taking 8-10 boxes of books into the conference center either on a tiny hand truck I took along or asking people if I could borrow one. Thanks again Coffee House, Copper Canyon, and the many other kind people over the years who lent me one when I didn’t bring one or just plain forgot.

The conference moves around so occasionally Kelly and I drove to it, other times we flew. We often mailed books to friends’ houses and that gave me a good way to catch up with people. I sometimes sent them to a nearby UPS or Fedex — once I tried to UPS some boxes to a Fedex office and apparently that is a Spy vs Spy level no-no-no! Had to change the delivery address. Then I’d pick up the boxes in a (very surprised) taxi, get them to the place, get them on the dolly/hand truck, and walk them in. It was way too expensive for us to use the official shipper and the conference haulers.

I think I reserved a table in the bookfair in 2023 because, really, how sick could I be in 2022 that I would not be able to go? Silly me. AWP is going to be back in LA next year, what a great place for it. The lunches I was able to walk out and find when we were there! Anyway, doubt we will be there.

We occasionally co-hosted parties. Sometimes great fun. Excellent to be able to pay back and pay forward other people who hosted some great dance parties over the years.

I liked to set up a reading on the Wednesday evening if possible — we had one at the Last Bookstore and one at Politics & Prose — so after the Wednesday morning flight, or maybe Tuesday night if I was feeling fancy, we’d be hustling around to get ready. Kelly would read along with as many Small Beer authors as were at the conference. Abbey Mei Otis read in DC along with We’d ask them to sign at the bookfair table at some point, too. Woah, imagine if we went this year with Kelly’s book coming out. Not sure I could lift that many boxes.

I really liked tabling at events, being right there seeing what people like to read, seeing the covers they like, seeing if they like short stories or if they’re just looking for a place to sell their memoir. (We were a great nonfiction market for older woman writers of weird fiction from Oregon.) There’s nothing like being available to writers and readers and people who don’t know you from Adam and have questions, so many great questions. I’d sometimes get to panels but I’d find it hard to skip meeting friends and strangers in the bookfair. I usually brought home 15-20 books and magazines at least?

Anyway, we’re not there this year and neither will we be at the ABA Winter Institute in Cincinnati next weekend. Good golly that’s a level of frustration. I’d love to be there: went to my first one in Baltimore in January 2020, four months after we’d opened Book Moon, met some great people, learned a lot. Kelly was going, too, but on the train down we got a call from her mom that our kid, who had a bad cold, had gotten worse. Could we come back? Kelly has an incredible knowledge of our kid when sick and an ability to know what they need so we talked about both of us going back or just one of us, and soon enough she was on her way back. It’s ok, we thought, we’ll both go in 2021.

The kid recovered, Kelly and I got slight colds; something was going around. We don’t think it was Covid, but there weren’t tests, so like everyone else, it’s a maybe. We’re not going to Boskone this weekend — but Kate & her husband are tabling for Small Beer & Book Moon for their first time there. If you’re there, please say hello! Hope they’ll have fun, meet good people, sell some books. We last went to Boskone in 2020 and our kid had a great time. We didn’t catch Covid there, even though some people from Boskone went to the Boston superspreader international biotechnology conference that same weekend. Everything comes back to Covid these years. Since it’s the reason we’re not doing any of these things this year, I suppose that’s ok.

Anyway, off to read some LCRW submissions for the next zine!

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Dammit, I Missed the 20-year Anniversary of Our Oldest Unpaid Invoice

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, chapbooks, LCRW | Comments Off on Dammit, I Missed the 20-year Anniversary of Our Oldest Unpaid Invoice | Posted by: Gavin

Excellent that the search function, while messy, thanks Google, still works well enough for me to find this rather than having to page down through the Not Journalling Updates Page. I was putting together the Book Moon monthly bestseller list for Locus when I remembered that I’d posted a while back about the 10-year anniversary of our oldest invoice.

Ten years? A blink of a fruit fly’s eye! Twenty years? Now we’re getting somewhere. I long ago figured the bookstore mustn’t have sold any copies of the zine or the chapbooks — they should have ordered copies of Kelly’s chapbook 4 Stories — maybe they did, I’m not going to go find out — but they could have returned them. I’d be happy to have a few extra copies around.

Anyway, as with everything (except wishing death to stingy billionaires and those who declare who is human and who isn’t), time has removed any sting from this and now it’s just here to amuse. 20 years? A dog’s yawn! Looking forward to 30.

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Kelly’s Book of Love Tour

Wed 7 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, Kelly Link, tour | Comments Off on Kelly’s Book of Love Tour | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s new (first!) novel, The Book of Love (reviewed today by Ron Charles in the WaPo) comes out next Tuesday and very appropriately she will be at Books Are Magic with Hilary Leichter in Brooklyn to launch it.

Since we don’t host readings at Book Moon, she’ll do a local reading (with Yvette Lisa Ndlovu) on Thursday with our friends over at the Odyssey in South Hadley, and then will do a drop-in signing at Book Moon on Saturday. The next week she’s off to the Harvard Bookstore and the B&N in Natick before a quick jaunt over to the West Coast. One extra day in Atlanta, then home.

Here’s a link to all the events — there will be a virtual event with Kathleen Jennings open to all hosted by Moon Palace on March 5 — and if you do manage to go, please do wear a mask.

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Isabel Yap @ KGB Bar

Wed 7 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, KGB Fantastic Fiction | Comments Off on Isabel Yap @ KGB Bar | Posted by: Gavin

Next Wednesday Isabel Yap will be reading in New York as part of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading series hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel:​​​

Isabel Yap & Randee Dawn, February 14th, 2024, 7pm ET.

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
(Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

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Sareen McLay is Writer of the Week at the People’s Friend

Sat 3 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sareen McLay | Comments Off on Sareen McLay is Writer of the Week at the People’s Friend | Posted by: Gavin

My sister Sareen McLay is Writer of the Week at the The People’s Friend. If you’re in the UK you’ll know the mag, the “world’s longest running weekly women’s magazine and number one for quality fiction every week.” Long term LCRW readers might remember her poem “Illumination” about climbing and caving in the north of England in the third issue. I’m toasting Sareen this morning with this mug of tea!

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Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List

Thu 1 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Kij Johnson, Locus, Sarah Pinsker, year's bests | Comments Off on Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List | Posted by: Gavin

In 2023 we (only) published four books and I’m happy to see three of them are on the Locus Recommended Reading list. The one title missing is Ayize Jama-Everett’s series capper Heroes of an Unknown World—at least The Last Count of Monte Cristo, his great Afrofuturist graphic novel, is listed.

As ever, congratulations to everyone whose work made the list! Do I think more of the list makers should read LCRW? Well of course! How could they miss our monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, semiannual, dammit, annual issue from last year? (I mean, maybe they all read it and didn’t enjoy any of the stories, but, come now, how likely is that?)

The three titles, which if you are reading this you may be familiar with, that did make the list are:

Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories

Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places: Stories & the original story novelette first publisher there, “Science Facts!”

Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche

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Kij @ Prairie Lights Tomorrow

Wed 31 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson, readings | Comments Off on Kij @ Prairie Lights Tomorrow | Posted by: Gavin

Get your skates on: Kij Johnson reads from her new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Prairie Lights in Iowa City — or just order a book and get it personalized there!

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Book Riot Best of 2023

Mon 29 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, year's bests | Comments Off on Book Riot Best of 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

Catch up note on a best of list I missed: Sarah Pinsker’s collection Lost Places was selected as one of Book Riot’s 20 of the Best Fantasy Books of 2023. It’s a good, solid, wide-ranging list, and I completely agree with the write-up for Sarah’s book:

“All SFF fans should be reading Sarah Pinsker, and this is a great place to get started.”

Read it now and get your preorder in for her new novella, Haunt Sweet Home, coming from Tor.com in September.

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Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023

Fri 26 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, libraries | Comments Off on Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

I spy with my little eye* Anya Johanna DeNiro‘s OKPsyche on the Seattle Public Library Picks for the best LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023. There are 33 titles there, it would make a great reading list.

* DuckDuckGo

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Re: Formats

Thu 25 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, reports, sales | Comments Off on Re: Formats | Posted by: Gavin

I’ve updated my chart of the ratio of formats Small Beer titles (including chapbooks and LCRW) sell in.

Print books (in red on the chart) were 90% of sales in 2010 — we started selling ebooks in 2005 — and dropped to a low of 49% in 2014 (or: we sold a lot of ebooks that year).

The 2023 breakdown was 65.36% print and 34.64% ebooks. I’ve never tracked audio books, mostly because the half dozen audio book publishers all send statements at different times and they are somewhat hard to extract numbers from. I think audio sales would be about 2-3% of the total. Although I prefer print or audio, I’m format agnostic as a publisher, especially knowing how useful ebooks are for books such as ours where there are no large type editions. I’d like people to read Small Beer books and I know that people enjoy different types of books in different formats: for some fiction only works on audio or short stories only work in print, etc. Anyway, every year when I get to this point in Jul.-Dec. royalty calculations I like to stop and look at the format percentages, see if there’s anything I’m missing, any books I should be reminding people exist. Oh wait, all of them!

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Sparks

Tue 23 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings | Comments Off on Sparks | Posted by: Gavin

Today is the official publication day for Kathleen Jennings’s first collection of short stories, Kindling. Kathleen has illustrated many of our book covers over the last 15 years. She worked with Kij Johnson and did the cover and many interior illustrations for The River Bank; she provided covers for two issues of our zine, LCRW; and also did the cover and interior illustration for Margo Lanagan’s chapbook Stray Bats.

As a writer, she contributed comics to each of our Candlewick Press anthologies Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections, as well as two stories to LCRW. Both of those stories were reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. And now, at last!, we are elated to publish Kathleen’s debut collection, Kindling, in both hardcover and paperback. Kindling collects a dozen fantastic tales including “Annie Coal” which is published here for the first time.

Book Riot includes the book on a list of good books out today and Charlotte’s review just went up on her Library. If you’re new to Kathleen’s writing here are two completely different stories, The Present Only Toucheth Thee published in Strange Horizons and The Heart of Owl Abbas originally published on Tor.com.

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