Free copy of Errantry anyone?

Fri 19 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Here we go again, not back in the country two days and here we go again giving away books! And, we’ll be giving some away on LibraryThing next month. All in the name of getting the books out there. These are physical books, so we’re only sending them to the US & Canada, sorry international readers—but we send out free ebooks through LibraryThing, sometimes, too. The post office here has killed sea mail, so mailing 1 book costs $17, just for the mail. Eek!

We are having quite the month: Peter Dickinson’s new collection, Earth and Air, is about to be released, Errantry is about to ship out(!), and we are promised that the two huge Ursula K. Le Guin volumes of Selected Stories are about to ship from the printer.

All of which is to say: this is fun!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Errantry by Elizabeth Hand

Errantry

by Elizabeth Hand

Giveaway ends October 25, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 


Stranger Things … & Magic for Beginners on the Humble Bundle

Fri 19 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Stranger Things … & Magic for Beginners on the Humble Bundle | Posted by: Gavin

Now with 5 extra books!

Please welcome the debut of a new kind of offering: the Humble eBook Bundle!

Here’s a brief primer on this sensational deal: for two weeks, you can pay whatever you want to get these six digital, DRM-free books: Pirate Cinema, Pump Six and Other Stories, Zoo City, Invasion: The Secret World Chronicle, Stranger Things Happen, and Magic for Beginners. If you choose to pay more than the average, you will also receive Old Man’s War and graphic novel Signal to Noise!

This is the first Humble ebook offering and is only available for two weeks,
so head over to the site and pick up your Humble eBook Bundle right now!


Kij Johnson in Locus

Thu 18 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Kij Johnson in Locus | Posted by: Gavin

Back. Not awake. Catching up slowly. Just read the great Locus interview with Kij Johnson:

Excerpts from the interview:

‘‘My mom was a school librarian, so she would bring home whatever books came in – on a Friday, she’d bring home a huge armload of books and hand them to my brother and me. We would read them all over the weekend, and then we’d tell her the ones we liked and some reasons why we liked them. My parents read everything. I had no interest at all in being a writer, but I come from a publishing family: my grandfather was a big-deal publisher of agriculture magazines, and my grandparents and parents were editors and copyeditors. I got my undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College, in an alternative program based somewhat on the Oxford tutorial system. My degree was called ‘A Cultural History of England to 1066,’ and it was awesome. (I really did get drunk and recite Anglo-Saxon at parties!) I studied Latin and Old Norse and a bunch of other stuff, even though I’m not especially good with languages. What it was good for was teaching me how to research. Oh my God, I can research like a motherfucker.”

Ha! More: print / ebook.

ETA: Added a reading at the Raven and another starred review!

10/25  7 p.m. The Big Tent at The Raven, 6 East 7th St., Lawrence, KS, 66044
11/24  1 p.m. Uncle Hugo’s Books, 2864 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55407

“[The] stories are original, engaging, and hard to put down. . . . Johnson has a rare gift for pulling readers directly into the heart of a story and capturing their attention completely. Those who enjoy a touch of the other in their reading will love this collection.”
—Library Journal (starred review)


The Humble Bundle

Thu 11 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on The Humble Bundle | Posted by: Gavin

I am guessing that by now you’ve heard about the new ebook Humble Bundle which contains the full DRM-free ebooks of Kelly’s first two books, yes? I’m going to put up a sticky post with the HB counter on so on that will be nice and obvious for the next two weeks.

If you don’t know what I am on about, below the cut I have cut-n-pasted the intro from their blog. Basically you can pay what you want for a rather awesome ebook bundle. The monies get split between the authors, the charities, and the Humble Bundle people. If you pay more than the average (currently $12.43 and which, interestingly, has risen over the last two days) you get two extra books. The HB people usually do ebooks, although they did a cool music one earlier this year which I bought for the OK GO extras—addicted to those videos. Cory Doctorow put the ebook edition together and I think tapped a bunch of people who have released their books under Creative Commons licenses and/or as DRM-free books. (There being really no point in buying DRM’d books if you ever expect to read them again.) It really is the simplest, neat, and lovely idea and it is awesome to have Kelly’s books involved.

Introducing the Humble eBook Bundle!

Get ready to feast your eyes on this new bundle! Please welcome the debut of a new kind of offering: the Humble eBook Bundle! Read more

Kij in NC; UKL in Seattle; Sofia in Madison (of course)

Sun 7 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

We will have a fun announcement on Tuesday, October 9th. Come back for it!

We’re busy falling in love with the people and city of Uppsala, Sweden, at Swecon/Kontrast. The food here is as great as promised, although I do not think we will eat better than the homemade (for 21 people!) meal that Daniel ______ (last name TK!) slaved over for days. Ok, while naps are being had by part of our party, here are a few upcoming readings and so on.

If you’re in North Carolina (or, you know, have a small plane can fly there—or, better, have a friend with a tandem and can bike there!) on Tuesday night, don’t miss rising star Kij Johnson’s appearance at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. (Tues., Oct. 9th, 7:30 PM)

Also coming up soon, Ursula K. Le Guin will be doing a Clarion West fundraiser event in Seattle. I’d go if I were there, dammit.

Join Ursula K. Le Guin Saturday evening, October 13, as she helps us kick off our upcoming 30th Anniversary Year. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. we’ll celebrate Clarion West’s past record of excellence and reflect on our future growth at the Uptown Hideaway, 819 5th Ave N., in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. Attendance is limited to 100 people. All proceeds benefit Clarion West.

October 26th there’s the Joan Aiken celebration in NYC which we’ve alluded to before.

Into November: between the 7th & 10th, Sofia Samatar, whose fabulous debut novel A Stranger in Olondria we’re publishing in hardcover/paperback/ebook in April 2013, will be at the Wisconsin Book Festival. We were there a few years ago and remember it fondly. Any excuse to stay in Madison! You can download a chunk of the novel here.


Bath bricks, senna, sassafras, and brown calico

Thu 4 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Bath bricks, senna, sassafras, and brown calico | Posted by: Gavin

Joan Aiken’s daughter Lizza has a lovely essay on the British Council website, “Voices: The Magical Mysteries of Children’s Literature,” where she talked about her transatlantic roots (Joan Aiken was US poet Conrad Aiken’s daughter) and the culture shock that reverbrated through her when she crossed the Atlantic as a child. I love this part:

“On our next trip over the Atlantic we visited the wonderful island of Nantucket, and Joan got the idea to write her own version of Moby Dick, in another of the Wolves Chronicles called Nightbirds on Nantucket. Here her intrepid English cockney heroine Dido Twite wakes up on a whaling ship in hot pursuit of a pink whale and lands on this mysterious American island where not only the language but the customs are strange. Within minutes poor Dido is scrubbed with a bath brick, doused with senna and sassafras, and buttoned into brown calico! Interestingly, this book was possibly more successful back in England where these New England customs had long since died out.”

We’re talking to Lizza about published another Joan Aiken collection (yay!) and in the meantime if you are in Cheltenham on October 13th of New York City on October 26th I hope you can make it to the events celebrating the 50th Anniversary of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.


Kegging, or, The Internet Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be.

Wed 3 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Kegging, or, The Internet Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be. | Posted by: Michael

100_1351

Abbey Gruit and Dunkel of Opportunity entering secondary fermentation.

I have finally upgraded to CO2 kegging my homebrew after seven years of doing without. Seven years of other homebrewers hiding amusement behind the bottoms of their imperial pint glasses. Seven years of worry and hardship! Did I use enough priming sugar? Did I clean those bottles well enough? Ok, it wasn’t that much hardship. I still got to drink good beer. But after clawing my way up the initial learning curve (and forking out the startup cash), keg beer already promises to be a huge leap forward in ease, simplicity and quality.

The internet was less helpful on the matter than I expected–a lot of overviews, a lot of filler, not enough detail. Though pretty much every single post I came across assured me I was soon to be “the envy of all your friends”. The most useful resources I came across were the brief but succinct kegging appendix in good old Papazian, the single sheet of instructions that came with the CO2 regulator, and the school of hard knocks.

While I sit back awaiting the fame that must surely accompany maturation, here, for the next person who goes looking, are the details.

Read more


Sweden and being offline

Mon 1 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Tomorrow we’re off to Uppsala in Sweden to Kontrast where Kelly’s one of the guests of honor along with Joe Abercrombie and Peter Watts. Can’t wait! Kelly’s collection, Pretty Monsters, has just come out there (in two volumes, sort of the same way it was done in Australia) and we are going to get to meet her translator, Ia Lind, as well as the lovely folks at X Publishing . . . and then there is the con: so far, so good on that front. They’ve been wonderfully communicative and helpful with our odd requests (beer! chocolate! carseats!). Besides the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005 it will be our first Eurocon.

You can check out programming here and I’ve pasted our schedule below. I’m mostly on childcare but I do get to talk about the Death of Science Fiction (ok, “Science fiction and the future”) on Saturday. Ideas for that panel are most welcome! Kelly will probably do a workshop (always her first love), too.

After Sweden we’re going to visit family in Den Haag (yay!) so we will be mostly offline for a bit. Although that doesn’t ever really work anymore, does it?

KELLY LINK

Friday
19:00 Short opening ceremony followed by signing

Saturday
13:00 The short story and the ideas panel
17:00 Writing and research panel
19:00 What has steampunk got to say about us? panel

Sunday
13:00 GoH interview
16:00 Closing ceremony

GAVIN J. GRANT

Saturday
11:00 Science fiction and the future


Small Beer Podcast 13: Julie Day Interviews Jennifer Stevenson

Thu 27 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Julie

Trash Sex Magic cover - click to view full sizeJennifer Stevenson is a fantasy author, a romance writer and a former roller derby queen, so it should be no surprise that our interview veered into a discussion of sex and sexual politics. When you add in the fact that we were discussing Jennifer’s book, Trash Sex Magic, the topic of sex became more than an expectation, it became a necessity.

Course, as fun as sex is, there’s always more to the story. The real-life analog of the book’s magical Fox River, the connection between the author’s mother and Raedawn’s mother, Gelia, and even Jennifer’s role in cofounding the Book View Cafe all found their way into our conversation. An interview with Jennifer Stevenson travels fast. Fact is, Jennifer is as much a force of nature as the characters in her novel.

Trash Sex Magic is now available as an audio book through Iambik. (Iambik distribute their audio books out through all the usual channels but for the best price you can’t beat their own site.) Listen to an an excerpt here.

The print edition is available through Small Beer Press and the ebook can be found at Weightless Books. Pick your poison. It’s a great read no matter how you chose to imbibe.

Episode 13: In which Julie Day interviews Jennifer Stevenson, the author of Trash Sex Magic.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe to the Small Beer podcast using  iTunes or the service of your choice:

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In the mails recently

Tue 25 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on In the mails recently | Posted by: Gavin

Here are pics of a few things that have arrived at the office recently:

  1. Galleys of A Stranger in Olondria — booksellers, meet Sofia and get your copy at the Heartland Fall Forum.
  2. Daniel A. Rabuzzi’s The Indigo Pheasant (read his guest post here).
  3. J. Boyett’s novel Brothel, which arrived with a nice note.
  4. Bike cards from the fabulous artists at Cricket Press in Lexington, Kentucky
  5. Galleys of the two volume Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin.
  6. The first issue of One Teen Story: “The Deadline” by Gayle Forman (subscribe!)
  7. A stack! Made up of . . .
    1. Donny Smith’s new translation of Wenceslao Maldonado’s If Cutting Off the Gorgon’s Head.
    2. A galley of the Subterranean Press edition of Kelly’s Stranger Things Happen with the lovely cover and interior illos by Kathleen Jennings.
    3. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23, edited by Stephen Jones, which includes Joan Aiken’s story “Hair”
    4. Fantasy & Science Fiction‘s September/October issue featuring Peter Dickinson’s “Troll Blood” as well as stories by Andy Duncan and Richard Butner.
    5. Finished and actual copies of Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees.

And!

Finished and actual copies of Lydia Millet’s new middle grade novel, The Shimmers in the Night, whose publication day is TODAY!


At the Mouth . . . on NPR

Mon 24 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on At the Mouth . . . on NPR | Posted by: Gavin

Quick: click and read Alan Cheuse’s lovely allusive review of Kij Johnson’s collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees:

Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind when you turn the pages of Kij Johnson’s first book of short stories, her debut collection is that impressive. The title piece has that wonderful power we hope for in all fiction we read, the surprising imaginative leap that takes us to recognize the marvelous in the everyday.

You have a few more chances to catch Kij at a reading or on the radio—Twin Cities folks please note the new reading just added:

9/26    Writers Voice interview air date
9/29    7 p.m. Ad Astra Books & Coffee House, 141 N. Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401
10/9    Quail Ridge Books, Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, NC
11/24  1 p.m. Uncle Hugo’s Books, 2864 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55407

In other news, the Goodreads giveaway for Peter Dickinson’s Earth and Air was very successful—now we know how to increase our traffic x 10! Give away great books. Winners’ books will be going out early this week.

What’s the connection between these two books? Cover artist Jackie Morris! Jackie painted both the bee for Kij’s book and the minotaur’s head for Earth and Air. Her blog is fascinating and I strongly recommend you take a look at this recent post which shows a piece of art in development.

What else? Lexington, Kentucky, is a city full of fabulous people! (Although flying Delta was a huge mistake. Urk.) More on that later. For now: bees!

Lastly, coming tomorrow: Julie Day posts a new podcast interview with Jennifer Stevenson, author of Trash Sex Magic.


Joan Aiken, new Wolves editions

Thu 20 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Joan Aiken, new Wolves editions | Posted by: Gavin


Joan Aiken’s Dido Twite series is celebrating its fiftieth(!) anniversary this year.

There are beautiful new editions coming out in the US and the UK as well as a new audio book, read by Joan’s daughter, Lizza. (You can see all the international editions here!)

There will be events in the USA (at the Bank Street College Auditorium on Oct. 26th) and in the UK (at the Cheltenham Festival, Saturday, October 13.


Peter Dickinson’s new book: Free!

Tue 18 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Ch Ch Ch Check it out! 15 copies. Yes, it is US only for postage reasons, sorry. We will do a LibraryThing give away of ebooks which will be international. Good luck!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Earth and Air by Peter Dickinson

Earth and Air

by Peter Dickinson

Giveaway ends September 21, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 


Elephants on the website

Mon 17 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW may appear next month. We are optimistic. Determined. But we have been all those things before and other deadlines have pushed it aside like a saddle-stitched zine before a three hundred page book, if you get my drift.

SO. While we are considering whether to just publish the next issue of LCRW as a flavor or perhaps a scroll, in the meantime, here is a story, “Elephants of the Platte” by Thomas Israel Hopkins, from a somewhat recent issue, N0. 25, to be precise:

North from New York City up the Hudson; west out the Erie Canal through Utica and Syracuse; transfer at Rochester from a long, thin packet boat to one of the grand old Great Lakes passenger ships across Lake Erie via Cleveland to Toledo; up through Detroit, Lake Saint Clair, and Port Huron; farther north across Lake Huron to Mackinaw City; down the shores of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee and Racine; transfer again at Chicago; down the Tippecanoe to the Wabash to Terre Haute; out through Saint Louis and Kansas City on the Transcontinental Canal along the ruins of Interstate 70; turning up toward Casper and points west on the Nebraska Canal along the ghost map of the old Oregon Trail. The night this happened, that was as far as we’d come.

Read more


Great Lakes Cider & Perry Festival

Thu 13 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Great Lakes Cider & Perry Festival | Posted by: Michael

Hi all, I’m Michael. If you fit into the same tiny cross-section of sword/pen/pint-slinging we do, maybe you’ve come across Literary Beer, a blog series on homebrewing I used to write for Small Beer Press. Who knows, maybe I’ll write it again. In the meantime, what you need to know about me is that I really, really like cider, mead, cyser, lager, stout, an ancient style of herbed beer known as gruit, tequila, mezcal, bourbon, scotch, and all kinds of weird things in between, and may here subject you to ruminations on any of the above. I hope you enjoy.

I went to the Great Lakes Cider and Perry Festival last weekend. It’s held at Uncle John’s Cider Mill, among the farmlands just north of Lansing, Michigan. I brewed my first batch of Michigan cider, a cyser I bottled in January, with apples from Uncle John’s orchards. This year they lost their entire crop after the freak (read: new normal) 80 degree weather in March. The trees flowered prematurely, then the buds were all killed by frost–a tragedy. Cider made from this year’s crop will come dear, though that won’t stop me. 100_1325Last year’s crop, anyhow, spent all this year maturing and was present and abundant in all its glory.

My old favorites Farnum Hill, West County and Albemarle were represented. I sampled ciders from Wisconsin, Oregon, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Spain, France, the UK. It was awesome.

I got cheery with a British expat cidermaker living in Ohio (that’s him on the right in the silly hat) whose ciders were really satisfying, a classic English style I’d been looking for since I moved out here. Griffin Cider Works is his label–”Burley Man” was my favorite, 7.5-8% alcohol with rich mouthfeel and sweetness to balance.

I tasted a hopped cider from the much-touted Wandering Aengus in Oregon, which I expected to dislike (hops are for beer!) but turned out to be quite a pleasant, gently bitter reprieve from all the sweet and dry.

Maybe the best American cider I tried was a bourbon barrel aged maple cider from Crow’s Hard Cider in Michigan–a single keg made just for this event, not available in stores.

I sampled a whole bunch of Spanish ciders all from one importer, a most eye-opening experience. They were peppery and funky like Belgian farmhouse ales, but light and richly tart, like nothing else I’ve tasted. Of course! Because they’re made from apple varieties I never knew existed. I drool at the thought. I can’t really get excited about wine or hop regions, but something about cider apples does it for me. Comes of once having lived next to Clarkdale Orchards in Deerfield, MA. I will never eat better apples, unless maybe I go to Spain.

100_1321For me, there is no buzz so heady as a hard cider buzz. There might be, but I’ll never be able to drink enough champagne to find out.

I hear after the tastings are over, the orchardists and cidermakers hang around until the next morning boozing and talking shop. That sounds like a pretty good time. Maybe next year I’ll try to crash, if there is a next year. I hope so.

Cheers!


Peter Dickinson in F&SF; Robert Reddick @ the library

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Peter Dickinson in F&SF; Robert Reddick @ the library | Posted by: Gavin

How cool is this? Peter Dickinson’s story “Troll Blood” is the above the headline story in F&SF this month. As Gordon points out in the story intro, Peter was last in F&SF in 1955! “Troll Blood” is one of six stories in Peter’s new collection Earth and Air, forthcoming from Big Mouth House. It’s at the printer as I type so it won’t be too long until you can get your hands on it.

Next Saturday, Sept. 15, at 10:30 am one of our fave local authors Robert Redick (have you read The Red Wolf Conspiracy? It’s fab!) is doing a panel this weekend at the Florence library: Writing Fantasy: Reflections on Craft. More info on the Straw Dogs Writers Guild page.

Go read this interview with the one and only Kathleen Jennings by Rowena Cory Daniells. There’s also a giveaway you should enter: “A little ink drawing of a famous quote with a word replaced by “duck” (artist retains right of veto/negotiation on quote, because I don’t have time to draw 14 ducks again – you don’t realise how many ducks that is until you have to draw them, but it is a lot of ducks).”

Top Shelf Comix is having a huge sale.

And that’s it for the open tabs. Ok, there was this crazy NYT story (which I read because I was reading a follow-up story about a restaurant whose owner, Lucy, I worked with nearly 20 years ago(!) in a restaurant in California). The tech story is about a business owner whose CTO apparently tried to start a competing company while still working at the first place, then when he was fired, he tried to take down the company through all the software backdoors he’d built into the system, and when the police, etc., tried to track him down they found he was living off the grid: no taxes filed, no credit cards, etc. Wow.


Kij Johnson on tour

Wed 12 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Kij Johnson on tour | Posted by: Gavin

At the Mouth of the River of Bees coverThis week we’re celebrating readers all over the world enjoy Kij Johnson’s first (print) book of short stories, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, we’re happy to say that Kij is going to be out there doing some readings.

Should you not happen to be in Minneapolis, Lawrence, Salina, or Raleigh, you can listen to Kij chat with Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe on the Coode Street Podcast and with Patrick Hester at SF Signal and later this month on the Writers Voice.

9/14    DreamHaven Books, 2301 East 38th Street, Minneapolis MN 55406
9/18    7 p.m. The Raven, 6 East 7th St., Lawrence, KS, 66044
9/29    7 p.m. Ad Astra Books & Coffee House, 141 N. Santa Fe, Salina, KS 67401
9/26    Writers Voice interview air date
10/9    Quail Ridge Books, Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, NC

Don’t have the book? We’ve got all your indie acquisition options here:

DRM-free ebook on Weightless

Support your local bookstore! Find this via IndieBound


Guest post: A Raffle of Laughter on Solemn Occasions by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

Tue 11 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Cover of The Indigo Pheasant: Longing for Yount Volume 2We’re pleased to have this guest post from Daniel A. Rabuzzi to celebrate the publication of the second and concluding novel in his Yount series!

“For the appearance and names of these gods, there is a humorous as well as a serious explanation…for the gods are fond of a joke.
—Socrates in Plato’s Cratylus.

Humorists are not absent from modern fantasy fiction written in English:­ Terry Pratchett and Fletcher Pratt spring immediately to mind, followed quickly by Robert Asprin, Piers Anthony, Martin Millar.  There are others.  The main forms of humor, at least as practiced by those named above, are broad, even when elegantly executed: the farce, the parody, the screwball drama larded with puns and episodic slapstick.  I have a weakness for such modes, but I wonder why the genre in general seems wary of humor and (for the most part) ring-fences the comic from the mainstream of fantasy’s serious purpose.

Of course, the comic sidekick is prevalent in modern fantasy, with Sancho Panza as one of several models.  (“Samwise,” Tolkien tells us, means “half-wise, simple.”)  And we have knaves, wisecrackers and tricksters a-plenty, drawing on traditions from around the globe.  I am particularly partial to Cugel the Clever myself.

A few authors – Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor . . .  Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury­ suffuse their work with mirth and whimsy, no matter that events described may be grim.  Sparrowhawk and Vetch, Zahrah the Windseeker, Coraline (and Richard and Door), Max (and Mickey), Uncle Einar and the other Elliotts in the October Country…they are, as George Meredith in “An Essay on Comedy” wrote about Moliere’s Jourdain and Alceste, “characters steeped in the comic spirit. They quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of certain chapters of the Book lying open before us all.”

Otherwise, fantasy hews strenuously to an epic mode that seldom admits humor, except for a dash of rustic or burlesque to highlight the seriousness of the main endeavor.  The diction is high, the tone earnest­there is, after all, a world to save, evil (“Evil”) to be destroyed or, failing that, banished for eons to come, sacrifice to be endured and salvation attained.  When confronting the Sublime, the sacred, the mysterium fascinans, the genre brooks little laughter, certainly not of the mocking kind, no matter how gentle (except when clearly marked and marketed as such, with a sort of invisible disclaimer shrink-wrapped around the cover: “this is a parody, thus acceptable; file it separately, so as not to pollute the noble volumes it lampoons.”).  The agon must be preserved in its purest, most noble essence.

For the genre tends to the conservative: order must be restored, history set right, the king must return.  (Michael Moorcock critiques these tropes effectively in the chapter entitled “Epic Pooh,” in his Wizardry and Wild Romance; A Study of Epic Fantasy ­which also contains sharp insights on wit and humor in fantasy).  Core elements of conservatism, alloyed or half-buried though they may be, run through newer variants of fantasy as well, e.g., urban fantasy or steampunk.

I miss the fantastical equivalents of the comedy of manners, the satire and the absurd, and  the humor implicit in the morose and the somber.

The comedy of manners would seem an ideal theme for fiction of the fantastical.  I was reminded of this by another passage in Meredith’s essay:

“Politically, it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze.  It was a boon to the comic poet.  He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions, the huge pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full activity; vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers, extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, sonnetteering marquises, highflying mistresses, plain-minded maids, interthreading as in a loom, noisy as at a fair.”

Sylvia Townsend Warner mined this milieu for her Broceliande stories.  I catch a similar droll sensibility, an archness, in the work of Theodora Goss, and that of Diana Wynne Jones, and more distantly of Angela Carter and, in yet another vein, J.K. Rowling.  Oh, and Joan Aiken, about whom Farah Mendlesohn wrote in Rhetorics of Fantasy:  “The acknowledged master of the fantasy of irony must be Joan Aiken, whose short story collections use irony to construct cryptic riddles and English comedies of manners.”  But we need more such, decanters of Erasmus and Moliere, of Dickens and Austen and the Shakespeare of Much Ado and Winter’s Tale.  The tradition is rich outside of our genre (to name just a few: Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, Alison Lurie, Gary Shteyngart…Shteyngart probably qualifies as a genre writer with his Super Sad True Love Story), if that might act as a spur to writers from Within The Tradition.

The absurd and the satirical sit even less comfortably within fantasy, perhaps because the genre does not want to acknowledge the propinquity, for to do so would mar the image of high seriousness that the genre strains for.  I think that is why works such as White’s Once and Future King, Crowley’s Little, Big and Brunner’s Traveller in Black stories are oddities­ like Gargantua and Pantagruel or Tristam Shandy, like The Man Who Was Thursday or Jurgen — honored in the breach but directly followed by few.  China Mieville and Jeff VanderMeer each have a leg in this field, likewise Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Vandana Singh, Nathaniel Mackey, Steven Millhauser, David Nickle, Jedediah Berry.

Finally, a plea for a more Peakean approach within the genre, and praise for the absurdist,  grave and melancholy humor epitomized by the Gormenghast trilogy.  The ruler does not return in the Peakean world-view, in fact he abdicates, he flees.  Chaos does not so much win as it is revealed to be the mainspring of the very Order upon which everything appeared to rest­the sacrament reduced to dust, a bright carving in a neglected upper hallway of a castle that may or may not exist.  That is cosmically funny, a folly, the lifted eyebrow of the gods, even if it is also possibly tragic.

——————

Daniel A. Rabuzzi [blog] studied folklore and mythology in college and graduate school, and keeps one foot firmly in the Other Realm.

ChiZine Publications published his first novel, The Choir Boats: Volume One of Longing for Yount, in 2009, and in 2012 brought out the sequel and series conclusion, The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount, described by reviewers as “Gulliver’s Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice,”  and “a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy that, like Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, will appeal to both adult and young adult readers.”

Daniel’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Shimmer, ChiZine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Abyss & Apex, Goblin Fruit, Mannequin Envy, Bull Spec, Kaleidotrope, and Scheherezade’s Bequest.  He has presented at Arisia, Readercon, Lunacon, and the Toronto Speculative Fiction Colloquium. He has also had twenty scholarly and professional articles published on subjects ranging from fairy tale to finance.

A former banker, Daniel earned his doctorate in 18th-century history, with a focus on family, gender and commerce in northern Europe. He is now an executive at a national workforce development organization in New York City, where he lives with his wife and soulmate, the artist Deborah A. Mills (who illustrated and provided cover art for both Daniel’s novels), along with the requisite two cats.

Novel preview links:

The Choir Boats [pdf]

The Indigo Pheasant [pdf]


An Under the Poppy story at a price

Thu 6 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on An Under the Poppy story at a price | Posted by: Gavin

. . . of one photograph of you with your copy of Under the Poppy! Here’s Kathe’s full post:

As a celebration of the publication of the paperback edition of Under the Poppy,  due out on 9/10 (and available now for preorder from Small Beer Press, B&N and Amazon, among others), I’m offering a PDF of never-before-published Poppy fiction, called “An Interlude of the Road”: the tale of a young Rupert and Istvan, and their encounter with Herr Nagler, the smiling herring-monger in the satrap’s robe.

To receive the story, all you need to do is send a picture of yourself and your copy of Under the Poppy: whether it’s in your hands or on your nightstand, you holding your e-reader, you waving a preorder paperback receipt (or the actual paperback). . . And if you’re somewhere sexy or singular, so much the better.  Are you on the winding road? Or sipping some highbrow tea? Sporting at the gentlemen’s club (wink wink)? Hanging out with a puppet? Or, like acclaimed writer Sarah Miller here, reclining at your ease?

If you give permission, the picture will be happily posted here, and on the Under the Poppy Facebook page; otherwise your privacy will of course be respected.

This fiction will be available only through the Under the Poppy site, until 11/11/12, as a special thank you to those who have journeyed along with these two inseparable gentlemen of the road and their friends, and me.

Send your JPEG to underthepoppy AT gmail.com.


Blackwood, Indigo Pheasant, Electric Velocipede

Tue 4 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Blackwood, Indigo Pheasant, Electric Velocipede | Posted by: Gavin

Hey,we have some books coming soon. Wooee! We are excited. And busy! So. In the next couple of weeks we will have a couple of guest posts. Our own Dear Aunt Gwenda, under her other name, Gwenda Bond, has her first novel, Blackwood, coming out this week. It’s all about the Roanoke disappearances and is getting great reviews. Gwenda has a Big Idea piece at Scalzi’s Whatever today. At some point in the next week or two we’ll have a post from Gwenda and meanwhile we are celebrating that we’ll be able to get our own copy signed in a couple of weeks when we’re down in Lexington for the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

A second post is set for next week from our friend Daniel A. Rabuzzi whose second novel—and sequel to The Choir Boats— The Indigo Pheasant comes out this month from ChiZine. Here’s an interview with Daniel from when The Choir Boats came out. I’m looking forward to seeing the book itself, too, as Daniel’s wife, woodworker Deborah Mills does beautiful work and with luck more of her art will be included in this edition.

Need another good thing to do with your hard earned cash? Back Electric Velocipede! John Klima and the EV team are doing a Kickstarter (with lovely Thom Davidsohn calendars available) and this is your chance to ensure their zine has a long and fruitful life!


Tonight, Kelly & Victor LaValle, Brooklyn

Wed 22 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight at 7:30 PM you can catch Victor LaValle and Kelly Link in conversation about LaValle’s latest book The Devil in Silver at Greenlight Books, 686 Fulton Street 
(at South Portland)
, Brooklyn, NY 11217 Click here for a map.

In other Kelly news, I might be reading this wrong but it looks like you could pick up the Sub Press limited edition of Stranger Things Happen 1/2-price in this sale(!). I’ve got a photo of a galley to post soon. So near actuality!

And two more quickly nearing events:

Kelly will join Karen Joy Fowler &c at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Lexington, KY, on September 21 – 22. And, we get to see Gwenda and Christopher wherein we will get to toast the talk of the town, Gwenda’s debut novel Blackwood!

And on  the 5th – 7th of October Kelly is one of the guests (along with Peter Watts,  Joe Abercrombie, Sara Bergmark Elfgren & Mats Strandberg, and Niels Dalgaard) at Kontrast in Uppsala, Sweden. Can’t wait to go! Afterward we are visiting family—and going to see museeeuuummmss in the Hague.


Stories of Your Life, 3

Thu 9 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Just a quick note to note that we would like to note that, wait. Start again:

We just got copies of the third printing of Ted Chiang’s excellent debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Thanks to Ori Avtalio and other sharp-eyed readers for helping us with typos. This is a book that I can honestly give to just about anyone and say, “Read the title story,” and know they will love it.

 


Up on Poppy Hill

Wed 8 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Up on Poppy Hill | Posted by: Gavin

Thank you someone (sorry I didn’t take note who it was!) on Twitter who linked to the lovely trailer for Studio Ghibli‘s new film, Up on Poppy Hill:


Small Beer Podcast 12: Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Sense and Sensibility”

Tue 7 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Benjamin Rosenbaum, Not a Journal., , , , , , , | Comments Off on Small Beer Podcast 12: Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Sense and Sensibility” | Posted by: Julie

The Ant King and Other Stories cover - click to view full size

There are just so many lovely people in the world. That was my conclusion after talking with David Thompson, the co-editor and host of Podcastle. He just showed up one day and offered to read a story for our little podcast. Well, of course, we said yes.

I couldn’t be more thrilled  with the pairing we’ve come up with: David Thompson reads Benjamin Rosenbaum. “Sense and Sensibility” is a wild mash-up of Jane Austin, the German comic-grotesteque and Gormenghast, a perfect story for the dog days of summer.

But wait, there’s more! Because we know one Rosenbaum story is just never enough, Small Beer is offering Benjamin’s collection, The Ant King and Other Stories, as a free Creative Commons licensed ebook download.

David’s first audiobook, Tim Pratt’s Briarpatch, will be coming out this fall while Benjamin’s latest story, “Elsewhere,” can be found at Strange Horizons. First though, I hope you’ll spend a little time with both David and Benjamin, a truly excellent pairing.

Episode 12: In which David Thompson read’s Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe to the Small Beer podcast using  iTunes or the service of your choice:

rss feed


The Freedom Maze wins the Mythopoeic Award

Mon 6 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on The Freedom Maze wins the Mythopoeic Award | Posted by: Gavin

The Freedom Maze cover - click to view full sizeGreat news this weekend (2): Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze received the Mythopoeic Award!

Here’s more about the award (lifted from their website): the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for younger readers (from “Young Adults” to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia or that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings.” The winners of this year’s awards were announced during Mythcon 43 in Berkeley, California.

In other news for The Freedom Maze, the Listening Library unabridged audio edition is coming out soon. Listening Library are very excited about the book and we can’t wait to get our hands on a copy.


Redemption in Indigo wins the Parallax Award

Mon 6 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Redemption in Indigo wins the Parallax Award | Posted by: Gavin

Redemption in Indigo cover - click to view full sizeGreat news this weekend (1): Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo has received the Carl Brandon Parallax Award!

Here’s more about the award (lifted from their website):

the Carl Brandon Parallax Award is given to works of speculative fiction created by a self-identified person of color. The award includes a $1000 cash prize. Nnedi Okorafor received the Carl Brandon Kindred Award for her novel Who Fears Death and the honors list comprised:  N.K. Jemisin,  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Anil Menon,  The Beast with Nine Billion Feet, Charles Yu “Standard Loneliness Package.” The 2010 Carl Brandon Awards will be presented at Worldcon in Chicago, August 30 – September 12, 2012. The jury statements and full nominations list will be published at that time.

In other news about Karen, Redemption in Indigo is on the Not the Booker looonglist. She also has a lovely cover for the UK edition of her forthcoming book The Best of All Possible Worlds—it comes out next February and is great—AND, as if that is not enough, she (lifting from her blog) . . .

and Karen Burnham (NASA engineer by day, SF reviewer and podcaster by night) approached me to ask if I would be interested in doing a podcast with her, the ‘yes’ couldn’t fly out of my mouth fast enough. We have a lot in common, including a first name, a degree (BSc Physics) and a hobby (martial arts/fencing). I was eager to tackle my to-read list and take some recommendations and, more importantly, do so in a meaningful way that would expand my appreciation of the craft of writing and the literary and scientific merits of speculative fiction. And so the podcast SF Crossing the Gulf came to be.

You can find it here, kindly hosted by SF Signal, and it will also be available via RSS feed and iTunes.


The Sale of Midsummer

Wed 1 Aug 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on The Sale of Midsummer | Posted by: Gavin

Coming on Friday: Joan Aiken’s lovely story “The Sale of Midsummer” will be released on Consortium’s free Bookslinger short story app.


Back

Tue 31 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Back | Posted by: Gavin

Dancing in the trees

We’re back in the office after 2+ weeks away. Yay! Yesterday we flew back from Seattle: today I feel like the sludge left at the bottom of a cup of cowboy coffee. Did we miss anything? (Yes.)

There is a stack of mail, a box of packages, tons of orders (thank you!), many emails, a few phone messages, a sad lack of telegraphs, one beeping box (a toy!), and a number of deadlines looooming.

Before leaving, we were at Readercon for a couple of days and we owe many thanks to Jedediah Berry and the et al awesome people who ran our table when we left. We were offline the last few days so missed Readercon’s craptacular response to the craptacular behaviour spotlighed by Genevieve Valentine so we just signed Veronica’s petition. (I am not sure if the BoD should stand down, but only because I want to make sure the convention survives. If the Board stands down and new directors are elected [is that how it works?], then that’s great.) But over all, blech. And kudos to Genevieve for posting about her experience. Thank you for helping everyone by doing that.

Also, Elizabeth Hand (“Near Zennor”), Kelly (“The Summer People”), and Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse) won Shirley Jackson Awards. (And, I have the nominee rock to send to Joan Aiken’s estate’s agent!). Wish we had been there.

At Clarion, with cup of tea

After Readercon, we went to Seattle to teach week 5 at Clarion West. This is a heads-up to editors and publishers everywhere*:  the 2012 Clarion West class are coming for you! They are in a white hot heat of creation, revision, and submission, and you will be hearing from them soon. Wow, that was a week. The worst part about it was leaving on Saturday. We wanted to stay!

We owe huge thanks to the Clarion West organization for all their work and accommodations. We traveled as a party of four, Kelly, me, our daughter Ursula and Kelly’s mom, Annie (without whom it would not have been possible, so thanks to Annie, too) and the CW people didn’t blink. They put us up, they put up with us, they ferried us around (even acquiring car seats when needed!) to parties and more. Every time I’ve seen Clarion West in operation I’m impressed. (The 2013 instructors have been announced.) Also thanks to Nicole Kimberling (publisher of Blind Eye Books and LCRW food columnist) who visited the Clarion class and Eileen Gunn & John Berry and Greg Bear for wonderful parties. (I grew up reading Greg Bear but was able to speak 2-3 coherent sentences to him without my head exploding. Phew.)

Then we went to Portland (hello Powell’s and Reading Frenzy) and Vancouver (hello Naam!), both of which were lovely (and occasionally terrifying—eek!). While post-Clarion braindead in Vancouver we almost watched a movie in the hotel . . . but it was $15.99. Um. Internet was expensive and so avoided. Do people really pay prices like that?

Travel back was ok except that we would like to unthank the bridge that got stuck in the upright position meaning we had to drive from Vancouver to Seattle instead of take the lovely train. Bad bridge, bad! (Loved the train otherwise.) And: United Airlines has the smallest seats in the world. Boo! Also: on the way out they lost our stroller and we did not get it back for a whole week. Ever really missed something? We missed that stroller! I even tried tweeting United but I got no response. Oh well!

And now we are back in body if not in spirit. Emails will be returned soon-ish.

* I think every Clarion instructor always wants to send out this heads up but since this is the first time I have officially been one of the instructors I am adding my voice to the masses of other instructors.


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