Small Beer Podcast 8: Jenny Terpsichore Abeles’s “Three Hats”

Thu 22 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Julie

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26

I should be used to the Small Beer studios by now: the pictures on the walls of kimono-clad women selling insect repellent, the Studio Ghibli bag illustrated with a seaplane pirate from Porco Rosso, the awards tacked haphazardly just above the couch.

The voices are even better.

There are the books, of course, whispering from their various stacks. Delia Sherman’s Sophie and Karen Joy Fowler’s Nora have no doubt talked at length. John Kessel’s Dot and Sid are in that tunnel somewhere just on the other side of the office wall. Still in the end, it’s the voices of the living, breathing people that surprise me every time.

Jennifer Terpsichore Abeles, or Jenny as we call her, has been a great office companion and fellow volunteer, a spitfire, some might say.  But it wasn’t until I started to read her fiction that I realized the truth. She’s not a spitfire at all; she’s a conflagration. In this week’s podcast, Jenny reads her story from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number twenty-six. So dig up a beer and enjoy.

Episode 8: In which Jenny Terpsichore Abeles reads her story, “Three Hats.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Typoes (sic)

Mon 19 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Typoes (sic) | Posted by: Gavin

The Serial Garden cover - click to view full sizeWe’d always rather hear about typos in our books rather than just have readers suffer in silence. Please do email us at info @ smallbeerpress . com if you come across any. It’s always an email that makes me wince, but it’s great to be able to fix future editions.

One happy example: in the next couple of weeks we’ll be publishing the paperback edition of our first Big Mouth House title, Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories, and thanks to Jed Hartman and some few others this edition will have a few less typos. But, again, should you find any typpos (sic . . .), please do tell, thank you!


ICFA, Brattle, Juniper

Wed 14 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

What are we doing in the next few weeks?

Kelly will be Guest of Honor (with China Mieville) at ICFA, March 21 – 25, Orlando Airport Marriott, Orlando, FL, and I will be running around with Ursula.

Gregory Maguire and Kelly Link, Brattle Theater, Cambridge, Mass.
Discussing Stone Animals and Tales Told in Oz—beautiful new chapbooks published by Madras Press, and all the proceeds got to charity.
March 29, 6 PM

UMass Amherst Juniper Literary Festival, Amherst, Mass.
Julia Holmes and loads of other interesting people are going to be there, yay! We will have a table in the book fair.
April 13 & 14

Japan/America Writers Dialog
Masatsugu Ono and Tomoka Shibasaki will be joined by Stuart Dybek and Kelly Link for an intriguing and original cross-cultural encounter facilitated by translators Ted Goossen and Motoyuki Shibata.
Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue at 70th St., NYC
May 6, 2 PM

Yale Writers Conference
We will be there on the last day to talk about publishing in all its many joys.
June 22

Joy! It’s what we live for. If you don’t love it, why do it? Oh, wait, must go try and understand and fill in another spreadsheet, eek!


Small Beer Podcast 7: Zombie Plans, Beer & Maureen F. McHugh’s “The Naturalist”

Thu 8 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Julie

the_naturalist_tasting_beersHere at the Small Beer studios we find there’s nothing like  a great book and some damn fine beers to really get the conversation flowing. We’d already read Maureen F. McHugh’s zombie story “The Naturalist” (read | listen) and with the help of  Tru Beer in Easthampton, Massachusetts, we happened upon three beers that go perfectly with just about any zombie apocalypse.

The result? This week’s Small Beer on Beer episode, a podcasting love letter to “The Naturalist,” all things zombie and some very unusual beers.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t yet read Maureen’s story in her collection, After the Apocalypse, you might want to listen to episode 6, the audio version, before diving into this episode.

Episode 7: In which we talk of  beer,  Reynard the Fox & Maureen F. McHugh’s “The Naturalist.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On Tap This Week:
Cerveza Cucapa’s Low Rider.
Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye.
Avery Brewing Company’s Mephistopheles’ Stout.

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Early March Writer’s Planner deadlines

Wed 22 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Here are a few selections from the early March deadlines in A Working Writer’s Daily Calendar 2012. We’ll post some as the year goes on. I’m not sure if we will do a 2013 edition. We’d probably need to put up a pre-order page really early and see if the interest is there.

Read more


Small Beer Podcast 6: In Which Julie reads Maureen F. McHugh’s “The Naturalist”

Mon 20 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Comments Off on Small Beer Podcast 6: In Which Julie reads Maureen F. McHugh’s “The Naturalist” | Posted by: Julie

After the Apocalypse cover - click to view full sizeNo, Robert Redford is not in this, neither are baseball games or family farms. This piece is not called The Natural. This story, “The Naturalist,” from Maureen’s collection, After the Apocalypse, is filled with zombies, post-apocalyptic Cleveland and meditations on good, evil, and our human impulse (or lack thereof) toward empathy.

We here at Small Beer loved it so much we decided to devote an entire Small Beer on Beer episode to the sampling of beer and the discussion of this story. So listen, enjoy, and tune back in next week when we broadcast part two: our roundtable discussion of “The Naturalist,” Avery’s Mephistopheles Stout and Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye.

Episode 6: Maureen F. McHugh’s “The Naturalist” as read by Julie Day.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Travel, updates

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

Kelly and I (and our daughter, Ursula) will (fingers crossed) be in Australia and New Zealand from Feb. 8th to March 17th, followed by a trip to Orlando for ICFA (itinerary below the cut). There will be people in the office (Geoff! Dusty! Julie! Jenny! Even Michael!) one or two days a week but shipping will slow down and reading and responding to manuscripts will slow to a halt. Submit work elsewhere or be ready to wait a long time (sorry about that) if you send it our way.

I’m more sad than I can say after hearing that two very different writers I loved have died, John Cristopher and Wislawa Szymborska. I loved John Christopher’s Tripods and Prince in Waiting/Sword of the Spirits books—read in Argyll in the early 1980s, so running away into the mountains or across the moors seemed both possible and desirable. I had no idea he had so many pseudonyms! Then when I worked at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in the mid-90s and met Kelly I think she introduced me to Wislawa Szymborska’s poetry—and then Szymborska received the Nobel Prize (so we sold a lot of her books, yay!). She was so down to earth, so much fun, she was an anecdote to flat writing and a real reminder to enjoy life. She obviously did and I’m glad we have so much of her poetry.

More internety things: Members of the Carol Emshwiller Appreciation Society (me!) are happy to note that Carmen Dog is on this Geekdad/Wired list of books for your ereader.

Maureen McHugh’s After the Apocalypse has a great review by Chris Moriarty in the upcoming issue of F&SF as well as in SF Revu. From now on we will get Maureen to title all our books. Or maybe we will get her to write more stories! One of her stories, “Useless Things” is reprinted in the new issue of Apex Magazine – which also features a story from David J. Schwartz, so yay for that.

It was excellent to see io9 pick up on Nisi Shawl’s Seattle Times lovely review of Three Messages and a Warning. Eduardo and Chris did such a great job with that book! They both had events in their hometowns—San Antonio and Austin, respectively—and from all accounts, a lot of fun was had—and books were sold, so yay for spreading around more weird lit from far away places.

Over on Weightless, Three Messages is doing nicely. Which is a smooooth segue into mentioning that we are excited about adding Locus subscriptions and individual issues to the site today.

What else? Two excellent interviews with Delia Sherman went up this week: the first on SF Signal, the second on the Potomac Review. Now we need to concentrate on New Orleans and get them to choose the book for their One City program or something. (Do they have one of those? And if so, have they done Poppy Brite’s Liquor yet? Hmm?)

Read more


New Stone Animals chapbook

Tue 7 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on New Stone Animals chapbook | Posted by: Gavin

Coming soon: a letterpress chapbook edition of “Stone Animals” from Madras Press illustrated by Lisa Brown, Lilli Carré, Anthony Doerr, Lev Grossman, Daniel Handler, Paul Hornschemeier, Ursula K. Le Guin, Laura Miller, Audrey Niffenegger, Tao Nyeu, Arthur Phillips, and Lane Smith. Order here.

Madras Press publishes individually bound short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of charitable organizations chosen by our authors—including for “Stone Animals” the Fistula Foundation.

link cover


Hal Duncan’s A-Z

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

Hal Duncan’s excellent new chapbook, An A-Z of Fantastic Cities is being printed at Thomson-Shore. However, due to the the production price being more than twice what was expected, we have had to increase the limited edition price from $25 to $50. There are about a dozen copies left. Existing orders are grandfathered in at the old price.

The regular edition is being printed at Paradise Copies. Pre-orders will ship once the limited edition arrives in the office.


Small Beer Podcast 5: Three Messages and a Warning

Thu 2 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Julie

It turns out the gestation period for this podcast is somewhere between that of a lion and a wolf. At the beginning of November, Michael J. DeLuca, Gavin and I recorded the first ever Small Beer beer tasting. Then we recorded two, yes two, stories from our latest anthology Three Messages and a Warning, a collection of the Mexican fantastic.

This podcast was something akin to a seventies concept album, think The Allen Parsons Project or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I seem to remember a intense discussion with the proprietor of the fabulous craft beer store, Tru Beer, in Easthampton, Massachusetts. A rapid convert, he donated a few beers to the cause. From Bread Euphoria, we acquired Day of the Dead bread. And then, like so many concept albums, the production requirements along with the obligatory aviator sunglasses and hair mousse almost brought the entire project to a screeching halt.

We are absolutely thrilled we’ve finally got our act together enough to finish this particular podcast.

Episode 5: Julie Day, Gavin Grant, Michael J. DeLuca and Three Messages and a Warning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Errantry

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

Small Beer Press are very happy to announce that they will publish Elizabeth Hand’s new collection of stories, Errantry: Strange Stories, this coming autumn. The cover will be a detail from Paolo Uccello’s “The Hunt in the Forest” (link leads you to the excellent Ashmolean Museum site).

Table of contents and final release date TBA but the book will be out in time for Liz’s guest of honor spot at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.

<strong> Uccello (Paolo Di Dono) (1397 - 1475)</strong>, <em>The Hunt in the Forest</em> (Click for larger version of this image)


Jan/Feb Writer’s Planner deadlines

Sun 29 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Jan/Feb Writer’s Planner deadlines | Posted by: Gavin

Here are a few late January/early February deadlines from A Working Writer’s Daily Calendar 2012. We’ll post some as the year goes on. February is a huge month for deadlines:

Read more


Unboxing

Fri 27 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Galleys of Nancy Kress’s collection, Fountain of Age, and the just-going-out-now Three Messages and a Warning.

Phew!

P1010832


P1010831


What to read this year

Thu 26 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Being that I’ve just started a Patricia Wrightson book—and since we are going there next month!—I am tempted by Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge.

Anyone else?


Clarion & Clarion West

Wed 25 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Clarion & Clarion West | Posted by: Gavin

March 1st is the deadline (what are you waiting for??) to apply to Clarion (San Diego) or Clarion West (Seattle). Kelly is on the all volunteer board of Clarion (she attended in 1995 and has taught it a number of times) and she and I (I went in 2000) are teaching at Clarion West this year. Yay!

Established in 1968, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop is the oldest workshop of its kind and is widely recognized as a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction.

Our 2012 writers in residence are Jeffrey Ford, Marjorie Liu, Ted Chiang, Walter Jon Williams, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.

Clarion West

Workshops for People Who Are Serious About Writing

Clarion West offers workshops for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy.

The Clarion West Writers Workshop is an intensive six-week workshop for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy, held annually in Seattle, Washington, USA.

We are very happy to announce that our instructors for the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop are Mary Rosenblum, Hiromi Goto, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, and Chuck Palahniuk, the 2012 Susan C. Petrey Fellow.


SOPA/PIPA Blackout Day

Wed 18 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on SOPA/PIPA Blackout Day | Posted by: Gavin

This post was copied from Michael’s post at Weightless.

Maybe you saw our big black splash page on your way here?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, PIPA is the Protect IP Act. What I and a lot of other people fear the passage of either of these bills by the US Congress will actually do is allow broad and arbitrary censorship of the internet.

I like an open internet very much, and I think Small Beer readers probably do too, so for the 24 hours of January 18th, 2012, Small Beer Press is going to pitch in and show that black splash page you probably already saw in hopes that some of you will click the links (or the ones above), learn what’s at stake and do something about it. And if not, I hope you won’t be too bothered by it.

Thanks very much for your time!
—Gavin & Kelly


How to read ahead

Tue 17 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on How to read ahead | Posted by: Gavin

Want to get galleys of our upcoming books from Kij Johnson, Sofia Samatar, Nancy Kress before everyone else? How about we throw an LCRW chocolate subscription into the mix?

You can get all that—as well as a ton of other good stuff—here at the Alpha Workshop Fundraiser!

Go on, get some good stuff and help fund the future of writing.


(Jim) Kelly (Link) @ the KGB

Wed 11 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on (Jim) Kelly (Link) @ the KGB | Posted by: Gavin

It’s an all Kelly night at KGB Fantastic Fiction at the excellent KGB Bar in NYC next Wednesday:

James Patrick Kelly & Kelly Link, January 18th

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways James Patrick Kelly is best known for his short fiction, Including “Think Like A Dinosaur,”  “Ten to the Sixteenth to One” and “Burn.”   His work has been translated into nineteen languages and has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.  His most recent publishing venture is the ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways on Kindle and Nook.
&
Steampunk!: An anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Kelly Link is the author of three collections of stories and her fiction has won three Nebula Awards, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She recently co-edited Steampunk!: An anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories with her husband Gavin J. Grant

Wednesday January 18th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.


Publication Day!

Tue 10 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Publication Day! | Posted by: Gavin

The Liminal People cover - click to view full sizeHere’s the deal: order a copy of The Liminal People from us today, January 10, 2012, and we’ll throw in the ebook for free as well as a copy of Ayize’s original edition that you can either keep in your amazing book collection or give it to a friend.

Read the first three chapters here here, but be warned: you may get hooked!

Ayize self-published the book and Nalo Hopkinson did us a huge favor and suggested he send the book to us. It’s a fast-paced science fiction thriller that grabbed me from the get go and I read it right through.

Early readers love it but we somehow managed to score a 0/4 trade reviews—eek! It’s been a while since we did that and now we need to get the word out asap! The book is in indie stores (and yes, online monoliths) just waiting for Guillermo Del Toro to discover it.

Anyway: read it and come back and tell me what you think. Ayize is working on another novel set in the same world and I am trying to get him to send it to me now! and after you’ve read it I think you’ll be saying the same thing.


2012 Writer’s Daily Planners

Mon 9 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on 2012 Writer’s Daily Planners | Posted by: Gavin

Just got these contributors’ copies in the mail today, and they look pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. A bit cold from being in a box on a truck these last few days, but other than that: not bad!

A bonus (for us at least) of this whole print-on-demand experiment is that if you find any typos we can just upload another file.

If you’d like one, look here.

(Photo by Geoffrey Noble.)


Hello

Wed 4 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Comments Off on Hello | Posted by: Gavin

2012? Wooee. Must be the future. Must remember to post about 2011 before it fades completely. In the meantime: we have a couple of podcasts to come—and did you listen to Rick Kleffel talking with Ayize Jama-Everett and Lisa Goldstein after their event at the Capitola Book Cafe? Not to be missed.

We had a big ebook sale on December 31st: it was huge. Seems like people, they like ebooks. With upcoming travel and so on we’ll have to keep pushing back any print book sale for a loooong time.

We published the POD+ebook edition of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, which is an interesting experiment.

We have some nebulous plans of a new model of bookselling—hey, who doesn’t right now? So far no one has shot it down. We’re not going all Kickstarter all the time (would be interesting though, wouldn’t it, if we put every single book on Kickstarter and if it didn’t fly we didn’t publish it??) or all subscriber or citizens . . . but maybe something in between.

Anyway, that’s all pie in the sky. Really just wanted to move the sale post off the top of the page and note that soon we’ll have t-shirts for sale and, more importantly, we have new books coming from:

April
Nancy Kress, Fountain of Age and Other Stories

June
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
Geoff Ryman, The Unconquered Country

July
Lydia Millet, The Shimmers in the Night

August
Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

As well as late titles(!):

LCRW 28
Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic
Geoff Ryman, Was

And paperback editions of books we are about sold out on! The Serial Garden, What I Didn’t See, The Fires Beneath the Sea. And that’s it for now. From this tiny outpost to yours, Hello!


Small Beer &c, 2011

Wed 4 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Small Beer &c, 2011 | Posted by: Gavin

Bookscan says our bestsellers were:

1) Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy
2) Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
3) Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
4) Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse
5) Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

I know other things happened this year. We published one issue of LCRW with a lovely cover by Kathleen Jennings:

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 27

A. D. Jameson · Jessy Randall · K. M. Ferebee · Karen Heuler · M. K. Hobson · Carol Emshwiller · David Rowinski · Joan Aiken · Sarah Harris Wallman · Gwenda Bond · David Blair · Sarah Heller · Nicole Kimberling

And here are the books we published.

First Small Beer Press titles:

After the Apocalypse
Maureen F. McHugh

“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”—Publishers WeeklyBest Books 2011: The Top 10

A Slepyng Hound to Wake
Vincent McCaffrey

“Henry is a character cut from Raymond Chandler: a modern knight on a mission to save those, and what, he loves.”—Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen

Paradise Tales
Geoff Ryman

* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes”—Publishers Weekly (*Starred Review*)

The Child Garden
Geoff Ryman

Winner of the John W. Cambell and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.

The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Joan Aiken

* “Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising . . . a literary treasure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Solitaire: a novel
Kelley Eskridge
A New York Times Notable Book, Borders Original Voices selection, and Nebula, Endeavour, and Spectrum Award finalist.

And one Big Mouth House title:

The Freedom Maze
Delia Sherman

“Adroit, sympathetic, both clever and smart, The Freedom Maze will entrap young readers and deliver them, at the story’s end, that little bit older and wiser.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz


33% off everything on Weightless

Sat 31 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on 33% off everything on Weightless | Posted by: Gavin

It is the end of 2011 and I am very happy about it. Good-bye, old year, good-bye. Do not be coming back, thank you. Although there were lovely parts, it will not be missed. 2012 looks much brighter.

Anyway: we are celebrating with a one-day sale: 33% off all ebooks on weightlessbooks.com.

Get your LCRW sub here and Small Beer books here and tons of others here.

And, in case I don’t get to it tomorrow, Happy New Year!

After the Apocalypse Fairy Tale Review Special Apex Magazine Issue 31

Rifter 10: His Holy Bones Wicked Gentlemen Lightspeed Magazine Issue 19

The White City Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #85 Secret Lives


get liminal!

Tue 27 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on get liminal! | Posted by: Gavin

Annalee Newitz reviews Ayize Jama-Everett’s debut novel and if you read the review you’ll see why we had to publish the book:

The Liminal People“You’ll be sucked into a fast-paced story about superpowered people struggling for control of the underground cultures they inhabit…. The novel is a damn good read. It’s a smart actioner that will entertain you while also enticing you to think about matters beyond the physical realm.”
—Annalee Newitz, io9

Read the first three chapters.


No more holiday shipping

Fri 16 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on No more holiday shipping | Posted by: Gavin

UPDATED: Please note we will not shipping books from our office until December 30. (Ebooks always available? Mais oui!)

In the meantime, one of our lovely local bookstores, Broadside, has all our books in stock and we very much encourage you to shop there!

The post office reminds us that the end of year celebrations are approaching. The sun is sinking in the northern hemisphere and we must eat, drink, and be merry for if we are bury ourselves deep in winter’s cold the sun may leave and never come back.

So set off some firecrackers, dig up the turnips, unleash the sun captured in the corn, the wine, the spirits, and have at the winter until it cracks wide open and spring comes charging in.

Should your winter fancy turn to books, please note we do not guarantee holiday shipping after these post office-provided dates. (Apart from ebooks.)

USA

Free Media Mail shipping: December 1, 2011

APO/FPO/DPO AE: December 9, 2011

Priority Mail: December 16, 2011

Express Mail: December 16, 2011

Canada

1st class mail: December 1, 2011

Priority Mail: December 11, 2011

Africa

December 1, 2011

Rest of the World

December 9, 2011

Thank you!

UPDATED: Our office will be closed from 4 PM EST on December 16 through to December 29. We will be open December 30 then closed over the new year and open again, fresh-eyed and energetic on Monday January 2, 2012.


Interview + Under the Poppy

Thu 15 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Interview + Under the Poppy | Posted by: Gavin

The TakerA couple of months ago at a book event in Stockbridge we were lucky enough to meet Alma Katsu, author of one of those everyone-is-talking-about-it books, The Taker.

Alma was really lovely and it turns out had read some of our books. She recently decided to do some interviews about different aspects of the publishing world and sent us a few questions for her expertly titled blog, Endpaper Notes.

The interview is here and she also has a copy of Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy to give away to commenters.

Big Mouth asks for typos!

Tue 13 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Big Mouth asks for typos! | Posted by: Gavin

I hate this part! But it must needs be done. Next spring we’re publishing paperbacks of two of our Big Mouth House titles and we would love to hear from anyone who has spotted a typo. (You can send in typos you find in any of our books anytime. It makes me wince, but, better to know about them than not, right? Right. Argh!)

Here are the books we’re working on and would love to here hear from you about:

Joan Aiken, The Serial Garden. This is a book with legs! So happy that people love this book. The paperback will be a few dollars cheaper but should have all the art and so on from the hardcover.

Lydia Millet, The Fires Beneath the Sea. The first edition is pretty much sold out—that Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 listing certainly helped! The paperback will include the first chapter of the follow up, The Shimmers in the Night, which comes out in July.


Next week (+ giveaway)

Fri 9 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 14 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

We have a new episode of Who Is Amazon Trying To Stomp Out of Business/Subsume/Buy Out This Week. Then we will keel over in shock, shock I tells you when we discover that the $34-billion WalMart-wannabe has disclosed its teeth to the public once again. You should see what they’re like behind closed doors. Not pretty. They’ve hired some great people, they’re going to buy some great books for their publishing arm, but, man, those people are, um, not nice.

Besides that, we have a new installment of Julie Day’s excellent Small Beer Podcast. This one features two stories from Three Messages and a Warning as well as actual and real beer from our new fave beer store, TruBeer, in Easthampton.

Want to preview the anthology? You can read two stories here.

We’ll also have office copies of at least one of our January books (yes, they were December, they slipped, darn it!), Ayize Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People. We will have giveaways for that, so be ready to define liminal.

In fact, we’ll send a free galley to the first five commenters (US/Canada only, sorry) on this post who post comments either on people or liminality(!).

Remember the holiday shipping deadlines—and how they don’t apply to our ebooks!

And: we will be posting some new books. Preorders welcome! We love preorders! We send them out asap so that you get the book long before it reaches the distribution system. Go, baby, go.

What else? Next week we will be trying to finish up a lot of work before 2011 goes quietly into the night. You never know, might get it done!


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