Yay Street Books!

Tue 8 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Yay Street Books! | Posted by: Gavin

Pasted wholesale from the National Book Foundation website’s winners of the Innovations in Reading Prize: yay Laura!

Street Books

Portland, OR
> www.streetbooks.org

Street Books is a bicycle-powered mobile library serving people who live outside in Portland, Oregon. Founded in June 2011, the street library offers a means to check out books for patrons who are unable to do so from regular libraries because they lack identification or proof of address. In nearly a year of operation, hundreds of patrons have been served, many of them becoming regulars who return weekly to the shift to return books and check out new ones. Patrons are invited to be photographed with their books of choice, and contribute their own reviews or stories from the road. These stories can be viewed at Streetbooks.org.

Street Books is committed to providing good literature, and conversations about literature, for those who are often pushed to the margins. Patrons have checked out hundreds of paperbacks in all genres, from sci-fi to romance to memoir, by authors ranging from James Patterson and Jeannette Walls to Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King. Street Books has created a greater engagement between its patrons and the larger housed community, and built a bridge with literature between the two. The Street Books project has been featured in national and international media, including Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Newstalk Radio in Ireland.

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Kij Johnson, At the . . . Goodreads Giveaway

Mon 7 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Free books, Kij Johnson | Comments Off on Kij Johnson, At the . . . Goodreads Giveaway | Posted by: Gavin

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Small Beer Podcast 10: Julie Day Interviews John Kessel

Fri 4 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Kessel, Julie Day, Podcastery, small beer podcast, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence | 1 Comment | Posted by: Julie

Here at the Small Beer Studios, it’s Kesselmania! Between the reading of “The Last American” in Episode Nine and this week’s interview of the man himself, right now it seems that we have Kessel and nothing but Kessel on our minds.

And why not? He’s an interesting guy, an astute anthologist and a terrific writer. Yes,it’s true: he’s won the Nebula, the James Tiptree Jr. and the Shirley Jackson awards. He’s also co-edited a fantastic series of anthologies with James Patrick Kelly. I tried to cover everything in a single interview. In other words, I set myself the impossible task.

What did make it into this podcast? John’s thoughts on the singularity, his current batch of anthologies with Jim Kelly, his latest novel in progress (yay!) his illuminating thoughts on Ender’s Game, a reading from his novelette, “Buddha Nostril Bird,” and how science fiction saved his life.

Small Beer is part of the DRM-free universe. More than that, John’s collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence is available as a free ebook on Weightless Books. So go ahead and read the collection for yourself. After all, how many interviews come with their own free book?

Episode 10: In which Julie Day interviews John Kessel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

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Why print on demand isn’t right for us right now

Tue 1 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., inside baseball, Publishing, Small Beer Press | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

I keep reading about the death of legacy publishers (hey, that’s us!) due to their refusal to get into the ebook game (done that) or not being swift enough to change from old fashioned book printers to using print on demand. This is going to be a short post because here’s the simple problem with print on demand is it’s too expensive. (Unless we want to price our paperbacks at $20 . . . ! Which I don’t.) Another problem is that we would have to create a gallery that would allow each product to be ordered when wanted. So the printing would be more expensive and then we would essentially have to rework our online presence too.

Let’s use a 320-page book as an example. We’ve been pricing our trade paperbacks at $16 since we started publishing in 2001. From that $16, about 65% goes to the bookstore and the distro. So we receive about 35% = $5.60 to pay the author and for the art, copyediting, Indexer marketing, publicity, mailing, freight, returns, and whatever other costs there are, including, with luck, ourselves.

So why don’t we minimize our investment in printed books and only print one or two hundred at a time? Because we can’t afford to.

We always use recycled paper, which bumps up the printing price of all our books but we’ve always thought that if a publisher can’t afford that, they shouldn’t be printing books.

The book printer below quoted just under $2 a copy, not bad for only 2K books. The more books we can print, the lower the unit cost. That leaves us almost $4 for all those costs above.

If we go the print on demand route, we’d receive $0.83 per book, not enough to pay the author royalties, never mind anything else.

So until the print on demand unit price drops, we’ll stick to printing a couple of thousand copies, letting books sell through, and reprinting when the orders start building up.

Print on Demand (quotes provided May 1, 2012 from 2 printers):

100 copies
$517.00 · ($5.17 each)
$667.80 · ($6.67 each)

250 copies
$1,292.50 · ($5.17 each)
$1,458.89 · ($5.83 each)

Book Printer (quote provided Feb 16, 2012):

2000 copies (including freight to warehouse/office)
$3842.00 · ($1.92 each)

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Publication day for Fountain of Age

Tue 24 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Nancy Kress, Small Beer Press | Comments Off on Publication day for Fountain of Age | Posted by: Gavin

Yay!

If anyone can tell you what the near future holds, it’s Nancy Kress. She’s been on a tear in recent years writing up a storm about what it’s like to live now and what it will be like when the aliens come—how does she know? (Well, it ain’t called science fiction for nothing.)

You can get the book from us (both version, print and ebook, are as always DRM-free, ha!) and it will be stacked up at such excellent bookstores as Elliott Bay, A Room of One’s Own, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, and University Bookstore.

Two of the stories, “End Game” & “The Kindness of Strangers,” are available on Escape Pod and with luck we’ll have another one up on the Small Beer Podcast within the next couple of weeks. It will either be “Safeguard” or “Laws of Survival”—I love the first one slightly more than the second, even though the second one outweighs the first by a factor of 1.2 billion on the weirdness scale, but we will see. (I also love the caper-ish title  story (which you can read on Asimov’s) but I think it’s too long for the podcast.)

So: Fountain of Age goes out into the world today. Steven Finch of fonografiks.com, who did the cover for After the Apocalypse did us proud again, thanks Steven!

If you read the book and love it we’d love to hear about it—and please do help us spread the word.

Last minute contest: we will send a free copy of the book out to the first three readers (US & Canada only, sorry) who can tell us the name of the story we published recently that features the fountain of youth.

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Signed copies of The Freedom Maze

Tue 17 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Signed copies of The Freedom Maze | Posted by: Gavin

Thanks to a recent visit to Western Mass by Delia Sherman, we have signed first edition hardcover copies of Delia’s The Freedom Maze in stock now.

NB: we automatically ship signed copies of any books we have in stock.

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Small Beer Podcast 9: John Kessel’s “The Last American”

Thu 12 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Kessel, Julie Day, Michael J DeLuca, Podcastery, small beer podcast, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, The Last American | Comments Off on Small Beer Podcast 9: John Kessel’s “The Last American” | Posted by: Julie

I don’t know how many different people mentioned John Kessel to me before I ever read his work. Well, actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly how many people mentioned John Kessel: four. One of them was Gavin Grant and another was James Patrick Kelly. Mariel Morales and Taylor Preston, school friends of mine from the Stonecoast M.F.A. program, round out the list. In a weirder than fiction moment, while I’m currently typing up this blog post in Massachusetts, tomorrow John, Taylor, Mariel and I are having lunch in North Carolina. It feels like Jim and Kelly should be there as well.

Both this podcast and the next one are all about John Kessel’s fiction. Once you’ve read or listened to one of John’s stories, you’ll find yourself needing more, at least I did. One of my personal Kessel favorites is “Every Angel is Terrifying” along with his series of science fiction stories “A Lunar Quartet.”

It’s nice when it’s easy to share what you love. John’s collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence is available as a free ebook on Weightless Books. So listen, enjoy and then download the rest of John’s stories and read them for yourself. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Episode 9: In which Michael J. DeLuca reads John Kessel’s “The Last American.”

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

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An A-Z of the Fantastic City is here . . .

Thu 12 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on An A-Z of the Fantastic City is here . . . | Posted by: Gavin

at laaaaaaaaast!

We received the signed and numbered (1-89!) limited hardcover edition of Hal Duncan’s An A-Z of the Fantastic City today and only burned down half the office in the process. Success! (They are only 2+ months late from the printer—still no explanation given . . .)

So, anyway, apologies everyone who is waiting for this. We are shipping it out to Hal, the fantastic illustrator Eric Schaller, and all those lovely people (and a couple of bookstores) who pre-ordered it.

Once they’re shipped we should have a few copies left over for sale then it will be gone, baby, gone. We’ll post some pictures of it when we get time, too.

It’s a book!

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Monday Monday

Mon 9 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Monday Monday | Posted by: Gavin

Phew, what a day.

Best phone call of the morning: someone asked us to reinforce two car seats. I put the call on hold and we discussed it: Perhaps this is the best use of our returns? There’s also that old lunch in the fridge that’s turned to stone . . .

Worst call of the morning: that bird, the one that sounds like a cell phone, very early this morning.

Lovely news of the day: Karen Lord is a Campbell Award nominee: yay! Congrats and best of luck to all the Hugo and Campbell nominees.

Best SBP news of the day: Nancy Kress’s Fountain of Age is on its way from C-M Books in Ann Arbor, MI, to Consortium’s warehouse in Jackson, TN, from where it will spring forth into the world.

Worst SBP news of the day: no info yet from the (different) printer on Hal Duncan’s limited edition. Bah humbug.

Best Weightless news of the day: royalties go out this week. They are so much easier to do than Small Beer’s headache inducing royalties which should go out next week. Also: tomorrow we are adding 100+ PM Press ebooks. Ha.

And PW profiles Newbury Comics, an old fave of ours. They’re a regional New England chain of record stores who started with comics and moved to music. They have a few magazines, a few books, and loads and loads of t-shirts, buttons, and various impulse-y things. Long may their pile it high and keep it cheery reign continue.

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Contracts, contracts

Mon 9 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, ebooks | Comments Off on Contracts, contracts | Posted by: Gavin

Interesting Salon article on Am*zon’s sponsorship of many literary non-profits. Are they buying love? They’re definitely trying. $25,000 is a helluva donation to anyone never mind a small organization trying to get by on sales or membership fees. (The Brooklyn Book Fest recently asked if we’d like Small Beer to be profiled on their new sponsored-by-Amazon OnePage and we said no. I love the Brooklyn Book Fest, but that’s not a great fit for us.)

Keep in mind that books are a halo product for Amazon. They would much rather be thought of as a bookstore than a Walmart wannabe.

This part of the Salon article was great to hear:

For the first time, the “Big Six” publishers — HarperCollins, Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan — have refused to sign Amazon’s latest annual contract. The main sticking point is exorbitant increases in “co-op promotional fees” for e-books that the publishers see as an illegal gouge by another name. One person familiar with the details of the proposed 2012 contracts that Amazon has submitted to major New York publishers described them as “stupifyingly draconian.” In some cases, he said, Amazon has raised promotional fees by 30 times their 2011 cost. In saying no, the big publishers are following in the footsteps of the Independent Publishing Group, a major indie distributor representing dozens of small presses that refused Amazon’s increases earlier this winter and soon saw the “Buy” buttons on more than 4,000 of their titles promptly delinked.

I am still hopeful that Amazon will overreach and disappear. Not going to happen, but it makes the horrible headlines about what they are doing to who easier to deal with.

What really makes me unhappy is that high street shops may be pushed out of business and all of our shopping choices will become the same: big box chain stores or Amazon. Which is a crap choice given that most of Amazon’s workers work in warehouses—with goals I could not meet if I were working there—and Fedex and UPS (and warehouse robot suppliers) will be the only winners.

And here’s the Boston Globe being much cheerier, so yay for them.

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Google glasses

Mon 9 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Google glasses | Posted by: Gavin

Google have suggested that at some point they may launch a product. This product may or may not look like the one in the photo.The product may or may not do certain things and have certain features. These features include being from the future! As ever with Google there is no actual human being who can give you information about this proposed project.

Given Google’s great success with Wave, Reader, Buzz, (and I am forgetting some here) and their recent announced closing of their ebook program with indie bookshops (thanks for messing that up), I am just jittering with excitement about this vaporware exciting new project.

Wow. The future will be great. (Wonder if they are working on jetpacks?)

This post is not at all informed by the fact that I’m using Bing (or even Yahoo(!)) half the time now because I can’t stand the “social search” crapola on the Google results page. Neither am I joining Google+ (i.e. “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”) because if I wanted some company to know absolutely everything about me . . . oh, wait, they already do. Crap. Sure, sign me up.

And I look forward to this post coming back to bite me in the bum when I am happily soldering my Google glasses permanently to my newly installed Google Headjak.

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Hal Duncan, A-Z update

Wed 4 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Hal Duncan, A-Z update | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve just heard from the printer that the long-awaited limited edition hardcover edition of An A-Z of the Fantastic City has been printed and is now in the bindery area to be sewn. So we are looking to receive it in about two weeks. At last! Apologies for the huuuuge delay. I’m not quite sure why this one took the printer so long, but it did. Phew. In the meantime, the paperback is available. More TK when the book comes in.

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

Thu 22 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Jennifer Terpsichore Abeles, Julie Day, LCRW, Podcastery, small beer podcast, Three Hats | 3 Comments | Posted by: Julie

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

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

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Typoes (sic)

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

We’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!

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ICFA, Brattle, Juniper

Wed 14 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book fairs, events, Kelly Link | 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!

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

Thu 8 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., After the Apocalypse, Geoff Noble, Jennifer Abeles, Julie Day, Maureen F. McHugh, Michael J DeLuca, podcast, Podcastery, Small Beer on Beer, small beer podcast, The Naturalist | 1 Comment | Posted by: Julie

Here 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.

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.

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

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Early March Writer’s Planner deadlines

Wed 22 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Working Writer's Daily Planner | 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

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

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

No, 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

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

 

 

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Travel, updates

Tue 7 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller, Maureen F. McHugh | 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

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New Stone Animals chapbook

Tue 7 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | 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.

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Hal Duncan’s A-Z

Tue 7 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Hal Duncan, unexpected and unwelcome news | 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.

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Small Beer Podcast 5: Three Messages and a Warning

Thu 2 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Julie Day, Michael J DeLuca, podcast, Podcastery, Small Beer on Beer, small beer podcast, Three Messages and a Warning | 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

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

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Errantry

Wed 1 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elizabeth Hand | 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.

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Jan/Feb Writer’s Planner deadlines

Sun 29 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Working Writer's Daily Planner | 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

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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

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