Oops. No Brooklyn after all.

Sun 18 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Oops. No Brooklyn after all. | Posted by: Gavin

Oops. We will not be at the Brooklyn Book Fest today after all. So sad! So sorry to miss all the fun—and our panels—but Kelly isn’t well so c’est la vie.

And, we ever-so-sensibly shipped books down this year so if anyone feels like selling books, ping me!

Hope everyone there enjoys the lovely weather.


Book Fests! Baltimore

Thu 15 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Book Fests! Baltimore | Posted by: Gavin

Next Saturday we are doing a panel at the Baltimore Book Fest where they are also looking for people who want to dress up and partake up in steampunk fun: email Emma Casale (emma@thecbstore.com, 410-917-7262) if you’re interested!

Steampunk!: Clockwork, Invention, Adventure

September 24, 2011, 6:30PM

Location: Children’s Bookstore Stage

Kelly Link and Gavin Grant lead a discussion about the Steampunk genre with Michael Kirby and Eden Unger-Bowditch. Come find out what Steampunk is all about!

More About the Authors
Kelly Link Steampunk!
 Gavin Grant Steampunk!
Eden Unger Bowditch The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black
Matthew Kirby The Clockwork Three



Book Fests! Brooklyn

Thu 15 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Book Fests! Brooklyn | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight Kelly is in Brooklyn to read at the powerHouse Arena Tin House/Electric Literature party—her Steampunk! story, “The Summer People,” also appears in the new Ecstatic issue of Tin House,

Then on Sunday, Sept. 18, we will be at the Brooklyn Book Fest where we will be at table #124 and both Kelly and I have panels. Come on by and say hi! Don’t quite know if we will have the secret t-shirts we had at Readercon (maybe at some point they’ll be on sale here . . . ) or LCRW mugs but we have the new ish of LCRW, and books, books, glorious books!

12:00 P.M. Crashing Genres. Join authors whose work defies classification: crashing the genre borders of sci-fi / fantasy and the supernatural. Cory Doctorow (For The Win and NYT best-selling Little Brother), has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, Kelly Link, author of cult favorite stories in Pretty Monsters and Magic for Beginners and best-selling author Jewell Parker Rhodes, winner of the American Book Award, uses magical realism to examine race and memory in her New Orleans vampire trilogy Seasons, Moon, and Hurricane. Moderated by Stephanie Anderson.

5:00 P.M. Epic Adventures. Have you ever wanted to travel to the other side of the world to experience new places, really learn about other cultures, and maybe even find your true love in the process? Join graphic novelist Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) and author/illustrator team Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story) as they take you on two powerful journeys that really show what is like to be entirely somewhere else. Moderated by Gavin Grant, co-editor of Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories.

New Lydia Millet cover

Tue 13 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on New Lydia Millet cover | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve just gotten a near final cover from Sharon McGill for Lydia Millet’s second middle grade novel, The Shimmers in the Night—the second book in the Dissenters series after The Fires Beneath the Sea. BTW, Lydia will be on a blog tour later this fall for Fires. Anyway: jacket!

https://smallbeerpress.com/images/9781931520782_big.gif


The Company We Keep – Under the Poppy takes to the road

Thu 8 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

A Guest Post from Kathe Koja:

An industrial art festival, throngs of hipsters, and bands, and Sailor Jerry rum…. And upstairs there was a Victorian townhouse, lovingly designed and painstakingly painted, hung about with deep red curtains, decorated with lavish lace and plump floor pillows and risque art. There was wine, and chocolates; there were flowers. There were curious glances as the curious audience—whose knowledge of Under the Poppy ranged from multiple devoted readings to “What’s this all about?”—made its way past the Poppy booth into the playing space.  And then the door closed behind them, and the show began.

“The company we keep
May keep us from our sleep
And keep us toss-and-turning till the morning …” Read more


Packing

Wed 31 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

What’s faster: packing or unpacking?


While we were away

Tue 30 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on While we were away | Posted by: Gavin

some readers got back to us after reading Delia Sherman’s upcoming The Freedom Maze. They’re not lying, it’s an intense, fun, excellent book for readers of all ages:

“A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie’s coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family’s double-edged past.”
—N. K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“This is an absolutely fascinating story. The Freedom Maze draws you into a world of danger and mystery, of daring and change, at the dawning of the Civil War. Sophie’s adventures in the history of her family’s Louisiana plantation feel real, and lead her to a real understanding of racial truths she would never have caught a glimpse of without magic. Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and vévés and bitter, healing herbs.  The Freedom Maze is deep, meaningful fun.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

“Sherman’s antebellum story exposes a wide sweep through a narrow aperture, where the arbitrary nature of race and ownership, kindred and love, are illuminated in the harsh seeking glare of an adolescent’s coming of age.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A bold and sensitively-written novel about a supposed-white child, Sophie Fairchild returned magically to a time of her ancestors who were slavemaster and slaves in the old South. This book puts the lie to those today making loose political statements about happy, comfortable slave families of that brutal era while telling a strong story that will not let the young reader stop turning pages to see how things will work out for Sophie and her fellow slaves, especially the cook Africa, and house slaves Antigua and Canada. I was mesmerized.”
—Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic

“A riveting, fearless, and masterful novel. I loved Sophie completely.”
—Nancy Werlin, author of Extraordinary

“A subtle and haunting book that examines what it means to be who we are.”
—Holly Black, co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“Vividly realized and saturated with feeling.”
—Elizabeth Knox, author of DreamHunter


Housekeeping

Wed 10 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Housekeeping | Posted by: Gavin

Our office will be closed for the rest of the month of August because of furnace repairs davenport ia and we will only be able to send out e-galleys to reviewers during that time.


Edinburgh book fest & more

Tue 9 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Edinburgh book fest & more | Posted by: Gavin

Stories of Your Life and Others cover - click to view full sizeTime for some updates before we shut down for the August recess. First a few quick reviews:

  1. Gary K. Wolfe in Locus on Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales: “In the best of Ryman’s fiction, the world unfolds in ways that are at once astonishing and thoroughly thought out, both radically disorienting and emotionally powerful.”
  2. Ted Gioia on Ted Chiang. (It’s a TedFest!) “The divide between genre fiction and literary fiction is, blurry at best . . . “
  3. Catch-up: Matt Kressel interviews Richard Butner for the Shirley Jackson Award site.
  4. Very sad to read about William Sleator’s death. Many years ago Kelly gave me a copy of his autobiographical collection Oddballs (it’s still one of the books she loves to give people), a hilarious book that only gets more fascinating as I see if from two sides, the child POV and the parental. I haven’t read much of his fiction, but

Ok, so the last two weren’t reviews, but go on, open up some tabs and read them.

Next: a reading! Vincent McCaffrey will read from A Slepyng Hound to Wake at the Brookline Booksmith at 7 PM on Thursday August 25th. We love Vince and we love the Booksmith (and their reading series, they have Lev Grossman there this week) so we are very sad we won’t be there. Slepying Hound is shipping out very nicely. If you want a signed copy, the Booksmith, Poison Pen, or Avenue Victor Hugo are your choices. (On AVH’s site on Biblio.com you can see what else Vincent has published . . . )

august coverNext: Locus! The August issue has:

  • an interview with Karen Lord—who can be heard on the Locus roundtable podcast here.
  • a review of Geoff Ryman’s collection (ok, that one’s linked above, but I liked having all this stuff together)
  • a review by Rich Horton of The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
  • and includes Lydia Millet’s The Fires Beneath the Sea in the Notable Books
  • and at some point soon, Locus will become available on Weightless

Next: travel! Next week Kelly will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival—apparently their website is down due to a lightning strike on their servers in Ireland!—where she and Audrey Niffenegger will have a lively chat at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 16th, and then Kelly will be part of what sounds like a great shindig of a night from 9 PM onward on Thursday the 18th. And since they are very sensibly headquartered in Edinburgh, we also get to go visit Kelly’s UK publisher for Pretty Monsters, Canongate!

Last! Clarion West. Kelly and I are excited to be among next year’s instructor’s at Seattle’s Clarion West:

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.

Although with that line-up, we might just see if we can sit in from week one . . .

Bye! We’re also off to visit family in Scotland, so will be offline for most of this month. We’ll be back—and starting to do events for Steampunk!—at the start of September.


I don’t know the author or the title…

Mon 8 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

But, look, it’s the #1 paperback best seller at the Harvard Book Store! How awesome is that? Screen shot below—where Kelly’s 3 Zombie Stories (actual title: I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It) holds back Alan Furst and Malcolm Gladwell from jousting for their usual spot.

I hope people are having fun asking for it!


About “Pink Lemonade”

Fri 5 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on About “Pink Lemonade” | Posted by: Gavin

Three Messages and a Warning coverWe asked some of the writers from Three Messages and a Warning to tell us the story behind the story. Here’s the first installment . . . !

About “Pink Lemonade”
Liliana V. Blum

Although must of my writing has always been in the realistic side, I am an assiduous reader of dystopias. I love 1984, The Handmaid’s tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Day of the Triffids, for example. So I was happy to give it a try when I was invited to write a science fiction or fantasy short story for the anthology.

One of my deep and personal obsessions has always been food, and not in the bulimic or anorexic kind of way. I suffer a weird distress whenever I think about people not being able to eat, going hungry. Needless to say, when my children are sick and cannot hold food in their stomachs, I suffer more than with other common illness. When I watch a movie in which the characters can’t eat due to their fictional context (they’re in a war, or lost in the woods, or held prisioner), I grow anxious. Events like the Holocaust and famines, then, are my worst nightmares.

Since my husband, Ramón, is in the agro business, I am close to and more or less versed on the newest agrocultural trends and technologies. I am very aware of the antagonism of many people in this area. Curiously enough, everybody thinks the more technology in health, science, education, transportation, computers, gadgets, the better. But when it comes to agriculture, it suddlenly becomes satanized. It wouldn’t worry me, except because if agriculture worldwide would go “organic”and use zero-technology seeds, more than two thirds of the population would die of starvation, and most of the  forested areas in the world would have to be destroyed in order to make room for  those inefficient crops. So I decided to write about what would happen if these “green” groups would really have it their way. That’s how “Pink Lemonade” was conceived . . .

Liliana V. Blum (Mexico, 19xx) is not one of those women who refuse to reveal their date of birth; she just likes coincidences. So that she was born the same year that Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum was published, is a great one. She is a ginger gal who suffered through her Mexican childhood of pinch-the-redhead-in-the-arm-for-luck. Now she only suffers the sun. She was born in Durango (famous for its scorpions, revolutionaries and narcos) and currently lives in Tampico, Tamaulipas (famous for its crabs and narco-related violence). Despite the eight-legged creatures, the daily bread of bullets and mutilated bodies, and being the mother of a boy, a girl, a beagle and a guinea pig, she has managed to write five short-story collections; one of them, The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (Host Publications, 2007) was translated into English. Her work has been published in literary magazines in the US, Mexico, England, and Poland. One of her books will be reprinted for a reading-campaign in Mexico City, to give away for free in the subway. She is currently working on her first novel.


Secret book revealed

Fri 29 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Secret book revealed | Posted by: Gavin

in Harvard Book Store newsletter!

“Fabulous local author Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners) has created a special edition book on Paige (our book-making robot) entitled I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It. The hearts of booksellers and librarians everywhere will immediately be warmed by this title, but here’s a little note from Kelly that explains the unusual title choice:  “When you work at a bookshop, hopeful customers sometimes come up to the counter and say, “I don’t know the author or the title, but it’s red (green, blue, etc) and it has xxxxx in it.” (I’ve said it myself at least once or twice.) Anyway, for a couple of years, my husband Gavin and I have had a running joke about using this as the title of a collection. These three stories have appeared before, in other collections, but we were hoping that an all-zombie mini-book would make a good sampler for new readers. We designed the book and printed it in less than twenty-four hours. How amazing: to see your book made before your eyes! We’re now thinking about other projects for Paige M. Gutenborg.”  It’s a slim and gorgeous new book–and it’s currently only available at Harvard Book Store! Order your copy here.”


The Care and Feeding of Your New Homebrew Collection

Thu 21 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on The Care and Feeding of Your New Homebrew Collection | Posted by: Michael

by Michael J. DeLuca

I’m moving to Michigan from Boston. Inside a car on a hot summer day for fourteen hours is about the worst place imaginable to store beer, and glass is dangerous to transport at the best of times, so in advance of the move, I’m giving a way a lot of homebrew. A lot: gallons and gallons of glorious mead, cider, cyser, barleywine, ale and stout. And for the most part, all this wonderful beer I had been hoping to drink in seasons to come is going to non-homebrewers. I worry: my beers are my babies. I want my friends to treat them right, both so they can get the best of their new collection and so if I ever come back to visit I can mooch a bottle or two. Hence this primer.

Read well, and reap the benefits.

Read more


LCRW August 2011 (aka #27) debuts this Thursday in Boston

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on LCRW August 2011 (aka #27) debuts this Thursday in Boston | Posted by: Gavin

We made a secret book today at the Harvard Bookstore on Paige M. Gutenborg, their on demand printer. It was awesome. We did a tiny bit of work on it last night, finished it this morning and had finished books in hand by this afternoon! More on that when we get it organized!

But, also, what is now? Now is LCRW 27!

Available in print format by the end of the week, mailed out, next week, read and devoured from now until English she is no longer spoke.

And here is what it is:

Fiction

A. D. Jameson, The Wolves of St. Etienne
Jessy Randall, The Hedon-Ex Anomaly
K. M. Ferebee, Thou Earth, Thou
Karen Heuler, Elvis in Bloom
M. K. Hobson, A Sackful of Ramps
Carol Emshwiller, The Mismeasure of Me
David Rowinski, Music Box
Joan Aiken, The Sale of Midsummer
Sarah Harris Wallman, The Malanesian

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Sending All Your Love
Gwenda Bond, Dear Aunt Gwenda
About these Authors

Poetry

Sarah Heller, Four Poems
Sarah Heller, Garden
David Blair, Five Poems

Cover

Kathleen Jennings


Ayize (San Francisco), Kelly et al (Boston), Geoff (NYC)

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Ayize (San Francisco), Kelly et al (Boston), Geoff (NYC) | Posted by: Gavin

Busy week for Small Beer readings:

Thursday, July 21, Ayize Jama-Everett is reading from The Liminal People (you can sign up here to get a free copy from LibraryThing) as part of an open reading at the “Black Futurists: Progressive Thought to Sci-Fi” exhibit:

African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC)
1410 Turk St, San Francisco, CA 94115 (Map)
(415) 922-2049

Jul 21st, 2011 (Thu)
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Open Mic – Hosted my D. Scot Miller

Location: Floor 1

D. Scot Miller welcomes featured Black Futurist readers and host open mic. Speculative and fantastic poetry and fiction that explores possible and alternate futures within and around the diaspora are welcome!

The same night (7/19, 7 PM) here in Boston, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (me!), David Blair, Michael J. DeLuca will be reading from the new issue of LCRW, #27, at the New England Institute of Art.

The Library Reading Room, Second Floor, Main Campus
New England Institute of Art, 10 Brookline Place West, Brookline, MA 02445-7295
1.617.739.1700 • 1.800.903.4425

And on Wednesday (7/20, 7 PM) down there in Gotham City, Geoff Ryman will be celebrating the release of his first short story collection, Paradise Tales, at the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series, held every month at the most excellent KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., NYC.

And then next Tuesday (7/26, 7 PM), in LA, Lydia Millet reads from her first children’s book, The Fires Beneath the Sea, at another most excellent venue, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California.

Hope you can get out to one of them. Photos always welcome!


Redemption in Indigo wins the Mythopoeic Awards!

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Redemption in Indigo wins the Mythopoeic Awards! | Posted by: Gavin

Redemption in Indigo coverCongratulations to Karen Lord, who, along with Megan Whelan Turner(!), Michael Ward, and Caroline Sumpter, are this year’s winners of the Mythopoeic Awards!

Wandering around the Mythopoeic Society site, I couldn’t resist looking at their complete list of award winners, which would make a pretty fine reading list for the past forty years of fantasy.

Congratulations again to Karen and thanks to the jury and the Mythopoeic Society for the work they do—and for such cheery news this morning!


Oops, oh well, sorry, and what’s TK

Mon 18 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 4 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry to announce that I am cancelling the 2012 Daily Planner. I’ve talked to Consortium, our distributor, and they’ll be passing the message through the official channels, so at some point soon it will disappear from your fave indie bookstore. All pre-orders will be refunded this week.

I will post what we have as an ebook for a nominal sum (99 cents?) and maybe put it on Lulu.com as a print on demand title, but for the most part this Planner won’t be coming out from us again.

I ran into too many obstacles and ran out of time. The 2013 edition was already problematical due to travel commitments in spring 2012. I apologize to those who were looking forward to it and, given the profusion of planners available, expect that they will find a decent substitute.

Here are the 99c ebook editions of the previous editions: 2012, 2011, 2010

It’s hard to admit that I have to put a stop on this title but this might be a good time to list a few upcoming titles: I’m in the middle of adding eight more titles to Consortium’s Summer 2012 catalog—including short story collections by Kij Johnson (At the Mouth of the River of Bees) and Nancy Kress (untitled as yet, maybe Fountain of Age), a huge fantastic debut by Sofia Samatar (A Stranger in Olondria), a paperback of the just-published Lydia Millet novel, The Fires Beneath the Sea and a hardcover of the second book in the series, Shimmers in the Night, paperback editions of The Serial Garden (which, although we have a few at the office, is pretty much sold out in hardcover), Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy, Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See, Geoff Ryman’s Unconquered Countries, and Laurie J. Marks’s Earth Logic.

And then this weekend at Readercon we talked to a couple of authors about putting out ebook editions of their backlist as well as putting out some new work. Can’t say who as that would be silly as then it would magically not happen and I would look even sillier than I do for having to cancel the Planner.

One project I’m happy to talk about is the potential Collected Stories of Joanna Russ. Graham Sleight talked to me about it on Sunday. Over the past couple of years, working with the much missed Joanna, Graham put together an approximately 900-page manuscript which includes preferred versions of all her stories in three collections, as well as what amounts to basically a whole new collection of stories. But rather than reprint the books, since some of the stories would be ever so slightly different, I think that once we’ve talked to the estate and the agent, unless someone else steps in (which is fine with me, as long as the books come out I will be happy), then we’ll work on putting it out in two huge paperbacks. Once the book starts to look more likely, we may be asking for help with transcription as it is a huge project and I hope there are enough fans of Joanna Russ with quick and accurate fingers who can help.

Anyway, that’s the news from this morning. Readercon report may yet follow, you never know.


Kelly’s new story Valley of the Girls

Mon 11 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Kelly’s new story Valley of the Girls | Posted by: Gavin

is up in Gwenda Bond’s YA issue of Subterranean Online—which has had some knockout stories in it. Anyway, the link to the new Link is here.

Fiction: Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link

http://subterraneanpress.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/subterraneanpress/images/header.gif


Hell of a week

Mon 11 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Hell of a week | Posted by: Gavin

Paradise Tales coverFirst: a new interview with Karen Joy Fowler! That is one smart person. (Two, since Charles Tan did the interview.)

This week we have a new book out. What? You didn’t know? It’s true that Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales was delayed a couple of times, but, Bam! Here it is. What a book. More on that later. Later this week, that is. Later this month, two series books (from me, who loves standalone titles!), Hound 2, as we call A Slepyng Hound to Wake and the first book in Lydia Millet’s new series for kids, The Fires Beneath the Sea.

Geoff’s one of the Guests of Honor at Readercon so we’re going to give him a beer and get him to sign a ton of books. If you would like them personalized, we;ll see what we can do.

Readercon begins for us on Friday when we take some books &c* in to the dealer’s room where we get to catch up with some friends—and buy some books from them. Should be a busy time as, yes, we are bringing our daughter Ursula, so we’ll see how well this works.

Here’s my tiny Readercon Schedule:

LCRW Stainless Water Bottle 0.6L2:00 PM NH    Three Messages and a Warning group reading. Chris N. Brown, Michael J. DeLuca, Gavin J. Grant. Gavin Grant (publisher), Chris N. Brown (editor) and Michael J. DeLuca (translator) read from the anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, forthcoming from Small Beer Press.

3:00 PM Vin.    Kaffeeklatsch. Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link.

And I will post Kelly’s when I’m more sure of it.

* What can the &c be? We’ve heard tell of t-shirts. Maybe. Water bottles? No. Drinkables? Surely not?


On a happier note (signed books galore)

Thu 7 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

we have copies of two new books in stock! Lydia Millet’s first book for kids, The Fires Beneath the Sea (our third Big Mouth House title), and Geoff Ryman’s long-delayed new collection, Paradise Tales. One for the kids, one for the adults!

Los Angeles News Flash! We just confirmed a reading for Lydia on July 26th at 7 PM at the most excellent indie Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

Boston, not a news flash: Geoff is one of the Guests of Honor at Readercon in Boston next week (and is reading at KGB in NYC after that) so we will have stacks of his books for your enjoyment. We’ll also have some signed copies in the office after the con.

Which reminds me of one of the things we should make more of a fuss about . . . we have signed copies of a bunch of our books! Order here and they’re yours (free shipping in the US & Canada as usual):

Alan DeNiro · Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead (5)

Carol Emshwiller · The Mount (5); Carmen Dog (2)

Greer Gilman · Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales (2)

Julia Holmes · Meeks (6)

John Kessel · The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (5 hardcovers)

Kelly Link · Stranger Things Happen (5)

Kelly Link · Magic for Beginners (5)

Laurie J. Marks · Water Logic (7)

Vincent McCaffrey · Hound (5)

Maureen F. McHugh · Mothers & Other Monsters (8 pb, 4 hc)

Benjamin Parzybok · Couch (5)

Geoff Ryman · The King’s Last Song (2)

Sean Stewart · Mockingbird (1);  Perfect Circle (4)

Jennifer Stevenson · Trash Sex Magic (2)

Howard Waldrop · Howard Who? (7)


InDesign bottleneck

Thu 7 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on InDesign bottleneck | Posted by: Gavin

Dum de dum, new issue of LCRW, dum de dum, redoing a galley, dum de dum, finishing a book, dum de dum, all on hold!

Bugger. The things I can do with technology—and not good things. The “paragraph styles” have disappeared in InDesign on my laptop. I hate re/installing InDesign, it takes foreeeever. So I tried contacting them since I can’t find anything about this problem online.

Good part: they responded in one day instead of the promised three (3 days? really? must be busy people) and they apologized for the trouble.

Bad part: despite paying $$ for InDesign 4—a good but annoying program which won’t even open files properly made in ID3—it turns out to get support I need to buy a support contract. (Ever looked for something on Adobe’s site? Ack!)

Hmm. Let’s check this week’s mail: submissions to LCRW, queries to the press, bills from printers and assorted vendors, random check for $175 to cover a year of support? Er, no. Darn. Morning becomes reinstallation and a prayer, I spose.

Oh well. Aimee Mann has come up on random shuffle and that seems about right.


Soul Available

Wed 6 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Soul Available | Posted by: Gavin

Eek! Maureen McHugh sent us an updated bio for After the Apocalypse:

Maureen F. McHugh was born in what was then a sleepy, blue collar town in Ohio called Loveland. She went to college in Ohio, and then graduate school at New York University. She lived a year in Shijiazhuang, China. Her first book, China Mountain Zhang, was published in 1991. Since then she has written three novels and a well received collection of short stories. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has attempted to sell her soul to Hollywood.


Ten Years of Books! Five Years of Beer!

Tue 5 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 3 Comments | Posted by: Michael

It has been a long strange road since the July morning in 2006 I showed up on Small Beer’s doorstep, was bustled inside and found myself crammed into a cool nook between bowed bookshelves, struggling and failing to turn down endless refills of green tea and squares of dark chocolate, making precious little headway with my stack of LCRW submissions due to the caffeine, the basket-hilted pirate letter opener meant to be wielded against envelopes, and the army of windup plastic robots and rubber Cthulus advancing on me from the bookshelves.

I fear I was not the most productive intern those first few months. I shipped books, transcribed Waldrop stories for Howard Who?, did battle with the wireless router, and composed inept ad copy for Mothers & Other Monsters. Somehow I managed not to get fired. Lucky for me I had homebrew in my corner. I think it’s safe to say after that first batch of wee heavy I could do no wrong.

Many uncountable cups of tea, paper cuts, trays of moldy lead type, pints of Bluebird Bitter and BBC River Ale under the bridge, now here it is 2011. Small Beer Press has been putting out amazing, weird books for a decade, and I’ve been “volunteering” here for half of that. All those nice photos of books posed with beer bottles? I took those. I made this website, and this one. Three Messages and a Warning drops in December, featuring my workman’s translations of Karen Chacek’s “The Hour of the Fireflies” and Garbiela Damián Miravete’s “Future Nereid”.

And now I am asked to brew a beer for the SBP tenth anniversary! It shall be my magnum opus. Kevin Huizenga (Peapod Classics, LCRW 16 & 23) did the above awesome artwork. (Ed.: also available on some t-shirts)

A crowd-pleasing pale ale has been requested for the occasion. Here goes.

Read more


Liminal People giveaway

Thu 30 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Liminal People giveaway | Posted by: Gavin

Git git git over to Goodreads and git yourself a copy of this science fiction thrill-ill-iller! We’re publishing it in December but we have 20 copies for going-to-be-happy readers to enjoy long before that cold cold month comes along.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett

The Liminal People

by Ayize Jama-Everett

Giveaway ends July 07, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win


Independents Week: July 1–7

Wed 29 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Independents Week: July 1–7 | Posted by: Gavin

Celebrate Independents Week with independent businesses across the country—and around the world as the movement grows. Shopping at local independent businesses pays wages to people in your area—who can then afford to buy books: maybe even yours!

Check out the American Independent Business Alliance for more information. In celebration of Independents Week, visit your local bookshop—remember most books are still bought at brick and mortar bookshops. Even chosing to buy one or two more books per year locally will make a difference to the viability of your local bookstore.

We all shape our towns by choosing which stores to shop at: we hope you will choose your local indie bookshop!

If you don’t have a great local indie, then here are a few suggestions from our ever-expanding list of favorites (use indiebound.org to find more near you):

Starting in Massachusetts (since that’s where we are) in Boston there’s the Brookline Booksmith, Harvard Bookstore, Porter Square Books, the Brookline Village Children’s Bookshop. Farther out there’s Back Pages in Waltham and Storybook Cove in Hanover. In Western Mass., we like Broadside Books (Northampton), Odyssey Books (South Hadley), Amherst Books (Amherst), as well as the utterly unique Bookmill in Montague (converted from an old mill, and gorgeous).

Down south of us in New York City there are fantastic general and specialty bookshops including St. Mark’s Bookshop, McNally Jackson, Shakespeare & Co., Hue-Man Books & Cafe, and (especially irresistible with its cupcake cafe!) Books of Wonder, as well as the Drama Book Shop, Asia Store, Idlewild, and Kitchen Arts and Letters—and don’t miss Word and Greenlight in Brooklyn. Upstate we recommend the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and the Spotty Dog in Hudson—dear to our hearts as they also serve beer.
Since we’ve already run out of space on this page before we left the northeast (and what about RiverRun in Portsmouth, NH, or all those lovely shops in Vermont?) we obviously can’t list every bookshop we’ve enjoyed visiting here (even those above are heavily edited) so please add your favorite bookshops in the comments.

And if you’re in D.C. don’t miss Politics & Prose. Or Quail Ridge in Raleigh, N.C., Skylight in L.A., Powell’s (or Murder by the Book or Reading Frenzy) in the other Portland . . . you get the idea Keep it indie this week, and every week!

Originally published in A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011.


New audio books

Wed 29 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Just in: Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo.

Coming soon: Julia Holmes’s Meeks, Holly Black’s The Poison Eaters and Other Stories.

Coming down the pike: Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series plus three more books. All of which means soon you will be able to take a Virgin Galactic ride into space and listen to Small Beer books all the way!


2011 Catalog & more

Mon 27 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

The Child Garden coverWe have a new catalog! It’s up on Scribd already and at some point there may even be a print edition. Don’t know if it will be color glorious color thoughout, so you have to look there to see all the lovely lovely bookcovers we have this year. The cover is Kathleen Jennings’s picture from the cover of The Child Garden. The back cover art is a secret. Well, until you look at it. More secrets inside. Mostly on page 28. Completists can see or download all our catalogs here.

Nice: Patrick Ness won the U.K.’s Carnegie medal for Monsters of Men (the third Chaos Walking book).

What’s coming up? Joan Aiken stories! “Spur of the Moment” in Eleven Eleven. “Hair” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. “Reading in Bed” on Tor.com.

Karen Joy Fowler’s collection is on the (quite!) long Frank O’Connor Award longlist.

If we had been faster on the draw, this story by Christine Sneed would have been in the next LCRW—which approacheth completion! Honest, guv. Christine didn’t simultaneously submit it, rather she sent us a nice postcard withdrawing her story after we’d had it for too long. Shame on me! I am trying to read faster, but the eyes, they can’t do it. In the meantime, I recommend this story of “Fortune“:

His plan was small but ambitious. He began by designing business cards on his computer, using purple ink on white paper and Clip-art pictures of Merlin’s hat, a crystal ball, and a spray of stars that arced upward from his name.

We were luckier with other stories! We’re already buying for next spring. Of note, since I was adding some new titles to Weightless Books: 12.6% (or 1/8, near as just about) of subscribers to LCRW now subscribe to the ebook edition. Hmm! But we like print, so until it’s the other way around, I think we’ll keep with the paper edition.

Back to the new issue: we have a cover from Kathleen Jennings, who we love.

Go get it: Small Beer Press 2011 Catalog


Inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award

Mon 20 Jun 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award | Posted by: Gavin

A Life on Paper: Stories coverWe’re immensely honored to pass on the news that the inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award for long-form work has gone to A Life on Paper: Stories by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin. The awards were presented at the 2011 Eurocon in Stockholm (winners and honorable mentions below).

The full announcement on the awards—and the wonderful and generous jury comments—is here, along with statements from the winners. We’re honored and humbled and would like to thank the the jury and the award administrators—what a job, trying to corral all those books from publishers all over the world to a similarly scattered jury!

A Life on Paper is a great book and our publishing it is all down to the translator, Edward Gauvin: thanks Edward!

Long Form Winner

A Life on Paper: Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer Press). Original publication in French (1976­-2005).

Long Form Honorable Mention

The Golden Age, Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive Press). Original publication in Czech as Zlatý V?k (2001).

Short Form Winner

“Elegy for a Young Elk”, Hannu Rajaniemi, translated by Hannu Rajaniemi (Subterranean Online, Spring 2010). Original publication in Finnish (Portti, 2007).

Short Form Honorable Mention

“Wagtail”, Marketta Niemelä, translated by Liisa Rantalaiho (Usva International 2010, ed. Anne Leinonen). Original publication in Finnish as “Västäräkki” (Usva (The Mist), 2008).


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