Happy Publication Day to a Great Novel(ist)

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

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

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

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

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

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AWP 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Kelly’s Book of Love Tour

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

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

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

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

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Isabel Yap @ KGB Bar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche

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Kij @ Prairie Lights Tomorrow

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

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

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Book Riot Best of 2023

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

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

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

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

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Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023

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

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

* DuckDuckGo

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Re: Formats

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

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

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

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

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Sparks

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

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

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

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

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Howard Waldrop, R.I.P.

Mon 15 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Brought low by the news that Howard Waldrop died yesterday, January 14, at the age of 77.

We delighted in bringing his first collection, the still well and hilariously named Howard Who?, back into print in 2006 and then publishing a later collection, Horse of a Different Color in 2013. Each of those books has at least one of my favorite stories in them: the award-winning “The Ugly Chickens” in the former and the holy grail/vaudeville mashup title story in the latter.

In 2014 we published ebooks of two selections of his works, Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction and Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction, which were published in trade cloth and trade paper by Michael Walsh of Old Earth Books. Then in 2022 we re-released his Wheatland Press/Electric Story collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, his “movie (‘dream factories’) and television (‘radio pictures’) stories from his first four collections, as well as a new article and a new story.”

That’s the publishing part. More on the man himself, one of my most faithful correspondents, later. For now, he is much missed. Here’s his best known story, The Ugly Chickens.

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The Book of Love Limited Edition

Thu 11 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on The Book of Love Limited Edition | Posted by: Gavin

A limited edition of Kelly’s first novel, The Book of Love, to be published later this year by Small Beer Press, courtesy of Random House who published the novel in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook on February 13, 2024.

The Book of Love is a huge beautiful novel about love in its many forms. The Random House edition is 640 pages and 2.1 pounds in weight. Read more

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OKPsyche in MN & WI

Thu 11 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on OKPsyche in MN & WI | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro just confirmed two more events for her novel OKPsyche:

(Postponed) 1/20/24 from 3 -5 p.m. at Avant Garden, 215 E. Main St., Anoka, MN 55303

and

3/25/24 at A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI.

I haven’t been to Room for years — long enough that they’ve changed hands and location since I was last there. I hope at some point to make it over because the people who own and run it are fun, admirable, and great booksellers — they also make great maps of book recommendations which they post on social media so I recommend following them. One of these days! In the meantime, if you’re in the area, hope you can get to one of these events.

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2 Weeks Until Kindling

Wed 10 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kindling | Comments Off on 2 Weeks Until Kindling | Posted by: Gavin

On a very snowy, wet, dreich day it is funny to write about a book called Kindling but the spark in Kathleen Jennings’s collection is bright enough to shine even in weather like this. (I realize weather is localized and that it is incredibly hot, but still wet!, in Brisbane, Queensland where Kathleen lives.)

Warehouse-wise the book is in a liminal state — either On Hand or about to be — and hopefully not in a frozen-in-a-truck state somewhere between Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Preorders will be going out soon and those placed on this site go out with a bonus backlist title. Most likely from us, but maybe from another press if the pack and pickers at the Jackson warehouse start having fun.

Over in Portland, OR, Rachael P. has the right idea on how to read this book in Powell’s 2024 Book Preview: The First Quarter:

Kindling
by Kathleen Jennings

When the words “gothic” and “folk tales” come up in a book description, I will always get excited. This anthology promises the creepiness of classic folk tales and lush, dreamlike settings. I’ve seen many reviews raving about the elegance of the prose, which, fittingly for folk tales, verges into the poetic. I can’t wait to read these stories under a warm blanket this winter. — Rachael P.

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Preorder The Book of Love

Mon 8 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Preorder The Book of Love | Posted by: Gavin

We just added a page on the BKMN website for preorders for signed or personalized copies of Kelly’s forthcoming debut novel The Book of Love.

If you’d like your book(s) personalized, once it’s in your cart, put the name of the person you’d like it personalized for in the “notes” field.

Every pre-order (including those before the page went up) placed by publication day — February 13, 2024 — will ship with a signed, limited edition not-for-sale specially made 5″ square broadside.

Books will be shipped Media Mail beginning February 11th. If you’d like your book to arrive sooner, please ask for a quote on Priority Mail shipping.

Kelly is doing some in-person and online events. She is tentatively planning to be at Book Moon on the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 17, if you’d like to pick up your copy then.

More of Kelly’s book.
Kelly recommends some books.

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SBP BS Bestsellers 2023

Fri 5 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on SBP BS Bestsellers 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

2023 was the another odd year for the press. Since I did the top 14 (BS = Bookscan, now called Circana) bestsellers last year (for a reason that eludes me now), here are the past year’s top 15 — look at all those short story collections!

 

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The Heart of Owl Abbas

Thu 4 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings, read | Comments Off on The Heart of Owl Abbas | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s new book, Kindling, her first collection of stories, is being trucked from printer to distributor and from there on its way to shops, cafes, backpacks, bedside tables, ship’s libraries, and a few to alternate worlds. One of those worlds might be the one where her story The Heart of Owl Abbas is set:

Cautious even in despair, Excelsior shredded the gossamer spell into cheap sentiment and tramping rhythm, and sent it by nip-fingered courier below where, unintended, the words fell like fire-inches, like sparks in kindling.

The rooms of roses burn,
The lanterns are turned high.
Petty Street, long starved for light,
Lifts a ravening eye.

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DeNiro on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans

Wed 3 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Interviews | Comments Off on DeNiro on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans | Posted by: Gavin

Something good to start the new year with: Anya joins Mary Anne Mohanraj and Benjamin Rosenbaum on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans for a conversation about her novel, OKPsyche. The conversation roves all over: on genre, gender, writing, history, poetry, and more — not to be missed.

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Not the Delaware Attorney General

Thu 21 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings | Comments Off on Not the Delaware Attorney General | Posted by: Gavin

Not to be missed in all of this, in January we’re publishing Kathleen Jenning’s first collection of stories, Kindling.

The printer, Maple Press in York, PA, is about to ship the hardcover and trade paperbacks to our distro, Consortium, whose main warehouse in an Ingram one in Jackson, TN. Once they’re received and sorted, Consortium will start shipping the books out to bookstores, libraries, me(! — well, Book Moon), and so on, and everyone in the whole world will get ready to celebrate the publication day, January 23rd, by setting the world on fire, overthrowing repressive governments, installing solar power and batteries, buying more bikes, and reading this collection of modern folk and fairy tales.

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Halting Subs, But Going On (and On)

Thu 21 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Covid, Long Covid | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Thank you, Vanessa Armstrong, for this news story about Small Beer on Tor.com.

The article led to a small flood of men emailing manuscript submissions and queries, showing that no matter how clear a headline is (“Small Beer Press Is Halting New Publications” is very clear), some people don’t think it applies to them.

I’m 2 years into long Covid. I’ve written updates since March 2022. I never tested positive for Covid. I’ve since had another 3 or 4 vaccines/boosters. I only see people unmasked once they’ve done a Covid test.

From my two years on this couch, I beg you to wear a mask in public/when traveling, etc. Insist on better filters at work or school. Build Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for meet-ups or home.

The Covid virus can attack many different parts of the body. This is a mass disabling event I do not want you to be part of.

I’ve added to the statement below. I realize I go on so please skip to here and pick up some books for yourself/someone you know.

We closed Small Beer to submissions in March 2023 and only published four books this year: two novels and two collections of stories. After 20+ years of reading submissions it’s been very strange to know there are good books I am missing but c’est la vie.

In December 2021 I came down with something unknown. I never tested positive for Covid but in 2022 I was diagnosed with Long Covid. I am a very different person now: I can’t carry boxes of books around, I don’t drive, I can’t read as much as I used to, I lie on the couch most of the day because walking or even sitting up for too long wipes me out. I have tried many anecdotally successful supplements and medicines — none of which have done any good. In the last two years I only see people who have are masked or have tested negative. Kelly drives me into our bookshop, Book Moon, once a week or so where people are unmasked but we run 2 Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and I am always masked. I literally would not wish this on my worst enemy — although I don’t really have one except maybe the soul crushing companies that would like to run all the small presses and indie businesses out of town.

We’d contracted our 2023 titles over the past few years. We have one more title under contract but I’m not sure if we can publish it as I think it’s too much work for me. I emailed with our authors about my limitations and occasionally talked on the phone but phone calls or zooms wipe me out and then I can’t do anything else.

In 2022 we only managed to publish two books. This year we published four and here at the end of the year I see how much these books missed the old me. Sarah Pinsker’s second collection Lost Places was selected for Slate’s Best Books of the Year which is something to celebrate. It’s always hard for small or indie presses to get coverage and no one expects to be on Best of the Year lists but I always hope our books will at least be considered for lists and awards. This year that was more difficult as I wasn’t able to send books out as widely or follow up. Publicity is part of my job and following up takes a fair amount of energy which I don’t have. So unless we want to change our habits and start being unfair to authors, we have to stop.

I haven’t even mentioned our September title, Anya Johanna DeNiro’s short, amazing, difficult, transcendent science fiction novel OKPsyche — the review I enjoyed most was Jake Casella Brookins in Locus which started off, “I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is” — or our final book, Kij Johnson’s long awaited, decade in the making second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending. 

Kelly recently took a two-year position at Smith College so now we will get health insurance there — then we’ll have to work out what to do after that. Kelly’s novel, The Book of Love, comes out in February, and at some point next year we’ll publish a limited edition. That’s been fun to work on and if it goes ok maybe we will do more. Or maybe we will just keep our zine, LCRW, going — although even there we only managed one issue this year. I can’t mail it out anymore so it’s harder to do. I love paper zines, so the intention is there. I’ve been very lucky to have support in the past two years. It is pretty crappy to see the ground cut away from under my feet but I know it could be worse.

In 2010 a friend, Michael J. DeLuca, and I started a DRM-free ebook website, WeightlessBooks.com, and my disability meant I had to step away from that last year.

I’d thought that with cutting down on other things (we don’t travel anymore: no more book fairs and conferences; no more Weightless; a lot less Book Moon; fiction is now quite hard to write) there was a chance I could keep Small Beer going but it is too much. As long as the authors are happy, we’ll keep the books in print — or sell them on where possible: Random House just released the cover for their new 2024 edition of Karen Lord’s debut novel Redemption in Indigo. 

My expectations for Small Beer was that Kelly and I would keep publishing books we enjoyed basically until we dropped dead, preferably a long time from now. So now I have the whole anger and grief that besides not being able to go sledding (if it snows, thanks Shell/Exxon/climate change), or walk the dog more than 1.5 blocks out and back, there’s also no more dancing — I miss dancing. My inner self often has music of my own or others playing and I am often dancing. I am so slow now.

Mine is not a long Covid story where I was once a marathon runner and now I lie on the couch. I liked lying on the couch preferably with comics, champagne, and bonbons. Ok, so that didn’t happen very often, but still.

Anyway. Everyone who is wearing a mask is helping everyone else. You are the helpers and I thank you. I appreciate all the notes from friends and strangers and am replying slowly. It is much easier to be flippant on Bluesky. I keep up with long Covid news.

We have pushed some great and weird books out into the world in the last 20 years, some further than others, but never a book we thought wasn’t odd and great and worth being a physical object in the world. No one knows the impact of a book that has sold 300 or 30,000 copies — it may change the world for one reader. It happened to us time and time again. I look forward to reading more good, odd books from other publishers in the future.

 

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Top 5 Bestsellers 2023

Tue 19 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Bestsellers, Kij Johnson, Nathan Ballingrud, Sarah Pinsker, Sarah Rees Brennan | Comments Off on Top 5 Bestsellers 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

Here are our top 5 bestsellers so far this year by numbers shipped from our distributor:

1. Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places
   
2. Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters
3. Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending
4. Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche
5. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

In 2023 we published the Liminals series capper from Ayize Jama-Everett, Heroes from Another World. Ayize had an amazing year: he published 3 books (including a great Afrofuturistic graphic novel The Last Count of Monte Cristo) and put out a documentary, A Table of Our Own: “an extraordinary and thought-provoking documentary that delves into the rich tapestry of the African-American experience, exploring the intersection of psychedelic substance use, spirituality and the pursuit of social justice.”

We followed Ayize’s novel with Sarah Pinsker’s second collection which was included in Slate’s Best Books of the Year.

Then came Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche — I think the review I enjoyed most was Jake Casella Brookins in Locus which started off, “I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is” and leapt off into the kind of review that I alwayshope to read of a book I love.

Our final book of the year was Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending. 10 years in the making, it’s a weird and wide-ranging collection and was recently reviewed in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda.

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Laurie J. Marks is Writing Again

Fri 15 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Laurie J. Marks | Comments Off on Laurie J. Marks is Writing Again | Posted by: Gavin

Anyone who has read the deep and excellent Elemental Logic series will rejoice with me to see that Laurie J. Marks is writing again. In a post today she writes about it, about the grueling years she and her wife Deb have gone through, the unexpected choices that she’s made, and, after a year of being retired, taking up writing again.

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LeVar Burton Reads The Court Magician

Wed 13 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., audio, LeVar Burton, Sarah Pinsker | Comments Off on LeVar Burton Reads The Court Magician | Posted by: Gavin

LeVar Burton is variously and widely recognized as a champion of all things literary for books and one of the ways he shares his joy and love of narrative is through his podcast. He recently chose Sarah Pinsker’s story “The Court Magician” — listen here (or wherever you access Podcastia).

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Never Have I Ever Polish Edition

Fri 8 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, translations | Comments Off on Never Have I Ever Polish Edition | Posted by: Gavin

Good news for Polish readers: we just received the on-signing contract payment from MAG Jacek Rodek for Polish rights to Isabel Yap’s award winning debut collection Never Have I Ever. That’s the first international rights sale for that title.

In other news, Isabel and Alyssa Wong will be anchor instructors for the final two weeks of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego next summer. Applications are now open.

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LibroFM Bundles

Wed 6 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., audio books, sale | Comments Off on LibroFM Bundles | Posted by: Gavin

Get 10% off audiobook credit bundles at LibroFM for the next couple of days — they only run this sale once a year. I use Libro and like it, easy to use, huge library, etc., etc.

 

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Slate: The 10 Best Books of 2023

Wed 6 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sarah Pinsker, year's bests | Comments Off on Slate: The 10 Best Books of 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places gets lovely review in Dan Kois’s list of Slate’s 10 Best Books of 2023.

How to explain what’s so graceful about this collection of fantasy stories by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Pinsker? . . .  Every story is surprising, delightful, and very human, and left me excited to read more from this writer, who is both finely attuned to the language and rituals of modern life and in touch with some real deep-magic weirdness.

See the list and read the full recommendation.

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