Matthew Schulz

Wed 5 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Matthew Schulz | Posted by: Gavin

once of Staunton, Ohio, are you there? Email us!


Cacao Piquin Stout, or, Beer of the Gods

Mon 3 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 4 Comments | Posted by: Michael

I made a chocolate beer. It wasn’t so many years ago I swore I’d never do any such thing—too gimmicky, I said, too much of a deviation from the tradition that has made beer great. But things change.

With me and brewing, the circumstance most likely to cause such a turnaround is the ready, cheap availability of superior ingredients. In January, I went to Guatemala—the cradle of Mayan civilization, and arguably the cradle of chocolate as a human institution. I brought back a half-kilo of cacao “beans”—a form of chocolate two steps removed from the least-processed chocolate you’re ever likely to encounter in this country. “What the hell is a cacao bean?” asked the customs official rummaging through my bags in Houston. I started in on the two-minute explanation; disappointingly, he waved me on before I’d got half started.

Read on for the two-minute explanation—but first, know that when I sat down to brew this beer, it was with the purest of aesthetical intentions in the Small Beer spirit: I strove for a beer that would as closely as possible resemble a bar of 70% raw cacao dark chocolate in liquid form.

Read more


Zhao Haihong Interview

Mon 3 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 7 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Zhao HaihongIn the new issue of LCRW we’re very happy to present the first English publication of multiple award-winning Chinese writer Zhao Haihong. Her story “Exuviation” was first published in 2000 in Science Fiction World Magazine and received the Galaxy Award. Zhao Haihong has an M.A. in English literature from Zhejiang University and teaches English literature in Zhejiang Gongshang University in Hangzhou, China. She started writing science fiction in 1996, and has received the Galaxy Award from Science Fiction World Magazine, the Soong Ching Ling Children’s Literature Award, and the sixth National Writers Association Award for outstanding children’s literature in China. Her first story collection, Eyes of the Birches, was published in 1999.

Fabulous intern Diana Cao (who, coincidentally, will be studying in Beijing for a month later this summer) interviewed Zhao Haihong last week:

Diana Cao: Could you first give some background about how you arrived where you are in your writing today?

Book One. Eyes of the Birches (the second editon)I’ve loved reading and writing since childhood. To me, writing was the only way to prove who I was in my middle school. I tried various kinds of writing in the six years, and some of them were science fiction stories—among them was a story I sent to Science Fiction World magazine and had published. The story “The Rising of the Great Rift Valley” won me the first prize of the Guangya Science Fiction Story Contest for Students (1996) held by the magazine. I was thrilled by the result and that’s the real start of my science fiction career. Since then, I have published 21 science fiction stories, mostly in SFW and later collected in two books: Eyes of the Birches and The Other Side of Time. My third collection The World and my first novel Crystal Sky will be published this year. These stories have brought me six Galaxy Awards (1997-2002) by SFW, the Sixth Soong Ching Ling Children’s Literature Award (2003) and the sixth National Writers Association Award for outstanding children’s literature in China (2004)—the last two are governmental awards, and science fiction is included under children’s fiction for governmental awards. Read more


Round up

Mon 26 Apr 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Round up | Posted by: Gavin

Catch-up post about recent happenings with our books.

1) April: Alasdair Gray! At last! Nope. Now a June book due to a printer error. Sigh. You can see an excerpt on Scribd.

2) May:  Edward Gauvin (translator of A Life on Paper) was recently blogging on translations, Belgium, and more at the 3% blog. (Surely 3.5% by now?)

4) June: 2 starred reviews so far for Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo!

5) July: good news coming soon on Julia Holmes’s debut novel Meeks.

Ok, bored with numbering now. The Interstitial Arts Foundation has a call for papers for a new interstitial-sounding anthology:

What is Interfictions Zero? Interfictions Zero is an online virtual anthology, comprised of a Table of Contents listing seminal pieces of published interstitial writings (with live links to those texts where possible) and original essays about the focus pieces listed in the TOC. With the online publication of Interfictions Zero, the Interstitial Arts Foundation will begin to create a historical context for how interstitial writing affects the growth and development of literature over time.

There’s also an interesting addition to the ongoing conversation about translations at the IAF blog.

Poets & Writers spotlights one of Chicago’s many wonderful bookstores: Women & Children First.

I Heart Rachel MaddowDo you like Rachel Maddow? Essentials in Northampton has the shirt for you—in white or pink and 10% of all proceeds will be donated to support the Capital Campaign for the Northampton Survival Center.

Apparently the folks at Essentials aren’t having quite enough fun there so there’s this site, too: My Parents Made Me Wear This.

The NY Center for Indie Publishing their 6th Annual New York Round Table Writers’ Conference, May 1 (er, tomorrow!), 9AM- 7PM, where you can meet various people in publishing—including Kelly’s fabby agent Renee Zuckerbrot. Tickets are Members – $69.00/Non-Members – $89.00/Student – $20.00:

Please e-mail contact@nycip.org to reserve or confirm a spot today – we hope to see you all here on May 1st!

And that’s it for now. Maybe there’ll be more later. After all, what else is there to do on a spring afternoon but haunt the web and wait until the tick tick tick hits leaving time!


Katharine Beutner interview

Fri 23 Apr 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Katharine BeutnerA while ago we published a lovely short piece of fiction (or poetry, as we listed it in LCRW 19!) by Katharine Beutner. Earlier this year we noticed that her debut novel, Alcestis, was about to be published by the good folk at Soho Press. All excited, we quickly dashed off some questions for Katharine and in the middle of her debut book launch and doing readings and so on she sent back her answers.

Then we brought punnet after punnet of pomegranates and honeycrisp apples into the office and everyone tried to decide which side they were on. To choruses of “Apples!” “Pomegranates!” (and the occasional “Beer!)” we decided that, yes, we like fruit, but if we were more specific than that it seemed we might be tempting the gods and, really, how foolish could we be? (Moving quickly on.)

Anyway, Katharine’s first novel is in stores now so why not add it to your reading pile? In the meantime, that interview:

SBP: First, what attracted you to the story, or: Why a historical novel? Why Ancient Greece? Why a dead girl?

Katharine Beutner: When I was little, I read and reread the D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which has beautiful Blakean illustrations that are cheery and brutal, just like the myths themselves.

I remember reading a prose translation of the Odyssey when I was maybe ten or eleven, and reading Sophocles and Aeschylus in high school. I majored in classical studies in college (at Smith, yay Northampton!). I’ve always been more attracted to Greek mythology than to any other kind.

As for “why historical fiction,” I like the way that historical fiction foregrounds the process of approximation that all fiction engages in. I have a favorite bit by Samuel Johnson that I sometimes drag out to explain this, from the Preface to Shakespeare, the same essay in which Johnson says that Shakespeare “holds up … a mirror” to nature:

“Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would be probably such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed.”

He’s talking about the fantastical elements of Shakespeare’s work, but I love historical fiction for the same reasons. All historical novels are fantasy, in a way. We can’t ever truly understand the past, but we can create art about the past that allows us to tell ourselves truths, even if we can’t reconstruct the truths of other time periods as citizens of the past would have done.

Regarding Alcestis’s story in particular, my question was actually “Why didn’t she *stay* a dead girl?” Sacrificing your life for someone else is a grand gesture, and I was frustrated that the traditional version of the myth reversed it and brought her back to life. So I set out to write a version of her story in which her time in the underworld would still have profound meaning for her, no matter what Heracles did.

Are pomegranates really your favorite fruit?

I like them, but I think apples are my favorite now, which is odd because I used to despise them for textural reasons. Then I discovered Honeycrisps a few years ago and became a convert. Still Greek myth-appropriate, though I always thought Paris should’ve given the apple to Athena.

Did you go to Greece for research?

I wish. I looked at lots of lucky tourists’ photos of Bronze Age ruins online, though! The Mycenaean period is still pretty mysterious, but I read some archaeological studies of particular sites and researched lots of other little pieces of information — what asphodel looks like in its various life stages, homeopathic treatments for asthma, what sorts of snakes are native to central Greece, that kind of thing.

Did you go to the underworld for research? If so, what brought you back?

Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country and Connie Willis’s Passage and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead were my underworld research.

The gender relations in the novel are not exactly equal. How did you get your head around them?

I was reading a lot of eighteenth-century fiction and Victorian fiction while I worked on Alcestis — my dissertation focuses on eighteenth-century women writers. There’s nothing like reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa to give you an immersive sense of how alien men and women can appear to one another when they exist within a culture of restrictive gender relations. (Or for a far more light-hearted version of this divide, see Fanny Burney’s Evelina, which was one of Jane Austen’s favorite books and has a monkey melee scene at the end. I like to think that Jane Austen loved it even more because of that.)

Is this your first novel, or your first published novel?

First published novel. My actual first novel was fairly traditional second world fantasy, written in slapdash fashion my first year after college. I might overhaul it some day — I still think the central relationship in the book is interesting — but for now it’s trunked.

Did you find being in a writing program helped?

It helped a great deal, even though writing program workshops are designed for short fiction, not for novels. (I fantasize about teaching a novel-workshopping class someday.) But I had great friends in the program and an excellent thesis adviser who helped guide me through my first revision of the novel. And I had two years to write, which is the best part of any writing program, I think.

What has the publishing experience been like for you? Did you find it hard to find an agent and publisher?

I was lucky — a number of my friends have become writers or agents, including Diana Fox, who represents me. She’d liked my first novel, unbelievably enough, and was encouraging about Alcestis from the beginning. Over about a year and a half, we collected a reasonable number of rejections from publishers, some just polite, some complimentary but unsure how to sell the book. Then Soho made an offer, which Diana called to tell me about twenty minutes after I’d finished defending my dissertation prospectus. (It was an exciting day.) So far, the experience has been great. Soho has been just wonderful, especially my editor Katie Herman and Justin Hargett, the director of publicity. I love getting to hear what people think about the book. And I’m usually busy with grad school work, which keeps me from obsessing too much about the many elements of publishing I can’t control.

Are you working on something else/taking a break/moving to LA with a screenplay in your pocket/disappearing never to be heard from again?

I’m currently being squashed under the weight of my dissertation, like Atlas. After I finish it, I’ll begin writing the novel I’ve been researching, which is about the disappearance of a Mt. Holyoke College student in 1897. I doubt I’ll ever move to LA, but the slightly too-long Hollywood elevator pitch for that novel is “Alias Grace meets The Prestige meets Fingersmith meets The Secret History” — it’ll be New England gothic, weird and twisty.


Ebook price experiment

Tue 6 Apr 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Just added a new DRM-free PDF ebook: Sean Stewart’s Mockingbird here and on Weightless for an introductory price of $5.95.

Once it goes live on other sites the price will have to rise to $9.95—otherwise they will drop the price to match ours and the author would get a pittance*. So get it cheap while you can! We also dropped the pb price on it (and a few other titles—including the Working Writer’s Daily Calendar which has dropped at least 25% in price as the year is 25% over!).

At $5.95 (call it $6) the author gets $3 a pop (yay!) from here/Weightless which is actually more than from Fictionwise or on the iPad/Kindle, etc., where the split goes:

Price: $10
Seller: 50% = $5
Publisher: 50% of 50% = $2.50
Author: 50% of 50% = $2.50

So the experiment is to see whether we can sell a decent number at $6 and maybe see if we should drop our prices on other ebooks. (Because after all, isn’t demand price elastic? So that demand should increase with lower prices? Well, so we are told and so we will experiment and see!)

* OK, that pittance would pretty much match the p-book rate! So maybe we will drop the price later. There’s always later, right?


Old Men in Love — in summer

Wed 31 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Old Men in Love — in summer | Posted by: Gavin

Also: we just bit the bullet and moved Alasdair Gray’s novel Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers from April to June. The pre-press work on this was really awful, but thanks to the good people at Thomson-Shore our edition should be beautiful and this fabuloso novel should ship out at the end of this month and start hitting stores (and the review pages) in mid-May.


email snafus

Wed 31 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on email snafus | Posted by: Gavin

And now someone around here, ok, me, has put their foot in it and broken the work email. So please try smallbeerpress@gmail dot dot dot if you want to get through, thanks.


Simple economics says we can’t pay you

Wed 31 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

No, really. Here at Small Beer Press every time one of us editors pitches a book (or announces a new issue of LCRW) to the publisher we get a standard response: a $50,000 check. After ten years or so, it’s pretty routine by now. So why doesn’t this 2-Prius’s+a bag of chips payment filter down to the writers? I mean, sure, we give advances and royalties to our authors and LCRW contributors get a tiny payment as befits a tiny habit (we can give it up anytime, honest) but what about the rest of those 50 big ones?

Well, it’s a long story and exceedingly complicated….

But, luckily for us we don’t have to do the drudgery of explaining it all as editor Mark Reiter did all the work for us while trying to get Steve Almond to contribute a freebie to a book Mark and his co-editor received that paltry $50,000 for:

Yes, Richard Sandomir and I are sharing an advance of $50,000. That’s $25,000 each. Take away the 15% agency commission, it’s down to $21,250 each. I’m paying my assistant Emily Sklar an extra $5000 out of my pocket to handle the logistics (tracking down folks like you, for example). We’re delivering to Bloomsbury 100 brackets. We can’t pay some people and not others, but if we did offer payment-less than $500 would be pointless-to everyone, the math says we’d be in the red.

So just like Nick I looked at Bookscan:

Enlightened Bracketologist (2007)
lifetime sales 8,346
this week   0

and being nosy I look and see what else Mark has published—a book with Twyla Tharp and something about success (we know how to achieve that—don’t pass on the advance!) as well as maybe the (retitled) paperback edition:

The Final Four of Everything by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir (2009)
lifetime sales 4,570
this week  13

It’s a pretty great model and we will be utilizing it in our upcoming Unicats! and the People Who Love Them. For which we’d be more than happy to read your submission, and, wait for it:

Now, the good news. Assuming that you don’t do anything with your contribution too far before our . . .  pub date, you have all the rights to the material.

(via Kelly, via Nick)


Sighted with our telepathic goggles

Mon 29 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 9 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Somewhere out in April or May we can see the new issue of LCRW. It’s looks like an LCRW: b&w cover (unveiled herein, ta da!), sixty pages, some color in the pdf version, a picture of Ursula or two, fiction and poetry and a comic from writers you may or may not know, and possibly, delivered to your door with a chocolate bar through hail, kale, ice or snow by the postal service of your country.

One oddity about this issue: there are a few stories about travel and sleep—two of our favorite things. And this issue does indeed as promised include two translations: yay!

The best way to ensure delivery: subscribe!

ToC after the jump: Read more


A free Chateau(reynaud)

Fri 26 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 17 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

At the end of May we’re going to publish our second translation (yay Edward Gauvin for bringing it to us!), a collection by French legend Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud titled A Life on Paper. Yes folks, we are in it for the money: not only a debut short story collection, but a translation.

Money, you say? What’s money got to do with art? Ignoring that question and swiftly going on to: “Money!” says the French government! They popped up with not one but two grants (the Hemingway and the French Voices) making up $6,000 of support for this book. Whoopee—we can pay the translator! Which is good, because Edward’s been hard at work placing stories from the book in Conjunctions, Harvard Review, Joyland, Southern Review, Agni Online, F&SF, Words Without Borders, and more, more, more. If you read this month’s Harper’s . . . no you won’t find a story but you’ll find a teeny ad for the book. Ha!

Ok, so, free books*: post something interesting about you, France, French things (not Freedom Fries, but anything else goes) in the comments and in a week or so we’ll randomly pick five and reward them with an advance review copy which we hope you the happy winner will dive into and enjoy the way we have and maybe even go on TV and rave about it in a bouncing-on-the-couch-aliens-told-me-to-do-it fashion that gets talked about for years after. Ok? Ok!

* US + Canada readers only, sorry—maybe we can get someone in the UK, Australia, Rest of World to pick up the rights.


Looks better than expected

Fri 26 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Looks better than expected | Posted by: Gavin

Hopeful, but keeping expectations low:


Nicholas Sparks: eejit

Wed 24 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

About a week or two after it was emailed everywhere but, really, is there anyone who read this and thought, “Oh yes, must read one of his romances next”?

Somewhere Nicholas Sparks is smiling. Hard. Eek!


Pop those tabs

Wed 24 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Pop those tabs | Posted by: Gavin

And a short tab closer:

  • The Spec Lit Foundation Older Writers Grant ($750) is open to applications until the end of the month. Apply here.
  • Reading Local Portland has an interview with our favorite furniture mover, Ben Parzybok—and, bonus, Laura Moulton.
  • Reading has been somewhat scattershot between Steampunk stories (latest in is from Ysabeau Wilce, yay!) and the old submission pile but Suzy McKee Charnas’s “Lowland Sea” is a fantastic start to Ellen Datlow’s new The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 2.
  • Also very much enjoying Mark Rich’s collection, Edge of Our Lives, which you can get direct from the publish RedJack Books.
  • 3% announced the winners of their Best Translated Book Awards:
    —Elena Fanailova for The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse.
    —Gail Hareven for The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press.
  • Our local copy shop (and LCRW maker) Paradise Copies in Northampton, MA, have a groovy new site.
  • Fred Pohl keeps a fascinating blog and the other day he posted about a couple of books, The Ground Truth by John Farmer and Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.
  • And Alan DeNiro, whose blog is sometimes abstruse but is on the must-read list, writes on the continuing tension between the book as a social object versus the book as a thing produced by one person alone.
  • The one and only Libba Bray and Tiger Beat at Books of Wonder:


Health care, etc.

Mon 22 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

March 20thWhat a relief that some kind of Intro to Health Care bill passed at last. It’s been a national embarrassment that an estimated 15% (say 47 million people—about the equal to the population of Spain or the Ukraine or Colombia) of this country’s people don’t have insurance. It’s hard to be proud of a country that just accepts that that’s the way it is and wants to ignore it. This is the best spending of political capital in a while.

We’ve spent the last year in hospitals with my and Kelly’s daughter, Ursula. Our health insurance, Health New England, has been fantastic and most things they don’t cover Mass Health will. She’s been in three different hospitals for 13 months. We’d be bankrupt if we have to pay, so I recommend Health New England to everyone in their area: Connecticut, Western Mass., and Vermont. All of which doesn’t stop my heart leaping into my throat (ouch) every time I check the mail and there’s an envelope from any of those hospitals, doctors, and god knows who all else. Is this the one going to say my insurance has run out? Is this the one saying my check somehow doesn’t seem to have arrived on time and my insurance has stopped? Will Mass Health pay this ambulance bill? What kind of bad news is this? And so far we have no idea—we’ve received different replies—if the insurance will cover her at-home nurse care. Good times.

I grew up in Scotland and much of my family still lives there. One of the biggest differences in quality of life between there and here is that over there no one worries about their health insurance—because it isn’t insurance, it’s a national health service that automatically covers everyone. Sure, it could be better, but everyone knows it’s there and available. In the USA I don’t know a single person, rich or poor, who doesn’t worry about their health insurance. I am raising a glass of Vermont’s own Long Trail Pale Ale in salute to everyone who put their name on the line and signed us up for a (ok, possibly) better future.


R,R,R,R,R,R. Nope. Wrrrrrrock!

Fri 19 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s looking forward to some fun. What you going to do the night before BookExpo in NYC in May? There is no choice: there’s only Wrrrrrrock Onnn!?!

The mighty people at Two Dollar Radio have put together a fan-tastic sounding event and all proceeds benefit Girls Write Now. When they pinged us and asked “So, you up for this?” we immediately flew the torn black t-shirt of approval. The show features Care Bears on Fire and Japanther and maybe a few other things, and the more monies spent, the more Girls Write Now.

See you there!


Cloud & Ashes: Tiptree Award winner!

Wed 17 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

We’re hugely excited to see that Greer Gilman‘s astounding novel Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales is one of the winner of this year’s Tiptree Award. We love to put shiny stickers on our books and this particular sticker is a real fave. Also can’t wait to get our hands on a copy the other winner, the first two volumes of Fumi Yoshinaga’s manga, Ooku.

The awards (money! art! chocolate!) will be presented at Wiscon in Madison, WI, in May, and Greer (and perhaps some of her art) should be there to receive hers.

The Tiptree Award jury also announced an honor list (as well as honoring L. Timmel Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle) of awesomeness:

  • Alice Sola Kim, “Beautiful White Bodies” (online at Strange Horizons 2009.12.07-14)
  • Vandana Singh, Distances (Aqueduct Press 2008)
  • Caitlin R. Kiernan, “Galapagos” (in Eclipse 3 edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books 2009)
  • Jo Walton, Lifelode (NESFA Press 2009)
  • Maureen F. McHugh, “Useless Things” in Eclipse 3 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books 2009)
  • Paul Haines, “Wives” (in X6 edited by Keith Stevenson, coeur de lion 2009)

If you haven’t gotten your copy of Cloud & Ashes yet, Greer is part of a group signing (with Paul Tremblay, John Crowley, and more) at 1:30 PM at the Harvard Bookstore this Saturday as part of Vericon. Greer is reading at 4 PM and if you’re in the Boston area, this panel at 10 AM on Saturday is probably worth going to:

John Crowley, Greer Gilman, and Katherine Howe talk about how they craft cultures for the people who populate their stories.


Free association

Mon 15 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

This is fascinating. Part of me wants to try it myself, part of me thinks it would be embarrassing. I think it might make a great panel/event at Wiscon or something, but, again with the possibly embarrassing:


Making a book cover @ Orbit

Wed 10 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Don’t know who sent me here but it’s great (although so tempting to slow down!):


Thursday: freebies, signed books, etc.

Tue 9 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

PianerThis morning the Boston Globe includes our awesome event this Thursday at 6 at the Brookline Booksmith in their Three to See mini feature.

What’s not mentioned: there will be free stuff! Franciscan will provide the candy, there will be a tiny leetle bit of chocolate, and we will have Working Writer’s Daily Planners for all and sundry! (Well, say the first 100 people, if UPS delivers them on time.)

Also, if you’d like any books signed by Holly Black (The Poison Eaters, Tithe, Spiderwick), Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners), and Cassandra Clare (City of Glass, City of Bones), use these links to pre-order them directly from the fab peeps at the Booksmith.

And, if you have questions for these writers (especially for the “lightning round”!) please email them to:hollycassandrakelly@gmail.com.

Hope to see you there—or at least to read one of your questions!


SF Hall of Fame

Tue 9 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

I was honored to be one of the jury—along with George R.R. Martin, Frank Wu, Leslie Howle, Robin Wayne Bailey, Robert Silverberg, Brooks Peck, and Therese Littleton—for the Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame inductees this winter. Just saw that Locus (post ganked wholesale below) says the Museum has now announced the inductees and you can go to the party to celebrate:

The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame has announced the 2010 Hall of Fame inductees: Octavia E. Butler, Roger Zelazny, Douglas Trumbull, and Richard Matheson.

The induction ceremony will be held June 26, 2010 at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington as part of the Science Fiction Awards Weekend, June 25-27, 2010, in conjunction with the Locus Awards and NW Media Arts writing workshops with Connie Willis and Gregory Frost. Further information and tickets to the Science Fiction Awards Weekend are available on the Locus website.


What would make you believe me?

Mon 8 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on What would make you believe me? | Posted by: Gavin

Neko dresses up for Dave TV:


books, whisky, and cards

Fri 5 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Catching up on the open tabs: be gone before the weekend!

Geoff Ryman is interviewed at The Short Review—which is an awesome site that only reviews that most commercial of forms, the short story!

Lois Ava-Matthews and friends have a great new(ish) online zine, Belletrista, whose mission is to Celebrate Women Writers Around the World. Issue 4 just went up and in it Tim Jones reviews Kalpa Imperial:

it stands in the distinguished tradition of fabulation of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, and it is arguably not a novel at all, but a collection of linked stories. As translated by Ursula K. Le Guin from the 1983 original, it reminded me most of a humanist equivalent of Gene Wolfe’s science fiction series The Book Of The New Sun.

Diagram has a 10 year antho which is a set of cards. Buy now.

An excellent review of Interfictions 2 by Sue Bond is up at Australian site MC Reviews with a lovely line (at least for interstitial enthusiasts):

I am still left puzzled as to what the deciding factor was for the choice and placement of the stories that are included in this anthology. It doesn’t seem to be restricted to particular themes, or to stories that contain an element of fantasy, or even stories that are unusual narratively.

And Erin asks are there interstitial writers in (between) other genres?

inverarity_12Speaking of (potentially) interstitial stuff, our Alasdair Gray book is at the printer and fingers crossed all will go well with all that pretty blue art on the inside. Here’s that bottle of whisky that he did the art for. Must try!

Our friends at Zygote games posted about an 11,000 year old site in Turkey.

When the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt, those stones in Turkey were older than the Pyramids are today.

Phew. Also, while you’re at it, pick up both their games for only $20!

Zine World reviews LCRW 23 and 24. 23 gets the better response:

Long-running, reliably good lit-zine. . . . There are stories from just about every genre, from fairy tales, surreal stories, and even an essay on logic problems. I enjoyed the bizarre surprise ending of “The LoveSling” and the engrossing story of “The Girl with No Hands. Truly something for everyone.

24 gets a light lambasting:

The bulk of the zine is the fiction pieces. They all seem to have the exact same style.

Eek! But they go on to say “Those who like to discover new writers, check this out.”


Going Ironside

Sun 28 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Going Ironside | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s a link to Holly’s Modern Illustration by Theo Black Faerie Tale “Going Ironside” at the late lamented Endicott Studio Journal of Mythic Arts.

Also, an interview with Holly on LibraryThing:

Several of the stories are permutations of the Modern Tales of Faerie series. Do you feel there is more to come out of that world?

One of the stories—”Going Ironside”—was a short piece I wrote before Tithe was finished. It influenced Valiant, although at the time I wrote it, I didn’t know that it would. The second story, I wanted to tell to check in with the characters and show what I think they’re doing and what I think they’re dealing with. It was a fun story to write. I always like having Roiben and Corny talk about their views of the world, because they both are so dysfunctional that they almost see eye-to-eye in a way that no one else does.

I love the Modern Faerie Tale world, but right now I don’t have any plans to write a fourth book, mostly because I am busy with an entirely new series, The Curse Workers. I have two more books in that series to write before I can even consider anything else.

If you want to ask Holly a question for the March 11th event in Boston, email it to hollycassandrakelly@gmail.com.


Steampunk

Fri 26 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly and I are having fun editing an anthology of YA steampunk stories for Deborah Noyes and the lovely people at Candlewick. The stories are beginning to arrive on our doorstep (that was one very expensive telegram) and Delia Sherman just sent us a great ghosts-and-machines story set in Wales and Cory Doctorow has started podcasting his story, “Clockwork Fagin.” More, as they say, TK, as more come in!


What’s your poison?

Wed 24 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on What’s your poison? | Posted by: Gavin

Send us a pic if you see Holly Black’s debut collection out in the wild!

Meanwhile here’s Steve Berman (see the dedication for who he is!) writing about the book on Guys Lit Wire and also a couple of pictures of Holly with actual copies (which, due to various logistical things, I haven’t seen yet!) of the book.

What’s your poison? Werewolves? Vampires? Devils? The Poison Eaters has them all!


New catalog

Sun 21 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 5 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Ok, enough of those posts about new books: Here’s everything we’ve got coming (not counting LCRW and maybe a surprise or two) between two covers. There’s an astounding new collection of stories from Karen Joy Fowler, a huge sexy historical novel from Kathe Koja, Karen Lord’s debut novel, and even a few authors whose names don’t begin with K. The catalog (below) can be downloaded from Scribd (as a pdf or a text file, but the pdf is prettier), and at some point we’ll print some and send them out. Peruse, pre-order, and pass it on? Sure, why not.

Small Beer Press 2010 Catalog


While waiting for the delivery truck

Fri 19 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Today’s the day when The Poison Eaters should be showing up the office. Dum-de-dum (waits, impatiently). Nice reviews have recently shown up in School Library Journal (“Although they are often centered on bleak, dark characters, the pieces inspire hope, are touching and delightful, and even turn the most ghoulish characters into feeling beings.”) and in BookPage (she shows “amazing range”—yes indeed she does!).

Update: Powell’s say they have it in their remote warehouse! Any remote viewers who can see it?? Maybe they mean Ingram, as they have it.

So in the meantime a few things:

Alasdair Gray (Old Men in Love) writes about the importance of place. Consider, he suggests, Dumbarton (which means “fortress of the Britons”).

We dropped the price of last year’s hottie The Baum Plan for Financial Independence to $9.95.

Fantasy Magazine reviews Interfictions 2 and suggests it’s an “anthology of literary fantasy.” Yours to agree or disagree about. Get your copy.

Con or Bust is running a fundraiser auction to assist people of color who want to attend WisCon from Feb. 22—Mar. 13. They’re looking for donations and buyers! Any suggestions for what we should donate??

BTW, if you’re going to WisCon, I’ll see you there! Sans baby, sadly (will try not to whine too much. But will some, so there). Maybe 2011.

We just signed up another book. Well, verbally. Will wait for the contracts (always good to have it on paper before announcing things) and then spring it upon the world. Fun fun fun!

The post office just delivered an empty envelope that should have been full of zines. Woe is me.

Past-LCRW contributor Katharine Beutner who is “currently being squashed under the weight of my dissertation” slipped out from underneath it to do an interview with us about her Ancient Greek underworld novel Alcestis which is out this month. Interview will go up next week or so.

Joe Hill’s second novel Horns just came out. Read the first chapter here. There’s also an app for it. Phew. He’s on tour now.

Kelly’s contributor copies of Ellen Datlow’s new anthology, Tails of Wonder and Imagination just came in—her story is “Catskin” is one of many many other stories about cats. Who knew people wrote so much about the little beasties?

Might be imagining seeing a copy of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 4.

Jed is back from tour — he managed to write that floaty bike all the way to the west coast and back and even managed to escape Chicago despite its many charms and massive amounts of snow.

Tra la la la la. Wait. Dum-de-dum. Wait some more.


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