check out Prince’s basement tapes

Tue 16 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

before, as they say, they disappear:


Good morning!

Mon 15 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Good morning! | Posted by: Gavin

Or, great morning! Given that our latest book, Holly Black’s The Poison Eaters, received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Wow! That link is behind a paywall but here’s part of it — it has to be one of the most positive Kirkus reviews we’ve ever seen:

“Black’s first story collection assures her place as a modern fantasy master…. Sly humor, vivid characters, each word perfectly chosen: These stories deserve reading again and again.”

The book shipped out from the printer on Thursday, Friday, and today (big shipments!) so it will start showing up in the world bang on time for publication day, February 23rd.


My ship has come in

Wed 10 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Just got this email:

I am Lady Martha Stirling,i wish to donate £20 Million Pounds you to build
Charity Foundation,because my doctors said i have limited days to live, I
will issue you a letter, email:ladymarthastirlings3@advir.com

I’ve enjoyed the challenge of running a “for profit” endeavour but Lady Stirling (must be Scottish, even better!) has persuaded me that now is the time to switch to nonprofit status. We will begin disbursement of funds as soon as the poor old dear kicks the bucket. Cakes and beer for all!


Holly Black, Kelly Link, and Cassandra Clare reading

Mon 8 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | 4 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Join three of the hottest writers in the Young Adult field on March 11th at the Coolidge Corner Theater for a panel discussion celebrating New York Times bestselling author Holly Black’s new book, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. And it’s not just about having a great time: ticket sales—and 20% of event book sales—will be donated by the Brookline Booksmith to Franciscan Hospital for Children.

Holly Black (Tithe, the Spiderwick Chronicles) will be joined by Kelly Link Kelly Link(Pretty Monsters) and Cassandra Clare (author of the New York Times bestselling The Mortal Instruments series) for a discussion of . . . and this is where it gets interesting: readers, whether they will be attending or not, are invited to email their questions for the authors to hollycassandrakelly@gmail.com. The three authors will begin with a selection of submitted questions and then take questions from the audience.

There will be giveaways for the attendees. Afterward all three authors will sign their books at the Brookline Booksmith. Refreshments will be served.

The panel discussion as fundraiser was suggested by Holly Black who brought her fellow Amherst author, Cassandra Clare, aboard. Black’s new book, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, is being published by Big Mouth House—an imprint of Small Beer Press, an independent press run by Kelly Link and her husband, Gavin Grant. Link and Grant’s Easthampton, MA, office is in the same shambling old refitted warehouse as Black’s office.

The Poison EatersWhile Black’s collection was in the planning stages (back in February 2009) Link and Grant’s daughter, Ursula was born at 24 weeks and 1 1/2 lbs. Ursula and her parents spent her first five months at Baystate Medical Center, and is now (doing well!) in a pulmonary rehabilitation ward at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Brighton (Boston).

Kelly Link, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black
A Discussion Panel on Young Adult Fiction with Reader-Submitted Questions
Seating begins at 5:45 PM
6 -7 PM,  Thursday, March 11th
at the Coolidge Corner Theater
(http://www.coolidge.org)
$5 (Buy tickets by calling the store at 617-566-6660

with a signing to follow at the Brookline Booksmith
(http://brooklinebooksmith-shop.com)

Ticket sales and 20% of event book sales will be donated to Franciscan Hospital for Children.

About Franciscan Hospital for Children
Franciscan Hospital for Children, located in Boston’s neighborhood of Brighton, is the leading pediatric rehabilitation center in New England.  The hospital offers medical, behavioral and educational services for children with complex issues requiring interdisciplinary care. For more information on the hospital visit http://www.franciscanhospital.org.


April is just around the corner

Tue 2 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

and so we are working like mad mad mad on our April book. Which is, I have to say, a bit of a stunner in a couple of ways: that we managed to acquire the title and of course the book itself.

My parents and my own reading tastes only match up sometimes—it would be fun to try and quantify how much/little but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get them onto LibraryThing or Goodreads. Back when I was in high school my mother suggested I try Alasdair Gray’s Lanark. Sadly for me I put it aside (with other recommendations, woe is me) for years. After all, if my mother liked it surely it wouldn’t be a brain-mangling metafiction set in a world I sort of knew (Scotland) and its mirror underside? It wouldn’t be a modern classic that had been anticipated by those in the know for 20-30 years? Urgh. Should have read it.

A few years later in uni when I got around to it I went straight to the university library and read through what I could find in quick order: I think 1982, Janine, Something Leather, and a fabulous collection, Unlikely Stories, Mostly. Later on I was able to catch up on most of what I’d missed and tended to try and read his books when they came out, including Poor Things, A History Maker, another great collection, Ten Tales Tall & True, and a doorstopper, The Book of Prefaces.

In 2003 when The Ends of Our Tethers came out, Canongate UK was in the midst of rearranging its US set up. I queried on US rights but they eventually decided to distribute their own titles here so there was no Gray title on our 2003 or 4 list. Dum de dum. A few years pass. [Insert montage of Small Beer titles, LCRW covers, chocolate bar wrappers, convention badges, tear-stained spreadsheets, etc.]

Then in 2007 Bloomsbury published Old Men In Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers. My copy was given to me by Kelly—signed by the man himself, amazing—and the copy I’ve been working from, so it may not be quite as pristine as it once was (cough, chocolate stains, cough).

Old Men in LoveI contacted Gray’s agent in November 2007 and in August 2008, on a trip to Scotland, Kelly and I visited Gray in his beautiful, art-stuffed flat in Glasgow. Things went well and contracts were generated and signed. Yay! Small Beer Press would publish the US edition of Old Men in Love. Inconceivable! Yet, apparently coming more true every day.

After the contracts we were soon in discussions with his agents about how we would put the book out. If you’ve ever seen one of Gray’s books—which he designs and illustrates—you’ll understand why this wasn’t a simple thing. We’ll put a section up on here and Scribd to show it off, it’s a strong style that works really well on the printed page. But oh the files, oi! Also, the UK paperback was being worked on so we would have corrections to include for our edition (not that many, really, but fascinating to see—we have them as scans of handwritten pages) although we could not use the UK paperback files as they are black ink and ours will be printed in blue and black. There was also one small section that Bloomsbury’s lawyers had decided might be actionable so Gray had taken it out but marked where it went with asterisks. On doing a little research it seemed prudent to follow Bloomsbury’s example (they have more lawyers, I suspect, than us) so we will have to leave it that way in our edition, oh well. (British politics in the 1970s was ugly, no surprise.) For the curious, the author reports that his Bulgarian publisher is putting out a translation that will include this part of the original text.

There won’t be an ebook of Old Men in Love, or at least not yet. Gray is taking a cautious approach to the format but we’re still talking with him as we think that DRM-free PDFs would work for this book (whereas html-based formats won’t) as they would hold his design and give something of the feel of the paper book.

Gray did some hilarious things in Old Men In Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers including adding his own piece of criticism at the end of the book (and another as a letter within) taking apart the construction of the novel and criticizing it as a fix-up of his own plays and some other work from the 1970s. As with his earlier novel Poor Things, there is a preface (maybe to be included in future editions of The Book of Prefaces?) by another writer, Lady Sara Sim-Jaeger, a distant cousin of the eponymous John Tunnock who, on receiving Tunnock’s diary and papers after his death commissions Gray to make something of them. The resulting novel brings together Tunnock’s diary from 2001-2007 (there’s a smidgeon of politics in there) and his memoir of being brought up by his two maiden aunts in Glasgow. Tunnock, a retired school teacher, is working on a book titled Who Paid for All This? which goes through various forms until eventually Tunnock decides it is to be made up of three strands: Periclean Athens, Medician Florence, and 19th century Bath, England.

All of these stories come together in Gray’s final edition into a sometimes hilarious, sometimes dark novel that will be beautifully printed in blue and black ink as the author intended it. What fun it all is! At the moment early copies have wung (surely the past tense of to wing isn’t winged?) their way to the trade reviewers and a few others: for everyone else, check it out in April. There’s nothing quite like it (not true, see Gray’s other novels!) and as ever we can’t wait to see what people think of it.

Here’s a little more about the book and here (via Wikipedia) is a video of Alasdair Gray on the BBC talking about the book and how he himself is not John Tunnock:


Amazon rude? Surely not?

Sun 31 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Er, yes, they’re at it again. Yet another reason we don’t have Amazon links on our site: who wants to deal with people whose sense of fairplay is somewhere in the vicinity of might=right?

First we’d like to point out that while Amazon dropped the buy links for all the MacMillan US titles from their site this weekend all of those books are still available on Powells, Indiebound, bn.com, etc., etc.

Amazon has been ok for us with ebooks: they use DRM and the books are tied into one device so it doesn’t seem like the best way to buy a book, but others think differently. At the moment we give them an ebook price (say $15.95 on a new hardcover book) and they pay roughly half of that even if they sell the book at $9.99. No strong-arming there. (Yet? Maybe because we’re not attempting to charge $24?)

We price the ebook editions of new hardcovers at $15.95 then drop them to $9.95 if/when a paperback comes out. If anyone wants to argue about these prices and claim that there are no costs to making ebooks please feel free to come on over and do the work for free. We are a small press and to format and upload different files to Fictionwise/bn.com, Google, Follett, Amazon, Scribd, (& our new site this spring) etc., is not a quick task. Nor is the information gathering for royalties—a bit of a  stinker, that. Although made somewhat easier with our nice generous 50/50 ebook royalties.

But back to the gorilla: Amazon sold a couple of thousand copies of our paper books last year—and we just don’t care. They’ve negotiated horribly high discounts with publishers and distributors so that we, for example, receive about 34%* of the retail price of a book sold on their site. (So $5.44 on a $16 paperback to pay the printer, freight, author, artist, ads, etc., etc. Yep, that math works out well.)

When indie bookstore orders from our distributor we receive about 40% of retail ($6.40 on that mythical $16 paperback). That 6%/$1 a book sure adds up—only a couple of thousand dollars over the year for us (although it would be nice…); it adds up to millions to larger publishers.

Amazon have a pretty typical huge corporation business model: make low low prices happen by twisting the supplier until they break. Then twist some more. Maybe they’re worried that won’t work any more? Maybe they’re worried about their closed-ecosystem ebook reader versus the Apple iPad/iBookstore/Nook/Que/every other reader? Maybe they’re just seeing what the other big houses will do once they see that Amazon is willing to be a weekend berserker? Maybe that’s just the way corporate capitalism is supposed to work? Blink.

(Via many sites! Esp. Gwenda, Kelly, NYT Bits, Scalzi, & more.)

* Since we’re not telling you the split between their discount, their mandatory marketing fee, the “free freight” (i.e. we pay to ship them books), and our distributor’s fee, we are not breaking the NDA’s we signed about discounts.


We know you’re excited for new books…

Fri 29 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Karen Lord, Not a Journal. | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

…so we’re going to keep stoking the flames!

Coming in June 2010 is Karen Lord’s fantastic and award-winning debut novel, Redemption in Indigo.karen lord We like Karen’s book because it’s choc-a-bloc full of magic–trickster spiders, metamorphic spirits, and clairvoyant nuns, oh my!  An imaginative re-telling of a Senegalese folk tale, Redemption in Indigo tells the story of Paama, whose overweight and overbearing husband causes nothing but trouble and embarrassment.  When Paama abandons her husband and returns to her home village, the magic really begins.  Unbeknownst to Paama, she wields the Chaos Stick, a handy device that controls the course of Fate, and the Indigo Lord wants it back…

As you might remember, Karen won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados for Redemption in Indigo–then she just won it again for her novel “The Best of All Possible Worlds.”

If you aren’t impressed yet, Nalo Hopkinson called Karen’s book “The impish love child of Tutuola and Marquez. Utterly delightful.”

We think so, too.  It’s a perfect read for the summer weather (though it’s possible the Chaos Stick is wreaking havoc on our weather patterns here in Massachusetts!).

Updated to add: more coverage of the award in The Barbados Advocate and The Nation.

More news of delightful reads to come…


Stories of Your Life

Thu 28 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 14 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Stories of Your LifeWorking back from January 2011, we’re exceedingly happy to announce that in October 2010 we will bring Ted Chiang’s first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, back into print. The title story alone is a knockout and then there are those seven other stories, which together have received a ton of awards and make this one of the strongest collections ever published.

Stories of Your Life and Others has been out of print for a couple of years so we are very excited to bring it back. Don’t go paying $100 for it now, wait until October and pay $16! Stories will be published in trade paperback and the table of contents is:

Tower of Babylon
Understand
Division by Zero
Story of Your Life
Seventy-Two Letters
The Evolution of Human Science
Hell is the Absence of God
Liking What You See: A Documentary
Story Notes

And for those readers (us!) waiting for new stories from Ted, the good news is that he just handed in a longish story to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. So, two books to look forward to!

ETA: That long story has now been published.


You saw it there first

Tue 26 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

kelleyeskridge.comWhere? There!

It’s time we announced some of the books we have lined up for 2010 (and ’11) — we’re going to be hard to keep up, we’re moving so fast, shining so bright. (Now, where are my slippers?)

First up (although not in calendric order): a reprint of Solitaire by fabby writer and editor Kelley Eskridge, a novel we really enjoyed when it first came out which we jumped at the chance to reprint. Who else likes it? One of our favorite people:

“Solitaire brilliantly explores…the dubious boundary between ‘virtual reality’ and the act of imagination—all in the ageless story of a bright, risky kid trying to find out who she is and where her freedom lies.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

and, me!

Solitaire is coming your way in January 2011: a year away—which seems like tomorrow in publishing terms. Better get on that cover and see what Kelley likes!

We’ve just signed up a bunch of books, more later. (It’s time for tea, you know.)


Read a Holly Black story

Mon 25 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

9781931520638Today at BSC Review: read the very first story in Holly’s first collection: “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.” It’s a total knockout — and may give second thoughts to anyone who thinks they might be attracted to vampires!


Bloomsbury, oh, Bloomsbury

Thu 21 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Not adding anything to the topic—the topic being Bloomsbury again using white models on books featuring people of color—except a big WTF?

First (was it first? Not sure if there are others) it was Liar by Justine Larbalestier, now it’s Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass. (via Jezebel and every other site in the world)

Your task this week: buy a book with a person of color on the cover.


Enthusiast Daniel Rabuzzi steps in the river

Tue 19 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 4 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

link to sample chapter of The Choir BoatsComputer troubles and the new year intervened but, here, at last, gingerbread and tea at the ready, is our promised interview with past-LCRW contributor Daniel Rabuzzi whose first novel of The Choir Boats, Volume One of Longing for Yount, was recently published by Chizine Publications. The Choir Boats is great fun: Rabuzzi’s characters are original and as the book leaves London behind the reader is off into a fresh and lively new world.

Daniel keeps a blog where he interviews artists and writers, reports on readings (and what he’s reading) and what he and his wife, wood carver Deborah Mills, are up to so it only seemed fair to put him on the other side of the paper:

Let’s start with the basics: how long did it take you write The Choir Boats?

Bits of The Choir Boats come from my journals and sketchbooks going back as far as junior high school. Then, one Sunday in May, 2002, I sat down to write my brother a letter and instead Barnabas, Sanford, Sally and Tom appeared in the house on Mincing Lane… quite unforeseen, I must tell you, but very welcome!   I delivered final edits on the manuscript in May, 2009, so I needed seven years for The Choir Boats.

You live in NYC, why did you set the novel in London?

Ah, a great question…I think of NYC and London as half-twins: we have a Chelsea and a Soho, they have a Chelsea and a Soho, and so on (alike, and yet so very different).  I have spent about a year in total in London over the past few decades: on business in the City, researching at the British Library, visiting friends, spending hours in the Charing Cross bookstores and at the V & A…and always tramping around the quirkiest precincts I can find– small streets in Lambeth or Maida Vale, a prospect from Chalk Farm, lanes in Whitechapel, and so on.  Always I find in London a sense of secrets– some good, some less so– marshalled behind the facades, tucked away just around the corner of the mews…whereas here in NYC, what you see is usually what you get, for better or worse we are much more “in your face.”  For me, fantasy is about sensing and pursuing the hidden, the secretive, so London feels much the bInterior illustration from The Choir Boatsetter fit for converse with Yount.  (Also, I fell in love in London with my wife and creative partner, Deborah Mills, who was at the time studying there.)   Having said that, NYC makes a cameo appearance in The Choir Boats (as a waystation for Maggie and her mother), and might just play a more central role in later books about our world and Yount.  Delia Sherman has certainly shown how effectively NYC can serve as a portal for fantasy in her Changeling books!

What kind of research did the novel involve?

I earned my PhD in modern European history…the research for The Choir Boats stems largely from my doctoral work on 18th- and 19th-century merchants in northern Europe.  I often feel like Pierce Moffett, the idiosyncratic historian in John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, asking whether the world has more than one history.  Or the protagonists in the works of Umberto Eco and of A.S. Byatt, hunting for clues in a rebarbative and ever-branching history.

You obviously love playing with language. Who are your favorite writers and what stream of fiction do you think influenced your novel?

Austen,  Blake, Dickens, Hesse, Borges and Mann are deep influences, as are Meryvn Peake and Ursula K. Le Guin.  Pope, Dickinson, Hopkins, Moore, Hughes, Heaney.  Lately I have been reading Z. Z. Packer, Elise Paschen, Sarah Lindsay, Alice Oswald, Nathaniel Mackey, Andrea Barrett, Nnedi Okorafor.  I especially like the writers I loosely call ‘the New Stylists”: Theodora Goss, Cat Valente, Sonya Taafe, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Sandra Kasturi, Naomi Novik, Susanna Clarke.  “Neo-Romanticists” might be a better label, as their various uses of language evoke Endymion, Alastor, Tieck’s Fantasus and Novalis’s search for the blue flower.  Greer Gilman and Ellen Kushner are the pioneers here, their wordplay (simultaneously lush and incisive) an inspiration to the most recent cohort.  Sarah Micklem and D.L. Cornish are two other writers whose prose sings to me.

As the book goes on you include an increasing number of literary characters and play more with the idea of stories. Will these characters ever cross over from story to our world?

Yes, though precisely how is still being marinated in my night-kitchen.  I do know that a certain Elizabeth Darcy (born Bennett) will play a minor but necessary role in The Indigo Pheasant, or, A Tax from Heaven, the sequel to The Choir Boats. Careful readers will recall that Elizabeth is a friend of Sally’s through Elizabeth’s City relatives.

link to sample chapter of The Choir BoatsWhat beverage and snack should readers have ready to read your book?

A rich black tea with lots of milk and sugar, and gingerbread or almond cookies.  The Dutch and Flemish make a ginger-cinnamon-nutmeg cookie for the winter holidays called speculaas that would be particularly appropriate.

Mmm. Thanks Daniel!


Need serious Mac help…

Tue 12 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 7 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Yon trusty MacBook was listening to the previous post and promptly gave up the ghost. Which is somewhere between utterly crap and mildly crap and I wondered if there’s anyone out there who can help? (Either in the comments or gjgrant at the google behometh.com, thanks!)

Of course my backup system, a hodgepodge of very careful and not so careful is now coming back to bite me. Hilariously I had just bought Snow Leopard so that I could automatically continuously back up our laptops. Ha.

I’d been running OS X 10.4 and I’d cloned the 80GB hard drive onto a backup drive (a Time Capsule, but not using Time Machine as it does not work with 10.4). I upgraded it to Snow Leopard (10.6.2) and it ran for a day or so then cra-cra-crashed. I ran it along to the Apple store in Boston who, telling me this was a known issue for that drive and this laptop replaced the drive with a new one (for free) and were going to recycle the drive. Today I went in and rescued the old drive as the cloned hard drive is either corrupt or not working (or I did it wrong) and can’t be opened.

Some of my files are on the office machine, some are backed up using SugarSync but there is some stuff on this dead drive that, if the clone is really useless, I’d love to get at.

The Apple guy here suggested buying a disc enclosure at Best Buy and some data recovery service. I’m thinking I will get a disc enclosure, take it home, see what happens—which will take care of the next couple of hours. I’m in Boston tonight, will be in Easthampton seeing what’s on the backup drive there tomorrow.


An Apple a day

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

Looks more and more like my trusty MacBook laptop would like to be shipped off to retirementland so I’ve been thinking about what I need to replace it and I think the answer is easy: a huge new iMac for when Ursula is home and I work there and a shiny Shiny tablet-thingy for the nonce. Because surely, besides making toast and training me how to play the oboe and getting me to exercise and keep to a budget, it will run InDesign, right? Dum de dum de dum. Not a magpie. Not distracted by shiny things.


Hello 2010

Mon 4 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Hello 2010 | Posted by: Gavin

It’s kind of odd to hit a year-change with no Year’s Best duties but I’ve been enjoying reading many other Best of Year/Decade lists—and the odd squeak about how this isn’t the end of the decade, dammit! I will miss the year-in-summary but I certainly couldn’t write it this year—or any year soon.

Apparently by the end of the world (2012) we will have “golden fleece’ lozenges” containing “interferon alpha, a protective protein made naturally by the body when attacked by a virus” which would mean not being hit with a grotty cold-like thing first thing in the year. Can’t come fast enough. Blech.

Also, maybe by 2012 Apple will have developed a power cord that doesn’t break every couple of years. How often do you see this rating in the Apple Store:

Apple 60W MagSafe Power Adapter (for MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Pro)Customer Ratings 2.0 Based on 1139 reviews

Bah. Hard to get excited about the iSlate while our two old MacBooks are sharing a cord!

So, given that the the last couple of days have been cold-days here is some catch-up blathery mostly from the old year so that, maybe, just maybe, after this ohnine will be deid and ohten will not be the new year, it will just be the year.

First: thanks! Our fundraising sale raised just under a $1,000 for Franciscan Hospital for Children—so we made up the difference and will be dropping a check in the mail this week. A good piece of that total came a buck at a time but there were many people who paid retail price. Yay! We have a fundraiser reading coming in March in Boston which should be fun. Will, of course, keep you posted,

Second: Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden is a finalist in the Cybils Awards in the Middle-Grade Fantasy & Science Fiction category. Yay for the Armitage family! (Did we mention it was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the parenting part of Toronto Star? 2008, 2009, who cares when it came out: we all know it’s a great book.)

And more: Much love was apportioned to Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes at the end of year multi-critic list at Strange Horizons. It’s not a book for every reader but for those it hits, yep, it is the thing.

Poppy Brite’s Second Line continues to get coverage at home. New Orleans Magazine says, “Her novels Liquor, Prime and Soul Kitchen have introduced readers to the wild world of Chefs John Rickey and Gary “G-man” Stubbs. The couple lives for food and the art of making it as many New Orleanians do. The two stories in Second Line serve as earlier and later chapters in the steamy soap opera saga.”

Holly Black was interviewed by Veronika about spooky dolls, what’s coming up, and so on. We’re getting her book ready to send to the printer—it will be our biggest book for a while, so it’s pretty exciting.

Kelly’s second collection Magic for Beginners made two other Best of the Decade lists: HTML Giant and the Village Voice—both of these make pretty great To-Read lists. Also weird and great to find on the web was Bryan Lee O’Malley enjoyed “Magic for Beginners.” Huh and wow. Maybe after Scott Pilgrim 6 is done he’ll do MFB as a comic. Cough. But then the comments today include infinite boners, so readers beware. In wandering about his site I downloaded one of his albums (recorded as Kupek)—it’s no Sex Bob-omb (cough, again) but it’s worth checking out.

For new stuff, ah, come back tomorrow or next week. And in the mean time,  cheers!


Working Writer’s 2010 not $2,010

Mon 4 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Working Writer’s 2010 not $2,010 | Posted by: Gavin

Of course you are always welcome to pay $2,010 for any one (or, I suppose, all) of our books but we just dropped the price on A Working Writer’s Daily Planner from an already-scandalously low $13.95 down to $9.95 including shipping in the US.

We’ve had great fun with this shipping out hundreds and hundreds before the new year and since, it’s good for a year, still shipping it out.

Soon we’ll be working on 2011’s so comments and suggestions are welcome!


Hound in VA

Sun 27 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Nice way to end the year in Hound: Jay Strafford at Virginia’s Richmond Times-Dispatch does a nice round-up of some recent debut mystery novels and has this (among other nice things, it’s worth reading the review) to say about Vincent McCaffrey’s:

“If you favor a leisurely but still intriguing mystery with amiable characters and a devotion to the printed word, Hound will provide a pleasant diversion. As much about books — and love and knowledge and family — as about murder, Hound is the first in McCaffrey’s projected trilogy, and book lovers will eagerly await Henry’s next outing.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch



ebooks are the answer

Thu 24 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on ebooks are the answer | Posted by: Gavin

in case the shops are closing and you have no Xmas presents. Or nothing to read. Next spring we’ll have an ebook store going but in the meantime, if the special someone (or Aunt Tammie) needs a last minute gift, send her or him an ebook!

(PS If you have no money, send them one of our Creative Commons books—they’ll never know the difference!)

Merry Christmas Eve one and all!


2 (UK) Pretty Monsters

Thu 17 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on 2 (UK) Pretty Monsters | Posted by: Gavin

Fun news from the UK where Canongate have “teamed up with children’s specialist Walker Books to create a young adult imprint, packaging the Scottish firm’s books for a younger audience.”

Why fun? Next paragraph, please:

“The imprint, Walker Canongate, launches in July, with four titles – Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared, Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters and Matt Haig’s The Radleys, all of which are books that have been, or will be, published on the Canongate adult list.

“A further unnamed title is due out in the same year. All of the titles will have different jacket designs, and some will be “abridged for the YA market”, or have additional content, such as teaching aids, for schools.”

Which means, we think, that it will come out in 2 editions in the UK with maybe 2 different covers. So, fun!

Here’s a recent review of PM and an interview with Kelly over at The Short Review—where you can also win a copy.


Apparently they didn’t

Thu 17 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Apparently they didn’t | Posted by: Gavin

know what it takes.

tigerwoods


Och aye

Tue 15 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

(via)


Ebook rights

Mon 14 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

The NYTimes reported yesterday on Random House’s rights grab on their backlist.

We’d like to point out to authors and agents that our royalty rate on ebooks is 50% of the net.

On the somewhat typical $9.95 ebook Small Beer Press receives 50% of the retail, so call it $5. So the author receives $2.50. Not bad. That’s more than the 7.5-10% of retail that we can do on paperbacks and equivalent to 10% of retail on a $25 hardcover.

On the small percentage of ebooks sold directly from our site the math goes like this:

Retail: $9.95
Paypal: $0.59
Net: $9.36

Author receives: $4.68

Just saying.


Random start to the week

Mon 14 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Thanks to everyone who blogged and tweeted and got the word out on our sale, it continues apace. The Mike FM radiothon raised $93,700 for Franciscan, which is just amazing. Yay and yay and yay!

And, nice segue, there’s a good review of Interfictions 2 here from King Rat, who, awesomely, donated the cost of the book to Franciscan Hospital for Children. Another review. And David Soyka @ Black Gate.

List-lovers, here’s a good one: io9.com included Carol Emshwiller’s novel The Mount in their 20 Best Science Fiction Books of the Decade. It’s another interesting list (of sf+f) and of course works as a great conversation starter. The Mount received the Philip K. Dick Award and is indeed a

deceptively simple story about humans revolting against a group of alien conquerers who love humanity – as pets they can ride on.

Hound is 20% off at RiverRun and so are all of their Forty Favorite Books of 2009—great list of books; we advise stocking up.

Nancy Pearl always has some good reading recommendations.

Rain Taxi are having their annual auction which is always good for a pressie … or maybe something for yourself.

Kaleidotrope subscriptions are on sale—grab one before Fred changes his mind!

io9 links to the must have squid + owl.


Red Sox, radio, Interfictions 2

Thu 10 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

The Red Sox just visited Franciscan but I only saw them leave because I was doing something else—but they visited Ursula and Kelly. Pictures were taken, by them, not us! They’re so young! And, so big! Seemed very nice. Apparently signed baseballs and took pics and made some of the kids (and maybe one or two of the parents) v. happy.

We’re on the radio tomorrow morning, call in and you too can take part in one of the oldest traditions in radio: pay to play!

Thanks to everyone who bought books at the sale or full price! You are awesome. We’ll wait until the end of the year to add up the donation but it should be a couple of hundred dollars.

We’ve run out of Interfictions 2 at the office (awesome!) so those orders have to wait a few days until the 4 more cartons of it we ordered come in.

Magic for Beginners has been included in a Best of the Decade lists from Salon—yay!

Kirkus Reviews is closing. What?!

Publishing is all about the tees. (Not a sic.) Go, Eric!

Nice review of our favorite bibliomystery Hound at Gumshoe.

And that’s the week that was.


Kelly & Gavin on Mike FM & a sale—all for Franciscan

Mon 7 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 31 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

UrsulaIt’s time for our once-every-ten-years end-of-the-decade sale and this year we’re donating a portion of the proceeds to Franciscan Children’s Hospital where our daughter, Ursula, has lived for the past couple of months.

Ursula, who was due on June 16th, was born on February 23rd, 2009, weighing 1 lb, 9 ounces. She stayed in the neonatal ICU at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in an incubator for the first couple of months while we lived close by at the Ronald McDonald House. In May we expected “to bring Ursula, who [was at that point] currently well over 4 lbs, home in about two weeks.” That didn’t quite work out. After a PDA ligation, laser eye surgery, a g-tube procedure (eating required so much energy she would have had a hard time growing without one), and a tracheostomy to help out her lungs, which have been, and (will continue to be for the next year) the real issue, two months later, on July 21st, we did indeed get her home.

Ursula at homeThat was a great day—but not a great night. So the next morning we called an ambulance and she went back to Baystate Medical Center. There she went back on a ventilator and after a couple of days was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. After two weeks in the pediatric ICU, she was transferred to one of the meccas of modern medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston. After two weeks there—where we were able to sleep in Ursula’s futuristic ICU room (think Grey’s Anatomy—in space!)—Ursula was transferred to Franciscan Children’s Hospital in the Brighton area of Boston, ironically next door to the house we lived in 10 years ago. We found an apartment which is a 5-minute walk away, moved in at the end of August, and we’ve been here ever since. (All things continuing as they are, Ursula will come home in spring.)

Ursula & KellyLife has been hectic, and at times quite difficult, but everyone says being a parent is like that. Ursula is an absolute joy & a delight—and also the reason that we won’t be traveling for a while! Her lung condition, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, means that for the next few years we’ll need to keep her away from people during the flu season. The trach means she can’t speak, but she is fluent in kicking and smiling. She’s nine months old now, but only about five months old “corrected,” referring to her original due date, which is how you are supposed to think of a premature baby, in terms of weight, development, etc. She’s 13 and a half pounds, and by the time she is two or three years old, the damaged areas of her lungs will be small enough in proportion to the areas of healthy lung tissue that she shouldn’t need either supplementary oxygen or her trach. We’re learning a lot about babies, respiratory care, and how awesome nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists are. At every hospital we’ve been to, we meet cool people because of Ursula.

Tiger babyFranciscan gets a lot of support (the Boston Bruins, big supporters of the place, are going holiday shopping for the kids on Tuesday!—and the Red Sox are coming by this week) but, hey, you know how it is in the health care zone: there’s always more needed. Ursula’s care is topnotch (and we strongly recommend and are eternally grateful to Health New England and Mass Health): from the 24-hour doctor, nurse (how do they stay so nice during the 12-hour—sometimes 16!—shifts dealing with all the poor, sick, cranky babies?!), and respiratory therapists to the speech (Ursula’s favorite person!), physical, and occupational therapists, to the cleaners who keep the unit sparkling, to the cheery people at the cafeteria (mmm!) and the front desk where we traipse by 3 or 4 times a day. And this is just one floor, the third, respiratory (with 24 beds), in one building of seven. They do everything for kids here: one of the playgrounds out in the back is set up for wheelchairs, it is awesome. It’s a huge place and every day hundreds of people come here to work and what they do is help kids.

So here are two things where maybe you can help—there’s a third which involves Holly Black, Kelly, and Cassandra Clare in Boston, but more on that at some later point.

First: radio. Second: sale.

Ursula & Gavin1) Radio: This Friday, December 11th, from 7 AM – 7 PM, Boston radio station 93.7 Mike-FM is doing a fundraiser for Franciscan. The idea is fantastic—and totally open to manipulation(!):

Operators will be standing by LIVE at 866-931-MIKE on Friday, December 11th from 7AM to 7PM to take song requests and donations. While any and all donations are warmly welcomed, remember that the bigger the donation the better chance you have of hearing your song exactly when you want!! Donations can also be made here.

About the Benefit:

The Mike-FM Request for Help to benefit the Franciscan Hospital for Children is a day long, celebrity hosted radio-thon pay-for-play which helps to raise money and awareness for the Hospital. Over the course of the 12 hours, Mike-FM will play any song you want to hear… for a price.

Celebrities will be paired with parents and from 9 AM – 10 AM Kelly Tuthill (celebrity news anchor from NewsCenter 5) will be on with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (parents of the delightful Ursula).

Please call 866-931-MIKE and request good songs!

Ursula says hello to Howard2) Sale: we’ve been trying to work out an interesting sale and we think we’ve come up with a nice and easy one:

All our books are on sale—and $1 from every book (or ebook, zine, subscription, etc.) goes to Franciscan.

And, if you order items at full price, we will donate the difference between the full price and the sale price to Franciscan!

All our preorder titles are on sale, too! (They’re marked “Remainder” until we get it fixed.)

Paperbacks are less than $10—many quite a bit less!—and hardcovers are up to 40% off. Or, of course, more.

Media mail shipping within the US/Canada is included in the price (a note on mailing dates) and can be upgraded to Priority Mail.

Go wild! Feel free to do all your holiday shopping here! And please do spread the word, thank you.


Mailing dates for Xmas, etc.

Fri 4 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Mailing dates for Xmas, etc. | Posted by: Gavin

Just looked at the last mailing dates before Christmas/your holiday of choice on the post office site. Not entirely sure what some of these mean and I don’t see Media Mail but if you are ordering from us and want it to arrive pre-Dec. 25th here are the dates.

Media Mail (7-10 days, 2 days in Massachusetts) is included in all our prices (except special sales…) and Priority Mail is here.

Domestic Mail Class/Product Cut Off Date
First Class Mail Dec-21
Priority Mail Dec-21
Express Mail* Dec-23
Parcel Post Dec-16
DBMC Drop Ship Dec-19
DDU Drop Ship Dec-23
International Mail**
Express Mail Military APO/FPO**

International Mail

International Mail Addressed To Global Express Guaranteed® (GXG)4*** Express Mail® International (EMS)5* Priority Mail® International (PMI)6*
Africa Dec-18 Dec-12 Dec-4
Asia/Pacific Rim Dec-18 Dec-17 Dec-11
Australia/New Zealand Dec-18 Dec-17 Dec-11
Canada Dec-22 Dec-18 Dec-14
Caribbean Dec-21 Dec-17 Dec-14
Central & South America Dec-21 Dec-12 Dec-4
Mexico Dec-22 Dec-17 Dec-11
Europe Dec-21 Dec-17 Dec-14
Middle East Dec-18 Dec-17 Dec-14

Futurama calendar writers …

Thu 3 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Futurama calendar writers … | Posted by: Gavin

… send us an email and we will send you some books! Even thought the calendar is on the wall next to the fridge (mmm, beer) I just turned the page over today from November to December and discovered that we missed John Crowley’s birthday on December 1st— Darn! Happy Birthday, John!

And, last week, one of the things they recommended was to read Kelly’s story “Louise’s Ghost.” Who are these people? They are awesome and we want to send them some books!


Getting excited

Thu 3 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 3 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Storiesabout Holly Black’s short story collection! She just handed in her excellent (and funny) new story, “The Land of Heart’s Desire,” which has something to do with these characters Roiben, Kaye, Val, and a few others that might be familiar to some.

The book comes out in February which means it goes to the printer soon, what fun!

And, we just heard back from some early readers who are as excited as us about this book:

“Gritty, grim, and fabulous—Holly is a master of dark magic and dark reality!”
—Tamora Pierce (author of Bloodhound)

“Holly Black is the Real Thing: a gifted writer with a solid grounding in what matters. Her stories are dark and splendid blooms rising from roots sunk deep in myth and tradition.”
—Ellen Kushner (author of The Privilege of the Sword)

“Simply put, Holly Black is one of our best writers. Enchanting and edgy, yes, but it’s the big heart in her stories that brings me back to her writing, time and again. Reading a new book by Holly is like meeting up with an old friend. They might be a little messed up from the last time you saw them, they might have some serious drama going on in their lives, but the connection is immediate, and when they’re packing up to head off again, you don’t want to let them go.”
—Charles de Lint (author of The Blue Girl)


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