If it’s Thursday, must be Portsmouth

Thu 22 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on If it’s Thursday, must be Portsmouth | Posted by: Gavin

RiverRun Books is one of the most popular Twittering Bookstores and they love Hound — you can’t miss it, it’s right there on their front table — which is great as Vince is reading there tonight.

Vince is blogging all week at Powell’s.com and is part of a great book event in New York City on Sunday.


Wed 21 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on | Posted by: Gavin

Dave Schwartz posted a fantastic photo: “Alan Deniro’s poster at the Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival, handmade publicity for his imminent novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less.” Click on it and make it bigger:

Threat Level Gnosis by Snurri.


What do you think the price should be?

Mon 19 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 5 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

What should we price the pdf ebook of our upcoming A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010? The paper version is $13.95 (and is at the printer).

The ebook will be pdf only — there is too much formatting and too many pics for anything else.

Suggestions?


Free calendar

Wed 14 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Free calendar | Posted by: Gavin

Update: Done!

We just received this promo and we won’t be ordering them (just like last year!) as we have a calendar all of our very own making that at long last is at the printer. It’s a nice enough planner, a month per page, and various handy things.

So, instead of letting it molder until next year, we’ll send it out to the very next reader to order one of our books or zines.

Not our calendar by you.


Ray Vukcevich at the movies (almost)

Mon 12 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Ray Vukcevich at the movies (almost) | Posted by: Gavin

Meet Me in the Moon RoomA couple of readers have emailed us to ask if the skippy viral thriller-chiller film Paranormal Activity is based on Ray Vukcevich’s incredibly creepy and wonderful story “Whisper” — which was collected in Meet Me in the Moon Room (and originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in January 2001).

The answer: while we haven’t seen the film at the moment we don’t think so. Ray tells us there has been a lot of film interest in “Whisper” over the years (along with a few of his other stories) but even though both “Whisper” and Paranormal Activity feature paranoid people setting up cameras to record themselves sleeping it seems that this is one of those cases of parallel evolution where the a similar idea is interpreted artistically from a couple of different points of view.

Either way, if you like creepy stories and haven’t read “Whisper,” now’s your chance.


Redemption in Indigo

Mon 12 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Karen LordSmall Beer Press are very happy to announce they have acquired the rights to Karen Lord‘s debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, which received the pre-publication BDS$10,000 Frank Collymore Award in Barbados and will be published as a trade paperback original in June 2010.

Redemption in Indigo is a clever and entrancing debut which incorporates folktales to tell the story of a woman who frees herself from a troublesome and capricious husband only to become the unwitting heroine in a fantastic struggle to reconcile the supernatural forces of fate with humanity’s free will.

Jewel Forde interviewed Karen on CBC’s “Mornin’ Barbados” and Karen’s just posted the video on Facebook.

Read the introduction after the break:

Read more


Cloud (& Ashes Lit)Drifts Free

Fri 9 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Cloud (& Ashes Lit)Drifts Free | Posted by: Gavin

Following last week’s Hound (hope you enjoy it, James DeBruicker!) this week’s freebie at LitDrift is Greer Gilman’s intense and magical Cloud & Ashes. Email them or leave a comment to enter.


LCRW hits 25, isn’t out

Tue 6 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on LCRW hits 25, isn’t out | Posted by: Gavin

The Choir Boats: Volume One of Longing for Yount Cover2 LCRW things (make that 4) about the next LCRW which is apparently number 25. Which, if we were numerically inclined would be yet another reason to celebrate. But we are too busy cutting lead type (um, no, not really) and then these:

  1. We are collecting questions for Dear Aunt Gwenda. Please send us yours!
  2. We just bought a couple of stories and if we are lucky we will have a translation (of an award winning story!) in the next issue and, separately, maybe more from a different country in the future.
  3. We are catching up a little with submissions but in the pile there are even yet and still some submissions from at least as far back as February and March of this year. Darn.
  4. I just read former LCRW contributor Daniel A. Rabuzzi’s debut novel, The Choir Boats, (Indiebound/Powell’s) a huge, inventive fantasy about 19th century London and Yount, another place,  and hope to post an interview here with him soon.

Another Hound freed

Fri 2 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Over at LitDrift.com they’ll be giving away one of our books a week all month and they’ve started things off with Hound.


Paige M. Gutenborg

Tue 29 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Today we took a wander over the river to Cambridge to see the new instant book machine at the Harvard Book Store (which has been named the Gutenborg!). Various publishing luminaries were there including our own Greer Gilman—who described her post-Harvard Library job search as looking for an iPod job in a PC world . . .—and we listened to them try and persuade us that this is the future. Well, part of it. Being historically minded, the first book they printed was the Bay Psalm Book, which was the first book printed in English on this continent,  in 1640 in Cambridge, no less.

It was at once fun and anti-climatic as the machine ran off the book in the promised four minutes and . . . that was it. Other bookshops with these machines report that they do a bang-up business, more with local authors than with out of print books. After all, why buy some scanned copy of Sense and Sensibility for $8 when you can get a decently edited one for, er, maybe about the same. Hmm. Well, luckily the Harvard Book Store has a good used section downstairs.

Our books are available on Google Books (with various levels of access) who have a deal with the manufacturer On Demand Books so at some point our books will hopefully be part of the instantprint experience.

As with everyone else who came by to see the machine in action, we’ll wait and see what happens.


Release the Hound!

Tue 29 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

It’s Publication Day for Vincent McCaffrey‘s debut novel Hound today — everyone send him flowers! We have signed copies for sale — as does the Brookline Booksmith. This Friday he’ll be in Hartford at the NEIBA trade show (along with other fave authors such as Joe Hill and Shaun Tan!) at the Author Reception and then on Oct. 9th he’ll be at Jamaicaway Books in Jamaica Plain for a reading.

And here’s a quick interview from the hitherto famously loquacious McCaffrey:

SBP: When did you start writing HOUND?

Vincent McCaffrey: 2002. Frustrated with the progress of several other projects (including the science fiction novel and a play) I started fleshing out some background ideas.

How much of Henry Sullivan is made of up bookhounds you knew?

Pretty much all of Henry is made up of book people I know–including myself, of course.

What is a bookhound?

A person who searches for books–not technically a seller, but Henry does both and the part he relishes is searching for good books.

Henry loves books (and beer, mmm) and is worried about their historical moment having passed. What do you think? Is the technical wonder that is the book dead or is there life in the old dog yet?

No, it is not dead yet. It is in danger. That is more of the point. For all the reasons I have addressed in various pieces, but mostly because of a false sense of security with ephemeral technology and a political need to quiet the book.

What made you pick the mystery form to discuss the book as object?

Because I imagined the death of the book as a political act (first degree murder) as much as a technological mistake (manslaughter). Because I carried this into a future set 250 years from now and wrote a science fiction novel based around it. Then went back to see if I could explain where it started.

Henry’s coming back next year in A Slepying Hound to Wake. Can you tell us a bit about that book?

Henry has fallen in love, and this begins to give him a purpose outside of himself and his own small world.

Do you have a routine with writing? Any superstitions?

I write for three hours every morning. I cannot reveal my superstitions otherwise I might disappear.

Did being a bookseller for 30+ years affect your writing habits?

It greatly discouraged me for the longest time. All those books. All that crap! Most of thelessons were negative until I finally took my own advice and stopped giving a damn about what other people wanted from me. Then the positive aspects such as a good sense of literature in general and what I loved about it, plus a  Calvinist work ethic about showing up on time and getting the work done proved instrumental.


printer

Mon 28 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

We have 3 books at the printer(s): Second Line, Interfictions 2, and a new ARC of The Poison Eaters to go out to bookshops next month — got to get the word out!

This post exists because I just noticed the QuickPress option in WordPress — could be trouble!


Would you like some Poison?

Fri 25 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 14 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

We have five advance copies of Holly Black’s new collection, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, to go out to readers and bloggers (in the US + Canada, as we don’t have international rights to the book) who will post something about it before it comes out — all the long way away in the future of February 2010.

Interested? Tell us your favorite poison (and why) and we’ll send out five copies to the five shiveriest and scariest!


It’s Not About the Burrito

Thu 24 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on It’s Not About the Burrito | Posted by: Gavin

Awesome story: social media meets the burrito and Broadway Books lives.

More good book news: from now on the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller list is the Indie Bestseller list.

We like indie bookshops, too!Buy local


Three Free Hounds

Thu 24 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Three Free Hounds | Posted by: Gavin

We did a member giveaway on LibraryThing and these three lucky readers will be receiving a free copy of Hound for reading and reviewing:

Betty in Smithers, BC (readerbynight)
Yesenia in Elmhurst NY (jesi813)
Belinda in Grand Bay, AL (sadi2forever)

Vincent McCaffrey by you.Kelly and I went to Vincent’s first reading the other night at the Brookline Booksmith in Boston and it was great fun—Vincent turns out to be a great reader and good with a Q&A (lucky for us).

He has a few more readings lined up—and there are some nice reviews coming, so yay for the Hound!

Anyone going to Booksmith readings (for, say, Lorrie Moore!) should note that for afterwards there’s a J.P. Licks just down the street, mmm!


Burn, feed, and boil

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Burn, feed, and boil | Posted by: Gavin

and now this part of our site has an updated FeedBurner thing, which I don’t really understand the benefit of but it is apparently important. You can subscribe to it on the site or here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmallBeerPressNotAJournal


Hound, Brookline, tonight

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Hound, Brookline, tonight | Posted by: Gavin

and don’t forget, the very first reading from Hound, Vincent McCaffrey’s debut novel at the Brookline Booksmith (279 Harvard St. Brookline MA 02446 (617) 566-6660) tonight!


Pretty Monsters UK

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Pretty Monsters UK | Posted by: Gavin

A nice guy called Robert Burdock posted a beautiful pic of the U.K. edition of Pretty Monsters that Canongate are putting out in a couple of weeks and since it’s better than any pic we’d be able to take (well, unless Michael were here), here’s his. We just received copies of the book and it is an art object. If you have the US edition (which won’t be in pb until Next June, sigh) it will be familiar but there are added touches: no dustjacket, new endpapers, sprinkled with monster blood:

Pretty Monsters. Pretty Book by Robert Burdock.


LCRW slipping into the fictionets

Thu 17 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on LCRW slipping into the fictionets | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 24 is available at last on Fictionwise.

Which also means it available on Barnes & Noble. Funny. Except, on bn.com it hasn’t quite appeared yet. You can get many old issues (LCRW 15, anyone?) so maybe #24 will pop up there one of these days.

Neither is it available on the Kindle.

Happily, it is still available on paper.


Is small beer obscure?

Thu 17 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Fun, if perhaps rather small beer, conversation (with all the usual hallmarks of a net discussion) on the relative obscurity of the phrase small beer. I am always surprised that it isn’t a better known phrase. One of these days.


Spruce Beer, or, A Beer to Ward Off Scurvy

Mon 14 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 19 Comments | Posted by: Michael

Further exploits in my quest to brew surprising, delicious, unhopped beer like it was 1799. Or 999. See more about my anti-hop crusade at The Beer of Alchemists and Witches.

The idea for this beer came from Benjamin Franklin. More directly, it came from Yards Brewing Company’s Poor Richard’s Ale, itself an attempt at a modern recreation of a recipe Franklin penned in French while stationed overseas, which, translated, reads as follows.

“Way of Making Beer with Essence of Spruce:

For a Cask containing 80 bottles, take one pot of Essence and 13 Pounds of Molases. – or the same amount of unrefined Loaf Sugar; mix them well together in 20 pints of hot Water: Stir together until they make a Foam, then pour it into the Cask you will then fill with Water: add a Pint of good Yeast, stir it well together and let it stand 2 or 3 Days to ferment, after which close the Cask, and after a few days it will be ready to be put into Bottles, that must be tightly corked. Leave them 10 or 12 Days in a cool Cellar, after which the Beer will be good to drink.”

Read more


Read some Hound

Thu 3 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Just added the first two chapters of Hound to the site — the book has a great first line:

Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living.

And the rest is pretty good, too.

Publication day is 9/29 and events are being added: Sunday October 25th at the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC (which will be a big event, more info TK on that) and also that month at RiverRun up in New Hampshire.

You can check out all we have to read on the site in a couple of different categories: everything, novel excerpts,  short stories, and, er, the thus far empty container, reviews (those still have to be portaged over from the old site). And we’ll be adding more as time goes by. But in the meantime, Hound!


Uncle Wes’s new book

Sun 30 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s Uncle Wes, who long-time LCRW readers may remember as the author of an oatmeal cookie recipe a while back, just had has his first book published and even though it’s full of great stories it’s in a very different section of the bookstore than Kelly’s books!

Wes’s book is Cure Constipation Now: A Doctor’s Fiber Therapy to Cleanse and Heal (for Kelly this sort of like a real-life version of Mark Leyner’s My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist) and it just came out in paperback from Berkley. I’m very glad they chose to use a typographical cover instead of something illustrative.

Dr. Wesley Jones, to give him his full title, believes most people in the USA (and Western world) eat too much refined food and need more fiber. Here’s his bio:

He is the founder and senior partner of the Cape Fear Center for Digestive Diseases in Pennsylvania. He is chair of Curamericas Global, Inc., which provides healthcare to Central America, South America, and west African communities. He was awarded the FACP and AGAF awards for his work in the field.

Read more


Hounding around

Mon 24 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Hounding around | Posted by: Gavin

Having trouble posting the final cover of Vincent McCaffrey’s debut novel, Hound, which is at the printer now. Dur. Will do it later. In the meantime, Vince will be getting out from Avenue Victor Hugo Books for a couple of readings soon. A few more may yet be lined up as this bookselling mystery gets more and more love from the bookselling brethren. Stop in and say hi here:

* Also at the NEIBA author reception:

Amir Aczel, Uranium Wars, Palgrave Macmillan
Michael Buckley, Nerds, Abrams
Crispina ffrench, Sweater Chop Shop, Storey
Ethan Gilsdorf, Fantasy Freaks And Gaming Geeks, The Lyons Press
Joe Hill, Horns, Harper
Katherine Howe, Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Hyperion
Maryalice Huggins, Aesop’s Mirror, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
E. Lockhart, The Treasure Map Of Boys, Delacorte
Loren Long, Otis, Philomel
C. Marina Marchese, Honeybee, Black Dog and Leventhal
Peter McCarty, Jeremy Draws a Monster, Macmillan
Jill McCorkle, Going Away Shoes, Algonquin Books
Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling, St. Martins


Videos, Ask, masquerading

Wed 19 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Videos, Ask, masquerading | Posted by: Gavin

Remember those videos we posted with Alan DeNiro* and Elizabeth Hand? If you missed them before now you can catch them to IndieBound. Here’s Alan’s interview and Liz’s.

IndieBound is working the social web more and more. They have a new feature on Twitter:

Ask Indie Booksellers on Twitter anything you want to know! Go to AskIndies and the #AskIndies hashtag and a link to your book will be added for you automatically.”

* Alan’s first novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, is out coming out later this year and it’s a mind-blowing experience. In some way it’s part of the whole post-apocalyptic group of books which sometimes seems like an admission that the author can’t imagine the future and has written a pre-historical novel masquerading as a post-historical novel; except this way they don’t have to research the past, either. But with Total Oblivion, while the past has invaded the present, this is in no way the past: it’s a lightly-outlined changed world where a teenage girl and her family embark on one of the ur-American stories: a trip down the Mississippi. More on it later — and it has a great cover which isn’t showing there yet — but add it to your wishlist now.


Boston apartment

Mon 17 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 5 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Ursula at homeKelly and I are looking for an apartment in Boston and we’re throwing it out here in case anyone knows anyone who knows anyone who can help. We have a couple of very specific criteria:

  • must have air conditioning
  • must be on the ground floor or have an elevator
  • wood floors
  • 2 bedrooms (can be tiny as long as living room is big)

We are looking to move in on September 1st and expect to be here for a year or two.

Our dream neighborhoods are Coolidge Corner, Fenway, and Jamaica Plain, but mostly it is important to be near or nearish to Children’s Hospital. (Small Beer Press will stay in Easthampton, though.)

We’re looking on Craigslist and are wandering around but, hey, aren’t questions like this what the internet is best at? Thanks for any help you can give!


Geektastic Rift in Wrong Grave shows Troll’s Eye View?

Thu 13 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd Cover

Kelly’s latest story, “Secret Identity,” can be found in Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci’s excellent new anthology Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd. For bonus points, see if you can spot Kelly (and some of the other writers) on the cover.

There’s nothing else coming out for a bit, but there are a lot of single stories floating around. Previous to Geektastic, “The Cinderella Game” came out this spring in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales—which was just picked as a read of the month, or some such thing, on Salon.

A couple of other stories just came out in paperback: “The Wrong Grave” in Deborah Noyes’s The Restless Dead, “The Surfer” in Jonathan Strahan’s The Starry Rift, and “Louise’s Ghost” in Peter Straub’s Poe’s Children. In hardcover “Stone Animals” is in another Peter Straub anthology, the fantastic looking 2-volume Library of America irresistible American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s Until Now, which comes out in September and looks ripe to be the Halloween present of the season.

Over in the UK, Canongate have a different idea of the perfect Halloween read: they are buying UK rights to Pretty Monsters and will publish it in paperback on October 15, just in time for those who might want to read “Monster” or “The Wrong Grave” on the scariest night of the year. Canongate put out some really wonderful books — such as Ali Smith’s Boy Meets Girl and (maybe, not read it yet) Michel Faber’s The Fire Gospel —  and Kelly is thrilled. Yay! Some readers no doubt read the US edition (which won’t be out in paperback until June 2010) but for a lot of readers this will be the first time they’ve seen the excellent cover to the right there.

Francis Bickmore, senior editor at Canongate, has acquired UK rights to Link’s Pretty Monsters for an undisclosed sum…. Bickmore said: “I’m over the moon that we have lured the maverick literary genius that is Kelly Link to our list, just in time for Hallowe’en. She is one of the best kept secrets of modern writing.”

Also in the UK, a little while ago Sarah Waters had a piece in the Graniaud about ghosts and writing her latest novel and gave us a thrill by including one of Kelly’s stories in her list of ten best ghost stories — along with some of Kelly’s own favorite ghost stories, “The Woman in Black,” “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and so on.

“The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link
All of Link’s stories are wonderfully odd and original. Some are also quite scary – and this, from her collection Stranger Things Happen, is very scary indeed. It’s the story of 10-year-old twin girls in a haunted American mansion, being instructed by an enigmatic babysitter just what it means to be “dead”.

Meanwhile in Australia, Text are splitting Pretty Monsters into 2 paperbacks and we just got copies of the first one, The Wrong Grave, and it is beautiful. The cover is marbled with silhouettes of crows and beetles and a stag — and they are carried over into the front matter. The second volume comes out later. It’s very exciting to think that it will be piled up in some of the great bookshops we visited in 2006 when Kelly taught at Clarion South: Pulp Fiction and Infinitas in Brisbane and Galaxy in Sydney.

Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales Cover

The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural Cover

The Starry Rift Cover

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now Cover


Bearfest

Sun 9 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Bearfest | Posted by: Gavin

Easthampton Bear FestEasthampton is having an artbear invasion and it is really cheery to look down from the 11.05 morning zeppelin ride into the office (can’t quite get there for elevensies) and see all the people taking their pictures, reading the signs, sitting on their knees, and so on. They’re really well done—although don’t think we will get one for the office at the auction. Who’d a thunk they’d be so popular?


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