We interrupt this silence to note that the invisible chickens on the green green grass roof of the Small Beer Press office building in New York City have begun pecking out the first stories of the new issue of LCRW.
Invisible chickens are one of the ways we are getting around the new economic straits (invisible dhow Jones are another): so much cheaper than typesetters. We do not think that most “readers”* of the zine will notice the difference in layouts.
Who are the writers in this issue? They are (depending on how you prefer these things) world famous writers whose work we are just so happy to publish. Or, they are new writers hungry for your open hearts (and eyeballs). Or, invisible chickens on the green green grass roof. Or, some regulars, some irregulars, some real, some imaginary, some magic, some dead, some dreamy, some dusking.
we’ve been offered a spot in an ad with some other publishers — it will be 4 books on a page with some text and the covers — in a national pop culture mag. Cost is $9,100. Anyone want to pay up? Come on, what else are you going to do with Aunt Aggie’s bequest?
(We will give you some books, and, er, stand you a drink or two when we next see you.)
Thu 25 Jun 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on Random Happy Birthday shout out | Posted by: Gavin
There’s a reason for this search buried in our Writer’s Daily Planner. So happy belated birthday George. It’s the 25th iteration of the year 1984 and we the citizens of Oceania thank you for your prescience.
George Orwell holds a significant place in contemporary literature. His politically charged masterpieces, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” introduced an entirely different approach to issues such as freedom and totalitarianism, and remain fresh and relevant today.
Eric Arthur Blair, later known as George Orwell, was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, Bengal, then a British colony in India. As The Literature Network explains, his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked for the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Limouzin, stayed at home with Eric and his two sisters, Marjorie and Avril.
By Frank Marcopolis courtesy of Creative Commons. He’s split the story into two: part one is here, part 2 TK.
“Can Erik and Batu revolutionize convenience retail? And what about all those zombies? ”
– Is the All-Night Convenience a metaphor for life itself? If so, how?
– What other symbols are used in the story (if any)?
– Is a new style of retail, one that will usher in a revolutionary era, on the horizon?
– Do you believe in ghosts? Zombies? Dog ghosts? Why or why not?
– Do you sleep in pajamas?
– What themes/issues/whatevers from the story do YOU want to talk about?
I’d love to know your thoughts. Listen to the story, and let’s discuss in the comments section.
Great piece about the only woman beer inspector in the UK (thanks Michael, Erin!). Apparently 80% of women in the UK haven’t tried real ale. How is this possible? Ok, so stout is no longer prescribed when women are pregnant, but still, come on! Next round, here’s some advice:
“The other thing is that women are more sensitive to bitter flavours,” says Annabel, “so if a woman’s first experience of real ale is a very bitter pint, she may never go back to it.” Better to start with something more floral, such as Caledonian Deuchars IPA or Theakston’s Old Peculier.
Notes Toward an Article on Carol Emshwiller Gavin J. Grant
Carol Emshwiller, who has been publishing superb, stirring, challenging fiction for over 50 years, is a perfect Guest of Honor for Wiscon, the only Feminist Science Fiction convention.
If someone were to compile one of those futile lists of the top hundred writers in the world right Now! I’d have to hack into the results and replace the name of one of the politely-angry young men in the top ten with Carol Emshwiller’s. I wouldn’t put her in the top five, but only to avert the pollsters suspicions. Number six then, or number seven.
I imagine that when they discovered I’d spoofed their poll, said pollsters might be ticked off. But if they attempted to track me down, I expect there would be a Spartacus moment (perhaps without all the cleft chins) as writers from all around the world would stepped themselves forward to say, “I put Carol Emshwiller in the top ten,” or, “It was I who fixed your silly poll,” and so on.
Carol Emshwiller’s writing, and she herself, inspires that kind of action.
But why would someone need (or want) to put Carol’s name forward that way? Surely the cream will rise to the top? Well, some will, but for the most part, it takes work to get there (as well as some odd mechanical processes which aren’t an appropriate extension of this metaphor). As sharper critics than I have pointed out, Carol’s writing manages to both demand the reader pay attention and at the same time depends on the willingness of the reader to invest their imagination in the story to be fully appreciated. This is why I would fix that poll. This is why others would defend me. This is why Carol’s readers are very happy people and are always putting her books into other people’s hands.
Carol’s writing can rarely be satisfyingly pigeon-holed. Her latest novel which we were extremely happy and proud to publish, The Mount (2002), is science fiction; but it can also be described (or defended or attacked) as allegory, a coming-of-age story, or fantasy. Or even romance. Ledoyt(1995) is a biographical historical Western coming-of-age story. Carmen Dog(1990), a novel that I hope every Wiscon attendee will read, is transformative in many senses of the word. As for Carol’s short stories: they are many, they are awesome, and each one is worth an essay to itself. Carol, of course, is well aware — and not at all bothered — that her fiction is not easily categorized.
Among the many resonances and influences in Carol’s writing are the mountains and landscape of the American West, personal relationships, the odd moments of war, and the actions and effects of people who may or may not be more damaged than the rest of us.
Recently, Carol has written a series of war stories including “Boys” (Scifiction), “The General” (McSweeney’s No.10), and “Repository” (F&SF), which explore war from typically Emshwilleresque viewpoints. Soldiers are unsure of who they are, who they are fighting, or why. War is the question, not the subject.
I look forward to reading many more of Carol’s questions.
Steve Berman has put out the first issue of a new magazine, Icarus, through Magcloud, one of those Web 2.1 long tail site thingies where you can publish what you like on any scale. Since niche mags are dying off like dinosaurs after a meteor crash, it will be interesting to see how this develops.Not sure if we will put out LCRW through them the way we did with Lulu; the ebook + zine format ($5 vs. $13) works quite well at the moment.
Not sure if you can subscribe or not, but you can preview and order the first issue here:
Icarus is the first magazine devoted to gay-themed speculative fiction and writing – from fantasy to horror to science fiction, and all the weird tales that fall between the cracks. Our first issue features short stories by Jeff Mann, Joel D. Lane, Jameson Currier and Tom Cardamone; interviews with Dan Stone and graphic artist Peter Grahame; poetry by Lawrence M. Schoen; plus book reviews, an article about the Gaylactic Network, and brief happenings in gay publishing. Icarus is published by Lethe Press.
We’re having an internet nofun time with all our @smallbeerpress.com emails not working. Boo. Old emails: info @ lcrw.net for instance still work. One of these years we will change over prop’ly, one of these years.
Update: snafu all untangled and everything is working again!
IndieBound just added a list widget so that people can have multiple wish lists (one for family, one for, er, friends?).
Of course we abused it right away to make a list of Small Beer books. Actually, Small Beer Press books, will have to go back and make a small beer booklist later. Copy and paste at will.
Michael Northrup’s firstnovel, Gentlemen, just got a review in the NYTimes and Michael, well, he’s a funny guy, so: lifted from his site:
I am having a contest on my website to celebrate the review of Gentlemen in today’s New York Times Book Review. The money line of the review is the last one: “Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet it has what can pass for a happy—or at least satisfying—ending.” Yet it could be so much moneyer! That’s where you come in.
Simply write your own ending to the sentence: “Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet…”
For example, Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet so is Northrop. So much fun! So much easy! Just leave your entry as a comment on my site. The winner will be picked by a celebrity guest judge and will receive amazing prizes! (You know, kind of.)
It took a while to organize but we’ve just posted Michael’s great picture of Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes. These angled shots give a much better idea of what one of our books look like and this, thanks to Kathleen Jennings’ wonderful cover, is one of the more beautiful ones we’ve put out:
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008). He edited Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (2006) and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (2007), and The Secret History of Science Fiction (forthcoming from Tachyon) with James Patrick Kelly. He teaches American literature, science fiction, fantasy, and fiction writing at North Carolina State University.
Well, maybe more like Your Rich Pal Who Likes To Directly Support the Arts‘s Name Here. The Interstitial folk have had the great idea of sending out a direct call for support for their new anthology in Tweeterland, Blogistan, Flogistan, and Facebukia. And in case those countries are not on your usual paths, here’s the goods:
We live in a world of niche marketing. The Interstitial Arts Foundation brings artists together to tear those barriers down.
The first volume of Interfictions, published in 2007, was hailed as “A phenomenal collection…engrossing and provocative” (Hipster Bookclub) that “belongs on the nightstand of anyone interested in the development of contemporary short fiction” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
This second volume features original work by a whole new set of writers who joyfully explore the big imaginative spaces between conventional genres. And this time, we’ll be reaching out to even more readers by publishing a series of free stories on the new Interfictions 2 Annex online!
What can you do to help? This extraordinary collection of interstital fiction needs your financial support. We’re asking you to sponsor not just a book, but an idea – the idea that artists need to be able to express themselves freely and directly to their audiences, without the restraints of conventional genre limitations.
Here are some ways you can help us publish Interfictions 2:
SUPPORT AN INTERFICTIONS 2 STORY
$500 pays one author for a 10,000 word short story
$375 pays one author for a 7,500 word short story
SUPPORT THE INTERFICTIONS ONLINE ANNEX
8 stories will be available only online, with one appearing every week from August until November 2009.
$400 covers author honoraria for the entire Annex
$50 pays one author for an Annex story
SUPPORT THE NUTS & BOLTS OF ACTUAL BOOK PRODUCTION & PROMOTION
$400 covers typesetting fees
$200 buys Interfictions 2 a magazine ad
$100 prints up promotional postcards
$25 sends out five copies to reviewers
Your Choice: Gift amount of your choosing supports the IAF’s General Fund
Become an Interfictions 2 Sponsor with a gift of $500 or more, and we’ll list you as a Sponsor on our Friends of Interfictions 2 web page. And if your gift of $500 or more is received by June 30, 2009, your name will be published in the printed anthology!
Your gift of $499 or less will get you listed on a Friends of Interfictions 2 web page as a Booklover, and Booklovers who donate between $375 and $499 by June 30, 2009 will have their names published in the printed anthology. Individual supporter names will not be linked to specific stories or work.
SUPPORT A STORY, GET A BOOK!
We’ll also send signed copies of both Interfictions and Interfictions 2, signed by editors Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak, to supporters who contribute $375 or more. In addition, Sponsors of $1,000 or more can choose to receive a signed limited edition print of Connie Toebe’s “Moonlight“, the art used on the cover of the first Interfictions.
Or you can mail your check along with the 2009 Gift Form to P.O. Box 35862, Boston, MA 02135. Contributions of any size are most welcome.
The IAF is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, so your contribution will be fully tax-deductible. But more importantly, when you make a gift to the IAF, you can bask in the knowledge that you are helping to build a new work of literature that can change people’s lives.
Thank you for your continued support. Please feel free to link to or pass on this page to anyone else you think might be interested in art without borders!
Warmly,
Ellen Kushner
Vice President & Co-Founder,
Intersitial Arts Foundation
but zombies, “talking animals, mermaids, a book that writes itself, a race of tiny people — whose lives are filled with pathos and tragedy — searching for their lost homeland, the ancient and massive ship of the series title; myths and legends from all and sundry, and haunting them all, a mad king who once declared himself a god. . . .
When GM goes into bankruptcy hope someone fires the people in the US who decided that is ok to make cars for Europe that get 71/59 mpg but not sell them here…. Autobloggreen reports on the latest Vauxhall Corsa:
It’s not a hybrid and it doesn’t have a plug, but Vauxhall’s new Corsa ecoFLEX is the company’s most fuel efficient production vehicle ever: on the UK’s extra urban fuel cycle the car is rated at 71 mpg (U.S.); the combined rating is 59 mpg (U.S.). This is a boost of 13 percent compared to the previous high-mpg Corsa….
Want to go work on an indie film in Canada? Jim Munroe’s latest project sounds fantastic—and you can be a part of it—a movie of a documentary series from 2040 when:
a generation of Torontonians have grown up after the economic collapse of the west. The movie consists of episodes of a documentary series popular in mainland China about the bad jobs some white people have — the plucky and resilient souls unlucky enough to be born into the slums of North America.
Add your memory object to Laura Moulton‘s new project Object Permanence which has an actual real world component as well the webpage. The Object Mobile is on the ground in Portland: track it down and add your own object.
Henry Wessells’s Temporary Culture is producing another beautiful book:
HOPE-IN-THE-MIST
The Extraordinary Career & Mysterious Life
of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick
Hope-in-the-Mist is the first book-length study of British author HOPE MIRRLEES, whom Virginia Woolf described as “her own heroine — capricious, exacting, exquisite, very learned, and beautifully dressed.” Raised in Scotland and Zululand, Mirrlees studied with the great classical scholar Jane Harrison and later lived with her in Paris and London. Mirrlees wrote one major poem, Paris (1920), the missing link between French avant-garde poetry and her friend T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) ; her novel Lud-in-the-Mist is an acknowledged classic of fantastical literature. An earlier version of Hope-in-the-Mist was published in the journal Foundation in 2003.
30 copies, hand bound in chartreuse Asahi book cloth with Ann Muir marbled endsheets, signed by Michael Swanwick and Neil Gaiman, and with the frontispiece signed by Charles Vess.
Five copies lettered A – E, for presentation.
Subscribers issue, 25 numbered copies : $300 in U.S. ; foreign $325 (includes shipping and a copy of the trade issue).
But by the time you’ve explored the many forms (physical and metaphysical) of Unleaving, spent time with various incarnations of Ashes, and seen just what Margaret could become after childhood’s left behind, it shouldn’t be all that hard to show a little patience with her adolescent uncertainties, plus subplots and further arcane references. And the payoff is immense. I finished Cloud & Ashes almost tempted to write a thesis that compares it favorably to what James Joyce did in Ulysses and tried in Finnegan’s Wake, yet feeling like I’d lived through it all.
“Many people have used ballads as sources of literary fantasy. I use ballads, but in shreds and patches, along with things I’ve read, word etymologies, a lot of dialect — my writing is both folk and baroque. I’ve got these great slabs of rhapsody and blots of vernacular. I think I use a fairly low percentage of Norman French-Latinate English, simply because I love the old root stock of the language. There are a scattering of words in my books I’ve made up on models from root stock. I love words passionately! (Maybe I should have been a philologist.) I discovered the Oxford English Dictionary at college, and spent all my time in the English students’ lounge reading their copy.
Hey, we didn’t mail anything out today (we are still [sorry!] behind from our almost-cleared-out warehouse sale, yay!) because there was a glitch in our mailing systems. So we emailed the mailing company, Endicia, and within a couple of hours they returned our call, apologized, and credited us a with a couple of months service free.
Wow.
We used to use P*ney-Bowes and they were awful. Every time we ordered supplies it was like stepping up to someone and asking to be punched in the face. No, wait. Punched twice. There was even a service charge for buying postage. When we bought $400 of postage at the post office it cost $400. When we buy it from Endicia it costs $400. When we bought it from ShtnyBws it cost $418.99. Why?
They introduced some kind of completely useless rewards or points program, they insisted on sending us a stupid magazine (and then tried to charge for it!) and basically made us feel that they could do without us more than we could do without them and we should watch it otherwise they might drop us. Or raise yet another esoteric fee on us.
So: Endicia, what a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the credit!
This message (and recommendation to switch) brought to you by the letters h a p p y and a complete lack of behind-the-scenes-sponsorship.
A good time? Knishes?* A trip back in time to the 1890s?
Or, maybe, books to show off — and even some to give away — at BookExpo. Which books? Lots to show off since last year, including The Baum Plan, The Ant King, The King’s Last Song, The Serial Garden, and now Cloud & Ashes.
Wait, wait, wait, though. Did we ever mention the books we’re going to be publishing this autumn and winter? The books we have been reading and playing with and designing and sometimes talking to the authors and thinking about covers but never actually doing anything about them? No?
Hot dang and Whoops!
Ok then, here are our next four titles (plus we have more more more TK after these, ha!) of which we will have early early not-at-all-real copies at BookExpo this week (as they are in various stages of discomportment and have just arrived in from a couple of different local printers):
September: Hound by Vincent McCaffrey. A debut novel about a Boston bookhound, books, death, and maybe the death of books. This is the first in a series and it will come out in hardcover.
October: Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans by Poppy Z. Brite. This paperback collects two of Poppy Z. Brite‘s chaotic and fun short novels (The Value of X and D*U*C*K) featuring two New Orleans chefs, Rickey and G-man, who grow up together, fall in love, open a restaurant, Liquor, and have some fun along the way. Poppy is writing a new afterword to go with the novels. Love this series, love that we get to be a part of publishing it. Huge thanks to Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press for helping put this together.
November: Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak. The editors went out into the fields and found 21 pieces of excellently border-crossing material. They’re also putting together an online launch party and auction which will be filled with wonderful art, music, and stories. The book will be the icing and the cake, though.
January: Suprise! We are still eating Christmas cake and not thinking about books. Not all true, though, as Feb. is going to be a big mouth month:
February 2010: The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black. Our second Big Mouth House title is a debut collection of young adult stories from New York Times bestseller (and one of our neighbors), Holly Black. Holly’s stories have just gone from strength to strength over the past few years — as evidenced by her appearances in various Best of the Year anthologies and lists. The Poison Eaters includes a new Modern Faerie Tale as well as some of our favorite stories of recent times.
So, if you’re going to the big show in NYC, drop by the Consortium (our distro) area and say hi. Jed will be there all the time (except for knish breaks), Gavin should be there on Friday & Saturday, and, with luck, Kelly will be there on Saturday. Books, baby, all about the books!
In all the excitement of the new year (cough), we forgot to point our Japanese readers to Carol Emshwiller’s novel Carmen Dog which came out recently from those magnificent people at Hayakawa.
That cover is just genius. We haven’t seen copies of it yet — they are usually shipped by slow boat, literally, but when we do, give it 4-5 more months and we’ll post pics up here.
Almost forgot one of the award lists that came out recently: way back in April (where’s the telescope? Who can look back that far?) the finalists for the Locus Awards were announced. A bit of a disappointment in the collection department that John Kessel or Ben Rosenbaum didn’t get nominated, c’est la vie with awards seasons though.
Here’s the Small Beeriana-connected stuff (a bit of a reach, but Kelly still works here) and it was nice that the final Year’s Best volume received a nod:
Stepping outside Small Beer HQ for a minute to point readers to 3 AM Magazine where they’ve just posted a new story of mine (that would be Gavin, if you can’t see the sig line on the website), “The Elect.” The story was written a couple of years ago. It was a dark time in this country. Freedom was talked of and flags were waved, even while freedoms were being taken away from more and more of us. Thus, stories like this.
Tue 26 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons | Comments Off on Book Expo, NYC, Fri-Sun | Posted by: Gavin
Those who remain in the book business (at least we’re not trying to sell gas guzzlers, phew) will party like it’s a very quite 2009 in NYC, Thursday to Sunday, at the Javits center — and, we have a couple of things Worth Doing while there.
Even if you’re not going, you can still go to our party and Ben Rosenbaum and Jedediah Berry’s reading at the might McNally Jackson Books.
We may have the inflatable couch this year, we may not. We have a shelf of books on display at the Consortium booth. We may have some freebies and galleys, but, not many. Hey, it’s the recession! Jedediah will definitely be there, Gavin will likely be there Friday/Saturday, and various friends and volunteers and Stars, baby, Stars will be there to spread the word. They’ll be like a street team, except in a convention center. And not really a team. Although there should be 11 of them and one of them will have big gloves on and will be known as “The safest hands in soccer.” All true.
Plus, there may be a last minute addition to this schedule but it will depend, like everything else at the moment, on she who must be obeyed:
Thu., May 28, 7:00 PM Pre-BEA Party (with Melville House, Stop Smiling Books, The Feminist Press, NYRB Classics, and the Little Bookroom)
Melville House, 145 Plymouth St., Brooklyn, NY 11201
(take the F train to York or the A/C to High Street)
Fri., May 29, 3:00 PM
Table 23, Holly Black signs ARCs of her young adult short story collection, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (Feb. 2010).
Sat., May 30, 3:30 PM
Table 17, Vincent McCaffrey signs ARCs of Hound ( Sep ’09), a debut mystery in which a Boston bookhound has to work who killed his ex and why.
Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant are the proud parents of a baby. Ursula Annabel Link Grant, originally due on June 16, showed up three and a half months early. Born in February 2009, they weighed 1 lb 9 ounces and has spent the last three months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass.
We expect to bring Ursula, who is currently well over 4 lbs, home in about two weeks. Right now we’re very thankful for the fabulous NICU nurses and doctors, the Ronald McDonald House in Springfield, the support of our friends and family, and also that we have health insurance.
Small Beer Press’s generous parental leave policies mean that Kelly and Gavin will take some time off in the next year or two. The latest issue of LCRW has been delayed until summer but otherwise everything should remain on schedule. Because premature babies don’t travel well, our travel schedule will be curtailed for the foreseeable future. We will post pictures in a couple of weeks.
Wed 20 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Cons | Comments Off on Look for this guy at Wiscon | Posted by: Gavin
He’s the one at the Small Beer Press tables! Meet David J. Schwartz who has a fantastic series of pictures on Flickr: it is well worth digging in to see what he’s been up to all winter. We just love these pics and love going back to see faves. A few are here, but really, if you have a minute, go check out the rest.
Dave (and, your goodself, if you want) will be personing the Small Beer tables at Madison, Wisconsin’s amazing alternaworld convention, WisCon, this coming weekend and he will have most of our books in the dealers’ room including Greer Gilman’s new Cloud & Ashes (Although sadly neither we nor Greer will be there) as well as Guest of Honor Geoff Ryman’s The King’s Last Song (get it, get it signed!). Despite our best intentions, there will not be a new issue of LCRW until summer.
There will be copies of Dave’s dark and thoughtful novel, Superpowers, and, hopefully, many other things of interest. Many of which will appear throughout the convention as people wander up and drop stuff off to sell (got a book or a zine? Bring it along!). In the meantime: Dave!
The first volume of Interfictions, published in 2007, was hailed as “A phenomenal collection…engrossing and provocative” (Hipster Bookclub) that “belongs on the nightstand of anyone interested in the development of contemporary short fiction” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
