Indiepubs sale

Tue 5 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Indiepubs, sale | Comments Off on Indiepubs sale | Posted by: Gavin

Our distro’s nice, fast Indiepubs site — where you can get books from 100+ indie publishers — has a ton of our books at 50% off for one week. The discount is automagically added in cart as per the screenshots below and shipping is free for orders over $40.

 

---

Holiday shipping 2023

Fri 1 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., free shipping, holiday, shipping | Comments Off on Holiday shipping 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

---

Celebrating the Visionary Stories of Kelley Eskridge

Wed 29 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelley Eskridge | Comments Off on Celebrating the Visionary Stories of Kelley Eskridge | Posted by: Gavin

Delighted to come across Dangerous, Hopeful Futures: Celebrating the Visionary Stories of Kelley Eskridge by Jonathan Thornton on Tor.com this week:

Kelley Eskridge is not a prolific author, but she has nevertheless produced a body of work remarkable for its subtlety and depth. Eskdrige’s short stories are marvels of character-focused SF, where speculations are explored through the interactions of everyday people. They frequently centre queer characters and explore ideas around gender. Similarly, her lone novel Solitaire (2002), is an underrated and pioneering work of queer cyberpunk that thoughtfully explores the potential uses of VR technology for incarceration.

Kelley is an excellent writer. We brought Solitaire back into print a few years ago. Her collection, Dangerous Space, is also available from Aqueduct. Definitely recommend if you’re looking for sf that takes on the current moment in gender, incarceration, family, politics, and more.

---

Room of One’s Own Holiday Catalog

Tue 28 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Room of One’s Own Holiday Catalog | Posted by: Gavin

In previous years we’ve celebrated books being in the NPR Best Books lists and others and I’m still somewhat optimistic that some of the books will appear here or there but with me being less able to reach out to reviewers I suspect some books sent out did not always reach their target. C’est la vie. I’ve said before I always expect our books to win every award and be in every list (“What’s the world coming to? Our book is not in [incredibly niche list the book might tangentially have fit]? Oh no!”) and sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

We published 4 books (& a zine) this year: 2 collections, a series capping novel, and a short novel — the good news today is that two of those books (along with Kelly’s White Cat, Black Dog) are in A Room of One’s Own Holiday Catalog: Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending and Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche‘s highlighted on the trans fiction page:

“This novel tore my heart up—in the very best way. Our narrator is a semi-recently-out trans woman in her forties, she is an ex-wife, a mother separated from her son, and largely between stable work (a former writer, whose metafictions pepper the text). Friendships real and imagined provide a mirror of reflection in which our narrator turns the mundane into profound. This is a portrait of a woman who has so much love in her heart, and slowly learns to afford herself some of that love.” — Charlie

---

Brew & Forge Book Fair

Mon 27 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book fairs, good things | Comments Off on Brew & Forge Book Fair | Posted by: Gavin

If you have some Small Beer books on your to-read list, see if you can get them at the Brew and Forge Book Fair where multiple copies of four of our books are available. Coincidentally, if you buy 4 books at the fair, you get a free notebook . . .

The fair opened today and runs until December 8. Authors voted for the tenth book fair to benefit the Palestinian Feminist Collective which “is committed to achieving Palestinian social and political liberation by confronting systemic gendered, sexual, and colonial violence, oppression, and dispossession. Read more about their work here.“

---

Brindles?

Fri 24 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bundles, sale | Comments Off on Brindles? | Posted by: Gavin

Discounted Bundled Books for You & Your Reader Friends:

---

What about Small Beer?

Sat 18 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Long Covid | Comments Off on What about Small Beer? | Posted by: Gavin

As a follow up to my last post, ugh, I did go on, I wanted to give a clearer idea of what is happening with the press.

Of course, since we have the obfuscatorily named zine, the story isn’t 100% clear.

There are many things I can do for the press lying here on this couch. There are many I can’t and sometimes all I can do is watch TV or read the internet.

We have one book under contract that was just delivered. Because it is a different kind of thing it would take normally about 3 years to bring to publication. I am not sure how long it will take now.

Other than that, we have Kathleen Jennings’s collection of stories, Kindling, coming in January. The proofs just arrived from the printer and when I return them I’ll find out if we’re still on schedule. I don’t think we’ve only ever had one book in that forthcoming page before. Weird to see. Glad this dictation thing is working well today.

We hope to publish a limited edition of Kelly’s novel at some point next year. There would be some kind of poetry if that were our last book. Although I’m a big fan of accessibility, so it would be sad if our last book is a limited edition.

We closed completely to submissions in March and given that I have not improved, I do not expect to reopen anytime soon. The way I am now I could not do justice to any book that we bought. It is very strange not to read submissions after 20 years.  I’m going to try and keep the zine going. However, I’m not up to mailing it, and some days I’m not up to reading. This year we managed one this year.* Next year, who knows.

 

* Rather than correct the sentence I’m going to leave it to sure the basic level of brain fog detail missing that I know have. I’ve never been the best writer (I’ve published some of them, ha!), but at least I was able to string a sentence together and I enjoyed writing fiction, nonfiction, reviews, etc. I didn’t expect to write like this until I was 85 or so. What can I say, I’m ahead of my time.

 

---

This Sauce Is Weak

Sat 18 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Long Covid | Comments Off on This Sauce Is Weak | Posted by: Gavin

I have — hilariously to me — just had my first cold in 3 years or so. Having a cold while having long covid. Phew, I do not recommend it.

To get the generally unsaid part over with now rather than at the end (my own tl;dr), no matter when I die, mine will be a Covid-related death. To be brought so low by a basic cold demonstrated that my defenses/immune system/resources are weak sauce indeed and one energetic butterfly flapping its wings in a nearby town will be enough to tip me over. It sounds melodramatic but I’m over 50 and I read new studies every week about long Covid’s effects on my age group. So far, so not great. Check out the drop in my already low number of daily steps on the tiny chart. On the other hand, I am reading my first Vita Sackville-West novel, All Passion Spent, about an 88-year-old widow and very much enjoying every slow minute of her looking around and back at her life.

Anyway. What about lying around feeling even more rubbish than usual was hilarious? Just the very fact of picking up a cold despite taking the same Covid precautions as we’ve done for the last 3 years.

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve only seen people who are either masked or people who test for Covid when they arrive. Last week I saw some friends — wait, I know how this often goes, but this story doesn’t go that way: we hadn’t dropped our guards, everyone tested negative and then we took masks off. So, no, since they tested negative and I did daily tests Sunday to Wednesday, it seems unlikely I had Covid23.

But despite all that, despite testing whenever seeing friends, despite me masking if I go to Book Moon (I go to so few places, it’s a curtailed world, but at least I can read and write about it), after all that care, I caught a simple cold, ha! The less hilarious part was how it absolutely flattened me. So stop reading here if you don’t like icky stuff about bodies. Which is me, I’d like to stop reading.

Colds, as I learned during this pandemic, are also coronaviruses. On Thursday morning, which I think was Day 5 of the cold, I started improving. Those five days were a grind on the household. I stayed in bed a lot more or, as is usual, on the couch. Not that different from my new normal, but without my usual ability to potter around the kitchen and put together a quick meal. That morning I made some porridge and felt that sitting at the table to eat (instead of lying on the couch — how often I have to type those words; almost as often as I . . . ) was a huge and difficult accomplishment. I’m expecting a congratulatory telegram from the president to arrive any time. Maybe tomorrow.

After, as I shuffled — these feet would not be lifted — to the couch, my watch was showing my heart rate at 118 and when I lay down it was ~95. I was lying here doing nothing, resting after a 10-yard shuffle, thinking about picking up my laptop, looking at our dog, unimpressed with me as I was not scratching her, on the other of the couch, then . . . I started sweating, and sweating more until I was wiping sweat off my forehead. Or fivehead as our kid likes to say. I was a whole gleaming ball of fivehead.

Was I moving a pallet of books per the photo above from a few years ago (I do order optimistic print runs) or the terrible selfie in the cargo lift (ugh, too lazy to shave) from October 2021? Nope. I was lying around. Maybe working out the poisons? I had a few sessions of sweating it out this morning and now I’m improved.

I wrote somewhere in a previous long Covid post about my new ability to lie around and not do anything and this week I levelled that up. When I was sick as a kid I remember being so bored lying in bed. Now, despite not going to sleep, I could look out the window — or more likely, at a wall, the window being too stimulating — for a while. When I’m sick(er than my new normal, etc.) I often feel I could do what needs to be done. Walk the dog? Of course. Do this, do that? I could, but the lever (pick your own mechanical, literal, or technological metaphor) won’t flip. I could do it and there’s no impatience as to the why not, it’s just I don’t. There’s no Bartleby, no draft card or bra burning, just seeing what needs to be done and being aware that I am not doing it.

I became a different person 23 months ago. Curtailed, diminished, disabled. When I caught the cold I’d roll between the high point of perhaps if I kick this my body will return to what it used to be and the low point of what if this is my new, new normal? Every day I wake up curious to see what’s happened and it’s not until I stand up and my heart rate jumps that I find out how I am. Meh.

Looking at what’s to come leaves a little to be desired. It’s taken a couple of days to write this because there’s no good ending. I answer a some work emails and just I run out of juice. When I walk, I shuffle and this new, new normal is a bit painful. I watch TV and try not to miss walking or running or singing or dancing. When I walk I feel as if I have worked hard all day. Step count, faithful step count, proves me wrong. It is a bleak series of thoughts to take into the darkening of the year. There are millions like me, trying different meds (yep, still am), masking when they see anyone, unable to do most of what they used to. Kelly described me as profoundly changed. My vulnerability has placed huge limits on what she and our kid can do. I am chronically disabled and now it looks like I am one good infection away from real trouble.

How annoying. How are we — all of us, not just this household — supposed to live? Well, I certainly don’t have a neat and tidy answer to that.

If you read this far and want to help:

— Please wear a mask in public.
— Or: we publish good, slightly weird books that make great presents and my PR efforts are a bit weak this year.
— Or: donate & support our kid and Kelly’s mum who will be doing the annual Hot Chocolate Walk in a week or two.

---

Hot Chocolate Walk 2023

Thu 9 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., donations, Hot Chocolate, Long Covid | Comments Off on Hot Chocolate Walk 2023 | Posted by: Gavin

It is almost time for the annual Safe Passage Hot Chocolate Walk (or run, for the more lively among us) here in Northampton. A while ago a friend persuaded me to take part and me and our kid did quite a few years together. We started long enough ago that I was pushing the pram around. Now the kid could push me around. This year our kid and Kelly’s mum are walking while I am raising money from this here couch.

Any donations are welcome with the understanding that everyone is stretched and has their own things they like to support. If you’re of a mind, I’d love your to support either our kid’s page and Annie’s, thank you!

---

Austin Woerner in Ploughshares

Thu 9 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Austin Woerner, Su Wei | Comments Off on Austin Woerner in Ploughshares | Posted by: Gavin

Austin Woerner has an essay in the new issue of Ploughshares. The issue is edited by Ladette Randolph and also features prose by Anthony David, Parul Kapur, John Keeble, Diane Hinton Perry, Nafis Shafizadeh, Wiam El-Tamami, Jamie Lyn Smith, and Jim Shepard. I haven’t seen it yet but Austin’s essay is apparently about the Chinese writer Su Wei. We published Austin’s translation of Su Wei’s first novel to appear in English, the weird and fascinating The Invisible Valley. 

More about Austin:

---

An Uneasy Stage

Wed 8 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Reviews | Comments Off on An Uneasy Stage | Posted by: Gavin

Happy to note that Kirkus just posted a review of Anya’s OKPsyche and it will be in their December 1st issue. Here’s how it begins:

An unnamed trans woman is at an uneasy stage in her metamorphosis. She has finally cast off the male persona that never fit her, but she has yet to become the woman she dreams of being. Part of her discomfort is physical—she does not have the body she wants—but much of it is social and emotional. She knows that most strangers do not see her for what she is. Her ex-wife is still adjusting to what is, for her, a surprising new reality. Her mother deadnames her. And, most importantly, her young son is shutting her out. DeNiro’s significant achievement here is making palpable the excruciating, inescapable self-consciousness of her main character. Her decision to narrate in the second person is a bold one; this move will help some readers immerse themselves in the story, but it will just as likely alienate others.

---

OKPsyche in Locus

Tue 7 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Locus, Reviews | Comments Off on OKPsyche in Locus | Posted by: Gavin

The new issue of Locus has a roundtable on short fiction with Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik and an interview with superstar Carmen Maria Machado, both of which I’m looking forward to seeing when my print issue arrives. But the first thing I read in the pdf was Jake Casella Brookins’s review of Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche. I can’t reprint the whole thing but it is worth reading before and after you read the book. It starts off:

I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is. Told in second person by a carefully unnamed narrator, the novel blends fantasy, science fiction, and absurdism; it’s also a very grounded and personal work. The narrator, a trans woman trying to reconnect with her young son, trying to find friendship and love in a hostile world, is aided by magical figures and contraptions, but it’s her voice that stands out. This is absolutely brilliant writing: raw and unflinching in how it portrays transphobia and self-doubt, sweeping and dynamic in its use of language and imagery.

And all I can say is that I am so glad the reviewer read the same book I did and hope many people will pick up the book and see how strong it is.

---

Kij’s book on BookBrowse

Mon 6 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson, Reviews | Comments Off on Kij’s book on BookBrowse | Posted by: Gavin

BookBrowse’s review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending and their Beyond the Book article, Dream Interpretation are featured today in their “Top Picks.”

During the week or so that the book is featured, everyone can read the review and article in full. After that, only members can read in full, everyone else sees an abbreviated version, so clickity click!

Excerpt:

This collection of speculative stories feels like being in a vivid dream that you don’t want to wake up from. Kij Johnson’s imaginative narratives are utterly surreal and somewhat dark, yet laced with wit. Their language is highly literary, almost poetic, and draws the reader deeper into Johnson’s world.

---

The Manna Is a Super-Consciousness

Fri 3 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Interviews, Liminals | Comments Off on The Manna Is a Super-Consciousness | Posted by: Gavin

FanFiAddict posted an interview with Ayize Jama-Everett on the closing up of his Liminals shop with the publication of the final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World. (Start the first novel here.)

That was four novels written over 10+ years with which cover more ground than expected: time travel, racism, slavery, inequality, family: blood and found, and more. They’re fast-paced and furious and I love them. Here’s a taster of the interview:

Q. Heroes of an Unknown World is the final Liminal novel. When you began in 2009, did you see the story spinning out ahead of you?

AJE: The Liminal people was a truncated version of a side character’s story that I wrote in frustration when a novel I was sending out was getting excellent rejection slips. I thought it would be a bullet aimed at the heart of Afrofuturisms more utopian aspects.
read on

---

The Real Challenge

Thu 2 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Poets & Writers, writing | Comments Off on The Real Challenge | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro contributed a short recommendation to Poets & Writers magazine for what to do as a writer when stuck or when the mind is lodged somewhere not useful. Read it here:

Whenever I get stuck I don’t go to one single thing to unlodge myself. . . .

---

A Locus Bestseller

Wed 1 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bestsellers, Locus, Sarah Pinsker | Comments Off on A Locus Bestseller | Posted by: Gavin

Bestseller lists are weird things. None of them turn out to be as simple as I’d expect — except, I suppose the ones I make for Book Moon because that they are what they say they are: a list of bestselling books in the store.

Anyway, this hardly a thought never mind an exploration of the concept comes from celebrating Sarah Pinsker’s recent collection Lost Places just slipping onto the August bestseller list as reported in the new issue of Locus.

Have other Small Beer titles been Locus bestsellers? Could this be our first bestseller? Can we get it to appear on other lists? I have no idea! In the meantime, we’ll celebrate having possibly the only short story collection on the list this month!

---

Speeches Not Delivered

Tue 31 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Jeffrey Ford, travel, World Fantasy Awards | Comments Off on Speeches Not Delivered | Posted by: Gavin

I’ve written a few acceptance speeches that didn’t have to be given — although in 2015 I did not write one when Monstrous Affections was up for the World Fantasy Award as the ballot was so strong. Ellen had won the award before, George and Gardner had won the year before, Michael Kelly happily won this year, and Long Hidden is a spectacularly good book. I didn’t even notice that Gordon Van Gelder was leading me back from a playdate for our kids to the awards in time for the announcement. Anyway, I was surprised and a little embarrassed to be the person throwing out random words instead of organized.

So this year I got ahead of things and a week before the convention I wrote this speech with Kelly and emailed it to Jeff Ford who kindly agreed to accept on our behalf. The award went to Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, which looks like a great book. If I have to writer one of these, it’s usually along the lines of thanks to the writers, the readers, the booksellers, and librarians.

This year’s version is here:

First, thanks to the marvelous Jeff Ford for accepting this award for us. And huge thanks to the writers we published over the years, but especially Richard Butner and Robert Freeman Wexler, whose books we published in 2022, and the contributors to 2 issues of our zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

We are sorry not to be here in person: Gavin never tested positive for Covid but after an brief illness in December 2021 he has now has something which seems to be long Covid/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This has much diminished his physical capacities. This is also why we are publishing many fewer books. We still wear masks everywhere we go.

We have mixed feelings about missing conventions, this one in particular. Missouri has passed anti-trans and anti-lgbtq laws that mean it is not a safe place for many people. Can we support these inequalities with our tourist dollars? Also, how would we have travelled here? By plane? With climate change we find it harder to justify getting on a plane for anything these days. Even so, we miss being here so a last thanks to this gathering, in person or online, for making community out of some great, very weird books.

---

Kij @ World Fantasy

Thu 26 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., conventions, Kij Johnson | Comments Off on Kij @ World Fantasy | Posted by: Gavin

While we won’t be at World Fantasy, some of our books will be, and, even better, some of the authors: starting with one of the guests of honor, Kij Johnson. I just grabbed her schedule from this page so if you’re there, hope you will get to see some of this and maybe get a signed copy of her new new new book The Privilege of the Happy Ending.

Thursday
Reading; 4PM, Chicago A
Spotlight: Kij Johnson; 5PM, Empire A/B
Opening Ceremony; 8PM, Atlanta/New York
Work/Work Balance: Writing With A Day Job; 10PM, Empire A/B

Friday
Animals in Fiction; Noon, Empire A/B
The Mythology and Fantasy of the Fox; 4PM, Atlanta/New York

Saturday
Kaffeeklatsch; 1PM, Dragon’s Den
Stories Without Stories: Non-Narrative Fiction; 3PM, Empire A/B

Sunday
Ad Astra Presentation; 10AM, Chicago A

---

New Book Day!

Tue 24 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson | Comments Off on New Book Day! | Posted by: Gavin

When we published our first book by Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, an amazing wide-ranging collection of stories, I had no idea that eleven years later we’d be publishing our third: The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small/Medium/Large Stories. This time we accompanied the trade paperback with a small hardcover run to give people —and libraries — the choice. I’ve seen copies of At the Mouth read to death so I am sure some people will prefer the hardcover. One of the stories in that first book, Ponies, was reprinted in a text book so many, many readers had the rather staggering experience of that story. With luck some of those readers will be looking for more unexpected oddities and weirdness and the new book has all that and more. Looking forward to getting it out into the world and reading people’s reactions.

Kij launches the book tonight at 7 p.m. at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, and will be one of the guests of honor later this week (10/26-29) at the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO.

---

Local Paper Goodness

Fri 20 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Kij Johnson, Reviews | Comments Off on Local Paper Goodness | Posted by: Gavin

I was reading our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, at first breakfast with our kid (me: tea; toast: marmite; toast: peanut butter & banana) this morning & was delighted to see a review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending — which Kij launches on Tuesday at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and then next week, 10/26-29, she’ll be a Guest of Honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO. I don’t know how Steve Pfarrer keeps up, he also wrote today’s above-the-fold story on Smith College Museum of Art’s new show, Sum of its Parts.

I was even more delighted when I followed the jump to read the rest of the review and found he had also reviewed Anya Johanna DeNiro’s “dreamlike, speculative novel” OKPsyche. I hope wherever you’re reading you have a decent local paper. If not, I highly recommend our paper which I finished reading when I went back for second breakfast with Kelly (porridge with miso and fresh tomato).

---

H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop

Tue 17 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop | Comments Off on H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop | Posted by: Gavin

Subterranean sent me a note the other day that my copy of their new Howard Waldrop collection, H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop, is about to ship. If you ever read “The Ugly Chickens” and thought, I have to read more like that! this might be the book for you.

George R.R. Martin, Waldrop’s early penpal and lifelong friend, has been working on adapting some of Waldrop’s stories into film. Pick up this book and see where it all started.

And a lovely note from Sub Press about the book:

In order to properly celebrate the writer we all know as “Mr. National Treasure,” the editors, book designer, and publisher have produced H’ard Starts as a true labor of love—and all proceeds from the sale of the book (minus shipping and credit card/PayPal fees) will go directly to the author, the one and only Howard Waldrop. So join us in our adventure in the Wayback Machine, and grab your own copy of H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop.  Supplies are limited, so act now, or regret it forever.

---

Who Will Tell This Story?

Mon 16 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson | Comments Off on Who Will Tell This Story? | Posted by: Gavin

An early story celebrating Kij Johnson’s new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, went up recently on the University of Kansas’s website: Fantastic fiction writer Kij Johnson can go home again, accompanied by a good photo of Kij on a scooter. If you want to keep up with Kij she is quite an active blogger and she also has a Patreon.

Here’s a snippet:

“Until the last three or four years, I would have said I don’t want to ever write about Iowa because it was boring. And yet here I am starting to write about Iowa. I can’t help it,” said the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author and University of Kansas professor of English, who will be a guest of honor at the World Fantasy Convention Oct. 26-29 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Read more here.

---

Twin Cities Book Fest

Thu 12 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro, book festivals, Kij Johnson, readings | Comments Off on Twin Cities Book Fest | Posted by: Gavin

This weekend in Minnesota the Twin Cities are celebrating everything bookish with Rain Taxi’s annual Book Fest and you can catch both Anya Johanna DeNiro, author of OKPsyche, and Kij Johnson, author of The Privilege of the Happy Ending on a panel there on Saturday morning at 11 a.m.

Kij launches her book in 10 days time at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, but Magers & Quinn should have some early copies tomorrow and both she and Anya will be available to sign their new books.

---

Callum Angus reads “Red Work”

Mon 2 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Callum Angus, LCRW, reading | Comments Off on Callum Angus reads “Red Work” | Posted by: Gavin

Last night Callum Angus streamed a live reading of his quilt-inspired story “Red Work” — “Come for the lesbian roller derby inside a volcano, dragons, and quilts!” — which was just published in the new issue of LCRW. Cal reads the whole story which begins at about 14:05 on the video below. Enjoy!

---

A Treat for Readers

Mon 25 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kathleen Jennings | Comments Off on A Treat for Readers | Posted by: Gavin

Our first book of 2024 has received a good early review in Kirkus Reviews — there’s a hilarious tag line at the end — but this will give you a good idea of why we’re publishing it and how enjoyable it is:

Old tales and new turning points converge in a dozen fantasy-rich stories.
Here’s a treat for readers who wish each fable launched by the words “Once upon a time” would segue into a cautionary tale punctuated with mythical motifs and genuine danger. In the opener, “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a songwriter and a songbird in a mythical land bring forth one final song. “Skull and Hyssop” taps into the swashbuckling spirit of old Errol Flynn movies with its tale of a reluctant pirate and a low-powered enchantress at odds with a government flunky. Meanwhile, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is steeped in medieval lore; we meet a masterless knight on the run, carrying only “news of the murder of a King, a sword wrapped in a cape and tied to my saddle, and a secret so close to my own heart that even I did not then suspect it.” A child walks through fire in “Ella and the Flame,” two lovers of death find each other in “Not To Be Taken,” and a stowaway boggart causes a bit of chaos in “On Pepper Creek.” Even when the book veers past familiar fantasy into the boundlessly imaginative, it’s still beautifully composed, as in “The Present Only Toucheth Thee,” in which a storybook offers its own postmortem in the form of poetry, and “The Tangled Streets,” which features an enchantress helping a troubled young man find his true form. More often, it’s luridly imaginative—see the helpful amateur cryptozoologist in “Undine Love”—and genuinely exciting, like the ending of the title story: “No, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve been tangled in this story for too long. I have tigers to hunt, dragons to slay. An old friend to find.”
Women with guts and men of good fortune in search of their personal treasures.

---

Literary, Trans, and Science Fictional Spaces

Fri 22 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro | Comments Off on Literary, Trans, and Science Fictional Spaces | Posted by: Gavin

As Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche moves out into the world I’m delighted to have seen a couple of reviews pop up — we’re publishing four books this year so getting review space against those behemoths who publish 12 or 15 books a year/month/day in September is an enjoyable achievement and it will be fun to see what other kind of literary, trans, and science fictional spaces this transtastic little novel will be written up in.

Nina MacLaughlin wrote about the book for the Boston Globe:

“An exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. . . . In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.”

and E.C. Barrett has reviewed it in Strange Horizons and it is a treat to see the book read so closely.

“. . . the second-person telling lets the reader in on a conversation this character is having with herself as she creates within herself the understanding that she needs: a sort of literary camera obscura that offers glimpses of how she pieces her historically disparate selves together.”

---

Elegant, Lyrically Descriptive Prose

Mon 11 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Elegant, Lyrically Descriptive Prose | Posted by: Gavin

I was writing a newsletter to go out tomorrow in celebration of Anya’s novel coming out and I realized I’d never posted that the first trade review for Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling had come in from Lucy Lockley in Booklist:

“Following her debut, Flyaway (2020), Jennings here compiles a collection of 12 of her previously published short stories. Samplings of her elegant fantasies include “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a beautifully detailed tale of a lonely songwriter who sends anonymous compositions to a recently arrived virtuoso, which unfortunately brings her presence to the attention of their dissipated ruler. In ‘Ella and the Flame,’ three sisters and a child spin wondrous tales while awaiting their cruel neighbors’ unjustified vengeance, and in ‘Not to Be Taken,’ the survivor of a murdered family returns home after decades away intent on finding a place for her burgeoning collection of poison bottles. As a riff on ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘A Hedge of Yellow Roses’ has a fully-awake but abandoned lady faire hoping for rescue by the unwitting knight who stumbled into her thorn- encrusted compound. The title story, ‘Kindling,’ links six customer scenarios to a clumsy but intuitive barmaid and her lovelorn admirer. Offer to fans of lyrically descriptive prose.”

---

Love to Open Up a Newsletter/Newspaper

Fri 8 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Anya DeNiro | Comments Off on Love to Open Up a Newsletter/Newspaper | Posted by: Gavin

. . . and see OKPsyche. First this morning in the Boston Globe Nina MacLaughlin included a lovely write up of Anya’s novel and then in this week’s Consortium Communiqué newsletter, there was Sam Edge’s lovely write up!

1) Boston Globe:
In Anya Johanna DeNiro’s slim and shining new novel, “OKPsyche,” published by Small Beer Press, based in Western Mass and run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, is an exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. Old snow takes on the look of “the coat of a cocker spaniel who needs a bath.” And “time compresses into apple seeds.” DeNiro, a trans author based in Minnesota, writes with vulnerability and force, looking at fear and shame, other people’s and the narrator’s own, looking at courage, at trans parenthood and love-finding, at the way reality and the people in it shift and bend, moving forward and backward at once. “Venus is clearly cis (myrtle, rose, apple, poppy). Venus is vengeful, unknowable (dove, sparrow, swan, hare, goat, ram) . . . Venus is able to make it up as she goes along.” In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.

2) Consortium Communiqué, Sam Edge, Epilogue Books of Chapel Hill, NC:
“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters.”

---

« Later Entries — Earlier Entries »