Kij’s book on BookBrowse

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

The Privilege of the Happy Ending coverBookBrowse’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., , , | 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., , , | 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., , , | 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., , , , | 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., , | 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., | Comments Off on New Book Day! | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeWhen 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., , , , | 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).

Review in the local paper! Titled "Fantasy fiction from Small Beer Press: The Privilege of the Happy Ending By Kij Johnson Small Beer Press Fantasy writer Kij Johnson has a long list of awards and award nominations to her name, from Nebula and Hugo Awards — two of the premiere prizes for fantasy and science fiction writing — to World Fantasy Awards. She and her publisher also have a good sense of humor: Her newest collection of work, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending,” includes the subtitle “Small, Medium & Large Stories.” (Many of the pieces have previously been published separately.) Published by Small Beer Press of Easthampton, “Privilege” indeed offers work of varying length, from vignettes of just a few pages to a novella-length tale, “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” which won a World Fantasy Award; NPR voted it one of the best books of 2016.

Review of OKPsyche in our local paper, yay! The unnamed narrator of “OKPsyche,” a dreamlike, speculative novel by Anya Johanna DeNiro, lives in or around Minneapolis in a not-too-distant future in which climate change and economic inequality have brought increasing ugliness and violence to the country. “The street is mostly empty except for surplus-green tents in the greenway and armed guards in front of the luxury towers. The creative class needs tactical teams to protect them from people who are not them.” But the heart of this short novel, published by Small Beer Press, is about the narrator’s journey as a trans woman, someone who’s trying to come to terms with the pain of her closeted past even as she struggles to find her way in a fragile, uncertain present. Part of that present is the fallout from the narrator’s transition: Her ex-wife and 11-year-old son, Aaron, now live in another Midwestern state, and the narrator is desperate to reconnect with Aaron...


H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop

Tue 17 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 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., | 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., , , , | 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., , , | 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., | Comments Off on A Treat for Readers | Posted by: Gavin

Kindling cover - click to view full sizeOur 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., | Comments Off on Literary, Trans, and Science Fictional Spaces | Posted by: Gavin

Anya's picture of the book from BlueskyAs 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

Kindling coverI 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., | 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.”


One Week to OKPsyche

Thu 7 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on One Week to OKPsyche | Posted by: Gavin

Come out Twin Cities — or, order your signed/personalized copy from Moon Palace:

One week tonight: Anya Johanna DeNiro launches her new novel, OKPsyche

9/14/23 6 p.m.

Moon Palace Books (FB)
3032 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55406


Old House of Fear

Wed 6 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Old House of Fear | Posted by: Gavin

Yesterday was a wash. After I put together breakfast for me and the kid, I had a health crash. It wasn’t hospital level, happily, rather one where, lying on the couch as per usual, I wanted needed to lie down. I was lying down but I need to lie down more. I had the smallest pillow under my head and it was a too much to bear.

In the morning my ambitions for the day had included a little light laptop work, making lunch, maybe even dinner, playing a video game, doing some dishes, skimming Bluesky, taking the dog for a short night walk. So all of those things fell to Kelly as I felt the squeeze of the air above me crush me down further. ~15 lbs of air above me was too heavy but there was nowhere to go.

The day improved slowly. I did as close to nothing as I could. That was easy during the first part where staring at the ceiling took everything I had. As time went by and I slowly (metaphorically) crawled back to my new norm, I realized I’d achieved the zen state of no thoughts. Zen-like, this made me neither happy nor unhappy.

Today I’m again on the couch, no different from the last eighteen months and my plans today are on the simpler end.

I’m attributing yesterday’s crash to Post-Exertional Malaise, a term I did not know before December 2021. On Sunday and Monday we had friends visit. They all tested — for which I am very grateful — and I did very little. While I was never a great host, now I am quite terrible. Someone else — Kelly — has to take care of welcomes and drinks and snacks and comfort and conversation and so on. Instead I sat half-slumped trying to be as near horizontal as was polite (ha, silly me, just give up and lie down) and to use as little energy as possible even as I was still delighted to see people (and dogs!). I did very little and removed myself from company after a little while and apparently it was all still too much.

So: no events, no conferences, no parties, no book fairs, no nothing that is just even the littlest bit interesting for a while yet more for me.

Hilariously I’d been meant to see my doctor last week. They cancelled it. I got a new last minute appointment for this Friday. Yesterday they called: and cancelled it. Maybe they’ll call me to re-arrange. I don’t have the energy.

———

List of 3 Russell Kirk booksWhat I’d wanted to write about this past weekend — instead of about this mushy piece of flesh attempting to pass itself off as a body — was a book I’d been reading: Russell Kirk’s Old House of Fear.

My mother died two years ago and in the run up to her anniversary I decided to read one of the books she’d included in a late-in-life reading journal. My mother loved books as much as anyone I know, although our tastes did not particularly align. However the books she recommended to me, siblings, extended friends, and family, were quite often a good fit. I also loved that she did not care one whit about condition or edition. A rare, signed first edition hardcover was the same book to her as an ex-library charity shop find. The story mattered, the particular book did not.

I’ve read and enjoyed all the books she’d recommended to me over the years and what fascinated me about these Russell Kirk books was their uncanny nature. She’d told me she loved Dennis Wheatley when she was young but her recent favorites included Dorothy Dunnett and Anthony Trollope — she was delighted to have found and read every book Trollope published. Kirk sounds like someone my mother would have argued with — she was religious but still a humanist. Now that I’ve read Old House of Fear, however, I can see why she had listed it. Or, without being able to ask, I think I can.

Old House of FearThe novel is set and was written in 1960 and published in 1961 and begins along the same lines as the film Local Hero: an American employee of a large firm is sent to Scotland to try and buy some land, here an island off the north coast. The novel quickly moves into John Buchan territory, with no one quite as they seem and strange events and behaviors, and then there are the stories within the story. Fair warning to readers, it is a novel of its time and while it doesn’t have some of the worst markers of the time the attitudes are sometimes rank.

If you read this edition, I definitely recommend leaving the introduction until you’ve finished the book — the writer says there are some great covers on the pulp editions. And if possible, read the book late at night. Even better if the wind is high and there are branches scraping at the window and you’re not quite sure there are any branches near enough the window to make that noise.

So that’s more writing than I meant to do and I’m stopping here before writing more about the book. Do tell me if you’ve read it or recommend more Kirk. I haven’t looked for the other 2 on my mother’s list.

Now it’s time for me to put my computer aside and take a break. We have a book out next week, so maybe I can do some last minute work on that. Maybe not. I am definitely not able to do as much work, Small Beer or otherwise, as in the past. So any help spreading the word about these new books is always appreciated.


New Flier

Fri 1 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on New Flier | Posted by: Gavin

Admin for me: added our new flier to the catalogs page where anyone who ever wants can download more Small Beer fliers than anyone would ever need.


Give it a look!

Wed 30 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Give it a look! | Posted by: Gavin

I was enjoying an author interview in Shelf Awareness this rainy morning when I was brought up short to see SL Huang is an evangelist for Kalpa Imperial. Now that is a way to wake up!

Shelf Awareness: Book you’re an evangelist for:

SL Huang: Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire that Never Was is one of the books I’m constantly hyping that I feel like so much of SFF has slept on! It’s by Argentinian author Angélica Gorodischer, and the translation from Spanish was done by Ursula K. Le Guin. And it is stunning.

It also exemplifies a lot of unusual things, craft-wise, that are highly unusual elsewhere: a fantasy world with no magic, a book made up of interconnected short stories, a book that takes place over many generations and many thousands of years. Give it a look!


Second Starred Review

Mon 28 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Second Starred Review | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeKij Johnson just put a line through an item on her bucket list: The Privilege of the Happy Ending has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews — great news, especially following the first starred review the book received from Publishers Weekly.

After the great popularity of At the Mouth of the River of Bees, we’re changing things up a bit and splitting the run on this book so that we will have some hardcovers available.

Here’s an excerpt from the review or read the whole thing on Kirkus’s site.

★ “While the entries are uniformly excellent in pacing and prose, the standouts may be the collection’s opener and closer. ‘Tool-Using Mimics’ spins out a half-dozen explanations for a vintage photo of a young girl with tentacles that lead to piercing questions about how much we can know about the past, other species, and each other. The titular novella, which also won a World Fantasy Award, is a compelling fairy tale about a little orphan girl and her talking hen that poignantly interrogates the ways we determine which stories take center stage. A strange and glimmering jewel for any genre fiction collection.”


Anya, Prairie Lights, 10/27

Fri 25 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Comments Off on Anya, Prairie Lights, 10/27 | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeWe’ve just confirmed another event for Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche this one in October at the justifiably famed and lovely Prairie Lights in Iowa City.

How great is the reading series? Tonight’s reading is kind of a stunner: National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley reading from his new short story collection, Witness, and then in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado. Check out the rest here.

More details to come as we get closer but for now set your landyacht’s autodrive calendar to Iowa City for 7 p.m., October 27th, and plan on arriving in time to browse those shelves.


SBP on Audio

Mon 21 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on SBP on Audio | Posted by: Gavin

I had fun finding Small Beer audiobooks for this new list I put together for Book Moon on LibroFM — get 2 audiobook credits for US$15 with your first month of membership . . .

There are a few audiobooks only available on Am*zon as I sold half a dozen books to them 10 years ago. One of them has earned out, so it was a good deal for the authors!, but meh to the limited availability.

 


Slowly, Slowly

Thu 17 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Slowly, Slowly | Posted by: Gavin

Not even a cover yet, but I’m moving LCRW 47 slowly along the road to publication. Phew.


Starred Booklist Review

Mon 14 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Starred Booklist Review | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeAnya Johanna DeNiro’s forthcoming OKPsyche is a short but powerful novel that just garnered a starred review from Booklist:

“DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story about what it means to try and find a place for yourself in the midst of a hurricane of climate disaster, violence, and fear. It’s a story told through weird, ghostly, haunting fantasy. Fans of enigmatic speculative fiction like Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022), will enjoy this tale of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.”

Booklist Review of the Day button


A Butner, A Wexler, 2 LCRWs

Mon 14 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on A Butner, A Wexler, 2 LCRWs | Posted by: Gavin

I should have noted Kelly and I are on the World Fantasy Award ballot under “special award – professional.” Since this is for 2022, it can be taken that the jurors very much enjoyed Richard Butner’s collection The Adventurists and Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel The Silverberg Business, and maybe also the paperback reprint of John Crowley’s And Go Like This and perhaps, too, LCRW 45 & 46. For the curious, you can read an excerpt from The Silverberg Business on Lithub and Butner’s nearish title story “Adventure” on The Deadlands. Congratulations to all the finalists!

Sorry to say we won’t be at the convention, especially irritating to me as Kij Johnson is one of the guests of honor — along with Jonathan Strahan and Tananarive Due, ach — and her new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, will be coming out that week. Oh well! I’ll send along books for the book bag and try my best to ensure there will be copies there.

 


Boundary-Pushing Wow

Fri 4 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Boundary-Pushing Wow | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeWe just got the proofs from the printer for Kij Johnson’s forthcoming second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories. We’re going to do a short hardcover run along with the regular trade paper edition, so it was fun to design a jacket extending out from Sophia Uceda’s lovely cover art. Proofs are always a two-edged sword though as I hope not to find any errors as that would slow up production even as at the same time I hope I do find any remaining errors as it would be better to find them now rather than opening up the finished book and finding them. So, fingers crossed: no errors!

And, good news came in from Publishers Weekly — which I immediately shared with our distributor and international rights agents — the first trade review has come in and it’s a star:

The devastating title tale follows another young girl and her cherished talking hen as they barely escape a swarm of monsters who devour anything with flesh. Johnson’s keen eye for the mysteries of human nature shines as her characters experience love, loss, growth, and betrayal, all made delightfully strange. These boundary-pushing, magic-infused tales are sure to wow.

Read the whole review here.


Privilege Hardcover

Tue 25 Jul 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Privilege Hardcover | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeWhile working on Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending we bought a collection of vintage sf&f for Book Moon — here are a few, there are more pictures up there, too. We don’t buy much in the way of used books there anymore, which is a shame as I love them, but Easthampton really wanted a new bookshop which is a different kind of fun.

Anyway, while cleaning and pricing some of the old hardcovers I realized it would be fun to do a short hardcover run of Kij’s book along with the trade paperback so we are adding a small hardcover edition and we got to design a new jacket for the hardcover. When I took it to our distributor they liked the idea but pushed for a higher price for the hardcover to differentiate the books so the hardcover will be $34 and the trade paper $18. I am still always surprised by how expensive it is to make a Smyth sewn hardcover using 30% recycled paper so that is reflected in the price. The interiors of the hardcover, paperback, and ebooks are the same so the hardcovers are going to be for those who read their books very hard and need a hardcover to stand up to the force of that. Or maybe libraries and those who like a pretty hardcover. The paperback is 5.5″ x 8.5″ as many — or maybe most? — of our books are as I find that size very readable.

The hardcover should be out at the same time as the paperback, October 24, and Kij will be at World Fantasy and some more places when it comes out.

 


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