Cloud & Ashes arrives

Tue 19 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, Cons, Greer Gilman, readings | Comments Off on Cloud & Ashes arrives | Posted by: Gavin

This month, or maybe next, depending on which bibliographic source you believe, Greer Gilman’s second novel, Cloud & Ashes, springs fully formed into the world. If you’ve ever had a chance to hear Greer read you’ll know what an entrancing, immersive experience this book is.

Greer has a new website up and has very handily opened up a thread on her live journal answering any and all reader’s questions on Cloud & Ashes:

To begin with, I wanted a Yorkshire dialect, because I so love the Watersons’ voices. It’s changed over the long years, becoming more itself, more Cloudish, but it’s founded on Yorkshire, mostly on the Dales and the North York Moors and coast.

Greer will read from Cloud & Ashes for the first time at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., on Wednesday, May 20, at 7 PM, then at Tuesday May 26 at 7 PM, she will read from Cloud & Ashes at Back Pages Books in Waltham. After that she is one of the Guests of Honor at Readercon 20 (July 9-12) and there may yet be a couple more readings appearing on the schedule.

Somewhat recently, Greer was one of the guests at the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and she sent us a recording of her reading. Greer is introduced by her friend and fellow conspirator, Faye Ringel, and after a 40-minute reading, Sonya Taafe sings “The Scarecrow,” one of the songs Greer incorporates into the novel, then Greer reads a little more. You can download and listen to the (large) MP3 here.

We spent a decent part of last week shipping out most (nothing ever gets finished) of the pre-orders for Cloud & Ashes as well as a goodly number of review copies, so there should be more happy readers and more people reading about it soon.

For more about the book, see our page, Greer‘s, or order your copy now:

Buy | Mail Order | ebook | Fictionwise (TK) | Powells | Indie Bookstore

---

Caruso was framed

Mon 18 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Pop, To Read Pile, YouTube | Comments Off on Caruso was framed | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s an interview with David Suisman just in time for his reading this Thursday at Barnes & Noble (105 Fifth Ave. at 18th St., New York, at 6pm) in NYC:

---

Nice pic of Small Beer books in the NYTimes

Sun 17 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks | Comments Off on Nice pic of Small Beer books in the NYTimes | Posted by: Gavin

The Times has a short piece on Scribd‘s latest maneuvers to become the place to go for reading offline text online and uses a rather lovely image of many of our books to illustrate that at least one publisher has most of their list on the site: check out Small Beer Press on Scribd:

---

Shipping, deals, reading

Fri 15 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW | Comments Off on Shipping, deals, reading | Posted by: Gavin

1. We are still shipping books from our warehouse clearance sale (that went well!).* However, it went so well that we will be shipping stuff out for the next couple of weeks. Today Uline are delivering (come on, come on, deliver already!) many new boxes (since we recycled all we had on hand) which should mean massive amounts go out real soon now.
2. We have just signed a couple of books for next summer: two novels! Where are the short story collections? Ah, well, we have a contract to be worked on for one of those next!
3. We are reading submissions still: but, it we are slow right now. If you query, you may hear from us, you may not. Sorry. We love putting out a zine, but in times of great need (um, printer demands payment for lovely book), reading drops down and col calling bookshops becomes the groovy thing to do.

* Turns out old John Maynard Keynes was right: people will buy stuff in a depression if the price is crazy enough. That’s a direct quote.

---

intavues evrywhea

Thu 14 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, John Crowley, John Kessel, To Read Pile | Comments Off on intavues evrywhea | Posted by: Gavin

Karen Joy Fowler has a great essay about writing Wit’s End on Powell’s blog (Wit’s End is just out in paperback, read now!). She does life in the connected (pre-collapse? c-cough) 21st century very well:

A lot of my novel is focused on privacy, and what that means in the age of the internet. This includes things like the creation of the author persona, the mediated fake intimacy of the net, and a new kind of accessibility of writer to reader.

John Crowley in The Believer (Four Freedoms coming soon):

“IT’S PROBABLY CENTRAL TO THE NATURE OF FICTION ALTOGETHER, TO TRY TO ENTER INTO LOST WORLDS OR ENTER INTO ‘THE LOST’ IN SOME WAY.”

Reasons to get involved with the science-fiction crowd: They speak Latin They respond promptly to blogs Their untamed romantic impulse

John Kessel on the podcastery and the radio:

In the first week of May I’ve had two interviews that are now available for your listening.  In the first, by Douglas Lain, author of LAST WEEK’S APOCALYPSE, we talk about science fiction, politics, utopia, some of my short fiction, and my twenty-year-old novel GOOD NEWS FROM OUTER SPACE). It’s available at Dietsoap, Doug’s quirky website, along with other recent podcasts.

The second interview was on the May 7 edition of “The State of Things” with Frank Stasio on WUNC radio, 91.5 FM in the Research Triangle. We talk about “Pride and Prometheus”, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Here’s the link.

And another thing worth reading on Powell’s, this time an essay by Lisa M. Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness:

Writing about farmers has taught me a lot about how to be a witness. In simplistic terms, it’s because not much actually happens on the farm. Most days in the lives of farmers I know are composed of unremarkable tasks repeated over and over: milking one cow after another, weeding up this row and then down the next. Any writer who expects to swoop in, get a hot story, and then swoop out, will likely come away empty-handed.

I’ve learned that, to write about farmers, one must instead slow down to that rhythm of repetition. The writer must sit in the combine as it chugs along in concentric circles, taking hours to close in on the center of the field, only to pick up, move to the next field, and do it all over again. Being witness means a willingness to pass the same barn or tree or fencepost two dozen times and continually try to learn something new about it.

And Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief) gets an in-depth interview on Bookslut that goes well beyond the usual questions:

Women in this time period were almost always buried in their wedding dresses, because these were the nicest pieces of clothing they owned. I grew up in New England surrounded by old graveyards, and often picnicked and played in them. For this book I went back and spent time there and took many names for characters from the headstones.

---

Ben Rosenbaum: NYC & Booklist (now with picnicking)

Thu 14 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, readings | Comments Off on Ben Rosenbaum: NYC & Booklist (now with picnicking) | Posted by: Gavin

Someone in Lexington, KY, made a great picnicking display at the library, and, maybe in the hope that he would keep his subjects away, included a copy of The Ant King. (Thanks Christopher!)

Ben Rosenbaum’s first collection The Ant King and Other Stories collected many (but not all, that guy is prolific!) of his stories in one place and showed off the range of Ben’s interests and talents. Booklist, following up on their previous starred review, just released a very interesting, nicely different and wide-ranging Top 10 List of SF and Fantasy titles for 2008. If you’re looking for a hardcover, we still have a few in stock but the distributor is out and maybe we will call it out of print later this month!

If you’re in the NYC area, you can catch up with Ben at McNally Jackson later this month. He’s a fast-moving and somewhat hard to pin down (or maybe you can catch him at WisCon?), but he will be reading with Small Beer Press’s own assistant editor Jedediah Berry (The Manual of Detection) on May 27th at 7 PM.

The Ant King and Other Stories. By Benjamin Rosenbaum. 2008. Small Beer, $24 (9781931520522); paperback, $16 (9781931520539).

The most adroit sf and fantasy writer in ages, Rosenbaum can satirize, kick butt on narrative conventions, handle metareality direly and lightly at the same time, and change tone on a dime without shattering continuity. Dazzling, dazzling stories.

---

Fictionwise gets wristleted

Wed 13 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, LCRW | Comments Off on Fictionwise gets wristleted | Posted by: Gavin

Looks like Fictionwise have caught up and added a bunch of our zines. (And some of them are available as DRM-free ebooks here.) Um, here’s a cut and paste including reviews (or, rather, ratings, where are the reviews? where’s the fun?). And, if you like the ebooks, this would be a good time to catch up on back issues as they all seem to be on sale.

1	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 23 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction, poetry, comics, etc. No. 23 features stories from Kirsten Allio, Nick Wolven, Angela Slatter, Mark Rich, Jodi Lynn Villers, and others. Ted Chiang contributes an algorithmic essay on The Problem of the Traveling Salesman (there’s math in it, but it’s fun, we swear). Plus, Abby Denson’s new comic explains how to create cats for fun and profit. Elsewhere within: murderous deer, fey graffiti, your wizardly father gives di… more info>> (Published: 2008) Hugo Award Nominee, Locus Poll Award Nominee Words: 35532 – Reading Time: 101-142 min. Category: Fantasy
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
2	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction, poetry, comics, etc. No. 22 features amazing stories from Carol Emshwiller, Maureen F. McHugh, David J. Schwartz, Charlie Anders, and others. Aunt Gwenda weighs in with some writing tips, and Abby Denson’s comic reveals the secrets of snake-slaying. Will the blind camera find aquatic love? Will the children of Winter undo their mother’s great work? Where has Satan been tending bar these days? All this and more within. (Published: 2008) Hugo Award Nominee, Locus Poll Award Nominee Words: 37657 – Reading Time: 107-150 min. Category: Fantasy	3 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
3	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 21 [MultiFormat] by Gavin Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. No. 21 is the first issue to be made available on Fictionwise and features amazing stories from Alice Sola Kim, Matthew Cheney, Kirstin Allio, Brian Conn, Benjamin Parzybok, Carol Emshwiller, and others. Of course the real reason to read it is for Dear Aunt Gwenda’s advice column (or perhaps Abby Denson’s comic?) wherein you too can learn the secrets of the universe. (Published: 2007) Hugo Award Nominee Words: 41372 – Reading Time: 118-165 min. Category: Fantasy	4 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
4	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 15 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. Issue No. 15 features a lady (Churchill, we presume) riding a tiger, and includes fabulous stories by Karen Russell, Sarah Micklem, Bruce McAllister, John Trey, Benjamin Rosenbaum & Paul Melko, Michael Northrop, Ellen M. Rhudy, Sarah Monette, Geoffrey Goodwin, Richard Parks, Stepan Chapman, Mark Rich, Amy Sisson, and Neal Chandler. (Published: 2005) Words: 39167 – Reading Time: 111-156 min. Category: Fantasy
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
5	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. No. 16 features fiction, poetry and suchlike from the wonderful Jenny Ashley, Gwenda Bond, Chris Fox, Scott Geiger, Eric Gregory, Michaela Kahn, John Kessel, Matthew Kirby, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yoon Ha Lee, Sandra Lindow, David Lunde, Christina Manucy, Kat Meads, Sean Melican, Eric Schaller, and Kara Spindler (Published: 2005) Words: 40539 – Reading Time: 115-162 min. Category: Fantasy
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
6	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 18 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. Issue No. 18 features a house monster. Black & white with handtinted woodblock cuts by famous and unknown artists. Printed on a 12th century Chinese letterpress on sheets of kelp-paper handmade by centaurs and sprites. Unattractively bound in the skins of dead animals. Alternately: attractively bound in more handmade paper, these sheets fairly traded from The Mysterions: Those Who Live at the Center of the Ea… more info>> (Published: 2006) Words: 39363 – Reading Time: 112-157 min. Category: Fantasy
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
7	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 19 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. No. 19, our 10-year anniversary issue, has wrestlers on the cover and features such wonderful authors as Ray Vukcevich, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Dennis Nau, Nancy Jane Moore, Cara Spindler & David Erik Nelson, Kara Kellar Bell, Andrew Fort, Anna Tambour, and Carol Emshwiller. (Published: 2006) Hugo Award Nominee Words: 35506 – Reading Time: 101-142 min. Category: Fantasy
	Regular Club List Price: $5.00 $4.25 You Pay: $3.00 $2.55 You Save: 40% 49%
8	Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 20 [MultiFormat] by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link		Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is a twice-yearly zine of eclectic fiction and so on. No. 20, the notorious “robot” issue, includes amazing stories by Marly Youmans, Anil Menon, Edward McEneely, Steven Bratman, Michael Hartford, M. Brock Moorer, Laura Evans, Amelia Beamer, Meghan McCarron, Jon Hansen, and Karen Joy Fowler. There is also some very fine poetry from Neile Graham, Rose Black, and David Blair, and the always endearing Dear Aunt Gwenda. And robots! (Published: 2007) Hugo Award Nominee Words: 39850 – Reading Time: 113-159 min. Category: Fantasy

---

Animaux de pierre

Tue 12 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Comments Off on Animaux de pierre | Posted by: Gavin

Looks like Kelly’s story “Stone Animals” is a nominee for le Prix Imaginales in the Nouvelle category, yay!

In other news, we just received a copy of the Recorded Books audio version of Pretty Monsters and it is tres jolie. It can be downloaded from various sites or gotten from your library: encourage them to stock it on CD, or Playaway—a fave version of some people we know who love to go hiking and listen to books.

---

Suisman in the WSJ

Tue 12 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., To Read Pile | Comments Off on Suisman in the WSJ | Posted by: Gavin

Holy crap, look at the size of that . . . review! The Wall Street Journal spends some time reading Selling Sounds, David Suisman‘s first book. You might know him from his old radio show on WFMU, or, you might not know him! Selling Sounds is about to come out and David’s got a reading in NYC in a week or two (ok, details: Thursday, May 21, 6 PM, Barnes & Noble, 105 Fifth Ave. @ 18th Street) where you too can be wowed.

We’ll have a little something from David in a week or so. In the meantime, maestro!

Music and Money

From Tin Pan Alley to RCA Victor: shaping musical taste, profiting from it.

In 1888, the music publisher M. Witmark & Sons opened an office near Union Square in New York, not long after the fledgling company had enjoyed success selling sheet music for a song penned by one of the Witmark boys, “President Cleveland’s Wedding March.” Witmark would go on to play a major role in the commodification of music from the late 19th century to the Depression — the subject of David Suisman’s “Selling Sounds.” As the author notes in an epilogue, the Witmark building was just a few doors away from a contemporary bastion of what the commercialization of music wrought: a Virgin Megastore. Now, in an epilogue to his epilogue, Virgin’s music emporium will soon become a thing of the past: Like so many other retail music stores of late, it has announced that it is going out of business. The story of “Selling Sounds,” then, is especially timely.

---

Worldcon memberships for sale

Mon 11 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons | Comments Off on Worldcon memberships for sale | Posted by: Gavin

For sale: 2 adult memberships for Worldcon 67 in Montreal this summer (Aug. 6-10) for sale. Currently memberships cost US$195, these are $175 each (which is what we paid for them a couple of months ago). Email info@lcrw.net and we’ll send them your way.

Edited to add: Sold! Thanks internets.

---

Man with good taste posts about

Mon 11 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller | Comments Off on Man with good taste posts about | Posted by: Gavin

Carol Emshwiller. Yeah!

Short Story Month – Guest Post – Richard Grayson

I’d like to put in a good word for Carol Emshwiller’s wonderful short stories.  Her 1974 collection, Joy in Our Cause, published by Harper & Row, was one that influenced me a great deal.  I guess the stories could be classified as experimental, but they are all playful as well as profound.

---

Happy author

Tue 5 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Greer Gilman | Comments Off on Happy author | Posted by: Gavin

Rediscovered this great old pic of Greer Gilman and all the other iwnners of the World Fantasy Award in 2004 while googling something about Cloud & Ashes:

---

Lunch find

Tue 5 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW | Comments Off on Lunch find | Posted by: Gavin

Best lunchtime LCRW slush-reading find: in the envelope with the story, a rejection from The Literary Review. Is this person submitting in reverse alphabetical order>=?

---

Freecycle

Mon 4 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Northampton & environs | Comments Off on Freecycle | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, we just successfully freecycled our old workhorse (which was the name of it in the end) Powerbook Mac to a guy who’s going to take it apart and maybe repair it for a computer repair class: excellent!

This press was basically run off that laptop from sometime in 2001 to sometime in 2006. It was bought when our place in Brooklyn was robbed (on July 4th weekend, how patriotic!) and it turned out rental insurance was one of the best ideas we’d ever had. At some point we put in a new harddrive, more than doubling its capacity to a mind-boggling 20GB. Ha. Then in 2006 or so it started slowing down and we stripped a lot of stuff off it and it was replaced with a MacBook. For a while it worked as a mini-server (and an AirTunes repository) then, one day, silence. We toasted it then, we toast it again. (Maybe all that toasting was why it stopped working? Is heat bad for laptops? How about peanut butter)

And now off it goes to a new and more scattered place: thanks old boy, good luck in your next life(/lives)!

---

New Scottish Poet Laureate

Mon 4 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., poetry, the world | Comments Off on New Scottish Poet Laureate | Posted by: Gavin

Lovely news from the UK about the new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, whose poetry we’ve enjoyed in the last couple of years. If you want to try her out, start with Feminine Gospels or The World’s Wife.

Duffy, the first woman and—since she was born in Glasgow and moved with her family to England when she was 5—the first Scot to get tapped for the job obviously knows how government works and is on top of the most important aspect of the job:

The job also comes with a “butt of sack” – traditionally a type of wine, which nowadays translates into around 600 bottles of sherry.

Duffy said: “Andrew (Motion) hasn’t had his yet so I’ve asked for mine up front.”

Should be more fun to read her occasional poetry than the poor, blocked Mr. Motion’s.

---

Get your summer read on

Mon 4 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok, bookshops, Kelly Link, the world, To Read Pile | Comments Off on Get your summer read on | Posted by: Gavin

Awesome news: Couch is on the Spring/Summer 2009 Indie Next List for Reading Groups. We’ll have a reading guide for Couch up within the next few weeks and if anyone wants to contribute, you know what to do. We haven’t seen the paper version of the list yet, but we like that Couch is in #9—and that the recommendation comes from Florida, yeah! (That’s a long way for a Portland-based couch to travel….)

Other recs include a couple of Kelly’s fave books, Molly Gloss’s bestseller The Hearts of Horses and Tana French’s In the Woods, and, in the YA guide, Kelly’s collection!

9. Couch by Benjamin Parzybok
“Couch follows the quirky journey of Thom, Erik, and Tree as they venture into the unknown at the behest of a magical, orange couch, which has its own plan for their previously boring lives. Parzybok’s colorful characters, striking humor, and eccentric magical realism offer up an adventuresome read.” –Christian Crider, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
(Mariner Books, $13.95,  / 0547085753)
“Molly Gloss tells a heartwarming story of a young woman who earns her way as a ‘horse gentler’ on the eastern Oregon frontier during the early 1900s.” –Sandra Palmer, Wy’east Book Shoppe & Art Gallery, Welches, OR

In the Woods: A Novel by Tana French
“This is a contemporary murder mystery set in Ireland with just the right hint of spookiness and great layers of psychological suspense, as a pair of detectives seek to solve the murder of a young girl in an ancient stand of woods. The current murder is foreshadowed by a crime against three young children many years ago that may hold a key to the new mystery.” –Sandra Palmer, Wy’east Book Shoppe & Art Gallery, Welches, OR

And here are some suggestions of great titles for reading groups of younger readers…

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

Chains by Laurie Halse AndersonThe Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Pretty Monsters: Stories by Kelly Link, Shaun Tan (illus.)

---

Unicorns

Sat 2 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, To Read Pile | Comments Off on Unicorns | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly wanted to note that while Gavin is off not shipping and reading Libba Bray’s Going Bovine she has been busy re-reading for the nth time P. C. Hodgell’s The God Stalker Chronicles (two separate novels, God Stalk and its sequel Dark of the Moon) and Seeker’s Bane (two separate novels,  Seekers Mask and its sequel To Ride a Rathorn) which Baen books recently reprinted. For which: yay and thanks! And, also, there must be more in this series, right?

A few of Kelly’s favorite books are here and occasionally she adds books to LibraryThing (but the widget links to Amazon, meh).

Armor-plated unicorns!

---

Going Bovine

Thu 30 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., To Read Pile | Comments Off on Going Bovine | Posted by: Gavin

I know I should be shipping hundreds and hundreds of books out (and yay for that!) but really what I am doing is wishing I were sitting reading Libba Bray’s Going Bovine. Started it last night and it is weird and excellent. Stupid work.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy!

---

Award Season: Nebulas

Tue 28 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, John Kessel | Comments Off on Award Season: Nebulas | Posted by: Gavin

The Nebula Awards were given out this weekend at the LA Times Book Festival and it’s a great slate of winners, including many Small Beer authors and friends including Kate Wilhelm who received one of the inaugural Solstice Awards, John Kessel, whose story “Pride and Prometheus” is getting nominated for every award there is and which received the award for Novelette, and Ursula K. Le Guin, who received the Best Novel for Powers. (Powers is a really good book, but Voices, the middle of the three Western Shore novels, is fantastic.)

Carrying on from looking at the gender breakdown of the Tiptree list: who are they, where do they come from?

Winners: 1 man; 4 women
Nominees*: 16 women; 14 men

* includes Norton Award but not script.

And here’s the reading list:

• Best Novel: Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Best Novelette: “Pride or Prometheus” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence)
• Andre Norton Award: Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) by Ysabeau Wilce

---

Arlen Specter

Tue 28 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on Arlen Specter | Posted by: Gavin

This just popped up on the NY Times:

Specter To Switch Parties

which means that the government will actually get the chance to govern without being blocked for petty party reasons. Which is awesome! Congratulations Mr. Specter, we very much applaud your decision!

---

Charge me up!

Tue 28 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., cars, the world | Comments Off on Charge me up! | Posted by: Gavin

Ganked wholesale from Autobloggreen—which is usually all about groovy new cars we can’t get here in the old-old USA—and it may be the perfect storm of blogginess for Gavin: electric cars, beer, and solar power, ack! Must move Small Beer Press to Chico, CA!

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Green Daily, USA

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. goes electric with charging stations

by Jeremy Korzeniewski on Apr 27th 2009 at 7:56AM

A few months back, we heard about Sierra Nevada Brewing Company’s plans to begin using waste from its beer brewing process to make ethanol. That’s great, but there’s apparently more greening going on at the company’s brewery in Chico, CA. The first two ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations from Coulomb Technologies have been installed at the plant and will be used by employees and customers that happen to own electric cars.

Anyone that carries a subscription to Coulomb’s ChargePoint Network will be able to use their Smart Card to charge their electric vehicles at any charging station in the world. That’s not the beer maker’s only new commitment to being eco-friendly – this weekend also marked the dedication of Sierra Nevada’s new 1.5 MW AC solar system. Who knew beer could be so green? Click past the break for the full press release.

[Source: Sierra Nevada Brewing Company]

---

Jimmy Carter for President

Tue 28 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Comments Off on Jimmy Carter for President | Posted by: Gavin

I don’t like guns. 30,000 people are killed every year with guns in the USA. That’s only 0.01% of the population but it’s thousands more than would be killed if guns were illegal. It’s really, really hard to carry out a massacre at your local school without guns. How is it that we even have the recognizable catchphrase “school shooting”? Why doesn’t that phrase make the NRA spin in their spinning suits?

However you or I feel about owning guns, former President and proud gun owner Jimmy Carter calls it on assault weapons:

I have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes. I use them carefully, for hunting game from our family woods and fields, and occasionally for hunting with my family and friends in other places….

But none of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives. That’s why the White House and Congress must not give up on trying to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, even if it may be politically difficult.

Please write to your representative to support the ban on assault weapons.

---

Award Season: Tiptrees

Mon 27 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, John Kessel | Comments Off on Award Season: Tiptrees | Posted by: Gavin

I’m very happy to see that the Tiptree winners and honor list have been announced. I was the chair of the jury this year and we very much enjoyed reading the recommended work. As with my experience on the World Fantasy Award jury, I can highly recommend the reading list and hasten to point out that an appearance there is a rare and wonderful honor. I can’t wait to see the art that each of the winner’s will receive (and hear about the song…). I recused myself from discussions of any Small Beer Press or Kelly’s stories so it is great to see John Kessel’s great story, “Pride and Prometheus,” made it onto the list anyway.

It never struck me to do this while the jury were working but just now I looked at the winners and honor list in the way I normally look at winners: who are they, where do they come from?

Winners: 1 man (UK); 1 woman (USA)
Honor List: 7 women (4 USA, 2 Australia, 1 UK); 5 men (4 USA, 1 Sweden)

Here’s the whole list: how many have you read?

2008 Tiptree Award Winners Announced!

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council is pleased to announce that the 2008 Tiptree Award has two winners: Patrick Ness’s young adult novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker 2008) and Nisi Shawl’s short story collection, Filter House (Aqueduct Press, 2008). Read more

---

Amherst and why is this brilliant?

Fri 24 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., YouTube | Comments Off on Amherst and why is this brilliant? | Posted by: Gavin

We are at the Juniper Fest at UMass Amherst tomorrow: 6 PM until late, Saturday 12 midday (that’s a decent hour) until later. Eric Lorberer, Lucy Corwin, and all sorts of good people will be there. (And Gavin will disappear off to Boston for a panel at MIT partway through the PM, oh well.)

Embedding is disabled by request (boo!) but you have to watch this and then tell us just why it it so brilliant and funny? (It absolutely is!)

---

At the printer

Thu 23 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Greer Gilman | Comments Off on At the printer | Posted by: Gavin

We just got a note that Greer Gilman’s (awesome) second novel Cloud & Ashes will ship soon from the printer, Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. That is one Michigan company who do great work and we doubt they need any bailout. Also, we’re very happy to be working with an employee-owed company. So, Cloud & Ashes will  be in stores within a couple of weeks. If you’d like yours faster, order it here.

You can see the amazing front cover by Australian artist Kathleen Jennings at Powell’s or on Indiebound, what you can’t see is the full wraparound effect of it which is pretty pretty. Here’s a little note from the artist abut it.

Thanks again to those readers who pre-ordered the book—you can find their names in the old-fashioned subscription list on the inside of the dustjacket.

“Sublimely lyrical Jacobeanesque dialect . . . readers who enjoy symbolism and allusion will cherish Gilman’s use of diverse folkloric elements to create an unforgettable realm and ideology.”—Publishers Weekly

---

Biking in Edinburgh

Wed 22 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on Biking in Edinburgh | Posted by: Gavin

This is not the way we bike, but it’s a fun thing to watch this guy do some “huge riding” around Edinburgh. Fast forward to about the minute mark (and YMMV with the soundtrack) to get to the livelier part:

---

Are you uncomfortable?

Wed 22 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW | Comments Off on Are you uncomfortable? | Posted by: Gavin

Gustave Bondoni gets The Best of LCRW at SF Reader:

This is not a book which will fall into most readers’ comfort zones. The stories, poetry and even the movie reviews attempt to make you think, as opposed to giving you an open and shut storyline. You will not be satisfied with the endings of these stories. And you are not meant to be. You are meant to challenge your assumptions.

---

Call for artists

Tue 21 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Interstitial Arts | Comments Off on Call for artists | Posted by: Gavin

From the Interstitial Arts Foundation who are going to have a lot of fun with their next anthology before, during, and after it comes out. These are the people, after all, who’re interested in skipping and slipping along between the cracks, so read on if you like the weird mixed with the weird:

——–

Dear lovers of Interstital Arts,

We are proud to announce the publication of our second volume of Interfictions, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak.

To celebrate the release of this unique anthology we are delighted to present our second annual Interfictions auction. Like all interstitial arts, this auction is more than the sum of its parts. Artists participating in this year’s auction may draw their inspiration from the first anthology or will be allowed to have first look at a story from the new book. This means that the 2009 auction is in the unique position of being an artistic fan celebration for an anthology that does not yet technically exist. We invite you to add your voice to this synthesis of words and imagination.

The first auction featured jewelry artists from across the country participating in a collaboration across mediums. The artists’ imaginations, triggered by words and images, produced over a dozen magnificent pieces of art. This year we’re expanding the focus beyond jewelry to music and wearable/portable art in any medium.

From April 20 to September 20, 2009 the Interstitial Arts Foundation invites artists and musicians of all genres and mediums (interstitial or not) to participate in the Interfictions 2 auction.

How It Works:

• On the Call to Artists page you will find short excerpts from the stories in Interfictions 2. As you click through them, we hope that at least one will immediately call to you. Choose a story you’d like to read in full, then fill out the form at the bottom of that page. Alternately, artists may also choose to submit work based on the first Interfictions volume, available in bookstores.
• Within 7 days we will send you a confirmation of receipt and, barring any questions we may have, you will receive the story you chose in email as a PDF. Then read, enjoy, and be inspired!
• Completed pieces are due by September 20. The auction begins in November!

To read the excerpts and express your interest, please click here.

Have questions? Check out the FAQ. Still have questions? Email us here:

---

« Later Entries — Earlier Entries »