Massachusetts peoples

Tue 16 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on Massachusetts peoples | Posted by: Gavin

It’ primary day: Go vote!

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The Serial Garden . . . on film

Tue 16 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Joan Aiken, YouTube | Comments Off on The Serial Garden . . . on film | Posted by: Gavin

Some mornings are just that bit crappy so to wake up and watch this was indeed cheering. These kids, they are having the fun:

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Gidney, Zombie Plans, Cringing, Nothing

Sat 13 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Comments Off on Gidney, Zombie Plans, Cringing, Nothing | Posted by: Gavin

Go get Craig Gidney’s new collection Sea, Swallow Me, and Other Stories—and help pay the man’s medical fees! (What kind of country accepts 10-15% of its citizens as a permanently uninsured underclass? This one. Vote for Obama and a new national health system.)

This is a collection we were gong to buy anyway and this offer from publisher Steve Berman was so irresistible that a check was dropped in the mail today:

Other good things on the web: Kelly’s story “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” is now online as part of John Joseph Adams’s huge new anthology The Living Dead. Coincedentally there was a nice review of Magic for Beginners over at The Fix. And Strange Horizons recently ran Richard Butner’s weird and lovely(?) story “The Secret Identity.”

Did anyone watch the first episode of “Fringe” without spending a lot of time cringing? So many weird and bad things. Best and most hopeful interpretation is that it was a prequel tacked onto the show and that the actual show will be better. Seems over optimistic.

However, to make up for that, the second volume of M.T. Anderson’s second Octavian Nothing is absolutely fantastic.

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Sunday in Brooklyn

Fri 12 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Comments Off on Sunday in Brooklyn | Posted by: Gavin

We’ll be at the Brooklyn Book Fair on Sunday from 10-6. 10 AM seems a little early, but coming somewhat early in the day may be advisable as we will be selling all books for same price: $10! (We’re not going to bring the hardcover editions of The Ant King or The Baum Plan, but we’ll have plenty of the paperbacks.) That includes Geoff Ryman’s The King’s Last Song and pretty much everything we have in print — even The Best of LCRW and the Harcourt paperback of Magic for Beginners. For big spenders we will have (recycled) canvas bags. For really big spenders, Small Beer Press is available!

While Kelly’s new book won’t be out, we will have tiny thing to keep people going: buttons (yes, that flock there) featuring four of Shaun Tan‘s interior illustrations for the book as well as “Pretty Monster” temporary tattoos.

Kelly and Holly Black have also produced their first collaboration: a 4-letter tattoo. Pick yours up at the fair!

Anyone dressed as a zombie gets a free button. Anyone dressed gets a free button. Anyone ina  dressing gown gets two. Anyone undressed gets appluaded.

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I.D. the thing

Thu 11 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Comments Off on I.D. the thing | Posted by: Gavin

. . . and we’ll send you an advance copy of Kelly’s new collection, Pretty Monsters:

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Music to work late to

Thu 11 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Pop | Comments Off on Music to work late to | Posted by: Gavin

Should you find yourself working late some night soon, whether you’re operating a piece of heavy machinery, such as a button-maker, or doing some final work on a book, either way you’ll find that Thalia Zedek‘s new CD Liars and Prayers works very well to help drown out the noise of the band a few down the hall or to incite an appropriately deep trance to work in.

Zedek sounds a bit like Leonard Cohen, a bit wall of sound, a bit pub band: it’s definitely a lively and fascinating mix. And: timely or not, but here is a smart woman talking about politics. There are a couple of tracks on her myspace page: go listen.

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Bloomsbury Academic

Wed 10 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Creative Commons, Publishing | Comments Off on Bloomsbury Academic | Posted by: Gavin

Bloomsbury’s recent announcement about their new Creative Commons-licensed line provides a fascinating point of entry into the possible future of niche-interest books:

Bloomsbury Academic will be using a radically new model. All titles will be made available free of charge online, with free downloads, for non-commercial purposes, immediately upon publication, using Creative Commons licences. The works will also be sold as books, using latest short-run technologies or Print on Demand (POD).

Until we all have Instabook printers on our desktops (just as photo printing became dispersed onto desktops instead of centralized), this seems like a great model: insure the work is available to as wide an audience (online, libraries, etc.) as possible and also provide the option of buying the physical text.

For the moment, people do a ton of reading online (hello NY Times, Blogistan, etc.) so our distribution model is still mostly the same as publishing last century: make a pretty book and send it out there to be read and enjoyed. Since 99% (ok 99 point something-or-other) of our sales are physical, paper books, this is what we’re sticking to. (And, it’s great fun working with authors and artists to make books.)

Looking ahead (or at least sideways) quite a few of our books are available as ebooks and some are out there as free CC-licensed texts that can be played with, shared, sent on, etc., and maybe provoke the reader to look up those authors in the future.

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Publication day

Tue 9 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Geoff Ryman | Comments Off on Publication day | Posted by: Gavin

Geoff Ryman’s The King’s Last Song comes out today: send us pictures when you see it in the shops!

Or you can buy the ebook right now at Fictionwise—and there’s a 15% discount this week—or from us.

You could get carried away: Laura’s Book Group from Edinburgh, who just won the 2008 Penguin/Orange Broadband Readers’ Group Prize, dined on deep fried crickets while reading it. (If you do that, definitely send us pictures!) 

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*** Pretty Monsters

Mon 8 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Comments Off on *** Pretty Monsters | Posted by: Gavin

Pretty Monsters has pulled in a couple of starred reviews! Online from Kirkus in the Sept. 15th edition:

Although some of Link’s work appears in other YA and adult short-story anthologies, this is her first collection wholly aimed at a young-adult audience. Weirdly wonderful and a touch macabre, the nine short stories take readers into worlds wit

Then Publishers Weekly:

Readers as yet unfamiliar with Link (Magic for Beginners) will be excited to discover her singular voice in this collection of nine short stories, her first book for young adults.

Which together with the earlier Booklist review gives the book . . . three starred reviews!

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Couch Excerpt

Mon 8 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok | Comments Off on Couch Excerpt | Posted by: Gavin

You can get an advance peek at Benjamin Parzybok’s debut novel Couch in the new issue of eleven eleven (a lit journal from the California College of the Arts) which has an excerpt, “On the Tracks.” The cover photo (which is an awesome wraparound) is by Thomas Dooley and the photo of eleven eleven is by Danielle Baldassini.

We just got a great blurb for Couch from Paul La Farge:

“A lot of people are looking for magic in the world today, but only Benjamin Parzybok thought to check the sofa, which is, I think, the place it’s most likely to be found. Couch is a slacker epic: a gentle, funny book that ambles merrily from Coupland to Tolkien, and gives couch-surfing (among other things) a whole new meaning.”

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new covers: Ryman

Thu 4 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Geoff Ryman | Comments Off on new covers: Ryman | Posted by: Gavin

Here’s a first look at final or near final covers for our Sept/Oct/November books. (Covers link to larger versions.)

The cover of Geoff Ryman’s The King’s Last Song is made up of two photos, one by Pablo Carral Vega (from Corbis) and one by Jeremy Horner (Panos). Our cover is a variation on the UK HarperCollins edition with a new typeface, new text, and so on. The files we got from HarperCollins were complicated, quite beautiful, and fascinating to work with.

This book sold pretty well in the UK so we are sending it out far and wide to try and generate some good reviews and word of mouth. There aren’t many novels set in Cambodia (either modern day or historical) so this one fills a gap. Booklist gave it a starred review and Library Journal gave it a strong recommendation. We, of course, do too! It’s a gobsmackingly-large canvas novel to dive into—very much autumn out on the hammock reading.

Geoff is teaching this semester at UC San Diego (where he just taught at the Clarion Workshop, too), so if you’re in the area look out for possible readings.

One confirmed reading already: Saturday, November 15 (with Ellen Klages) as part of the SF in SF series.

“Ryman’s knack for depicting characters; his ability to tell multiple, interrelated stories; and his knowledge of Cambodian history create a rich narrative that looks at Cambodia’s “killing fields”—both recent and ancient—and Buddhist belief with its desire for transcendence. Recommended for all literary fiction collections.—Library Journal

* “An unforgettably vivid portrait of Cambodian culture past and present.”
—Booklist (starred review)

The King’s Last Song has shipped from the printer so pre-orders will be sent out soon and it will arrive in stores within a week or so.

Preorder | Mail Order | Powells |Our Local Bookstore | Your Local Bookstore

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Needs More Coaster

Wed 3 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, Books | Comments Off on Needs More Coaster | Posted by: Gavin

Still wondering whether you should buy into the Ant King’s lair? There are reviews coming up in Realms of Fantasy and the Washington Post and of course, you can read a bunch of the stories online or just download the whole thing.

Benjamin Rosenbaum’s stories run the gamut from weird to truly weird. Sometimes the whimsical aspects can occlude the deep rigor and the intellectual underpinnings: make no mistake, no matter what the genre, these are some of the best stories we’ve read in recent years and we’re very happy to share them with readers.

Ben just announced a competition on his blog (with a nice long deadline) for readers to create derivative works from his stories:

• On March 3, 2009 (that gives you six months), Ben will send signed (and extensively doodled-upon) hardcover copies of The Ant King and Other Stories to the creators of the three derivative works that he likes the best

Go, create!

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Pretty Monsters news

Wed 3 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Comments Off on Pretty Monsters news | Posted by: Gavin

We just sent out a couple more ARCs of Pretty Monsters (such a pretty book!) to people who won our earlier LCRW sweepstakes. We have a couple more to give out this month before the book comes out on October 2nd. We will probably give them away at the Brooklyn Book Fair and on here or in our newsletter.

Kelly will also have a tiny tiny giveaway thingy at our table at the Book Fair.

There are a few reviews in Blogistan (Oops…Wrong Cookie, Monsters & Critics) but keeping track of that seems a little Sisyphean. Penguin and Kelly have started setting up some readings. More on that as they approach. As always, the easiest way to keep up is our calendar.

Booklist just gave Pretty Monsters a starred review and there was a tiny interview in Time Out New York last week (thanks for the heads-up Curt!):

“In nearly every one of these startlingly, sometimes confoundingly original stories, Link defies expectations with such terrific turnarounds that you are left precipitously wondering not only “What’s going to happen now?” but also “Wait, what just happened?

Meanwhile, out there in the world there is a beautiful Polish edition of Magic for Beginners. We haven’t seen it yet, but the cover looks fantastic.

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WFC memberships for sale

Tue 2 Sep 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons | Comments Off on WFC memberships for sale | Posted by: Gavin

We have 2 memberships to the 2008 World Fantasy Convention in Calgary for sale: $100 each. Please pass the word along to anyone you know who might be interested, thanks!

Update: Sold both, thanks.

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Katrina + 3

Fri 29 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, the world | Comments Off on Katrina + 3 | Posted by: Gavin

3 years since Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav is on a maybe/maybe not course for New Orleans. Which is sort of akin to the US Government’s approach to the disaster. Maybe we’ll help you. Maybe not. Which is one reason they will be voted out in November.

Over at Smith Mag they just posted the Epilogue of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, an amazing comics narrative that has been picked up by Pantheon and which will be published as a graphic novel at some point. But if you have a moment, try starting from the beginning.

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Generation Loss on sale

Wed 27 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elizabeth Hand | Comments Off on Generation Loss on sale | Posted by: Gavin

We’re celebrating Elizabeth Hand’s Shirley Jackson award-winning novel Generation Loss and sending it out there into the world for $10.

As with all our prices, that includes US/Canada shipping—please use the international shipping options if you are ordering outwith North America. Go forth and read good books!

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John McCain for President

Wed 27 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on John McCain for President | Posted by: Gavin

Don’t miss the latest internet stunt from McCain aides. It is a legit site, right?

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YB coming soon

Wed 27 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Year's Best Fantasy & Horror | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror marches toward publication. We just received an advance copy and Publishers Weekly just gave it a starred review (yay!) picking out some of our fave choices:

The 40 selections in this exemplary anthology from Link and Grant (the fantasy half) and Datlow (the horror half) reflect virtually every hue of the fantasy/horror palette: urban fantasy in Jeffrey Ford’s “The Drowned Life” and Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Last Worders”; traditional supernatural horror in Paul Walther’s “Splitfoot” and Terry Dowling’s “Toother”; modern folk fantasy in Elizabeth Hand’s “Winter’s Wife” and Eileen Gunn’s “Up the Fire Road”; and cosmic terror fiction in Laird Barron’s “The Forest” and Don Tumasonis’s “The Swing.” A handful of stories involve child abuse and abduction, of which Lisa Tuttle’s “Closet Dreams” is the most horrifying. The front matter’s snapshot summaries of the past year’s yield in fantasy, horror, comics, mixed media and music are a small and invaluable book unto themselves. (Oct.)

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Some catching up

Tue 26 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Comments Off on Some catching up | Posted by: Gavin

• The disclosure label from New England GreenStart shows that our home power mix (we don’t get to choose for the Paragon Arts Building) is 75% hydroelectric and the rest from biomass (20.9%), solar (3%), and wind (1.2%).
  Hydro has its own impact problems (somewhat less than nuclear [storage, leaks] or coal [mining, pollution]), but seeing the solar part rise from 1% to 3% in the last couple of years is tres tres exciting.
• The NEA recently announced that applications are open for their 2010 translation grants. Go forth, translate something weird, and query us on it.
• Download our distributor’s catalog in PDF here and see what’s coming from us, Coffee House, Paul Dry, Manic D, and many more.
• Gayle Shanks, president of the Am. Booksellers Association, has a thoughtful letter on Chelsea Green’s decision to restrict sales of their new Obama title to Amazon:

One of my core beliefs as a bookseller is that a free society depends on a diverse marketplace of ideas, and that closed markets, exclusive agreements, and tactics designed to achieve a short-term victory at the expense of core values are both short-sighted and counter productive.

We’re in the process of changing out BookSense.com book links over to IndieBound—we hope you’ll always consider buying our books locally (where they will generally be in stock first). Here are the links for The Ant King: Our Local Bookstore | Your Local Bookstore.

Since everyone always votes with their wallet, try this fact on people when they tell you they like to buy online:

• Spend $100 at a local and $68 of that stays in your community. Spend the same $100 at a national chain, and your community only sees $43

That math means that your local community loses $25 of every $100 spent at chains. Which means $250 of every $1,000; $250,000 of each million dollars. Which is why local shops find it hard to compete when that much income is leaving the area. That $25 ($250, $250,000) pays people to work locally, pays local suppliers, etc. Don’t discount shop people out of jobs in your town.

Listening to someone else’s local music right now on My Old Kentucky Blog: Ben Weaver The Ax in the Oak from one of our fave labels, Bloodshot.

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Episode 9: Strawberry Wheat/Wine

Mon 25 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Literary Beer | 4 Comments | Posted by: Michael

“Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities’ confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.”
—the Reinheitsgebot, a beer purity law, the first of its kind, enacted in Germany in 1516.

And now I’m going to talk about brewing with strawberries.

They’ll take away my homebrew when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

Read more

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Double dutch

Mon 25 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Comments Off on Double dutch | Posted by: Gavin

While in Scotland some of our nieces and nephews (and, er, others) had great fun attempting some skipping trips—don’t expect pics of this to surface on the nets. But one participant just sent us this video which made us want to head down to the Apollo Theater for the double dutch skip offs:

Watch CBS Videos Online

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Listen to John

Thu 21 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Audio out, John Kessel | Comments Off on Listen to John | Posted by: Gavin

Listen or download a John Kessel interview on WMUA’s Writer’s Voice here.

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories just received a great thoughtful review in the LA Times:

“There is at least one universal truth running through this collection. Rejection, unlike love, is a sure thing. Its contours can be measured, its gravity weighed. In that, Kessel’s losers surely aren’t alone in stumbling off the path to paradise.”

Down in western North Carolina WNC Magazine gave the book a corker of a review in their August issue (on stands now):

“Politically conscious science fiction, macabre humor, and economical, slice-of-life storytelling…. A treasure trove of polished gems for anyone who enjoys a well-told tale.”

Update: a new review popped up on Anthem (who also have a great Feist/John McCain house-counting mashup):

What keeps the reader motivated to power through the slow points is salient feature of the book is the deftness with which Kessel builds his characters. The stories are based around misfits, nerds, and criminals—people who, for one reason or another, lie about who they are.

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Back

Thu 21 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., travel | Comments Off on Back | Posted by: Gavin

We’re back in the office after a bit of a wander around Scotland. Lots of stuff (stuff? vocabulary hasn’t improved any) happening with books and so on. (Is there a so on or is it only books? Don’t know.) Listening to an interview with John Kessel (more on that soon) and trying to catch up on all that stuff.

Scotland: nice and cool. Tea all the time. Breakfast can be a challenge! Everyone plays Wii games better than us. We had tea (see) with Alasdair Gray(!) and met up with a few of the Glasgow mafia (of the writing sort) in a pub with the best haggis in Scotland (or so said the writing on the wall). The Olympics were easier to watch (it’s UK-centric, but much less insipid and sentimental). The beer isn’t as good as in England (if you like bitter), but there were a few good ones, including Atlas Brewery’s in Kinlochleven—which we walked past while on the West Highland Way. Nothing like a local beer after a 10-mile walk. 100s of pics were taken, some may be uploaded later.

One of the things (the many things) we forgot to bring over were pedometers which would have been fun over that week. Should you ever be tempted to go on the walk, remember to check your jacket (zipped into its own pocket) is still carabinered onto your pack before you start up from lunch. Especially if this is a borrowed North Face jacket. Oops! If anyone found said jacket between Kinlochleven and Kingshouse, we’d love to hear from you.

Oh well. It meant a trip to the shops (and the Marks and Sparks food section…) where we went to Zavvi (previously known as Virgin before a management buyout—just as Small Beer Press will be known as Lost the Plot Press after a similar buyout here) where we picked up the first season of The IT Crowd which seems simple but funny enough.

Read fewer books than might be expected (maybe all that walking and sleeping) but very much enjoyed Robin Jenkins’s Poverty Castle which seemed to be Jenkins (perhaps best known for his dark and amazing The Cone-gatherers) in his lightest mood. There are echoes of Compton Mackenzie’s entertainments (Monarch of the Glen, Whiskey Galore, etc.), as well as of Georgette Heyer, and even a light metafictional concept (we see the writer who is writing this story) in the set up: a family (husband, wife, 5 daughters) are suddenly enriched by the death of a faraway uncle. They decide to buy and restore an old house in Argyll and from there their story intermingles with their neighbors (an old aristo family), the villagers, and one of the daughter’s roommates at Glasgow University. The class observations of 1950s and ’60s Scottish life are acute, the characters—even if sometimes over the top—are rich. All in all a great escape, even if Jenkins cannot quite stick to his optimistic guns.

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Reign of the Ant King

Sat 9 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, Creative Commons, ebooks | Comments Off on Reign of the Ant King | Posted by: jedediah

The Ant King takes the throne and promptly showers gifts upon the people. Namely, free copies of The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.

This debut collection was officially released this week and now we send forth a free download. Inside you’ll find airships, gumballs, and the orange that rules the world. What you won’t find: DRM. So copy, share, remix, reuse, repeat.

The Ant King and Other Stories is available in several formats (PDF, HTML, RTF, and plain text), and is being distributed under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0).

Mr. Rosenbaum is at Worldcon just now, and if you’re there, you can catch him today at a reading and a signing. For more about his collection, and for a link to the free download, proceed hither.

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The Ant King in VA

Fri 1 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum | Comments Off on The Ant King in VA | Posted by: Gavin

It’s almost publication day for Ben Rosenbaum’s debut collection, The Ant King, and tonight he’s doing a reading at Stacy’s Coffee in Falls Church, VA. More on the book next Tuesday when it comes out.

One note: if you want a hardcover, best go to a reading (Stacy’s or in Denver at the World Sci Fi Convention) or order it from this site. Looks like they will sell out faster than the paperback!

Stacy’s Coffee, 709 West Broad St., Falls Church, Virginia 22046, (703) 538-6266

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Yay!

Mon 21 Jul 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elizabeth Hand | Comments Off on Yay! | Posted by: Gavin

Liz Hand’s Generation Loss won one of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Awards!

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Sun 20 Jul 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Uncategorized | Comments Off on | Posted by: Gavin

Amusing and impressing us:

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Sun 20 Jul 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, Uncategorized | Comments Off on | Posted by: Gavin

Amusing and impressing us:

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