Jan/Feb Writer’s Planner deadlines

Sun 29 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Jan/Feb Writer’s Planner deadlines | Posted by: Gavin

Here are a few late January/early February deadlines from A Working Writer’s Daily Calendar 2012. We’ll post some as the year goes on. February is a huge month for deadlines:

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Unboxing

Fri 27 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Galleys of Nancy Kress’s collection, Fountain of Age, and the just-going-out-now Three Messages and a Warning.

Phew!

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What to read this year

Thu 26 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Being that I’ve just started a Patricia Wrightson book—and since we are going there next month!—I am tempted by Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge.

Anyone else?


Clarion & Clarion West

Wed 25 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Clarion & Clarion West | Posted by: Gavin

March 1st is the deadline (what are you waiting for??) to apply to Clarion (San Diego) or Clarion West (Seattle). Kelly is on the all volunteer board of Clarion (she attended in 1995 and has taught it a number of times) and she and I (I went in 2000) are teaching at Clarion West this year. Yay!

Established in 1968, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop is the oldest workshop of its kind and is widely recognized as a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction.

Our 2012 writers in residence are Jeffrey Ford, Marjorie Liu, Ted Chiang, Walter Jon Williams, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.

Clarion West

Workshops for People Who Are Serious About Writing

Clarion West offers workshops for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy.

The Clarion West Writers Workshop is an intensive six-week workshop for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy, held annually in Seattle, Washington, USA.

We are very happy to announce that our instructors for the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop are Mary Rosenblum, Hiromi Goto, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, and Chuck Palahniuk, the 2012 Susan C. Petrey Fellow.


SOPA/PIPA Blackout Day

Wed 18 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on SOPA/PIPA Blackout Day | Posted by: Gavin

This post was copied from Michael’s post at Weightless.

Maybe you saw our big black splash page on your way here?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, PIPA is the Protect IP Act. What I and a lot of other people fear the passage of either of these bills by the US Congress will actually do is allow broad and arbitrary censorship of the internet.

I like an open internet very much, and I think Small Beer readers probably do too, so for the 24 hours of January 18th, 2012, Small Beer Press is going to pitch in and show that black splash page you probably already saw in hopes that some of you will click the links (or the ones above), learn what’s at stake and do something about it. And if not, I hope you won’t be too bothered by it.

Thanks very much for your time!
—Gavin & Kelly


How to read ahead

Tue 17 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on How to read ahead | Posted by: Gavin

Want to get galleys of our upcoming books from Kij Johnson, Sofia Samatar, Nancy Kress before everyone else? How about we throw an LCRW chocolate subscription into the mix?

You can get all that—as well as a ton of other good stuff—here at the Alpha Workshop Fundraiser!

Go on, get some good stuff and help fund the future of writing.


(Jim) Kelly (Link) @ the KGB

Wed 11 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on (Jim) Kelly (Link) @ the KGB | Posted by: Gavin

It’s an all Kelly night at KGB Fantastic Fiction at the excellent KGB Bar in NYC next Wednesday:

James Patrick Kelly & Kelly Link, January 18th

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways James Patrick Kelly is best known for his short fiction, Including “Think Like A Dinosaur,”  “Ten to the Sixteenth to One” and “Burn.”   His work has been translated into nineteen languages and has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.  His most recent publishing venture is the ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways on Kindle and Nook.
&
Steampunk!: An anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Kelly Link is the author of three collections of stories and her fiction has won three Nebula Awards, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She recently co-edited Steampunk!: An anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories with her husband Gavin J. Grant

Wednesday January 18th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.


Publication Day!

Tue 10 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Publication Day! | Posted by: Gavin

The Liminal People cover - click to view full sizeHere’s the deal: order a copy of The Liminal People from us today, January 10, 2012, and we’ll throw in the ebook for free as well as a copy of Ayize’s original edition that you can either keep in your amazing book collection or give it to a friend.

Read the first three chapters here here, but be warned: you may get hooked!

Ayize self-published the book and Nalo Hopkinson did us a huge favor and suggested he send the book to us. It’s a fast-paced science fiction thriller that grabbed me from the get go and I read it right through.

Early readers love it but we somehow managed to score a 0/4 trade reviews—eek! It’s been a while since we did that and now we need to get the word out asap! The book is in indie stores (and yes, online monoliths) just waiting for Guillermo Del Toro to discover it.

Anyway: read it and come back and tell me what you think. Ayize is working on another novel set in the same world and I am trying to get him to send it to me now! and after you’ve read it I think you’ll be saying the same thing.


2012 Writer’s Daily Planners

Mon 9 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on 2012 Writer’s Daily Planners | Posted by: Gavin

Just got these contributors’ copies in the mail today, and they look pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. A bit cold from being in a box on a truck these last few days, but other than that: not bad!

A bonus (for us at least) of this whole print-on-demand experiment is that if you find any typos we can just upload another file.

If you’d like one, look here.

(Photo by Geoffrey Noble.)


Hello

Wed 4 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Comments Off on Hello | Posted by: Gavin

2012? Wooee. Must be the future. Must remember to post about 2011 before it fades completely. In the meantime: we have a couple of podcasts to come—and did you listen to Rick Kleffel talking with Ayize Jama-Everett and Lisa Goldstein after their event at the Capitola Book Cafe? Not to be missed.

We had a big ebook sale on December 31st: it was huge. Seems like people, they like ebooks. With upcoming travel and so on we’ll have to keep pushing back any print book sale for a loooong time.

We published the POD+ebook edition of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, which is an interesting experiment.

We have some nebulous plans of a new model of bookselling—hey, who doesn’t right now? So far no one has shot it down. We’re not going all Kickstarter all the time (would be interesting though, wouldn’t it, if we put every single book on Kickstarter and if it didn’t fly we didn’t publish it??) or all subscriber or citizens . . . but maybe something in between.

Anyway, that’s all pie in the sky. Really just wanted to move the sale post off the top of the page and note that soon we’ll have t-shirts for sale and, more importantly, we have new books coming from:

April
Nancy Kress, Fountain of Age and Other Stories

June
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
Geoff Ryman, The Unconquered Country

July
Lydia Millet, The Shimmers in the Night

August
Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

As well as late titles(!):

LCRW 28
Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic
Geoff Ryman, Was

And paperback editions of books we are about sold out on! The Serial Garden, What I Didn’t See, The Fires Beneath the Sea. And that’s it for now. From this tiny outpost to yours, Hello!


Small Beer &c, 2011

Wed 4 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Comments Off on Small Beer &c, 2011 | Posted by: Gavin

Bookscan says our bestsellers were:

1) Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy
2) Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
3) Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
4) Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse
5) Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

I know other things happened this year. We published one issue of LCRW with a lovely cover by Kathleen Jennings:

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 27

A. D. Jameson · Jessy Randall · K. M. Ferebee · Karen Heuler · M. K. Hobson · Carol Emshwiller · David Rowinski · Joan Aiken · Sarah Harris Wallman · Gwenda Bond · David Blair · Sarah Heller · Nicole Kimberling

And here are the books we published.

First Small Beer Press titles:

After the Apocalypse
Maureen F. McHugh

“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”—Publishers WeeklyBest Books 2011: The Top 10

A Slepyng Hound to Wake
Vincent McCaffrey

“Henry is a character cut from Raymond Chandler: a modern knight on a mission to save those, and what, he loves.”—Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen

Paradise Tales
Geoff Ryman

* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes”—Publishers Weekly (*Starred Review*)

The Child Garden
Geoff Ryman

Winner of the John W. Cambell and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.

The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Joan Aiken

* “Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising . . . a literary treasure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Solitaire: a novel
Kelley Eskridge
A New York Times Notable Book, Borders Original Voices selection, and Nebula, Endeavour, and Spectrum Award finalist.

And one Big Mouth House title:

The Freedom Maze
Delia Sherman

“Adroit, sympathetic, both clever and smart, The Freedom Maze will entrap young readers and deliver them, at the story’s end, that little bit older and wiser.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz