Spider in a Tree

Tue 1 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

October 2013 · 9781618730695 · trade paper · 336pp | 9781618730701 · ebook

Jonathan Edwards is considered America’s most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts.

In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Mr. Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all others: Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards’s young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards’ wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale.

Reviews and Notices

“Edwards sees evidence of divine grace everywhere, but in a world “haunted by work and sin,” the characters fight to sublimate their bodies and the natural environment, and their culture is shaped by a belief in the uselessness of earthly pleasure and inevitability of mortality and judgement. This combination of “absence, presence, and consolation” motivates the complicated inner lives of these well-realized characters, whose psyches Stinson explores in empathetic and satisfying depth.”
— Rain Taxi Review

“The book is billed as “a novel of the First Great Awakening,” and Stinson tries to do just that, presenting us with a host of viewpoints from colonists to slaves and even insects. She gives an honest imagining of everyday people caught up in extraordinary times, where ecstatic faith, town politics and human nature make contentious bedfellows. Although the novel was slow to pull me in, by the end I felt I had an intimate glance into the disparate lives of these 18th-century residents of Northampton, Massachusetts.”
—Historical Novel Review

Rick Kleffel interviews Susan Stinson (mp3 link).

“Ultimately, ‘Spider in a Tree’ is a lesson in what not to expect. Stinson eludes the clichés usually associated with religious extremism to peel away the humans underneath. We speak of a loving God, who asks us to embark upon a deadly war. We most easily see the sins in others that we are ourselves guilty of. Every ambition to perfect ourselves has a very human cost. As we reach for what we decide is the divine, we reveal our most fragile human frailties. Words cannot capture us; but we in all our human hubris, are quite inclined to capture words.”
—The Agony Column

The Mindful Reader: A wonderful read about Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening—Concord Monitor

Awakening Edwards: Jonathan Edwards in the hands of a Northampton novelist—Valley Advocate

Local author’s novel imagines life in Jonathan Edwards’ Northampton—Daily Hampshire Gazette

“As a Puritan preacher who suspends listeners above the sulfurous fires of hell, Jonathan Edwards commands center stage in this compelling historical novel. With mesmerizing narrative gifts, Stinson exposes readers to the full force of Edwards’ brimstone sermonizing. But she also lets readers hear Edwards’ voice in other registers, giving compassionate reassurance to his troubled wife, extending tender forgiveness to a despairing sinner, reflecting pensively on how God manifests his wisdom in a lowly spider. But the Edwards voice that most readers will find most irresistible is his inner voice, laden with grief at a young daughter’s death, perplexed at his spiritual status as master of a household slave. . . . An impressive chronicle conveying the intense spiritual yearnings that illuminate a colonial world of mud, disease, and fear.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

Interviews

New: Bookslut, Religion Dispatches

Lambda Literary, Writer’s Voice, Book Connection, Plum Journal, “How to Fall”

9/26/13 Springfield Republican: “Writer Susan Stinson of Northampton honors theologian with Bridge Street Cemetery tours”

Read more


North American Lake Monsters

Tue 16 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

July 16, 2013 · published simultaneously in trade cloth (9781618730596) & trade paper (9781618730602) Ebook · 9781618730619 | Available on Audible
Trade paper, Second printing: 10/14 · Third: 10/16 · Fourth: 6/19 · Fifth 2/25
International editions: Agave, Hungary. Edizioni Hypnos, Italy. MAG, Poland. Russia. Spain. Ithaki, Turkey.

Adapted into the TV series, Monsterland, on Hulu

Shirley Jackson Award winner
World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award finalist Locus Recommended Reading 
Rights sold: Audio; Poland (MAG), Hungary (Agave); Russia (AST); Spain (Fata Libelli)

Nathan Ballingrud’s debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud’s intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible. These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.

Table of Contents
You Go Where It Takes You
Wild Acre
S.S.
The Crevasse
The Monsters of Heaven [read on Tor.com]
Sunbleached
North American Lake Monsters [read at the Weird Fiction Review]
The Way Station
The Good Husband

Reviews and Reactions

“This short story collection teems with monsters — from vampires to werewolves to white supremacists — all in a contemporary Southern setting. In ‘Sunbleached,’ a vengeful teenager kidnaps a vampire. In the title story, a serial killer lake monster terrorizes a town, while a father recently released from prison struggles to reconnect with his family. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, and Stephen King, these nine short stories center around working-class lives and examine themes of toxic masculinity and monstrosity.” — Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed

“My favorite collection from the last 5 years.” — Sarah Langan

“A bleak and uncompromising examination of 21st century masculinity through lenses of dark fantasy, noir, and horror. Ballingrud is an important figure in North American letters.” — Laird Barron

“Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters is an exceptional fictional debut: It deserves a place alongside collections like Peter Straub’s Magic Terror, Scott Wolven’s Controlled Burn, Dan Chaon’s Stay Awake, Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Like those works, Ballingrud’s stories delve into the damaged psyches of American men, with a distinctly twenty-first-century awareness of  the world we now inhabit, itself as damaged as the shellshocked figures that populate it. Ballingrud’s tales are ostensibly tales of terror, meticulously constructed and almost claustrophobically understated in their depiction of an all- encompassing horror that, despite its often unearthly shimmer, is human rather than supernatural in origin; Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” or Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” as reimagined by Robert Stone or Cormac McCarthy.” —Elizabeth Hand, F&SF

“Pain has a rich and varied language, both mundane and transcendent, with infinite variations and many subtle flavours. Pain is one of the most private experiences people face, and yet a universal experience. North American Lake Monsters uses this palette to create most of its narrative hues and textures, to sharpen and heighten the characteristics of its profoundly human, deeply flawed characters. What sets this collection of short stories apart is the way the supernatural, magical and horrific are utilized like a light source, illuminating dark places while casting even deeper shadows. Ballingrud’s writing is piercing and merciless, holding the lens steady through fear, rage and disgust, showing a weird kind of love to his subjects, in refusing to turn away, as well as an uncompromising pitilessness. Angels and vampires are placed next to lost white supremacist boys and burnt-out waitresses. All are equally, horribly ugly and real.” —Toronto Globe and Mail

“North American Lake Monsters is not a physically demanding book — slim, spare and elegant in appearance, not heavy to the heft — but here appearances are deceptive. Because it is a truly impressive book, one to which attention should be paid. The stories carry (so lightly) a weight of hinterland and incident, of emotional power and implication, seemingly to excess for their modest size. And they punch with that weight solidly behind them.” — John Howard, Wormwood

“Each one of these nine stories has the capacity to seduce and terrify you.” —Andrew Liptak, io9

“Matched to his original ideas and refreshing re­furbishments of genre set pieces, Ballingrud’s writ­ing makes North American Lake Monsters one of the best collections of short fiction for the year. —Locus

“The beauty of the work as a whole is that it offers no clear and easy answers; any generalization that might be supported by some stories is contradicted by others. It makes for an intellectually stimulating collection that pulls the reader in unexpected directions. The pieces don’t always come to a satisfactory resolution, but it is clear that this is a conscious choice. The lack of denouement, the uncertainty, is part of the fabric of the individual stories and of the collection as a whole. It is suggestive of a particular kind of world: one that is dark, weird, and just beyond our ability to impose order and understanding. These are not happy endings. They are sad and unsettling, but always beautifully written with skillful and insightful prose. It is a remarkable collection.” —Hellnotes

“Ballingrud’s language transforms known quantities into monsters again. . . . “You Go Where It Takes You,” the opening story of the collection, sets the tone and, with its shocking ending, frames the moral of North American Lake Monsters. Transformation carries a shocking cost. Two recent, disastrous transformations of the American landscape reverberate through the book: Katrina and the financial crisis. New Orleans is felt as a lost love. So is the American Dream, which seems now to have vanished for good along with Bear Stearns’s collateralized debt obligations. The transformations of Ballingrud’s characters echo these cataclysms. And yet–despite all the blame that’s flying around the landscape, and in the teeth of our contemporary hysteria about anything resembling reckless behavior–he refuses to judge them. These people do some really terrible things. They suffer. But there’s no sense of comeuppance earned, much less deserved. This is the most striking quality of this extraordinary collection: the compassion of Ballingrud’s gaze. He makes no excuses for his characters, never comes near to glorifying their bad choices, and yet never looks down on them. The reader is left with the scarcely bearable knowledge that in the end, the subjects of North American Lake Monsters are human.”—Amazing Stories

“What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition.” —John Langan, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Dark, quirky stories.”—Charlotte Observer “Ballingrud’s work isn’t like any other. These stories are full of sadness and sorrow, but they’re not merely sad. Like Tom Waits, Ballingrud is an expert at teasing out every delicious shade and nuance, every fine gradation of misery and pain. It’s a heady and fantastic cocktail mixed from roughnecks and down-and-outers and flawed people who find in their ordinary and terrible world monsters, magic, and the strange. Ballingrud’s fantastic elements are never seen full on, but always out of the corner of your eye, and it makes them all the more haunting.” —Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A good horror story stays with you long after reading it. A great horror story doesn’t simply stay with you, it haunts you, and Nathan Ballingrud’s fiction does just that. He breathes life into rough, blue-collar characters and places them in some of the best dark fiction being written today. Every single story in this collection is an emotional gut punch.  The despair that saturates these tales is rich, and often it is not the supernatural elements in these tales that is horrific.” —Arkham Digest

“For those willing to go down the dark road that’s laid out here, and those willing to feel complex patterns of sympathy, disgust, and horror for (often bad) people, this is an interesting collection. Uncomfortable a read as it is, it has the tinge of reality to it: a reality that often we’d rather not look at.” —Lee Mandelo, Tor.com

“It’s Raymond Carver territory, beautifully written and right on target for today: construction work, waitressing, tattoos, and white supremacists. And shattering each story is the luminous, the terrifying, the Lovecraftian otherness that reveals what it really feels like to be alive in this moment in time.  Ballingrud’s fantastical werewolves and human skins and Antarctic staircases evoke the truth of our own fears about life.” —Maureen F. McHugh (After the Apocalypse)

“One of the best horror short story collections published during the last couple of years.” —Rising Shadows

“These stories are dark and gritty nightmares, filled with a deep and humane soulfulness. You don’t get a lot of dark fiction or horror quite like that. Wonderful stuff.” — Christopher Barzak

“Ballingrud’s lyrical and intense stories play on deeply personal fears and anxieties of the social outcast, the people who struggle to maintain relationships (spousal, parental, etc). People who are us. And like Daniel Woodrell and Donald Ray Pollack, Ballingrud’s stories pack an authentic emotional punch. No sentimentality here. Ballingrud doesn’t moralize and he doesn’t offer easy answers. You probably won’t like the protagonist of “You Go Where It Takes You,” but you’ll empathize with her; you’ll understand why she’s doing what she’s doing. And, ah, that’s the horror. Ballingrud’s stories will keep you up at night, and you’ll continue to obsess over them for many days after.” — Paul Tremblay

“Highly recommended. Nathan Ballingrud’s debut collection uses complex characters and startlingly beautiful language to reinvent the horror genre. In Ballingrud’s grim landscapes we encounter the supernatural as a chink in the human: sometimes terrifying, sometimes marvelous, but always captivating. His stories reward repeated reading.” — Helen Marshall

“One of the best collections I’ve read in years. Beautifully crafted fiction, stories that’ll really affect you and keep you thinking long after you’ve finished the book.” — Tim Lebbon

“The exceptional quality of the writing aside, what most impressed me about this collection was how the uncanny and the supernatural were used to augment stories that a chronicler of everyday tragedy and misfortune, like William Gay for example, often wrote about. At times I felt like I was reading a new approach to horror fiction, and that’s a very refreshing prickle to feel across my scalp.” — Adam Nevill

“Wild Acre” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist.

Listen: Audio discussion with between Nathan Ballingrud and Karen Lord and Karen Burnham about the story “The Good Husband.”

Susan Stinson and Bob Flaherty (“My god, Susan! What you have you done to me!”) talk about North American Lake Monsters on WHMP.

Interviews

Red Room interview by Asha Vose
Read an interview. the Laurel of Asheville Shirley Jackson Awards blog BooklifeNow

Early Reviews

Tor.com on “Sunbleached.” Colleen Mondor on “North American Lake Monsters.” Lucius Shepard writing an appreciation of “You Go Where It Takes You.” Two videos in which Nathan participated, promoting Teeth (Ellen Datlow, ed.), which featured “Sunbleached.” “Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite short fiction writers.”—Jeff VanderMeer

“Nathan Ballingrud’s ‘The Way Station’ is another story of the sort I’ve come to expect from him: emotionally intense, riveting, and deeply upsetting in many ways. It deals with loss, with the aftereffects of Katrina on a homeless alcoholic who’s haunted by the city itself before the flood, and in doing so it’s wrenching. . . . It’s an excellent story that paints a riveting portrait of a man, his city, and his loss.”—Tor.com on The Naked City

“But the two most remarkable stories in Naked City are by relatively new authors: ‘The Projected Girl’ (Haifa) by Lavie Tidhar and ‘The Way Station’ (New Orleans and St. Petersburg, Florida) by Nathan Ballingrud are both heartbreakers.”—John Clute on Strange Horizons

About the Author

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970 but has spent most of his life in the South. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His stories have appeared in several Year’s Best anthologies, and he has twice won the Shirley Jackson Award. His second collection, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell includes the novella “The Visible Filth” which was filmed by Babak Anvari as Wounds. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.


A Stranger in Olondria

Tue 30 Apr 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

April 2013 · 320 pp · hardcover · 9781618730626 | trade paperback · 9781931520768 | ebook · 9781931520775
2nd tp printing: 12/14. 3rd: 6/17. 4th: 4/2022
Also by Sofia Samatar: The Winged Histories, Tender: Stories

World Fantasy Award winner · British Fantasy Award winner · Crawford Award winner

Nebula Award finalist · Locus Award finalist · Locus Recommended Reading
Sofia Samatar received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Rights sold: audio (Audible); France (nominated for the Prix Imaginales, Les Editions de l’Instant); Poland (MAG); Romania (Editura Art); India (Juggernaut Books); Japan (Tokyo Sogensha); Italy (Edizioni E/O Ne/oN Libri).

NPR: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade

“‘Have you ever seen something so beautiful that you’d be content to just sit and watch the light around it change for a whole day because every passing moment reveals even more unbearable loveliness and transforms you in ways you can’t articulate?’ asks judge Amal El-Mohtar. ‘You will if you read these books.'”

Time Magazine: 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

“The novel unfolds in waves of A Game of Thrones-level twists, all while its fantastical world-building pulls from South Asian, Middle Eastern and African cultures to offer a welcome departure from Eurocentric fantasy.”

Jevick, the pepper merchant’s son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home—but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire’s two most powerful cults. Even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of freeing himself by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that most seductive of necromancies, reading.

A Stranger in Olondria was written while the author taught in South Sudan. It is a rich and heady brew which pulls the reader in deeper and still deeper with twists and turns that hearken back to the Gormenghast novels while being as immersive as George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

Sofia Samatar: News and upcoming events.

Audio interviews: To the Best of Our Knowledge. The Big Idea. Interview on the Qwillery. Coode Street Podcast with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

Read: an excerpt on Tor.com.

Download: a pdf of the first 70 pages.

Reviews

“The best stories throw a wrench in our characters’ best-laid plans, and nobody throws a wrench quite like a ghost. Jevick is the stranger of the title, sold on tales of a wonderland called Olondria in much the way I was sold on the idea of that wonderland called New York. What Samatar does is pull us into a world so thoroughly strange yet so familiar that you think it’s one kind of story until it shoves you off course and becomes another. It’s about a man who has too much to learn and not much time to learn it, but it’s also about how a little knowledge really is a dangerous thing.”
— Marlon James

“Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria tackles one of my favourite genres: the bildungsroman, which is a fancy way to say coming of age. Feeling a bit like a Dickensian tale of a boy going to the big city, it soon morphs into a ghost story. Charming stuff.” — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Washington Post

“It’s the rare first novel with no unnecessary parts – and, in terms of its elegant language, its sharp insights into believable characters, and its almost revelatory focus on the value and meaning of language and story, it’s the most impressive and intelligent first novel I expect to see this year, or perhaps for a while longer.”
—Locus

“The excerpt from Sofia Samatar’s compelling novel A Stranger in Olondria should be enough to make you run out and buy the book. Just don’t overlook her short “Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” the best story about loss and love and selkies I’ve read in years.”
— K. Tempest Bradford, NPR

“Sofia Samatar’s debut fantasy A Stranger in Olondria is gloriously vivid and rich.”
— Adam Roberts, The Guardian, Best Science Fiction Books of 2013

“Books can limit our experiences and reinforce the structures of empire. They can also transport us outside existing structures. The same book may do both in different ways or for different people. Samatar has written a novel that captures the ecstasy and pain of encountering the world through books, showing us bits and pieces of our contemporary world while also transporting us into a new one.”
— Bookslut

“The novel is full of subtle ideas and questions that never quite get answered. It is those dichotomies that lie at the heart of this novel, such as what is superstition and what is magic? How much do class and other prejudices affect how we view someone’s religion? Jevick often believes himself above such things, as does the current religious regime of Olondria, but in a way both are haunted until they believe. . . . Samatar gives us no easy answers and there are no villains in the book — simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right.
— io9.com

“As you might expect (or hope) from a novel that is in part about the painting of worlds with words, the prose in Stranger is glorious. Whether through imaginative individual word choices—my favourite here being the merchants rendered “delirious” by their own spices . . . Samatar is adept at evoking place, mood, and the impact of what is seen on the one describing it for us.”
­— Strange Horizons

“Vivid, gripping, and shot through with a love of books.”—Graham Sleight, Locus

“A richly rewarding experience for those who love prose poetry and non-traditional narratives. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is a fine exemplar of bibliomancy.”
—Craig Laurence Gidney (Sea Swallow Me)

“With characteristic wit, poise, and eloquence, Samatar delivers a story about our vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”—Amal El-Mohtar, Tor.com

“If you want to lose yourself in the language of a book, this is the one you should read first. Samatar’s prose is evocative and immediate, sweeping you into the complex plot and the world of Jevick, a pepper merchant’s son.”
—xojane

“A journey that is as familiar and foreign as a land in a dream. It’s a study of two traditions, written and oral, and how they intersect. Samatar uses exquisite language and precise details to craft a believable world filled with sight, sound and scent.”
—Fantasy Literature

Advance Praise

“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”
—Library Journal (*starred review*)

“Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure.”
—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames

“A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy…. Samatar’s beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere.”
—Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX

“Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell

“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story.”—Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After

“Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.”
—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows.  Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.”
—Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes

Listen to Sofia read two of her poems on Stone Telling: “Girl Hours” · “The Sand Diviner”

Cover illustration by Kathleen Jennings.

About the Author

Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She is the recipient of the William L. Crawford Award, the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She teaches Arabic literature, African literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.


Earth and Air

Mon 22 Oct 2012 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books, Peter Dickinson| Posted by: Gavin

October 2012 · 208pp · 9781618730589 · trade cloth · $17.95 | 9781618730381 · trade paper · $14.95 | 9781618730398 · ebook · $9.95

Tales of Elemental Creatures

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Wall Street Journal: The Best Fiction of 2012
“Much modern fantasy draws upon myth and folklore, but not many authors can enter wholly into the surprising and novel logic of myth. In this brilliant collection of stories, Peter Dickinson recasts Beowulf and Orpheus, investigates tales of earth-spirits, explains the footwear of Mercury and accounts for the survival of Athena’s owls in Christian Byzantium. These beautiful stories, our reviewer believed, ‘deserve to become classics of the genre.'”

“Enjoyable surprises await those who pick up this latest and last addition to the Tales of Elemental Creatures series. Peter Dickinson, working alone (he co-authored the first two collections, Water and Fire with wife Robin McKinley), once again proves his expertise in fantasy and short story writing…. The pleasure of reading a short story by this author stems from his complete control over the essentials of fiction writing…. A true delight, this engrossing collection will lead many readers back for second and third readings.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Mining folklore for ideas is routine in modern fantasy, but not many can add the surprising twists and novel logic that Peter Dickinson does. These are beautiful stories, deft, satisfying, unexpected. They deserve to become classics of the genre.”
—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal

Peter Dickinson has long been one of our favorite authors and we are very proud and happy to announce that we are publishing a new collection of stories by Dickinson—and we will go on from here to reprint many of his novels for both children and adults.

In this collection, you will find stories that range from the mythic to contemporary fantasy to science fiction. You will find a troll, gryphons, a beloved dog, the Land of the Dead, an owl, a minotaur, and a very alien Cat. Earth and Air is the third and final book in a trilogy of shared collections connected by the four classical elements. It follows previous volumes Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits and Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits, written by both Peter Dickinson and Robin McKinley.

Ridiki is Steff’s beloved dog, named after Eurydice, whom the poet Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead. When, like her namesake, Ridiki is bitten by a snake and dies, Steff decides that he too should journey to the Underworld to ask the King of the Land of the Dead for his dog back.

Mari is the seventh child of a family in which troll blood still runs. When her husband goes missing in a Scottish loch, she must draw upon the power of her blood to rescue him. Sophie, a young girl, fashions a witch’s broomstick out of an ash sapling, and gets more than she bargained for. An escaped slave, Varro, must kill a gryphon, in order to survive. A boy named Yanni allies himself with an owl and a goddess in order to fight an ancient evil. A group of mind-bonded space travelers must face an unknown threat and solve the murder of a companion before time runs out.

All of these stories are about, in one way or another, the contrary and magical pull of two elements, Earth and Air. Each story showcases the manifold talents of a master storyteller and craftsman who has twice won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award, as well as the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

A short interview on F&SF about “Troll Blood.”

Reviews

“I particularly enjoyed “Ridiki”, a version of the Eurydice story substituting a boy’s beloved dog Ridiki for Eurydice, and “Wizand”, which cleverly portrays the unusual lifecycle of the wizand, which confers power on witches, including, in this story, a 20th-century girl named Sophie. Most intriguing, perhaps, is the final story, “The Fifth Element”, which doesn’t as obviously deal with an “elemental creature” as the other stories. Instead, it’s an odd science fiction horror story, that reminded me of Philip K. Dick’s first published story, “Beyond Lies the Wub”, and Robert Sheckley’s “Specialist”, in telling of the multispecies crew of a sort of tramp starship, and what happens when their “ship’s Cat” dies.”
—Rich Horton, Locus

The prevailing spirit of Earth and Air seems to be Mercury, the sardonic trickster. Read it with your mind open, senses alert… and prepare for a marvelously bumpy ride.
–Faren Miller, Locus

“Dickinson completes the series of “elemental” tales he began with his wife Robin McKinley (Water, rev. 7/02; Fire, rev. 11/09). Though links to the theme can be tenuous, these six new stories are provocative in both variety and ideas. . . .and with Dickinson’s usual command of imaginative imagery and beautifully tooled language, this is a fitting capstone to the series.”
—Horn Book

“The prevailing tone of all six is somewhat dark, even saturnine, though not without flashes of hope. In content and style, they are sophisticated and challenging to the extent that the volume might have been published as an adult book. Certainly it has strong crossover appeal. Older teens and Dickinson fans of all ages will find the stories rewarding despite the investment of effort in the reading experience.”
—Booklist

“Noted fantasist Dickinson concludes the cycle of elemental stories he began with Robin McKinley in Fire (BCCB 11/09) and Water (BCCB 7/02) in a solo outing with tales of earth and air spirits. Aside from the sci-fi influenced final story, “The Fifth Element,” the five preceding tales evoke an old-world flavor of magic, incorporating pieces of Greek mythology and European folklore, sometimes placing archetypal beings in the modern world of cars and email. Appropriately, the two tales focusing on earth creatures, “Troll Blood” and “Wizand” (yes, that is the right spelling), are characterized by densely loaded prose and deal with themes of love, lust, and possession. Without McKinley’s more adolescent-focused contributions, the stories lean more toward a new adult audience, though the two animal-centered stories, “Ridiki” and “Scops,” will appeal to pet-friendly readers, particularly dog lovers. These stories are nonetheless thoughtful and provocative, and they will find an audience among Dickinson’s usual fans.”
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“This is ultimately a wonderfully hopeful work, with glimpses at some of the best of human nature: compassion, love, a sense of right and fairness, and a correspondingly humane response from the supernatural powers.”
—School Library Journal

“These unusual, memorable tales from a much-admired writer should appeal both to teens and Dickinson’s adult fans.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Strange, sometimes beautiful tales.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“They are beautifully told and move so effortlessly that I was startled to discover I’d read the book in one sitting.”
—Don D’Ammassa

Reviews of “Troll Blood”

“Another story which will stay with me is Peter Dickinson’s “Troll Blood.” Mari is a young researcher of Old Norse, with a curious family history. She develops a friendship with her professor, marries the love of her life, and through these relationships she explores her ancestral connections. This is a heart-warming fantasy story of love, trust and honour, held together by lush, sophisticated prose. My one criticism is it jumps about geographically, making is a bit hard to follow at times, but overall this is a beautiful story.”
—Barbara Melville, Tangent

“If some crafty Tilton-hunter were setting a snare, there could be no better bait than a piece like this. Old manuscripts. Old Norse. Beowulf. Even for those readers not so predisposed to love manuscript neep, the story of the troll and the bargain works well, for a story of a troll. I’m not quite so smitten by the biology and the verse, but it’s still another win for this issue.
—Lois Tilton, Locus

Table of Contents

Foreword

Troll Blood
Ridiki
Wizand
Talaria
Scops
The Fifth Element

Praise for Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits

World Fantasy Award finalist

“There is plenty here to excite, enthrall, and move even the pickiest readers.”—School Library Journal

“… a collection of enchanting tales.”—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

“This collection of beautifully crafted tales will find a warm welcome.”—School Library Journal

“Dickinson’s offerings are notable for their sophisticated magical thinking and subtlety of expression.”—The Horn Book

“Dickinson’s stories are told with a storyteller’s cadence.”—Booklist

“This collection … offers something for every fantasy fan.”—Library Media Connection

Read more


The Shimmers in The Night

Tue 25 Sep 2012 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books, Lydia Millet| Posted by: Gavin

September 2012 | 256pp · 978-1-931520-78-2 · trade cloth · $16.95 | 978-1-931520-79-9 · ebook · $9.95

This might be the worst weekend of Cara’s life. Her mother is still missing and her brother Jax is off at “smart kid boot camp” in Boston. When he texts Cara asking to be rescued, she and her two best friends, Hayley and Jaye, go into action. The so-called boot camp is actually a front for Cara’s mother’s organization, which is fighting a force which brooks no dissent against its wish to make the planet over in its own image—to “clean it up,” leaving no space for anything else, animal, insect, or human.

And human doesn’t really mean what everyone thinks it does. . . .

The three girls have to escape a new elemental threat, “Burners,” and learn about the enemy’s horrifying plan to “hollow out” people and use them as weapons.

Tension ratchets up as Cara and her friends learn more about the threat their mother is fighting, about how unusual Cara’s mother really is, about how some of the people they’ve known all their lives might be their enemies, about what it means to be human, and most strange and wonderful of all, about the mysterious band of rebels they have suddenly joined.

The Shimmers in the Night is the second thrilling novel in the Dissenters series following The Fires Beneath the Sea.

Lydia Millet on “Where I Write”
Lydia Millet interviewed by William Blake on The Nervous Breakdown.

“It is the week before Halloween and Cara’s younger brother, Jax, is off to Cambridge for a two-week stint at a “genius-kid” camp. He has special abilities that allow him to read minds (or in other words, “ping” them). Cara is busy herself, leaving to go out of town for a competitive swim meet with her friends. She is there when Jax texts her for help, “SCARED TELL NO 1 PLZ COME!” She finds a way to secretly leave, going unnoticed by her coach and Mrs. M. Cara soon enters a world of men with fire in their mouth; people with angel wings; and a brother that has been hollowed to be used as a weapon. Fortunately, Cara recruits her friends and they all work together in fighting the dark forces. This second book in this new fantasy series will not disappoint. Characters are given enough dimension that the fantasy elements are believable. Readers will identify with Cara’s strong ties to her family and friends, who find out that people they might have known for most of their lives are closer to being their enemies. Readers will want to leave the lights on well after finishing this book as the detail depicted will create similarities in your mind to Clive Barker’s Abarat books. Readers will likely want Cara on their team as they jump, like Alice down the rabbit hole, through the guide book that turns into a window through another world.”
— VOYA

“The seemingly three-tiered conflict that emerged in The Fires Beneath the Sea (2011) coalesces into a single war. . . . Cara and her brothers (though not their oblivious dad) know their mom’s involved in a confrontation that connects murderous mythical creatures with global warming. Cara leaves Cape Cod for a Boston swim meet, but a frightened text from Jax (a classic genius-younger-brother archetype–think Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time) says he’s endangered at his Cambridge genius-kid camp. She sneaks off to fetch him, and a man with flames inside his mouth accosts her on the subway. He’s a Burner, an elemental who belongs to the army of the Cold. The Cold steals people’s consciousnesses (including Jax’s) and uses their bodies as “hollows” to serve his Carbon War, which is acidifying oceans and extinguishing species. . . . Nicely serious eco-fantasy. . . .”
—Kirkus Reviews

Upcoming Appearances

Lydia Millet is the author of many novels, including My Happy Life (PEN-USA Award winner), Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), and Ghost Lights. Her short story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She works at an endangered-species protection group and has just been named a Guggenheim fellow. The Shimmers in the Night is the second book in the Dissenters series. The first book, The Fires Beneath the Sea has just come out in paperback.

Cover by Sharon McGill.
Author photo by Ivory Orchid Photography.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Millet, Lydia, 1968-
The shimmers in the night : a novel / Lydia Millet. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: “Cara’s mother is still missing. When her brother Jax texts her from “smart kid’s boot camp” in Boston, Cara and her two best friends go to the rescue. But the camp is a front for Cara’s mother’s organization who are fighting against a force who wants to make the planet over in its own image, which will leave no space for anything else, animal, insect, or human”– Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-931520-78-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-931520-79-9 (ebook)
[1. Supernatural–Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters–Fiction. 3. Psychic ability–Fiction. 4. Missing persons–Fiction. 5. Family life–Massachusetts–Fiction. 6. Cape Cod (Mass.)–Fiction.]  I. Title.
PZ7.M5998Shi 2012
[Fic]–dc23
2012022742


The Fires Beneath the Sea

Mon 30 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books, Lydia Millet| Posted by: Gavin

July 2011 · 256 pp · hardcover (out of print) · 9781931520713 | ebook · 9781931520416
April 2012 · 280 pp · trade paperback · 9781931520478
— Includes a sneak preview of the second book in the Dissenters series, The Shimmers in the Night

Start reading now on Wattpad.

A Junior Library Guild Pick
Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011
Selected for the ABC Best Books for Children Catalog
Locus Notable Books
Turkish rights sold to Ithaki.

Cara’s mother has disappeared. Her father isn’t talking about it. Her big brother Max is hiding behind his iPod, and her genius little brother Jackson is busy studying the creatures he collects from the beach. But when a watery specter begins to haunt the family’s Cape Cod home, Cara and her brothers realize that their scientist mother may not be who they thought she was—and that the world has much stranger, much older inhabitants than they had imagined.

With help from Cara’s best friend Hayley, the three embark on a quest that will lead them from the Cape’s hidden, ancient places to a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. They’re soon on the front lines of an ancient battle between good and evil, with the terrifying “pouring man” close on their heels.

Packed with memorable characters and thrilling imagery, Lydia Millet weaves a page-turning adventure even as she brings the seaside world of Cape Cod to magical life. The first in a series of books about the Sykes children, The Fires Beneath the Sea is a rip-cracking middle-grade novel that will make perfect beach reading—for readers of any age!

* “Millet’s prose is lyrically evocative (“the rhythmic scoop and splash of their paddles”). A lush and intelligent opener for a topical eco-fantasy series.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Read more


Fountain of Age

Tue 24 Apr 2012 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

April 2012 · trade paper / ebook · 978-1-931520-45-4 · 303 pp.

Philip K. Dick Award finalist

Nine new stories from a long-time star of the science fiction field including the Hugo Award winner “The Erdmann Nexus” and the caper-inspired Nebula Award winning title story “Fountain of Age.”

Kress unpacks the future the way DNA investigators unravelled the double helix: one gene at a time. In many of these stories gene sculpting is illegal yet commonplace and the effects range between slow catastrophe (“End Game”), cosmic (“First Rites”), and tragic (“Safeguard”). Then there’s the morning when Rochester disappears and Jenny has to rely on “The Kindness of Strangers.” There’s Jill, who is kidnapped by aliens and trying to learn the “Laws of Survival.” And there’s Hope,  whose Grandma is regretting the world built “By Fools Like Me.”

* Read an interview with Nancy in The Stranger.

“What stands out is that Ms. Kress’s characters have developed interior lives. . . . she is a wise woman.”
—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal

“Well-written hard sf, peopled with strong and vivid characters, and articulating a subtle and highly nuanced vision of the moral quandaries inherent in genetic engineering, global warming, and other intentional and accidental manipulations of our biosphere. The nine stories in this collection include the Hugo Award Winning novella, ‘The Erdmann Nexus’ and the Nebula Award-winning short story, ‘Fountain of Age.’ Other highlights are ‘Images of Anna,’ in which a routine photo shoot morphs into an alchemical romance about the relationship between selflessness (or perhaps more accurately “self-loss”) and self-discovery; and the post-apocalypse, harsh to the point of brutality, global warming parable, ‘By Fools Like Me.'”
— Chris Moriarty, F&SF

“What makes her fiction distinctive, apart from the elegance of her craft and the clarity of her prose, is the manner in which she recombines [conventional SF] elements into complex structures that reveal their hidden dimensions, and invariably concern their impact on fully realized characters. She’s as good as anyone at imaginary gardens with real toads, only we’re the toads.”
—Locus Magazine

“This is an extraordinary collection of stories by one of our best writers. Kress has won several Hugo and Nebula awards for her work and justifiably so. Her focus tends to be on biology and genetics (though not always), but her real heart lies in how humans behave…. There are nine stories in this collection and all of them are keepers. I did find “The Erdmann Nexus,” the longest story here, to be the better story, if only because of its length. Kress really does excel in the short form. . . . This is a collection that absolutely belongs on your shelves.”
—Paul Cook, Galaxy’s Edge

“The nine stories in this collection are all excellent examples of Kress’s writing for the past decade. Fountain Of Age should be a ‘must buy’ both for fans of Kress’s work and for those readers who are just discovering her writing. Highly recommended.”
—SF Revu

“Quality oozes from every page. A master class in the art of short-story writing.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Passions are magnified by age and the world only becomes more unpredictable in Kress’s new collection, anchored by the Nebula-winning title novella. The nine stories, published over the course of just two years, wrestle with themes of love, death, and transformation. . . . Kress’s depiction of science is much like her characters’ experiences with love: by turns glorious and terrible, and always a little disturbing, even in triumph.”
—Publishers Weekly

“End Game” & “The Kindness of Strangers” are available as podcasts and many of these stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and Best of the Web.

Table of Contents

The Erdmann Nexus
The Kindness of Strangers
By Fools Like Me
First Rites
End Game
Images of Anna
Laws of Survival
Safeguard
Fountain of Age

Cover by fonografiks.com.

Praise for Nancy Kress’s previous books:

“Nancy Kress Has the true storyteller’s Gift–the ability to make her characters and what happens to them so vital that the reader’s heart aches.” —Stephen R. Donaldson

“Nancy Kress comprehends the grimy relationships among bioscience, technology, and politics; and soon we will too, if only enough of us read her. Too soon it cannot be.” —Gene Wolfe

“Nancy Kress has written a novel that graphically disects the roots of human violence while affirming the invincibility of the human spirit. An Alien Light is both provocative and insightful.” —Julian May

“Kress’s villains are not diabolical conspirators but willfully ignorant hypocrites, shortsighted and greedy dunderheads, the well-intentioned half-baked—in short, us. But we are also the heroes whose generosity, honesty and energy could turn our lemming tribe away from the polluted waters ahead.” —Washington Post

“The plotting is fast-paced, the characterization is good, and science explained in easily digestible portions.” —New Scientist

“The kind of thriller that continually makes you want to turn the pages faster than you can read them.” —SF Site

“That Kress remains a master is everywhere evident.” —Booklist

“The keeness of vision to. . . see the possibilities for the future very clearly, and they are both fascinating and frightening.” —San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty books, including four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. For sixteen years she was the fiction columnist for Writers Digest magazine. She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with Beggars in Spain. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award. Most recent books are a collection an SF novel, Steal Across the Sky; a YA fantasy written under the name Anna Kendall, Crossing Over; and a short novel of eco-terror, Before the Fall, During the Fall, After the Fall. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, SF writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.


The Liminal People

Tue 10 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

January 2012 · 9781931520331 / 9781931520362 · $16 · 204pp · trade paper/ebook
2nd printing: April 2022

The Liminal People · The Entropy of Bones · The Liminal War · Heroes of an Unknown World

Membership in the razor neck crew is for life. But when Taggert, who can heal and hurt with just a touch, receives a call from the past he is honor bound to try and help the woman he once loved try to find her daughter. Taggert realizes the girl has more power than even he can imagine and has to wrestle with the nature of his own skills, not to mention risking the wrath of his enigmatic master and perhaps even the gods, in order keep the girl safe. In the end, Taggert will have to delve into the depths of his heart and soul to survive.
After all, what really matters is family.

* * * Read the first three chapters.

Ayize interviewed on The Rumpus:

Like all good genre stories, The Liminal People sneakily explores some deep questions. In between cool fight sequences and imaginative depictions of the not-quite or perhaps more-than-human, it makes you wonder about what it means to belong and who gets past the gates of that exclusive country club called “normal.”
It’s little wonder Jama-Everett would be interested in these kinds of subjects. Like his work, he’s hard to categorize. And he’s quite familiar with the experience of liminality. He grew up as a kind of real-life Oscar Wao—a bespectacled, comic book-reading punk rock fan in 1980s Harlem.

Read: Ayize’s excellent and hilarious Book Brahmin piece for Shelf Awareness.

Listen:

Reviews

“The first of an excellent three-book series!” — Liberty Hardy, Book Riot

“A fun and fast-paced thriller. Recommended for: Mutants, misfits, anyone who’s ever felt partway between one thing and another.”
—The Ladies of Comicazi

“A refreshing burst of the real world. It is the first truly global Spec/Fic book of the 21st century.”
— Shawn Taylor, Nerds of Color

“Compact but creative, and filled with good ideas and elements of classic sci-fi, noir, and superhero stories. Really well-paced and compelling.”
—Peter, Brookline Booksmith

“Taggert walks uncomfortably with the likes of Tracker, gives Frodo a powerful shove and tells him to human-up, and asks Spiderman to consider exactly to whom that great responsibility is owed. Beautifully wrapped inside a page-turning sci- fi adventure mystery are the questions of great literature: what happens to the children our world abuses and discards? What kinds of damage can damaged people enact? What happens when the wisp of family ties wraps those on the edge into embrace? Now what happens if these people have powers? Welcome to the world of Liminal People! Now we just need an in conversation with Marlon James and Ayize. Now THAT would be awesome!”
— Linda Sherman-Nurick, Cellar Door Books, Riverside, CA

“You’ll be sucked into a fast-paced story about superpowered people struggling for control of the underground cultures they inhabit…. The novel is a damn good read. It’s a smart actioner that will entertain you while also enticing you to think about matters beyond the physical realm.”
—Annalee Newitz, io9

“The action sequences are smartly orchestrated, but it is Taggert’s quest to retrieve his own soul that gives “The Liminal People” its oomph. Jama-Everett has done a stellar job of creating a setup that promises even greater rewards in future volumes.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“The story’s setup . . .  takes next to no time to relate in Jama-Everett’s brisk prose. With flat-voiced, sharp-edged humor reminiscent of the razors his fellow thugs wear around their necks, Taggert claims to read bodies ‘the way pretentious East Coast Americans read The New Yorker … I’ve got skills,’ he adds. ‘What I don’t have is patience.'”
—Nisi Shawl, The Seattle Times

“Fresh and entertaining.”
— Strange Horizons

“An astounding first novel.”
—Elitist Book Reviews

“For all the grit, character and poetry on display here, Everett’s own super power appears to be plotting and set-pieces. Readers will find a quick immersion in the opening scene, and then some secret world-building. Once the plot kicks in, readers had best be prepared to finish the book in one sitting, while experiencing better special effects than you will find in any movie. Indeed, Everett’s prose is cinematic in the best sense; when he puts us in a scene of action, his descriptions take on a hyper-clarity that is better than telepathy. The plot arc is cunning and enjoyably surprising, and the revelations have the shock of the new but the old-school satisfaction of well-woven espionage plots. ‘The Liminal People’ is seriously well-written, but also seriously fun to read. It’s a secret world that deserves the elegant exposition of this engaging novel — and a sequel, sooner rather than later.”
—Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column

“Every once in awhile, a first novel catches you by surprise. Sometimes it’s the style and sometimes it’s the pure originality or unique mixing of influences. In the case of Ayize Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People (Small Beer Press), the pleasure comes from all of the above.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, Omnivoracious

“Razor. Plush. Fast.”
—Recommended by Tân, City Lights Books

“From within “The Golden Ghetto” Jama-Everett has created a book that resists classification, joining the Afrosurreal Pantheon of writers exploring this new-found freedom.  He calls the gifted ones Liminal People, people “Always on the borderland, the threshold, the in-between.” He has Taggert explain.  “I learned what I know by walking the liminal lands.”  I trust that many people will relate, or will want to.”
—D. Scot Miller, City Lights Blog

“The Liminal People is an excellent first novel full of insightful characters – however gradually they may gain that insight – engaged in a battle that seems to have only just begun. I’m hoping that this novel is the first in a series, as Jama-Everett has built a world and peopled it with characters about which and whom I wish to know more.”
—Fantasy Literature

“Ayize Jama-Everett has brewed a voodoo cauldron of Sci-Fi, Romance, Crime, and Superhero Comic, to provide us with a true gestalt of understanding, offering us both a new definition of “family” and a world view on the universality of human conduct. The Liminal People—as obviously intended—will draw different reactions from different readers. But none of them will stop reading until its cataclysmic ending.”
—Andrew Vachss

“Ayize’s imagination will mess with yours, and the world won’t ever look quite the same again.”
—Nalo Hopkinson

“The Liminal People has the pleasures of classic sf while being astonishingly contemporary and savvy.”
—Maureen F. McHugh

“Fast and sleek and powerful—a skillful and unique mix of supernatural adventure and lived-in, persuasive, often moving noir.”
—Felix Gilman, author of The Half-Made World

“Fast-paced and frequently violent, Jama-Everett’s engaging and fulfilling debut offers a compelling take on the classic science-fiction convention of the powerful misfit; incorporates an interesting, multiethnic cast of characters; and proves successful as both an action-packed thriller and a careful look at the moral dilemmas of those whose powers transcend humanity.”
—Publishers Weekly

Cover by Adam S. Doyle.

About the Author

Ayize Jama-Everett calls the Bay Area his home despite being born in New York City. He holds a Masters degrees in Divinity, Clinical Psychology, in Fine Arts, Creative Writing. He has worked as a bartender, a translator, a drug and alcohol counselor, a stand-up comedian, a script doctor, a ghostwriter, a high school dean, a college professor, and for a brief time, a distiller of spirits. Jama-Everett’s Liminal series began with The Liminal People and continued with The Entropy of Bones and The Liminal War. He has also written a graphic novel, Box of Bones with two-time Eisner Award winner John Jennings and has written for The Believer and the LA Review of Books, among others.


A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2012

Tue 3 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Books, Calendar| Posted by: Gavin

Available in two spiralbound or PDF ebook editions.

Standard Edition, 134 pages:
— order the print edition ($13.95)
— ebook: Weightless ($0.99) /  Lulu ($1.99)

Almanac Edition which includes all the prompts, exercises, reading lists, and articles from the two previous editions, 182 pages:
— order the print edition ($15.95)
— ebook Weightless ($0.99) / Lulu ebook ($1.99)

A Working Writer’s Daily Planner is the perfect place to keep everything writing-related: whether it’s the minutia of deadlines and word counts, the writing ideas and inspirations that insist on being jotted down, or the most private hopes and dreams. There’s nothing like having this planner in hand to show how much time, effort, thought, and love a writer puts into writing.

Our redesigned third annual Daily Planner is the perfect gift for anyone interested in writing from teenager to grandparent. Cover and interior art by Kathleen Jennings.

Praise for previous editions:

“I know some writers who have spent many, many hours trying to figure out the ins and outs of residency programs, grant applications and even MFA programs in creative writing. A lot of that work is done for you here, with those deadlines detailed and looming some time before their due dates.”
—Jacket Copy, Los Angeles Times

“Like many writers, I have a thing for shiny new planners, dreams of organization and a complete lack of follow-through after March. No more, my friends! A gift from a fellow writer will keep my bad thang on track—at least until June. A Working Writer’s Daily Planner from Small Beer Press is a practical planner for those of us who are distracted by bright and shiny things (like Facebook, admit it). Spiral bound, good quality paper to take the ink and chock-full of goodies such as writing exercises, paper dolls and workshop information (plus much more), it’s already been marked up with deadlines and dog-eared.”
—Momgadget.com

“An incredible gift for your favorite writer, or yourself.”
—Kelli Russell

“What I just pulled out of the shipping box is a solid little book of 144 pages of text printed on a good stock of 6×9-inch paper and spiral bound to lay flat. The spiral, by the way, is made of a heavy wire and bent in at the ends, so it should both stay on the book and make it through the year.”
—Women of Mystery

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to Format a Manuscript
“A Mayan Apocalypse Primer for the WorkingWriter,” Michael J. DeLuca
“Ladies, Please!,” Sarah Rees Brennan
State Arts Grants
“What I Know About Literary Agents,” Geoffrey Goodwin
“Rewriting,” Kelley Eskridge
“A Short 2012 Reading List,”Su-Yee Lin
Future Planning
Further Resources
Contest and Award Fees
CLMP Contest Code of Ethics
“A (Mostly) Contemporary British Reading List,” Rebecca Isherwood
Fifty First Sentences
Residency Spotlight
Submission Tracker
“111 Contradictory Writing Suggestions,” Geoffrey Goodwin
Science Fiction Spotlight
A Reading List of  Favorite Romances,” Kelly Link
“Bestsellers: Do They Last?”

2010 & 2011 EXTRAS (Almanac Edition only)

Book Festivals
Writing Exercise: A Reality Show Story
“The Editorial Assistant,” Rebecca Isherwood
“How to Find a Writing Group,” Ben Francisco
Six Reading Lists
An Even Dozen Writing Prompts
Debut Author Interview: Kelly Link interviews N.K. Jemisin
Writing Exercise: A Play on Words
“Story Idea Generation,” Kelly Link
“What I Know About Writing,” Geoffrey Goodwin
Writing Exercise: Genre Musical Chairs
“Reading as a Writer,” Kelly Link
“How to End a Story,” Nick Mamatas
Writing Exercise: The Cliché Trainwreck
Where to Find Out About MFA Programs
April is National Poetry Month: Spotlight on Poetry
Writing Exercise: Truth or Fiction
“Beyond Competent and Accomplished: A Call to Action for Workshoppers,” Kelly Link
“Trivia Vs. Writing Real Stories,” Kate Wilhelm
Persevere
Writing Exercise: Dialogue
Online Writing Workshop Spotlight
Writing Exercise: Soundtrack First
Photo and Illustration Credits

A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2012 Sample


The Freedom Maze

Tue 15 Nov 2011 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books, Delia Sherman| Posted by: Gavin

The Freedom MazeNovember 15, 2011 · 9781931520300 / 9781931520409 · $16.95 · 272 pp · trade cloth (out of print)/ebook/audio
January 7, 2014 · Paperback and new ebook edition published by Candlewick Press

Norton Award winner
Prometheus Award winner
Mythopoeic Award winner
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults
Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011
Tiptree Award Honor List

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine.

In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending summer at her grandmother’s old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can’t resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and playful inhabitant.

When Sophie, bored and lonely, makes an impulsive wish inspired by her reading, hoping for a fantasy adventure of her own, she slips one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. On her arrival she makes her way, bedraggled and tanned, to what will one day be her grandmother’s house, where she is at once mistaken for a slave.

“Forced to spend her summer at her grandmother’s Southern house in the 1960’s, Sophie unwittingly finds herself transported to the Civil War era as a slave of her ancestors.”
—ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults

“Ensnares the reader with mysteries and conundrums of many varieties: social, historical, and magical. 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

“The Freedom Maze is, frankly, a stunning book on every level.”
—Tor.com

“Ambitious . . . vividly evokes two historical settings, turning a glaring light on the uncomfortable attitudes and practices of earlier eras.”
—Jonathan Hunt, The Horn Book

“Delia Sherman riffs on Edward Eager’s classic The Time Garden in her deeply affecting time travel and coming-of-age novel The Freedom Maze. . . . Realistic, compelling, and not the slightest bit condescending, The Freedom Maze is all about changing your world. Well done, Ms. Sherman.”
—Colleen Mondor, Bookslut

“There are books you just know will stay with you forever. This is one of them. Rating: 10: Perfect.”
— Book Smugglers

“It’s 1960, but on the decayed Fairchild sugar plantation in rural Louisiana, vestiges of a grimmer past remain—the old cottage, overgrown garden maze, relations between white and black races.
“Stuck for the summer in the family ancestral home under the thumb of her cranky, imperious grandmother, Sophie, 13, makes a reckless wish that lands her in 1860, enslaved—by her own ancestors. Sophie’s fair skin and marked resemblance to the Fairchilds earn her “easy” employment in the big house and the resentment of her peers, whose loyalty she’ll need to survive. Plantation life for whites and blacks unfolds in compelling, often excruciating detail. A departure from Sherman’s light fantasy Changeling (2006), this is a powerfully unsettling, intertextual take on historical time-travel fantasy, especially Edward Eager’s Time Garden (1958), in which white children help a grateful enslaved family to freedom. Sophie’s problems aren’t that easily resolved: While acknowledging their shared kinship, her white ancestors refuse to see her as equally human. The framing of Sophie’s adventures within 1960 social realities prompts readers to consider what has changed since 1860, what has not—for Sophie and for readers half a century later—and at what cost.
“Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America’s Civil War.”
—Kirkus Reviews (*starred review*)

“Halfway through the narrative, I thought a tale like this could be improved if we can see how the transformation has changed the character—more than a glimpse given the amount of time spent developing the opening. This was exactly what Sherman did…. This is a novel worth checking out: a fine exemplar of a well-written children’s book, or of the fantastic for fans of history and especially of the Civil War, reminiscent in ways of Octavia Butler’s Kindred.”
—Trent Walters, SF Site

“While heartache thrums throughout the book–children have been sold away from their parents, bodies are worked like machines and beaten liberally, living conditions are despicable–there is the clear bell of hope, that sound in children’s literature that is too tough to destroy.”
—The Pirate Tree

“Sherman has created a finely honed work of art, a novel that deals eloquently with complex and intersecting issues of race, womanhood, class and age. In transporting the reader so fully into another time, The Freedom Maze becomes timeless. This is true magic.”
—Alaya Dawn Johnson, author of Moonshine

“A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie’s coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family’s double-edged past.”
—N. K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“This is an absolutely fascinating story. The Freedom Maze draws you into a world of danger and mystery, of daring and change, at the dawning of the Civil War. Sophie’s adventures in the history of her family’s Louisiana plantation feel real, and lead her to a real understanding of racial truths she would never have caught a glimpse of without magic. Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and vévés and bitter, healing herbs.  The Freedom Maze is deep, meaningful fun.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

“Sherman’s antebellum story exposes a wide sweep through a narrow aperture, where the arbitrary nature of race and ownership, kindred and love, are illuminated in the harsh seeking glare of an adolescent’s coming of age.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“A bold and sensitively-written novel about a supposed-white child, Sophie Fairchild returned magically to a time of her ancestors who were slavemaster and slaves in the old South. This book puts the lie to those today making loose political statements about happy, comfortable slave families of that brutal era while telling a strong story that will not let the young reader stop turning pages to see how things will work out for Sophie and her fellow slaves, especially the cook Africa, and house slaves Antigua and Canada. I was mesmerized.”
—Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic

“A riveting, fearless, and masterful novel. I loved Sophie completely.”
—Nancy Werlin, author of Extraordinary

“A subtle and haunting book that examines what it means to be who we are.”
—Holly Black, co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

“The Freedom Maze is destined to become a classic of time-travel fantasy alongside Edward Eager’s Time Garden and Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Sherwood Ring. Yes, it is thatgood. But it’s also something more: a novel that slides skillfully past all the usual stereotypes about plantation life in the ante-bellum South, encouraging young readers to look at race, gender, and American history in a deeper, more nuanced way. It is, quite simply, one of the very best books I’ve read in years. Now I want everyone to read it.”
—Terri Windling

“Vividly realized and saturated with feeling.”
—Elizabeth Knox, author of DreamHunter

“An entertaining, cracking adventure yarn, The Freedom Maze elegantly unravels many myths of the antebellum South, highlighting the resistance of the enslaved, and showing how even the kind hearted are corrupted by their exploitation of their fellow human beings.”
—Justine Larbalestier, author of Liar

“A story that says what no story has quite said before, and says it perfectly. Stuck on her family’s Louisiana plantation in 1960, adolescent Sophie Fairchild wishes for adventure—and travels magically from the beginning of Civil Rights to the beginning of the Civil War. Enslaved by her own ancestors, Sophie finds kinship among the other people secretly traveling tangled paths toward freedom and home. No matter what age you are, this is a book for the permanent shelf.”
—Sarah Smith, author of the Agatha-winning The Other Side of Dark

“A dramatic yet sensitively-written coming-of-age story that succeeds both as classic fantasy and issue-oriented children’s literature. When Sophie Martineau travels back in time from 1960 to 1860, she discovers the painful complexity of her own heritage as a descendant of both Louisiana planters and the slave women who were forced to bear their children. Sherman offers a non-sugarcoated portrayal of life for black women under slavery, and she never falls into the trap of reducing them to simple stereotypes. Instead, Sophie’s adventure becomes a window into the daily lives of the women who manage the Martineau family’s plantation, work their fields, cook their food, and even raise their children–all while their own reality as thinking, feeling human beings remains strangely invisible to their white owners. Young readers will stay up late to find out if there’s a happy ending for Sophie and Antigua. And by the time they turn the last page, they will have gained a deeper appreciation of the real human cost of slavery–and of the intelligence and resourcefulness with which generations of women struggled to protect their families under a system that denied their most basic rights as human beings.”
—Chris Moriarty

“Vivid and compelling, The Freedom Maze will transport you completely to another time.”
—Sarah Beth Durst

Small Beer Press: In your nearly twenty years of working on this book, what was the most surprising thing you found?

Delia Sherman: “The most surprising thing, really, was finding an advertisement for a runaway slave in the library of Loyola University in New Orleans that read more or less as follows: “Wanted, [name], a woman of [however many] years. Blond and blue-eyed, could pass as white.” That was the most dramatic example, but once I’d seen it, I began to notice others, for “fair-skinned” or “red-haired” slaves escaping with darker companions as slave and master or mistress. It really made me think about how race was constructed in the ante-bellum South.”

Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City, but spent vacations between her mother’s relatives in Texas and Louisiana and her father’s relatives in South Carolina. With a PhD in Renaissance Studies, she proceeded to teach until she realized she’d rather edit and write instead. But retaining her love of history, she has set novels and short stories for children and adults in many times and places. Her work has appeared most recently in the YA anthologies The Beastly Bride, Steampunk!, and Teeth.  Her “New York Between” novels for younger readers are Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Delia still enjoys teaching writing workshops, most recently at the Hollins University Masters Degree Program in Children’s Literature. After many years in Boston, she once again lives in New York City, but travels at the drop of a hat.


After the Apocalypse

Tue 25 Oct 2011 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

November 2011 (third printing: Sept. 2012) · 9781931520294 · $16 · 200pp · trade paper/ebook

Shirley Jackson Award winner
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of 2011
NPR Best Books of 2012
io9 Best SF&F Books of 2011
Tiptree Award Honor List
Philip K. Dick Award finalist
Story Prize Notable Book
Rights sold: Italy (Il Saggiatore), Poland (REPLIKA), Slovak (Tatran).

“After the Apocalypse is what a story collection should be: urgent, various, all of a piece. Whether she’s writing about disease or dirty bombs or refugee camps in Canada, McHugh focuses always on those people who suffer first and suffer most when things fall apart.”
—Aaron Thier, The Nation

“Each tale is a beautifully written character study. . . . McHugh’s great talent is in reminding us that the future could never be weirder — or sadder — than what lurks in the human psyche. This is definitely one of the best works of science fiction you’ll read this year, or any thereafter.”
—Annalee Newitz, NPR

The apocalypse was yesterday. These stories are today.

Following up on her first collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh explores the catastrophes, small and large, of twenty-first century life—and what follows after. What happens after the bird flu pandemic? Are our computers smarter than we are? What does the global economy mean for two young girls in China? Are we really who we say we are? And how will we survive the coming zombie apocalypse?

“An amazing collection.”
—Karen Russell (Vampires of the Lemon Grove)

“The stories in After the Apocalypse will catch many readers off-guard; they’re suspenseful, but they never quite go where you expect them to. The end of the world as we know it will never be the same again.”
—Salon

“Superb. . . . Against backdrops of sheer terror, Ms. McHugh’s characters insist on investing themselves in flirtations, friendships and jobs. They keep their innocent curiosity for the world even as it falls to pieces.”
—Wall Street Journal

Read a story: “The Naturalist” · “The Kingdom of the Blind” · “Useless Things” · “The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” · Read the title story on Storyville.

Interviews: Coode Street Podcast ·  WISB ·  Jessa Crispin, Kirkus Reviews · Apex Magazine · David Moles &  Maureen F. McHugh in conversation.

Find it on Scribd.

More: Maureen F. McHugh and the Earthquake Kit

“Disturbing but mesmerizing, the stories in After the Apocalypse will creep into your unconscious and haunt you for weeks.”
—NPR, Best Science Fiction of 2012

“McHugh brings a subtle grittiness to the end of days. There is no post-apocalyptic glamour in these post-apocalyptic tales.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“These nine stories take place in a world that has been ravaged by prion diseases and economic collapse, even as it enters a new age of artificial intelligence and green biotech. You won’t be able to forget the people you meet there.”
—io9

“One of the best short story collections I’ve read in the last decade.”
—Chris Moriarty, F&SF

“McHugh’s approach to the apocalypse is oblique, a concern with the personal, the individual or family unit, rather than the devastation that surrounds them…. [T]here are perhaps half a dozen stories that are as powerful as anything you are likely to read this year.”
—Strange Horizons

“The best stories in this mesmerizing collection from the L.A. writer are the ones that elude categorization—the struggles of a troubled doll maker in “Useless Things,” the fantasies of an impulsive man in “Going to France.” It’s the ordinary and everyday that we should be afraid of, not the prospect of big explosions and world-ending catastrophes. This is a pro stretching a genre to its limits—subverting, inverting, perverting, disturbing.”
—Los Angeles Magazine

“Almost four years ago I read Maureen McHugh’s story “Special Economics,” about the fortunes of a spunky young Chinese girl, and immediately considered it to be the ne plus ultra of hip, wired, globally aware, twenty-first-century SF. I had a chance to peruse it again, thanks to the publication of her new collection, After the Apocalypse, and found the tale just as au courant as ever. SF would not be deemed irrelevant if it were all as good as this. McHugh proves she can deliver zombie shocks (“The Naturalist”), surreal whimsy (“Going to France”), and beautiful mimesis (“Honeymoon”) as well. She’s at the top of her game in these pages.”
—Asimov’s

“Maureen F. McHugh’s collection of stories is an outstanding solo in the zeitgeist fiction chorus including Gods Without Men (Hari Kunzru) and The Truth and All Its Ugly (Kyle Minor) that at long last begins building the bridge between The Two Cultures invoked by C.P. Snow decades ago. In these stories, despite the title, destruction and despair are not the key motif: survival, even transcendence, is.”
—SF Signal

“If you haven’t discovered McHugh yet, After the Apocalypse is a must-have.”
—Charles Tan, Bibliophile Stalker

“You aren’t ready for tomorrow until you’ve seen it through McHugh’s observant gaze.”
—io9 Best SF&F Books of 2011

“McHugh’s stories function as short films in the way things could go wrong soon, focusing in on a character long enough to make us care, then moving on to the next. By the end, the stories build on each other, creating one of those collections whose theme and execution, make it greater than the sum of its parts. The near future, After the Apocalypse tells us, may be calamitous in many ways, but in the end there will still be people who fear, laugh, cry, work, play, and live.”
—SF Site

“Strong characterization, vivid description, emphasis on the mundane courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances: these things make all the stories in the volume ring true.”
—New York Review of Science Fiction

“Intriguing. . . . If the stories here are anything to go by, author Maureen McHugh thinks we should be very afraid of the future. What awaits us is desolation, meaninglessness, and an abnegation of all progressive values…. These stories are about the life that continues when everything is over.”
—The Future Fire

“Hugo-winner McHugh (Mothers & Other Monsters) puts a human face on global disaster in nine fierce, wry, stark, beautiful stories. . . . As McHugh’s entirely ordinary characters begin to understand how their lives have been transformed by events far beyond their control, some shrink in horror while others are “matter of fact as a heart attack,” but there is no suicidal drama, and the overall effect is optimistic: we may wreck our planet, our economies, and our bodies, but every apocalypse will have an “after” in which people find their own peculiar ways of getting by.”
—Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)

“Like George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, 1996), McHugh displays an uncanny ability to hook into our prevailing end-of-the-world paranoia and feed it back to us in refreshingly original and frequently funny stories. In these nine apocalyptic tales, people facing catastrophes, from a zombie plague to a fatal illness contracted from eating chicken nuggets, do their best to cope. In “Useless Things,” perhaps the most affecting story in the collection, a resourceful sculptor, worried about drought and money in a time of high unemployment and increasing lawlessness, turns her exquisite crafstmanship to fashioning sex toys and selling them on the Internet with the hope of making enough money to pay her property taxes. In “Honeymoon,” a participant in a medical trial that goes horribly wrong watches in horror as six men are hospitalzed in critical condition; she uses her payment to take a vacation because, when all was said and done, she “wanted to dance. It didn’t seem like a bad choice.” That survival instinct is what makes McHugh’s collection a surprisingly sunny read in spite of the global disasters that threaten at every turn. An imaginative homage to the human ability to endure.”
—Booklist (*starred review*)

“All our worst dystopian fears are realized.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Interview: Publishers Weekly

Audio rights sold to Recorded Books.

Table of Contents

The Naturalist
Special Economics
Useless Things
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large
The Kingdom of the Blind
Going to France
Honeymoon
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces
After the Apocalypse

Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:

“Gorgeously crafted stories.”—Nancy Pearl, NPR

“Hauntingly beautiful.”—Booklist

“Unpredictable and poetic work.”—The Plain Dealer

“Poignant and sometimes heartwrenching.”—Publishers Weekly

Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor’s choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.


A Slepyng Hound to Wake

Tue 19 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9781931520263 · 288 pp · July 19, 2011 · trade cloth/ebook

In his second bibliomystery, Boston bookhound Henry Sullivan has a new girlfriend, a new apartment, and a shelfload of troubles.

Chaucer said “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.” Henry Sullivan, bookhound, is ready to be that sleeping dog: to settle down in his new apartment and enjoy life with his new girlfriend.

But the underside of the literary world won’t let him go. A bookscout sells Henry a book—and is murdered later that night. An old friend asks him to investigate a case of possible plagiarism involving a local bestselling author. To make matters worse, his violinist neighbor seems to have a stalker. And wherever Henry goes, there’s a cop watching him.

Henry can read the signs: to save those he loves he has to save himself.

“In 22 years of bookselling I find that readers remain endlessly fascinated with an insider look at the book business—an oxymoron right there.
Vincent McCaffrey offers a real insider’s view in A Slepyng Hound to Wake—a quote from Chaucer—the sequel to the splendid hit, Hound. I’d call them “biblio-noirs” rather than bibliomysteries: the deeds are dark even though bookhound Henry Sullivan becomes involved in what first seem academic rather than criminal matters. How likely is it that the possible ripping-off (OK, plagiarism) of a bestselling author could lead to murder? Dark, too, is Henry’s outlook on his professional world where centuries of tradition are daily eroded by digital publishing and internet bookselling. This gloom carries over into his relationships, freighting them in a classic noir fashion. Still, 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

“McCaffrey makes good use of his Boston setting. . . . Slepyng Hound provides an easy, intelligent read.”
—Gumshoe Reviews

“In McCaffrey’s compelling second mystery to feature Boston book dealer Henry Sullivan (after 2009’s Hound), Henry is unsettled by the murder of a fellow “book hound” down on his luck, Eddy Perry, who just sold Henry a rare volume of Lovecraft horror stories. Later, former girlfriend Barbara Krause, the owner of Alcott & Poe, an independent bookstore, asks Henry’s help in investigating a plagiarism case. Sharon Greene, one of Barbara’s employees, has accused a local literary heavyweight, George Duggan, of stealing from the work of the late James Frankowski, a little-known writer with whom Sharon lived for years. Meanwhile, Barbara struggles to keep Alcott & Poe afloat in an era of recession and e-commerce. A longtime bookstore owner himself, McCaffrey places less emphasis on crime solving than on the larger question of the printed word’s place in today’s world. Evocative prose and characterizations will remind many of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels.”
—Publishers Weekly

“There’s a Woody Allen tone to this one, and you’ll enjoy sharing it with bibliophiles or anyone who appreciates quirky characters. The plotting and weaving of story lines hide a clever puzzle, but most readers will forget they’re reading a mystery until all the pieces fall into place at the very end. Lisa Lutz fans could like this.”
—Library Journal

“Henry’s second (Hound, 2009) is not for those who require a fast and furious story line. The strong mystery is woven into a slow-paced, philosophical discussion of the painful demise of those special bookstores whose nooks and crannies once yielded fabulous finds.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Start reading:

Chapter One

The books were like corpses, the ink of lost dreams dried in their veins. On a bad day, Henry Sullivan felt like a mortician salvaging the moldering flesh of small decaying bodies to be preserved for a proper burial. But, on a good day, though there seemed to be fewer of those of late, he might save something which left him giddy.

Henry pulled the second box free from a mat of cat hair and dust beneath the bed, and peeked beneath the lid.

“Yes!”

The foul odor of the mattress too close to his face, made him swallow the word along with the impulse to gag.
A month before, after lifting the spoiled leaves of disbound volumes abandoned in a basement beneath the seep of a ruined foundation, he had uncovered loose pages sheltered by a collapsed box of empty Croft Ale bottles. Separating the layers until the fetor of mold had made him dizzy, he had salvaged a bundle six inches thick of cream colored rag paper broadsides, announcements, and advertisements, all in French. They had been discarded by a print collector interested only in the engravings originally meant to illustrate the words. And in the heart of that, Henry had found a first printing of ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.’

Those rare sheets were sold now to the highest bidder, but they were a part of the romance Henry imagined about himself. It was still his belief that long before Foucault and Derrida, when words still offered a common meaning, the world could be changed by the content of a few fragile pages. And this was why Henry Sullivan loved his job.

And this happened every once in awhile, more often to him than others he thought, because he had a nose for it.

Henry pushed a broom hand into the depths of the crevice below the bed frame. Again he heard the hollow strike on a box. . . .

Praise for Hound:

“There’s something charismatic and timeless about the way the story builds and McCaffrey opens Henry’s life to the reader . . . McCaffrey is . . . just telling a compelling, old-school yarn, the kind of story a man who knows his literature tells.”
—Time Out Chicago

“For the true bibliophile, this is a book you’ll love.”
—The Hippo

Cover by Tom Canty.

Vincent McCaffrey’s novel Hound was chosen as a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. He has owned the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop for more than thirty years. He has been paid to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. He has chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller. A Slepying Hound to Wake is his second novel and he is hard at work on the next novel featuring Henry Sullivan.


Paradise Tales

Tue 12 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Books, Geoff Ryman| Posted by: Gavin

Trade paper/ebook · 9781931520645/9781931520447 · 320 pp · July 12, 2011

Sunburst Award Winner
Lambda Award Finalist

Geoff Ryman writes about the other and leaves us dissected in the process. His stories are set in recognizable places—London, Cambodia, tomorrow—and feature men and women caught in recognizable situations (or technologies) and not sure which way to turn. They, we, should obviously choose what’s right. But what if that’s difficult? What will we do? What we should, or . . . ?

Paradise Tales follows the success of Ryman’s most recent novel, The King’s Last Song, and builds on that with three Cambodian stories included here, “The Last Ten Years of the Hero Kai,” “Blocked,” and the exceedingly-popular “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter.” Paradise Tales includes stories selected from the many periods of Ryman’s career including “Birth Days,” “Omnisexual,” “The Film-makers of Mars,” and a new story, “K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career).”

Small Beer Press has also reprinted two of Ryman’s novels, The Child Garden and Was, with new introductions or afterwords to continue to build the readership of one of the most fascinating writers exploring the edges of being, gender, science, and fiction.

Geoff Ryman Locus interview.

Reviews

“Paradise Tales includes one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in the last 10 years.”
—New York Times

“In the best of Ryman’s fiction, the world unfolds in ways that are at once astonishing and thoroughly thought out, both radically disorienting and emotionally powerful.”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“The stories gathered here from across Ryman’s career narrate paradise and its stories in ways that are far from conventionally utopian. Rather, Ryman’s paradises are not only largely intangible but often built on and out of loss. Reading his quasi-fairytales and other flights of passionate fantasy, we will always be reminded that these paradises, like all paradises, are places that can never be—except in fiction. For Ryman, however, this is an essential exception, as the power of story to heal and repair across time and across cultures becomes a recurrent theme in the collection…. By the end of Paradise Tales, however, the reader will understand that Ryman has already invented such a device: whether it is fantasy, science fiction, or some fiction in-between, the utopian, revelatory tool for Ryman is simply fiction itself.”
—Strange Horizons

“A prophet of the flesh, Geoff Ryman is fascinated by biology, our human capacity (shared with the rest of squishy creation) for bodily transcendence, degeneration and metamorphosis. Whether contemplating the genetics of homosexuality (“Birth Days”), the lives of transgenic sophonts (“Days of Wonder”), or the humiliating transformations attendant upon aging (“VAO”), he brings a kind of saintly compassion and insight to his characters. But not all the entries in Paradise Tales conform to this paradigm. There are cosmopolitan explorations, such as the Cambodian-centric “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” and “Blocked.” And there are densely speculative cyber-forecasts like “The Future of Science Fiction.” But all benefit from Ryman’s economical yet lapidary prose.”
—Asimov’s

“I recommend this collection to both Ryman’s existing fans and those new to his work. It is a beautiful and challenging treasure of a book.”
—Cascadia Subduction Zone

“Short-form speculative fiction doesn’t get much better than this.”
— J. J. S. Boyce, AESciFi—the CanadianScience Fiction Review

* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes. “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter,” a Cambodian ghost story, and “The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai,” a samurai-style narrative, have the delicacy of Asian folktales or lyrical fantasies. By contrast, “V.A.O.,” about a future society destabilized by prohibitively expensive health care, and “The Film-makers of Mars,” which suggests that Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter stories were drawn from life, are set in futures that credibly extrapolate current scientific and cultural trends. Ryman (The King’s Last Song) frequently explores human emotional needs in heartless environments, as in “Warmth,” which poignantly portrays a young boy’s bond with his robot surrogate mother. Readers of all stripes will appreciate these thoughtful tales. ”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Contents

The Film-makers of Mars
The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai
Birth Days
V.A.O.
The Future of Science Fiction
Omnisexual
Home
Warmth
Everywhere
No Bad Thing
Talk Is Cheap
Days of Wonder
You
K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career)
Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter
Blocked

Praise for Geoff Ryman’s most recent novel:

“[Ryman] has not so much created as revealed a world in which the promise of redemption takes seed even in horror.”
—The Boston Globe

“Inordinately readable . . . extraordinary in its detail, color and brutality.”
—The Independent (UK)

Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels The King’s Last Song, Air (a Clarke and Tiptree Award winner), 253, Lust, and The Unconquered Country (a World Fantasy Award winner). Canadian by birth, he has lived in Brasil, resides in the UK and is a frequent visitor to Cambodia.


A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011

Tue 5 Oct 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

October 2010 · 9781931520676 · Spiral bound/ebook · 6 x 9 · 160 pp · Excerpt on Scribd

The perfect supplement to any writer’s life, this new edition of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner is even better than before, packed with more of the information writers need to organize their work schedules, track upcoming deadlines, and learn about grant opportunities, contests, and workshop programs. For 2011 we turned to those who know best what writers want—writers themselves—and asked them what resources they’d find most useful. The result is a unique and indispensable tool that makes it easy for writers to keep track of the practical, business end of writing, leaving more time for them to actually spend writing.

If you’re a writer, you’ll immediately see the advantage of gathering so much information into one spiral-bound compendium: application deadlines are built right into the calendar, along with spotlights on writing markets and helpful online resources. You’ll also find information on How to Find a Writing Group – Or Start Your Own, writing conferences, advice on formatting manuscripts, suggested readings, and the dos and don’ts of submitting your work to journals, magazines, and literary agents. If there’s a writer in your life, this calendar will make the perfect gift.

And because every professional writer needs distractions, we’ll sneak in peculiar tales of the writing life, plenty of inspiring art and photos, writing prompts, and, as always, a few surprises too.

Table of Contents

How to Format a Manuscript
Book Festivals
The Editorial Assistant — Rebecca Isherwood
How to Find a Writing Group — Ben Francisco
Debut Author Interview: N.K. Jemisin — Kelly Link
Younger Writers
Residencies
State Arts Grants
Story Idea Generation — Kelly Link
What I Know About Writing — Geoffrey Goodwin
Future Planning
Science Fiction & Fantasy Corner
A Few Random Magazines
Further Resources
CLMP Contest Code of Ethics
Contest and Award Fees
How to End a Story — Nick Mamatas
Submission Tracker

Reading Lists
11 Poets You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Read — Kristin Evans
A Summer Reading List — Samantha Guilbert
Tales of Love and Darkness — Kristin Evans
Reading as a Writer — Kelly Link

Writing Prompts and Exercises
A Place to be Inspired
A Play on Words
Five Memoir Writing Prompts — Geoffrey Goodwin
Genre Musical Chairs
Fifty First Sentences

Photo and Illustration Credits

Lawrence Schimel, H.N. James,  Amal El-Mohtar, Mari Cheng, Rebecca Isherwood, Greg McElhatton, Kelly Link, Graeme Williams, E. Catherine Tobler, Fred Coppersmith, National Library of Scotland, Richard Butner, Alex Dally McFarlane, Claire Massey, Davida Gypsy Breier, Austin Cheng, Kristine Paulus, Samantha Guilbert, Lorna E. Carlson.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone who worked, helped, or contributed, including: Kelly Link, Jedediah Berry, Michael J. DeLuca, Kristen Evans, Christi Jacques, Su-Yee Lin, Diana Cao, Samantha Guilbert, Rebecca Isherwood, Ben Francisco, Abram Thau, Geoffrey Goodwin, Nick Mamatas, and some few others.

Reader reaction to A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010:

“I know some writers who have spent many, many hours trying to figure out the ins and outs of residency programs, grant applications and even MFA programs in creative writing. A lot of that work is done for you here, with those deadlines detailed and looming some time before their due dates.
“With the extra time, there are writing prompts, if you should feel so inclined. And as the weeks tick by—it’s done in a weekly format, with space every day to write in appointments, or word counts or whatnot—you’ll see more and more writers’ birthdays, prompting you to, you know, get back to writing.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Each week is given a full page with enough space to jot down interview times, for example, or to make note of those awful looming deadlines…. But there’s much more in here than the birth dates of writers who are far more famous than most of us will ever be. The facing pages are packed with information about writers’ residencies, writing prizes and awards in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, writing fellowships, writing prompts and exercises, practical tips on formatting manuscripts and links to writing blogs and other online resources—and words of inspiration.”
—The Daily Hampshire Gazette

“Oh, how I wish I’d had this from the beginning of the year.”
—C.R., May 2010
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011 Excerpt

Typos discovered so far: Hallowe’en is listed as Sunday Oct. 30, when it should by Monday, Oct 31.
Typo spotting help (with any of our books) is always appreciated.


Hound

Tue 8 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Michael

September 8, 2009 · 280pp · 9781931520591 · trade cloth · $24 | ebook · $9.95
June 7, 2011, trade paper 9781931520256 · $16 · New cover by Tom Canty.

“Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living.”

“Henry Sullivan, book dealer & bibliophile, has his life thrown into turmoil when his Beacon Hill landlady dies and a former lover is found murdered. A debut novel by the owner of Boston’s beloved Victor Hugo Bookshop.”
—A Must-Read Book from the Massachusetts Book Awards (pdf link)

“A hell of a tale. A murder and the trail to catching him leads through the world of book collectors (Bookhounds) and the things they love. Fans of Dunning will enjoy this.”
—Crimespree Magazine

“If bibliophilia is an illness, then Henry Sullivan is terminal! Books are his work, his life and his love. . . . Filled with anecdotes and asides on bookselling and the love of reading, Vincent McCaffrey’s love for books absolutely drips from the pages. If you share that obsession, then you will be touched and moved by his words. Vincent McCaffrey is obviously a man so well read that he seems to have gleaned a deep understanding of human nature from his studies. His characters are appealing and sympathetic and his story well plotted. I look forward to his next novel after what was a most enjoyable debut.”
—Gumshoe Review

A bookhound, Henry Sullivan buys and sells books he finds at estate auctions and library sales around Boston and often from the relatives of the recently deceased. He’s in his late thirties, single, and comfortably set in his ways. But when a woman from his past, Morgan Johnson, calls to ask him to look at her late husband’s books, he is drawn into the dark machinations of a family whose mixed loyalties and secret history will have fatal results.

Hound is the first of a series of novels featuring Henry Sullivan, and the debut novel of a long-time Boston bookseller, Vincent McCaffrey. It is a paean to books, bookselling, and the transformative power of the printed word. Even as it evolves into a gripping murder mystery, it is also a reminder that there are still quiet corners of the world where the rhythms of life are calmer, where there’s still time for reading, time for getting out for a beer with friends, time to investigate the odd details of lives lived on the edges of the book world.

As the true story unfolds, its mysteries are also of the everyday sort: love found and love lost, life given and life taken away. At the center is Henry himself, with his troubled relationships and his love of old books. There’s his landlady Mrs. Prowder whose death unsettles Henry’s life and begins the sequence of events that overturns it. There’s the secret room his friend Albert discovers while doing refuse removal, a room that reveals the story of a woman who lived and loved a century ago.

And throughout the novel are those of us whose lives revolve around books: the readers, writers, bookstore people, and agents—as well as Henry, the bookhound, always searching for the great find, but usually just getting by, happy enough to be in the pursuit.

Read the first two chapters of Hound.

Hound was chosen for two First Mystery Bookclubs and was on the Select 70 at Harvard Book Store. Vincent McCaffrey read in Boston, Amherst, Portsmouth, New York City, and more.

On the web:

Reviews

“Ingenious and refreshingly irreverent, Hound is not only a mystery on many levels, but also an intelligent—and often funny—tour-de-force of the perils and follies of human relationships. McCaffrey has a gift for crafting quirky characters and original dialogue, and the path of our hero, Henry, is always wonderfully unpredictable. I came away from this ‘book noir’ with a sense of catharsis, but also with a sudden desire to reread and rethink all the great classics to which McCaffrey alludes in his terrific novel.”
—Anne Fortier, Juliet

“McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Hound is billed as a mystery, and it’s a good one, but its fuse is long and its pace befitting an old bookshop. That’s a good thing. There’s something charismatic and timeless about the way the story builds and McCaffrey opens Henry’s life to the reader. It wasn’t until the action started to heat up about 100 or so pages in that we remembered we were reading a mystery at all. And while we’re a little tired of books about books and the people who love them—which often come off more as marketing initiatives—McCaffrey is never cloying or playing to demographic. He’s just telling a compelling, old-school yarn, the kind of story a man who knows his literature tells.”
—Time Out Chicago

Early Reader Reaction:

“Vincent McCaffrey’s debut mystery is crammed with stories, with likable, eccentric characters, much like his marvelous Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop—of all the bookstores in the world, the one I still miss most of all. Like all good mysteries, Hound concerns more than murder: it’s rich in detail and knowledgeable asides about bookselling, the world of publishing, and life lived in the pubs, shabby apartments, penthouses, and strange corners of the city of Boston.”
—Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monsters

“McCaffrey’s bookseller, Henry Sullivan, is as endearing, frustrating, and compelling a character I’ve come across in some time. Hound is more than Henry’s show, however.  It’s a slow burn murder mystery, a sharp character study, a detailed exploration of Boston, and a mediation on the secrets of history—both personal and universal. But I’m wasting our precious time trying to pigeonhole his wonderful first novel. Hound is, quite simply, a great book.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep.

Catalog

HOUND, by Vincent McCaffrey. 2009, Small Beer Press, Northampton, MA.
Octavo, 8 ½” tall, 285 pages, green quarter-cloth over tan boards. A fine, clean, neat hard cover first edition with little shelf wear, hinges and binding tight, paper cream white. In a fine, lightly worn dust jacket with the original price.

Henry Sullivan, by himself. 1963, Boston.
6’ tall, 170 pounds, brown hair and pale skin. A clean, neat, hard-headed book hound, released in a single edition, in very good condition overall, with minor wear, hinges cracked but secure. In blue jeans and a brown flannel shirt.

Credits

Cover photo: David Fokos.
Download cover for print.

Author photo courtesy of Thais Coburn.

Vincent McCaffrey has owned and operated the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop for more than thirty years, first in Boston, and now online from Abington, Massachusetts. He has been paid by others to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. He has since chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller. He can still remember the first time he sold books for money in 1963—and what most of those books were. Hound is his first novel.

Follow him on Twitter.


The Ant King and Other Stories

Tue 5 Aug 2008 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

Hardcover | trade paperback (9781931520539) | ebook (9781618730138)

A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron’s zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children’s collective goes house hunting.

“Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, “best first collection” for this book.”
—Booklist (Starred review)

“Rosenbaum proves he’s capable of sustained fantasy with “Biographical Notes,” a steampunkish alternate history of aerial piracy, and “A Siege of Cranes,” a fantasy about a battle between a human insurgent and the White Witch that carries decidedly modern undercurrents…. Perhaps none of the tales is odder than “Orphans,” in which girl-meets-elephant, girl-loses-elephant.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents

The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale
The Valley of Giants
The Orange
Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Start the Clock
The Blow
Embracing-the-New
Falling
Orphans
On the Cliff by the River
Fig
The Book of Jashar
The House Beyond Your Sky
Red Leather Tassels
Other Cities
Sense and Sensibility
A Siege of Cranes

Reviews

“But among our most interesting writers today one finds a growing number—Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Lethem, Benjamin Rosenbaum—working the boundary: “sometimes drawing the line,” as Hyde writes of Trickster, “sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there,” in the borderlands among regions on the map of fiction.”
—Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends

“A terrific range of tales, showcasing an active, playful mind and a gleeful genre-blender.”
—Aimee Bender

“Imagine Borges and Dali hanging out at Pee Wee Herman’s playhouse, and you have a brief inkling of what Rosenbaum’s fiction is like. The Ant King and Other Stories is Rosenbaum’s debut collection of short fiction, which features pieces have been that have nominated for genre awards, and have appeared in a slew of venues, from Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and McSweeney’s. The content ranges from postmodern fables, flash fiction, pulp fiction, all told in precise and distinctive, if not exactly poetic, prose. The imagery—which is what propels the stories as much as plot—is always startling and surrealistic. Rosenbaum mixes literary forms and narrative styles like a DJ.”
—Fantasy Book Spot

“Ben Rosenbaum is one of the freshest and finest voices to appear in science fiction in many years. The stories collected in The Ant King demonstrate his astonishing versatility, his marvelous imagination, and his ready wit.”
—Jack Womack

Benjamin Rosenbaum grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and received degrees in computer science and religious studies from Brown University. His work has been published in Harper’s, Nature, McSweeney’s, F&SF, Asimov’s, Interzone, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and Strange Horizons. Small Beer Press published his chapbook Other Cities and The Present Group published his collaboration,Anthroptic, with artist Ethan Ham. His stories have been translated into fourteen languages, listed in Best American Short Stories: 2006, and shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Rosenbaum lives near Basel, Switzerland, with his wife and two small, rambunctious children. There are cows, steeples, double-decker trains, and traffic lights for bicycles in his neighborhood.

On Other Cities

“Rosenbaum’s fertile sense of invention and his sly humor (“Ponge, as its inhabitants will tell you, is a thoroughly unattractive city. ‘Well,’ they always say at the mention of any horrible news, ‘we do live in Ponge.'”) make these parables a real treat.”
— Asimov’s

“Throughout Other Cities, compressed insight and wonder are compressed into but a handful of words. This small book’s crisp design and illustrations mirror the elegance of the writing: recommended.”
— Xerography Debt

“And though the stories are tiny, they do not disappoint as a result of their brevity. When you leave one fantastic destination behind, there is another city right around the corner.”
— Tangent

“A collection of fourteen gems, expertly cut and highly polished. Each contains, within its myriad facets, a metropolis, brimming with mystery, insight and wonder.”
— Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)

On the web:

Publication history

Credits

Cover art © Brad Holland.
Photo credit: Photo by Jessica Wallach/PortraitPlaytime.com


Water Logic

Fri 1 Jun 2007 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 9781931520232 | ebook · 9781618730121 · Edelweiss
Elemental Logic: Book 3
Tiptree Honor List

Now shipping with the new cover by Kathleen Jennings.

Fire Logic · Earth Logic · Water Logic · Air Logic

Laurie J. Marks’s third novel in her ground-breaking and award-winning Elemental Logic series (following Fire Logic and Earth Logic ) is a triumph of politics, fantasy, world-building, and intelligent design: of character, world, and magic.

Amid assassinations, rebellions, and the pyres of too many dead, a new government forms in the land of Shaftal—a government of soldiers and farmers, scholars and elemental talents, all weary of war and longing for peace. But some cannot forget their losses, and some cannot imagine a place for themselves in an enemy land. Before memory, before recorded history, something happened that now must be remembered. Zanja na’Tarwein, the crosser of boundaries, born in fire and wedded to earth, has fallen under the ice. Now, by water logic, the logic of patterns repeated, of laughter and music, the lost must be found—or the found may forever be lost.

By water logic, a cow doctor becomes a politician. A soldier becomes a flower farmer. A lost book contains a lost future. The patterns of history are made and unmade.

Read the first chapter.

Listen to the author read Chapter 1: part 1 · part 2

Reviews

“Frankly, it’s mind-bending stuff, and refreshing.”
—James Schellenberg, The Cultural Gutter

* “How gifts from the past, often unknown or unacknowledged, bless future generations; how things that look like disasters or mistakes may be parts of a much bigger pattern that produces greater, farther-reaching good results.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

“Finely drawn characters and a lack of bias toward sexual orientation make this a thoughtful, challenging read.”
— Library Journal

“Marks’s characters are real people who breathe and sleep and sweat and love; the food has flavor and the landscape can break your heart. You don’t find this often in any contemporary fiction, much less in fantasy: a world you can plunge yourself into utterly and live in with great delight, while the pages turn, and dream of after.”—Ellen Kushner

“Marks plays the fantasy of her unfolding epic more subtly here than in previous volumes, and the resulting depiction of intransigent cultures in conflict, rich with insight into human nature and motives, will resonate for modern readers.”—Publishers Weekly

Map of Shaftal by Jeanne Gomoll:

On the web:

Credits

  • Cover image © Corbis.
  • Author photo © Deb Mensinger.
  • Map of Shaftal © by Jeanne Gomoll.

Laurie J. Marks (website) has published nine fantasy novels, including Dancing Jack, The Watcher’s Mask and the Elemental Logic series (Fire Logic, Earth Logic, Water Logic, and Air Logic). She has been writing since her childhood in California, inspired by the works of C.S. Lewis and Lloyd Alexander. Her books have been shortlisted for the James D. Tiptree/Otherwise Award, and have twice been awarded the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Laurie J. Marks lives in Massachusetts with her wife, Deb Mensinger, and their Welsh corgi, Serendipity.


Howard Who?

Tue 1 Aug 2006 - Filed under: Books, Peapod Classics| Posted by: Gavin

2006 · trade paper · 9781931520188 / ebook
2nd printing May 2021

Read the award-winning The Ugly Chickens. Watch the trailer.

“Italo Calvino once said that he was ‘known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself.’ Much the same could be said of Howard Waldrop. You never know what he’ll come up with next, but somehow it’s always a Waldrop story. Read the work of this wonderful writer, a man who has devoted his life to his art—and to fishing.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Introduction by George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire): “If this is your first taste of Howard, I envy you. Bet you can’t read just one.”

The third entry in our Peapod Classics reprint line is a twentieth-anniversary celebration edition of Howard Waldrop’s erudite, gonzo, wistful, funny, and beautifully written debut collection of short stories.

Waldrop has a capacious, encyclopedic knowledge of superheroes, baseball players, Mexican wrestlers, world wars, long-dead film stars, oddball television shows, pulp serials, radio plays, fairy tales, scientific expeditions, extinct species, and knock-knock jokes.

  • What if the dodo wasn’t extinct after all?
  • What if sumo wrestlers could defeat their opponents with the power of the mind?
  • What if Izaak Walton and John Bunyan went fishing for Leviathan in the Slough of Despond?

Acclaimed cult author Waldrop’s stories are sophisticated, magical recombinations of the stuff our pop-culture dreams are made of. Open this book and encounter jazz singers, robotic cartoon ducks, nosferatu, angry gorillas, and, of course, the dodo.

Never published in paperback, long out of print, and extremely collectible, Howard Who? was Waldrop’s amazing debut collection. If you haven’t read Waldrop before, you’re in for a treat.

Table of Contents
Introduction by George R. R. Martin.
The Ugly Chickens
Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen
Ike at the Mike
Dr. Hudson’s Secret Gorilla
. . . the World, as we Know’t
Green Brother
Mary Margaret Road-Grader
Save A Place in the Lifeboat for Me
Horror, We Got
Man-Mountain Gentian
God’s Hooks
Heirs of the Perisphere

“Back in print after so many years, Howard Who? remains a terrific collection of short stories. There is nobody else alive writing stories as magnificently strange, deliriously inventive, and utterly wonderful as Howard Waldrop.”
— Metrobeat

Links

Praise for Howard Waldrop:
“Clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy.”
— Library Journal

“Wise and funny.”
— Publishers Weekly

“An authentic master of gonzo sf and fantasy.”
— Booklist

“Erudite and gonzo.”
— Science Fiction Weekly

“Waldrop subtly mutates the past, extrapolating the changes into some of the most insightful, and frequently amusing, stories being written today, in or out of the science fiction genre.”
— The Houston Post/Sun

” The man’s a national treasure!”
— Locus

“The resident Weird Mind of his generation, he writes like a honkytonk angel.”
— Washington Post Book World

About the Author:

Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Night of the Cooters, and Going Home Again. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.”

George R.R. Martin is the author of the bestselling Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. His fiction has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy Award, Stoker, and Locus Awards. He worked on the TV shows The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Credits

Publication history

First published as Howard Who? Twelve Outstanding Stories of Speculative Fiction by Doubleday in 1986.

Also by Howard Waldrop:

Novels

The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 with Jake Saunders (1974)
Them Bones (1984)

Collections

Howard Who? (1986, 2006)
All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories (1987)
Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories (1990)
Going Home Again (1997)
Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations (2003)
Heart of Whitenesse (2005)
Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader: Selected Short Fiction 1980-2005 (2007)
Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction, 1989-2003 (2008)
Horse of a Different Color (2013)

Chapbooks

A Dozen Tough Jobs (1989)
A Better World’s in Birth (2003)

Nonfiction

Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (2003)

Forthcoming

I, John Mandeville
The Moon World
Moving Waters


Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead

Sat 1 Jul 2006 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

July 2006 · 9781931520171 · Twitter. Out of Print.

“This is a great debut collection of loopy, off-the-wall, and still-somehow-packing-emotional-weight stories; DeNiro can weld words into some mighty strange configurations.”
—Caleb Wilson, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville, TN

  • Longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award
  • Crawford Award finalist.
  • Book Sense Pick.
  • Reviews

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is Minneapolis-based poet and writer A. DeNiro’s wide-ranging and assured debut fiction collection.

DeNiro’s stories have been published in the most forward-looking magazines including Fence, Crowd, One Story, Strange Horizons, and 3rd Bed.

These stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but these stories also connect with readers on an emotional level, in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro’s stories, characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize.

A MAN LOSES his leg in a war, and a field doctor sews on a fairy tale in its place. A woman excavates her living room in order to discover what has become of her marriage. The Byzantine army invades a small college town. Giants move in next door. A boy in a town called Suddenly falls in love with a girl who lives in the Lake of the Dead. The secret history of Erie — past, present, and future — is revealed.

Table of Contents

Our Byzantium
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
If I Leap
The Fourth
The Centaur
Cuttlefish
The Caliber
The Excavation
A Keeper
Fuming Woman
The Friendly Giants
Quiver
Child Assassin
The Exchanges
Salting the Map
Home of the

Reviews

“Maybe the future of sf. . . . The title story here, set in twenty-third-century Pennsylvania, is its nameless-till-the-last-sentence narrator’s university-application essay, numbered footnotes and all, which explains why not to expect him on campus anytime soon; he is in love and considering getting gills. Maybe DeNiro is the future of alternate history: in “Our Byzantium,” a college town is invaded by horse-and-chariot-led soldiers who demolish cars, wheelchairs, and other machines; reestablish Greek as the lingua franca; and otherwise conquer. . . . The long closer, “Home of the,” about Erie, Pennsylvania, now and then, is as laconic and associative as its title is elliptic. Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff.”
—Ray Olson, Booklist

Advance Readers say:

“Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is a thrill ride. Men jump from buildings and walk away, Assassins are hired to murder novels, Byzantines spring from the hills and sack college towns. On each page DeNiro performs feats of acrobatic skill, holding the edge with remarkable control.”
— Hannah Tinti (Animal Crackers)

“I’m not ordinarily an editor, so finding stories for the first six issues of Fence magazine was a guilty pleasure, and the subsequent work by formerly unknown Fence writers like Kelly Link and Julia Slavin has made me look like a prognosticator, or maybe an annoying drunk guy on a streak at a casino. Now here’s DeNiro, whose Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead was always my favorite. I’m thrilled to see him in bookstores at last.”
— Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude)

“DeNiro’s stories move in unexpected ways into unexpected places — up in the air, under the water, out of this world. Sharp, smart, and completely original, this is a lively, lovely collection from a memorable talent.”
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

“Reading DeNiro’s new collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, made me feel like a dog that twists its head a bit to the side on hearing a whistle too high for humans to hear. The dog is perplexed and intrigued by the sound — it knows where it’s coming from but not really. Familiar enough, but maybe not. So too with these strong, out of kilter stories.”
— Jonathan Carroll (Glass Soup)

“The wholly original, carefully crafted tales that comprise Deniro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead are like colorful pinatas full of live scorpions — playful, unexpected, and deadly serious.”
— Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)

Interesting Things:

  • Alan DeNiroThe title story was shortlisted for the O. Henry award.
  • Book launch party July 18, 7 PM, at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis. Soft launch at the WisCon convention in Madison, WI.
  • Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead was a Lit Blog Coop Pick which lead to all kinds of discussion and a podcast interview.

SF stories:

Credits

Cover images © Ellen Klages (Lead Men) and Jupiter Images.

The following stories originally appeared in slightly different form in the following publications:

Our Byzantium, Polyphony 3 (Wheatland Press)
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, Fence, Vol.2, No.2
If I Leap, Altair, 6/7
The Centaur, Spoiled Ink, July 2005
Cuttlefish, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, 8
The Caliber, Santa Monica Review, Fall 2002
The Excavation, Minnesota Monthly, June 2001
A Keeper, Electric Velocipede, 6
Fuming Woman, Trampoline (Small Beer Press)
The Friendly Giants, 3rd Bed, 4
Child Assassin, One Story, 22
The Exchanges, Crowd
Salting the Map, Fortean Bureau, 17

“The Fourth”, “Quiver”, and “Home of the” appear here for the first time.

Anya Johanna DeNiro lives and writes in Minnesota. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, One Story, Strange Horizons, Persistent Visions and elsewhere, and she’s been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She currently writes YA novels about the adventures of trans women. She can be found online on Twitter, usually, at @adeniro.


Mothers & Other Monsters

Thu 1 Jun 2006 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade cloth · $24 | trade paper ·  $16 · 9781931520195 · Signed limited edition.

Story Prize finalist · BookSense Notable Book · Cleveland Plain Dealer Recommended Summer Reading · Includes 3 Nebula finalists including Hugo and Locus Award winner “The Lincoln Train”

“Gorgeously crafted stories.”
— Nancy Pearl, NPR, Morning Edition, “Books for a Rainy Day“

“Wonderfully unpredictable stories, from the very funny to the very grim, by one of our best and bravest imaginative writers.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

In her luminous debut collection, award-winning novelist McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations:

—A woman introduces her new lover to her late brother.
—A teenager is interviewed about her peer group’s attitudes toward sex and baby boomers.
—A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge.
—Anthropologists visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by nomadic raiders.

McHugh’s characters—her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious teenagers—are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and heartbreakingly real. The trade paperback has bonus added material for book clubs and reading groups, including an interview with the author, book club questions and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen’s fabulous essay, The Evil Stepmother.

Table of Contents

Ancestor Money
In the Air
The Cost to Be Wise
The Lincoln Train
Interview: On Any Given Day
Oversite
Wicked
Laika Comes Back Safe
Presence
Eight-Legged Story
The Beast
Nekropolis
Frankenstein’s Daughter

Reading Group Guide (Download as PDF)

The Evil Stepmother: An Essay
Author Interview
Talking Points

Reviews & Advance Praise

“Unpredictable and poetic work.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer (Recommended Summer Reading)

“[McHugh] cherry-picks subtle magical or futuristic elements from the expansive genre library.” — Angle Magazine

“McHugh’s prose style is unique.” — LEO (Louisville Eccentric Observer)

“McHugh’s stories are hauntingly beautiful.” — Booklist

“The 13 stories in McHugh’s debut collection offer poignant and sometimes heartwrenching explorations of personal relationships and their transformative power…. McHugh (Nekropolis) relates her stories as slices of ordinary life whose simplicity masks an emotional intensity more often found in poetry. The universality of these tales should break them out to the wider audience they deserve.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Passion and precision.” — Locus

“McHugh is enormously talented…. [She] has a light touch, a gentle sense of a humor, and a keen wit. — Strange Horizons

“When I first read China Mountain Zhang many years ago, Maureen McHugh instantly became, as she has remained, one of my favorite writers. This collection is a welcome reminder of her power—they are resonant, wise, generous, sharp, transporting, and deeply, deeply moving. McHugh is enormously gifted; each of these stories is a gift.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

“My favorite thing about her is the wry, uncanny tenderness of her stories. She has the astonishing ability to put her finger on the sweet spot right between comedy and tragedy, that pinpoint that makes you catch your breath. You’re not sure whether to laugh out loud or cry, and you end up doing both at once.”
—Dan Chaon, Among the Missing

“Enchanting, funny and fierce by turns—a wonderful collection!”
—Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace

More:

Maureen F. McHugh & Sarah Willis in conversation: parts 1, 2 & 3.
Blog
Interview
Short short story: “Makeover”

About the Author

Maureen F. McHugh is the author of four acclaimed novels including China Mountain Zhang. Her genre-expanding short fiction has won the Hugo and Locus Awards and has frequently been included in Best of the Year anthologies. Since 1988 she has attracted a broad readership in publications such as Asimov’s, Scifiction, Starlight, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She lives in Los Angeles where she writes alternate reality games.

Creative Commons

April 22, 2008: Released online as a free download under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Cover image © Conde Nast Archive/Corbis. Photographer: Erwin Blumenfeld.
Download cover for print.


Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop

Mon 8 Aug 2005 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

Locus Award Winner
Hugo Award Winner

Read Excerpts:

  1. Can Writing Be Taught?
  2. Trivia Vs. Writing Real Stories now available at the Online Writing Workshop.
  3. My Silent Partner at SF Site.

Writers on Clarion

For 27 years, Kate Wilhelm and her husband, Damon Knight, taught at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, an intensive and ambitious six-week writing program for novice writers, known to participants as “boot camp for writers.”

Part memoir and part writing manual, Storyteller is Wilhelm’s affectionate account of the history of the program and her years there with Damon as mentors and instructors. She relates how Clarion began, explains why workshop participants fear red pencils* and rejoice at the sight of water guns, what she learned, and how she passed a love of the written word on to generations of writers. Storyteller is a gift to all writers from this generous and acclaimed teacher. It includes a special section of writing exercises and advice.

* See page 121 for the origin of “The Red Line of Death.”

Reviews:

“There are many books of writing instruction out there, but what sets Storyteller apart is the sense that Wilhelm really knows students and knows how to teach them to craft a professional story.”
— The Oregonian

“A useful, compact, and entertaining guide to writing that is neither bound to a particular genre or market.”
— Locus

“This book should be on the reference shelf of every aspiring writer. Not only is it a gift of insight and experience of a wonderful writer but it’s also a fine story of the growth of a renowned writing workshop. Highly recommended.”
— SF Revu

“Teaching writing is a balancing act between compassionate encouragement and firm, blunt criticism. Kate is a master of it. The book uses reminisces about the founding, development and running of Clarion to frame a series of practical, plainly stated lessons for the beginning (and professional) writer. I learned a great deal reading it — something that can be accomplished in a deceptively short time, for Kate is also a master of simply and clearly setting out complicated, muddy issues, a skill honed both in her award-winning fiction (Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a personal favorite) and in her long years of teaching.”
— Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“Oh, but this is a lovely book…. Wilhelm fills Storyteller with lessons about how to write, and just as important, how not to write.”
— Strange Horizons

“Its strength, I think, lies in some of the pointers she offers to beginning writers as to help them shorten the time it takes to get published.”
— New Pages

“If you are a budding writer, please spend $16 on this book before raising the money needed to attend Clarion. You’ll get much more out of the workshop if you do.”
— Emerald City

“For such a short book — just barely 192 pages — there is a lot here, and a lot that I’ve never found in other writing books, and it’s all on-point. It’s also delivered as part of the story of one of the most significant institutions in the history of science fiction and fantasy, as told by a true storyteller.”
— Green Man Review

“Satisfying in its own right, presenting an informative, and entertaining, blend of history, memoirs, and writing lessons.”
— Steven Silver

“This book should be on the reference shelf of every aspiring writer. Not only is it a gift of insight and experience of a wonderful writer but it’s also a fine story of the growth of a renowned writing workshop. Highly recommended.”
— SF Revu

“Full of pithy, relevant advice for writers, amusing recollections of the field’s current giants during their early days, and the fullest published account to date of how a revered program was established.”
— Scifi Dimensions

Listen to an interview.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • In the Beginning
  • Years Two and Three
  • Two New Homes
  • Those Cryptic Marks
  • Supporters
  • Delegations and Confrontations
  • Let the Wild Rumpus Begin
  • Who Is That Masked Man?
  • Where Am I?
  • What’s Going On?
  • Once Upon a Time
  • Body Count
  • Please Speak Up
  • Beyond the Five W’s
  • The Days
  • Notes and Lessons on Writing
  • Writing Exercises

In 2005 we donated $5 from each sale of Storyteller through our website to the Clarion Foundation. In early 2006 we sent in a check for $850 — thank you readers for helping us help future Clarion Workshop attendees.

Reviews for Wilhelm’s previous books:

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang:

  • Hugo Award Winner
  • “Richly deserves the praise it won. . . . It richly deserves to be read—or read again—for its insights that remain startlingly fresh.” —L.D. Meagher, CNN.com
  • “As well-crafted and sympathetic as it is scientifically rigorous.”—Nalo Hopkinson, scifi.com
  • “The best novel about cloning written to date.”—Locus
  • “Wilhelm’s cautionary message comes through loud and clear.”—The New York Times

About the Author

Kate WilhelmKate Wilhelm (1928–2018) wrote more than thirty novels. Her short fiction appeared in landmark anthologies such as Again Dangerous Visions, Orbit, The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women, and The Norton Book of Science Fiction. Her work has been adapted for TV and film, translated into twenty languages, and received the Prix Apollo, Kurd Lasswitz, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. In 2003 she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Photo by Richard B. Wilhelm.

An alternate selection of the Science Fiction Book Club.

Links

Clarion. Clarion West.

Credits

Cover image © Corbis.

Previous Readings:

July 8-10, 2005 — Guest of Honor: Readercon, Burlington, MA

May 26-29, 2006 — Guest of Honor, WisCon, Madison, WI


Magic for Beginners

Fri 1 Jul 2005 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

hardcover · 9781931520157

Best of the Year: Time Magazine, Salon, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times. Best of the Decade: Salon, The Onion, HTML Giant, Village Voice.

Available in hardcover from Small Beer Press and in paperback, ebook, and audio from Random House. (See here for international editions.) The limited edition is sold out. See below for more.

Link’s engaging and funny second collection — call it kitchen-sink magical realism — riffs on haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, superheroes, marriage, and cannons — and includes several new stories. Link is an original voice: no one else writes quite like this.

Each story is illustrated by cover artist Shelley Jackson. The cover is modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine.”

“Her exquisite stories mix the aggravations and epiphanies of everyday life with the stuff that legends, dreams and nightmares are made of, from pop culture to fairy tales. Some of these pieces are very scary, others are immensely sad, many are funny and all of them are written in prose so flawless you almost forget how much elemental human chaos they contain.”
—Salon, Best of the Decade

Reviews

“Intricate, wildly imaginative and totally wonderful. Whether or not you think you like fantasy, if you’re a fan of inventive plots and good writing (her use of language will fill you with awe), don’t miss Kelly Link’s collection.”
—Nancy Pearl, NPR

“Link’s stories … play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and J.K. Rowling, and Link finds truths there that most authors wouldn’t dare touch.”
— Time Magazine

“Link’s writing shimmers with imagination.”
— Salon

Book Sense Pick: “Kelly Link is my favorite new fantasy writer. She mixes up fairy-tale monsters and our modern world to create unique, humane stories that illuminate the joy and pain of everyday stuff. These stories are magic.” –Michael Wells, Bailey-Coy Books, Seattle, WA

Story Prize recommended reading list.
Locus Award winner.
Young Lions Award, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Finalist.

(More reviews)

Table of Contents: The Faery Handbag : The Hortlak : The Cannon : Stone Animals : Catskin : Some Zombie Contingency Plans : The Great Divorce : Magic for Beginners : Lull.

Stories from Magic for Beginners have been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Conjunctions, The Dark, and One Story. “Stone Animals” was selected for The Best American Short Stories: 2005. “The Faery Handbag” received the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Awards and was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Association and World Fantasy Awards. “Magic for Beginners” received the Nebula, Locus, and British Science Fiction Association Awards and was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Hugo, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Award.

The limited edition is now sold out.
Overstock, unnumbered unsigned copies are available for $70.

Hand-numbered and signed by the author and illustrator and includes two tipped-in plates: an enlargement of the title story illustration and a color reproduction of the trade dustjacket painting by Shelley Jackson which is based on “Lady with an Ermine” by Leonardo da Vinci held in The Czartoryskich Museum in Krakow. Printed by Thomson-Shore of Dexter, MI, on 70# Finch Opaque Cream White Smooth paper, with 80# Oatmeal Rainbow Endpapers, Smyth Sewn in Cobalt Blue Pearl Linen Cloth, with a ribbon to keep your place.

October 2, 2008: Released under Creative Commons.
September 30, 2013: Taken down from Creative Commons due to rights sale.

See also: KellyLink.net.


Carmen Dog

Mon 1 Nov 2004 - Filed under: Books, Peapod Classics| Posted by: Gavin

ISBN: 9781931520089 · trade paperback · ebook available

The debut title in our Peapod Classics reprint line.

“A rollicking outre satire…. full of comic leaps and absurdist genius.”
—Bitch magazine

In this dangerous and sharp-eyed look at men, women, and the world we live in, everything is changing: women are turning into animals, and animals are turning into women. Pooch, a golden setter, is turning into a beautiful woman — although she still has some of her canine traits: she just can’t shuck that loyalty thing — and her former owner has turned into a snapping turtle. When the turtle tries to take a bite of her own baby, Pooch snatches the baby and runs. Meanwhile, there’s a dangerous wolverine on the loose, men are desperately trying to figure out what’s going on, and Pooch discovers what she really wants: to sing Carmen.

Carmen Dog is the funny feminist classic that inspired writers Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler to create the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. We are very pleased to publish it as the debut title in our new Peapod Press reprint line.

Chapter One:

“The beast changes to a woman or the woman changes to a beast,” the doctor says. “In her case it is certainly the latter since she has been, on the whole, quite passable as a human being up to the present moment. There may be hundreds of these creatures already among us. No way to tell for sure how many.”

Read on

Reviews

A first novel that combines the cruel humor of Candide with the allegorical panache of Animal Farm. . . . There has not been such a singy combination of imaginative energy, feminist outrage, and sheer literary muscle since Joanna Russ’s classic The Female Man.
—Entertainment Weekly

Carol is the most unappreciated great writer we’ve got. Carmen Dog ought to be a classic in the colleges by now . . . It’s so funny, and it’s so keen.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Changing Planes

Pure essence of Emshwiller. Only she could have taken the women’s movement, opera, and a wolverine and come up with such enchantment.
— Connie Willis, author of Passage

One of my favorite books! Funny, ironic, and wonderfully true in its consideration of women and other animals.
— Pat Murphy, author of There and Back Again

With Carmen Dog, Carol Emshwiller takes her place beside Mikhail Bulgakov and his great social satire, Heart of a Dog. She is one of the premiere fantasists working today, and her fiction is always more than the sum of the parts.
— Gregory Frost, author of Fitcher’s Brides

The novel asks, in the most humorous way imaginable, where we might be as a civilization without our pets and sacrificial caretakers. The humor helps disguise the horrific implications, but never is the bite taken from the dog.
— Strange Horizons

This trenchant feminist fantasy-satire mixes elements of Animal Farm, Rhinoceros and The Handmaid’s Tale…. Imagination and absurdist humor mark [Carmen Dog] throughout, and Emshwiller is engaging even when most savage about male-female relationships.
— Booklist

Her fantastic premise allows Emshwiller canny and frequently hilarious insights into the damaging sex-role stereotypes both men and women perpetuate.
— Publishers Weekly

An inspired feminist fable…. A wise and funny book.
— The New York Times

“A fable, chock full of heroes and villains, tragedy and triumph, all complex in the way a Dali canvas is complex, and funny in the very same way.”
—Spectrum Circus

— Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association
— Strange Horizons

About this book
Copyright 1990 by Carol Emshwiller. All rights reserved. First published in the USA by Mercury House 1990. This edition printed on 52.5# Enviro Edition recycled paper in Canada by Transcontinental Printing. Text set in Centaur MT. Titles set in Friz Quadrata.

Cover art by Kevin Huizenga.

About the author
Carol Emshwiller‘s stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation,and many other anthologies and magazines.
Emshwiller is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been awarded an NEA grant, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant, a New York State Foundation for the Arts grant, the ACCENT/ASCENT fiction prize, and the World Fantasy, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Gallun, and Icon awards.
She is the author of six novels including Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, Mister Boots, The Secret City, and Leaping Man Hill, as well as collections of short fiction: Joy in Our Cause, Verging on the Pertinent, The Start of the End of It All, Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, I Live with You, Master of the Road to Nowhere, and two volumes of Collected Stories. She grew up in Michigan and France and lives in New York City.


Trash Sex Magic

Tue 15 Jun 2004 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade cloth (9781931520065) · trade paper (9781931520126) · ebook (9781931520911)  · 302 pages

Locus Award finalist

“This just absolutely rocks. It’s lyrical, it’s weird and it’s sexy in a very funky way. Trash Sex Magic is full of  people you would maybe be afraid to meet in real life, but once you’ve met them fictionally you are damn sorry you can’t at least have a beer with them.”
—Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

Jennifer Stevenson’s debut novel starts with Raedawn Somershoe who lives in a trailer on the banks of the Fox River. She likes men and men like her. It runs in the family: her mother, Gelia, can seduce a man just by walking across a road. When they set their sights on a man, something magical happens.

Alexander Caebeau drives a bucketloader for a construction company. He’s lonely, homesick, tired of cutting down trees and putting up ugly buildings. He dreams of going back to the Bahamas, but when Alexander meets Raedawn Somershoe, something magical happens.

Raedawn has just lost her lover. Her mother is keeping secrets from her. Her childhood sweetheart has come home and is looking for answers. Riverfront developers want Rae and her family gone. She may just be falling in love with Alexander Caebeau. And the Fox River is beginning to rise. . . . Something magical is about to happen.

Reviews

“Engaging … deeply charming, and its best scenes lodge in the reader’s memory.” — Washington Post

“Weird in the best possible way.”
—Margo Lanagan

“It’s not often you get characters like those that appear in Jennifer Stevenson’s Trash Sex Magic. Even if you remove the oddities like the underground huts and the tree fucking, Stevenson presents men and women who feel entirely new to literature, and they’re so good you have to wonder why they’ve been missing…. It’s so refreshing to read a fantasy book that doesn’t read like it bows down to Tolkien, a book with a message that doesn’t sound preachy. Trash Sex Magic is Stevenson’s first novel, and it will be exciting to see what she comes up with next.” — Bookslut

“Jennifer Stevenson’s raunchy, funny, and disturbing first novel, Trash Sex Magic, is full of bewitching weirdness.” — Chicago Reader

“Wonderful…. Trash Sex Magic can sweep you up and leave up dazzled, miles from home.” — Locus

“Stevenson’s first novel is at once sexy, beautifully written and passing strange.” — Publishers Weekly

“Jennifer Stevenson’s sparkling wit comes through in wordplay and metaphor, and her insight and unwavering attention to detail creates a prose as marvelous as the plot while celebrating Gaia and the passionate and transcendental energy of Eros, and it does so with a profound honesty. Imagine Anne Rice with a sense of humor, or a Christopher Moore novel re-written by Anais Nin. If you are looking for a multi-layered treatise on Goddess archetypes, if you’re looking for a fantasy that isn’t quite dark, isn’t quite urban, or if you’re just looking for a funny, well-written trashy novel, this book is definitely for you. Surreal, and full of delightful weirdness, this has quickly become my most-recommended book of the year.”
— Green Man Review

Advance Praise:

“It’s to Chicago what The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is to Pittsburgh and A Winter’s Tale is to New York — a winning, touching, open-eyed love letter — but with trash, sex, and magic too. Unusual and wonderfully done.”
—John Crowley, Little, Big

“It was a proverb of the 16th Century: On Hallowmass Eve troll notte thy broomstick bye ye caravan park, for thou wottist notte who maye mount thereon. I had paid it little heed since learning it years ago, and planned to read this grand book one chapter at a time. I’d scarcely begun the second when I fell under the author’s spell.”
—Gene Wolfe, The Knight

“Ambitious, phantasmagorical, with images that burn into your brain and stay there, even when the book is off in a corner somewhere minding its own business.”
—Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint

“Jennifer Stevenson is my goddess. In this book, trash is power. Trash Sex Magic is a springtime bacchanalia of beautiful, wild women, magic trees and sexy men — love it!”
— Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads

About the Author

Jennifer Stevenson lives in Chicago, Illinois with her husband of 45 years. She has washed dishes, shelved library books, repaired life-size rubber sunflowers, groomed horses, and bookkept for a living. Crows follow her car, begging for peanuts.
Trash Sex Magic is Jennifer Stevenson’s first novel. Since then, she has written four standalone romantic comedy novels and three connected fantasy series: Hinky Chicago (five novels of sexy fantasy), Slacker Demons (four novels of paranormal romcom), and Coed Demon Sluts (five novels of paranormal women’s fiction). She is currently at work on a series of thrillers.

Author photo by Beth Gwinn.

Cover


Stranger Things Happen

Sun 1 Jul 2001 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

9781931520003 · pb · $18 | 9781931520997 · ebook
July 2001
December 2022: 10th printing with new interior illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook.

This first collection by award-winning author Kelly Link takes fairy tales and cautionary tales, dictators and extraterrestrials, amnesiacs and honeymooners, revenants and readers alike, on a voyage into new, strange, and wonderful territory. The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial noses. A dead man posts letters home to his estranged wife. Two women named Louise begin a series of consecutive love affairs with a string of cellists. A newly married couple become participants in an apocalyptic beauty pageant. Sexy blond aliens invade New York City. A young girl learns how to make herself disappear.

These eleven extraordinary stories are quirky, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. Every story contains a secret prize. Each story was written especially for you.

Stories from Stranger Things Happen have won the Nebula, Tiptree, and World Fantasy Award. Stranger Things Happen was a Salon Book of the Year, one of the Village Voice‘s 25 Favorite Books, and was a Firecracker Award finalist.

Cover painting by Shelley Jackson.

Reviews

“Pity the poor librarians who have to slap a sticker on Kelly Link’s genre-bending, mind-blowing masterpiece of the imagination, Stranger Things Happen.”
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia, for NPR’s You Must Read This

“Kelly Link is the exact best and strangest and funniest short story writer on earth that you have never heard of at the exact moment you are reading these words and making them slightly inexact. Now pay for the book.”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

“My favorite fantasy writer, Miss Kelly Link”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR, All Things Considered

More reviews . . .

Contents

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
Water Off a Black Dog’s Back
The Specialist’s Hat
Flying Lessons
Travels with the Snow Queen
Vanishing Act
Survivor’s Ball, or, The Donner Party
Shoe and Marriage
Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water
Louise’s Ghost
The Girl Detective

Kelly Link is the author of four collections of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her short stories have won the Tiptree, Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (”Because you can’t go through it.”)

Link and her family live in Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Candlewick published their YA anthologies Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales.

Fifth Printing Note

We are very sorry to say some copies of the fifth printing have page 118 reprinted instead of 188. You can either download the pdf of page 188 here or you can email us. We hope the replacement page (or the book, below) will satisfy readers. However, if you’d rather, we will replace your book. Please email us if this is the case. Sorry.

Identifying the fifth printing: on the copyright page it states “First Edition 5 6 7 8 9 0”

Publication History [bibliography]

“Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” Fence, 1998
“Water Off a Black Dog’s Back,” Century, 1995
“The Specialist’s Hat,” Event Horizon, 1998
“Flying Lessons,” Asimov’s, 1995
“Travels with the Snow Queen,” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, winter 1996/7
“Vanishing Act,” Realms of Fantasy, 1996
“Survivor’s Ball, or, The Donner Party,” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, 1998
“Shoe and Marriage,” 4 Stories, 2000
“The Girl Detective,” Event Horizon, 1999
“Louise’s Ghost” and “Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water” are published here for the first time.

Eleven years after first publication, Stranger Things Happen was published in a 500-copy limited hardcover edition by Subterranean Press. One of Kelly’s favorite artists, Kathleen Jennings, provided the cover illustration as well as story headers for each of the eleven stories.
This special signed limited edition of Stranger Things Happen was accompanied by a exclusive chapbook, Origin Stories, which contains two stories, “Origin Stories” and “Secret Identity.”
It is now out of print.

“This is one of the ways that publishers can distinguish the print work they do from the e-books they issue, focusing on creating an object that’s worth having. And Link’s work seems a great place to start.”
—Los Angeles Times

Free Download

July 1, 2005

Kelly Link’s debut collection Stranger Things Happen is now available for as a free download in various completely open formats with no Digital Rights Management (DRM) strings attached. It is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5) license allowing readers to share the stories with friends and generally have at them in any noncommercial manner. The book is provided below in these formats: Text file, HTML, rtf, and lo-res PDF. We encourage any and all conversions into other formats. We’ll happily host, credit, and add your conversion to the file list below. Please abide by these few rules for file-conversions:

  • Send us a link to the reader for your conversion so that we can include it on the downloads page.
  • No DRM. If your format of choice has a means of restricting copying, use or playback, please do not use it.
  • If the book has been converted to your format of choice but the conversion doesn’t suit you, go ahead and reconvert it for your own use and distribution. We will host the first and only the first version as the few formats we have provided are pretty much all we know anything about. And we don’t know that much about those.
  • Enjoy!

Downloads: To get your Free Download of Stranger Things Happen go to this page of all our Creative Commons offerings.


Meet Me in the Moon Room

Sun 1 Jul 2001 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 256 pages · $16 · 9781931520010 | ebook

Philip K. Dick Award finalist
Locus Recommended Reading

Here are 33 weird, wonderful stories concerning men, women, teleportation, wind-up cats, and brown paper bags. By turns whimsical and unsettling — frequently managing to be both — these short fictions describe family relationships, bad breakups, and travel to outer space.

Vukcevich’s loopy, fun-house mirror take on everyday life belongs to the same absurdist school of work as that of George Saunders, David Sedaris, Ken Kalfus, and Victor Pelevin.

Read some stories: Whisper · No Comet · Mom’s Little Friends

Read an interview with Ray Vukcevich.

Reviews

“One of my all-time favorite collections.”
— Laird Barron, author of Blood Standard

“Ray Vukcevich is a master of the last line.”
—The Review of Contemporary Fiction

“Eccentric short stories, which frequently give everyday life a loopy twist.”
—Book Magazine

Read more reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Locus, F&SF, and more.

  • Meet Me in the Moon Room and Whisper were on the Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot.
  • The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror XV Honorable Mentions: “Pretending,” “Beatniks with Banjos,” “In theRefrigerator,” & “Whisper.”
  • “Pretending” was reprinted in The Best of the Rest 3.
  • “Meet Me in the Moon Room” was reprinted in the Oregon Quarterly.
  • “Miles and Miles of Broccoli,” an essay by Ray posted on the BookSense.com website.
  • Read about Ray in the The Hartford Courant and the Register-Guard.

Table of Contents

By the Time We Get to Uranus
The Barber’s Theme
Beatniks with Banjoes
Finally Fruit
Pretending
Mom’s Little Friends
No Comet
There is Danger
Pink Smoke
Season Finale
The Sweater
Home Remedy
A Breath Holding Contest
Fancy Pants
In the Refrigerator
The Perfect Gift
Message in a Fish
Catch
The Finger
Rejoice
My Mustache
We Kill a Bicycle
A Holiday Junket
Giant Step
Quite Contrary
Doing Time
The Next Best Thing
Beastly Heat
Ceremony
Poop
White Guys in Space
Whisper
Meet Me in the Moon Room

Reader Reviews

“I’ve been reading the Ray Vukcevich stories to people over the phone, so I thought I should send out a couple of the books and save my voice.”
— C.C.F., Columbus, OH

“What other writer could make you start laughing halfway down the first page of a story about a man putting on a sweater? Thurber maybe, a long time ago. Buy this book.”
— Damon Knight, author of Humpty Dumpty, An Oval

“These stories cannot be compared to anyone else’s. There is no one in the same class as Ray Vukcevich. The stories are uniquely, splendidly, brilliantly original, a surprise in each and every one, and brimming with wit and laugh-out-loud humor. A stunning collection.”
— Kate Wilhelm, author of Desperate Measures

“In Ray Vukcevich’s ingenious stories the absurd and the profound are seamlessly joined through fine writing. Meet Me in the Moon Room is a first-rate collection.”
— Jeffrey Ford, author of The Beyond

“I once heard Ray Vukcevich say about life, humanity, and writing, “All we have is each other.” In the spaces between us lie some very strange territories, and this is the ground Ray explores in his stories. There is no other planet like planet Ray; once you visit, you’ll want to go back as often as you can. In Meet Me in the Moon Room, you get an explosion of guided tours. Grab the bowl with the barking goldfish in it, wind the cat, curl up in a comfortable chair in an abandoned missile silo, and plunge into the wild mind of Ray Vukcevich. No one else can take you on this trip.”
— Nina Kiriki Hoffman, author of Past the Size of Dreaming

“Ray Vukcevich is a marvelous writer. His perspective is skewed, giving us a whole new take on the world. His use of language is unique. And, perhaps most delightful of all, is that Vukcevich stories are completely unpredictable. I envy the person who will be reading Ray Vukcevich for the very first time.”
— Kristine Kathryn Rusch, editor of The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 45th Anniversary Anthology

“Ray Vukcevich should be as revered as Donald Barthelme or Salvador Dali in the pantheon of modern surrealists. Unjustly deprived of such honors, he should at least be allowed a few weeks in a time-share vacation condo with Don Webb, Rick DeMarinis, Mark Leyner and James Blaylock, literary peers whose absurdist take on existence Vukcevich shares. Did I mention that the condo would occupy an abandoned ICBM silo, as in Ray’s creepily twisted ghost story, “Pretending”? Or perhaps the luxury beach house would perch on a few square inches of the scalp of the barbershop patron who boasts a monkey-filled jungle in his hair, in “The Barber’s Theme”. The writers’ relaxathon could also take place in the outer reaches of our Solar System, once the lucky vacationers grow their organic spacesuits, as average folks do in “By the Time We Get to Uranus.” Or as a last choice, the writers might congregate in the mysterious highway median of “Fancy Pants”, where metamorphoses that would baffle Ovid occur.
“Wherever the greats hold their Beach Blanket Oulipo, Vukcevich will doubtlessly be the life of the party. Alternately melancholy and boisterous, plaintive and assertive, sensitive and outrageous, serious and goofy, Vukcevich’s stories portray a universe not only stranger than the average person imagines, but stranger than he or she can imagine! It’s an uncommon, even scary intellect and vision and talent that can make us believe in wisdom out of a baby’s butt (“Poop”) or nose roaches (“Home Remedy”) or shopping bags over the global head as protection from planet-smasher comets (“No Comet”). And believe we do, thanks to Vukcevich’s honed, transparent, yet unmistakeable prose stylings. Plunk down a blindfolded critic in the middle of a Vukcevich landscape, and within two sentences the savant will know just what capricious deity is in charge. The critic will also be reduced to a gibbering, adoring, spastic wreck, but them’s the breaks.
“If you don’t instantly agree to meet Vukcevich in his unique Moon Room club, solely on his terms–well, you’re the kind of timid soul who would turn down a blind date with Destiny even if the demiurge came dressed in the form of Little Kim or D’Angelo.”
— Paul Di Filippo

About the Author

Ray Vukcevich was born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and grew up in the Southwest. He spent many years as a research assistant in several university brain labs but is now writing full time. His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s, Twists of the Tale, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rosebud, and Pulphouse. His novel, The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces, was published by St. Martin’s Press. His latest book is a collection of short fiction called Boarding Instructions. Read more at www.rayvuk.com.

Meet Me in the Moon Room Bibliography:

First printing: July 2001
Second printing: October 2001 — changes to copyright, contents, and pages 72, 204, 209, 249.
Japanese edition: Tokyo Sogensha.

Cover painting by Rafal Olbinski.


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