Here we go to Readercon & Clarion West

Tue 10 Jul 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., conventions, Jedediah Berry, Kelly Link, Readercon, Vincent McCaffrey| Posted by: Gavin

This coming weekend we (me, Kelly, and our daughter, Ursula) will be at Readercon. I am on a panel on Oblique Strategies. Help! Kelly is on some panels, too, see below. Since we are leaving on Saturday morning for Clarion West (Writer Boot Camp ahoy! We do a reading on Tuesday night in Seattle!) even though the program sched says Kelly will be at the Shirley Jackson Awards, she won’t. And, Jedediah Berry has stepped up to man the Small Beer table. Phew! And Vincent McCaffrey (author of the Hound series) is on a panel about political fiction, Delia Sherman can be found on “When Non-Fantastic Genres Interrogate Themselves,” Greer Gilman is on “Mapping the Parallels,” and so on and on!

The bad news is that the con dropped us from two tables down to one, which means we can’t take as many titles from other publishers to sell: boo! That’s how we got our start with LCRW—people such as Mike Walsh (Old Earth Books) and Greg Ketter (DreamHaven, a real bookstore, how exciting that was!) sold the zine and then our chapbooks off their table, encouraging us to keep going back to the conventions and eventually it all snowballed into BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS! (It is a slippery slide!)

See you in Boston or Seattle!

Thursday

8:00 PM   G   Genrecare. Elizabeth Bear (leader), Kathleen Ann Goonan, Kelly Link, Shira Lipkin. In a 2011 review of Harmony by Project Itoh, Adam Roberts suggests that “the concept of ‘healthcare’ in its broadest sense is one of the keys to the modern psyche.” Yet Roberts notes “how poorly genre has tuned in to that particular aspect of contemporary life.” Similarly, in the essay “No Cure for the Future,” Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay write that “SF is a world almost never concerned with the issues of physical frailty and malfunction.” As writers such as Nalo Hopkinson, Tricia Sullivan, and Kim Stanley Robinson explore the future of the body, how is SF dealing with the concepts of health, medicine, and what it means to be well?

Friday

4:00 PM   ME   Oblique Strategies for Authors. Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, Gavin J. Grant, Glenn Grant (leader), Katherine MacLean, Eric M. Van, Jo Walton. In 1975 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a deck of cards called “Oblique Strategies.” Each card provides a cryptic directive—such as “Use an old idea” or “Honour thy error as a hidden intention”—intended to help an artist deal with a creative block or dilemma. While many of the original strategies are useful for writers of fiction, others (such as “The tape is now the music”) are perhaps only appropriate for musicians and visual artists. Let’s brainstorm a deck of Oblique Strategies specifically designed to provide unexpected creative kicks for authors who are in a jam.
Proposed by Glenn Grant.

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Stranger Things Happen limited edition news

Fri 25 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, limited editions, Stranger Things Happen| Posted by: Gavin

Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link’s debut collection of stories. It contains eleven stories It was one of the first two books—the other was Ray Vukcevich’s Meet Me in the Moon Room—we launched with back in July 2001 and is our bestselling title. We just recently got in copies of the seventh printing of the paperback. It has also been downloaded more than 110,000 times from our site and others as well as selling very well as an ebook. It is taught at many schools and has been published in Japan, Italy, Hungary, Russia, the Czech Republic, France, Israel, and Korea. Yay!

This October, eleven years after first publication, Stranger Things Happen will be published in a hardcover edition by the good people at Subterranean Press. We could have published this edition ourselves but Kelly has long wanted to work with Bill Schafer and everyone at Sub Press and they are pros at this kind of project. As with many readers in this genre, we’ve long been admirers of the press and Bill has often given us great advice over the years. We own many of their books—and we have all these great books we’re working on so it made sense to go to them with it.

It is also gave Kelly a chance to work with one of her favorite artists, Kathleen Jennings, who has provided the cover illustration as well as story headers for each of the eleven stories.

This special signed limited edition of Stranger Things Happen is accompanied by a exclusive hardcover chapbook, Origin Stories, which contains two stories, “Origin Stories” and “Secret Identity.”

There are only going to be 500 copies, all of which will be signed, and we have arranged with Kelly to personalize copies ordered here.

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ICFA, Brattle, Juniper

Wed 14 Mar 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book fairs, events, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

What are we doing in the next few weeks?

Kelly will be Guest of Honor (with China Mieville) at ICFA, March 21 – 25, Orlando Airport Marriott, Orlando, FL, and I will be running around with Ursula.

Gregory Maguire and Kelly Link, Brattle Theater, Cambridge, Mass.
Discussing Stone Animals and Tales Told in Oz—beautiful new chapbooks published by Madras Press, and all the proceeds got to charity.
March 29, 6 PM

UMass Amherst Juniper Literary Festival, Amherst, Mass.
Julia Holmes and loads of other interesting people are going to be there, yay! We will have a table in the book fair.
April 13 & 14

Japan/America Writers Dialog
Masatsugu Ono and Tomoka Shibasaki will be joined by Stuart Dybek and Kelly Link for an intriguing and original cross-cultural encounter facilitated by translators Ted Goossen and Motoyuki Shibata.
Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue at 70th St., NYC
May 6, 2 PM

Yale Writers Conference
We will be there on the last day to talk about publishing in all its many joys.
June 22

Joy! It’s what we live for. If you don’t love it, why do it? Oh, wait, must go try and understand and fill in another spreadsheet, eek!

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New Stone Animals chapbook

Tue 7 Feb 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Coming soon: a letterpress chapbook edition of “Stone Animals” from Madras Press illustrated by Lisa Brown, Lilli Carré, Anthony Doerr, Lev Grossman, Daniel Handler, Paul Hornschemeier, Ursula K. Le Guin, Laura Miller, Audrey Niffenegger, Tao Nyeu, Arthur Phillips, and Lane Smith. Order here.

Madras Press publishes individually bound short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of charitable organizations chosen by our authors—including for “Stone Animals” the Fistula Foundation.

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(Jim) Kelly (Link) @ the KGB

Wed 11 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

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

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

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

Wednesday January 18th, 7pm at

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

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:

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

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.

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Small Beer &c, 2011

Wed 4 Jan 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bestsellers, Karen Joy Fowler, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link, Maureen F. McHugh, Ted Chiang| Posted by: Gavin

Bookscan says our bestsellers were:

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

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

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 27

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

And here are the books we published.

First Small Beer Press titles:

After the Apocalypse
Maureen F. McHugh

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

A Slepyng Hound to Wake
Vincent McCaffrey

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

Paradise Tales
Geoff Ryman

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

The Child Garden
Geoff Ryman

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

The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Joan Aiken

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

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

And one Big Mouth House title:

The Freedom Maze
Delia Sherman

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

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Book Fests! Brooklyn

Thu 15 Sep 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book fairs, conventions, Kelly Link, steampunk| Posted by: Gavin

Tonight Kelly is in Brooklyn to read at the powerHouse Arena Tin House/Electric Literature party—her Steampunk! story, “The Summer People,” also appears in the new Ecstatic issue of Tin House,

Then on Sunday, Sept. 18, we will be at the Brooklyn Book Fest where we will be at table #124 and both Kelly and I have panels. Come on by and say hi! Don’t quite know if we will have the secret t-shirts we had at Readercon (maybe at some point they’ll be on sale here . . . ) or LCRW mugs but we have the new ish of LCRW, and books, books, glorious books!

12:00 P.M. Crashing Genres. Join authors whose work defies classification: crashing the genre borders of sci-fi / fantasy and the supernatural. Cory Doctorow (For The Win and NYT best-selling Little Brother), has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, Kelly Link, author of cult favorite stories in Pretty Monsters and Magic for Beginners and best-selling author Jewell Parker Rhodes, winner of the American Book Award, uses magical realism to examine race and memory in her New Orleans vampire trilogy Seasons, Moon, and Hurricane. Moderated by Stephanie Anderson.

5:00 P.M. Epic Adventures. Have you ever wanted to travel to the other side of the world to experience new places, really learn about other cultures, and maybe even find your true love in the process? Join graphic novelist Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) and author/illustrator team Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story) as they take you on two powerful journeys that really show what is like to be entirely somewhere else. Moderated by Gavin Grant, co-editor of Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories.

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Edinburgh book fest & more

Tue 9 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Clarion, Geoff Ryman, Karen Lord, Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Vincent McCaffrey| Posted by: Gavin

Time for some updates before we shut down for the August recess. First a few quick reviews:

1. Gary K. Wolfe in Locus on Geoff Ryman’s Paradise Tales: “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.”
2. Ted Gioia on Ted Chiang. (It’s a TedFest!) “The divide between genre fiction and literary fiction is, blurry at best . . . “
3. Catch-up: Matt Kressel interviews Richard Butner for the Shirley Jackson Award site.
4. Very sad to read about William Sleator’s death. Many years ago Kelly gave me a copy of his autobiographical collection Oddballs (it’s still one of the books she loves to give people), a hilarious book that only gets more fascinating as I see if from two sides, the child POV and the parental. I haven’t read much of his fiction, but

Ok, so the last two weren’t reviews, but go on, open up some tabs and read them.

Next: a reading! Vincent McCaffrey will read from A Slepyng Hound to Wake at the Brookline Booksmith at 7 PM on Thursday August 25th. We love Vince and we love the Booksmith (and their reading series, they have Lev Grossman there this week) so we are very sad we won’t be there. Slepying Hound is shipping out very nicely. If you want a signed copy, the Booksmith, Poison Pen, or Avenue Victor Hugo are your choices. (On AVH’s site on Biblio.com you can see what else Vincent has published . . . )

Next: Locus! The August issue has:

• an interview with Karen Lord—who can be heard on the Locus roundtable podcast here.
• a review of Geoff Ryman’s collection (ok, that one’s linked above, but I liked having all this stuff together)
• a review by Rich Horton of The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
• and includes Lydia Millet’s The Fires Beneath the Sea in the Notable Books
• and at some point soon, Locus will become available on Weightless

Next: travel! Next week Kelly will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival—apparently their website is down due to a lightning strike on their servers in Ireland!—where she and Audrey Niffenegger will have a lively chat at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 16th, and then Kelly will be part of what sounds like a great shindig of a night from 9 PM onward on Thursday the 18th. And since they are very sensibly headquartered in Edinburgh, we also get to go visit Kelly’s UK publisher for Pretty Monsters, Canongate!

Last! Clarion West. Kelly and I are excited to be among next year’s instructor’s at Seattle’s Clarion West:

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

Although with that line-up, we might just see if we can sit in from week one . . .

Bye! We’re also off to visit family in Scotland, so will be offline for most of this month. We’ll be back—and starting to do events for Steampunk!—at the start of September.

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I don’t know the author or the title…

Mon 8 Aug 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bestsellers, indie bookstore exclusives, Kelly Link, Paige M. Gutenborg| Posted by: Gavin

But, look, it’s the #1 paperback best seller at the Harvard Book Store! How awesome is that? Screen shot below—where Kelly’s 3 Zombie Stories (actual title: I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It) holds back Alan Furst and Malcolm Gladwell from jousting for their usual spot.

I hope people are having fun asking for it!

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Secret book revealed

Fri 29 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, keep it indie, Kelly Link, zombies| Posted by: Gavin

in Harvard Book Store newsletter!

“Fabulous local author Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners) has created a special edition book on Paige (our book-making robot) entitled I Don’t Know the Author or the Title But It’s Red And It Has 3 Zombie Stories In It. The hearts of booksellers and librarians everywhere will immediately be warmed by this title, but here’s a little note from Kelly that explains the unusual title choice:  “When you work at a bookshop, hopeful customers sometimes come up to the counter and say, “I don’t know the author or the title, but it’s red (green, blue, etc) and it has xxxxx in it.” (I’ve said it myself at least once or twice.) Anyway, for a couple of years, my husband Gavin and I have had a running joke about using this as the title of a collection. These three stories have appeared before, in other collections, but we were hoping that an all-zombie mini-book would make a good sampler for new readers. We designed the book and printed it in less than twenty-four hours. How amazing: to see your book made before your eyes! We’re now thinking about other projects for Paige M. Gutenborg.”  It’s a slim and gorgeous new book–and it’s currently only available at Harvard Book Store! Order your copy here.”

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Kelly’s new story Valley of the Girls

Mon 11 Jul 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

is up in Gwenda Bond’s YA issue of Subterranean Online—which has had some knockout stories in it. Anyway, the link to the new Link is here.

Fiction: Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link

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3 Karens

Tue 17 May 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Franciscan, Karen Joy Fowler, Karen Lord, Kelly Link, Tim Wakefield| Posted by: Gavin

What a morning we’re having. But along with the other stuff, here’s the great news:

1. Karen Lord’s debut novel Redemption in Indigo is a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award. That’s a really strong list of books—both the adult and children’s—lit lists making it a real honor to be nominated.
2. Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories gets a lovely review on Strange Horizons and both the book and the original story, “Booth’s Ghost” are finalists for the Locus Award. That book is piling up the awards!
3. The third Karen moment today is that fabby Karen Russell who recommends Kelly’s Stranger Things Happen on NPR. Wow! There’s a link to

ETA: Want to go see Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield . . . sign a book? That’s what he’ll be doing at [some future day at] one of our beloved indie bookshops, the Brookline Booksmith. [Event postponed because the guy has to go pitch!] The guy is a great player (or so I’m told, still not really up on the whole baseball thing, give me time) but he’s also a great guy: at Franciscan Hospital for Children there’s a lovely all-weather playing field behind the main building called the Wakefield because guess who funded it? That makes him awesome.

And: we got emailed asking whether we’d publish a book by an author we love. Wow. Fingers crossed.

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Boskone

Thu 17 Feb 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons, Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, we’re going to be at Boskone this weekend. Here’s Kelly’s and my schedules—all dependent of course on all people with colds/flus/con crud staying away, por favor, so that we can bring Ursula and have some fun running around with her. Not sure what we’re going to do at naptime. Maybe go off home. Michael will be there, too, although I’m not sure if he’s panelling after all. We’ll be sporting some nice new shirts and will be experimenting with a Weightless thing.

Kelly Link:

Saturday 11am Harbor 3: New Faces of Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

These exceptional writers may still be in the early stages of their career, but already we catch glimpses of greatness. Let’s name names — and talk about what makes them so special.

Laird Barron, Peter V. Brett, Paul Di Filippo (m), David Anthony Durham, Kelly Link

Sunday 1pm Harbor 1: A Child’s Garden of Dystopias — the Boom in Nasty Worlds for Children

Why do dystopias and YA literature seem to go together? Are YA dystopias more common now than previously? Are there differences between YA and adult dystopias — perhaps a different ratio of cynicism to hope? How does “if this goes on” fit in? Consider this article.

Bruce Coville, Theodora Goss, Jack M. Haringa (m), Kelly Link

Gavin:

Saturday 1pm Lewis: The Small Press: Bigger Than Ever?

Boutique publishers and small presses are publishing more of the best stuff in the field every year. True? Who? How? Why? And what about the future? What’s the role of the small press in a world dominated by e-books?

Neil Clarke, Gavin Grant, Valerie L. Grimm (m), Joe Hill

Sunday 11am Harbor 3: The e-Book Market

E-books appear to be the wave of the future. How does a professional who wishes to continue to make a living surf that wave?

Jeffrey A. Carver, Neil Clarke (m), John R. Douglas, Gavin Grant, Charles Stross, Eleanor Wood

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Steampunk! ToC

Wed 19 Jan 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cassandra Clare, Christopher Rowe, Cory Doctorow, Delia Sherman, Dylan Horrocks, Elizabeth Knox, Garth Nix, Holly Black, Kathleen Jennings, Kelly Link, Libba Bray, Shawn Cheng, steampunk, Ysabeau Wilce| Posted by: Gavin

Today Kelly and I are handing over the final copyedited manuscript of the anthology we’ve been working on for the last year or so: Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories to our editor, Deborah Noyes at Candlewick. Yay!

It’s been a huge amount of fun getting the stories (and two comics!) from the writers who hail from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. There was the usual amount of last minute hijinks trying to corral 14 authors (including Kelly!) to go over the copyedits in superquick time, luckily for me none of them were on internet sabbatical.

But that it all done. The introduction is written, the bios are in, the stories are copyedited (and the copyediting arguments are over!) and so out the door it goes. Now we get to put together a website (although getting back to the 19th century and doing a website is harder than I expected it to be) and at some point soon we’ll get to post the cover. Candlewick showed us a couple of exciting cover roughs—more on that when it’s finalized.

And now: the table of contents!

Cassandra Clare, “Some Fortunate Future Day”
Libba Bray, “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”
Cory Doctorow, “Clockwork Fagin”
Shawn Cheng, “Seven Days Beset by Demons” (comic)
Ysabeau Wilce, “Hand in Glove”
Delia Sherman, “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor”
Elizabeth Knox, “Gethsemene”
Kelly Link, “The Summer People”
Garth Nix, “Peace in Our Time”
Christopher Rowe, “Nowhere Fast”
Kathleen Jennings, “Finishing School” (comic)
Dylan Horrocks, “Steam Girl”
Holly Black, “Everything Amiable and Obliging”

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Things to do. Things that happened.

Tue 19 Oct 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, Julia Holmes, Karen Joy Fowler, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

The Boston Book Fair was a ton of fun—thanks to everyone who stopped by. Most of whom, of course, didn’t know us. At some point we really must publish a small book on beer. The hit of the day was definitely the Working Writer’s Daily Planner which made me think maybe I should just set up at stalls at writerly conferences and fairs all over the country and forget about these book things. But happily there were enough readers that we sold some books, too. And that’s despite the high winds. At one point I was attacked by a mini-twister that blew everything on The Common‘s side of the booth all over the place. The Common is a new journal for everyone to subscribe to. Go on, might as well! They’re into the fictions, the poetries, and the images—aha, something different!—and their editorial angle is “a sense of place.” I didn’t get to Kelly’s panel (and neither did some others as it was full!) but reports are that it went well. With luck we’ll be back next year.

Ok, so: if you’re in the Santa Cruz area tonight, there’s only one thing to do: go see Karen Joy Fowler. She will also be in Danville on Thursday (1o/21). Those in LA have to wait until 11/5 when she will be at Vroman’s.

You can (and should, it’s great) listen to Rick Kleffel and Karen’s lovely conversation on the Agony Column. (links to MP3). Rick also reviews the book:

That rare writer who can match the power of her novels with the power of her short stories. She works in the world of myth with great ease. We feel, reading her stories, that we are in our world, but some portion of it that connects vitally with everything else. What happens here is gripping, important, compelling, and often terrifying. Her new collection of stories, ‘What I Didn’t See’ offers readers perfect renderings of a New American Mythos.

Yesterday Cory Doctorow BoingBoinged the heck out of Under the Poppy:

This book made me drunk. Koja’s language is at its poetic best, and the epic drama had me digging my nails into my palms. It’s like a Tom Waits hurdy-gurdy loser’s lament come to life, as sinister as a dark circus.

The multi-format ebook version is available now. The book has arrived from the printer and it is so heavy! We compared it to another recent hardcover and it was about twice as heavy. Maybe we should use lighter paper?

Talking of ebooks, Weightless continues apace: we added a single-title publisher: Sator Press! Plus, Featherproof titles are onsale. And so on.

If you’re in the Boston area, tonight Kelly will be at the Literary Death Match! (Me, I’ll be babysitting.)

The World SF Blog introduces you to Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud.

And, we have copies of Meeks in stock in the office. Everywhere else will be getting new stock in soon. Turns out if you publish a lovely book with French flaps, then it will take a little more time for the reprint to get done.

That’s most of what’s going on. Time, methinks, to go back to sleep!

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Boston Book Fest is this Saturday

Thu 14 Oct 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., book festivals, Kelly Link, Under the Poppy, Working Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin

and we’d love to see you there! We have new books and will be there 10 – 6.

And: Kelly is on Kate Bernheimer’s fairy tale panel at 3 PM with Maria Tatar and Kathryn Davis in celebration of the huge new anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. Kelly just got her copy yesterday and it’s a fabulous looking book. There are 40 stories, including many originals, from peeps such as Shelley Jackson, Kevin Brockmeier, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Joy Williams, Aimee Bender, and, you know, 35 others! The cover art and design is by house fave Julie Morstad.

At the book fest, we will be sharing a booth with the completely new journal (which will be launched next year), The Common, from Amherst College. They’re open for submissions and seeking “stories, poems, essays, and dispatches that embody a strong sense of place.” You can download Issue Zero here.

You can find us and The Common at booth 26. Other exhibitors include the fine folk at One Story, Godine, and Zephyr Press, a couple of our favorite bookshops, Brookline Booksmith and the Raven, as well as Oxfam, WBUR and WGBH, Redivider, 826 Boston, and some food trucks—yum! Wish Yoma were providing the food. Maybe next year! Maybe we will bring banh mi (shades of the Brooklyn Book Fest).

If all goes well, Kelly and I will be bringing Ursula along. We can’t get a nurse for the day (eek!) so Kelly and I will be juggling looking after her (she is 18 months old and wants to do stuff!). I’m not quite sure how that will work with Kelly’s panel. Anyone want to step in from 3-4PM and help shill will be appreciated.

Lastly: two new titles, Under the Poppy and A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011, just arrived at the office so they will be debuting at the book fest.

Apparently it will be sunny and breezy. If that’s true, that will be a mild improvement on the rain rain rain at last month’s Brooklyn Book Fest. See you in Copley Square!

ETA: We have a nurse for Ursula for Saturday so she will only be making an appearance early in the morning during set up!

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Kelly + the Literary Death Match

Fri 8 Oct 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

(Ganked wholesale from the Literary Death Match site.)

LDM100: October 19, 2010

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Topics for Kelly?

Wed 9 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s blog tour is under way and if you have any topic requests for later in the week please post in the comments!

Here’s the tour so far. (Today’s is a book giveaway, so go sign up for that, or you can get your copy from Powell’s who have it in stock now.)

Updated with links to posts:

The Cozy Reader — on writing and not writing
Forever Young — a continuation of the above
Parajunkee’s View — paranormal monsters
Reviews by Brooke — lists!
Anna’s Book Blog — reading as a writer
Books By Their Cover — short review + interview
Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews — story idea generation
Monster Librarian — interview
Fantasy Book Critic — Kelly interviews N.K. Jemisin
Word for Teens — on Diana Wynne Jones
The Compulsive Reader — go make a zine!
TBA: Bookchickcity.com

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Kelly’s going on a blog tour

Tue 1 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Next week the paperback of Kelly’s collection Pretty Monsters comes out from Penguin and since she won’t be going out on tour (maybe she will for the theoretical next book—which, to forestall questions, isn’t written, scheduled, etc.), instead she is going out into the Great Tubes of the Internets for a tour of the far horizons of Bloglandia. The paperback (just to complicate the lives of blibliographers) has one extra story, “The Cinderella Game”—originally published in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Troll’s Eye View anthology—and is sitting here looking very pretty and proud.

Also, I think about four of these sites are giving away copies of Pretty Monsters so please do add these to reading calendar for next week:

June 7: Thecozyreader.com
June 8: Foreveryalit.com
June 8: Parajunkee.com
June 9: Reviewsbybrooke.blogspot.com
June 10: Annavivian.blogspot.com
June 11: Booksbytheircover.blogspot.com
June 14: Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews
June 15: Monsterlibrarian.com
June 15: Bookchickcity.com
June 16: Fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com
June 17: Wordforteens.blogspot.com
June 18: Thecompulsivereader.com

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Tom Canty art, signed books by Kelly, more more more

Thu 20 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, Karen Lord, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link, Laurie J. Marks, Publishing| Posted by: Gavin

Here is a tiny note to ignore. In fact, skip this para and go right to the next one. If you do read this, please don’t go bid against us for the Thomas Canty-illustrated copy of Water Logic—which is part of the auction to raise money for Laurie J. Marks’s wife, Deb Mensinger’s liver transplant.

Ok, so you skipped that paragraph. Thank you! But before you read on to find out what exciting things are happening here (alchemy! we turn art into commerce!) how about bidding on this copy of Water Logic customized with an original drawing by Thomas Canty ? Yay!

Bid!

And, they just posted this offer: all of Kelly’s collections either signed or personalized to you. You know we’re not going anywhere for a while so if you’d like a signed copy, this is your best chance for, what, a year at least?

Today’s featured (starred!) review on Booklist is Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo! That cover is not the actual cover, everyone will be relieved to know. The final cover is almost done, the interior is done (sorry, not being printed in indigo ink), so off to the printer it will go. This is the first novel you’re going to love and you will be so happy to be one of the readers who can say I was there when . . .

New Zealanders—this one is for you! “Next week (May 24 – 28) ‘Good Morning‘ book reviewer Laura Kroetsch is looking at Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (Text, 9781921656361)” + 2 other books! (Thanks Renee!)

Edward Gauvin is fighting a valiant battle against those who think Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is a Kurt Vonnegut literary game.

The strenuousness of these assertions–mine and publisher Small Beer’s–should not, I repeat, decidedly not be construed as protest, or evidence of insincerity. That is all.

In the meantime, A Life on Paper has shipped from the printer and will be hitting stores in a week or two—reviews should then pile in. Who isn’t going to review a major French author’s first work in English? Here’s a story from the book, “The Excursion,” in (the fantastically named) Joyland.

Over there in October (since all time exists at all times if you look sideways from here you can see October) we’re in the middle of publishing Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy—and part of the fun is the stage show which will debut next February (look a bit more to the side, there it is! Phew, sexy!). Kathe’s joined Kickstarter to raise some knicker money (so that the knickers can later be dropped? There’s a vaudeville joke in there somewhere) for the girls Under the Poppy, which is, natch, a Victorian brothel.

Inside baseball time: we just presented our autumn and winter titles to our sales reps and it was fun to see the reactions from the sales reps so yay for that. We’re lucky in that we have a team of sales reps (Consortium’s) who read a ton (some of them had already read some of these books from early ebook versions we’d sent ahead) and like the slightly weird stuff we give them.

Also: how many times a book is sold:

1. By the author to the agent
2. agent to editor
3. editor to publisher and sales team and whoever else
4. sales team to sales reps
   1. publicist to reviewers/editors
   2. reviewer to editor (or vice versa)
5. sales reps to the booksellers (or to the bookstore chain buyers)
6. bookseller to you

There are probably a few more steps in there!

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Thursday: freebies, signed books, etc.

Tue 9 Mar 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bookshops, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Kelly Link, Poison Eaters, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

This morning the Boston Globe includes our awesome event this Thursday at 6 at the Brookline Booksmith in their Three to See mini feature.

What’s not mentioned: there will be free stuff! Franciscan will provide the candy, there will be a tiny leetle bit of chocolate, and we will have Working Writer’s Daily Planners for all and sundry! (Well, say the first 100 people, if UPS delivers them on time.)

Also, if you’d like any books signed by Holly Black (The Poison Eaters, Tithe, Spiderwick), Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners), and Cassandra Clare (City of Glass, City of Bones), use these links to pre-order them directly from the fab peeps at the Booksmith.

And, if you have questions for these writers (especially for the “lightning round”!) please email them to:hollycassandrakelly@gmail.com.

Hope to see you there—or at least to read one of your questions!

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While waiting for the delivery truck

Fri 19 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alasdair Gray, Big Mouth House, Cons, Holly Black, Interstitial Arts, Jedediah Berry, John Kessel, Kelly Link, To Read Pile| Posted by: Gavin

Today’s the day when The Poison Eaters should be showing up the office. Dum-de-dum (waits, impatiently). Nice reviews have recently shown up in School Library Journal (“Although they are often centered on bleak, dark characters, the pieces inspire hope, are touching and delightful, and even turn the most ghoulish characters into feeling beings.”) and in BookPage (she shows “amazing range”—yes indeed she does!).

Update: Powell’s say they have it in their remote warehouse! Any remote viewers who can see it?? Maybe they mean Ingram, as they have it.

So in the meantime a few things:

Alasdair Gray (Old Men in Love) writes about the importance of place. Consider, he suggests, Dumbarton (which means “fortress of the Britons”).

We dropped the price of last year’s hottie The Baum Plan for Financial Independence to $9.95.

Fantasy Magazine reviews Interfictions 2 and suggests it’s an “anthology of literary fantasy.” Yours to agree or disagree about. Get your copy.

Con or Bust is running a fundraiser auction to assist people of color who want to attend WisCon from Feb. 22—Mar. 13. They’re looking for donations and buyers! Any suggestions for what we should donate??

BTW, if you’re going to WisCon, I’ll see you there! Sans baby, sadly (will try not to whine too much. But will some, so there). Maybe 2011.

We just signed up another book. Well, verbally. Will wait for the contracts (always good to have it on paper before announcing things) and then spring it upon the world. Fun fun fun!

The post office just delivered an empty envelope that should have been full of zines. Woe is me.

Past-LCRW contributor Katharine Beutner who is “currently being squashed under the weight of my dissertation” slipped out from underneath it to do an interview with us about her Ancient Greek underworld novel Alcestis which is out this month. Interview will go up next week or so.

Joe Hill’s second novel Horns just came out. Read the first chapter here. There’s also an app for it. Phew. He’s on tour now.

Kelly’s contributor copies of Ellen Datlow’s new anthology, Tails of Wonder and Imagination just came in—her story is “Catskin” is one of many many other stories about cats. Who knew people wrote so much about the little beasties?

Might be imagining seeing a copy of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 4.

Jed is back from tour — he managed to write that floaty bike all the way to the west coast and back and even managed to escape Chicago despite its many charms and massive amounts of snow.

Tra la la la la. Wait. Dum-de-dum. Wait some more.

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Holly Black, Kelly Link, and Cassandra Clare reading

Mon 8 Feb 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Kelly Link, Poison Eaters, readings, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

Join three of the hottest writers in the Young Adult field on March 11th at the Coolidge Corner Theater for a panel discussion celebrating New York Times bestselling author Holly Black’s new book, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories. And it’s not just about having a great time: ticket sales—and 20% of event book sales—will be donated by the Brookline Booksmith to Franciscan Hospital for Children.

Holly Black (Tithe, the Spiderwick Chronicles) will be joined by Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters) and Cassandra Clare (author of the New York Times bestselling The Mortal Instruments series) for a discussion of . . . and this is where it gets interesting: readers, whether they will be attending or not, are invited to email their questions for the authors to hollycassandrakelly@gmail.com. The three authors will begin with a selection of submitted questions and then take questions from the audience.

There will be giveaways for the attendees. Afterward all three authors will sign their books at the Brookline Booksmith. Refreshments will be served.

The panel discussion as fundraiser was suggested by Holly Black who brought her fellow Amherst author, Cassandra Clare, aboard. Black’s new book, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, is being published by Big Mouth House—an imprint of Small Beer Press, an independent press run by Kelly Link and her husband, Gavin Grant. Link and Grant’s Easthampton, MA, office is in the same shambling old refitted warehouse as Black’s office.

While Black’s collection was in the planning stages (back in February 2009) Link and Grant’s daughter, Ursula was born at 24 weeks and 1 1/2 lbs. Ursula and her parents spent her first five months at Baystate Medical Center, and is now (doing well!) in a pulmonary rehabilitation ward at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Brighton (Boston).

Kelly Link, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black
A Discussion Panel on Young Adult Fiction with Reader-Submitted Questions
Seating begins at 5:45 PM
6 -7 PM,  Thursday, March 11th
at the Coolidge Corner Theater
(http://www.coolidge.org)
$5 (Buy tickets by calling the store at 617-566-6660

with a signing to follow at the Brookline Booksmith
(http://brooklinebooksmith-shop.com)

Ticket sales and 20% of event book sales will be donated to Franciscan Hospital for Children.

About Franciscan Hospital for Children
Franciscan Hospital for Children, located in Boston’s neighborhood of Brighton, is the leading pediatric rehabilitation center in New England.  The hospital offers medical, behavioral and educational services for children with complex issues requiring interdisciplinary care. For more information on the hospital visit http://www.franciscanhospital.org.

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Hello 2010

Mon 4 Jan 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Greer Gilman, Holly Black, Joan Aiken, Kelly Link, Poppy Z. Brite, Ursula| Posted by: Gavin

It’s kind of odd to hit a year-change with no Year’s Best duties but I’ve been enjoying reading many other Best of Year/Decade lists—and the odd squeak about how this isn’t the end of the decade, dammit! I will miss the year-in-summary but I certainly couldn’t write it this year—or any year soon.

Apparently by the end of the world (2012) we will have “golden fleece’ lozenges” containing “interferon alpha, a protective protein made naturally by the body when attacked by a virus” which would mean not being hit with a grotty cold-like thing first thing in the year. Can’t come fast enough. Blech.

Also, maybe by 2012 Apple will have developed a power cord that doesn’t break every couple of years. How often do you see this rating in the Apple Store:

Customer Ratings Based on 1139 reviews

Bah. Hard to get excited about the iSlate while our two old MacBooks are sharing a cord!

So, given that the the last couple of days have been cold-days here is some catch-up blathery mostly from the old year so that, maybe, just maybe, after this ohnine will be deid and ohten will not be the new year, it will just be the year.

First: thanks! Our fundraising sale raised just under a $1,000 for Franciscan Hospital for Children—so we made up the difference and will be dropping a check in the mail this week. A good piece of that total came a buck at a time but there were many people who paid retail price. Yay! We have a fundraiser reading coming in March in Boston which should be fun. Will, of course, keep you posted,

Second: Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden is a finalist in the Cybils Awards in the Middle-Grade Fantasy & Science Fiction category. Yay for the Armitage family! (Did we mention it was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the parenting part of Toronto Star? 2008, 2009, who cares when it came out: we all know it’s a great book.)

And more: Much love was apportioned to Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes at the end of year multi-critic list at Strange Horizons. It’s not a book for every reader but for those it hits, yep, it is the thing.

Poppy Brite’s Second Line continues to get coverage at home. New Orleans Magazine says, “Her novels Liquor, Prime and Soul Kitchen have introduced readers to the wild world of Chefs John Rickey and Gary “G-man” Stubbs. The couple lives for food and the art of making it as many New Orleanians do. The two stories in Second Line serve as earlier and later chapters in the steamy soap opera saga.”

Holly Black was interviewed by Veronika about spooky dolls, what’s coming up, and so on. We’re getting her book ready to send to the printer—it will be our biggest book for a while, so it’s pretty exciting.

Kelly’s second collection Magic for Beginners made two other Best of the Decade lists: HTML Giant and the Village Voice—both of these make pretty great To-Read lists. Also weird and great to find on the web was Bryan Lee O’Malley enjoyed “Magic for Beginners.” Huh and wow. Maybe after Scott Pilgrim 6 is done he’ll do MFB as a comic. Cough. But then the comments today include infinite boners, so readers beware. In wandering about his site I downloaded one of his albums (recorded as Kupek)—it’s no Sex Bob-omb (cough, again) but it’s worth checking out.

For new stuff, ah, come back tomorrow or next week. And in the mean time,  cheers!

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2 (UK) Pretty Monsters

Thu 17 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Publishing| Posted by: Gavin

Fun news from the UK where Canongate have “teamed up with children’s specialist Walker Books to create a young adult imprint, packaging the Scottish firm’s books for a younger audience.”

Why fun? Next paragraph, please:

“The imprint, Walker Canongate, launches in July, with four titles – Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared, Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters and Matt Haig’s The Radleys, all of which are books that have been, or will be, published on the Canongate adult list.

“A further unnamed title is due out in the same year. All of the titles will have different jacket designs, and some will be “abridged for the YA market”, or have additional content, such as teaching aids, for schools.”

Which means, we think, that it will come out in 2 editions in the UK with maybe 2 different covers. So, fun!

Here’s a recent review of PM and an interview with Kelly over at The Short Review—where you can also win a copy.

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Stone Animals @ NPR

Mon 23 Nov 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners, Stone Animals| Posted by: Gavin

Nice surprise: Kelly’s story “Stone Animals” is excerpted at NPR.org.

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Free books, songs, arguments

Tue 10 Nov 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Greer Gilman, Kelly Link, Pop, Publishing, writing| Posted by: Gavin

BSCreview has 3 free copies of A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010 to give away.  Want Want Freebies?

Lev Grossman included Kelly’s Magic for Beginners in a list of “the six greatest fantasy books of all time.” Ladies and Gentlemen, start your arguments.

Richard Nash calls out BEA (via Shelf Awareness) on their rather silly decisions not to have a big party and not to let in the grand reading public. BEA is dying and no one seems to care. The American Booksellers Association has sensibly started a new thing, the very successful Winter Institute where publishers and booksellers get to meet in peace. Book fairs (hello Brooklyn!) do tremendously. ComicCon is spinning off secondary fairs like no one’s business. Kids are lining up to get into manga fairs. Someone else is going to take up the slack (hello again, Brooklyn, LA, Washington DC, Miami). Putting publishers in front of the public is no bad thing. We went to a huge indie book fair in Italy that was 4 days long and bigger than the Javits Center. People love that stuff — come on BEA, get like AWP and other smarter conferences, let the people in.

Hal Duncan has songs (with Neil Williamson) and a successful pay-per-view (or whateveryoucallit) going on on his site.

There have been two fascinating reviews (one website, one blog—there are many on the blogs but I just happen to be posting right now) of Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes: Paul Kincaid on SF Site,

Time and again, in innumerable different ways, we see hints about the ways that the stories we tell shape the actions we take…. This is where the circle is broken, and if events drive us incessantly towards tragedy as stories must, it is a very different tragedy from what has gone before.

Cloud and Ashes is not an easy book to read, but it is incredibly worth while making the effort. Any sense I have given of what goes on here is inevitably only partial, there is so much I have had to omit, major characters, significant plot lines. Above all, I have barely hinted at how much it plays with gender roles, how much it has to tell us about the role of women in shaping the world, indeed how every potent active character is female. It is a book you will barely grasp, but it is a book whose hold on your mind, on your memory, is assured. It is a story about story, and stories are what we are all made of. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

And She Who Must on LJ:

I loved it, and it still took me about a month to read it; it’s quite long, and very, very rich. After a few pages I’d have to stop and digest what I’d read. I don’t think that’s a bad thing – indeed, I was in no hurry to reach the end, I didn’t want it to be over.

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UK Twilight site giving away Pretty Monsters!

Mon 9 Nov 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Canongate, Feeebies, Kelly Link, Pretty Monsters| Posted by: Gavin

Ganked wholesale from BellaandEdward.com(!):

BAE UK Book Contest: Win Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link!

Pretty Monsters is a great collection of horror short stories, and is a good crossover book that teenagers and adults will love. I really enjoyed it!

UK Competition:

Canongate Books is pleased to offer BellaandEdward.com prize copies of Pretty Monsters.

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