Running Up That Zine

Wed 7 May 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 50, (probably — everything I do is still slower than I expect) coming out next month, is our latest celebration of writers, edited by Kelly and me, to be printed in the near-ish future by our local copy shop (who have a lovely garden and great holiday lights). Every copy comes with a free car*, a pianoforte,* an Oxford comma,** and its own 2 unique typos***.

Since the FDA will soon no longer exist we’re making the cover from a plant-based cheese which is set to melt enticingly during the time it spends in a hot van on its way to you. Open your envelope and devour the contents. Copies bought directly from Book Moon or any other direct sale outlet will be accompanied by a 2 oz (56 g) portion of Miyoko’s “cheese*” for you to replicate this experience. All fictions contained within the zine are better than any here.

* Lie.
** Probably, likely, and so on.
*** At least*v.
*v I am enjoying adding these before and after the period.


LCRW Costs, They Go Up

Sun 30 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Damn my eyes. I have seen — and ignored for a year or two too many — spreadsheets such as no zinemaker should see. I have calculated numbers no right-thinking person should know. I have stared at the Sum of all Costs and my very soul trembles before them. In the long dark tea time of the zining afternoon when considering the Fiscal Cliff I run out of Excuses and Pure and Simple Reasons and decide This Must Not Go On. The zine? Yes. Shall I go hiking? No. Shall I hike the zine price? Frustratingly enough, yes.

The USPS costs have Increas’d ($2.31 to mail just 1 zine) and even the Very Paper the zine is printed upon is More Costly in 2025 than in 2024. Or 2023. Or in 2022. Or in 2022. Wait, I am stuck. Please imagine I typed “Or in Year-1” until I hit 1996 when paper was free due to the availability of the photocopier at my temp job. We pay writers but thruppence a word, unincreas’d for Some Years. If that is to increase, and if we are to continue to send out a zine once, maybe even twice in a year, then the Price must rise.

Before The Increase, here are links for those who have the energy to order or — for those with faith the USPS will still be here in a couple of years — subscribe.

 

Chocolate $400
Writers $1,200
Printing $950
Candles $3600
Cover art $100
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my zine is dying


Nebula Award finalist: Jennifer Hudak’s, The Witch Trap

Wed 26 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Sending our congratulations and sharing the joy that Jennifer Hudak’s story “The Witch Trap” from LCRW 48 is one of six fine finalists for the short story Nebula Award.


The Positive Side of Mail Theft

Mon 10 Feb 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Over on Locus, Paula Guran’s column from the January issue of the magazine covers LCRW along with:

Nightmare 10/24
Uncanny 11/12-24
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 9/24
Reactor (10/2/24 – 11/20/24)

and she writes that “Four tales in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #48 piqued [her] readerly interest.”


Book of Love, LCRW 49

Fri 22 Nov 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

If all goes well, we’re going to be picking up LCRW 49 from the printer next week and start shipping it out. Ever so slowly, as ever. I could not resist and spent a bit more for the color cover. There are many issues I’ve been very tempted to print in color but I am usually too stingy/aware of the economics of the zine for this but I see it as a little treat (my home culture!) for everyone concerned.

And, at last, the numbered edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love is now available on Book Moon’s site. Can’t wait for this to go out to people, too.


New LCRW on the Horizon

Mon 28 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 49 is nearing completion, although Kelly’s in Seattle today, so, no, it won’t be quite ready for a bit yet.

In the meantime, I’m emailing 10.1 million subscribers to see if they’ll renew — with a note that, hey, we appreciated that past subscription! Also of interest, we send a backlist title out with new or re-subscriptions.

Must admit it is kind of weird not to have any new books — not counting the limited edition of The Book of Love — since Kathleen’s collection, Kindling. What am I going to do next year? Monthly issues of the zine? (Ha. No.)


LCRPrinter

Wed 7 Aug 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It’s about true, next issue of LCRW is taking the snail trail to the printer quite soon. Which means I should make an ebook and start getting the old team back together to mail this thing out. Ok, I’m going to need a safecracker and a driver . . .


Slow Moving

Fri 21 Jun 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 48 comes along very slowly caused entirely by my laptop keyboard and trackpad no longer communicating with the computer. Who knew that could happen?


eLCRW in the EU

Mon 20 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Over at Weightless Michael has found a way — with help from our friends at Interzone — to make LCRW available as an ebook in both the EU and the UK using Payhip. I am very grateful to everyone that 1) there’s a solution and 2) it was implementable.

I am sorry we can’t send chocolate over with the e-subscriptions. I’d say one of these days, but I kind of hope we don’t all end up with food printers in our kitchens so I hope you can get a good snack wherever you are to go with the zine. Is it really an issue of LCRW, anyway, if there aren’t chocolatey fingerprints on it/the ereader?


Dammit, I Missed the 20-year Anniversary of Our Oldest Unpaid Invoice

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Excellent that the search function, while messy, thanks Google, still works well enough for me to find this rather than having to page down through the Not Journalling Updates Page. I was putting together the Book Moon monthly bestseller list for Locus when I remembered that I’d posted a while back about the 10-year anniversary of our oldest invoice.

Ten years? A blink of a fruit fly’s eye! Twenty years? Now we’re getting somewhere. I long ago figured the bookstore mustn’t have sold any copies of the zine or the chapbooks — they should have ordered copies of Kelly’s chapbook 4 Stories — maybe they did, I’m not going to go find out — but they could have returned them. I’d be happy to have a few extra copies around.

Anyway, as with everything (except wishing death to stingy billionaires and those who declare who is human and who isn’t), time has removed any sting from this and now it’s just here to amuse. 20 years? A dog’s yawn! Looking forward to 30.


Callum Angus reads “Red Work”

Mon 2 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Last night Callum Angus streamed a live reading of his quilt-inspired story “Red Work” — “Come for the lesbian roller derby inside a volcano, dragons, and quilts!” — which was just published in the new issue of LCRW. Cal reads the whole story which begins at about 14:05 on the video below. Enjoy!


CSA = Crazy-Sexy Agriculture

Fri 30 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Just added LCRW Cooking Columnist Nicole Kimberling’s fifth column for LCRW which was originally published in LCRW 31:

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31 coverI think whoever invented the idea of paying a local farmer for a whole season of vegetables in advance, must have been some sort of subversive genius. . . .

[read on]

 


Truly Original

Fri 7 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 45 cover - click to view full sizeI enjoy reading Locus, finding books for Book Moon or for me, and generally keeping half an eye on what’s going on. This month Paula Guran reviewed the latest issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, #45, and said:

“If you are looking for unique literature, you can’t beat LCRW.”

 


Sneaky

Tue 22 Jun 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Out goes a new zine into the world. 43rd of its line.

Most are mailed out, at least. What’s it got? A Night Farmers’ Museum, Half a Papatya, Shiny Green Floors, Mysteries, Wires, Gutter-Princes, Acting Tips, Three Favours, Poems, King Moon’s Tithe to Hell, and a Time Travel Self-Care System.

All of which can be yourn.


NPR Best of the Year

Wed 30 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

In 2020 like everyone else in the world we rang the changes pretty hard. Our kid has been remote schooled (i.e. at home) since March, we closed Book Moon to walk-in browsing and ran it as a phone, online, and curbside pickup joint, and ran ourselves as hard as we could just to stand still.

Here’s an indented aside on Book Moon: it’s a small, local bookshop with an outsize national and international reach and those two facts kept it alive this year. We have a small staff, 4 smart and hardworking part-time booksellers, me and Kelly, and Kelly’s mother, an invaluable volunteer. We worked either as the 2 of us (plus kid doing school) or either Jed or Amanda alone in the store. On weekends in autumn and winter, Franchie worked outside as a carnival barker — although everyone has mixed feelings about actually trying to attract more people to the store. Having only one person in the store at a time was tough. I’m glad we only have one phone line and appreciate people leaving messages.

Every month at Book Moon has been our best month — but some of that is just us having fun with words. March to October sales were flat flat flat. We took out a small PPP loan which I think will be turned into a grant. Our landlords gave us a truly needed break on the rent — it was the difference between breaking even and losing money. All that aside, sure, these were our best March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and even October yet. November 2020 was 20% up on November 2019. December 2020 beat (THANKS ALL!) our actual best month so far, December 2019 — but woah what a different kind of work all these phone and internet orders are.

Book Moon is part of Bookshop.org. Do I want to only have a Bookshop site? No. Do I think it’s a good thing? People love it and if it gets them off the crappiness that is Am*zon, all the better.

I hoped and expected sales to grow this year. Easthampton has been very welcoming to having its own bookstore. But I also expected to have 1-3 booksellers in the store each day who were not Kelly or me. Covid meaning only us or 1 person at a time in the store has meant squeezing time for Small Beer pretty hard. Will it change? Yes. Soon? No.

So we ran ourselves hard because what we are doing, publishing books, running a bookshop, putting out a zine, is what we really want to keep doing. Do I want 750 Book Moons around the country or to publish 120 books a year? Not really. Do I like this what we’re doing? Yes!

So as purveyors of the written word — be it in printed book form, ebook, audiobook, zine, or T-shirt format — to readers local and far flung we are pretty damned grateful to still be around here at the end of December 2020 and to be (knock on wood, wearing a mask, washing hands) healthy. We’d like to do this for some years to come so we owe you thanks for buying books from us, borrowing them from a library, attending events, picking them up used, reviewing and sharing them.

In 2020 we published one new book (1), one TV tie-in (2), brought two books back into print (3) in new editions (as well as innumerable reprints, but that might be too much for me to go find), and published two issues of LCRW (41 — the free one, 42 — the answer, of course).

  1.  Elwin Cotman, Dance on Saturday: Stories
    — Karen Russell, “In addition to being wildly inventive, is also so goddamn funny.”
    — and the reason for the title of this post. It really is an amazing read.
  2. Nathan Ballingrud, Monsterland
    — if you watch the show on Hulu try and match the stories to the episodes.
  3. (i) Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss
    — Danielle Trussoni, New York Times Book Review: <“Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary series began in 2008 with Generation Loss, a startling and addictive novel that introduced a protagonist fueled by drugs and post-punk irreverence.
    — More news on book 2 & 3 in the Cass Neary series in early 2021.
    (ii) Susan Stinson, Martha Moody
    — Karen Rigby, Foreword Reviews: “An exuberant, cheeky Western in which sensual hunger steers an offbeat homesteader toward freedom.”

Other things that happened: since a friend talked us into joining the local Hot Chocolate Walk me and the kid have joined 6,000+ people in early December on a walk to raise money for a local shelter organization, Safe Passage. This year there was no walk but of course Safe Passage still needs the funds so we put up our page and it was just beyond inspiring and so lovely to see people from all over the country donate. Thanks, all. I continue to review zines for Xerography Debt and really enjoy the different views of the world represented in zines.

Weightless Books continues along as a half decent DRM-free independent alternative ebookstore. Next year, time willing, Michael and I have a few ideas to freshen it up. But that would be after everything else gets done.

In LCRW news, a story from #40, Michael Byers’s “Sibling Rivalry” was reprinted in Best American Short Stories 2020, edited by Curtis Sittenfeld. We gave away #41 to print and electronic subscribers to provide a moment of joy for one and all. This year has been so crappy, sending out a couple of hundred free zines was a respite.

This was a year in which we writers sent us longer stories that caught us by surprise. From LCRW 42, Sarah Langan’s You Have the Prettiest Mask was excerpted on Lithub and there were 2 long stories in LCRW 41, Rachel Ayers, “Magicians & Grotesques” and David Fawkes’s “Letterghost.”

We have quite a backlog of good things to come for LCRW. Will 2021 be the year we manage 3 issues? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I know we are publishing collections from Alaya Dawn Johnson, Isabel Yap, Jeffrey Ford, Zen Cho, and one more writer late in the year, perhaps there will be space for another LCRW in there somewhere.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 42 cover - click to view full size Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full size Dance on Saturday cover - click to view full size Martha Moody cover - click to view full size Generation Loss cover - click to view full size


LCRW Prices Rising in 2021

Mon 7 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

As announced in November, LCRW print and digital subscription prices will be rising on January 1, 2021, but now I have the actual numbers:

The single issue digital price will be $3.99.
The 4-issue digital subscription price will be $12.99.

The single issue print price will be $6 (USA),  $8 (Canada), and $11 (World).
The 4-issue print subscription price will be $24 (USA),  $32 (Canada), and $44 (World).

Subscribe now to get ahead of the game. Subscribe then for fun. Donate to your fave charity if you can.
Cheers!
Gavin


All Your Questions Answered

Fri 13 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 42 cover - click to view full sizeNext week the new issue of LCRW goes out with all your questions answered and, for some people, a chocolate bar. Perhaps we should be sending out LCRW masks but the responsibility of readerly enjoyment is quite enough for us. The responsibility for the lives of our readers is fainting couch material.* Thanks everyone who wears a mask in public.

All your questions? Since everything comes down to What Is The Point Anyway? Yes. We are going with Douglas Adams’s answer, pushing it further from funny to unfunny and perhaps back to funny.

The zine comes out the same as Obama’s A Promised Land. Wonder which one will sell more?

You may have read an excerpt from Sarah Langan’s “You Have the Prettiest Mask” on Lit Hub. It is a huge, dark novella and as ever I am looking forward to hearing what people think of it. Masks being something we give more thought to every day.

The full table of contents is now up:

Sarah Langan, “You Have the Prettiest Mask” [read an excerpt on Lit Hub]
Vandana Singh, “Sticky Man”
Stewart Moore, “Madeline’s Wings”
Jack Larsen, “Bright and Shabby Buses”
Kristin Yuan Roybal, “Separation Theory”

poetry

Holly Day, Two Poems

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, Cooking Column: “The Stories We Tell”

The zine will be in the mail at some point next week and the ebook will go out on Weightless on Tuesday. (Not as sure about other ebook sites.) It is very cheering to put a zine out in the middle of the pandemic. To take stories from writers and send them out to readers. To imagine a readership with the mail piled up untouched for 3 days for pandemic/magical thinking reasons, and then taking the zine from the pile, putting feet up, getting comfortable, digging in.

* What makes good fainting couch material is something we often ponder from our chaise lounges. Something soft, something forgiving. Something not made of thinly sliced trees. Something like a hammock or a panda.


LCRW Forty-Extraordinary-One

Tue 30 Jun 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeHey, it is publication day for the new issue of LCRW! We are celebrating all day by relaxing by the seaside with mimosas. It is a sunny day with a breeze and the shade of the trees it hitting me just right. Later someone, not me, is going to produce a fruit plate. If you happen to call Book Moon and I answer the phone, that’s not me, that’s my semi-sentient personal AI who may be able to help you find a book or may check in on your feelings about the word pudding and the utility of graprefruit cannons as distractors for angry 11-year-olds.

The other day after mailing out all the LCRWs, I went to update the subscriber database so mark some subscriptions expired. Except! Ha! Made myself laugh! No subscriptions expired because this was a freebie to all the subscribers! So, thank you, subscribers! It is mostly great fun to make this zine and send it out into the world and it was delightful to send this issue out as a thank you for supporting the work.

It’s a big issue: we packed 2 novellas and a long story in there along with Nicole Kimberlings “Quarantine Pantry Challenge” column. And of course the fabulous cover illustration, “Mirrie in the Sea Storm,” is by Vicky Yuh.

Also, 2020 being so uneven, LCRW 41 is the first thing Small Beer has published this year. We’d meant to have Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss paperback out in April (it is printed, at the warehouse, and ready to roll out in August) and Elwin Cotman’s new collection, Dance on Saturday, out this month, but: COVID-19 meant we asked our booksellers at Book Moon not to come in to the shop, so we spent much of spring here. That may change a little in upcoming months, as we need to find new balances in the new world, or, it may not. Who knows how anything will go — except the chances of me getting on a plane this summer is near zero, so: more time for making books or more time in BKMN? The USA is doing such a terrible job of controlling the virus — which, you know, just means being polite enough to wear a mask in public — that we may remain in the equivalent of lockdown until there is a vaccine (eek).

All of which is to say, we are delighted to have actually published something in this the last day of the first half of 2020. We look forward to hearing readers’ reactions and to publishing many more things in the second half of the year.


LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One

Wed 20 May 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 41 cover - click to view full sizeThe next issue of LCRW, no. 41, will be published in print and ebook form on June 16th, 2020, and will be known as LCRW Forty (Extraordinary) One.

That cover there, that’s a place holder for a fabulous piece of art.

The page for it will go up soon but in the meantime: news!

LCRW 41 will be sent to print and ebook subscribers — and anyone who subscribes to LCRW before June 15 — for free.

We will check in with the lovely indie bookshops that usually carry LCRW and see if they are going to be open but many are in the same position as Book Moon which won’t be open for the forseeable future for anything but curbside pickup from May 27th at the earliest. So since this issue can’t find readers the usual way, maybe it will find a few more readers in a different way.

The Table of Contents includes two novellas which will take you to two very different places. Best of all, neither of those places is this one.

There are many subscription levels — my favorite remains the chocolate subscription (which is tough in warm weather as that price does not include cold packs) — and #10, the huge donation & a free chocolate subscription.


News

Tue 24 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

We have some news coming tomorrow. It’s not about announcing a new short story collection coming next summer which will provoke much fainting and sharing on the sosh meeds. It’s not about the next issue of LCRW, coming together, should be out in November, as per usual, fingers crossed for a yay. Neither is it about a John Crowley reading in Easthampton in November, but that should be happening. We haven’t been unlawfully prorogued, so it’s not that. More manana!


A. B. Young’s Vain Beasts in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019

Tue 20 Aug 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Pen American Best Debut Short Stories 2019Today Catapult publishes PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019, edited by three superstars writers, Carmen Maria Machado, Danielle Evans, & Alice Sola Kim.

The dozen debut authors are all winners of the $2,000 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. The stories collected here were originally published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Auburn Avenue, Black Warrior Review, Conjunctions, Epiphany, The Iowa Review, Kweli, Nimrod Journal, The Rumpus, The Sun, and I am delighted to say, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. That story is A. B. Young’s “Vain Beasts” from LCRW 38.

With editors like these, I am very much looking forward to reading this book. Here’s a little more about it:

“Prominent issues of social justice and cultural strife are woven thematically throughout 12 stories. Stories of prison reform, the immigrant experience, and the aftermath of sexual assault make the book a vivid time capsule that will guide readers back into the ethos of 2019 for generations to come . . . Each story displays a mastery of the form, sure to inspire readers to seek out further writing from these adept authors and publications.”—Booklist

Who are the most promising short story writers working today? Where do we look to discover the future stars of literary fiction? This book offers a dozen compelling answers to these questions.

The stories collected here represent the most recent winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, which recognizes twelve writers who have made outstanding debuts in literary magazines in the previous year. Chosen by a panel of distinguished judges, themselves innovators of the short story form, they take us from the hutongs of Beijing to the highways of Saskatchewan, from the letters of a poet devoted to God in seventeenth-century France to a chorus of poets devoted to revolution in the “last days of empire.” They describe consuming, joyful, tragic, complex, ever-changing relationships between four friends who meet at a survivors group for female college students; between an English teacher and his student-turned-lover in Japan; between a mother and her young son.

In these pages, a woodcutter who loses his way home meets a man wearing a taxidermied wolf mask, and an Ivy League–educated “good black girl” climbs the flagpole in front of the capitol building in South Carolina. Each piece comes with an introduction by its original editors, whose commentaries provide valuable insight into what magazines are looking for in their submissions, and showcase the vital work they do to nurture literature’s newest voices.

Stories by Tamiko Beyer, Sarah Curry, Laura Freudig, Doug Henderson, Enyeribe Ibegwam, Jade Jones, Pingmei Lan, Marilyn Manolakas, Jon Paul Infante, Kelsey Peterson, Erin Singer, and A.B. Young

ABOUT THIS YEAR’S JUDGES

Danielle Evans is the author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, which was a co-winner of the 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, the winner of the 2011 Paterson Fiction Prize and the 2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and an honorable mention for the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Alice Sola Kim is a winner of the 2016 Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, McSweeney’s, BuzzFeed, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has received grants and scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Elizabeth George Foundation.

Carmen Maria Machado‘s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the World Fantasy Award, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She is the writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.


2018 SBP x Locus

Mon 25 Feb 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Locus February 2019 (#697) cover - click to view full sizeFollowing up on my earlier 2018 wrap-up, I’d meant to post something near the start of February about the 2018 Locus Recommended Reading List but so it goes. The whole issue is worth digging into if you like weird or sff&h or genre fiction at all as between these reviewers they’ve tried to see everything that came out last year. Not everything is included in their write up but many are and I’m proud to say that 4 of our books and 3 stories we published in collections and one in LCRW were included.

I’m going to start with a lovely quote from Gary K. Wolfe and then put some reviews for each title:

It’s worth noting that three of these collections (Singh, Otis, and Duncan) came from Small Beer Press, which has become a reliable source for innovative short fiction collections.
— Gary K. Wolfe

2018 Locus Recommended Reading List

Andy Duncan · An Agent of Utopia
“An Agent of Utopia”, Andy Duncan (An Agent of Utopia)
“Joe Diabo’s Farewell”, Andy Duncan (An Agent of Utopia)

“Dying Light”, Maria Romasco Moore (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #37, 7/18)

Abbey Mei Otis · Alien Virus Love Disaster

John Schoffstall · Half-Witch

Vandana Singh · Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories
“Requiem”, Vandana Singh (Ambiguity Machines)

Readers can go and vote for their own favorites in the Locus Poll and Survey (deadline 4/15).

Reviews

Vandana Singh · Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories

“A major short story collection.” — Jonathan Strahan

“An essential short fiction collection in a year that saw many good ones. Singh’s superb work has appeared in a wide range of venues, and it is good to have a representative selection in one place.” — Graham Sleight (Ten books of the year)

John Schoffstall · Half-Witch

“Other highly recommended titles are Half-Witch from John Schoffstall, a traditional fantasy except that the sun orbits the world and God takes part as a not-very-helpful character . . .” – Laurel Amberdine

“Though billed as YA, had plenty for all to chew on in its vision of a magic-inflected Europe and a protagonist with a direct (if interference-riddled) line to God.” — Graham Sleight (Ten books of the year)

P.S. We just sold audio rights to Tantor on this title so listen out for that later this year.

Claire G. Coleman · Terra Nullius

“Searing.” — Gary K. Wolfe

Abbey Mei Otis · Alien Virus Love Disaster

“Abbey Mei Otis publishes in literary journals as well as SF magazines, so many of the weird SF and fantasy-infused stories in Alien Virus Love Disaster will be new and delightful for our readers.” — Tim Pratt

Andy Duncan · An Agent of Utopia

“Andy Duncan – in what might well be the collection of the year – invoked everyone from Sir Thomas More to Zora Neal Hurston in An Agent of Utopia, which also brought together some of his most evocative tales about the hidden corners of Americana, from an afterlife for Delta blues singers to the travails of an aging UFO abductee.” — Gary K. Wolfe

“. . . a book that showcased why he is a treasure.” — Jonathan Strahan

“An essential introduction to one of the great tellers of fantastic tall tales.” — Graham Sleight (Ten books of the year)

“Andy Duncan’s charming and affable stories abound with hidden depths, and An Agent of Utopia is no different, with a dozen stories, including a pair of originals that are generating a lot of buzz.” — Tim Pratt

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

“My very favorite story this year may have been another story from a veteran of both SF and Mystery: ‘Dayenu’, by James Sallis, from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. It’s an exceedingly odd and unsettling story, beautifully written, about a veteran of a war and his rehab – from injuries? Or something else done to him? And then about a journey, and his former partners. . . . The story itself a journey somewhere never unexpected.” — Rich Horton


Not Like Anything I’ve Recently Read

Tue 28 Aug 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Locus science fiction magazine July 2018Rich Horton included a couple of stories from this spring’s LCRW 37 in a recent short fiction roundup in Locus and since the reviews are now online I’ve reprinted them here because the stories are excellent and should be widely read. As I went to find Maria Romasco Moore’s twitter ID to tag her in the review I saw on her website that besides her fantastically titled forthcoming chapbook from Rose Metal Press, Ghostographs, this summer she sold her debut novel, congratulations, Maria!

Someone on twitter recently asked if we publish novellas and I answered that we sometimes do in LCRW — although if asked in person I usually add something to indicate that  a novella has to be as good as as 2-3 short stories. James Sallis’s “Dayenu” is. Last night I was looking at one of Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Bests Science Fiction and I very selfishly missed him again thinking that this was a story he would have enjoyed. It’s funny how much one person’s reading can influence so many others. Ach. Anyway, here are the reviews:

“Dying Light” by Maria Romasco Moore (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, March) is a strong story set on a starship carrying passengers in suspended animation, heading to a newly colonized world. The passengers live in “the light”, a virtual environment, to keep them mentally sharp. The narrator, Ruth, is worried about her wife, Mag, who has become self-destructive – an odd thing in the “light”, where one can do what they want to their virtual bodies without necessarily affecting their “real” body. The real problem is Ruth and Mag’s relationship, which the story foregrounds. It’s well enough executed, but what intrigued me was the backgrounded SFnal aspects – the “light” and how it works, the hints about the state of Earth society and how that affects the colony’s prospects. Neat stuff, even if I’m not quite sure I read it the way the writer intended.

Even better is a remarkable long story by James Sallis, “Dayenu“. It opens with the narrator doing an unspecified but apparently criminal job, and then fleeing the house he was squatting in, and meeting an old contact for a new identity. Seems like a crime story – and Sallis is primarily a crime novelist – but details of unfamiliarity mount, from the pervasive surveillance, to a changed geography, to the realiza­tion that the rehab stint the narrator mentioned right at the start was a rather more extensive rehab than we might have thought. Memories of wartime service are detailed, and two partners in particular – a woman named Fran or Molly, a man named Merrit Li. Page by page the story seems odder, and the destination less expected. The prose is a pleasure, too – with desolate rhythms and striking images. Quite a work, and not like anything I’ve recently read.


LCRW: Always Seeking Work by Women of Color

Wed 4 Apr 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Since we’re about to put out the prime and fantastic 37th issue of LCRW (the one with the dragon on the cover), it’s a good time to call for more submissions.

Last year we raised the LCRW pay rates to US$0.03/word ($25 minimum) for fiction and $10/poem. As stated in our guidelines, we are always especially seeking work by women and women of color and other historically underrepresented groups.

We only read submissions on paper so that Kelly and I can read everything. Writers who live outwith the USA can email submissions but please be forewarned: we are even slower to read email submissions than we are paper submissions. But we do read them all.

We would very much appreciate it if you could pass this call for submissions on to women writers, especially women of color.


Howard Waldrop, Upright & Writing

Fri 6 Oct 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Today in a nice surprise the Austin Chronicle features one of Austin’s own great writers, Howard Waldrop. It made me laugh from the quote that goes with the photo onwards: “Just sit down in the chair and start writing and then after 10 or 12 years you’ll figure this stuff out.”

Howard is one of 20+ authors (including Christopher Rowe) who will be in Santa Fe at the Jean Cocteau Cinema this weekend for the huge George R. R. Martin Wild Cards celebration. It sounds like so much fun! One day I will get back to Santa Fe and visit the cinema and see all the groovy stuff they have there.

There are more than a couple of great lines in Elizabeth Banicki‘s Austin Chronicle Waldrop profile including this paragraph:

I’d been scouring libraries across town for collections of his writings. His brilliant short stories “Mary Margaret Road-Grader” and “The Ugly Chickens” had me high on how he bends reality while staying completely grounded in human nature. In those stories, unremarkable people adventure through fantastical scenarios where their physical and psychological worlds are woven together, often indistinguishable. The residual effects stayed with me for days. Great writing does that thing where you’re reading along and then – POP! – you get socked with a sentence or paragraph so clean, words so perfectly chosen to relate to human experience, that you can only drop the book into your lap and recover. Waldrop’s writing does that.

But I am slightly worried about a couple of later parts:

Waldrop doesn’t believe he’s a mystic, but he does believe he can kill any publication just by letting them publish his work.

and then at the end:

Waldrop has various works in progress, one of which will be published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Eek!

I think LCRW will be ok. In the meantime, Howard’s most recent collection Horse of a Different Color is 50% off this week to celebrate!


Made a thing and it is a zine

Fri 22 Sep 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Picture by Marija Smits

Picture by Marija Smits

Since people are posting about getting LCRW on twitter* — wait, what if they’re posting about it on other platforms (in other silos) and I can’t see, wah, so sad to be a human not an AI scanning all social media in these times — then it must be real and not just a dream that it was printed recently at Paradise Copies and sent out to those lovely readers.

Some people get the chocolate, some people get the epub (where chocolate must be self-supplied). Some people are probably not getting it on the Am*zone, etc., as the epub failed some kind of test there. Feh. Anyone who think ebooks should be free should try producing an epub file that passes all the different epub validator tests — and then come back in 2-3 years when it has to be remade to pass the newer tests.

Anyway: LCRW. It is the 36th iteration, the first of the year. Maybe 2017 will not completely suck? No, it will. The title is in pink, can you tell? The cover of the print copy does not look like the ebook version for fun. I haven’t used a color cover for too long and this one makes my eyes hurt so well. It is good to make things and send them out in the supposedly analog world — hat tip to the world-as-simulation or Berenst*in Bears theorists.

Also: it’s gone out to some lovely bookstores: Borderlands, DreamHaven, Magers & Quinn, & more. How do I love thee, independent bookshops and booksellers? A lot. A whole lot. Even the ones that don’t want to carry a supposedly twice-yearly occasional outburst. Yesterday I went into Broadside Books here in Northampton and instead of dropping off the zine I picked up a bunch of books for kid presents. But they had such nice books!

Oh well, next time. In the meantime, if you too have already read M. T. Anderson’s Landscape with Invisible Hand and aren’t ready for the heartbreak of The Penderwicks in Spring, then sure, pick up LCRW. Will it hold back the unending crush of news of immensely stupid people doing immensely stupid things? For a little while, just a little while.

* Not all lcrw tweets will be LCRW tweets.


LCRW 36 cover illustration

Mon 5 Jun 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We’re working on LCRW 36 and I just love this cover, “I Was Raised By The Forest” by kAt Philbin, so much I had to post it.

(Get LCRW delivered just for you.)

I Was Raised by the Forest


LCRW: Pay Rate Rise

Mon 13 Mar 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

A few weeks ago I posted this on Twitter:

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 35 coverAnd I wanted to bump it here, especially the part about “Always seeking work by women & writers of color” — which I have said in interviews (Reckoning | Tor) and added to our Guidelines.

Our previous rates were: $25/story, $5/poem. Our new rates are: fiction & nonfiction, US$0.03/word ($25 min); $10/poem. We still only take paper submissions and aren’t the fastest responders but that’s something we will work on for 2017. In the meantime, anything you can do to help spread the word is much appreciated, thank you.


Earlier Entries in LCRW »