North American Lake Monsters hc sale

Mon 9 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

This month we’re celebrating the news of Nathan’s novel The Strange being picked up for film adaptation by taking 25% off the first hardcover edition of North American Lake Monsters — was $100, now $75.


LibroFM Bundles

Wed 6 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Get 10% off audiobook credit bundles at LibroFM for the next couple of days — they only run this sale once a year. I use Libro and like it, easy to use, huge library, etc., etc.

 


Indiepubs sale

Tue 5 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Our distro’s nice, fast Indiepubs site — where you can get books from 100+ indie publishers — has a ton of our books at 50% off for one week. The discount is automagically added in cart as per the screenshots below and shipping is free for orders over $40.

More sale books! Go to the underworld in Archivist Wasp; drift away in Sofia Samatar novel;, afrofuturamazingism: The Liminal War, Down Under with a twist in Terra Nullius; a Chinese autofiction with ghosts; Appalachianesque short stories; a Wind in the Willows sequel — add books to cart for discount Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social 675 followers 635 following 437 posts Gavin J. Grant. He/him. Peely-wally Scottish immigrant. Equality, health care 4 all. BLM. Long covid 12/21, meh. smallbeerpress.com (closed to subs): Anya DeNiro, Kij Johnson, Kathleen Jennings, Zen Cho, & LCRW, a zine. bookmoonbooks.com Suggested for you Posts Posts & replies Media Likes Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 18m Who here could have expected etc etc etc Liz Bourke @hawkwinglb.bsky.social · 34m Well this is great news. www.theguardian.com/business/202... Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 33m Ha, wrong again. Free shipping at $40: indiepubs.com/search/?spag... Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 34m About half our slightly weird books are 50% off for a week on our distro's Indiepubs site. Discount automagically added in cart. Free shipping @ $50 indiepubs.com/search/?spag... ALT ALT Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 34m About half our slightly weird books are 50% off for a week on our distro's Indiepubs site. Discount automagically added in cart. Free shipping @ $50 indiepubs.com/search/?spag... ALT ALT Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Jesse D. Jenkins @jessejenkins.bsky.social · 2h Really important analysis from US Treasury Dept. finds the overwhelming share of clean energy investment driven by the Inflation Reduction Act is occurring in lower income communities, offering real economic opportunity across America: home.treasury.gov/news/press-r... This is as intended. 🔌💡 Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.bsky.social · 9h This is bad. Atlanta is proposing a blanket ban on masks. (Sounds like healthcare workers & religious face coverings might be exempt) There is no evidence mask bans reduce crime. But mask bans do increase disease spread, violate free expression rights, & are misused to stop & frisk people of color. ALT ALT Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.bsky.social · 19h At last, my favorite crime novels of 2023, all at this gift link: www.nytimes.com The Year’s Best Crime Novels Our columnist picks the year’s best. Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com · 1d Good morning, here are the ten books I was most struck & moved by this year. www.nytimes.com The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2023 From witch stories to near-future noir, here are the year’s 10 best speculative books. Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 23h See if we can stop the rot — sign here: Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 1d Aberdeen plans to remove all degrees and research in modern languages. Utterly disgraceful. Please consider signing this petition www.change.org/p/save-langu... Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 1d Thanks everyone who supported me not doing the Hot Chocolate Walk for Safe Passage: I raised $200, our kid raised $310(!), and Safe Passage raised 25% of the annual budget: $781,930!!! Donate here if you like. THANKS friends and strangers, very much appreciated! p2p.onecause.com/hcr2023/ursu... Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 1d If Joan of Arc had a heart Would she give it as a gift? To such as me who longs to see How an angel ought to be? Lorena Hobbitt @kellylink.bsky.social · 1d Joan of Bark Closeup of saintly looking labradoodle, eyes raised toward heaven (the lunch table). ALT Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 1d "The universe owes us nothing; we, the living, must safeguard one another." Gift link from author, great stuff: Rachel Vorona Cote @rvoronacote.bsky.social · 6d I've been obsessing over Jon Klassen's delightfully dark children's books since I first started reading them to my toddler. This summer, I finally decided to write about them. Here's my Letter of Recommendation essay for the New York Times Magazine (gift link): www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/m... Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 1d Give them hell, Mary: "Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson" www.theguardian.com/environment/... Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Tiffany @webinista.bsky.social · 1d Petting dogs and waving at babies are the key to happiness. (This is why I tend to walk to get groceries.) Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 1d Vonnegut knew Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope: "Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is - we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore." Let's all get up and move around a bit right now... or at least dance. ALT Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Ryan North @ryannorth.ca · 1d Decades ago my wife got this bear at Starbucks whose SKIN SLIDES OFF, revealing that he's not a festive holiday bear but instead showing his true form (murder bear happily wearing the skin of his slain enemies.) A holiday tradition ALT ALT ALT Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Lorena Hobbitt @kellylink.bsky.social · 1d Would love to know why Siri’s voice recognition has absolutely gone to shit over the last few months. It’s made asking for music impossible when at one point it was quite impressive. Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 3d Applications are open for this years Clarion Writers Workshop at UC San Diego. It's a great line-up of instructors -- Sam J. Miller, Jeffrey Ford, Matt Bell, Nalo Hopkinson, and the anchor team of Alyssa Wong and Isabel Yap. clarion.ucsd.edu#apply clarion.ucsd.edu Clarion Workshop Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 2d Never saw this show growing up in Scotland but fascinated to read this: c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 2d Let's talk about 'Hogan's Heroes'. It ran 1965-1971: A campy spy comedy set in a POW camp in Nazi Germany, which feels like a very weird choice. Maybe even in bad taste? But here's what changed my mind about it: First, every major German character was played by a Jewish actor. Hogan's Heroes cast on the set of POW barracks. ALT Reposted by Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. Molly Shah @mommunism.bsky.social · 2d The words of one of the Palestinians who were shot in Vermont Alt text bot ALT Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 2d 2023 Massachusetts minimum wage is $15/hour & should be going up from there: www.mass.gov/info-details... Lachelle 🍉 @praxiteles.bsky.social · 2d Gretchen and Michigan dems have done so many solid things here but constantly underestimate the impact it would have to simply raise the minimum wage Gavin, Small Beer Press, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 2d I'm going to Book Moon today to help ship zome sines (hmm), zome with chocolate, some with books, some sekrit bundles. 2 more weeks of holiday shipping! smallbeerpress.com/shopping/ 2023 books! Short story collections by Sarah Pinsker & Kij Johnson, short novel (OKPsyche) by Anya Johanna DeNiro, series capper from Ayize Jama-Everett. And a zine (purposefully mis)named after a NY heiress's wrist tattoo. ALT Home Search Feeds 2 Notifications Lists Moderation Profile Settings Following Popular With Friends Blacksky LongCovid What's Hot Classic Indie bookstores & booksellers More feeds Send feedback · Privacy · Terms · Help Screenshot of some of the titles at 50% discount for 1 week on our distro’s Indiepubs site. Free shipping on orders over $50. Many many indie publisher books on this site! Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 Tender SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 Air Logic SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 Taboo SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 Half-Witch SMALL BEER PRESS (-$7.48) $7.47 Dance on Saturday SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 Available Dark SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 The Adventurists SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.50) $8.50 The Silverberg Business SMALL BEER PRESS (-$8.49)

 

All books on sale


Brindles?

Fri 24 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Discounted Bundled Books for You & Your Reader Friends:

2023: Hard year. Good weird books. ayize jama-everett, heroes of an unknown world “dive in, you will love what you discover.” —victor lavalle, author of the changeling sarah pinsker, lost places ★ “queer, hopeful, and eerie, celebrating the rebellious spirits of both immortal-feeling youth and resilient elder protagonists.” — booklist (starred review) anya johanna deniro, okpsyche “an exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose.” — nina maclaughlin, boston globe kij johnson, the privilege of the happy ending ★ “hugo and nebula award winner johnson (the river bank) returns with 14 dazzling speculative shorts. . . . these boundary- pushing, magic-infused tales are sure to wow.” — publishers weekly (starred review)


HOLIDAY30

Fri 25 Nov 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

This is an automated post I wrote last Friday about a 30% off sale on all our available titles on Indiepubs, an ebookstore run by our distributor — so you can also add books from Secret Acres, PM Press, Haymarket, Spiegel and Grau, World Editions, and more.

Add as many books as you can want to the cart and then put the discount code (HOLIDAY30) in. The code applies to all our available books. Some publishers may not participate, so be careful of that, but if you’ve been thinking about stocking up or doing the most excellent thing of gifting SBP titles, now’s your chance to save some $$$!

HOLIDAY30


Warehouse Clearance Sale — last day

Mon 12 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It has been — it is — nuts, so: thank you! Today, July 12th, is the last day of our Warehouse Clearance Sale — maybe we’ll do another next year and I’ll be better prepared for the madnesses. We’ve processed on third or so of the orders and some are shipping out. Many are being assembled. Books are moving from one warehouse to the other, being shipped from our office to the warehouse, adding a T-shirt, or another Angélica Gorodischer title.

Anyway, last day of the sale is here.


Celebrating Jeffrey Ford’s new book Big Dark Hole with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

Tue 6 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

July 6th, 2021: We are celebrating a new book, Jeffrey Ford’s Big Dark Hole, and 20 years (. . .) of Small Beer Press books with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

It’s been 20 years since we started publishing books as Small Beer Press and we are going to celebrate in a couple of different ways beginning now and continuing later this summer — mostly by making books or sending even more books out into the world, ha!

First Thing

We are delighted to celebrate 20 years of really rather good books by publishing Jeffrey Ford’s new collection Big Dark Hole. It’s a stoater!

This is Jeff’s sixth collection — seventh, really, as there was a Best of from PS last year — and every one of them is a cracker. We’re already planning our next collection with him — who wouldn’t when you look at this list I grabbed from his site:

The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, 2002, Golden Gryphon Press

The Empire of Ice Cream, 2005, Golden Gryphon Press

The Drowned Life, 2008, Harper Collins

Crackpot Palace, 2012, Harper Collins

A Natural History of Hell, 2016, Small Beer Press

Big Dark Hole, 2021, Small Beer Press, natch, comes out today, July the 6th, 2021, and it is a short, sharp shock of fantastic fiction.

There are a three new stories first published here in this book, “Monkey In the Woods,” “Inn of the Dreaming Dog,” and “The Match.” That third one there will have you stopping what you’re doing and making sure you read the rest of the story before someone interrupts.

You can read one of the stories, “Not Without Mercy,” online, but, really the book is shiny in surprising places and feels good in the hand. Sign up now for Readercon — online in August — where Jeffrey Ford and Ursula Vernon will be the guests of honor.

Second Thing

We’re putting on our first warehouse sale in many years. Long time readers will recognize the screenshot below from our pre-WordPress website — and now 10+ years later we’re basically doing the same thing.

The sale is going to run on the Book Moon website and will have a few rules and limitations:

  • alphabetical buying encouraged but quite difficult given the price-ordered list, but it’ll be fun, honest.
  • no buying over 5,000 books unless you really want to build something interesting out of them.
  • On second thoughts if you want to buy over 5,000 copies, you do you.
  • Discounts range from 0-94% off retail prices.
  • Order some full-price titles (such as the first one on this page,Travel Light, or Big Dark Hole) and we’ll throw free titles from the sale list.
  • Orders on this Easthampton, Massachusetts-based bookshop website will be shipped as fast as we can put them through from the Tennessee warehouse of our fabulous Minneapolis-based distributor, Consortium.
  • Gosh we love these books. We loved publishing every single one of them and right now we’re lining up some surprises and new books for the couple of years. It is true that I am an enthusiast, still, about all this and our warehouse people will tell you that, yes, I am very enthusiastic when I put the print orders in. More joy all round, says I.
  • There are a few books in the sale that are rarer and we will ship them from Book Moon.
  • This Decennial Warehouse Clearance Sale will run for one (1) week, July 6th-12th with the possibility of being extended for one (1) more week.
  • We only ship within the US & Canada.

I imagine if we keep publishing for another 10 or 20 years, we’ll have more clearance sales. Imagine that: 2030. 2040. What funny looking numbers. 2030 looks more like a time than a year. 8:30 already?

Who knows. Maybe by 2040 we’ll all be ordering small pills from Bookland that download the latest story virus into our chips. If you trust Bookland and your shipper, of course.

Anyway, please pass the word around and stock up: it’ll be Jolabokaflod before you know it.

Right, here’s that all important Warehouse Clearance Event link.

Thanks for reading, spreading the word, buying books, and keeping this Small Beer contraption on the road!


4-Day Sale

Fri 23 Nov 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

What it says on the tin: 4-Day Sale: 25-80% off regular prices. Prices include shipping — so please order 2-100 titles!


Buy Any 2 New Books, Pick a Freebie!

Wed 13 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

ETA: Thanks to all who took advantage of this. Must try a sale some time in 2018. But not anytime soon, too busy!

I put this in the newsletter yesterday and now we’re caught up with shipping from that, I’m posting it here.

Buy any 2 of our books and pick one of the books below FREE!
Include the title as a note or email us, we can deal with it! (Buy 4, pick 2 freebies, buy 12, pick, I don’t know, 7,8?)

Fine print:
Print titles only.
North America only: sorry. International mailing is abominable. (But: DRM-free ebooks are here.)
All US orders taking advantage of this will be upgraded to Priority Mail.
(Sorry: remainders not included.)
Offer ended 5 pm EST December 20, 2017.

Order Here!

  1. Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, A Life on Paper
  2. Alan DeNiro, Tyrannia
  3. Peter Dickinson, Emma Tupper’s Diary
  4. Peter Dickinson, The Poison Oracle
  5. Angélica Gorodischer, Prodigies
  6. Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love (hc)
  7. Eileen Gunn, Questionable Practices
  8. Vincent McCaffrey, Hound (pb)
  9. Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse
  10. Lydia Millet, The Fires Beneath the Sea (pb)
  11. Lydia Millet, The Shimmers in the Night (hc)
  12. Benjamin Parzybok, Sherwood Nation
  13. Susan Stinson, Spider in a Tree
  14. Howard Waldrop, Horse of a Different Color
  15. Ysabeau S. Wilce, Prophecies Libels & Dreams

Holiday Shipping Deadlines.


Get a couch for two bucks

Thu 4 Sep 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

No offers of deer, dear, please. No kids on bikes riding threateningly around our town. Just Benjamin Parzybok’s debut novel Couch $1.99 on both bn.com and Weightless today — and, Couch now has a sneak peek of Ben’s forthcoming droughty Portland novel Sherwood Nation.

BTW, if you’re on the west coast you can go see Ben at one of these readings:

Sept. 16, 7:30 PM Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland, OR
Oct. 15, 7 PM Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 Tenth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122

I think both bookstores have pretty comfy chairs. You probably don’t need to bring your own couch . . .


Nook Daily Find

Mon 7 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Peter Dickinson’s Death of a Unicorn is the Nook Daily Find and is $2.99 today only at bn.com.

It has jumped up the charts throughout the day and now it is sitting pretty at #30 besides two of Nora Roberts’s books. Long may Lady MM rise!

ETA: #7!

It’s a Top Ten bestseller!

Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 10.09.17 PM

 

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 2.24.29 PM

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Death of a Unicorn ebook sale

Mon 23 Sep 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Death of a Unicorn cover - click to view full sizeTo celebrate the publication of our latest Peter Dickinson title (The Poison Oracle), we are putting the ebook of Death of a Unicorn on super sale this week: it’s 70% off, was $9.95, now only $2.99!

Get it here:

— Weightless
— Kobo
— iBooks
— Barnes & Noble

You can get it at all the usual places (we have sent the new price out to all the sites we can, some of them are slower to process the price change than others) and as always we recommend Weightless and your local bookshop (through Kobo) first.

 


33% off everything on Weightless

Sat 31 Dec 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

It is the end of 2011 and I am very happy about it. Good-bye, old year, good-bye. Do not be coming back, thank you. Although there were lovely parts, it will not be missed. 2012 looks much brighter.

Anyway: we are celebrating with a one-day sale: 33% off all ebooks on weightlessbooks.com.

Get your LCRW sub here and Small Beer books here and tons of others here.

And, in case I don’t get to it tomorrow, Happy New Year!

After the Apocalypse Fairy Tale Review Special Apex Magazine Issue 31

Rifter 10: His Holy Bones Wicked Gentlemen Lightspeed Magazine Issue 19

The White City Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #85 Secret Lives


Ebook sale: 50% off!

Fri 25 Nov 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We’re having an ebook sale! Here’s the why of it and here’s the what:

Small = 50% off all Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House titles!

WELCOME = 25% off ANYTHING!

Engines = 50% off Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors

Enter the coupon exactly as above once you’ve filled your cart and you will receive your lovely discount!

The Freedom Maze After the Apocalypse A Slepyng Hound to Wake Paradise Tales

The Monkey’s Wedding and Other StoriesRedemption in IndigoMeeksWhat I Didn’t See and Other StoriesStories of Your Life and OthersThe Fires Beneath the SeaUnder the Poppy


Surprise! We have books on sale!

Sat 4 Dec 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Here!

New hardcovers 40% off!
New paperbacks 30%+ off!
Daily Planner: $9.95
Preorders: 25% off!
Backlist: heavily discounted!

And, there are extra extra multiple purchase opportunities!

—Buy 5 books (can be 5 of the same title of if you are so inclined) and get 1 of these books free (please include it in the “comments” field or email your choice to us): Hound, The Poison Eaters, The King’s Last Song, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, Endless Things, Kalpa Imperial, The Mount
—Buy 10 books and get 2 of these books free!
—Buy 15 books and get 4 of these books free!
—Buy 20 books and we will be seriously impressed and you can choose 6 of these books free!

Media Mail shipping is free in the USA as usual!

The sale is here here here

Don’t want all that paper? Go Weightless. Read more


Kelly & Gavin on Mike FM & a sale—all for Franciscan

Mon 7 Dec 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

UrsulaIt’s time for our once-every-ten-years end-of-the-decade sale and this year we’re donating a portion of the proceeds to Franciscan Children’s Hospital where our daughter, Ursula, has lived for the past couple of months.

Ursula, who was due on June 16th, was born on February 23rd, 2009, weighing 1 lb, 9 ounces. She stayed in the neonatal ICU at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in an incubator for the first couple of months while we lived close by at the Ronald McDonald House. In May we expected “to bring Ursula, who [was at that point] currently well over 4 lbs, home in about two weeks.” That didn’t quite work out. After a PDA ligation, laser eye surgery, a g-tube procedure (eating required so much energy she would have had a hard time growing without one), and a tracheostomy to help out her lungs, which have been, and (will continue to be for the next year) the real issue, two months later, on July 21st, we did indeed get her home.

Ursula at homeThat was a great day—but not a great night. So the next morning we called an ambulance and she went back to Baystate Medical Center. There she went back on a ventilator and after a couple of days was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. After two weeks in the pediatric ICU, she was transferred to one of the meccas of modern medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston. After two weeks there—where we were able to sleep in Ursula’s futuristic ICU room (think Grey’s Anatomy—in space!)—Ursula was transferred to Franciscan Children’s Hospital in the Brighton area of Boston, ironically next door to the house we lived in 10 years ago. We found an apartment which is a 5-minute walk away, moved in at the end of August, and we’ve been here ever since. (All things continuing as they are, Ursula will come home in spring.)

Ursula & KellyLife has been hectic, and at times quite difficult, but everyone says being a parent is like that. Ursula is an absolute joy & a delight—and also the reason that we won’t be traveling for a while! Her lung condition, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, means that for the next few years we’ll need to keep her away from people during the flu season. The trach means she can’t speak, but she is fluent in kicking and smiling. She’s nine months old now, but only about five months old “corrected,” referring to her original due date, which is how you are supposed to think of a premature baby, in terms of weight, development, etc. She’s 13 and a half pounds, and by the time she is two or three years old, the damaged areas of her lungs will be small enough in proportion to the areas of healthy lung tissue that she shouldn’t need either supplementary oxygen or her trach. We’re learning a lot about babies, respiratory care, and how awesome nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists are. At every hospital we’ve been to, we meet cool people because of Ursula.

Tiger babyFranciscan gets a lot of support (the Boston Bruins, big supporters of the place, are going holiday shopping for the kids on Tuesday!—and the Red Sox are coming by this week) but, hey, you know how it is in the health care zone: there’s always more needed. Ursula’s care is topnotch (and we strongly recommend and are eternally grateful to Health New England and Mass Health): from the 24-hour doctor, nurse (how do they stay so nice during the 12-hour—sometimes 16!—shifts dealing with all the poor, sick, cranky babies?!), and respiratory therapists to the speech (Ursula’s favorite person!), physical, and occupational therapists, to the cleaners who keep the unit sparkling, to the cheery people at the cafeteria (mmm!) and the front desk where we traipse by 3 or 4 times a day. And this is just one floor, the third, respiratory (with 24 beds), in one building of seven. They do everything for kids here: one of the playgrounds out in the back is set up for wheelchairs, it is awesome. It’s a huge place and every day hundreds of people come here to work and what they do is help kids.

So here are two things where maybe you can help—there’s a third which involves Holly Black, Kelly, and Cassandra Clare in Boston, but more on that at some later point.

First: radio. Second: sale.

Ursula & Gavin1) Radio: This Friday, December 11th, from 7 AM – 7 PM, Boston radio station 93.7 Mike-FM is doing a fundraiser for Franciscan. The idea is fantastic—and totally open to manipulation(!):

Operators will be standing by LIVE at 866-931-MIKE on Friday, December 11th from 7AM to 7PM to take song requests and donations. While any and all donations are warmly welcomed, remember that the bigger the donation the better chance you have of hearing your song exactly when you want!! Donations can also be made here.

About the Benefit:

The Mike-FM Request for Help to benefit the Franciscan Hospital for Children is a day long, celebrity hosted radio-thon pay-for-play which helps to raise money and awareness for the Hospital. Over the course of the 12 hours, Mike-FM will play any song you want to hear… for a price.

Celebrities will be paired with parents and from 9 AM – 10 AM Kelly Tuthill (celebrity news anchor from NewsCenter 5) will be on with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (parents of the delightful Ursula).

Please call 866-931-MIKE and request good songs!

Ursula says hello to Howard2) Sale: we’ve been trying to work out an interesting sale and we think we’ve come up with a nice and easy one:

All our books are on sale—and $1 from every book (or ebook, zine, subscription, etc.) goes to Franciscan.

And, if you order items at full price, we will donate the difference between the full price and the sale price to Franciscan!

All our preorder titles are on sale, too! (They’re marked “Remainder” until we get it fixed.)

Paperbacks are less than $10—many quite a bit less!—and hardcovers are up to 40% off. Or, of course, more.

Media mail shipping within the US/Canada is included in the price (a note on mailing dates) and can be upgraded to Priority Mail.

Go wild! Feel free to do all your holiday shopping here! And please do spread the word, thank you.