Free calendar
Wed 14 Oct 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Free stuff, Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin
Update: Done!
We just received this promo and we won’t be ordering them (just like last year!) as we have a calendar all of our very own making that at long last is at the printer. It’s a nice enough planner, a month per page, and various handy things.
So, instead of letting it molder until next year, we’ll send it out to the very next reader to order one of our books or zines.
more birthdays?
Tue 7 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin
We are putting the final finishing touches to our daily planner and one of the fun things we’ve been doing is looking up birthdays of writers (and, er, others) who we like and adding them (H. P. Lovecraft, Gary Larson, Edith Nesbit, Molly Gloss, and so on).
Any suggestions?
We need a citation for the date—although we’ll accept Wikipedia (as long as you didn’t just change it!)
A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010: Your Year in Writing
Small Beer Press
August 2009
9781931520584 · Trade paper/spiralbound · 6 x 9 · 160 pp · $13.95
— Mail Order
— Powells
— Our Local Bookstore
— Your Local Bookstore
Some Mass. book affairs
Fri 17 Apr 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Cons, To Read Pile, workshops, Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin
We have a few things coming up in local environs that we wanted to tell yous all about in an endeavor to get you off the internet and back into peopleville. First up, a busy weekend, second a publishing course, and last, the best, a book!
- First one comes in two parts:
a) The 9th ANNUAL JUNIPER LITERARY FESTIVAL Celebrating 50 Years of the Massachusetts Review April 24 & 25, 2009, wherein there is a bookfair where we will be selling books and, if they have it like they did last year, eating candy floss and attending readings by Marilyn Hacker, et al.
b) June 21-27, Juniper Summer Writing Institute (which includes the Juniper Institute for Young Writers). Wherein Holly Black (and maybe Kelly Link) will be teaching. - The same weekend as the Juniper Lit. Festival Gavin will be in Boston for a panel at MIT as part of the MiT6 Conference:
The Future of Publishing
Gavin Grant, Small Beer Press
Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maass Literary Agency
Robert Miller, HarperStudio
Bob Stein, The Institute for the Future of the Book
Moderator: Geoffrey Long, MIT CMS
Saturday, April 25, 6:45-8:15 pm, Wong Aud., E51 - Then in May, Gavin’s on a panel at Emerson as part of their 2-week Certificate in Literary Publishing program:
Keeping Afloat in Literary Publishing
May 22 – 1:00 to 4:00 pm
Panelists: Jan Freeman, Gavin Grant, William Pierce, Thomas Radko & Ladette Randolph – Moderator: Gian Lombardo
A panel of literary periodical and book publishers will present information on their presses and magazines, outline their key concerns, and be available for questions from participants. Jan Freeman is founder and director of Paris Press. Gavin Grant is publisher of Small Beer Press. William Pierce is senior editor of Agni and contributes a series of essays there called “Crucibles.” Ladette Randolph is director/editor-in-chief of Ploughshares. Before that she was an editor at the University of Nebraska Press, and was managing editor of Prairie Schooner. - This last one’s a bit of a stretch, but we’ll be having a closer look at it nearer pub. date and the press is based in this state. Also, after all these conferences and writing workshops, it’s a bit of a relief to talk about an actual book!
Harvard UP is publishing a book by one of our favorite WFMU DJs, David Suisman. (Check out that great cover!) If this rings a tiny (musical) bell, it might be that you read David’s great piece in The Believer a couple of years ago, “Welcome to the Monkey House: Enrico Caruso and the First Celebrity Trial of the 20th Century“—which you can read today through the magic of the internet (and The Believer and whoever taught you to read). Pre-order the book here:
Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music
From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast.
Kristin’s converter tables
Wed 18 Mar 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin
In response to our call for suggestions for A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010: Your Year in Writing Kristin had a fantastic idea:
How about something targeted to the young fantasy/science fiction/mystery writer in all of us?
- How far can a horse travel in a day?
- Carrying two riders when one is an elf and one is human?
- What is the minimum amount of oxygen content/gravity/sunlight able to sustain human life?
- How do you allow for time dilation?
- A ratio for ambient temperature to body temperature for establishing time of death.
Which led us to supply a few more:
- How about how many old ladies visiting your town does it take to produce a murder?
- An adverb removal tool to convert your text into noir?
Which then led to the thought: there’s a curiously large internet’s worth of writers out there. Any conversion tables you’d like to see?
What do you want in a planner?
Mon 9 Mar 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, Writer's Daily Planner| Posted by: Gavin
In August we’re going to publish something different: the first in what we’re hoping will be an annual series of . . . desk calendars(!) with A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010: Your Year in Writing. (You can preorder it using that Paypal link or here.) We figured there was a gap for something like this, so why not go for it.
The calendar will be published in August so we’re almost finished putting it together and we’ve been having great fun adding all the things we would like to be in a calendar.
And then we thought: there’s a whole big internet of people who might, just might, have some opinions on this, too, so here we go: what are you looking for in a planner/calendar/diary? What is the killer app (as it were, this is a book, there may be an online component of it later, we’re not sure) that would make this irresistible to you—or for someone else as a gift? Is it phases of the moon? Birthdays of interesting people? Converter tables between liters and pints, inches and centimeters, parsecs and kilograms?* Market information? Blank space?
Some of these will be in the calendar, some won’t. We’re looking for your help to make this better and we’re looking forward to your suggestions. So, please, send in what you’d like in it and feel free to repost this on anywhere else.
* That’s a tough one. May need a physicist or two to help us there.