~ # a record
of site updates and occasional links # ~
This Here Year
Dec. 28
- New Maureen McHugh interview at the BookStandard.
25 - All we want for Christmas
is world peace, a new president who supports said first thing, and
perhaps Bill Keller (NYTimes editor) to quit, too.
The NYTimes (non-italicized
to show disgust) held onto two stories that could have changed the
results of the last US elections. The Times has forgotten they are
a newspaper and are supposed to report the news. The
current government suspect all and sundry of terrorism. You could
be a terrorist. So they need to spy on you. Sure.
Navel-gazing won't help. Pink
slips for management might.
24 - Dead as a dodo? Perhaps
not.
Cue up "The
Ugly Chickens." (EDSF appreciation.)
23 - Theodora Goss's chapbook,
The Rose in Twelve
Petals, is basically sold out. Powells
has a couple of copies and some of the other bookshops that stock
our stuff (Dreamhaven, Pandemonium, Clarkesworld) may have it but
that's it. Since her collection is coming next year we may not reprint
this. You can always go read one of her storuies in the meantime:
"The
Rapid Advance of Sorrow."
Excellent story
about Sean Stewart and all the hoo-ha over the gaming.
Apologies for not sending you
a card. We're not very good at that. Let's drink to that!
A Year's Best List: This was
the best year known around here as 2005.
21 - Kelly
Link's Magic for Beginners
is on Time Magazine's list of the Best
Books of 2005.
20
- Ok, that news was so exciting that everything else (except keeping
the woodstove fed and watching My Man Godfrey) got put on
hold. But here's a groovy thing: Sean
Stewart and Steve Lieber's comic, Family
Reunion, is in the first Year's
Best Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga. Yay!
7 - Incredibly
exciting news (or, Watch the Jaw Droppeth):
NORTHAMPTON,
MA: This morning Ohio housewife, novelist, and video game author
Maureen F. McHugh woke up to discover her debut short fiction collection,
Mothers & Other Monsters
(Small Beer Press, July 2005, $24, ISBN 1-931520-13-5) is one of
three finalists for the second annual $20,000 Story
Prize. (The runners-up each receive $5,000.)
Interviewed by phone McHugh exclaimed, "This
book has changed my life!" McHugh, an award-winning writer,
is the author of four novels. After undergoing chemotherapy to overcome
a bout of Hodgkin's Lymphoma in the first half of this year McHugh
had most recently been working on a series of stories for lastcallpoker.com,
an online game and marketing campaign. She has also been working
on a second, as yet unannounced, campaign.
"Being
a finalist for this award," McHugh said, has inspired her "to
take up where she left off" in her critically-acclaimed career
as a novelist. She is working on two novels, BabyGoth and
Coming of Age in America. "Of course," she added, she'll
"certainly continue to write short stories!"
The Story Prize will be awarded Wednesday, January
25, 2006 at 7 P.M. at the New School's Tishman Auditorium (66 West
12th Street in New York City). The three Story Prize finalists will
read brief selections from their collections and then discuss their
work with Larry Dark, Director of The Story Prize (on the stage
where Inside The Actors Studio is staged).
The evening will culminate with the announcement
of the winner and presentation of the $20,000 award and the engraved
silver bowl given to each winner of The Story Prize.
The 2005 judges
were novelist and MacArthur Fellow Andrea Barrett (The Voyage
of the Narwhal); the most famous librarian in the USA and author
of Book Lust, Nancy Pearl; and critic and novelist (The
Book Against God) James Wood.
Mothers & Other Monsters was a July Book
Sense Notable Book and Booklist called it "Hauntingly beautiful,
driven by the difficult circumstances of their characters' lives
-- slices of life well worth reading and rereading." It has garnered
praise from bestselling authors Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen
Book Club) who said of it "Each of these stories is a gift"
and Mary Doria Russell (A Thread of Grace) who called Mothers
& Other Monsters "Enchanting, wistful, funny and fierce by turns."
Maureen F. McHugh has spent most of her life in
Ohio, but has lived in New York City and, for a year, in Shijiazhuang,
China. She is the author of four novels. Her first novel, China
Mountain Zhang, won the Tiptree Award. Her latest, Nekropolis,
was a Book Sense 76 pick and a New York Times Editor's Choice.
McHugh teaches writing at the John Carroll University in Cleveland
and at the Imagination and Clarion workshops. She lives with her
husband and two dogs next to a dairy farm in Cleveland Heights,
OH. Sometimes, in the summer, black and white Holsteins look over
the fence at them.
The two other finalists are The Summer He Didn't
Die by Jim Harrison (Atlantic Monthly Press) and The Hill
Road by Patrick O'Keeffe (Viking).
To order tickets ($14 for general admission seating)
to The Story Prize reading and awards ceremony at the New School's
Tishman Auditorium (66 East 12th Street) on Jan. 25, call 212-229-5488
from 1 to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday or e-mail boxoffice@newschool.edu.
The judges also produced a short
list of other highly recommended story collections published
in 2005 -- which included Kelly Link's Magic
for Beginners, as well as books by Robert Coover, Judy Budnitz,
Michael Martone and others.
6 - Great freebie post-rapture
comic
by Jim Munroe and Montreal illustrator Michel Lacombe. Dark and
thoughtful and hopefully the first of many.
5 - January
18 @ KGB Bar: Jeff VanderMeer (Veniss
Underground) and we just added LCRW
17 contributor Marly Youmans (Ingledove).
Strange Horizons Review
of Mothers & Other Monsters: "McHugh is enormously
talented.... [She] has a light touch, a gentle sense of a humor,
and a keen wit."
Need a pressie for a lit'rary friend? Fantastic
review mag Rain Taxi
is having a TENTH ANNIVERSARY AUCTION: From December 5th-11th, Rain
Taxi is holding an eBay
charity auction featuring signed books, rare first editions,
broadsides, chapbooks, and other exciting works by authors beloved
by Rain Taxi and its readers -- over 100 items in all! Proceeds
from the auction will give Rain Taxi a nonprofit organization,
a much-needed push into another decade of service to the literary
community.
3 - Film: The
Lion in Winter -- a strange, strange beast where Eleanor
of Aquitaine is happily imprisoned -- except during the holidays
when Henry II brings her back into the traveling family. Peter O'Toole
(aged 36) and Katherine Hepburn (aged 61) have tons of fun and are
fantastic -- she was given an Oscar and the film received many awards.
The two Welsh boys (Anthony Hopkins plays the eldest son, Richard;
Timothy Dalton the French king, Philip) are great. This was the
first big film part for both of them (where are they now?) and the
tension between them during one scene could be cut by...well, you
may need a sword, not a knife.
Cons: Long; a little too much acting-by-shouting;
suffers from The Ending of Horrifying Guffaws.
Pros: some phenomenally filmed scenes (a short scene where the three
sons walk silently in the cellars particularly stood out); wandering
dogs; authentic historically dirty long before Pride and Prejudice;
ever-twisting intrigues; dialogue and delivery often fantastic.
2 - SF Site reviews Perfect
Circle ("a
hell of a book") and Mr. Boots. ("One
of Carol Emshwiller's most satisfying books.") Of course
they like them. What's not to like? Two great storytellers, two
great books. Quick, book a short plane trip: here's your reading.
(Wow, what an awful line!)
A fun (Tom Disch!) book
we saw in Madison (from Seattle). Now with beautiful T-shirt
("...proud to introduce the first in our new line of apparel.
Named after the Payseur & Schmidt art director Russ Vinelander,
who held the position from 1926 - 1935"...).
Nov. 30 If you're of Scots descent (i.e.
your grandparents once fell off Ben Nevis) then wear a skirt to
work: it's
St. Andrew's Day! Eat!
Drink!
Be Merry!
28 - Email
Newsletter.
While
we wait for the coming of House of Choconita (mmm, lovely chocothings!)
we managed to get LCRW 17 together.
Then we managed to get it to the printer and, much later, pick it
up.
We then attempted to apply some DRM (Dirty Rotten
Management) but couldn't get the zine to load on our iPods.
We left a message for Sony asking if they had any
ideas how we could apply a rootkit to a zine. Our Australian contingent
fell about laughing. Something about the word kit, we believe.
Having failed with the DRM, we will be sending this
zine out into the world where "readers" (wait, this is
the Ownership Society [but we don't own a ship!], so make that "Owners")
can make digital (or analog) copies to their hearts content. If
they make money on it, we will first be impressed, then grateful
when the checks start rolling in. (They will, right?)
This has been a confusion brought to you by the
letters L, C, R, and W.
The pic/new logo above is the Valrhona going out
to those peeps (mostly not vampiric Westerfeldian Peeps)
who popped for the Zine avec chocolat choice.
(Some chocolate was consumed during this post.)
On Storyteller:
"Full of pithy, relevant advice for writers, amusing recollections
of the field's current giants during their early days, and the fullest
published account to date of how a revered program was established."
-- Scifi
Dimensions
27 - Added an ebook version (1MB,
DRM-free) of Carmen
Dog to the shopping mall
. As with M&OM and some
of the other ebooks, it's only a PDF. There are more versions on
Fictionwise
-- also of Trash Sex Magic
-- and of course many many versions of Stranger
Things Happen. Carmen Dog will be added to Fictionwise
sometime soonish.
From Heather Rogers's Gone
Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. More than enough to
provide food for, ah, thought:
In 1863, Dr. Ezra Pulling, a volunteer sanitation
inspector in New York City, described the taxonomy of waste redistribution
as follows:
Thus the textile contents of his [the scavenger's]
bag and basket go to the paper mill and shoddy factories. Bones
find their destiny in saponaeceous and fertilizing compounds;
metallic articles are transferred to the junk shop; and even
bits of coal find their appropriate uses. But there still remains
a residuum which his professional genius has contrived to make
a source of profit. This consists of fragments of bread and
other farinacious [sic] food, decaying potatoes, cabbages, &c.,
interspersed with lifeless cats, rats, and puppies, this introduced
to a post mortem fellowship. I shall not stop to trace
the occasional metamorphosis of the latter into the familiar
sausage, but proceed to state that much of the above miscellaneous
collection is supplied to certain sailors' boarding-houses,
and enters into the composition of bread puddings, and of a
sort of "[s]longshore lobscouse" which Jack loves "not wisely
but too well."
There is, however, a debris of material too thoroughly
saturated with street-mire to be considered savory, even in
the above compound; but this is by no means destined to be wasted.
It is sold to the manufacturers of cheap coffee. It is desiccated,
partially carbonized, mingled with a small proportion of chickory,
&c., ground, and is ready to fulfill its destiny."
LEO
(Louisville Eccentric Observer) review of Mothers
& Other Monsters: "McHugh's prose style is unique."
(Thanks Rob!)
Go see Walk the Line!
Great review
of Travel Light
on Strange Horizons. Yes, it is a fantastic book and yes,
you can read the first couple of chapters here.
16 - KGB reading tonight
at 7 PM: Judith Berman (Bear
Daughter) & Joe Hill (Twentieth Century Ghosts).
Fixed link (thanks Colleen!) to Bone
Wars - the "Game of Ruthless Paleontology."
15 - Go see a play!
"Flying
Lessons"
Adapted and Directed by Ariel Franklin, from the story by Kelly
Link
November 17-19, 8 pm
Rooke Theater, Black Box, Mount Holyoke College
Admission: free
Seating is limited, so call (413) 493-4243 or email mjcole(at)mtholyoke.edu
for reservations.
Some
stuff added to the shopping(e) pages after our trip to Madison including
a couple of books we like, a new ish of Trunk
Stories, and Bone Wars
which was a bestseller at the convention and one we expect will
be flying off your local toy store's shelves this Christmas.
Department of No Comment
A while ago when we were sending out all the review
copies and so on for Kate Wilhelm's memoir of the Clarion
Writer's Workshop and book on writing, Storyteller,
we sent a query to AARP The Magazine to see if they were
interested in a copy of the book, an interview etc. Yesterday we
received this response:
Dear Mr. Grant:
Thank you for contacting AARP. We appreciate
hearing from you.
Due to the very limited space in our bi-monthly
magazine, a decision was made not to accept poetry submissions
at this time. Should we decide to include poetry in the future;
an announcement will be posted in AARP The Magazine.
Hmm.
14 - There were a lot of good times had while traveling.
The standing ovation for Carol
Emshwiller when she was given a Life Achievement World Fantasy
Award was the best.
Bye SciFiction.
Damn.
9 - Small profile
(+ another posting of "The
Faery Handbag") of SBP at Chapter
Log.
5 - Celebrated Guy
Fawkes and so on's attempt.
Oct.
29 - Infinity Plus posted the introduction to Travel
Light.
Maureen F. McHugh & Sarah Willis in conversation
parts 2
& 3.
Kelly Link mini-tour. Come by and say hello:
Nov. 1, 7 PM -- Prairie
Lights, Iowa City, Iowa
3-6 -- World
Fantasy Convention, Madison, WI
8 -- 12:10-12:25
PM interview at WCPN
-- 7 PM -- Mac's
Backs, Cleveland Heights, OH
With Maureen F. McHugh and Dan
Chaon (You
Remind Me of Me)
10, 9.30 PM -- Dirty Laundry:
Loads of Prose Reading Series, Avenue C Laundromat, 69 Avenue
C at 5th Street, New York City
-- with Rob Brezsny (Free Will Astrology)
13 -- KGB
Bar, New York City. With Eric Bogosian.
28 - Maureen McHugh & Sarah Willis in conversation
(thanks Gwenda).
27 - It is ridiculous that Bloodshot Records should
have so many good records. The height, the top of the bar, the spilling
pint, the tipped-over bourbon, the monkeys are flying out of the
president's butt, the top hat-wearing cane toad of ridiculosity
is their new compilation, FOR
A DECADE OF SIN: 11 Years of Bloodshot Records. It
is 2 Discs, 42 new songs and a 24 page booklet.
Maureen
McHugh is in Texas at a Game
Writers conference. Say hi! More here.
The new ish of
the zine (that'd be LCRW) is
going out soonish. It's full of great fiction -- so full
there's hardly room for anything else. If you're in Madison at this
con you can get
it there. We're hosting a "Got Zine" party with Trunk
Stories, Electric Velocipede,
and the Ratbastards.
Otherwise, order here,
go to these shops, or send us checks/
well-concealed cash.
Seventeen
issues: seventeen events:
-
LCRW hits
seventeen and no one gives it a car. It has a permit to drive
right through the woods, over the hills, down the freeway (EZPassing
everything in its way) and off the pier. But that's ok: it's
printed on waterproof paper. (For a certain value of water.)
-
LCRW hits
seventeen but still loses the Ashes. (Cricket joke.)
-
LCRW hits
seventeen. There are witnesses who swear it was the other way
around.
-
LCRW hit
seventeen a long time ago but dresses young.
-
LCRW hits
seventeen but needed a triple-twenty to win. (Darts joke.)
-
LCRW hits
seventeen bars and is then led away for a "rest."
-
LCRW hits
seventeen but the eighteenth is standing behind it with a big
stick and knocks it over.
-
LCRW hits
seventeen on the first hole. Retires gracefully to the nineteenth.
(Golf story.)
-
LCRW hits
seventeen and runs away. Is found living in squalor in the basement
of the Bertelsman building. Wrangles a distribution deal out
of it. Still doesn't get to meet Jenny
Agutter.
-
LCRW hits
seventeen and still has eight years of 25-Life to serve.
-
LCRW hits
seventeen aces in a row. (Tennis dream.)
-
LCRW hits
seventeen but the elevator never gets there.
-
LCRW hits
seventeen
- LCRW hits seventeen and only
then discovers the internet. Then sues.
- LCRW hits seventeen and goes
to college. The next four years are a blur of fiction, poetry,
and other.
- LCRW hits seventeenth century
music festivals like a tornado.
- LCRW hits seventeen new indie
bookshops distributing it and falls over in a dead faint.
26 - The world sometimes moves toward what we would
like: possible indictments of professional politicians (who will
all be pardoned in January 2009, but until then may they rot, rot,
rot); fall produces a smattering of pretty colored leaves (although
the snow is a little early); and comics appear in book form
instead of by the annoying monthly.
Two
new books have us sitting on the couch, wine glasses filled (2003
Calatayud Old Vines Garnacha, mmm!), and blankets out. (Yep, too
cold for even warm beer.)
The
Forty-Niners is Alan Moore, Gene Ha, Todd Klein, and Art
Lyon's new Top 10 tale. It's a prequel set in 1949 when all
the comic characters and superfolk are being moved to Neopolis (like
New York City, like Metropolis) so they'll stop freaking out the
neighbors. 16-year-old Jetlad, who fought in WWII, and Leni Muller,
Sky Witch, are the latest arrivals.
The city is, politically and socially, a mess. There are rumors
of impending martial law. The Hungarian-Americans with inherited
medical conditions (they don't like daylight, they get Thirsty)
are out of control. The mayor, while honest, is not quite steady
on his feet.
What the city needs is a police force.
So it's a little Terry Pratchett. A little easy on the Evil Villains.
And a little easy on the wrapping-it-all-up. But for all of that
(and one out of three of those things isn't a bad thing), The
Forty-Niners is a satisfying read. Satisfying also to be
able to get it and read it as a book. Long may the format last.
The second book is Tricked
by Alex Robinson
(read an interview).
Robinson's Box
Office Poison was a read-in-one-sitting book. It collected
ten years of Robinson's comic into one huge book that went in unexpected
directions, won lots of awards sold like Cornflakes. Four years
later, Robinson's second book (not counting the BOP B-sides
thing), rewards the wait. And we were waiting. The cover is lackluster
(news is good: apparently there will be a new cover for the 2nd
printing) but we managed not to be put off.
Tricked is nominally the story of a pop star suffering from
writer's block but is really, as with Box Office Poison,
an ensemble piece. Robinson, like Moore, delights in visual and
textual richness and tricks out (excuse me) the book with references
to a rich fictional pop history complete with breakups, famous producers,
and obsessed fans. Four more years until another book? C'est la
vie. This one will take some rereading.
25 - Drove the length of Massachusetts through the
first snow!
24 - Happy Birthday Fiona!
21
- Missed a ferry. (Must
make reservations!) Did drive through Canada (was that the scent
of actual freedom of speech mixing with Tim Horton's donuts?). Wisconsin
Book Fest in Madison was wonderful. (This
is where to eat. We would go every week.) Audrey Niffenegger read
her new novel in pictures (no, not a misnamed graphic novel, an
artist's book published at an affordable price), The
Three Incestuous Sisters.
There was a tiny celebration of Noisy
Outlaws a juggernaughty (not in that sense) literacy-fundraiser
anthology from McSweeney's that has a story ("Monster")
by Kelly Link as well as stories from George Saunders and other
faves. Kelly also read with Rebecca Meacham -- a fantastic
reader whose debut collection, Let's
Do, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.
Which is the prize Dave Shaw's
debut collection won. Must be a good prize! There
was a documentary film from a 3-generation Irish bookshop (Kenny's)
which is going internet only. Good luck! We met a reader who gets
their book packages. Sounds like great fun. There
was a zine fest, too. Much home-madery was moved from zine table
to bag. Especially of the brownie sort (more on brownie delivery
systems soon, we hope) but also of the Rough
Guide to Bicycle Maintenance, Night Light Comics, Molly,
SISU, Mutate, and More.
Visited one of the best mags in the country, Ninth
Letter. Imagine a mag edited by smart people with eclectic
taste, run by people who know how to put things together, funded
by a farsighted university, and with the pages and a website produced
by the visual art grad students and you get some idea of the inventiveness
of this thing. This magazine. This idea. We expect you to read it
and weep the same way we do.
12 - A gag. Travel Light was first published
before most of us were born. It is a wonderful and weird book. Something
not like the other books you're reading -- unless you are reading
a novel about a young woman rescued by bears, raised by dragons,
and taunted by heroes. Halla is all of these and more. She is a
delightfully spiky protagonist with a will of her own.
So, the gig (or the gag) here is photos, pix, all
those things. You will have seen the great Kevin Huizenga drawing
on the cover (avec dragons and all!). What is being looked for is
pictures of the book in odd situations, travelling (light or otherwise),
unexpected, or out of kilter. Or comfy and at home atop the dragon's
pile of treasure. Feel free to check out your local bookshop, Borders,
or B&N (we know it's out there) to find a copy for picturing. Post
your pic online somewhere -- you can even post it on Amazon if this
linky
thing works.
Then email us about your picture. We will have an
impartial set of judges (lured from an international biking event
through the skillful use of Putney, VT, apple pie) judge the pictures
on the basis of imagination, legality, fitness, ballroom dancing
technique, and use as a paperweight. Or, maybe we'll just send you
something for your trouble. A copy of LCRW, a paperback,
chocolate, something like that.
Read a bit of Travel
Light.
11 - Listen to interviews with Maureen
McHugh and Kate
Wilhelm.
Two ways to get free books. (Not including theft
or the library!)
1) Send Strange Horizons some money and
support them as they go into thir fifth or sixth year. $25 will
get you a chance at lots of freebies.
Maybe more will get you more chances?
2) Um. Borrow a friend's copy? Obsessively check
Bookcrossing?
10 - Wallace & Gromit was great -- even
if there was a flat tyre (bike) on arrival. Fortunately a lift back
was available. Phew. May go see it again if the reading/travel schedule
allows.
Lovely week of traveling to fave bookshops and see
fave peeps. See yous on Thursday in Ann Arbor, next weekend in Madison,
and Monday in Urbana.
8
- This book has been
sighted in stores!
"Sally
started [reading Mockingbird] first, and realized right
away that she was onto something good. When she finished, she
confiscated the book I was reading at the time and put Mockingbird
in my hands. Didn't take me long to figure out why. For a soft
book year, I've still managed to read some good books since January,
but Mockingbird is hands down the best novel I have read
in 2005, and one of the best I've ever had the privilege to read."
-- Park Road Books Newsletter, Charlotte, NC
Maureen McHugh and
Kelly Link will be reading on
Nov. 8 in Cleveland Heights, OH.
This
doesn't work on a Mac. At least, it did for a while, then stopped.
I'm just saying if you like cards, or stories, or games. Go play,
PC users.
New Wallace and Gromit film opens today -
Go See! May have seen it by now.
LCRW 10+7 gets made. Yay!
Read a great fun book, Michael
Martone by Michael Martone. More on this later.
Oct. 8 - All we hear is radio silence. Silencio!
Something to do with hands giving up the ghost -- the cry of the
white collar worker. Or the moan. One, two, three: Aw.
Sept. 26 - Judith Berman (Lord
Stink), whose first novel, Bear
Daughter is now out from Ace, is interviewed
and the book is reviewed
today at Strange Horizons.
(I love that you can subscribe to their review section --
so smart!) Saw Bear Daughter on the front table of a Barnes
+ Noble this weekend. Go, buy!
Storyteller
update: Boingboing'd!
Also: a chapter, "Trivia
Vs. Writing Real Stories", is now up at the Online
Writing Workshop. (Get at Powells.)
Powells update: Powells is the size of a small moon
yet is attached to this planet by doors and a warehouse (apparently
very pretty, with wood floors and good coffee). And the people there
read. Staff picks -- what we always check out first at a new bookshop.)
And some of them peeps use metaphors (is this a metaphor?) of the
sort we appreciate:
"Mockingbird
is the story of a young woman who grudgingly inherits her
mother's psychic powers. This book reads like a shot of whiskey
-- sweet, fiery swirls in the throat that linger on."
-- Mary-Jo,
Powells.com
Also: Powells are offering 30% off on pre-orders
of The
Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Yes, please. Someone? Anyone?
The old "he bumped into me" excuse. Does
that still work for giant
squids?
23 - Tenth conversion of Stranger
Things Happen added -- thanks to Jeff DeLeo and everyone
else who has contributed to getting the book out there.
Added hardcovers of Perfect
Circle and Trash Sex
Magic back to the shopping page.
These are mostly returns from bookshops and are in VG/VG condition.
Best copies will be shipped out first.
22 - Latest good comic:
Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women & Their Children.
Download and read the whole comic as a PDF. Seriously. This is great
reading. How good is this project? Excellent.
Getting the word out any way they can. Comics, baby, comics.
Went on a New York City restaurant tour: Banana
Leaf (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Malaysian); Dizzy's (Brooklyn, breakfast);
St. Alp's (Manhattan, Japanese cafe); Grand Sichaun (make sure you
go here [or the one on 9th + 50th]: Manhattan, Chinese).
Bad chorus to get stuck in one's head: The
Evens' "Terrible things are going to happen." Oh well.
Here we go again.
Changed a link here.
Something to do with an advice
columnist.
19 - Added an ebook version of Maureen
McHugh's collection to the shop.
(It's also available on Fictionwise).
16
- In the hustle, the bustle, the we-all-fall-down (not due to Plague
Mice in Jersey! [true!]), we have remissly not mentioned this
project recently fulfilled for
another year:
The Year's Best Fantasy
and Horror Eighteenth Annual Collection [paperback][hardcover].
Comes with a huge number of intros, some stories, a couple of
poems, and a list of other stories and so on to track down. A
treat for you or a great present, says we.
Now, onto #19.Suggestions?
New Must Reads: Jeffrey Ford's blog.
Don't wait for his pretty new book of short stories (worth the weight,
though, ahem), read The
Girl in the Glass. And while you're ordering that, pick
up a copy of Judith Berman's groovy debut
Bear Daughter. Nice thing about these is that
they're paperbacks, baby, paperbacks. Carry them on the train, use
them to start a fire when stuck in the mountains.
Yes, this is all about the plugging of books, the
waiting for books, the buying of books, and the plotting out who
to give the books to. Effendi
for her. Black
Juice for him. Und so weiter, ne?
Besides books, it was a year of lack in the tomato
home-growing front somewhat made up for, however, by the surprising
reaping of harvest in pears. Not pairs. Basket after basket. Is
there more fun than having a basket of pears and if one pear's time
is gone, toss it and try the next three? Well, see, we don't
have a peach tree. Pear chutney!
13 - M.T.Anderson inteview.
Thanks to Aunt Gwenda for pointing that out. Ask her a question!
12 - A few more unobtrusive updates of readings
and reviews and so on. Fixed Kate
Wilhelm's bio page -- eek! Do tell
if you hit a bad page like that.
Who had the courage to fire Michael Brown? No one.
So he fell on his sword. Good man. Now, if only Bush would do the
same.
7 - Read Maureen F. McHugh's short-short story,
"Wicked."
6 - New: on
the bookshelves at your local bookshop: Storyteller: Writing
Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop
by Kate Wilhelm. Read
an excerpt: Can Writing
Be Taught?
Back to the world. The government again fails its
people. The people support themselves: Red
Cross.
Good-bye and good luck Space
Crime, we will miss you!
Tomatoes:poor. Pears: an abundance!
Aug. - "The
Faery Handbag" -- Hugo winner!
July 29 - Fox in the yard! Coming; going.
Next month's Bookslut
reading series is a must see: Maureen
F. McHugh, Jennifer Stevenson
read (with Charles Blackstone). August 23, 7:30pm Hopleaf, 5148
N Clark St., Second Floor, Chicago.
27 - So should orders be placed
please be patient. Shipping will be slower than usual in August
due to the heat, travel, etc. Thanks for understanding.
Soon: UK! But for now have a
look at a new comic from Steve Lieber and Sara Ryan: Flytrap.
Cheap at twice the etc. Madnesses:
Leaving the country as Kelly's book is an August Book Sense pick,
is due for a couple of big reviews, has sold pb rights(!), when
there is a sidewalk sale in our town, when there's a cover
story (not up as of 7/28!) in the local weekly, and one in Publishers
Weekly, etc etc.
Good review
of Maureen's book in Booklist.
Look out for a reading upcoming in Chicago.
26 - Did anyone tell anyone
at all about the new ish of LCRW? It has Famous Poets, Debut
Fiction, is dishwasher safe*, and weighs in at a slimming 450 calories**.
Is it online? Not so much. Try over here.
* please do not read in the
dishwasher.
New Personals Section:
You: Shifty,
greasy around the mouth, not hungry. Me: missing my fish and chip
supper. Call me. Box 07552
Couple of chancers
seeking vans, trucks, any commercial carriers to knock over. Please
forward your schedule and bill of lading to Box 64230
Seen on the
freeway leaving LA: huge gorilla followed by thousands of weeping
ghosts. Box R5598
SWM, slightly
chubby, slightly bald, useless with PowerPoint. Need instruction.
Box 21440
Magic for Beginners gone
back to press. Yay! Readings in fall. Sorry if it's out of stock
in the meantime. Eek.
18
- After pre-orders we have a couple of signed copies of Kate Wilhelm's
new book, Storyteller. Grab
now?
We are drinking sangria (hey,
it's a hot morning) and eating olives. Our people are taking care
of the croquet lawn and tending the tomatoes. We are losing at Ticket
to Ride: Europe. We are loving Jon Courtney Grimwood's books
(Pashazade and Effendi). We will be in NYC Wed-Sat
for Kelly to read at KGB and to see Teenage Fanclub and the Rosebuds.
We are shipping you your books, sorry to be so slow.
Kelly's story "The Great
Divorce" is the featured story at One
Story. Magic idea, one story mailed to you every
3 weeks or so. Love it.
A link to the Comedy
Central clip where Stranger Things Happen was briefly
flashed. We think we know why: looks like the segment was filmed
in Shakespeare & Co. in New York City. Shakespeare
& Co., like St. Mark's, Book Court, and a bunch of other NYC
bookshops, are one of those amazing places that actually stock and
sell the heck out of our books. Yay! Thanks chaps. Instant karma
all over the place.
15
- Story in today's
Wall
Street Journal Online on
marketing (hush!) and
the free download of Stranger
Things Happen.
Thanks to everyone who pointed
this out (and thanks to Alex so that we don't need to retype it):
Last night on The Daily
Show, during Rob Cordry's report on Harry Potter security
they repeat the line "IT COULD HAPPEN HERE," and once they use
book covers to punctiuate it. It by Stephen King, "Could"
from The Little Engine That Could and "Happen" from Stranger
Things Happen. Daily Show's repeat throughout the next day
(today) on Comedy Central and usually on the following Monday
if you want to catch it."
-- Alex Wilson
Fun! Caught the show but after
that section so will be watching for reruns.
11 - New author photos
added from the jacket of Mothers
& Other Monsters. LCRW
16 going slowly out to readers,
then reviewers. Oops. Nice reversal there. Limited editions are
starting to ship, too (at last!).
Magic for Beginners
got an A grade from Entertainment Weekly (they also like
the new Son Volt CD, need to give it a spin). Wow. More good news
coming.
Thanks to everyone who helped
spread the word about the free download of Stranger Things Happen.
The reaction has been great (3,000 downloads of the audio version
of Most of My Friends..., and so on). Whisper it: people like to
read.... Or, for optimum fun points, (fun not guaranteed), shout
it at pedestrians while driving.
5 -- Just hit 10,000 downloads
for Stranger Things Happen!
Lots of new versions of Stranger
Things Happen including an audiobook version of "Most
of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water." Nice! Also, "The
Faery Handbag" (along with "Reports of Certain Events
in London" by China Mieville [McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber
of Astonishing Stories]) won a Locus
Award!
Wow, what a weekend. Did you
see all those fires in the sky? UFOS, baby.
2 - A review
of Stranger Things Happen and a piece on Girl
Detectives.
It's a tiny bestseller.
1 - News:
Publication Day for Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers
& Other Monsters and Kelly Link's Magic
for Beginners and we are celebrating by releasing Kelly's
first collection, Stranger
Things Happen, as a free download in various completely
open formats with no Digital Rights Management (DRM). (We hope to
release Magic for Beginners
later this year once all the individual story rights have reverted
to the author.)
When we published our first
two books, Stranger Things Happen and Meet
Me in the Moon Room, we were incredibly lucky and received
an incredible (repeated word on purpose: it really was -- and still
is -- amazing) amount of support, advice, help and enthusiasm from
readers, publishers, writers, and others across North America and
beyond.
So this is one way to say
thanks, everyone.
2. Creative What?
We're also interested in spreading
the word about Creative Commons.
Copyright is a good thing and artists deserve to be paid whatever
society is willing to pay for their work. But, do artists need
to retain the rights to their work for 70 years after their death?
Uh, no.
3. Can't I buy the book?
Will giving Stranger Things
Happen away kill sales? We hope not. The book is available
in hundreds of libraries, on print.google.com
and Amazon.com's Search Inside program, in a few used bookshops
and on BookCrossing.
But there are 6 billion readers out there! This is just a way
we can say thanks and give something back (or pass it on) to everyone
who helped us.
So, yes, Stranger Things
Happen is in its 4th printing and we certainly encourage
readers to buy a copy -- we're
a tiny indie press: sales are good!
4. Questions
Got a question? Email us and
hopefully we'll post an answer. We are a tiny press, though, so
please don't get jumpy if we don't answer immediately. We're busy
freelancing or working on our next books.
More thanks:
-
Much of
the impetus, information and inspiration for using the Creative
Commons license came from author, innovator, and groundbreaker
Cory Doctorow. (Thanks,
Cory!)
-
Thanks also to our webhost Utopian.Net
(run by artists for artists) for help with this project (and
being great hosts!).
June 30 -- We have a
new Bargain Books/Hurts page of
cheap books returned to us from the distributor. Condition usually
good+. Prices: cheap.
Added an ebook version of Trash
Sex Magic to the shopping page. Expect more ebook versions
(pdfs only for the moment, I suspect) as time goes by. We'll also
be adding them to Fictionwise.
Coming soon to a Virgin megastore
near you: LCRW, 
der
new one.
We received some boxes of "hurts"
from our distro. Means books which went to shops, got read, then
sent back. So we'll start selling them off mirocheap on a new page
hidden on this here site sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Fullers 1845. The discovery
of a hidden Dagoba bar. Not having to read bad books. Thunderstorms
shaking the house. Tomato plants from the farmer's market after
the heat killed all the transplanted seedlings. Hot sauce. Smax.
Laptop battery suddenly starts working. Theo Black showing us the
bear in the back yard. Teenage Fanclub: Man-Made.
29 -- Some fun announcements
to come on July 1 -- publication day for Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers
& Other Monsters and Kelly Link's Magic
for Beginners (also been adding reviews).
We have to get more from our distributor because we sold out what
we had, oops! [Yes, we have been bought out at last. How did you
guess?]
24 -- Maureen
F. McHugh, Kelly Link, and
Christopher Rowe
are reading tonight at 7 PM at Malaprops,
Asheville, NC.
Updated pages: Shopping 1,2,3;
Maureen F. McHugh, Kelly
Link (MFB, reviews,
calendar), Sean
Stewart (Locus
interview), Kate Wilhelm (including
special offers and donations), KGB,
Year's Best, LCRW Subscriptions,
Links.
Seen in the day: a bear. Seen
in the night: a raccoon avec 3 raccoonlets.
23 -- Wanted: Someone
familiar with Fictionwise's formatting to get (some of) our books
onto the site. Inquiries accepted 2-4 PM, Mon-Fri. Help?
A review
of LCRW 15. As well as an
interview with Alisdair
Gray and many other Good
Things.
Great crowd at the Harvard Book
Shop, yay!
21 - Kelly Link (kawaii,
ne?) reads tomorrow with Steve Almond at 6.30 PM the Harvard Book
Shop in Cambridge (aka Boston), MA. (And, yes, the book has arrived!
Hits the stores soonish, publication day is July 1st [Also known
as Be Nice to Zombies Day]).
Something else coming soonish:
LCRW No.16. A powerful, powerful
experience. More calumny and lies: no perfect binding. No color
(unless it's hand-colored...). Excuses? We've got a few. None of
them good. Ah well. Doesn't affect the interior, only the perceptions.
Read: The
Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. What a novel.
Teresita Urrea (Santa Teresita) was Urrea's great aunt and he's
been writing this novel for 20 years. It's full of rich characters
-- broadly painted, but so lively and enjoyable -- leavened throughout
by true (occasionally horrifying) stories. Teresita grew up just
before the Mexican revolution and we see the portents of revolution
from all angles: the soldiers', the Urrea family, the native Indians
(the "people"), and the peasants who work the land. The
Hummingbird's Daughter is a large novel without being sprawling,
something that you can carry with you and fall into with ease. You
can almost taste the old train Teresita is taken on, the herbs she
is taught to use, the fantastic breakfasts. Read, read, read. Urrea's
site; BookSense.com essay;
a review
of his first novel, In
Search of Snow.
16
-- KGB last night we had Greg Frost and Jeff Ford read. Was it good?
It was. They'll be reading in the northeast environs this summer
and they make a great pairing. Go see if you get the chance.
Also pencilled onto the calendar:
"Kindred:
Photographs" by Christa Parravani in the Hosmer Art Gallery,
Northampton, MA, July 2-29. Open reception Sat. July 23, 2-4 PM.
13 - Dropping the price of Travel
Light to $12. $2 refunds to preorders, yay!
Added a page for Storyteller.
Includes short, fun pieces
by Gordon Van Gelder, Jeff Ford, and others on the Clarion workshop,
writing, etc.
A review of Mothers
& Other Monsters.
"The 13 stories in McHugh's
debut collection offer poignant and sometimes heartwrenching explorations
of personal relationships and their transformative power.... McHugh
(Nekropolis) relates her stories as slices of ordinary
life whose simplicity masks an emotional intensity more often
found in poetry. The universality of these tales should break
them out to the wider audience they deserve."
-- Publishers Weekly
Also: a new page for the true
first limited edition and
a page of McHugh's poems.
Last year: Pirates!
(Because this is the journey of a typical novel...) In November
it is all about How
to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against
the Coming Rebellion. Author Daniel H. Wilson is a Ph.D.
candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon and he's
worked at Microsoft Research, PARC, and Intel Research. Hilarious.
A few tips:
-- Don't be on the list when
the robots call roll. Prepare an escape route. Collect supplies.
Might sound like how to survive
a zombie attack, but remember: robots can data mine! They're (somewhat)
smarter and if you drive a newish car, your first means of escape
already puts you right in their hands! This book is your number
one defense against the upcoming attack*. Stock up. Send to friends.
* What attack? "Consumer
robotic companies are creating friendly robot toys, household servant
robots, and robotic smart houses. Soon, we will live with and even
inside our robot workforce.... It all seems so innocuous.
And yet how could so many Hollywood scripts be wrong? How could
millions of dollars o special effects lead us astray?"
Buy from Powells.
You won't be able to say you weren't warned. And while we're at
it, thanks for using our Powell's
link!
11 - Added the new Say
to the buying ops page. It's pretty
on the inside, too. Also added Sybil's Garage and the new
ish of the Dogtown Review from that guy Schwartz, Dave Schwartz.
A final cover for Kate Wilhelm's
Storyteller: Writing Lessons and
More from 27 Years of the Clarion Workshop. Thank you Corbis.com
and art director Jelly Ink.
In other news: despite 110 deaths
since 1999, Tasers are still legal. A comparison of two dissimilar
cases. Apple iPod users are unhappy their batteries don't last the
promised 18 months. Eight people contact Apple (admittedly many
other people are upset). Apple proceeds to willy-nilly send out
$50 certificates to purchasers.
110 people since 1999. Caught
this story on WBAI
while skimming radio shows driving out of New York City. 'BAI played
an absolutely horrendous tape of a woman who was shot with a Taser
when she was pulled over by the police. She was calling someone,
telling them what had happened and where she was pulled over. The
policeman lost patience when she wouldn't get out her car (and when
she resisted him dragging her out!) and shot her with the Taser.
You can watch the police video
here.
(Although after hearing it, I couldn't watch.) Are police too fast
with their weapons? Yes.Is it inhumane? Yes.
110 deaths. Time to Write Your
State Reps again. Ban Tasers.
7 - Car ok! (Yes, sorry, Ford
has a tiny SUV hybrid, the Escape. Which we don't want.) A zine
we liked and sold at WisCon. Also have new Say and JPPN
to add to site.
Maureen McHugh's story "Oversite"
is reprinted in The Ruminator
Review with great commentary by Maureen (click the green
text).
Tons of other stuff. But now
the 201,000 mile Saturn needs at least an oil change.
6 - Back. Responses will be
slow. Although response to the books at the big show was good (despite
dead feet and 100-yard stares on our side). Lois of Toadstool Bookshop
brought restorative cookies. Ah.
PW gave a starred review
to Magic for Beginners, yay!
2 - We're at BookExpo. If you
are too, drop by booth 3773 (that's us!). Also Holly Black's reading
at Books of Wonder (Thu, 5-7 PM), the Lit Blog Coop pahty at the
Slipper Room (6-8), our distro's party (same time, across town...),
and on and on.
Galleys, we have a few/ T-shirts
for sale here soon. Groovy red editing pencils to go with Kate Wilhelm
book. Cards! Books coming from printers. (Some still to be sent
out!) Ack.
May 12 - Pages dropping
like flies. See above for reasoning/excuses. Yet you still feel
the urge to send off zine tokens? 1
2 3
4 5
etc. UT. NM. WI. Other.
Apropos of travel: Why are GM
and Ford in the pan? No hybrid. SUV sales dropping by 25%. Ha. Hummer
= Stupid actually hits home. Toyota introduced the Prius in Japan
in what, '97? Eight years later, hybrids are a tiny part of the
world market, but a huge part of the mental space of car buyers.
Car maker without a hybrid = a bookshop with no poetry section.
It looks like a bookshop, there are booksellers, but ... they really
don't care. So why should you? Cambridge, ONT, looks like it might
get another Toyota plant -- the 7th in N. America. (Toyota might
also buy GM, but only after they declare 'ruptcy so that the government
can socialize the pension plan.) Toyota are looking into putting
a hybrid in the Camry --they're so far ahead of the US companies
it's laughable. We, with our penchant for transporting mass quantities
of actual paper reading volumes, are just waiting for the first
van with a hybrid engine. Go Dodge! Go Honda! Go someone! (Saturn:
what a wasted opportunity.)
10 - The second title in our
Peapod Classics reprint series: Travel
Light by Naomi Mitchison. "You will love this book,"
says Holly Black author of such good books as Tithe, Valiant,
and the Spiderwick Chronicles.
Many book covers and so on added.
Woof.
8 - Soon the shopping
pages will be on hold as travel
and other things get in the way of the michty michty commerce arm
of Small Beer Unlimited. Preorder
page will work and checks can still be sent but nothing, not a zine,
a chocolate bar, or a book, will be hitting the mail after 5/12
until June.
Did we mention we lied. LCRW
will not be perfect bound. It will not have a color cover. The
title in fact will be "written" by a friendly capuchin
monkey using his right foot. Art? Yes. Stories? Yes. Poetry? Yes.
Dear Auntie G? Yes? Chunk of change on color cover? No.
Have covers for Mockingbird
and Storyteller. Web pages to follow, not too soon.
Added a couple of Kelly Link
readings.
6 - Tomorrow Small Beer is magically
in two places at once! The
many-armed hydra of good fiction will capture the eyeballs (and
only the eyeballs) of many people. Then let them go after a quick
spit and polish.
1 - Sean Stewart on the cover
of Locus.
April 28 - Wow. We need
this in the US. They Work
For You. If you don't have a UK post code, why not check out
the Member
of Parliament for the lovely seaside town of Ayr. US version,
please?
A favorite bookshop,
A Room of One's Own, turns
30. Photos and more. And this year we get to visit it at least
twice.
Happy book news. Nice
piece of data from Ipsos Book Trends quoted in passing in this story
about how people can buy hardcover books (ooh!) when they pick up
their soy milk and quorn (cough). Here's the catchy quote:
1.7 billion general-interest
books [were] sold in 2004, according to Ipsos Book Trends, a market
research service based in New York.
Say there's 300 million people
in the country (because we're not counting the people hiding in
the hills), that means people bought almost six books per person
per year. Not bad!
Who cares if a lot of the books were How-To books (yep, got
mine right here) or textbooks, &c. Six books per person per
year! That doesn't even go into not counting the too-young-to-read
set (I suppose it does include board books) and those whole swaths
of people who only buy books to fix the wonky leg on their dining
room tables. (It's a sitcom world.)
6 books/person/year. More than
expected. All right, back to making some books for the blue light
special in aisle 9!
27 - New story: "Heads
Down, Thumbs Up," by Gavin J. Grant at Scifiction.
Book overload at SBP HQ. We've
moved everything up another flight as yet another floor was filled
with books. Archaeologists will have fun sorting through all the
papers we've left behind.
Updates: Magic for Beginners
and Mothers & Other Monsters are slowly wending their
way through the printer. May take a while. Limiteds selling well.
Yay!
Kate
Wilhelm's book, Storytelling, has some nice news that we
can't say anything about yet.
Galleys are being made of our
new edition of Sean Stewart's Mockingbird -- yay for bringing
great books back into print! Sean's added a new afterword for this
edition. Meanwhile Perfect Circle is back at the printer
-- just the trade paperback, although maybe next time we will do
another short hardcover run as there seems to be a lot of demand!
The UK edition, Firecracker, is doing well,too.
Galleys are also about to be
made on Travel Light. We'll be offering a few of these to
nice readers of our newsletter. Received a fantastic quote from
one of our favorite writers:
"A 78-year-old friend staying
at my house picked up Travel Light, and a few hours later
she said, 'Oh, I wish I'd known there were books like this when
I was younger!' So, read it now -- think of all those wasted years!"
-- Ursula K. Le Guin (Gifts)
Music: The Evens debut CD (growing
all the time) and the ubiquitous iPod random-almost-everything mix.
Chocolate: Emergency Lindt bar. Sorry CB, this was for you. Will
get a replacement soonest. Cough.
26 - 'Tis the time of year to
be cross-eyed and falling behind on everything. Oops. Added the
Magic for Beginners cover.
Not on the front page yet, that requires a few more minutes. Some
readings getting arranged,
slowly. More, as ever, to come.
The print edition of the LA
Times had a great illo to go with Gavin J. Grant's Lovecraft
piece. Turns out it was a Lovecraft ish, with a big pic of the man
on the cover and a couple of other pieces on him. Who knew?
Tomato seeds sprouted! (Is that
the right term?) 4 months and counting.
15 - Garbage
have a new album, Bleed Like Me, and are on tour. The album
isn't as driving as their previous ones, but, like anything, given
enough exposure (set to repeat on iTunes and try and inspire some
actual work to be done) there are some catchy songs. (And, you know,
it's all in a minor key.) If tix are still available, anyone in
NYC want to go see them on Tuesday night at the Hammerstein Ballroom?
Benjamin Rosenbaum (Other
Cities) will be reading at KGB
Bar in NYC on Wednesday, April 20, 7 PM.
14 - Limited edition update:
demand is happily high so the print runs have been increased to
150. Extra button added at bottom of page.
Today is the UK publication
date for Firecracker, the UK version of Perfect
Circle (which we just sent to the printer to get more, yay!).
Perfect Circle was also selected by Booklist as one
of their Top Ten SF Books for 2004. More good news on various books
to come and new title pages will go up -- just updated Maureen
McHugh's with the final table of contents and some lovely early
quotes.
And we received three logos
from lovely people which we will put online as soon as some other
things are taken care of.
News:
- First quarter results from
the magazine division of SBP saw a flattening of revenue as the
latest beta version of LCRW (#15) was released. Sales of 214,000
in the first week were an 8% increase over the November's LCRW
14 first week sales.
- However, back issues sales
dropped as LCRW 7, one of the workhorses of Small Beer sales in
previous quarters, dropped to zero as the issue went out of print.
Sales of LCRW 9 picked up some ground (12,000 for the quarter)
being the "oldest" issue available, but not enough to
compensate for the loss of #7. Small Beer management refused to
comment on the possibility of an LCRW 7 reprint.
- For the ninth year in a row
LCRW was neither nominated nor the recipient of a National Magazine
Award (600-1000 circulation category), Pulitzer Prize, or, indeed,
anything. As of April 1, a small sticker was added to LCRW beta
version 15 stating "No Award."
- The Graham Group, a magazine
forecasting consulting group in Framingham, MA, forecast first
week sales of LCRW beta version 16 (the extra-chewy issue, June
'05) of 250,000+. Small Beer management pooh-poohed the idea and
noted that "crackhead industry expectations" should
take into account the next Harry Potter book's impact on summer
sales. Graham Group responded with a fax blast press release that
printed out 316 times and broke all the Small Beer fax machines.
If anyone would like a broken HP 1012 fax, please email us and
we'll talk shipping rates.
March 29 - "The
Faery Handbag" can now be read online. It has been nominated
for the Hugo Award that "The
Voluntary State" will win, yay!
27 - Congratulations: Aqueduct
Press & Gwyneth Jones, Philip K. Dick Award winner for Life.
25 - Hey, how about nominating
Kate Wilhelm for the latest necessary
award? Or anyone else?
Writers Who Make A Difference
awards
Please help us recognize writers
who, through their writing, have contributed to the field of writing
or to their communities. We encourage you to nominate writers
you know who have made a difference in one of the following ways:
- Who have helped and influenced
other writers either through their writing or teaching
- Who have been instrumental
in bringing about changes in the publishing field that benefit
all writers
- Who have increased awareness
of issues of concern to writers
- Who have used their writing
to help communities or humanitarian causes
- Who have been innovative,
introducing new forms, subject matter or perspectives
The
Cultural Gutter likes some of the stuff you like. Music, books,
comics, videogames all get wrote about with equal intelligence.
Add to your minuscule reading list.
24 - Strange
Horizons is having a fund raiser! Fund them!
New ish of Xerography
Debt. What a great cover. I've been reading it for a while,
writing reviews for some time, and always finding stuff to check
out -- this time including something I'm not going to tell you about
in case I love it so much that I buy all copies.
Don't buy an HP1230 fax. Damn.
Anyone know how to fix an 18-month-old busted one?
23 - Posted Kelly's story "The
Specialist's Hat."
Picture
of melted snowman (RIP) too sad to post. However, here's something
I have been forgetting to post. Made, sent, all by mysterions. Wonder
what it says.
Managed not to break any international
anti-torture rules. Didn't smack opponent while judge was listening
to other singers. Brought out a new edition of LCRW: LCRW Zero!
Which has zero pages and costs zero dollars. Used a bike in
the usual way, not to beat prisoners with. Another day lived in
a parallel universe. Read a good book: Pashazade
by Jon Courteney Grimwood. Another of those good Brit books that
were missing from US bookshops for a few years until some smart
editors picked them up. It's a gritty future (sure, noir, but dusty,
too). Hey, and there are more coming.
A couple of days ago used this
page
to make a favicon -- i.e. the wee LCRW icon that may appear
in your browser next to the website address. Ooh.
22 - On Strange Horizons:
How
to Start a Small Press by Gavin Grant. Or, not, as the case
may be.
20 - Reasons to read Zine
World:
Congratulations!
You're 151 proof, with specific scores in beer (100), wine
(133), and liquor (147). All right. No more messing around.
Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking
and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get
wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the
bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which
is most efficient.
