All of the fiction from the third year of Clarkesworld Magazine. For just £4.99. Includes stories by Jay Lake, Nnedi Okorafor, Robert Reed, Sarah Monette, Mike Resnick, Lavie Tidhar, N.K. Jemisin and Catherynne M. Valente. What a great way to support your favorite online fiction magazine. Buy it here.
Books
Coming Soon From Wizard’s Tower: The Swordsman’s Oath
We are almost there with the next volume in Juliet E. McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn. You can see the cover below. For more information about The Swordsman’s Oath, see our website.
Lyda Gets Interviewed (Again)
I’m delighted to see that the fabulous Lyda Morehouse has an interview up at SF Signal. You can read it here. And then maybe buy the book.
Congratulations, Lethe Press
Steve Berman write to let me know that two Lethe Press titles have been selected in the Over The Rainbow Project’s list of top LGBT books for 2013. The successful books are:
- Heiresses of Russ 2011, JoSelle Vanderhooft & Steve Berman, eds.
- You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home, Alex Jeffers
Also on the list are Mike, Linda & Louise Carey’s The Steel Seraglio (ChiZine), which for contractual reasons that benefit Mike and his family I’m sadly unable to have in the bookstore; Martin Eden’s fabulous LGBT superhero comic, Spandex (Titan); the latest volume of Batwoman; and Kate Bronstein’s A Queer and Pleasant Danger.
In celebration of his successes, Steve is offering the two Lethe books half price. I’ve not read Alex Jeffers’ book yet, but Heiresses of Russ is great, featuring fabulous stories by Ellen Kushner and N.K. Jemisin as well as Rachel Swirsky’s Nebula-winning “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”.
Juliet Gets Reviewed
I’m delighted to see that Juliet McKenna’s The Thief’s Gamble has got a review over at Fantasy Review Barn. It is always hard to get reviews of old books, but if anyone is interested in reviewing any WTP publications please do get in touch.
Picking Your Fights
The row about Julie Burchill’s Observer article continues to rumble on in the UK media, becoming more and more meta by the day. The current situation is that everyone is up in arms about how a journalist who decided to vilify and threaten an oppressed minority because she said they were bullying her friend is now apparently being bullied in turn by that same evil minority group. Given that Burchill is such a shy and retiring individual herself, all of her friends are queuing up to defend her from awful people like me. My heart bleeds for the poor dear, it really does.
Sadly, however, I can’t fight on behalf of all oppressed minorities, so I’ll have to leave defending poor Julie to the rest of the Bolly and Lobster consuming commentariat. I have other things to do. Most of yesterday was actually spent working on the day job, but in the evening I headed off to Bristol to talk to Freedom Youth, a local LGBT Youth group. My colleague, Andy Foyle, and I were there to encourage them to get involved in the LGBT History Exhibition. It was a really fun evening, and I think I came over quite well thanks to my knowledge of superheroes, Buffy, Xena and so on.
Today I was in Bristol again for an appearance on Ujima Radio. This was for the launch of Paulette’s new Women’s Outlook show. We had a great half hour on women in literature, in which I got to talk about Tolkien, Eowyn and the forthcoming Kij Johnson lecture. That’s the first part of this podcast (and yes, the Ujima website has got the name of the show wrong). The second half hour of that podcast has women from three local feminist groups as guests. I was delighted to hear Anna Brown of the Bristol Feminist Network talking about their inclusive policy (and her colleague, Sian Norris, has been very supportive over the Burchill debacle).
Talking of Sian, there will be a Women’s Literature Festival in Bristol in March. Stella Duffy will be there, and therefore so will I.
I also got a couple of slots in the second hour of the show. It begins with a slightly silly session on public toilets, in which I argue the merits of gender-neutral bathrooms. The final half hour is devoted to discussion of Female Genital Mutilation. Paulette kindly let me get a mention in right at the end for Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death. Hopefully that will get Nnedi a few more sales.
Tomorrow night I’ll be on ShoutOut with a couple of other trans people talking about #TransDocFail, which I happen to think is far more important than Miss Stroppy Pants Burchill.
And next week on Ujima we have a whole hour devoted to LBT issues, so I’ll have lots more of me to link to after that.
Welcome Back, Fablecroft
Long time bookstore shopper may remember that we helped the Australian small press, Fablecroft, run a promotion for a charity anthology, After the Rain, which benefited the victims of the Queensland floods. When the fundraiser was over the book went away, and it has taken a while for it to come back. That’s life sometimes with small presses. People have priorities in life (including, in this case, relocating across the country) and small stores like mine take a back seat for a while. But I am delighted to report that the book is back in the store. We also have Epilogue, which is an anthology of post-apocalyptic stories with an Australian twist. I for one can’t wait to read “What books survive†by Tansy Rayner Roberts. So, if you’d like to sample some of the best short fiction that Australia has to offer, you know what to do.
Another Archangel Review
I’m not here. I’m in London for a meeting with a client and to do some research on the history of gender reassignment surgery at the Wellcome Institute.
While I’m away, you can all read this lovely review of Archangel Protocol by Jo Hall. And then you can buy the book.
Lyda Speaks
The fabulous Sense of Wonder blog, which has already reviewed Archangel Protocol, has now published an interview with the author, Lyda Morehouse. You can read it here (también en español). Lyda talks more about the process of converting the books to electronic format (in a way that Mouse would thoroughly approve of), and about her more recent work. She’s lovely. I continue to be a very proud publisher.
New From Prime
I have two new books in the store from Prime. Future Games is a themed anthology on the subject of, well, the future of games. It is edited, as usual, by Paula Guran.
The other book is Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter by Richard Parks. As you can probably guess from the title, this one is fantasy with a Japanese setting.
New From Book View Café
OK, so I have done some actual work today, rather than just blogging. We have some new books in the store. For today let’s give a warm welcome to three new offerings from Book View Café.
Dragon Virus is a collection of six inter-linked stories by Laura Anne Gilman. It has mutants. And a promising blurb from SF Signal.
Next up there is Living in Threes by Judith Tarr, a YA science fiction novel that spans the millennia from ancient Egypt to the far future.
And perhaps the prize exhibit is Flyers, the first book I have ever stocked by Vonda McIntyre. It is a small chapbook collecting two linked short stories. One of them, “Wings”, was a Hugo and Nebula nominee. At just £1.25 (about $2), how can you go wrong?
Kickstarter Project News
There are a couple of Kickstarter projects that I’m interested in that are due up fairly soon.
The first is Fearful Symmetries, an un-themed anthology of original horror fiction to be edited by Ellen Datlow and published by ChiZine. I didn’t pay a lot of notice to this initially as I figured it would breeze past the funding goal and appear in my bookstore in due course. Much to my surprise, however, it is still only just over 2/3 of the way to the goal with just 4 days left. Why?
Ellen has promises of stories from Laird Barron, Kaaron Warren, Elizabeth Hand, Lucius Shepard, Sarah Pinborough, Jeffrey Ford and Joe. R. Lansdale, plus she is planning to have an open submissions period. This will be a great book, and it is a great opportunity for new horror writers. It is well worth backing.
I note also that the $25 backer level is very good value because it gets you an ebook edition of the book plus two other ebooks of your choice from the ChiZine catalog. That means you’ll be getting three fine books at less than cover prize.
Anyway, I’ve backed it. I hope some of you will too.
Much better news is that You Are The Hero, Jonathan Green’s proposed history of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, has reached both the initial goal and the stretch goal for funding additional internal artwork. There are just 20 hours to go if you want to get in on any of the exclusive backer rewards.
Archangel Protocol Reviews
I’m delighted to report that two reviews of Archangel Protocol came out in the past day or so.
Firstly Odo gives the book 4 stars on the Sense of Wonder blog. You can read his review here (también en español). And he’s giving away 5 copies of the book. You just have to leave a comment to get in the draw.
In addition Paul Weimer reviews the book at SF Signal. He gives it 4.5 stars. That’s pretty darn impressive. Also I’m particularly pleased that Paul gave shout out to Bruce Jensen’s magnificent cover art. Lyda and I are really pleased that the whole series will be getting coherent cover designs.
I am a very happy publisher today. Here’s hoping this shifts some more copies.
Resolutions
I don’t normally pay much attention to New Year Resolutions. Yesterday’s xkcd pretty much sums up my opinion of them. However, last year has been a disaster for book reading, in that I bought far more books than I have read (and indeed read far more books than I have reviewed). So I’m going to try something fairly simple. This year I will resolve to read at least one chapter of a book every day. We’ll see how that works.
New Aussie Podcast
Thanks to Kirstyn and Mondy of The Writer & The Critic I have been altered to a new podcast by prolific Australian blogger, Sean Wright. The podcast is named after his blog, Adventures of a Bookonaut, and Episode 1 is very interesting.
It contains three interviews. The first is with Luke Preston. He’s a thriller writer, but well worth listening to as he has come to novel writing from a screen writing background. Consequently he has some interesting views on how to write (which I suspect are better-suited to his chosen genre than to other types of fiction).
Next up is Joelyn Alexandra from Singapore who introduces us to her own writing, and to several other writers from her part of the world.
Finally there is an interview with Helen Merrick, author of The Secret Feminist Cabal. This is a must-listen for anyone with an interest in feminism and science fiction.
Thanks Sean, I’m looking forward to more episodes.
Cheaper Bodies
I’ve been trying to avoid doing too much PR for the bookstore over the Holidays. I’ve seen way to much pestering of people to buy online, and quite a bit of annoyance expressed about it. As it is, I’m selling books without the hard sell. Not in the same quantity as during November, but definitely above average for the rest of the year. So I’m grateful for that, and trying to let you enjoy the Holidays in peace.
However, when publishers announce a price drop, I have a duty to pass the news on. I’m therefore delighted to inform you that Outlaw Bodies from The Future Fire is now only £3 (that should be a little under $5). If you have been thinking about getting it, now is a good time to do so.
My Christmas Message
Talking of proselytizing at Christmas, I appear to have been at it. It wasn’t planned that way. A while back the Fantasy Faction website got in a bit of hot water because it published a list of fantasy novels to look forward to in 2013 that was, in the modern vernacular, a bit of a cockforest. So I decided to help them out and wrote a little article about forthcoming fantasy books by women. It took a while for it to get posted, and it finally appeared today. You can find it here.
My apologies to anyone whom I have left out (of whom I’m sure there are any). I should also add that I’m pleased to see many SF books by women due out next year. I’ve already read The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord, and loved it. I’m also very much looking forward to Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter. I’m sure that there will be others.
Got Elvis?
We have. To be precise, we have My Elvis Blackout by Simon Crump, the latest release from Galley Beggar Press. This is an ebook re-release of a book first published in 2000. It sounds quite mad. Here’s some of the blurb:
In these 37 short stories, the King of Rock and Roll – “hero and model to teenagers the world over” – joins a choir in order to torture and murder Christians, labours under the delusion that he’s a major rock-star (when really he’s just an inmate in an asylum who’s afraid of potatoes), and kills both Barbara Cartland and Chris De Burgh. And then he does some bad things too.
Oh dear. Apparently Elvis fans will not be upset. Chris De Burgh fans should probably not buy it.
Monkey Business
I have spent most of today in Bristol doing bookish things.
It started out at Forbidden Planet where the manager, Tim, had kindly laid on a signing for Gareth L. Powell’s latest novel, Ack-Ack Macaque. Gareth was in full flying gear for the event, his hero being a monkey who flies spitfires against the Nazis in a very odd version of WWII. (And if you think that’s weird, the first chapter of the book features a woman cyborg investigating her ex-husband’s murder in near-future London.)
Alongside the book were copies of the new issue of 2000 AD, which contains a short strip trailing the novel. Tharg and his buddies have clearly been busy in the many years since I bought a copy of their magazine. Not only have they surpassed the date in which their stories are supposed to be set, they appear to have surpassed 2000 issues as well (correction: they are not quite there yet). Amazing, though it does make me feel rather old.
After a quick sojurn in the pub, many of us trooped down to St. Nicholas’ Market for Fairies at the Bottom of the Market, a reading featuring three local authors. The location was the Indian/New Age shop, Lunartique, which has recently moved into the catacombs below the market. They have a small store room decked out as a grotto which is a nice spot for readings, though we do need to find a source of good quality temporary seating.
The event was organized by Scott Lewis who is one of the contributors to Colinthology. He was also one of the readers, along with Emma Newman and Jo Hall. Roz Clarke chaired the event. We got a good crowd, and sold a few Colinthologys along with some of Emma and Jo’s books. We shall do this again, I think, though hopefully with better seats.
Finally I took myself along to My Burrito. They have a couple of seasonal specials on at the moment. The first is a Mexican-spiced lamb, which I tried a few days ago and very much enjoyed. The other is steak with a jalapeno & coriander pesto, which was also delicious though flash fried steak (which they cook to order) doesn’t work as well in a burrito as the traditional shredded Mexican meats.
All in all, an excellent day out, despite the ever-present danger of Christmas “music”. As Eugene Byrne commented on Twitter today, no, I do not wish it could be Christmas every day.
The Year In Review
Regular readers will know that I don’t do end-of-year posts. That’s because I am a regular contributor to the annual “Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening” series at the Aqueduct Press blog. Timmi has asked me to contribute again this year, and my column went live yesterday. You can read it here.
As you’ll see, there are lots of great books that I have not written reviews of yet. I just don’t have the time. Apologies to all concerned. Hopefully the brief mentions in that column will encourage a few people to try some very good books.
Also, I’m in very good company: sandwiched between Gwyneth Jones and Ursula K. Le Guin. Woot!