Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "navigation"

Well. Blow me down... A numerologically significant anniversary has utterly escaped my notice, until now. The date June 1, 2014 marked the twentieth anniversary of the first publication of the first edition of my first novel, A Harlot of Venus.

And this spaced-out excuse for a Rodent missed it. Alas! Gone forever is the opportunity for a grand twentieth hoopla. It's a good thing nobody noticed, so I have four more quiet years to prepare for the silver anniversary in whatever year that is for people who can count... Oh, right: 2019.

Luckily, however, in the upcoming summer of 2015, all those children born in the Martian Year of the Harlot (1994) will be of an age to legally raise and imbibe a toast to the publication, and the subsequent "rollicking success" of the book. (In the last two decades at least twenty copies have been sold; and most of those I've bought back on the used market so they can be bundled for pulping. And, for what it's worth, I'm pretty certain the first paper publication did not recoup my glorious advance on royalties before the publisher went furry-tummy up. But that's a story fit for the summer of 2016!)

I guess now I'll need to make a fabulous Green Woman poster and print flyers inviting everyone over the age of twenty-one to Santa Banana on June 1, 2015 for a festival at which alcoholic beverages will be served with impunity.

Mark your calendars for the silver anniversary, everyone: June 1, 2019. Bring a copy of the book to the party for signing, and we'll throw in that coveted set of six Ginsu can-cutting knives absolutely free!

Pay no attention to that book behind the curtain...

While it may be constitutionally impossible for a white rodent of a certain advanced age and degree of living fossilization to write anything that isn't at least sort of sexist at some level... I hope to hell I never write a novel that utterly fails the Lutgendorff Test. Oh, wait, what's that you ask? See the article here in the New Statesmen.

Lutgendorff read the entire NPR list of 100 best Sci-Fi/Fantasy books, but didn't have to go very far in before she noticed the rampant misogyny and so forth in the sea of nostalgia. So she started keeping track of what she was reading, and came up with a test. (Note: Yes, I'm still stereotypically assuming that Liz Lutgendorff is a woman, even after doing a quick Google search, but I will happily come back and edit this if she isn't a she; or if she turns out to be a computer program.)

As you can see below, this is sort of riffin' on the Bechdel Test we all know and love.

The Lutgendorff Test asks three good questions of a book:

1: Does it have at least two female characters?

2: Is one of them a main character?

3: Do they have an interesting profession/level of skill like male characters?

Here I shall openly confess that I have not read most of the books on that NPR list; and most of them don't interest me on the face of things, so I don't even feel any loss. (Less than two handfuls of the books were penned by women, by the way.) Of those on the list I have read, I wouldn't put very many on a list of 100 greatest anything.

But I was gratified to see that The Left Hand of Darkness made the cut.

The short story Moldgasm, a psycho-erotic thryller by H. Cogito Epsilon is now available from Smashed-Rat-on-Press. This is a transient anniversary special, made available only by request for a limited time. Just follow the bread-crumbs to e-mail The Rodent at SROP specifying EPUB or MOBI format, and a copy could be yours, but we can't make any promises, and the offer may self-destruct at any time. For example, if nobody wants one or we get paranoid about books with humorously transgressive content.

Keep an eye on SROP for more specials as this 40th anniversary year progresses. We are still planning for Epsilon's Anna Conda of the KGB and Mantissa Etherbright's release of The Princess on the Rock on Beltane... And there are rumors of a possible Sanguinity Hematode short story collection in the summer.

I like smart girls a whole lot, and I like books about their adventures. One of my favorite characters growing up was Pippi Longstocking and Pippi still owns a warm little piece o' my heart even today.

Yes, yes, I'm aware that I'm quite a few years outside the normal demographic niche for books like that, but I'm still discovering great girls. (For example, Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes, Caroline Lawrence's Flavia Gemina, Jennifer Allison's Gilda Joyce, or even Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart.)

Or, Carrie Cross's young heroine, Skylar Robbins.

A while back I read the first two of the Skylar Robbins books, and I've been just dying for the third book, The Mystery of the Missing Heiress to come out. Well it came out a while ago, and I'd been planning to buy the e-book edition... Sadly, the publisher apparently decided to stall the e-book for what seems like centuries; but the paperback has been out since March... That's about a 5 month delay, which is at least 753 in book years. I've been sighing and checking, and at several points I've considered just buying the physical book so I can get on with reading it...

Until today. What changed? The e-book still hasn't come out (for Kindle or whatever your personal e-vice is). But I saw an autographed used copy for sale on the 'Zon, for less money (including postage) than I would have paid for the paperback. Of course, I couldn't resist that. So I bought it. * I'm half ashamed of myself because I like this author's work and I want to support it.

So. The take home point here for Teen Mystery Press is this... I would have paid $10 for the e-book if it had come out yet. But you, Teen Mystery Press, and poor Carrie Cross both lose this round.

However, being who I am, I'll also offer in public to put my money where my sentiments are. So, I hereby swear on a stack of assorted hefty holy books gathered from the far corners of the galaxy that I will buy the e-book of The Mystery of the Missing Heiress whenever it finally comes out, so that Ms Cross gets the little royalty bits that come with a first sale, instead of the nothing that comes from a used book changing hands.

However (and this is a long-shot I know), if Ms Cross happens to show up on my doorstep before then, of course I'll spring for lunch and an exotic coffee drink at any restaurant within a 5-mile radius of my humble Santa Banana abode.

_____
* Update Sept 1, 2017: Yay! The book arrived in today's snail post! It is indistinguishable from a brand-new unused paperback, except that it's inscribed and autographed on the inside front cover.

The year is almost over, and GR has begun to show us our years in books... Oh, how time flies! Maybe you haven't read your quota for the year?

If any readers out there happen to be seeking short books to stuff their books-read-in-2018 count, here are some of the shortest volumes from Smashed-Rat-on-Press... Nothing over 35,000 words! That means you might even be able to gobble one per day between now and the new year! (Some of the poetry books are particularly quick reads, of course.)

(But for heaven's sake, please don't buy any of them and ruin the current record run. Just follow the bread crumbs to free e-copies.)