The First-Ever Dragonstairs Press Book Launch!

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I am fresh back (or perhaps the phrase juste should be "exhausted back") (or was, when I first began this post, before a seemingly endless stream of friends decided to die, requiring me to write memorial after memorial for them, thus postponing this far more cheerful post) from the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Where academics and writers share a common time and space and have as little to do with each other as humanly possible.

And where Dragonstairs Press (owner, editor, and proprietor: Marianne Porter) held its first-ever chapbook launch!

This was for a chapbook that could be bought at ICFA but hasn't yet been made available to the general public. Marianne tells me it will go on sale sometime in April, on a date not yet selected. 

The chapbook, pictured above, is Comicosmics. This is a play on Cosmicomics by the late, great Italo Calvino. The flash fictions I wrote are homages to Calvino but gender-reversed with the narrator being not "Old Qfwfq" but his ex-wife. Who had her own contrarian takes on his exploits.

The chapbook launch took place on Saturday afternoon, immediately after the poolside Locus photograph of all the con's participants. I talked briefly about Calvino and his unique take on SF ("science... fiction? What an intriguing idea"). Then I read one of the flash fictions I'd crafted for the occasion.

There was a good turnout of Dragonstairs aficionados. Everyone had a very pleasant time. And a significant fraction of the chapbooks were sold on the spot. The rest will be put on sale sometime in April, almost certainly on a Saturday at noon Philadelphia time. I'll let you know just as soon as I know myself.

Above, first paragraph: In all fairness, at a lunch organized by Sally Grotta, I did meet a mathematician who told me that the very little I knew about dark matter was entirely wrong; so there was at least one useful exchange of information between academia and "the creatives."

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