.
What exactly is a blue moon? Well, the older definition was the fourth full moon in a single season. Later, it came to mean the second full moon in a single month. Both meanings are honored today but only the second one applies here.
In Iceland, there's a tiny imprint named Tunglið (Icelandic for Moon) that only publishes books on a full moon and always in an edition of 69. They offer them for sale only for the one day and burn all unsold copies immediately after
This so charmed Marianne Porter who is, I periodically have to remind people, not only the editor but the publisher, proprietor, and sole power behind Dragonstairs Publications (I am only the in-house content provider), that she decided to do the same. But because putting out a publication a month is a draconian schedule, she decided to publish a chapbook limited to 69 copies, with all unsold copies to be burned at the end of the day, once in a blue moon.
Literally.
The first such chapbook, titled Blue Moon of course, went on sale March 31, 2018. The bonfire of the publishing vanity was held at midnight.
The next blue moon after that will be this week, on October 31--Halloween. So I wrote a horror-themed series of short-short fictions, flashes, for a new chapbook titled Blue as the Moon. It is 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches, hand-sewn, signed, and numbered. It will be available for thirteen hours, starting at 5:54 p.m. this Friday, October 30 (moonrise) to 7:17 a.m. on Saturday, October 31, 2020 (moonset). The fire and burning will be held at midnight on Halloween evening. Philadelphia time, it goes without saying.
Because Marianne is no fan of seasonal blue moons, the next opportunity to get one of these extremely ephemeral chapbooks will be on August 31, 2023.
Ordering information will go up on the Dragonstairs Press website on Friday. You can find it here.
Oh, and it's $12 in the US, $14 out of country, postage included.
And because the serialization must go on . . .
Jack Frost's Wake (part XXVIII)
Plain text: It is only as you reach the final paragraph
CONTINUED TOMORROW
Above: Blue as the Moon, then under construction. The chapbooks are now assembled, sewn, and stacked, and the matches are ready.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment