Here we are, our first quarterly issue of EAP, and there is more stuff coming in over the virtual transom than ever. We love young readers and writers here at EAP. Well, we love old ones, too, and middle aged ones, and all of them in between. But it’s always a particular pleasure to watch the next generation of real book lovers. That’s why we were particularly pleased to get Kelsey Liu’s contribution of a bunch of her short stores. She’s a teenager, and you might be able to guess that from the subject matter, but you’d never be able to tell from the polished proficiency of the stories. No typos! No errors! Care and feeding gone into these stories! We’ve started publishing the one we found the most charming in a charming bunch: The World Falls in Love. I sort of fell in love with that one, myself. Now we’ll see if she can keep her young nose to a very old grindstone; if she can, I predict good things for her, and for us who read her.
Meanwhile, what is it about Irvine, California, and short story writing? In one week, we heard from Kelsey, who lives there, and from Paul Rogov, who also lives and writes there. There was something about Paul’s stuff that made me sit up and go ‘hhmmm.’ There was this ham sandwich in his story about Philo’s Magnet Motor, which particularly appealed, and not because I like ham sandwiches, either. But see what you think. As my Dear Husband said at breakfast, “Irvine? You say you got TWO contributions from Irvine? What the hell is going on down there?”
Hell if I know. But I kind of like it.
On the indie publishing front, we’ve had a busy summer, to say the least, with two books released in Fall 2012–David Budbill’s PARK SONGS, and my own second book in The History of Arcadia, LILY THE SILENT. Not to mention starting to get together our Spring 2013 book, GREENBEARD, by R. C. Bentley, and many thanks to Stephen Player, who did us a spectacular cover image in the time it takes to turn around and say, “Why do we not have a spectacular cover image?” Mike Madrid had called him just to get advice on finding an artist to help us out, and Stephen very generously offered his own time and art…which is rather lucky for us, considering he’s usually busy working on covers for Terry Pratchett books…and GREENBEARD should very much appeal to Terry Pratchett fans, among others. It certainly appeals to all of us!
Onward!
(And by the way, congratulations to the GOOD READS and LIBRARY THING EARLY REVIEWER winners of copies or PARK SONGS, by David Budbill. The books went out today, hope you enjoy them as much as we do around here…)