No April fools here!

It’s National Poetry Month

April 7, 2025, Ottawa — April is National Poetry Month, which seems like the perfect time to remind you that the BumblePuppy Press doesn’t only publish fiction.

Last May we published Skipping Stones, by Marie-Andrée Auclair and Adrienne Stevenson, a book of poems that certainly fits this year’s theme of “… FAMILY in its many forms: found and chosen family, birth family, and family that defies categorization.”

Skipping Stones is a collaborative collection that explores shifting relationships in a restless world. The book is available from the usual online outlets and (of course!) directly from the publisher.

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Speaking of Adrienne, her novel, Mirrors & Smoke, is now also available as an audio book, narrated by Marnie L Sher of Sweet Tone Sound.

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Rachel A. Rosen interviewed

We often get caught up on definitions, but fascism has never been a coherent ideology. When fascism comes to Canada, to paraphrase George Carlin, it will be polite and couch its atrocities in language about national pride, tradition, and orderliness.

You can convince people to accept massive sociopolitical and economic changes through framing particular issues as not political. You can still vote, but why would you? The issues most critical to your wellbeing—say, do we light the planet on fire in pursuit of shareholder value—have been decided amongst the ruling class by consensus, and you won’t be consulted on them. This is managed democracy, and it’s on its way here too. It’s no wonder that North Americans are exhausted by traditional electoral politics.

The author of Cascade and its forthcoming sequel, Blight, both from the BumblePuppy Press, Rachel Rosen holds forth on fascism in fiction and the real world on the Night Beats Extended Universe website website in a discussion with Zilla Novikov, who wrote Reprise. (All three books are, or course, available in our shop.)

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As usual, Rachel is keeping herself busy with more than writing. On March 15, she (with David L. Clink) dropped their latest Wizards and Spaceships podcast — their 11th.

In this episode David and Rachel welcome guest Jesse Pohlman, author and game designer, to discuss the crossover between tabletop role-playing game players, genre fans, and genre writers, and the considerations that go into building your own TTPRG.

You can listen to the podcast here.

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Rachel also continues writing short fiction. Her latest story, “Do You Love the Color of the Sky?” appears in the Spring 2025 issue Trollbreath Magazine, a new (to me) quarterly online ezine. Alas, the story is behind a paywall, but the fee is an eminently reasonable $6.00 per quarter – click here to subscribe to it.

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Did I mention that Rachel keeps herself busy? Well, she does (and so does Zilla Novikov!). Not only are they working on a sequel to The Sad Bastard Cookbook, they are working on a spin-off for parents of small children, and they would like your help. For more information, and/or to submit a recipe, click here to access their Google Doc.

And of course, as you might already know, you can download the original cookbook for free right here.

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And finally (for now), a reminder that Rachel’s forthcoming novel is available for pre-order in ebook format from the Big A, Draft2Digital and of course, in our favourite method, for both print and ebooks, right here at our shop.

Thanks and looking forward,

Geoffrey Dow, publisher