Two Strange Books Walk Into a Zoom Room: Join Our July Double-Feature Author Salon
Some book club meetings are quiet, orderly affairs. Everyone brings notes. Someone has underlined three tasteful passages. There may be tea. This is not that meeting. On Wednesday, July 29 at 6 p.m. Pacific, Small Press Big Mouth Book Club is hosting a special Double-Feature Author Salon with Rory A.B. Forrest, author of Dave, the Space Pet, and Nick Gregorio, author of Jen & Gary’s Infinite (Quantum) Entanglements.
Two books. Two authors. Two distinct, delightfully strange literary worlds sharing one Zoom room. That is either an excellent idea or the beginning of a highly specific disaster. We are betting on excellent.
Meet the Books
Dave, the Space Pet and Jen & Gary’s Infinite(Quantum) Entanglements are the kinds of books that remind us why small presses matter. They are imaginative, ambitious, difficult to reduce to one tidy sentence, and uninterested in behaving like books that have already been written. They take risks. They make room for the absurd, the speculative, the tender, and the deeply human. That is exactly the kind of work we want to talk about.
During the salon, Rory A.B. Forrest and Nick Gregorio will join us for a live conversation about their books, their writing lives, and the strange chain of decisions that turns an idea into a finished book. We will talk about building fictional worlds, writing beyond conventional boundaries, finding the heart inside unusual premises, and publishing work that does not fit neatly into the most obvious box.
We may also ask the most important literary question of our time: how weird is too weird? Our position is that we have not found the limit yet.
What Is an Author Salon?
Think of it as the livelier cousin of a traditional book club meeting. The conversation will be relaxed, candid, and open to readers, writers, authors, and anyone curious about how books get made. You do not need to prepare an academic argument. You do not need to arrive with a color-coded notebook. You do not even need to have finished both books.
Read one. Read both. Start one fifteen minutes before the meeting and arrive with questions. We are not checking homework. The salon will include a moderated conversation with both authors, followed by time for audience questions. This is your chance to ask about the books, the writing process, publishing with a small press, creative risk, revision, inspiration, or whatever else has been rattling around in your reader brain.
The July Big Mouth Double-Feature Author Salon will take place on:
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
6 p.m. Pacific
Live on Zoom
Bring your questions, your curiosity, and your affection for books that refuse to stay inside the lines. We will see you there.
