Publications – Page 3

Mosaics Anthology 1 is Published

The charity anthology Mosaics, A Collection of Independent Women, Volume I has just come out. (The second volume is already under way.) It benefits the Pixel Project, a charity that is trying to fight domestic violence across the world. Their slogan is, It’s Time To Stop Violence Against Women. Together.

I’m proud to say that it includes my story, Happily Ever After in Twelve Stained Glass Panels.

Here’s the blurb: Whatever happened to the Miller’s Daughter, the one who spun gold into straw? This is the part the Brothers Grimm didn’t tell us.

Selling a story to this anthology was a quick education in how to promote an Indie book. Some of the stuff they did: An illustration for every story, except these were for use on social media, not for the book. The hashtag, #IamAMosaic for everyone to use when they discussed their stories or the anthology. Lots of stuff on Twitter. Asking all the authors to try to get readers to post reviews on Amazon on Launch Day, and providing us free Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) that we could offer for the purpose. A Facebook launch party, with giveaways, including a Kindle Fire.

It went at a breathless pace that I wasn’t quite prepared for (especially since it happened when I had other stuff going on) but built momentum.

mosaics HEA in 12 stained glass panels

I hope very hard that this antho succeeds. It’s a very worthy cause, and Pavarti Tyler and Kim Wells have thrown themselves into promoting it.

#IAmAMosaic

“The Mother Goose Crisis” in Unsung Stories

Unsung Stories, the UK-based online magazine, published my story, The Mother Goose Crisis.

When a nursery-rhyme virus threatens to take out the internet – and possibly its users too – a creative solution is needed to save the world as we know it. But what, and can the tech team pull it off?

The story is short and light-hearted. I wrote the first draft years ago, in the era when 5 1/4 inch floppies still existed. From time to time, as I do with all my stories, I’d pull it out, revise it and update it. (There is no such thing as a Trunk Story – only one that hasn’t yet found its purpose.) The floppies in the story became 3 1/2 inches. Then they became thumb drives. The cast changed a bit. I still found it amusing, but had no idea where to send it.

Recently, on Codex, someone linked to Unsung Stories. Here’s how they describe themselves:

Unsung Stories is a fiction imprint of Red Squirrel Publishing a London-based small press. Unsung Stories publishes genre fiction, most commonly described as science fiction, fantasy and horror. But as useful as those classifications are, we look beyond them, into the potential they contain. We love the fuzzy bits between genres: hard, soft, gooey and fuzzy sci-fi, high, low, top, middle and bottom fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, steampunk, cyberpunk, space opera, weird, dark, comedy, satire, bizarro and anything else that falls somewhere between any or all of those…

So I sent it off, and here it is. I’m delighted.

“Genetic Changelings” in Flametree Publishing’s Science Fiction Short Stories

Gothic Fantasy 3 books covers 2015 August

Flametree Publishing, a UK-based publisher, is coming out with three awesome collections of stories classic and new: Ghost stories, Horror, and Science Fiction. They’re publishing my story, “Genetic Changelings,” in the Science Fiction anthology.

Deepali’s a science writer whose latest book, “Genetic Changelings: The Slippery Slope from Normalcy” is a runaway hit. She’s becoming the voice of the Normies in a world where it’s becoming more and more acceptable to be Designer. But her own sister’s about to sabotage that…

Flametree recently sent me a link to the Table of Contents, and I am going to be TOC-mates with an awesome bunch of authors – new and established. Here it is:

Science Fiction Short Stories

The Body Surfer by Edward Ahern
Behind the First Years by Stewart C. Baker
Genetic Changelings by Keyan Bowes
Overlap by Beth Cato
Rest in Peace by Sarah Hans
The Hives and the Hive-Nots by Rob Hartzell
The Vast Weight of Their Bleeding Hearts by Alexis A. Hunter
Makeisha in Time by Rachael K. Jones
The Julius Directive by Jacob M. Lambert
Metsys by Adrian Ludens
Fishing Expedition by Mike Morgan
Red by Kate O’Connor
Nude Descending an Elevator Shaft by Conor Powers-Smith
Sweet Dreams, Glycerine by Zach Shephard
Jenny’s Sick by David Tallerman
Shortcuts by Brian Trent
A Life As Warm As Death by Patrick Tumblety
Butterfly Dreams by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1 by M. Darusha Wehm
Clockwork Evangeline by Nemma Wollenfang

“These new authors are surrounded by classic work from the following writers: Edwin A. Abbott, Ray Cummings, Arthur Conan Doyle, E.M. Forster, H. Rider Haggard, Henry Kuttner, Jack London, Edward Page Mitchell, Philip Francis Nowlan, H. Beam Piper, Arthur B. Reeve, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Edgar Wallace, Stanley G. Weinbaum.”

(I never ever thought my work would appear in the same book as some of the greats! )

This is going to be an awesome set of books. Look at this cover! (Which you shouldn’t judge a book by, but – look at this cover! Including the alien baby amid the scrollwork.)