A couple of weeks ago, we posted a blog sharing some of the amazing publications our novel authors have accomplished outside of World Weaver Press, including stories in prestigious magazines such as Galaxy's Edge and Fireside, and even hitting the NYT Bestsellers List. A lot of the books we've published have been multi-author anthologies, so we asked anthology contributors to let us know what else they'd been up to. Check out the list below to find some new favorites.

WWP published "N31ghb0rs" by Eric Del Carlo in Far Orbit: Apogee, October 2015

"Unlinkage" appeared in Analog, March 2016
"Demon on His Shoulder" appeared in Dark Horizons: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction from Elder Signs Press
"Come Mr. Tally-Man" appeared in Street Magick: Tales of Urban Fantasy from Elder Signs Press

Elder Signs Press also accepted his dark YA novel The Vampire Years, which should be out in Fall 2017. Congratulations!

WWP published “Better Than Chocolate” by Tellulah Darling in Covalent Bonds, February 2017

Tellulah will publish an urban fantasy novel, The Unlikeable Demon Hunter, under the name Deborah Wilde in April 2017. Congratulations!

WWP published "Possession" by Rhonda Eikamp in Fae, July 2014

Rhonda published several short stories in 2016:

The Journal of Unlikely Observances, "Little Government Gets Us Nowhere"
Lackington's, Issue 12, "Zoopoiesis, With Mountains"
Mirror Dance, Issue 35, "Meet Me At The Top"
The Dark, "Some Pictures Of Monsters"
Syntax & Salt, October Issue, "Golden Rules"

WWP published "The Fairy Midwife" in Fae, July 2014, and "The Business of Thorns" in Speculative Story Bites, August 2016

Shannon published a short story in 2016:
"Blood Red and Raven Black" appeared in Truancy Magazine

And a picture book for children:
Gail Murphy and the Piskies

WWP published "Two Steps Forward" by Holly Schofield in Scarecrow, August 2015

Holly published 20 short stories in 2016. Here are some of them:

“The Jungle Between“, Cast of Wonders (December, 2016)
“Limit of the Sky”, Perihelion SF (November 2016)
“Cross-Contamination”, Parsec’s Triangulation anthology (July 2016)
“Well Enough Alone“, Shoreline of Infinity (June 2016)
“End of My Rope”, Metasaga’s Futuristica anthology (June 2016)
“East Wind in Carrall Street”, Exile Editions’ Clockwork Canada anthology (May 2016)
“Ready or Not”, Perihelion SF (Jan 2016)
“A Distant Honk”, Unlikely Story’s Clowns: The Unlikely Coulrophobia Remix anthology (Jan 2016)
A full list is available at https://hollyschofield.wordpress.com/bibliography/

Also, Holly Schofield's "Two Steps Forward" from Scarecrow made the Longlist for the 2016 Sunburst Awards!

WWP published "My Midnight Cowboy" in The Naughty List, November 2015

Pumpkin published three romance books in 2016:

Goldilocks & The Three Brothers Bear The Amāre Tales, Book 2 (Evernight Publishing) - Jan 2016
The Hart Moment (Evernight Publishing) - Feb. 2016
Do Not Disturb (Hot Tree Publishing, written as Mary Billiter) - Oct. 2016

WWP published "A Murder of Crows" and "Postcards from the Abyss" in Corvidae, July 2015, and "Scarecrow Hangs" in Scarecrow, August 2015

Jane published a number of books in 2016:

Picture books:
How Do Dinosaurs Write Their ABCs with Chalk? (Scholastic)
What to Do With a Box  (Creative Editions)
On Bird Hill  (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
How Do Dinosaurs Stay Friends? (Scholastic)
Little Frog and Scary Autumn Thing  (Persnikity)
How Do Dinosaurs Go to Sleep? (Scholastic)

Novels:
Seelie King’s War  (Viking)
Stone Man Mysteries 1 (Lerner, graphic novel, 1 of 3)

Poetry
Grumbles From the Town (Boyds Mills)

Nonfiction
Alligator’s Smile (Lerner, poetry nonfiction)

Also, SFWA named Jane Yolen the 33rd Damon Knight Grand Master for her contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy. Congratulations!

SHARDS OF HISTORY by Rebecca Roland was World Weaver Press's very first published novel. Now, five years later, we bring you the exciting conclusion to her epic fantasy trilogy. SHATTERED FATES, will be available in paperback and ebook May 23, 2017.

The covers of Roland's first two books have also been redesigned! And don't forget, there's a story set in the Shards of History world in her short story collection THE KING OF ASH AND BONES AND OTHER STORIES.

Rebecca Roland is the author of the Shards of History series, The Necromancer's Inheritance series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction, and she is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net, her blog Spice of Life, or follow her on Twitter @rebecca_roland.

Guest Post by K. Bird Lincoln

Tell me the truth. When you think of “Japanese Fantasy” you either picture some very naughty websites or Anime/Manga like Totoro, Log Horizon or Deathnote.

I’m here to tell you that Japanese authors writing fantasy is much more than naughty lingerie and characters with big eyes. (Haruki Murakami, anyone? But that’s a different article.) This article is about Japan-related fantasy written by non-Japanese. I know, I know, that’s also an entirely different can of cultural-appropriation worms. (Check out author Jim Hines’ summary of some of the most interesting author opinions on diversity out there).

Trust me, though, while these books sometimes venture into slightly over-used tropes, they all offer something to fantasy lovers looking to get themselves out of the Pseudo-European Medieval quagmire as written by English-speaking authors.

Straight-up Adventure in alternate Shogun-era Japan with ninjas: Tales of the Otori Book One: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
[Goodreads I Amazon]

The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordinary, preternatural skills. When Takeo's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru. Under the tutelage of Shigeru, he learns that he too possesses the skills of the Tribe. Armed with this knowledge, he embarks on a journey that will lead him across the famed nightingale floor—and to his own unimaginable destiny...

If you just want to plunge right into an alternate Japan loosely based on history and culture with a light romance and lots of skulking in shadows, check out this series. I read the whole series in hopes for deeper angst and kissy face between Takeo and Lady Kaede, but felt vaguely unsatisfied at the end.

Urban Fantasy set in Tokyo alternating historical flashbacks: Fated Blades Book One: Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein
[Goodreads I Amazon]

As the only female detective in Tokyo’s most elite police unit, Mariko Oshiro has to fight for every ounce of respect, especially her new boss. But when he gives her the least promising case possible—the attempted theft of an old samurai sword—it proves more dangerous than anyone on the force could have imagined.

What pushes this beyond your everyday kick-ass woman with a sword, is how Bein wove backstories of the swords through the main narrative. Switching between Mariko and various periods in Japanese history was very cool.

He got most of the historical and cultural details right as far as I can tell (I've lived in Japan more than 6 years and..ahem…studied Japanese history in college—Lo, these many years ago). Bein's descriptions sometimes have a cool twist: "Beyond the glass stretched the crazed labyrinth of Shinjuku, a werewolf in urban form, biding its time until nightfall to unleash its full madness." 

Romantic junkie that I am, I wanted more Mariko. More juicy relationship angst between Mariko and her mother, and possibly a hint of romance. But if you love Urban Fantasy and are burned out on werewolves and vampires—this one’s for you!

Literary-esque Modern Magical Realism:  The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
[Goodreads I Amazon]

In a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town, an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.

You should go read this even if you have absolutely NO interest in Japan. Why? Because Barzak’s writing superbly tugs at heart strings. While not straight-up Romance, the characters in these intertwined stories are all looking for love.

It's the intertwining story, centered in Ami, Japan, of a group of people and how love and death touches their lives.

But the reason I recommend this book is because there are very few Western authors who can write about Japan, and write Japanese characters in Japan, and get it mostly right. I think Christopher Barzak gets it mostly right. He captures the pressures of society so well that when characters commit suicide you understand why and his foreigners-in-Japan characters embody some of the reasons we run away from home.

And in the end, he teaches through all his characters that we can choose the masks that we wear to tell the world who we are, but in the end, they are only masks and are changeable.

YA fantasy set in Modern Tokyo with : Paper Gods Book One: Ink by Amanda Sun
[Goodreads I Amazon]

On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Ink is a terrific edition to the YA Paranormal genre. Readers of YA series by Becca Fitzpatrick or Lauren Kate with bad-boy hero fetishes will totally get into Tomohiro — he wields a mean Kendo sword, gets in fights with Yakuza, and yo-yos between needing people and cutting them down to size...not to mention his terrifying sketches...

From my perspective of having lived in Japan, Katie's experience with bento, conbini puddings, drunken flower-viewing parties, and scrubbing school toilets are spot-on depictions of Japanese life. The author's judicious sprinkling of real Japanese slang even got the thumbs up from my Tokyo-boy husband.  This one pushed all my romance junkie buttons in the right way, but is still safe for the older YA designation.

Crazy alternate Shogun-era Japan with steampunk elements adventure: The Lotus War Book One: Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff 
[Goodreads I Amazon]

Yukiko is a child of the Fox clan, possessed of a talent that if discovered, would see her executed by the Lotus Guild. Accompanying her father on the Shogun's hunt, she finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in Shima's last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled thunder tiger for company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved his life, all she knows for certain is he'd rather see her dead than help her. But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.

What we have here is a super-funky, crazy alternate Edo period Japan — if the Shogunate commanded a vast army of armored warriors and airships that ran on a fuel created from the seeds of a plant that poisoned the land.

And oh yes, if that alternate Japan also had real oni-demons and griffins.

While there is a bit of intrigue, this is a straight-forward, no surprise-you-can't-see-coming-a-mile-away, evil vs. good adventure with the Shogun starring as the half-crazed supervillain committing murder (of children!) and laying literal waste to his country.

Historical Fantasy with Trickster Spirits!: There’s a lot out there. Especially if you like short stories. But here are three I particularly recommend.

Fudoki by Kij Johnson
[Goodreads I Amazon]

Set in the same universe as The Fox Woman, this time Kij Johnson takes on another animal totem and enters the world of the creature who comes to be known as Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen. 

And who may or may not be the figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing as she follows the paths that are leading her to the nunnery and death.

Kij Johnson is the bomb. Like Christopher Barzak, she totally gets how telling stories with Japanese-inspired myths is an opportunity to explore concepts of identity, self and love. You should read this, but only if you’re in a literary mood and don’t mind some plot-ambiguity, and hopefully are sitting in front of a roaring fire with a cup of green tea.

Tiger Lily by K. Bird Lincoln
[Goodreads I Amazon]

Lily isn't supposed to hunt game in the Daimyo's woods. She's just the cook's daughter. It isn't her place to talk to nobility. And she definitely isn't supposed to sing the forbidden old, Jindo religion songs.

But Lily was born in the year of the Tiger, and can't ever be like other village girls. In the woods snaring rabbits one day, she finds instead the Daimyo's son, Ashikaga, wounded, in the gooseberry brush. When the Pretender Emperor's men arrive to kill Ashikaga, Lily, desperate, sings a forbidden Jindo song.

The song wakes a powerful spirit – as well as Ashikaga's interest. The prickly lord has hidden secrets of his own and a burning desire to prove himself to his father. He will stop at nothing to defeat his father's greatest enemy.

You know I had to mention Tiger Lily, right? Because I think I strike a balance between actual medieval Japan (circa the Ashiakga Shogunate period) and twisting history to suit my own needs. While there’s some romance—it’s definitely not a mainstream romance. There are gender surprises involved. Tina Connolly called it "A beautifully-written genderbending tale of rebellious girls, shifting disguises, and forbidden magic, set against the vivid backdrop of ancient Japan."

Kitsune Tsuki by Laura VanArendonk Baugh
 [Goodreads I Amazon]

How does one find a shapeshifter who may not even exist?

The onmyouji Tsurugu no Kiyomori, a practitioner of the mystic arts, has been engaged to protect the warlord's new bride from the fox spirit rumored to be near. Tsurugu and the shadow-warrior Shishio Hitoshi face an impossible challenge in teasing out a kitsune shapeshifter from the samurai and servants –- if such a creature is even present at all.

Confession: I haven’t read this yet. But I just went out and bought it so I definitely will read it soon. I came across Laura VanArendonk Baugh mentioned in a writer’s promo Facebook page and was like “oh, another Caucasian woman writing Japanese Historical Fantasy — must stalk!” I then quickly realized she’s another World Weaver Press author, having been published in Corvidae, Fae, and Scarecrow (yay editor Rhonda Parrish!).

I’ll tell you what. You go read her, too, and let me know what you think.

K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie with family and a huge addiction to frou-frou coffee. Also dark chocolate-- without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent more years living on the edges of the Pacific Ocean than in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her first novel, Tiger Lily, a medieval Japanese fantasy, is available from Amazon. She also writes tasty speculative and YA fiction reviews under the name K. Bird at Goodreads.com.

Dream Eater by K. Bird Lincoln, a Japanese-influenced urban fantasy set in Portland, OR, will be released from World Weaver Press in April 2017.

by Trysh Thompson

It was early 2015, and I was sitting in a World Weaver Press editor meeting, reviewing a list of possible anthology topics. I scanned the list, and some of the ideas were clearly drunken fodder, but one stood out to me.

Geeks.

As someone who has worked in the software industry since graduating college (despite running away from my computer science major screaming bloody murder), I’ve worked with my fair share of developers. Dear Lord are they adorably awesome in their awkwardness. Some of them are downright hot and they don’t even know it, their noses buried in code most of the time.

I immediately threw my hand in the air. “I’ll take the geeks.”

No one really fought me for it. Victory was mine!

Victory that was a long damn time coming.

Submissions for Covalent Bonds opened in mid-March 2015 and ran for nine months. In that time I received 45 fantastic submissions and I learned the true meaning of heartbreak as my cursor hovered over the send button of rejection emails time and time again. Believe me, there are some fabulous pieces that you didn’t get to see. I hope those pieces find homes elsewhere, because they were fantastic.

Just when I was paring down a table of contents, it was announced that Red Moon Romance (WWP's romance imprint) was closing, and Covalent Bonds was cancelled.

My geeks were cancelled.

I had worked with many of these authors during the long submission window to perfect their stories, so I was attached to the characters, the stories, and these authors. I hated the idea of letting them down.

Through some kind of miracle (nah, we all know what it was—new editor-in-chief Sarena Ulibarri), a few days after cancellation, Covalent Bonds was back. All of my authors were sticking with me.

That blew my mind. This was my first anthology and I admit I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but they were willing to stick with me. Maybe I was doing something right.

We’ve been sitting on Covalent Bonds for a long time, and I’m so glad it’s finally going to make its way into the world. It deserves to be out in the world, and I’m pretty proud of it.

There are so many types of geeks represented—comic book geeks, hackers, table-top gamers, online gamers, even a grammar professor. Furthermore, there are so many different types of romances. Geeks don’t conform to societal conventions, and neither should their romances. I’m all for bending rules and testing boundaries, and I’m proud to say that this anthology is no exception. In this book, there are traditional romances, meet cutes, and even a mystery with a romance budding in the background.  Just like I cover different types of geeks, there are different types of romance.

Oh, and the snark. Anyone who knows me well knows that snark is what I do best. So the easiest way for any author to wiggle into my cold, black heart is to make me laugh. All of these managed to do just that.

These stories make me happy. I’m so honored to have compiled this collection, and to have my name associated with these nine fantastic authors. I’m so proud of how this turned out.

The geeks shall inherit the earth. Covalent Bonds is the first step.

Trysh Thompson has written just about every form of non-fiction you can think of—everything from news, movie reviews, magazine columns, marketing hype, software manuals, and was even an editorial assistant on a gardening book no one has ever read (The 7-Minute Organic Garden—see, you’ve never heard of it, have you?). To keep from being slowly and torturously bored to death by her day job, she turned to fiction as means of escape—reading it, writing it, and editing it.

Forget the old stereotypes: geeks are sexy. Especially the ones in our newest romance anthology, COVALENT BONDS, which is available today, February 14, 2017, in both ebook and paperback.

Covalent bonds aren’t just about atoms sharing electron pairs anymore—it’s about the electricity that happens when you pair two geeks together. This anthology celebrates geeks of all kinds (enthusiasts, be it for comics, Dr. Who, movies, gaming, computers, or even grammar), and allows them to step out of their traditional supporting roles and into the shoes of the romantic lead. Forget the old stereotypes: geeks are sexy.
 
Featuring nine stories ranging from sweet to hot, by authors G.G. Andrew, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Tellulah Darling, Mara Malins, Jeremiah Murphy, Marie Piper, Charlotte M. Ray, Wendy Sparrow, and Cori Vidae, Covalent Bonds is a chance for geeks get their noses out of the books, and instead to be the book.

Trysh Thompson has written just about every form of non-fiction you can think of—everything from news, movie reviews, magazine columns, marketing hype, software manuals, and was even an editorial assistant on a gardening book no one has ever read (The 7-Minute Organic Garden—see, you’ve never heard of it, have you?). To keep from being slowly and torturously bored to death by her day job, she turned to fiction as means of escape—reading it, writing it, and editing it.

Trysh is currently reading submissions for her next WWP anthology, SONOFAWITCH! See guidelines here.

"Bittersweet" by A.E. Decker is original fiction from the anthology Speculative Story Bites. Get the whole anthology from Amazon, Kobo, or World Weaver Press.

Only half past noon, and there went the last pound of brandied rose creams. I must make more for the evening rush, thought Marcel, watching the satisfied customer walk out the door, gift-wrapped box under his arm. Do I still have all the necessary ingredients in the kitchen, or must I--

Then the next customer in line bore down on him and his train of thought shattered like a sugar sculpture dropped onto a hard floor. “What do you mean, you sold the last rose creams?” the man demanded, his loud, aggressive voice carrying over the noise of the small crowd that filled Doux-Amer. “I came here specifically to buy them.”

Zut alors, monsieur, Quelle tragidie. Quicktackle that last customer before he reaches Bleecker Street. Marcel bit his tongue. Why did men of this ilk—self-important, business-suited types—never think to call ahead and reserve what they wanted? He stole a look around the shop, hoping to foist this particular pest off on one of his subordinates. Both George and Amanda quickly busied themselves with other customers. They’d heard that bellow and knew the aggravation it portended.
I’ll give them hell later, Marcel promised himself. “If you return this evening, I will have made fresh ones,” he told the seething businessman. “Perhaps you could reserve—”

“Return?” The businessman swelled up. Even his striped power tie looked belligerent. “I took a train to get here. This is coming out of my lunch hour, you know.”

Marcel rubbed his brow. In an aisle to his right, two customers squabbled over a box of mixed creams. A little girl threw herself onto the floor, transforming into a screaming bundle of arms and legs over her mother’s refusal to buy her cocoa. The checkout line began shifting like an angry centipede as those waiting grew impatient at the delay. Three hundred matters pressed for his attention, and this man acted like taking a subway from Wall Street to Greenwich Village was comparable to traversing the Sahara. Try being a chocolatier on Valentine’s Day, monsieur.

“You have more in the back, don’t you?” the businessman accused.

“I assure you we do not.”

“I’ll pay extra.”

“There won’t be more until this evening.”

The businessman drummed an angry staccato on the countertop. “Let me speak to the manager.”

Marcel wrenched his attention from a woman who wandered the shelves near the window, picking up boxes of chocolate and turning them over in her hands before setting them down again. Her cap’s brilliant crimson-red color had drawn his attention when she’d first entered the shop, at least half an hour ago. “Pardon?” he asked.

“I want,” said the businessman with insulting distinction, “to speak to the manager.”

“I am the owner, monsieur, and I tell you I cannot magic brandied rose creams into existence. Come back this evening.” Or keep hassling me and discover what I can magic into existence, he added silently.

The businessman gaped. You, the owner? read the almost-visible thought balloon hanging over his head. Barely old enough to shave and not even American?

Twenty-two is old enough to shave, merci beaucoup. Blonde beards just grow more slowly. And what did you expect from a shop called Doux-Amer, a Texan?

Taking advantage of the man’s no-doubt temporary silence, Marcel signaled to George to ring up the next customer. The constipated line finally moved, much to the relief of his patrons.

The businessman recovered. “Tell you what,” he said, checking his watch; a gesture meant to convey both urgency and importance. “I’ll give you my address and you can send the chocolates when they’re finished. I need them by six-thirty.”

The wandering woman picked up a bag of chocolate-covered raspberries. Her thumbs caressed the foil as she held it, longer than anything else she’d selected. Her eyes squeezed shut a moment, then she put it back on the shelf.

Marcel shook his head. “Sorry, but we don’t do deliveries.”

The businessman’s face tightened. “I can always go elsewhere, you know.”

Marcel turned quickly away, feigning a cough. It was either that or let the derisive laugh escape. Take your business elsewhere? Thank you monsieur, I could use a break. He couldn’t see the checkerboard floor for all the bodies obscuring it. More people kept piling in; the bell over the door hadn’t stopped ringing since eleven o’clock. His neck burned and his legs ached all the way up to his hips. Better to be a sled dog in the Arctic than a chocolatier on Valentine’s Day. At least after being run off your feet, you’d know you’d gotten somewhere.

“That is your choice, of course,” he said, once he trusted himself to speak, “but no other chocolatier makes brandied rose creams. They are one of my signature chocolates.”

In case you didn't know, our authors are pretty amazing. We know the awesome things they've been doing with World Weaver Press, but we recently asked what else they were up to (writing-wise) in 2016, and, wow!  See below for a glimpse of what some of our authors have published and achieved outside of WWP. In a week or so, we'll be doing the same for some of our anthology contributors.

Author of Bite Somebody (2016) and Bite Somebody Else (forthcoming 2017)

Sara Dobie Bauer published a number of short stories in 2016, including:

"I Hate Myself for Loving You" in Lunch Ticket Magazine
"The Saguaro Apocalypse" featured in Stoneslide Corrective and winner of their "Striking Use of Wit" Award
"You're Glowing" in Omnia Veritas Review
"Forget Me Do" in Red Rose Review

Those are just the stories that are available online for free! To see Sara's full list of 2016 publications, click here to visit her blog.

Author of Legally Undead (2014)

Margo Bond Collins published a number of novels, novellas, and stories in 2016:
Under Her Skin (Shifter Shield Book 1)
A Generation of Vipers (A Shifter Shield Novella)
Wild Wild Ghost
Flightless (Fairy, Texas #2)
The Billionaire Cowboy's Speech (A Necessity, Texas Novella)
"I'll be on New London for Christmas" in Baby It's Cold in Space: Eight Science Fiction Romances

Margo also hit the NYT and USA Today Bestseller's lists as part of the Magic and Mayhem box set!

Author of The Falling of the Moon (2015) and The Meddlers of Moonshine (2016)

A.E. Decker published a short story in 2016:

"Forever Now" in Fireside Fiction Magazine, issue 32

Also, Decker's story "Bloodsilver" was accepted by Lawless Lands: Tales From The Weird Frontier, an anthology coming in 2017 from Falstaff Books.

Author of Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions (2016)
 
Larry Hodges published several short stories in 2016:

“Manbat and Robin” in Galaxy’s Edge
“Penguins of Noah’s Ark” in Galaxy’s Edge
“Pretty Pictures at War” in Galaxy’s Edge
"A Snowball's Chance" in NewMyths.com

Also, Larry's story “Leashing the Muse” was a finalist in the Washington Science Fiction Association’s Small Press Award!

Author of Dream Eater (forthcoming 2017)

K Bird Lincoln finished the second in her self-published historical fantasy series set in an alternate medieval Japan. The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight is now for sale on Amazon.

Praise for the Tiger Lily books: "A beautifully-written genderbending tale of rebellious girls, shifting disguises, and forbidden magic, set against the vivid backdrop of ancient Japan."
--Tina Connolly, author of Ironskin

Author of Shards of History (2012), Fractured Days (2014), The King of Ash and Bones and Other Stories (2013), and Shattered Fates (forthcoming 2017)

Rebecca Roland published two short stories in 2016:

"The Monster on Her Cheek" in Flash Fiction Online
 "In Silence She Says Much" in New Myths

"Granny Grizz" by Tom Howard is original fiction from the anthology Speculative Story Bites. Get the whole anthology from Amazon, Kobo, or World Weaver Press.

“Doctor Alex,” the patient said, “do you think there really is such a thing as karma?”

Looking out the window at the heavy clouds and the occasional and improbable snowflake drifting by, the doctor seemed to be considering the question but was actually thinking about the drab, young woman lying on his couch. Gabriele Taylor recently moved to Miami and claimed to possess a unique phobia. If she turned out to be half as interesting as her preliminary workup made her out to be, she might be an entire chapter in his next book. While not the top of his class as a psychiatrist, he’d written a couple of successful self-help books and was always looking for new material.

“Karma, Miss Taylor?” He took a seat at his desk, resisting the urge to turn up the thermostat again. “Do you feel you’ve done something you need to make amends for?”

“I must have.” She looked up at him with big brown eyes. Gabriele Taylor was in her mid-twenties, although she appeared older. Limp brown hair framed a thin and tired face, and her body was soft and padded in all the wrong places. “Why else would this be happening to me? Other therapists laughed at me. Said they didn’t even have a name for my phobia.”

“Really?” Dr. Alex asked. He suddenly paid attention. “Well, I’ve been able to help a lot of people, Miss Taylor. I believe by working together we can wrestle that demon of yours into submission.”

Her eyes opened wide, and he saw they were no longer brown but the same muddy gray as the sky outside the window.

“I hope so,” she said. “I’m at the end of my rope. If I look for anyplace warmer, I’ll have to leave the U.S.”

He gave her his biggest smile, a smile that worked well with his female patients. “Miss Taylor, may I call you Gabriele? I am intrigued by your case. On the phone, you said that the cold is trying to kill you?”

“Winter,” she corrected. “Actually, my grandmother.”

“Which is it?” he asked, picking up his notebook for the first time. “Is winter or your grandmother trying to kill you?”

“Both.” She seemed embarrassed. “I suppressed my grandmother trying to kill me —”

“Let’s start with the phobia,” he interjected. “When did you become afraid of winter?”

“When it tried to kill me. I was working in a New England summer camp. I was in two bad car accidents, months apart, both of them due to snow and ice.”

“New England does have blizzards,” he said.

“It was summer.”

“Oh. Were you hurt?”

“No. I managed to get my seatbelt off and jump free.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with your grandmother.”

Gabriele took a deep breath. “My grandmother is winter. Wherever I move, she follows me. It’s only a matter of time until she succeeds in catching me.”

“Why would your grandmother want to kill you?” He took more notes. This girl’s unique phobia, along with its background, could be his entire next book.

“She has to kill me so I can become winter and take her place.” Gabriele sounded sincere. “It’s a family thing.”