[Table of Contents Reveal]: GRIMM, GRIT, AND GASOLINE

Dieselpunk and decopunk are alternative history re-imaginings of (roughly) the WWI and WWII eras. These are tales with the grit of roaring bombers, rumbling tanks, of 'We Can Do It', the Great Depression and old time gangsters, or with the glamour of flappers, Hollywood starlets, smoky jazz, elegant cars and Radio City Music Hall. Plus fairy tales.

Two young women defy the devil with the power of friendship. The pilot of a talking plane discovers a woman who transforms into a swan every night and is pulled into a much more personal conflict than the war he’s already fighting. A pair of twins with special powers find themselves in Eva Braun’s custody and wrapped up in a nefarious plan. A team of female special agents must destroy a secret weapon–the spindle–before it can be deployed. Retellings of The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Monkey King, Swan Lake, Pinocchio and more are all showcased alongside some original fairy tale-like stories. 

GRIMM, GRIT, AND GASOLINE: Dieselpunk and Decopunk Fairy Tales will be available in ebook and paperback September 3, 2019. We're pleased to share the Table of Contents with you today!

“Circles and Salt” by Sara Cleto
“Salvage” by A.A. Medina
“The Loch” by Zannier Alejandra
“Evening Chorus” by Lizz Donnelly
“To Go West” by Laura VanArendonk Baugh
“Bonne Chance Confidential” by Jack Bates
“늑대 - The Neugdae” by Juliet Harper
“The Rescue of Tresses Malone” by Alena Van Arendonk
“Daughters of Earth and Air” by Robert E. Vardeman
“Easy as Eating Pie” by Amanda C. Davis
“Accidents are Not Possible” by Sarah Van Goethem
“A Princess, a Spy, and a Dwarf Walked into a Bar Full of Nazis” by Patrick Bollivar
“Steel Dragons of a Luminous Sky” by Brian Trent
“Ramps and Rocket” by Alicia K Anderson
“As The Spindle Burns” by Nellie K. Neves
“Make This Water No Deeper” by Blake Jessop
“One Hundred Years” by Jennifer R. Donohue
“Things Forgotten on the Cliffs of Avevig” by Wendy Nikel

About the Authors

Dr. Sara Cleto is a folklorist, author, and teacher. She recently completed her PhD in English and Folklore, and she is a co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic where she teaches courses on fairy tales, creative writing, mythic adaptation, and more. Her poetry and fiction can be found in Uncanny Magazine, Faerie Magazine, Liminality, Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, and others. Her story in this collection, “Circles and Salt,” is a response to the gruesome but fascinating Grimms’ fairy tale “The Girl Without Hands.” She lives in liminal space with her husband and their cats. She can be found at saracleto.com and carterhaughschool.com.
 
A. A. Medina is the co-owner and editor of Aphotic Realm Magazine and author of the transgressive-horror novella, Siphon. When he is not melting in the Arizona sun or rewriting the same three chapters of his next book, Medina writes short stories. One in particular may be inspired by the first World War’s nine martyr villages of Verdun and his favorite childhood tale about a magical boy named Pinocchio.
 
Zannier Alejandra grew up in Cochabamba, Bolivia, land of coffee and eternal sunshine. After university, she set out to travel the world and ended up living in London, where both coffee and sun seem to be in short supply. In a past life, Zannier was a credit analyst at an international bank, but traded in her spreadsheets for more creative pursuits. Nowadays, she spends most of her time writing short fiction, watching movies and analyzing TV. She even gets paid for two out of those things on a regular basis. Her story, "The Loch," was inspired by the ballet Swan Lake.
 
Lizz Donnelly is a writer, knitter, cat lady and baking enthusiast. She spent several years as a cocktail waitress in a four star resort; a job which lent some inspiration to her retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale.” Her writing has recently appeared in Speculative City, Non Binary Review and Drabble Harvest, among others. You can find her on Twitter @LizzDonnelly and on Patreon, where she writes a monthly Science Fiction blog series called Canon Blast!   
 
Laura VanArendonk Baugh loves writing with all kinds of folklore and so appreciated the chance to engage with the world’s best-known folk tale (if less familiar in the Americas), of the Monkey King and the Journey to the West. Bringing it to the Dust Bowl was a play on the westward journey she thinks Xuanzang/Tripitaka and his friends might have appreciated. She can often be found writing tales of youkai or weaving epic fantasy or eating dark chocolate. You can find more of her award-winning folklore-based and original fiction at www.LauraVAB.com.
 
Jack Bates is a three-time finalist for a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. In 2007 he co-wrote WHITE OUT, a horror screenplay that had its option picked up twice by Triboro Films in New York. His stories have appeared at crime sites such as Near to the Knuckle, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp and many others. He has also appeared twice before in Mystery Weekly. Most recently his short, ‘The Fakahatchee Goonch’ was included in the Bouchercon 2018 anthology, FLORIDA HAPPENS.
          Drawing on his experience as an educator, Bates sets his Cinderella based story in the Hudson Bay region of New York. The homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is not accidental. After deconstructing both stories, certain tropes and themes align. Re-inventing self is major component of each story. Both characters yearn to be free of their poverty level lives. One takes matters into his own hands while the other has a chance encounter. Either way, fate has a way of putting a twist on the final outcome.
 
Juliet Harper is a queer witch and horror writer who hails from well off the path through the forest, residing among the wolves and flowers. Her love for all things wild, transcendental, and horrific often inspires her writing, resulting in such other stories as "To See the Light," published in Mad Scientist Journal, and "Beast," published on the Mills College art museum blog. She enjoys exploring the odder side of mundane, bringing horror, or magic, to the everyday, seeking to paint the ultimate gory but delicious scene for her readers. 
          Harper possesses a B.S. in Forensic Psychology and is currently working toward attaining her Masters in Creative Writing at Mills College in Oakland, CA. 
 
Alena Van Arendonk inhabits a virtual creative pentathalon, shuffling the hats of writer, actor, artist, seamstress, and costume designer. Her hair is long enough that she has received her fair share of Rapunzel jokes, but she insists that in no way influenced her choice of fairy tale.
 
Writing is a lonely profession, as Robert E. Vardeman knows well after more than 40 years at it. The sense of otherness and pain and rejection in “The Little Mermaid” speaks volumes to him. But his crazy optimism offsets even such sorrow. There should be hope in the world, and his current short short story takes that tale a little farther to soar into a realm above loss and the guns of The Great War.
 
Amanda C. Davis likes fancy baking almost as much as she likes fairy-tale retellings, so Hansel and Gretel was a perfect choice. Her other dark, funny takes on fairy tales have appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Mirror Dance, and others; in 2013 they were collected with pieces by her sister Megan Engelhardt in Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection. You can read more on her website at http://www.amandacdavis.com or follow her tweets at @davisac1.
 
Sarah Van Goethem is a Canadian author who resides in southwestern Ontario. She spent lazy childhood summers on the farm, reading on the old tire swing beneath the maple tree, believing in fairytales. Her first YA novel was in PitchWars (2016), her second novel was longlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award (2018), and she’s busy working on her third. She’s also won various awards for her short stories. Sarah is a nature lover, a wanderer of dark forests, and a gatherer of vintage. You can find her at auctions, thrift stores, and trespassing at abandoned Gingerbread houses. But don’t worry, she always leaves herself a breadcrumb (or pebble?) trail to find her way home.
 
Patrick Bollivar has always enjoyed fairy tales involving princesses, especially the ones where heroes fight their way to the top of a tower.  When not indulging his fantasies, Patrick works at the top of a tower at Vancouver Airport while his princess works from home, managing their two little dwarfs.  You can read more of his short stories in Pulp Literature Magazine, Tesseracts Nineteen: Superheroes Universe, and Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland.       
 
Brian Trent is the author of the sci-fi-novel Ten Thousand Thunders (published in 2018 by Flame Tree Press), and the Rahotep dark fantasy series. His contribution to Grimm, Grit and Gasoline is an original tale that explores dieselpunk in a deliberately non-western setting, mixing in fairy tale elements from ancient Chinese and Japanese traditions. His short fiction regularly appears in the world’s top markets, including Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Terraform, Daily Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, and more. A Writers of the Future winner and contributing author to Baen Books anthologies, Trent lives in a foggy mountaintop town in New England. His website is www.briantrent.com.
 
On nights and weekends, Alicia K. Anderson squeezes creative writing between the assignments for a Ph.D. program in Mythological Studies. During the weekday, she is a freelance SEO consultant–which is a form of wizardry in its own right. Sometimes she wishes she were locked in a tower with only occasional headaches from visiting loved ones. Alas, her husband and stepson don’t have to ask her to let her hair down to gain entry to her lair. At best, they sometimes knock. 
 
A self-proclaimed California country girl, Nellie K Neves is an independent author, contributes to RAC Magazine, and spends most weekends crafting culinary delights. As depicted by her Lindy Johnson series, Nellie has a penchant for writing about strong female characters caught in the midst of adversity with plots known for exacting twists and turns. That is what drew her to the Brother’s Grimm tale, “The Twelve Huntsmen”. The story depicts a woman separated from her love, but she remains close to him as part of a twelve woman royal guard with a cunning plan to reunite with her prince. In her version, “As the Spindle Burns”, Nellie pairs elements of the original fairytale with her interest in famous women throughout history, specifically female spies like Mati Hari. But it’s best to remember,  nothing is ever as it seems, especially not in love and war. 
 
Blake Jessop is a Canadian author of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories with a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Adelaide. You can read another one of his original fairy tales in “Terra! Tara! Terror!” from Third Flatiron Anthologies, or follow him on Twitter @everydayjisei.
 
Jennifer R. Donohue is from the Jersey Shore and now lives in central New York with her husband and her Doberman, where she works at her local library and facilitates a writing workshop. She grew up with pierogies and her grandmother’s Polish lullabies. Inspiration from this story came from the legend of the sleeping knights, who would one day gallop out from under the mountain and fight for Poland once more. Her work has appeared in Escape Pod, Mythic Delirium, Truancy, and elsewhere. Her novella Run With the Hunted is available in paperback and on most digital platforms. She blogs at Authorized Musings, where she shares fiction and the tribulations of the writing life, and tweets @AuthorizedMusin
 
Wendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author who enjoys sitting out on her back porch with a cup of coffee and watching the birds (though, no, she hasn’t seen Hugin and Munin, the mythological ravens featured in this story, yet -- probably because Utah is too far from Scandinavia). Her short fiction has been published by Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and is forthcoming from Analog and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her time travel novella series, beginning with The Continuum, is available from World Weaver Press. For more info, visit wendynikel.com

About the Anthologist

Rhonda Parrish is the editor of more than a dozen anthologies including, most recently, Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinns and Tesseracts: Nevertheless.

In addition, Rhonda’s written work has been in publications such as Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 & 2015). Her YA Thriller, Hollow, is forthcoming (March 2020) and her website, updated regularly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com

More anthologies from Rhonda Parrish