Scarecrow cover art has arrived. The third anthology of fantasy and horror (and a little sci-fi) short stories in the series Rhonda Parrish's Magical Menageries.

Feeling wolfish and witchy? Revisit Wolves and Witches a fairy tale collection by Amanda C. Davis and Megan Engelhardt, re-released this week with a special author interview conducted by Annie Locke. 

Do you attend a book club? Book club interest in Wolves and Witches has prompted us to create a set of discussion questions to generate conversation and get things going at your reading group's next meeting. BYO Wine. 

The full interview and book club questions can be found in the back of all new copies of Wolves and Witches, both the ebook and paperback. Have an older edition? Snag the PDF of the bonus content on the bottom of the Wolves and Witches page. 

And check out the opening of Annie Locke's interview below!

Find it Online:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Goodreads
Independent Bookstores
Kobo
OmniLit
WorldWeaverPress.com 

For a limited time, the first anthology in Rhonda Parrish's Magical Menageries, Fae, is on sale for just $0.99 -- that's US$0.99 or CND$0.99 -- at all major ebook retailers including the WWP website. 

And as of this writing, Fae is among the top 20 paid ebooks on Amazon Canada and #1 in all its genre sub-categories on both Amazon Canada and Kobo Canada.

We hope you'll take this chance to snag your ebook copy of Fae and devour all the dark and delicious stories within to get you ready for the rest of the anthology series: Corvidae, Scarecrow, and Sirens.

Our second query-reading period of 2015 closed on June 30, and the numbers are (mostly) in. As per request (and, oh my, have we had requests for these stats on Twitter!), we're sharing some of the stats about the kind of submissions we received and the percentages receiving requests for full/partial manuscripts as well as those receiving personalized rejections. 

Queries received in total: 99
Length of query period: 30 days
Received as a result of an #SFFpit request: 10+
Received as a result of an #PitMad request: 5

During June, both WWP and our imprint Red Moon Romance were open to query letters. We've not counted the strictly-romance queries in the WWP stats we're sharing today; however, there was a substantial number of queries for sf-romance, fantasy-romance, or paranormal-romance, some of which came in directed to WWP and some to RMR, for that area of overlap, we've included the data in our shared stats. 

As a general note: any query that comes in to WWP or RMR comes into the same inbox, read by the same editors. This means if a query is on the borderline between what each imprint does, all editors from both imprints take a look. If we decide we want to publish that project, then the editor and the author have a conversation about which press/imprint would be best for the title, but that's a consideration that comes long after the slush pile.

Not everything adds up to 99. There are two considerations to note: First, some manuscripts fit into multiple categories among the following lists, so the categories when totaled may add up to more than 99; Conversely, some queries didn't tick any boxes in a sub-set. Second consideration, this is not a precise gathering of data, not by a long shot. 

We'd like to introduce everyone to our newest author, A. E. Decker!

A. E. Decker hails from Pennsylvania. A former doll-maker and ESL tutor, she earned a master’s degree in history, where she developed a love of turning old stories upside-down to see what fell out of them. This led in turn to the writing of her YA novel, The Falling of the Moon. A graduate of Odyssey 2011, her short fiction has appeared in such venues as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine, and in World Weaver Press’s own Specter Spectacular. Like all writers, she is owned by three cats. Come visit her, her cats, and her fur Daleks at wordsmeetworld.com.

A. E. Decker's novel The Falling of the Moon is a witty, quirky young adult fantasy novel and the first in a series that sets the storybook notions of "happily ever after" and "some day my prince will come" on their ears. Blending fantasy, fairy tale, and comedy-of-manners, this adventure features a team of underdogs and unexpected sidekicks that will make a great read--and you'll be able to get your hands on a copy October 27, 2015! Check back for more information as we get closer to release date.

We're the first to admit that publishing with a small press isn't right for every story--there's always been more than one path to print for a story, and today there are more paths than ever before--but for the right story, small press publication holds a great deal of merit.

This summer, our Editor-in-Chief, Eileen Wiedbrauk, was invited to guest-post on the Odyssey Writing Workshop blog, where she discusses what a small press is, and how being small and independent of the concerns of a large business structure allows the small press to take chances and focus on niches that aren't as well-served by large publishers.

If you check out the full article, you'll also get to hear about the things that were important to us as we built WWP from passion into press.

Corvidae is out this week, and I’m am super stoked but also definitely feeling the pressure, dudes.

Corvidae is full of speculative fiction stories about, you guessed it, corvids. I freaking adore corvids. I’ve always felt a kind of kinship with them—I even have a murder of crows as a tattoo. Working on this anthology I wanted to do justice to the topic, not just how people have felt about these creatures since ancient times but also the birds themselves. I wanted stories that captured their intelligence, capriciousness and beauty and, despite my own personal bias toward magpie stories, I also wanted as wide a range of corvids as possible. I put a lot of pressure on myself.

This anthology, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the second in the series Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries.

Read that series title again.

Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries.

Rhonda Parrish’s.

Me. My name. Right there in the series title. It’s not just on the cover of the book, it’s there in the name of series. Holy cheeseballs, Batman!

But wait, there’s more!

The first book in Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries(!) was Fae. People love Fae. I love it, the contributors love it, reviewers love it, readers love it. People. Love. Fae. The same people who read and loved Fae are likely to read Corvidae and I want them to love it just as much. Or more. The words ‘Sophomore Slump’ rarely left my mind the whole time I was working on Corvidae because above all else I want not to disappoint.

Now it’s time to share the results with the world and so I’m feeling the pressure. But it’s a weird kind of pressure, one that is combined with excitement, pride and optimism. Because this is a great anthology.

Everyone who is involved with it has worked really hard to make sure it is something special. I even asked a corvid (in the form of @YegMagpie) to look it over and make sure it was super shiny. In fact, he wrote cawmentaries to go with each story which you can read here.

From the Great War to far-away planets and everywhere in between, these stories and poems feature jays, magpies, crows, ravens, choughs, and rooks; they spotlight corvid intelligence, playfulness, and self-awareness while also exploring their darkness and their light.

So if you like corvids, if you like speculative fiction and especially if you liked Fae, you are going to love Corvidae. But until I hear it from you—the readers—directly I’m still going to feel that pressure. And maybe that’s okay.