The perfect grab-bag of Halloween fun, from free books to ghosts to corgis in costume -- read on!

Treat! Glamour by Andrea Janes is free today-only on Kindle. Get your copy of this funny, witchy novel where the lives of the haves and the have-nots collide . . . in an ice cream shop . . . with witches. It's awesome.

Got ghosts? What about animal ghosts or the creepiest New Mexico ghostwalk ever, or NYC's Boroughs of the Dead, or how about thirteen creepy stories of ghosts, specters, and things we can't quite identify in Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales? Right now when you use the code HAUNTED at checkout, the ebook edition is 50% off the sale price.

Last day to submit to Corvidae and Scarecrow anthologies is today. Information here. But if you keep scrolling down that page you'll see another treat: Far Orbit: Apogee a sequel to the first Far Orbit anthology will be accepting submissions starting in the new year.

Dressing up this year? These eight super-sexy Halloween costumes for moms may not be what you're expecting. And these five nerdy science costume ideas are uber delightful.

Add a little humor to your Halloween with a Southern belle and a Velvet Elvis painting possessed by the King himself in Susan Abel Sullivan's The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama, also 50% off the ebook sale price on WWP when you use the code HAUNTED at checkout.

Seeking: Assistant Editor(s) to grow Red Moon Romance and/or World Weaver Press lines through the acquisition and editing of novel- and novella-length works of romance and/or speculative fiction. Independent contractor position. Pays 15% (and up) of net sales of completed editing projects. 

Minimum Qualifications:

• Experience editing (commercial) fiction / working with authors
• Query/slush reading experience
• Ability to bring 3-12 projects from slush to production each year (editor's availability will determine the number of projects to be stipulated in annual contract)
• Strong grasp of grammar, styling, and usage
• Familiarity with Chicago Manual of Style, and Oxford (US) dictionary or Miriam Webster
• Education/coursework/employment in related field
• Ability to work remotely while staying in touch with WWP/Red Moon team via email and video conference

Assistant Editor position is responsible for selecting submissions from the query/reading phase of submission, bringing the project to Editor-in-Chief for approval, then completing substantive and line edits on the project in tandem with the author, and coordinating with the author through copyediting, production, and publicity. Editors who can successfully complete their own copyediting can increase their percentage of payment. All editors will be expected to attend a minimum of one video-conference office meeting per month (office meetings happen weekly).

Applicants should specify whether they are seeking to work with Red Moon Romance or World Weaver Press. Some training will be provided but experience is preferred and love of genre fiction is absolutely required. Previous WWP interns are encouraged to apply.

Interested candidates should contact publisher [at] worldweaverpress [dot] com with letter of interest and résumé directed to Eileen Wiedbrauk, Editor-in-Chief.


Edited to add: As of December 21, 2014, we are closed to applications for the Assistant Editor positions. All applicants have been notified by email that the search is closed. We look forward to introducing everyone to the new editors in January!

Rebecca Roland, author of Shards of History, a fabulous NA fantasy, and the collection The King of Ash and Bones writes: 

I'm one of those people who loves autumn. I love how the air grows crisp, I love how obsessed I become with baking because it's finally cool enough to use the oven without sweating every time I open it, and I love how it signals that the holidays are approaching, which means celebrations and time with loved ones.

This was part of the reason I decided to set my short story "The Road Home" during autumn. The story follows Rasmus, one of the secondary characters from my novel Shards of History, as he returns home for the first time after being exiled years before. He's bringing gifts for the harvest festival, which is a huge celebration put on and enjoyed by his entire village.

By Kristina Wojtaszek.

In late September I found myself wandering through the library, wishing only to curl up with something new despite my hectic schedule. As my fingers grazed book spines, I came across one with a curiously simple title: GHOST STORIES. I plucked it from the shelf and shuffled through the pages, then flipped back at the sight of a black and white sketch of a desolate looking basset hound. I didn't bother with the title or author, but rushed head first into the story of Dog and his sickly child owner, the unusual narrative reading like the winding flow of conscious of a hound exploring his secret world of scents. When I finished, I was surprised to find it had been written by Ray Bradbury! Why had I never heard of The Emissary before now? It was just the kind of beautifully eerie, yet somewhat heart warming tale I had been aiming for with my own supernatural dog story, Cinder, published last Fall in Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales.

By Rebecca Roland, author of Shards of History.

A few years ago, I went on a ghost tour in Old Town in Albuquerque. All of the stories I heard that night fascinated me, but one in particular stuck with me.

On the night that I went on the ghost tour, it was late summer, mostly warm with just a hint of chill in the air letting us know that fall was on its way. We met at the main square, a place that was usually bustling with tourists during the day, but at night was almost entirely deserted. It felt like a good night to go searching for ghosts.

Our first stop on the ghost tour was at a restaurant. Many of the old adobe buildings in Old Town used to be houses. People were born in those houses, lived in them, and died in them. This particular building is over a hundred years old.

We stood outside one of the large windows of the restaurant as the tour guide told us about the building and one of the spirits that haunts it. Through the window I could see a tiled foyer and a staircase leading up. The restaurant was closed, and the inside of the building empty and lit by security lights.

One of the people who lived in the building a long time ago was a little girl named Victoria. She was eight years old when she contracted tuberculosis and died. Her spirit is one of several said to haunt the restaurant. Sometimes she even showed herself through the very window we stood in front of. She was always seen wearing a dress and a smile.

By Bascomb James.

Sailors and pirates—“Arrr!”—are a natural pairing in many swashbuckling adventure stories. Traditional sea pirate stories were often inspired by the European merchant trade with the East and Spanish trade with the New World. During the 18th century, it took about six months for a merchant ship to travel from London to Calcutta via the Cape of Good Hope. Cargos therefore, had to be durable, portable, and valuable. Valuable cargos in heavily-laden, slow-moving cargo ships were a favorite prey of pirates and other brigands. Pirates and pirate stories made an easy transition to the emerging science fiction market, appearing in juvenile and adult science fiction stories. We saw pirates in the movies, on television, and in our SF literature. It did not matter if the protagonist was a pirate or fighting pirates, we always knew there would be a chase, a heroic struggle, and at the end, we would share the winner’s exultation. Author David Wesley Hill delivers space pirates—“Jasper takes what Jasper wants”—as well as a hard science take on physics of planetary travel among the rings of Saturn.

David Wesley Hill is an award-winning writer with more than thirty stories published in the U.S. and internationally. In 1997 he was presented with the Golden Bridge award at the International Conference on Science Fiction in Beijing, and in 1999 he placed second in the Writers of the Future contest. In 2007, 2009, and 2011 Mr. Hill was awarded residencies at the Blue Mountain Center, a writers and artists retreat in the Adirondacks.

Saturn Slingshot
by David Wesley Hill
(Opening)

Serendipity  was an old ship. For more than two centuries she had sailed the same slow course from the inner planets to the Jovian moons and out toward the Kuiper Belt, that clot of comets lying between Neptune and Pluto. There, after unloading cargo and picking up freight bound sunward, her crew would adjust Serendipity’s sail, align the spinning prismatic circle of Kapton19(tm) at an angle to the distant solar orb, and begin the decade-long spiral back toward the heart of the system. Serendipity had made eleven such round-trip voyages.