Clockwork, Curses, and Coal (ebook)
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Anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish.
Series: Punked Up Fairy Tales
Fantasy / Short Story Anthology
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Ebook
ISBN-13: 978-1734054514
Anthology: Approx. 83,000 words / 280 pages
Also available as a trade paperback
Find it Online:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Goodreads
Independent Bookstores
Ingram
iTunes/Apple iBooks
Kobo
Wholesale: Ingram or direct: World Weaver Press.
Series: Punked Up Fairy Tales
Fantasy / Short Story Anthology
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Ebook
ISBN-13: 978-1734054514
Anthology: Approx. 83,000 words / 280 pages
Also available as a trade paperback
Find it Online:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Goodreads
Independent Bookstores
Ingram
iTunes/Apple iBooks
Kobo
Wholesale: Ingram or direct: World Weaver Press.
DescriptionFairies threaten the world of artifice and technology, forcing the royal family to solve a riddle to stop their world from irrevocable change; a dishonest merchant uses automatons as vessels for his secrets and lies; a woman discovers the secret of three princesses whose shoes get scuffed while they sleep. These and so many other steampunk and gaslamp fairy tales await within the pages of Clockwork, Curses and Coal.
Retellings of Hansel and Gretel, The Princess and the Pea, Pinocchio, The Twelve Dancing Princesses and more are all showcased alongside some original fairy tale-like stories. Featuring stories by Melissa Bobe, Adam Brekenridge, Beth Cato, MLD Curelas, Joseph Halden, Reese Hogan, Diana Hurlburt, Christina Johnson, Alethea Kontis, Lex T. Lindsay, Wendy Nikel, Brian Trent, Laura VanArendonk Baugh and Sarah Van Goethem. Table of Contents“The Iron Revolution” by Christina Ruth Johnson
“Clockwork Tea” by Joseph Halden “A Future of Towers Made” by Beth Cato “A Bird Girl in the Dark of Night” by Sarah Van Goethem “Checkmate” by Brian Trent “Necromancy” by Melissa Bobe “Blood and Clockwork” by Wendy Nikel “Sappho and Erinna” by Lex T. Lindsay “Divine Spark” by Diana Hurlburt “The Balance of Memory” by Reese Hogan “The Giant and the Unicorn” by Alethea Kontis “Ningyō” by Laura VanArendonk Baugh “Father Worm” by Adam Breckenridge “The Coach Girl” by M.L.D. Curelas ExcerptsVideo Excerpt From Checkmate by Brian Trent
From "Perry Featherstone’s Peculiars" by Sarah Van Goethem
Jane was seven when her sisters went missing. When they were stolen by the dreadful Perry Featherstone the first time the circus came to Aldermoor. That was nine years ago now. Jane’s father had sent her to the butcher. Jane remembers this exactly, because they could rarely afford meat. But that day she stepped over the blood-soaked gutter and braved the shop, shiny coins in hand. She carefully avoided looking at the half bodies of the pigs and cows, sawn down the middle, and the plucked fowl hanging from the rafters. She did, however, scoop a feather from the floor and tuck it into her straggly hair. “Four sausages,” she told the man with the gleaming muscled arms when he finally paid her attention. That’s what Papa had said. Get us some bags of mystery, Jane. Now that’s a good girl. Run along. Jane stopped to see Mrs. Lydia Sophronia Dawkins before she went back upstairs. Hello bird girl, Mrs. Dawkins said when she saw the feather in Jane’s hair. Have you seen my sweet Jane? Jane liked that. Bird girl. It was better than the lucky one, the fortunate sister. She dawdled, filling her face with petit fours, laying them across the counter and pecking at them like a bird, while Mrs. Dawkins iced a cake with almond paste. Jane took too long; she knows that now. But she liked the separateness from her sisters. The space to breathe. To be someone else. She often wondered what it was like to be them, to never have space to yourself. To be attached to another person. Jane liked the feeling—until she returned. Until she found her sisters were gone and so was the circus. From "Father Worm" by Adam Brekenridge Some of Amber’s earliest memories were watching her father walk among the ark of birds they caged in the yard, singing to them in whistlesong, his melody sowing some frenzy into them that she could only assume was patriarchal love. Amber knew how much she loved her father and, tiny as she was, tinier still was every bird who flitted around in their cages, burning a profound energy that she believed was their inability to contain their love for him within their frail bodies. She would run among the cages, trying to match the wavelength of their energy, whistling to them her own songs of love. She always stopped before she exhausted herself too much, because she feared that if she burned herself out she would have no more love to give. At the end of every month her father would take some of the cages through the village to the hill on the other side of the valley. There he would release them in a ceremony she was forbidden to attend. “He’s giving the birds back to the sun,” her mom would tell her, the only explanation she was ever given. On every occasion of this ceremony Amber would devise a scheme to slip away from the care of Whitlock, the family’s mechanical servant, who could anticipate her plans as deftly as a grandmaster playing chess against a novice. Every time she thought she had mastered her escape she would turn a corner to find him waiting for her. “I have more eyes than you know,” he’d laugh as he scooped her up and carried her back to the house on his shoulders, steam blowing in her face from the valve in the back of his head as he chuckled at his own cleverness. It always felt like rain to her. “Why am I not allowed to watch the birds go free?” she asked him once. “Because there is a truth to the ceremony that you are not ready for,” he’d say, “and when you learn it, you will long for your innocence.” For most of the rest of the month Amber could forget her curiosity in watching her father sing to the birds and dig through the yard for worms to feed them with. This task Amber was allowed to help with. The dirt beneath the grass had a kingdom of worms, so many that Amber swore the ground sometimes wobbled with their movements. Even in her small hands a clump of dirt would have a whole family of them, squirming between her fingers, exploring her skin, slipping away sometimes to plop back into the earth. The feeling of them disgusted her, and yet she would sometimes crouch down to wonder at the little holes they made and where they might lead. “They’re beautiful aren’t they,” her father had asked her once while she’d been studying their movements. He’d been standing between her and the sun, so that when she looked up at him she was blinded even in the presence of his shadow. “You don’t mean the worms, do you?” she’d asked. “What else would I mean? They’re the only creatures brave enough to hide themselves from the sun.” He paused a moment. “And we give their lives to these idiot birds.” That was the first time she’d heard her father express his love for the worms. That love was as repulsive to her as the worms themselves, but fascinating too in its way. The birds also loved them, so much so that they’d eat them. It was strange though, to love something so much that you would eat it. Surely that was madness. About the AnthologistLike a magpie, Rhonda Parrish is constantly distracted by shiny things. She’s the editor of many anthologies and author of plenty of books, stories and poems. She lives with her husband and three cats in Edmonton, Alberta, and she can often be found there playing Dungeons and Dragons, bingeing crime dramas or cheering on the Oilers.
Her website, updated regularly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com and her Patreon, updated even more regularly, is at https://www.patreon.com/RhondaParrish. |
More Like ThisPraise"The technological flights of fancy are always intriguing, and fairy tale lovers will enjoy deducing the inspiration for each tale. Readers will not be disappointed."
--Publishers Weekly "Clockwork, Curses, and Coal accomplished something pretty special. For the first time in all of my years of reading, I adored every single story in an anthology. I hope other readers love them just as much as I did." --Long and Short Reviews "…possibly her best yet… What I like most about Parrish, though, is not just her high standards and imaginative themes, but her ability to attract a diverse group of new voices that represent a full range of what speculative fiction has to offer." --Ottawa Review of Books "All in all, this is a particularly solid and well-put-together collection even compared to Parrish’s other anthologies. There are exciting highs, disturbing lows, and a lot of great adventure along the way." --The Future Fire |
