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and all the writers and artists who donated their work,
here is our benefit anthology.
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You can read about it here:
To Ukraine, With Love
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and you can ask your local library to order copies!
Read some great science fiction, fantasy, myths, fairy tales, and eldritch stories, while enjoying the artwork.
Interior illustrations for this version are in black & white. Full color versions may be out by the end of November.
Next year there will also be an audiobook version.
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Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2024:
New Story
“In Space No-One Can Hear You Play Alto Sax” is a winner in the short, short category for
The Kepler Award 2023
March28 28, 2024, in Science Fiction
“In Space No-One Can Hear You Play Alto Sax”
by Hesper Leveret
The departure lounge is vast, echoing in the sterilized air with the voices of thousands of people waiting for their assigned shuttle up to the ships.
Everyone is a stranger. We just all have the same dream of settling the new world we call Goldy – a Goldilocks planet in the Dorado constellation.
But we don’t have to wait until we’re 100 light years from Earth to start working together.
New Story
“Call of the Void” is a winner in the short category for
The Kepler Award 2023
February 28, 2024, in Science Fiction
“Call of the Void”
by Bridgette Dutta Portman
Jones’s suicide will be the last. Commander Hennepin will make sure of that.
He digs Jones’ grave as the mottled orb of Jupiter hangs overhead. It’s full today, as it is every eighty-five Earth hours.
Hennepin avoids looking at it. Not that he’s afraid. But both of the prior suicides happened when the planet was in its full phase, with the entirety of its swirling clouds lit up by the distant sun.
A New Story
In Eldritch
January 29, 2024, in Eldritch
“Under the Ghost Star”
by Erik VanBezooijen
A Vlakk witch’s 13th birthday is always momentous. For on that day, her mentor gifts her a special insignia and frees her to seek her own destiny.
But on Kuma’s 13th birthday, beneath the crossroads, beneath the Fivefold Catacomb, she faced the Death Spirit, who in a voice like grating coal blocks, told her “You shall remain here in the dark earth, be my most ardent worshiper, supplying my sacrifices, and the roots of this place shall feed on your soul and mind, your body and bones forever…”
And Kuma answered the Death Spirit…
Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2023:
Here’s hoping for a
Happy New Year
for us all.
New Story
December 31, 2023, in Fantasy
The first time Able saw Ana, he thought she was an angel. Maybe because the light outlined her in gold and lit a halo around her hair.
Or possibly because her smile was so radiant she seemed more than human.
But probably, it was due to the large, white wings strapped to her back.
New Story
in Stories for Young People of All Ages
“The Flip Side”
by Hall Jameson
I had arrived in a box with an orange kitten the Keepers called Carrot and a speckled kitten they called Dot. Me, they called mostly, OhNo! but sometimes, StopThat! or GetDown!
Then I fell off the beam in the Basking Room, and landed in a very different place…
A New Story
October 25, 2023, in Fantasy
by Douglas Schwarz
The man who appeared at my elbow after the accident was obviously a demon. I had other things on my mind though, like the paramedics desperately trying to keep my body alive.
Then he told me he was there to collect me according to the terms of my contract.
What contract?
August 31, 2023, in Science Fiction
‘No flash,’ said the man, shaking his head. ‘I want something… custom.’
May 28, 2023, in Science Fiction
Annie sat on her garden swing letting her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, just like Daddy had shown her.
The brighter stars appeared first, then the smaller, fainter stars, until the black sky was dotted with the tiny flecks of light.
It was a perfect night for star gazing. No moon, no cloud.
Inside, something was happening.
Men from Daddy’s work were talking with Mummy. And Uncle Trevor had come round. There was something wrong
Something they all wanted to talk about without her listening
So, Annie had been bundled out to look at the stars.
A New Story
In Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales
April 30, 2023, in Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales
“Soul Arbitration”
by Rustin Lovewell
Hel arrives first.
The ground at the northern beachhead opens like an inverted gate, rocks and black pebbles sloughing away in a fall that drowns out the crashing surf.
My skin prickles.
I clutch the armrests of my stone seat as the goddess emerges from the depths,
moonlight reflecting off her bone crown.
Mist clings to her garments like phantom hands.
New Story
March 29, 2023, in Science Fiction
Just playing checkers in the park.
Talking about the latest toy they would produce.
All by themselves.
New Story
Valentine’s Day 2023
February 14, 2023 in Science Fiction
“Tomorrow Is a Difficult Proposition”
by Kris Bowser
“We’ll talk later.” I tell you, with such casual smoothness you have no idea how poor my grasp of “later” actually is.
Then I expand out to formless thought-feeling-presence. I am around your ship, through your ship. I have no edges, no body, only a calmness like shade and meditation and cool water.
I unfold within a nebula, a fair harbor for thought, while patterns form in the blooming and exploding of stars as millennia sweep by.
I return to where you were, but find I have lost you.
You could be anywhere. I’m hazy on the time as well, and so I search backwards and forwards.
I rush through all the reaches of the cosmos where your people have explored and built civilizations, and I rummage through planets and systems like opening and shutting drawers in rapid search.
And all I have to aid my search is a set of dingy keys.
New Story
January 31, 2023, in Science Fiction
“BCALLI, SINGER OF THE STRING”
I directed the 800,000 planetesimals in my sector of the inner edge of the Öpik-Oort Cloud encasing the Solar system.
We were deployed to keep the germs’ madness quarantined until they blew up their world.
Always on our toes and never sleeping, millennia passed quietly, as it does on watch,
just an occasional comet shooting off toward the inner system.
Then came a song.
On the String.
∼ Main Terminal ∼
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Science fiction, fantasy, myths, legends, fairy tales, and eldritch stories, podcasts, artwork, interviews, reviews, and articles, from around the world and throughout time.