Unicorns locked away in the cargo holds of spaceships, becoming roller skating phenoms or leaving sparkly rainbow poop in a poor bartender’s living room are just the start. There’s a demi-god trying to figure out where Pegasus has disappeared to, horses formed of sea, or steam and even one who thinks he’s a spider. And so much more. These stories are all a little untamed, a little wild, a little… untethered.
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Let’s hear today from Annie Douglass Lima, an author of YA whom I know only online, because she lives and teaches in a country I’ve never yet visited. She has a new book out today in her YA fantasy series, and you can grab it for free while it’s fresh. So let’s take a moment to check it out, okay?
Continue reading“Magic mixes with grease and jazz in this fantastic new anthology that brims with strong heroines, diverse settings, and a heaping helping of Nazi-punching.”
—Nebula Award-nominated Beth Cato, author of Breath of Earth
That’s the early word on Grimm, Grit, & Gasoline, a dieselpunk fairy tale collection. And today we get to see the cover!
Continue readingI’m excited to announce that my young adult action and adventure novel, The Gladiator and the Guard, is now available for purchase! This is the second book in the Krillonian Chronicles, sequel to The Collar and the Cavvarach.
Bensin, a teenage slave and martial artist, is desperate to see his little sister freed. But only victory in the Krillonian Empire’s most prestigious tournament will allow him to secretly arrange for Ellie’s escape. Dangerous people are closing in on her, however, and Bensin is running out of time. With his one hope fading quickly away, how can Bensin save Ellie from a life of slavery and abuse?
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Don Gutoski captured the graphic and stunning image he called “A tale of two foxes,” winning Photographer of the Year. You can see a large version and read more here.
I usually try to keep an eye open for good fox photography, but this is a really unusual image, demonstrating the rawness of nature and the conflict between species due to climate change.
I wonder if this image might inspire a scene in the next Kitsune Tales installment? Hmm….
Pleiades Star Cluster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So I’m sitting in a session at Realm Makers 2015, called “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Philosophy and Theology as Found in Science Fiction and Fantasy.” Which is a pretty fascinating topic, really.
And the speaker, Steve Laube (both an agent at Steve Laube Agency and editor at Enclave Press) mentioned something I’ve heard before, but it’s not the kind of thing that gets old. Continue reading
Market Square Arena, the site of Elvis’s very last concert. Dun dun DUUUUN! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m not gonna lie — I am not a fan of crowdfunding an unknown creative project. Every time I see someone posting, “Hi, you don’t know me and I have no evidence of work ethic or talent, but please give me thousands of dollars to encourage me to be artistic,” I get a little rage-y on behalf of all those who do the work first.
It’s a bit different when it’s an established creative who has proven talent. I have contributed to crowdfunding projects by artists whose work I’ve enjoyed previously.
And it’s more different still when the crowdfunding is to enable 100% of the sales to go to a good cause, without having to first pay back production costs. Continue reading
One of my favorite things about Route 66 is discovering relics of a previous age, America’s answer to ancient ruins.
Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What’s good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It’s happy for deep people.“Blink,” episode of Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat
Route 66 is full of old things, and many of them are falling apart from decades of abandonment. Here’s a gallery of some of my favorite findings. Continue reading
The water was a lot of dead algae and also (not pictured) a thick pancake batter-like sludgy foam. Yech.
So, I missed the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold conference last weekend, and I feel pretty bad about that. I’ve been to the Colorado Gold only once, last year, but I really enjoyed the people I met there and the conference sessions themselves.
Dead fish everywhere. We should maybe rethink some of our environmental stewardship choices.
But I did get to spend a weekend at another (non-writing) event with friends, being eaten by mosquitos beside the highly questionable waters of Maumee Bay and Lake Erie, so that was some consolation. The tap water was officially safe again, but the lake water, not so much. I’ll let you know if the pollution-affected mutant mosquito bites turn out to have imbued me with superpowers. We can always hope. Continue reading
