My first annual awards suggestion post

Yeah, I'm late to the awards nomination party. Surprise! But if you've still got space on your Hugo or Nebula ballots--or are looking forward to the 2015 World Fantasy Awards--have I got some suggestions for you.

First the writing. This year I had three eligible stories published. How you classify them depends on the award, so I'll give you all the relevant details. In ascending order of size, they are:

"The Wizard of Woodrow Park" published in The Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens (Zombies Need Brains, LLC)
Hunting for a rogue anthropologist, Aviann Special Agent Hreaak Meekram finds himself confronting a wizard.
(7,000 words)

"The Gap in the Fence" published in Athena's Daughters (Silence in the Library Publishing)
Ten-year-old Ana will do anything to save her best friend’s dog–even challenge the fairies who live beyond “The Gap in the Fence”.
(9,600 words)

"Glass Transit" in Hellfire Lounge 4: Reflections of Evil (Bold Venture Press)
Bumbling sorcerers Eddie Woodhouse and Ducky “Duke” Orr get more than they bargain for when they leap from a magical bottle into the skies over Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937.
(13,500 words)

And don't forget all those anthologies are eligible for Best Anthology or Best Related Work, depending on the award. But honestly, one 2014 anthology knocks them and every other potential contender out of the park: Unconventional Fantasy, a celebration of 40 years of World Fantasy Cons published by the Baltimore Washington Area Worldcon Association.

Go ahead, accuse me of favoritism. I'm one of the editors, along with Peggy Rae Sapienza, Sam Lubell and Bill Campbell. But look at the stats.

The six (yep, six!) volumes of Unconventional Fantasy comprise over 250 short stories, essays and poems by best-selling, award-winning authors and amazing new talent. We're talking writers like Neil Gaiman, Hideyuki Kikuchi, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip and Joyce Carol Oates. Then there's the art. In addition to the catalogue of the Virgil Finlay exhibit hosted by World Fantasy Con 2014 and the fifty-image gallery of WFC 2014 Artist Guest of Honor Les Edwards, the collection features over two hundred images of artists from around the world--artists like Alicia Austin, Kathleen Jennings, Dr. Moro and Mahendra Singh. To cap it off, there's a 100-image pictorial gallery of World Fantasy Cons past. Taken together it's over 3,200 pages of text.

The anthology was formatted in PDF, MOBI and EPUB on a souvenir thumb drive given away (yep, as free!) to all members of WFC2014. As publications go, it was a very limited edition, but thanks to the generosity of our contributors, we just might be able to offer an electronic version to 2015 Worldcon and World Fantasy Con members if the collection makes it to the final awards ballots.

And if that's not a reason to vote it on every major ballot, I don't know what is.

Happy voting!

Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens is officially ticking!

Just in time for you to see what all the fuss is about before Zombies Need Brains starts up another Kickstarter, ZNB's first anthology, Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens has landed at a retailer near you. It's got Steampunk. It's got little green men, bug-eyed monsters, secret agent chickens and Chihuahuas. What more do you need ?

A table of contents? We can do that:

"The Cavorite Job" by Ian Tregillis
"Gracie's Fire" by Leah Cutter
"Quinta Essentia" by Bradley P. Beaulieu
"When Comrade Ekaterina Died for the Motherland" by J.R. Hargenrader
"A Clockwork Alien" by Gini Koch
"Heart of the Empire" by Jason Palmatier
"The Red Queen and the White" by C.B. Pratt
"The Wizard of Woodrow Park" by Jean Marie Ward (me!)
"Of War and Wings" by Tansy Raynor Roberts
"Airship Down: A Sound and Fury Adventure" by Gail Z. and Larry N. Martin
"Steamsuit" by David J. Fortier
"Fingers of Steam, Veins of Gold" by Brad Hafford
"Heart of Clockwork" by S.C. Butler
"Lady Antheia's Guide to Horticultural Warfare" by Seanan McGuire

All edited by the irrepressible Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, the same folks who brought you The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity and After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar.
Wanna taste? I've got your excerpt right here. Or you could check out one of the early reviews:

"They take a steampunk nineteenth century…and add aliens. Would Earth even recognize the threat? It’s a nod to industrialism… A high-five to technological advancement… And, above all, kudos to the genius of action-packed prose."

Word of the Nerd 

Not only that, the book comes in all your favorite flavors:

Trade Paperback 

Kindle

Kobo 

Nook

What are you waiting for? Those Chihuahuas can't hold out forever, you know. ;-)

"Burning Down the House" for Fun and Promo

I missed the posting deadline for Six Sentence Sunday for the second week in a row. Bad blogger, that's me. By way of apology, I thought I'd offer a slightly longer excerpt from "Burning Down the House" from Hellfire Lounge 3: Jinn Rummy which will be launched at Balticon, May 25-28. I promise to share the date, time and details as soon as I learn them. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy what happens after our poor protagonist Eddie Woodhouse sits in that big comfy chair:

“Do you have the bottle?” he asked.

A flash from the dance floor lit her eyes like an evil smile. She placed an empty absinthe bottle on the table.

“May your next transfer run as smoothly as the one from your bank.” The blare of the music muted the scrape of her scimitar nails along the glass. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do this someplace more private?”

“No.” The jinni inside him lashed his face. He couldn’t hide the bulge of their shared skin or his flinch of pain.

The woman added teeth to her smile. “Your funeral. I trust you’ll be more careful where you stick your straw in the future.”

Her exit line raised a different kind of welt, but he didn’t care as long as she left. Nobody paid any attention to a fat man in a club full of beautiful people. More importantly, the security cams and warding spells focused on the tables would keep her from trying anything more than what he paid for. He’d never been a contender in the magical department, but he never thought he’d sink so low that he’d owe his life to the sorcerous paranoia of Ducky “Duc d’Or”.

Eddie’s teeth chattered against the glass as he closed his lips around the neck of the bottle and chanted the first of the thirty-one goetic evocations from The Secret Key of Solomon under his breath. The words didn’t always make sense, but he suspected the real spell lay in his mind’s desperate prayer: “Take this damned thing outta me and I’ll never do magic. I’ll never so much as make a wish. Never. Ever.”

The words burned his throat. Never. The jinni swelled inside his lungs until he thought his ribs would explode. Ever.

#

What happens next? Well, you'll just have to read the story--or come to the launch--to find out.

Sparkly Cover Goodness

Yeah, I know, you've been wondering whether I forgot how to do this blog thing. Not quite. I just wanted to save it until I had something to make you go Ooooooh! And I do, Ben Fogletto's wonderful cover for Hellfire Lounge 2, where you'll find one of my darker little stories, "Billy's Monster".
I don't have an ISBN or release day yet, but when I do, you'll hear it here first. Not to worry, you won't be bored in the meantime. It'll take days to see all the fabulous details in this image. Enjoy!

Yesterday I Will

Last August, Jim Levin of the York Emporium bookstore and curiosity shop announced a writing competition. The only criteria were the story had to be under five thousand words and it needed to carry the title "Yesterday I Will". Inspired by a preview of Weird Tales' first One-Minute Weird Tale, I wrote a 69-word story that I thought was pretty funny. Fortunately, the judges agreed. The story made it to the final anthology, which I finally got to hold in my hot little hands at Balticon. No reviews so far, and it's only available through Fortress Publishing, Amazon and The York Emporium, but if you like new voices and edgy science fiction, this is the anthology for you.

And then there's my story... ;-)