Jennie Posthumous on Supernatural Streets (Now, only $0.99)

Jennie Posthumous on Supernatural Streets (Now, only $0.99), and the origin story for her tale in the anthology.  

A Hunting We will Go

Staunton, Virginia is known as a historic city. From the architecture to being the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. There are also cemeteries dating back to the 1700s. One of those is Thornrose Cemetery, dating back to around 1750. 

Thonrose was used in my first Lady of Death novel, The Fae's Amulet. It's a gorgeous place where people still go to walk around. There are even benches, flowers, and wildlife. (Disclaimer: I also have family buried there, though not in any of the mausoleums.)

There's also Pokemon Go stops.

The husband and I enjoy playing Pokemon Go. It's a fun game. While driving through the cemetery to get stops, we stumbled across some local police officers near a large pile of red clay mud. (It's Virginia, red clay is the thing here.) I guess it's where they dump the extra dirt and mud. Anyway, these poor officers are standing around the edge looking at something. One is talking on his handset and the other's body language said he was uneasy about something. Since that pile of dirt is a good ways from the single-car road, we found another route and left them to their business.

That did not stop the husband and myself from joking about what they were looking at. The conversation went something along the lines of:

Husband: They found a bone.

Me: Well, duh. It is a cemetery. Maybe they found a femur! (Anyone who has kids will recognize the Disney COCO reference.)

Husband: But there's no graves over there. 

Me: It's a really big femur. Dragon, maybe?

Husband: That’s too obvious. It would have to be something more unusual.

And that got us to talking, and joking, about what type of bone it would be. Some other references to movies and such were also thrown in, because we have kids and are nerds/geeks.

And then came the call for short stories for the Supernatural Streets anthology. It seemed all the pieces were falling into place for a story about a griffin femur found at Thornrose. Of course it had to be set in the Lady of Death universe!

A Hunting We Will Go features Chris and Curtis, a pair of best friends who work at Fellhaven Restaurant and Tavern (a fictional restaurant in the nearby city of Waynesboro). Close enough to be brothers, the pair go hunting for a creature from another realm and find something more than they bargained for.

A fun story to right, it gives a little more insight into some fun side characters.

Julie Frost on The Genesis of “Brave Day Sunk in Hideous Night” for Supernatural Streets

Another guest post on Supernatural Streets. This time, from Julie Frost 

The Genesis of “Brave Day Sunk in Hideous Night”

Julie Frost 

The origin of the whole “Pack Dynamics” universe is a bit weird and a lot convoluted.

When the first “Iron Man” movie came out, I got a little obsessed. Scratch that. Wholly obsessed. Tony was so messed up, and Pepper so long-suffering, that they were just... irresistible. Yeah, I shipped that, and shipped it hard. So I sat down and bashed out a novelette starring two characters that totally were not them in any way, shape, manner, or form. Ha. It was the first story I’d ever written without any speculative elements whatsoever. It was basically a romance (I don’t write romance, by the way) with a lot of torture, as Not-Tony and Not-Pepper get in a plane crash in Bosnia and are captured by terrorists. I loved it to itty-bitty pieces.

And it was completely unsalable. Short romance was not a Thing in 2007.

I lamented to my Writing Buddy about how I needed to add a spec element so I could actually make some beer money with the thing. He mused for a minute and said, “Make her a werewolf. She’s hiding her condition from him. Wackiness, as we say, ensues.”

So I did. The length doubled. I never did place it (werewolf romance novellas are a hard sell, who knew?), but I eventually self-pubbed it because I could and because by then I had a novel series to hang it on. One publisher rejected it but said that it was the best title they’d seen all year. I’m rather fond of “Piles of Cash and Killer Benefits” myself. I am pretty sure my Writing Buddy came up with that too.

A year later, give or take, the Iron Man Train was still chugging merrily along, and I was basically devouring every movie Robert Downey, Jr., has ever been in. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” crossed my radar, and I thought it was the best movie I’ve ever seen that only twelve people have even heard of, let alone watched. And I got to thinking, double the Downey, double the fun, what if I mash KKBB and Iron Man together, Tony hires Harry and Perry to look into some industrial espionage for him, whee.

My issue with that was that I didn’t want to write fanfiction anymore. But I was three thousand words into it, madly scribbling when I got a spare minute at Denvention 3 (the 2008 Denver WorldCon), and also lamenting to high Heaven and anyone who would listen about ARGH FANFIC MAKE IT STOP BUT ALSO I LOVE THIS.

A kind soul tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t you have a universe you can drop characters like this into?”

I blinked. Why, yes. Yes, I did.

Long story short, “Pack Dynamics” turned into a prequel of “Piles of Cash,” and I sold it seven years later to WordFire Press.

Ben is nothing like Harry. Harry is a clueless, incompetent doofus. We love him because he’s got a good heart and he tries hard. While Ben is Damaged with a capital D, he is actually skilled at his job. I imported Harry’s White Knight Syndrome, and--like Harry--he gets kidnapped and beaten up a lot, but that’s where the resemblance ends. We love him (hopefully) because he fights for the things he believes in, doesn’t see himself as a victim, and is almost painfully self-aware.

Now, I’m a short story writer at heart. Novels are hard. In the six years between the time I wrote “Pack Dynamics” and its sale, I managed to scribble several short stories and novelettes set in the universe, including this one. Ben is a favorite creation of mine, and I love tossing him face-first into a situation and seeing how he’ll react to it.

When I sat down and started outlining projects for a short-story NaNo endeavor in 2013, I knew I had to write a Ben story. So I started poking through private eye websites to see what sort of job I could hang some fiction on, and decided to combine a repo with a skip trace. But a normal repo would be boring, so I decided to mix it up a little and have my brand of fun with it while also traumatizing Ben. Again.

It’s what I do. 

Buy Supernatural Streets here

Rob Reed's Night Hawks for Supernatural Streets

The anthology Supernatural Streets is out and ready for debut.

And I'm not the only one in this anthology. Meet Rob Reed, as he talks about his short story, Night Hawks.

The origins of my story “Night Hawks” in the “Supernatural Streets” anthology

Rob Reed

As co-editor of the urban fantasy anthology “Supernatural Streets” I went back and forth on whether I’d include one of my own stories. I had several ideas I really wanted to write, but we had more good stories then spots available, and I didn’t want to bump someone just to run my own story.

That changed when we had a couple authors drop out close to the last minute for different personal reasons. There was no heartburn on my end. They are both pros and were upfront about their reasons and I’d work with either person again. But, that left us two stories down and we needed to fill at least one of those holes with a new story.

Enter Frank and Tiny. I had created these characters in my mind as sort of a look at the “dark underbelly” of what monster hunting might be like as a lifestyle. I wanted to explore the toll it would take on the characters and how they’d cope.

I also wanted to create a story that was fun to read. It had to have relatable characters, some well-staged action, and more than a touch of humor.

I had their world. I had their voice. All I needed now was a story. The germ of the idea started with something I’d observed in my own life. I stretched it out into a running gag that also gave me a pivotal bit of action near the climax. That first piece helped structure the rest of the plot complications.

One thing I like about this story is that I wound up using every idea I thought up along the way. Every character trait, every joke, every little bit of business I envisioned, they all made it into the final product. Some of them were changed along the way, smoothed out a bit or restructured slightly to fit the other pieces better, but they all made it in. Like a well-built bicycle on Christmas morning, there were no extra pieces left over when I was done.

The title is deliberately evocative of the masterful Edward Hopper painting, “Nighthawks.” I had that image in mind when mulling over the characters. It’s no coincidence the story opens with the two main characters at an all-night truck stop reminiscent (in my mind at least) of the diner in the painting.

What’s amazing to me is how close the final story on the page is to how I originally envisioned the story in my head. Even before I had all the details worked out I had a vision for what I wanted the story to be and the result is as true to that vision as anything I’ve ever written.

I hope you all enjoy the result.

Buy Supernatural Streets here.

The return of the Planetary anthologies

So, Pluto is out

Luna is out.

And the returning anthologies are already up and ready to go.

Mars is up for pre-order, and it has a new editor. 

Mercury is back for pre-order 

As is Venus.

You can pretty much order or pre-order the entire series as of right now. Just click here.

But yeah. They've got editors and they've got covers, and they have release dates and everything.

Tuscany Bay is such a nice, efficient publisher, and they run a tight ship.

It's so nice working with people who know what they're doing.

The entire Planetary Anthology series.

Luna Anthology: The Hyland Resolution by Justin Tarquin

I mus admit to quite enjoying The Hyland resolution.

Here, the description.

It works better if you read it in the voice of Rod Serling. But then, so do most things.

Charles Hyland is a harmless mathematics professor on an academic junket. When his fellow faculty are caught in the crossfire of an interplanetary war, their only hope is that Charles can extricate himself from the labyrinth of his own mind.

Justin Tarquin on 

"The Hyland Resolution"

I got the germ of the idea that became the story “The Hyland Resolution” about four years ago next month. I remember because I know what sparked it: it was the episode “For The Girl Who Has Everything” of SUPERGIRL, in which our heroine was attacked by a Kryptonian critter called a Black Mercy (because the Kryptonians used it as a humane method of execution). The Black Mercy’s venom or whatever induces a coma filled with dreams that fulfill the victim’s deepest desires, before ultimately killing him—unless he somehow rejects the happy fantasy.

I only watched the first five or ten minutes, because by the end of its first season I had had my fill of this series and was only tuning in occasionally for long enough to see if the basic idea seemed interesting. Sometime if I only see the beginning of a story, I can abstract out the basic problem that drives the plot and think of a completely different way to present and handle it that might make a good original story. (Perry Mason seems to inspire me that way sometimes.)

I’m probably not the only one who does this: this particular episode’s idea has been around the block many times. I see in Wikipedia that the Supergirl writers cribbed it from a Superman comic (“For The Man Who Has Everything”: even thriftily reusing 83% of the title), and my brother tells me there was an episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER on the same idea. 

Declan Finn, our worthy LUNA editor, pointed me to an episode of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (a very good series I’d never watched till then) where Bruce Wayne is trapped in a dream in which he had never become Batman, because his parents had never been killed. How far back does this plot concept go, I wonder? Does it trace back to the scene where Odysseus loses some crewmen to the Lotus Eaters?

I don’t know how the SUPERGIRL writers handled it, though my guess would be that it involved a lot of emoting and sharing of feelings. But as I thought about it myself, I realized two things: first, that I did have an original idea how a person could be snapped out of such a fantasy; and second, that my protagonist would be a mathematician. To say more would be to give spoilers. I drafted a very short piece, set on Earth, about a math professor named Charles Hyland. But my first draft seemed to be lacking vitality; I shelved it without even giving it a title and went on with other things for awhile.

With Luna, I remembered my draft and returned to it.

It needed fleshing out, and the themes of the anthology provided direction for how I could proceed. Dreams, check. Madness, well, check. Loneliness and despair? What if my mathematician, Charles N. Hyland (the N is for Norbert, but that never comes up in the story), is a man of many troubles, who uses mathematics as an escape for thinking of things that upset him? The Moon … I moved my setting to a university on the Moon in the early days of its colonization, a university in a Lunar city, established by Christians from Central and South America, fleeing the religious persecution of the increasingly secularized governments on Earth, named El Redentor: Spanish for “The Redeemer”. (None of this comes up in the story, either.) The ubiquitous AI that Hyland consults sometimes, like an advanced web search application, I named Thoth, after the Egyptian god of wisdom, records, and the Moon; and I put in a couple other faint allusions (or Easter eggs) of moony lore.

As for the theme of despair, I pulled in an idea I have about the coming century of colonization of the Solar System, that I think SF writers have short-changed … namely, war. For some reason, as far as I know, everyone seems to imagine that the opening up of vast stretches of new real estate on the Moon and elsewhere will all be handled in as peaceful and orderly a fashion as a session of Congress devoted to voting themselves a raise. On the contrary, to me it seems natural that some spots on the Moon and elsewhere are going to be particularly desirable, and the colonizers will inevitably come into conflict over them and turn to their various governments on Earth to defend their interests. The Moon may be a pretty violent place for its first few decades … plenty of conflict for stories, and excuse for despair.

So how would my absent-minded Professor Hyland deal with wartime emergencies? He’d go through the motions while striving to keep his mind on his mathematics. That could give me a nice opening scene, developing his character in the midst of some intense action. At least for me, the opening scene is good for a chuckle.

By the way, for those who enjoy number puzzles (I can never understand why there aren’t more of us), the story contains one or two, understated and in no way essential to enjoying the story, but solvable. Nothing fancy—rather like figuring out why Spock said there were 1,771,561 tribbles in the grain bin that emptied out over Captain Kirk.


Declan and Jagi liked “The Hyland Resolution”, and then we had a long wait as the production of Superversive Press’s Planetary Anthology series slowed down to a halt, and ultimately the publishing enterprise that had produced a lot of good reading closed its doors. 

But Tuscany Bay Books picked up the project and has issued Pluto and Luna with a new look. “The Hyland Resolution” is one of 22 stories in this 600+ page volume. I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve read so far.

BUY LUNA HERE!!!!!

Justin M. Tarquin has lived about fifteen forty-thirds of his life (so far) in the Chicago area, and remembers going to John Paul II’s Mass in Grant Park just a few weeks after he moved there. From this you can work out his age to within a month if you feel so inclined. By day he tries to pay the mortgage by making spreadsheets and databases yield up their secrets, and in the evening he cooks dinner for his family. His enchiladas, though perhaps not worth dying for, would surely be worth a light maiming: say, two or three hit points. If he has a few minutes free when no one is looking, he is probably having entirely too much fun with some number puzzle; but if he gets a few hours, he will be found reading or writing science fiction and fantasy in the basement. His goal as a writer is to make readers feel the way he does when he watches How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), at the part where the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes bigger.

Steve Johnson on "The Doom that Came to Necropolis", for Luna

This is one of those intros that just lent itself to Rod Serling.

Don't believe me?

Ahem

Necropolis is a small town, complete with small town values and small town myths. Unbeknownst to them, their doom is about to arrive, riding a motorcycle, clad in a leather jacket and armed with the weapons of science. His mission is simple, but about to trigger a war that can only be waged in … the Lunar zone.

See what I mean?

Steve Johnson on "The Doom that Came to Necropolis"

“Necropolis” came about when I was working on prose styles, which should more honestly be called slavishly copying E.E. “Doc” Smith. His Lensmen are super-competent, with more options and resources than your average superhero, so they don’t spend a lot of time tracking down purse snatchers. I needed an enemy, and who’s better than Cthulhu?

This led to “what would a story in which a Lensman went up against Cthulhu sound like?” Both Lovecraft and Smith used complex sentences with many dependent clauses, a wide vocabulary, and even similar simile-stacking compound-comparison stupendously starkly adjectivial exaggerations! So I was able to work out a pretty dead-on combination of their styles.

That was more important to me, actually, then who was in it or what happened! Bruce Glassco, a fellow Clarionite who created the game “Betrayal at the House on the Hill”, suggested a typically hapless Lovecraft protagonist to play up the contrast, and boy did that help. Most of the story is Monk-and-Ham, Remo-and-Chuin bickering and banter, until the plot literally kicks in the door and makes them stop.

I’m still in love with the idea, by the way. I recently debuted the first chapter of a novella pitting a Doc Savage imitation against a very close copy of Cthulhu, without quite giving copyright lawyers any reason to salivate in anticipation.  Now the clear-eyed hero has a coterie of friends to help him, and a significantly bigger threat to deal with. If it works, expect a whole series of Space Men vs. the Great Old Ones stories, each bigger, more over-the-top, and more fun than the last. It would be nice to have a pulp formula like Doc Savage did, to keep the series going forever, but the big question for me in any series concept is “can you top this?”

 BUY LUNA HERE

Steven G. Johnson has reported on crimes, butchered pineapple, reviewed comic books and now teaches high school. A book-a-day man from way back, he can quote passages of Starship Troopers and the Lensman series from memory, which would be terribly useful if they were given equal weight in the curriculum to Shakespeare. That would be the only advantage of giving them equal weight to Shakespeare: the increase of Steven G. Johnson's educational usefulness. He has told convention audiences that the important things remain important, no matter what century or fictive universe: love, death, fear, power, loyalty, friendship, war and family. The crunchy bits like zombie biker sorcery from Mars are wonderfully tasty, but they are not the meal. He thinks the scariest two-word phrase in the language is "Aztec dentist" and is not at all sure he would like hearing an even scarier one. Steve and his wife, historical author Virginia C. Johnson, reside in Fredericksburg, Virginia in an old house with a tower, with their son, Benedict von Graf, their loyal dog Max, and a stable of cats. The dog is also stable. 

Luna: The Anthology Trailer

As I said, the Luna anthology is finally out.

Brought to you by the awesome Tuscany Bay press.

LA Behm on Another Fine day in the Corps, in the Luna Anthology

As I've done for the past few days, I've been posting from the various and sundry people who contributed to the Luna anthology. 

Another Fine Day in the Corps was originally scheduled for the Dark half of the anthology.

And no, I didn't put it there for the swear words. 

Sigh. Another "shoulda woulda coulda" from Luna. 

Had I thought about it more, I would have gone back and put back some of the swearing. Oops.

The short version of the story is simple.

Some days, you get the bear.

Some days, the bear is packing mortar rounds.

Another Fine Day in the Corps,

or where did it come from?

L.A. Behm II

A question I get asked a lot (as do most of the other authors I talk with) is where do you get the ideas for your stories.  This one I'm blaming on a creative writing course, the video game X-Com 2 and really bad late night TV.

So, twenty mumble odd years ago, I took a creative writing class in college, more as a lark than anything else.  One of the things that the professor posited to the class as a whole was that you, as an author, could start a story in any manner you wanted.  Of course, there was someone who disagreed.  They specifically said 'Oh, but surely you can't start a story with profanity'.  The professor grinned and looked at me.  As a non-traditional student – twenty eight and working on my second degree – I was the go to guy when the professor wanted the opinion or a statement from someone who was old enough to drink.  I pointed out that I'd read stories that started with everything but the queen mother of swear words -as Ralphie in A Christmas Story puts it - and I had a few thoughts about starting a story with that one.  Needless to say, that got me a very huffy response.  

Fast forward a few years (twenty one or so), and I'm sitting in the living room playing X-Com2, while my father in law watches some inane war movie on TV.  And by inane, I mean really, really horribly bad.  They were doing the kind of things that'd get you killed in other war movies, let alone real life.  That, along with the mission name I'd just been given in X-Com (Babylonian Sword) struck a chord with me and I sat there and wrote a 1000 word flash fiction story, called Operation Babylonian Sword.  Which, honestly sat on my computer, looking forlorn for a long time, until Declan put out a call for submissions for Luna.  

When the submission call went out, I dusted off the micro story, tweaked it a bit, and sent it in.  The rest, as they say, is a lot of hard work.  Edits were made.  Emails were sent.  More edits were made. Word choices were reconsidered – my characters tend to speak in expletives, in part because I spent way to much time around the USMC, and expletives are used there like most normal folks use 'uh'.  I toned them down . . . well, a bit.  

Enjoy the story!

BUY LUNA HERE.

L.A. Behm I: Born and raised in Texas, he's done a bit of everything - civilian contractor in Iraq, volunteer fireman, warehouseman, mortician's assistant, newspaper opinion columnist, tech support, logistics coordination, poet, and even driven a bus for a while. A two time graduate of Southwest Texas State University, he spends his days writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy, painting miniatures, and watching his cats perform parkour. 

Luna Anthology: Samaritan, by Karl Gallagher

When I was put in charge of the Luna anthology, my first choice was to approach people I knew and could rely on. On authors who I knew would come through.

Karl was easily one of my first choices. His Torchship Trilogy was a finalist for the 2018 Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian Science Fiction Novel... and it was nowhere near as squicky as Stranger in a Strange Land.

When bioengineered germs are floating on the wind, the only way for the Amish to avoid high technology is to move to the Moon. But even in that splendid desolation you can't help seeing the neighbors sometimes.

Karl Gallagher, on his story "Samaritan" for the Luna anthology.

"Samaritan." Thomas' people settled on the Moon to avoid contamination from biotech and nanotech gadgets. But when a high-tech spacer crashes Thomas must risk exile from his home to save the stranger's life.

As our world experiments with new technology, it's hard to be in the control group. Peer pressure forces people to buy smartphones and join Facebook. GMO-phobes find their "pure" veggies are catching pollen from improved plants. When we have nanotech robots and artificial bacteria it'll be even harder to block unwanted tech.

So what's someone wanting the simple life to do? Move away. Far away.

To someplace where no breeze can carry the latest invention into your yard. Naturally there's no place on Earth like that--we only have the one atmosphere.

The true control group will have to live on the Moon, separated by vacuum from technology they don't trust. But who'd want to live without the latest and greatest toys? We already have them: the Amish, better known as "Old Order" communites, and Hutterite and other denominations who form isolated farming communities separate from modern society.

Would they be willing to move to the Moon? Certainly not all. But if that's the only way to prevent nanobots infiltrating their bloodstream, some would. They'd likely be subsidized by the kinds of billionaires who worry about AIs and other existential risks, and this wouldn't be an option until there are existing lunar settlements.

So in the year 2100 there may be a portion of the Moon "off limits" to current technology, inhabited by religious settlers using technology close to the Apollo era.

I originally conceived that idea for the GURPS Transhuman Space roleplaying setting. This is a game where where a dead person's mind copied into a robot is an almost boring character. I wanted to create a foil for the transhumanist weirdness flooding the setting, and a runaway Amish kid in space seemed just the ticket.

Some years later it came back to me as I was brainstorming a new story. Rather than make my viewpoint character a runaway I chose someone who wants to stay home and settle down. When he sees a "modern" injured after his spaceship crashes there's a dilemma--help the stranger or keep himself safe?

BUY LUNA HERE.

Karl K. Gallagher is a systems engineer, currently performing data analysis for a major aerospace company. In the past he calculated trajectories for a commercial launch rocket start-up, operated satellites as a US Air Force officer, and selected orbits for government and commercial satellites. Karl lives in Saginaw, TX with his family. His novels Torchship, Torchship Pilot, and Torchship Captain are available on Amazon and Audible.

Luna Anthology: Squeeze on the Moon, by Lou Antonelli

We got the Dragon Award finalist Lou Antonelli to talk about writing his short story Squeeze on the Moon

There’s history, and there’s alternate history, and then there’s secret history- when the tale told is fantastical but doesn’t conflict with the public record. Here’s a little tale of an exploration you’ll never hear about in the media. You wonder about these little government projects sometimes, don’t you?

It's Lou doing alternate history. How can you say no?

 Lou Antonelli, on writing "Squeeze on the Moon" for Luna

An expert in disaster recovery gets the opportunity of a lifetime – plus a little walk down memory lane. Sometimes you find nostalgia in the strangest of locales.

Over the years I’ve had songs become the prod, if not the basis, of a number of short stories. Song titles can be useful hooks to get the author off high center and putting words on paper – or pixels. Stories I have written that take off from song titles include “Hearts Made of Stone”, “Rome, If You Want To”, “Stuck in the Middle with You”, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, among others,

A song can be an excellent way of setting a story’s locale in time. Also, sometimes you can work it into the plot. For example, in my short story “The Return of Alfred Bester”, a crucial clue is given when one character mentions Fontella Bass as a way of giving someone a signal. The clue being Fontella Bass was a one-hit wonder from the 1960s, but that one hit was the song “Rescue Me”.

The music of my youth was the British New Wave, or Second Wave, whatever you want to call it – of the late 1970s and 1980s. When I heard the call for the Luna anthology, I recalled the song “Wrong Side of the Moon” by Squeeze from the album Argybargy. That was in 1980.

That got the gears turning, and so led to the story “Squeeze on the Moon” for the Luna anthology. It’s probably an unusual creative process, but it’s mine and I’m sticking to it.

One thing spec fic allows the author, and reader, to do is venture forth and explore without leaving his or her armchair. “Squeeze on the Moon” is that of story. This harkens back to the old days when a sense of wonder and “I wonder what’s out there?” drove so many stories. Literary science fiction has retreated and contracted into home-bound political correctness. Even when a story is set in the future or outer space, it’s just another left-wing fantasy.

I cut my teeth as a reader in the days before mainstream science fiction was politicized liberal bullshit, and so I like to think my stories still go back to those days when the future was bright and it was all still out there to be explored.

The millennial’s attitude towards spec fic seems to be “The world (or the future) sucks and so do we.” It’s projection from a generation of losers raised by the generation of traitors who collaborated with the Soviet Union so the U.S. would lose the Vietnam War.

Hopefully, we’ll see things slowly turn around. In the meanwhile, I think of Psalm 118:22: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

BUY LUNA HERE.

A life-long science fiction reader, Lou Antonelli turned his hand to writing fiction in middle age; his first story was published in 2003 when he was 46. Since then he has had 86 short stories published in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, in venues such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Jim Baen's Universe, Dark Recesses, Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine, Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD), and Daily Science Fiction, among others.

Richard Paolinelli on writing Polar Shift for Luna

This part of the anthology, Polar Shift, was described as: One morning, Sam Peck’s biggest worry was serving as best man at his friend’s wedding once they returned to Earth from the base on the Moon. Before the day was over his biggest worry would be finding out whether or not he is the last living human being in the entire universe.

Some days are not worth getting up in the morning.

Richard Paolinelli on writing 

Polar Shift for Luna

What would you do if, in one terrible instant, you went from being one of seven billion to possibly the only remaining living human being anywhere in the universe? Would you fight on to live one more day, hoping to find another survivor? Or would you go mad? Or maybe both?

So here I am, minding my own business, trying to get my next sci-fi novel started and completed before Christmas 2017 when somebody comes up with the brilliant idea to do an 11-volume planetary anthology.

As God is my witness, I tried to ignore the siren call. Really, I did. I stuck fingers in my ears and yelled “lalalalalalalalalalala!!!!!” at the top of my voice. 

For all of 10 seconds. 

Because it was at that point that one brain cell bumped into another (Yes, Virginia, I have more than one of them rattling around up there) and I recalled that I had notes for an anthology I wanted to write and most of the stories were perfectly aligned with many of the themes in this Planetary Anthology series.

“Darn you!!!!” I yelled, in the same tones us old guys use when we yell at those durn kids to get off of our lawns, and then quickly set down and got to work. 

And as if I wasn’t getting my schedule disrupted enough, Declan Finn e-mails me an invite to write something for Luna.

“Darn you, Declan!!!” I yelled, in the same tones an Exorcist uses when telling a demon “The power of Christ compels you!”, and with just about as much affect.

So I rummaged through the notes and came up with “Polar Shift”, a story about a man who suddenly finds himself the last known survivor of a cataclysm that has apparently eradicated the human race, with one exception. How he deals with his sudden isolation, with little hope of it ever ending, while trying to avoid slipping into madness, is the point of this story.

This story along with all of the others I submitted to this series – with one exception – is part of what would have been “The Last Humans Anthology I was planning to release in 2019. The overall theme is one human being, alone, trying to overcome an obstacle or impossible situation.

I hope you enjoy this story, along with the others that will appear in this series. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting back to work on that delayed novel from last year with hopes of getting it done.

Unless of course I get another e-mail…

BUY LUNA HERE

Richard Paolinelli began his writing career as a freelance writer in 1984 and gained his first fiction credit serving as the lead writer for the first two issues of the Elite Comics sci-fi/fantasy series, Seadragon. His sports writing career spans stops in New Mexico, Arizona and California. In 2010, Richard retired as a sportswriter and returned to his fiction writing roots. Since then he has written several novels – including the Dragon Award Finalist (Best Sci-Fi Novel), Escaping Infinity – three Sherlock Holmes pastiches, two non-fiction sports books and three novelettes. He is serving as co-editor for one of the 11 volumes of Tuscany Bay's Planetary Anthologies (Pluto) and will have his own short stories in several of the other volumes. His third full-length science-fiction novel, When The Gods Fell, is scheduled to be released on September 1, 2018 by Tuscany Bay Books. He is also a partner in Tuscany Bay Books with Jim Christina and founded the Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild (www.sffcguild.com) a not-for-profit organization aimed at promoting science-fiction and fantasy and its creators in many media platforms.


Escaping Infinity has been nominated for 2017 Dragon Awards Best Sci-Fi Novel; 2017 Readers' Favorite Awards - Honorable Mention; 2017 New Apple Summer E-Book Awards - Official Selection; 2017 ETWG Blue Ribbon Book Cover Contest – 2nd Place. Also won the 2001 California Newspaper Publishers Association award for Best Sports Story.

William Lehman on writing Vulcan III for Luna

Today we have another author who contributed to the Luna Anthology, William Lehman.

His story is Vulcan III: The first step to Mars was a refueling station on Luna.  Building it would take a special crew. Selected for compatibility, engineering savvy, and mental toughness.  This was their story.

Vulcan III

When Declan approached me about this project, I had only written one short story in my life, and it hadn't been published yet. (It can be found in "Secret Stairs: a tribute to urban legend") But I grew up reading Heinlein, Clark and Asimov so I thought I would take a crack at it. 

We were headed out to the coast for a long weekend (thanksgiving) and the whole way there this story was biting at the back of my neck.

I got so excited about this project that I wrote it over that weekend, in fact over just under two days of it, with space in there for walks on the beach.

My original intent had been to do a stand alone, but now I think this will turn out to be a distant prequel to the space opera series that I'll be writing when I get done with one or two more in my current series. Commander Bradford will be an ancestor of the hero of the piece, and an overnight at Frozen Base will be the final exercise before being sworn in as an officer of the United Space Service.

BUY LUNA HERE

William Lehman Joined the navy at 17, and spent the next 20 years as a Submarine Sonar technician during the end of the cold war, and through Gulf war one. He finished out his Navy career as the Work Programs Director at the Naval Brig Bangor WA and as a Reserve officer for the Bremerton Police department. Learning nothing, he went right back to work for the Navy as a civilian. He's the author of the John Fisher Novels Harvest of Evil, and Keeping the Faith, with Shadow War coming soon. He's also an avid elk hunter, a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and a Freemason. He currently lives in western Washington, with his wife, and various dogs and cats, the children being grown and on their own.

The Night My Father Shot the Werewolf, by Josh Griffing

The boys in Mrs. Carroll's third-grade class learned a lot last year, about things like cursive, and multiplying, and werewolves.

Welcome to the Luna anthology.

Things are gonna be strange.

Josh Griffing, on writing The Night My Father Shot the Werewolf

When a boy is nine, his Dad is the most important person in his life, and he should be able to look to Dad to defeat the monsters that hunt in the dark.  Sean Grady always knew his Dad would do whatever it took to keep the family safe:  this is Sean’s story.

I didn’t really write this one with the Luna Anthology in mind: in fact it was declined by Intergalactic Medicine Show before I’d even heard of the project.  I wrote it as an examination of a man’s duty to watch over his family and the measures that duty may require of him.

In some ways it’s a very personal story:  I used my own initials for the Dad and like him, I have something of a temper at times. One reader who saw the self-caricature even asked “Is there something you need to tell me?” But the events and—aside from a few broad lines of memoir—the characters are entirely the product of my overactive imagination. 

 A nod to Stephen King’s “Cycle of the Werewolf” is in order, if only subliminally, and a nod to the architects of leaky old schools in Southern cities where I daydreamed in my formative years.

The question of lycanthropy has long fascinated me, in terms of the division between human and animal identity, and the issue of the “moral monster” that Larry Correia handles so well in his MHI books, especially Alpha and Nemesis.  In fact, without a moral axis to the universe, one cannot well call a monster “evil” or call evil “monstrous”.  Even in H. P. Lovecraft, the horrors and demons that lurk behind the wrongness of the shadows seem to be merely Other and their terror is as much in the physical threats they pose or the psychic chaos of their divergence from the natural world.  Because Lovecraft’s amoralist world offers no Good, the evils he depicts cannot be defeated or even quite acknowledged before “The Rats in the Walls” devour all.

But in a moral universe, Good may conquer Evil, and even when it’s buried, it rises again to destroy the corruption.  This principle is a common trope in the old Lon Cheney Jr. wolfman films and much of the werewolf genre, and in the Hammer flick “The Gorgon” (1965) as well, when the monsters’ deaths revert them to their proper human forms, in honor (acknowleged or not) of the imagio dei within.  

In the fourth chapter of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar tells of God’s punishing his hubris with boanthropy—though no physical mutation happens—for seven years, and in Kipling’s famous Jungle Books, Mowgli grows up as a human boy among the wolves and beasts of the Indian jungle. Again and again, the theme of man’s distinction from the beasts he resembles is a source of wonder and inquiry, and many cultures share some form of a shape-shifter myth of creatures that are neither quite man or beast.  

Is it demonic, or a virus, or magic, or a long-muddied record of some other event long since forgotten, like dragons and giants and  world-washing floods?  Wherever the Man-among-Beasts comes from, it is the moral agency and duty of Man, integral to who he is as Man (or what C. S. Lewis called hnau in his Space Trilogy), that differentiates werewolves from almost every other monster genre, and without humanity as hnau, the monster might be called “werewolf” or “loup-garou”, but the result is merely one more generically shape-shifting monster story.

But I have said almost too much already.  Go get the anthology and read it for yourself!

Josh Griffing is an Army Reservist in Georgia who writes when he can, and reads when he can get away with it. 

He has two young children, four insolent cats, and a pair of small and yappy dogs. Amazingly, his wife is still very nearly sane, and for this he is eternally grateful.  

He blogs sometimes at https://subcreated-worlds.com/.

Tuscany Bay's Planetary Anthology: Luna

I am now happy to announce that Luna, the Planetary anthology I edited for Tuscany Bay, is live.

If you recall from when this project was first proposed, Luna was about madness, despair, dreams and illusions.

You know, all of the cheery subjects.

This will also debut the second short story by my wife, listed here as Margot St. Aubin.

Of course she's under an alias. Neither one of us want to be an easy target.

Luna has the following stories and authors.

These are the tales of the orb that lights our night sky and drives the tides of our oceans. The bright companion that orbits our planet, invades our dreams and drives us mad.

The Curse and the Covenant by Ann Margaret Lewis – Tal, in the land of Ur, is son to a Lord. When a demon offers his father a gift to make him and his people like gods, Tal knows it’s a bad idea.

The Doom that Came to Necropolis, by Steve Johnson – Necropolis is a small town, complete with small town values and small town myths. Unbeknownst to them, their doom is about to arrive, riding a motorcycle, and armed with the weapons of science.

How to Train your Werewolf, by Margot St. Aubin – Jason Branch recently escaped from a home for the insane. His only goal now is to rest and be left alone in the woods. But when strangers decide that the same stretch of land would be perfect for their needs, they will soon discover Jason's true madness.

Luna Sea, by Jody Lynn Nye – the moon can be a harsh mistress … or can she?

Regolith, by Penelope Laird – How far would you go to prevent your favorite band from being kidnapped and held for ransom on the Moon?

Crazy like an Elf, by Declan Finn – When astronomer Barbara Davis hired a private security firm, she didn’t expect a man who claimed to be from Middle Earth.

Samaritan, by Karl Gallagher – Thomas' people settled on the Moon to avoid contamination from biotech and nanotech gadgets. But when a high-tech spacer crashes Thomas must risk exile from his home to save the stranger's life.

Moonboy, by Karina L. Fabian – Cory Taylor is the first boy born on the moon and may just be the first to die on it. But his first attempt to leave the moon may move up that date to closer than even he expects.

Fly Me To the Moon, by Mark Wandrey – Annmarie Smith dreamed of going to space, and she finally succeeds in creating a company to mine water on the moon. Everything looks great, until alien first contact makes it all much, much more complicated.

The Hyland Resolution, by Justin Tarquin – Charles Hyland is caught in the crossfire of an interplanetary war, their only hope is that Charles can extricate himself from the labyrinth of his own mind.

Another Fine Day in the Corps, by L.A. Behm II – Some days you get the bear. Some days, the bear is packing mortar rounds.

The Mask of Dhuran Zur, by John C. Wright – Some manuscripts you just shouldn’t read.

Elwood, by Bokerah Brumley – Mysterious things happen to Emma Kelly when she meets the lunatic gypsy at the end of the lane and the gypsy's invisible púca.

Much Madness is Divinest Sense, by Lori Janeski-- A madman doesn't usually believe that he's insane. But the ones who are truly dangerous are the ones who not only believe it, but embrace it.

The Night my Father Shot the Werewolf, by Josh Griffing – The boys in Mrs. Carroll's third-grade class learned a lot last year, about things like cursive, and multiplying, and werewolves.

The Black Dogs of Luna, by Paul Go – The crew of the Sirocco find a nightmare of the ages on the Moon.

Despot Hold ’em, by Caroline Furlong – You have to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. But most importantly of all, know when to run.

Polar Shift, by Richard Paolinelli – After the pole's shift, Sam Peck may just be the last living human being in the entire universe.

The Price of Sanity, by A.M. Freeman – Never make deals with the unknown. Especially when it's paying for your freedom with your soul.

Vulcan III, by William Lehman – Unfortunately for the crew of "Scorpion" the Vulcan III, the moon is the harshest engineering environment we've ever built in, especially when something goes wrong.

Merry By Gaslight, by L. Jagi Lamplighter – What if that million-dollar mansion you hardly dare to long for were so much less than you deserved.

Squeeze on the Moon, by Lou Antonelli – An expert in disaster recovery gets the opportunity of a lifetime – plus a little walk down memory lane.

So, yeah. 

This party is just getting started.

Tuscany Bay is an awesome press, lead by a true mensch and an awesome professional in Richard Paolinelli who made certain that this anthology would still happen, and that the last two years worth of work wouldn't be in vain, on the part of either the authors or the editors.

Music to write to: Fields of Verdun

This has got to be the most upbeat song about one of the most desolate battles in history. Seriously guys, Cannae was over within a day. And that was pure suck.

Of course, the most reasonable follow up to this is the cover by Minniva, who makes bad songs sound awesome, and good songs around awesome.

And next is where things get bat guano insane. 

In honor of Storming Area 51, here's a parody of Fields of Verdun, based exclusively on memes. And no, not even I understand all of the references

And speaking of Storming Area 51, the anthology of the same name comes out today. So be sure to pick up a copy.

NEW RELEASE; Storming Area 51, an anthology

So, I'm in a new anthology, from Bayonet books.

It's called Storming Area 51.

It's gonna be a little strange.

Thirty-five awesome stories – one kick ass meme that started it all.

It started as a joke. Storm Area 51 they said.

"They can’t stop us all" was the battle-cry.

But all laughter stopped when the U.S. Air Force mobilized the reserves and pulled out the big guns.

It was too late, relentless mockery and derision by the media and the powers that be had pushed the weebs and alien enthusiasts too far. What else were they supposed to do?

They put on their big girl panties and showed up, determined to find out exactly what was hidden behind the walls of the clandestine government facility.

Buy this book and share in the terrible secrets concealed deep behind the barbed wire, fences and armed guards.

C.J. Carella - Naruto Charge
J W Kiefer - Dark Mater
Walt Robillard - More to Carry
Michael Gants - Eminent Domain
Sarah A. Hoyt - Sunny Side Up
Alice Peng - Embasy City Delivery
Jamie Ibson - The Sarge V'Sal
Tim Niederriter - Destinys End
Philip Ginn - Waterbenders in the Desert
Chris Winder - The Cricket
E. A. Shanniak - Stalking Death
Marisa Wolf - Home
Aaron Seaman - #Vaporize Doug Burbey - Shift Work
Nathan Pedde - The Rise of the Ghids
Tim C. Taylor - Angel-51: Princess of Earth
Casey Moores - Sanity Check
J. R. Handley & Cisca Small - Love Finds Away
I. Ronik - Fallout - A Vapid Vixens Short
Michael J. Allen - Crashing the Party - A Scion Story
Alex C. Gates - Controlled Chaos
Declan Finn - Area 51 is Not Enough
IQ Malcolm - Kyle: Respawned
Milissa L. Story - Paradise Ranch
J. William Adler - Viva la Revolución
Joshua M. Young - Evan and Kyle Meet the Survey Cube
Sophie J. Shepherd - Nothing’s Gonna Happen
Lawrence N. Oliver - Hanger Nine
Mel Todd - Routine Duty
Drew Avera - Storm the Gates
Philip K. Booker - Balancing the Scales
Tamsin L. Silver - The Trip Home
Robert W. Ross - Isabella's Campaign
Daniel Medrano - Hey Sweetie
R. Max Tillsley - Crickey!

You might be able to take a guess from the title of my story, Area 51 is Not Enough, it has some certain familiar characters.

You could say that one is a heartless, bloody thirsty monster.

The other's a vampire.

Yes. Marco Catalano and Amanda Colt are back!

Between her time as a spy and Marco's nature for getting into trouble, they're ready to storm the barricades of Area 51. After all, it is an R&D base for the airforce. And if the government is going to research things like the supernatural, where else would they do it. For years, Amanda had been worried of another Fort Dietrich Incident. This time, she wants to take a closer look. But she needs a distraction. 

And oh, look. someone wants to stage an invasion of Area 51. Nice distraction you got there. Pity if someone should ... take advantage of it.

But this one has everything.

You want action? We got action.

You want romance? We got some of that.

You want animals that eats, shoots and leaves? We got it.

You want dragons? Fae? Hell hounds? Invading armies? Mad science? Got it all.

You want more from the Love at First Bite universe? You got it.

But Storming Area 51 is released on September 20th. Available for pre-order here.

And if you are new here, you can order the Love at First Bite quartet here.

The Moon Anthology is Closed

How many people remember high school group projects?

You know what I mean: when the teacher assigns everyone to work on a bit of homework, to be turned in on a date, and everyone's grade is going to be the same, no matter the effort everyone put into it. It's a great example of why socialism is a failure: one person might put in 100% of the effort, and everyone else would just blow it off and ride the coattails of the smartest person in the group.

Most of my friends just happened to be that one person in the group, and would take over any group project, almost entirely out of self defense. I was like that too.

So, when I handed in a schedule for the Moon anthology to Superversive Press, I said I would have all of the stories collected by April 16th. When I invited authors to join the anthology -- authors like Jody Lyn Nye and Brad Torgersen -- that's the date I gave them.

But you might remember that I publicly posted that the Moon anthology was due in on April 1st. Why the discrepancy? I remembered the group projects, and I knew that several people would turn in a project AFTER the last possible minute.

But now, the last of the stories are in. And have we got an awesome lineup.

Obviously, we're not entirely done with the process. Some stories can be further edited, which will allow us to squeeze in more stories, which will eventually dictate the final lineup.

Right now, the preliminary list looks like seven dragon award finalists with ten nominations and a win between them, as well as two NY Times bestselling authors.

So, not a bad start.

Writing "Death March of Cambreadth" for Mars

When Superversive announced the Planetary Anthology, you'd have to figure that Mars was right up my alley.

I've only broken, destroyed, trashed, and blown up any number of vehicles, places and people that I take one look at John Wick and see it as a challenge.

So Mars, god of War?

Blow crap up?

Count me in.

Strangely enough, I went small for this one. Don't ask me why I did. But there was still plenty of violence. Don't worry about that. Because if I have any message in any of my books, it's Orwell's "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

In my collection of various and sundry people I collect, I've known two women who were divorced, and under fairly odd and bizarre circumstances. How bizarre? Well, in one case, one had a husband who worked for a federal agency, and he thought he had leverage over her because he had made a sex tape of them without her knowledge...

Yes, because a federal employee has NOTHING to lose by releasing a sex tape online. Sigh. Yes. He was that stupid. He did exist. And he was one of those federal employees who carried a gun. (Which doesn't say much given that even the Department of Education has a SWAT team-- yes, really).

So I took this guy, made him psychotic as well as moronic, laying a trap for a fictional heroine who is actually modeled on a completely different woman.

Then I set it on Mars, in 2340, added cybernetic limbs, laser rifles, and a catchy tune to kill people to.

I added a main character designed to look at this situation and consider "How many different ways can I think of for this entire situation to go wrong?" His name is Paul Murphy, and he's had some experience with this type of situation. There's a reason one of his arms is cybernetic. It's been years since he's been in a good fight, and he misses it. So when his friend Carrie comes to him with her little problem, he comes up with a plan when everything goes to hell.

And then everything goes to hell.

But Paul has a plan in his mind and a song in his heart.

And the song is March of Cambreadth.

So, Planetary: Mars is out. Might want to look into it.