"The Victor" - My story in "Not Our Kind"

The Kickstarter for the "Not Our Kind" anthology is in its home stretch, with only about four and a half days left as I write this post. It stands a bit over 60% funded at this point and since Kickstarter is all or nothing (a project either meets its funding goal and gets funded or does not meet it and gets nothing -- the backers are not charged anything either in that case), I'll be watching it closely over the next few days hoping for the best.

My story which is slated to be in the anthology is called "The Victor." I wrote the first draft of this story just a little less than a year ago, while I was in Philadelphia for the 2013 Philcon. The Liberty Hall Writers website has a weekly prompted writing contest for its members. The prompt that weekend showed fireworks in the sky over a road and my mind went to an image of a lone man walking on that road under those fireworks. He had won a battle, single combat, but the cost of that victory was something quite unusual and the rest of his life would never be the same.

When editor Nayad Monroe invited me to submit to the Not Our Kind anthology I knew right away that "The Victor" was the story I wanted to send for her consideration. I took the story through some revisions and sent it off, quite close to the last minute of her submission window for the invited authors. I was thrilled when she accepted the story for the anthology and I'm looking forward to hearing what readers think of the story.

But for that to happen, the Kickstarter needs to succeed. So if you're interested in reading my story as well as stories by the other Not Our Kind authors (Alex Bledsoe, Ekaterina Sedia, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, Damien Angelica Walters, and many others) then now is the time to stop by Kickstarter and back the project.

"What Fates Impose" from Alliteration Ink

Alliteration Ink, the publisher of the Sidekicks! anthology which includes my story "Learning the Game", has a Kickstarter running through July 14th at 9 PM Eastern US time for their anthology "What Fates Impose: Tales of Divination". I've been looking forward to reading this anthology since the Table of Contents was released and have backed it on Kickstarter. There are a lot of fantastic short fiction writers in this book and it should be a lot of fun to read.

Since I've worked with Alliteration Ink before, I was given the opportunity to have a sneak peak of several of the stories from the book. If anything, I'm even more excited about holding the anthology in my hands now than I was previously.

• Keffy R. M. Kehrli's "Gazing Into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future" is a bit sad, a bit hilarious, and a bit crazy. Which, when you realize it's about trying to predict the future via marshmallow Peeps, seems just about right.
• Ferrett Steinmetz's "Black Swan Oracle" is a science-fiction story through-and-through even if the main character's name is "The Oracle." Again, a bit funny. And this time quite a bit sad.
• And then there's Beth Wodzinski's "One Tiny Misstep (In Bed)." Holy. Shit. I don't know what else to say about this tale of a marriage gone stale and fortune cookies and the alley outside a Chinese restaurant and... Oh my. Imaginative, realistic in its characterization, and absolutely crushing.

Yeah. This book? Go help it get released into the wild. Go Kickstart it!