My New Fantasy Collection

 My new collection of fantasy short stories from Sophont Press, Twelve All in Dread,  is now available in ebook for preorder at amazon.com, with paperback soon to follow.

It includes a dozen stories, six from my "Twelve Witches" series as well as a number of medieval-inspired tales for readers interested in sword and sorcery. "The Twelfth Witch" introduces us to the youngest and most powerful of The Twelve All in Dread, Tesseracta Rowan, as she quests in search of her powers and family origins, while other fantasy stories, such as "Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Age," return us to the age of Arthurian mystery and romance. The collection concludes with a dash of Cthulhu mythos, in "Blood Moon."

Alternately hilarious, heartbreaking, and chilling, Twelve All in Dread presents a dozen fun and original fantasy stories filled with action and magic.

ISBN # 978-1-7362848-7-2

Copyright 2022 Juliana Rew, Cover by Keely Rew

Return of the SciFi and Fantasy Cons

 

It is great to see the Cons returning to more in-person meetups. We enjoyed going (fully masked) to MileHiCon 54 in Denver and serving on three panels. I was especially interested in the panel on the growing popularity of stories set in the multiverse. On another panel, we had a spirited "discussion" about what can be done to fix the climate and the role the "hopepunk" scifi genre might play to offset today's preoccupation with dystopia. The audience for our panel on writing short stories and flash fiction was enthusiastic and ate up all of our advice, inadequate as it probably was. An event I love at MileHiCon is the "Slush Read," and my entry seemed to be well received. There's nothing like a little *constructive* criticism to keep you on the path to stardom.

Guest of Honor Ken Liu gave a talk about how science fiction does a terrible job predicting the future, so our work’s cut out for us to do better. Another GoH, Travis Heerman, showed us his first written, directed, and produced film, “Demon for Hire.” Only 8 minutes long, it’s a hoot. The trailer's available on his blog at http://travisheermann.com/blog/2022/07/13/trailer-demon-for-hire/

Last but not least, artist GoH Charles Vess lists among his credits illustrating Book III of Neil
Gaiman’s “Sandman” series. Of course, I caught a cold while returning from Scotland, so my filking chops were missing in action.

We managed to sell a few books at the author table, and Third Flatiron recently contributed books and ebooks to the World Fantasy Convention, to take place in early November in New Orleans. We'll be attending virtually, but are glad that's now become an option.

I'm going to try mightily to work on my new novel during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers' Month) next month, and am hoping to publish my fantasy short story collection, "Twelve All in Dread," featuring the young witch Tesseracta Rowan and her evolution toward "All Things Understanding."

New Anthology, "After the Gold Rush"

At Third Flatiron, we're now celebrating 10 years with our latest outing. Over the years, we're honored to have featured the work of more than 350 authors, and have podcasted more than 50 of their stories. We're also proud of the mix of Colorado and international writers. This all-original SFFH anthology has the theme, "After the Gold Rush." We asked contributors to explore themes related to complications of booms and bubbles, including effects of accelerated culture; ecological consequences caused by human over-expansion, such as climate disasters; and economics (for example, resources and commodities).

We are especially grateful to Wulf Moon, who leads the "Super Secrets" workshop. He encouraged writers on the Writers of the Future Forum to submit to our latest call, and by our count, seven "Wulf Pack" authors of the twenty-one in this anthology are new to our pages.

So, what have we got in store for you this time? Here is a peek at what's in the anthology.

Love all the new tech? We might get more than we bargained for as the latest gadgets accelerate and overtake us. We lead off with James Tager's "Past the Projections," a creative—and creepy—story in which AI robotics come to life in virtual reality. The intelligent drone "bees" in Tim Borella's "To Vanquish Other Blooms" repeat the adage, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

We offer a number of instructive "what-if" stories about corporations that corner valuable resources, such as sunlight and real estate. With ingenuity and valor, ordinary people might still find ways to come out on top. Such a story is Robert Bagnall's "Sunrunner," an affecting story, about a rebel sunlight thief. We cheer Julie Biegner's teens as they try to take down the VR monopoly that's become a fascist state in her story, "Amphibios." Also, check out "Reassessed Value," by David Hankins, about a farmer who discovers a corporate loophole to save his land.

After climate change: Are we hearing the strains of the orchestra playing "Nearer, My God, to Thee?" In "Moving On," by Andrew Wright, Cape Cod is now an island, and it's Harry's job to check on houses and gardens before another storm arrives.

A gold rush theme means there's always room for a weird western, right? On the boomtown planet of Proxima B, when a samurai lawman is called to investigate a death, he discovers an ancient Mexican cult, in "Showdown at Sueño Hueco" by Wulf Moon.

"Earth's Last Immortals," by Erin Cullen, is the story of a future where life-extension technology has made it possible for humans to technically become immortal, but at what cost?

In a world where the world has retreated into virtual reality, a man searches for people who will return to "real" reality. "Facing Reality" by Yelena Crane.

In "Last Light in the Dark" by Shannon Fox, an actor on a far-future planet decides a change of pace is in order when his family's line of work starts to deviate from his personal values. While other stories about the after-effects of gold rush "bubbles" are usually sad, we find a nugget of hope.

It's hot. Damn hot. In Edward Barnfield's, story, "Live from the Troll Factory," hackers toil away in a post-internet apocalyptic sweatshop. It reminded us a bit of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake—only with computers.

Not all is gloom and doom, however.

There's evidence there was once a lot of water on the moon, so there may be a future call for explorers to find hidden reservoirs. Enjoy David Cleden's "Down on the Klondike," as a young man buys a stake on the Moon with his mother's credit card and runs into disaster almost immediately. In "The Front of the Pack," Lauren C. Teffeau's satirical story, this captured prisoner is not an arms dealer, he offers a scarce service—he's a regulation evasion provider.

Bon Voyage: In "Last Bite at the Klondike," by Liam Hogan, we meet an asteroid miner who opts to test the "interstellar progress paradox" rather than return to Earth.

We loved the movie, "CODA" (Children of Deaf Adults). If humans ever make first contact, it'll be important to find what we have in common. "All Our Signs Align" by Eve Morton, introduces a translator who teaches aliens American Sign Language (ASL).

"Unwinding the Clock" by Brandon Case, tells the satirical story of a grandma hacker who codes a scam app and sends the proceeds to a deserving recipient

Like William Wallace said in "Braveheart:" Freeeedom!! "The Last of the Gen Xers" by Angelique Fawns, is the story of a guy with an outlawed gas-guzzling Cadillac.

As usual, we conclude with our flash humor section, "Grins & Gurgles," with a "Currency Change Announcement" by Elizabeth Davis; "Amore for Life" by Cray Dimensional; "Genie in a PET Bottle" by Daniel M. Cojocaru; and "Goldberry" by Tom Easton and Jeff Hecht.

We hope you enjoy After the Gold Rush. It's available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3V48HWK

 

Juliana Rew

July 2022

 

 

 

Editor's Note: Things With Feathers: Stories of Hope Anthology

As inspiration for Third Flatiron Anthologies' latest theme, we put forth one of Emily Dickinson's poems, "Hope," in which she characterized it as "a thing with feathers." We reprint "Hope" inside for you to savor. Many of the contributors to this anthology agreed with Dickinson, while others expanded the ideas and symbols of hope.

 

 We open with Nemma Wollenfang's "Dream Eater," a truly transformative steampunk fantasy that shows us how a little kindness can reap rewards beyond your wildest dreams. While Cayce Osborne's "Yin-Yang" is indeed a ghost story, it is also a story of redemption.

Is there hope for us all? In P. A. Cornell's "Shiny Things," humanity's future is in doubt, as aliens return the planet to nature, until an intelligent bird pleads our inventiveness. Conversely, we depend heavily on math and technology, but sometimes it can become an obsession, as in David Cleden's "Ephemeralities."

Some of our stories call on the hopeful lessons of mythology, magic, and religion, such as F. T. Berner's "The Ones Who Made the Crossing," Sharon Diane King's "The Sorcerer's Appendix," and, for a touch of the weird, Nicholas Stillman's future-origin story, "Yes, Sadly." Barton Paul Levenson uses "Elf Magic" to show us how we could get along with others who aren't like us.

Still others draw hope from the wellspring of the supernatural, as in Bruce Arthurs' "The Best Damned Barbershop in Hell," and Paula Hammond's "Adventures in the Spiritual Lost-and-Found."

A common linchpin seems to be how much family plays a pivotal role in giving us hope—even more so over the past year. The wisdom of grandparents and devotion of grandchildren take center stage in Emily Dauvin's "The Soul of Trees," E. J. Delaney's "Zeno's Paradise (with redheads!)," Shannon Brady's "The Wonders of Yesterday," and Raluca Balasa's "Vanishing Act").

In time for the winter holidays, we have Arthur Carey's heartwarming alien encounter, "The Black Marble," a story that lets us reflect on the good things that we have and how they might continue to be.

Enthusiastic hope, aka "the Tinker Bell effect": Remember how we all clapped to bring Peter Pan's pal back to life? We want to believe that Alicia Cay's astronaut will survive in "The Girl Who Built Worlds." Melissa Mead's "Stella" catches a falling star and puts it in your pocket—ready in case you need it. Brian Rappatta's "The Warrior Rides into Battle, Sword Held High," rides along with characters who live their dreams of a better future as they take the daily bus to work.

Those of you wondering whether you're brave enough to attend a science fiction convention in person this year, there's encouragement to be found in Danielle Mullen's "One Last Thing." You might meet someone truly inspiring.

Worried about the sentient AI in your refrigerator? Anchoring the anthology is a hopeful post-singularity tale about intelligent buildings who love their customers, in Wulf Moon's "Sophie's Parisian Stationery & Parfumerie Magnifique."

As usual, we include our humor section, "Grins and Gurgles." As a ginger native of the mythical Colorado town of Plumbum, I can attest to the findings in Bonnie McCune's "Final Report from the Land of Red-Headed Children." And there's fairies! Art Lasky asks whether fairies could bring back "The Summer of Love." When a tsunami threatens, James Dorr's "The Wise Sister" helps us plan for disaster without the need to overpack.

Finally, we feature an essay, "What Hope Might Ask," in which Gerri Leen lets loose with flights of fancy regarding our fine feathered friends. Luckily, we hear wild birds have been doing better during the pandemic. We also recommend an Atlantic essay on hope by Arthur C. Brooks.

We do hope you enjoy reading "Things With Feathers." It's available from Amazon for Kindle and print paperback.

 

Review: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

  As a Coloradan, I often look forward to the work of horror writer Stephen Graham Jones. His latest, The Only Good Indians (Gallery/Saga Press), is a worthy entry that brings us into collision with the natural world. And anyone who’s tried to debug an electrical problem in the house will immediately be sucked right in.

Ten years in the past, a group of Blackfeet teens stumbles upon an elk herd that is easy pickings. They slaughter many, even though it’s an illegal kill and they haven’t a way of bringing all that meat home. Now the vengeful ghost of a pregnant cow comes back to harrow them.

As bad goes to worse (think "Cabin in the Woods"), Jones’s book touches on many issues, both historical and scientific.

I was reminded of the Magnetic Fields song, “Fear of Trains,” with its haunting litany of difficulties faced by Native Americans throughout our history

We are also reminded to coexist with wildlife. I just came across an ongoing study by Colorado Parks and Wildlife to study survival rates of calves under a year old among herds across the state, focusing on how human recreation may be influencing the behavior of elk. There’s a weird but fun story in the Colorado Sun about transporting pregnant elk via helicopter!

If you’re in Colorado in the fall, a real treat is to admire (from a remote, respectful distance) the “bugling” of the elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, as the rutting season begins.

At Third Flatiron, we featured a great story about mass hunts from trains in our weird western themed Principia Ponderosa anthology. The author of that story, “The Hunt,” Salinda Tyson also invoked a Servant spirit that preserved the balance between the human and the natural. If you liked Jones’s story, check out Tyson’s story here.

The Only Good Indians is a finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction and is available on Amazon.

Racism Is Not a Family Value

Originally published November 2009

 

My daughter, a recent graduate in Cultural Anthropology, praised in particular a course on Zora Neale Hurston, an American folklorist, novelist, and authority on black culture, taught by Professor Lorecia Kaifa Roland of the University of Colorado Boulder. Raised as I was in lily-white suburbia, I had never heard of Zora. She was "rediscovered" by Alice Walker. But it turns out that one of Zora's best friends was Fanny Hurst, another famous novelist writing about black life. Hurst's novel, "Imitation of Life," was one of the defining "experiences" of my life, even though I never read the book. During your life, if you have children, you try to share your values and reasons for those values. I had shared the story with my daughter that I had joined the YWCA, one of the oldest women's organizations in the United States, not because I was a Christian, but because one of their basic tenets was to get rid of racism. Somewhere along the way, the YWCA felt this goal was no longer necessary and dropped it from their principles and practices. At the time, I was very upset about this and felt it was premature. I'm happy to say that it is now back (http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=djISI6PIKpG&b=284783). My daughter and I didn't know we had these inspirational novelists in common, but for me it was exciting to see her discover and internalize an experience so different from her own privileged upbringing yet so important to our society today. "Imitation of Life" was made into two films, one in the late 1930s and another in the 1950s. I saw the 1950s version first. The story involves a black woman raising her light-skinned daughter while working as a servant for a strong white woman entrepreneur. The daughter, even as a young child, wants to be white and denies that she is "colored." When she grows up, she abandons her mother and gets as far away from her as possible, passing herself as white. She lives in constant fear of being discovered. Her mother is resigned, even comfortable, with her identity and never understands why her daughter rejects her race and her mother's love. There have been many other fantastic stories about mother/daughter betrayal, notably "Mildred Pierce" and "The Piano," but "Imitation" contained the double edges of blood kin betrayal and racism, a potent combination that I found life-changing.

Editor's Note: Brain Games: Stories to Astonish

 Life's become something of a shifted chessboard, hasn't it? My gang has worked hard to put together the Fall/Winter 2020 edition of Third Flatiron Anthologies, a huge issue with 27 short scifi, horror, and fantasy stories. The theme of Brain Games: Stories to Astonish focuses on puzzle solving and ingenuity, inverted tv tropes, inventions (clockwork, practical, or Rube Goldberg), masterful creations, mythology, and social commentary. A number of these tales cross over to the dark side, in keeping with the season, and our final short story ushers us into the winter holidays. (Note the young Santa at work on the cover.)

 

We open with an odd space mystery, as asteroid miners try different theories about who stole their Earth shuttle. Brian Trent gives us "Theft, Sex, and Space Pirates."

Further bending our minds, Geoff Taylor gives us "Killer dApp," software scifi that presents a completely evil yet plausible way to take advantage of anonymous cryptocurrency (hey, kids, don't try this at home). Jetse de Vries dishes out Japanese AI warrior scifi, with embedded poetry.

With the coronavirus playing havoc with people's smellers, it could be important to keep our noses in tip-top health. Two of our stories disagree on what space aliens smell like. Alyce Campbell is pretty sure they smell garlicky ("Kwatt Games"), while Brenda Kezar speculates that they smell like patchouli ("US Portal Service"). Maureen Bowden dips into "The Sweet Smell of Sheep" to tell the story of the Trojan War from Paris's ex-wife.

As we are encouraged to stay in our homes and socially distance ourselves, mail delivery becomes an even more important daily service, not to mention that postal service is a pillar of civilization. We're not so sure a quantum portal would be a good replacement. Rebecca Fung posits that Santa might agree with us, as he gets all his toy ideas from kids' letters, in "The Greatest Toymaker in the World."

Artificial intelligence, androids, and robots seem to be on a lot of people's minds. That is, do they have minds like us? Henry McFarland describes some "Perfectly Rational Gamblers," and their frequent visits to casinos, while C. J. Peterson writes the code that would determine whether two supercomputers have achieved self awareness (hilarity ensues). But could we be living in a computer simulation? In Paula Hammond's "All Your Bases Yada-Yada," a woman discovers what seems like a glitch in the pixels on the way to work. It's a bittersweet symphony. Although they didn't have 3-IN-ONE oil back in Medea's day, she helps out Jason and the Argonauts against a giant robot that's prone to rust, in Jenny Blackford's "A Bronze Giant to Guard Her."

For you players of games: A cop in training gets too comfortable living in virtual reality in Jess Hyslop's "Softlock."

Intelligence different from our own may arise from Nature, as Ellen Denton reminds us, in "Minds Unseen."

We hope to rely on good old-fashioned human ingenuity to get us out of scrapes like deadly viruses. Let's see what the Nobel Peace Prize address in "Stockholm, 2066" might be, as told by Joseph Sidari. And we wonder what Graham J. Darling is referring to in his comical postapocalyptic tale, "The New Season." Is it the new flu season, or the election season? And which is scarier?

Lisa Timpf shows us it's possible to do our shopping without all of today's "helper technology," in "The Disconnect."

Halloween season wouldn't be complete without some horror tales. Eleftherios Keramidas's sorcerer just can't resist applying the latest technology to outsmart a deadly magical book, in "Toxic." Monica Joyce Evans's "Forced Teaming" discusses the cons of a job holding the digital copies of dead human personalities. For some Frankensteinian steampunk, Dennis Conrad's "The Incredible Machine" sucks the life out of us. Otherworldly calls come in through a village's outdated switchboard in David Rogers's ghostly "Numbers." In M. Richard Eley's "Bad Connection," a hacker gets his just comeuppance when he Zoom-bombs the wrong meeting.

To spice things up, Justin Short offers "Mock Me Amadeus." (It's a graveyard smash.) Dominick Cancilla recounts the adventures of "Joey and Rue," a riotous mashup of demons and Rube Goldberg, while M. K. Hutchins writes an empathetic tale about getting on the Grim Reaper's good side in "Upcycling Death."

As usual, we conclude with the flash humor section, "Grins and Gurgles." If you're fed up with the constant pillow guy commercials, Steve Zisson tells us how to DIY your own. Aidan Doyle channels his lovable evil villain to lecture his minions in "To All the Creatures I've Hid from Ethics Committees," and Lauren Lang's lingerie model suffers the discomfort of outer space to find "The Best Bra for the Boobs."

Brain Games: Stories to Astonish is available in eBook on Amazon (free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers), and there's a paperback edition.