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Interview: Annie Reed on “The Fixer”

“The Fixer” by Annie Reed

When Amelia botched her first spell as a kid, her parents enrolled her in an after-school program that taught her how to fix her screw-ups. She loved doing this so much that as an adult she opened her own business to help people who couldn’t get their spells to work quite right.

Now the best spell reclamation wizard in the business, she’s never run into a spell she couldn’t fix…until now. And to make matters worse, the spell in question is one of her own, pirated by a shady online wizarding school out to bilk unsuspecting wannabe wizards—and ruin Amelia in the process.

“The Fixer” is one of the 15 tales in the Magicks & Enchantments anthology, which is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

A blast of arctic air along with the smell of something not quite right assaulted Amelia when she stepped off the elevator into the lobby of her apartment building.

“Holy crap,” she muttered to herself, pulling her sweater tightly around her shoulders and wrinkling her nose.

Moretown Bay in June wasn’t the warmest place on the planet—the days were overcast and the offshore breezes blew in chilly, humid air from the bay—but usually a light coat or windbreaker was sufficient. The city wasn’t Juneau, Alaska, for goodness sake.

Amelia didn’t even own a down jacket. In all her years living in Moretown Bay, she’d never needed one. Raincoat? Oh my, yes. She had three, but no down jackets.

Today had dawned sunny and warm—for once—and she thought she’d be fine with a light sweater. The weather shouldn’t have changed that much during the short elevator ride from her apartment on the ninth floor to the lobby. Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t have changed at all.

Although her apartment building wasn’t in the ritziest part of town, the lobby wasn’t an open-air affair. The last time she’d checked, the building’s heating system had been working just fine. The lobby shouldn’t make her feel like she’d stepped into a walk-in freezer.

And the smell? Moretown Bay usually smelled like any other big coastal city—exhaust fumes from cars and busses, cooking smells from restaurants and those little hibachi things people used on their apartment balconies, and the smell of people (washed, unwashed, or perfumed and body-sprayed within an inch of their lives)—overlaid with the musty odor of the bay.

None of those odors quite described the smell in the lobby. More like an undercurrent of something horrible, like a combination of overripe skunk and fermented garbage pit dialed down to a level that barely registered.

Even trolls and goblins didn’t smell quite like that.

Magic. It had to be.

—from “The Fixer” by Annie Reed

The Interview

Amelia, the protagonist in “The Fixer,” has a knack for reversing spells, which she describes as “like figuring out a giant puzzle made entirely of magic.” Do you plan to write more stories about this character?

I might. Amelia’s a really interesting character. She started life as a side character in a never-to-be-published Diz & Dee novel I wrote for myself to work out the characters and their world and most importantly how magic works and is regulated in that world. She really grew into her own in “The Fixer.” I’d like to introduce her into a Diz & Dee story someday, if not write an entirely new project focusing on her.

You’ve set “The Fixer” in the fictional town Moretown Bay, which is the setting for a number of your stories. Tell us about the town and the world you’ve created, and why you enjoy writing in it.

I adore the Pacific Northwest, which is why I live in the desert. (Not really.) But seriously, the Seattle, Washington, area is one of my favorite places in the world. I created a fictional version of Seattle called Moretown Bay, which lets me play in my version of the area, not to mention change a few things up to suit the stories. And since I really like writing stories where magic and everyday life intersect, I made the world in which Moretown Bay exists a place where magic intersects with contemporary life.

Since Moretown Bay is a big city, I can write a pretty wide variety of stories, from the more lighthearted Diz & Dee mysteries (Diz is an elf; Dee is a human with precognitive abilities) to the darker Tales From the Shadows stories to something like “Deadbeats,” which is the story of a police officer on her first undercover assignment to catch a warlock. I’ve even written what I plan is the first of many standalone Moretown Bay novels – IRIS & IVY, the story of a woman’s quest to track down the killer who murdered her twin.

If you’ve ever been to Seattle, you might even catch fictionalized versions of some iconic Seattle neighborhoods and attractions in my Moretown Bay stories.

Why do you think so many people are drawn to reading stories about magic?”

That’s a hard one. I can only answer for myself. I like to imagine there’s more to the world than meets the eye. I write mysteries to impose some sort of order on the chaos that is real life. Incorporating magic into the mix sometimes is the only way to realistically impose order on chaos. (I know, that’s a weird way of putting it, but in real life the bad guys don’t always get caught.) I especially like writing about magic—and reading stories about magic—when the real world seems totally out of control. Writing and reading stories about magic is my literary comfort food.

You’re a founding member of the Uncollected Anthology, a group of writers who publish three urban and contemporary fantasy anthologies each year. What do you most enjoy about being a part of this collective?

I get to write themed stories with my friends. That’s first and foremost. It’s a group effort, and whenever groups of writers come together, like in a workshop, the creative energy is off the charts. That’s how the Uncollected Anthology started—as a way to keep that creative energy flowing beyond the workshop setting, with the added goal of introducing the fans of each writer to other writers in the group they might enjoy. I get so many new stories ideas, especially for the Moretown Bay stories, just because of my involvement in this group.

Plus, some of the themes have really made me stretch my writing chops. I mean, take Magical Motorcycles, which was our first issue. I never would have thought up that theme on my own, but the story I wrote for that issue—”The Magic of Home”—gave birth to Twig, a decidedly opinionated and tough-as-nails elf who’s since gone on to star in her own novella “Unbroken Familiar” and the novelette “Murder’s Revenge,” which is part of THE WILD HUNT anthology. All of Twig’s stories are also set in Moretown Bay.

The Diz & Dee Mysteries is a series of short stories you’ve written that combines mystery and fantasy. In August 2021, the Conjuring Crimes issue of the Uncollected Anthology will contain a brand-new story set in this world. Can we have a sneak peek?

Sure! Here’s an excerpt from the opening to “Maggie’s Missing Mojo” which will be available on August 1st:

Diz and I were in the middle of a conversation about the sorry state of our finances when the masseuse from across the street swept into our office. She gave me a wild-eyed look and said, “I need your help.”

My name is Dee. I’m a private investigator. My partner Diz and I run D & D Investigations out of a storefront that used to house a bakery. On a damp day—and it’s always damp in Moretown Bay—our office is haunted by the aroma of donuts past.

Magdalena the masseuse has been a fixture in the neighborhood for years. She opened her massage parlor long before Diz and I stopped investigating magic-related crimes for the Police Department to go private. She was one of the first to welcome us to the neighborhood with a batch of brownies that had a little extra added ingredient. I only had a few nibbles to be polite. Diz ate the rest. He’s an elf. The extra ingredient didn’t phase him.

She’s a genial woman who’s about my age, as unique as her hand-embroidered hip-hugger jeans, wide-brimmed hats, and silky blouses that billow around her like those poet shirts men used to wear a couple of centuries ago. She always makes me think of fresh spring days and fields of wildflowers and soft breezes through tall pines. Although that could just be the aromatherapy oils she uses in her business.

If I could read auras (which I can’t), most days hers would be tinged a serene rose pink.
Not today though. Today serene was out the window.

That’s not all that unusual. People who need our services aren’t calm and collected. Diz and I specialize in looking for missing people. By the time someone comes to us, they’ve already gone to the police and the police haven’t been able to help. Our clients are frustrated and upset and frequently angry, and it’s my job to calm them down enough to have a conversation about whoever’s missing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in my most calm, professional, you can tell me anything tone.
Diz always lets me take the lead when we interview new clients. Especially the ones who are visibly upset. He’s not exactly a calming influence.

When most people think “elf,” they envision Legolas from those movies. Or maybe Santa’s elves, the short ones who dress in red-and-green tunics and candy-cane striped leggings. That’s definitely not Diz. If Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) ever starred in a movie as an elf, Diz could be his stunt double.

Except for the hair. Diz has marvelous hair.

He’s also tall, broad shouldered, strong jawed, and has drop-dead gorgeous blue eyes. Not to mention gloriously pointy ears. I’m not ashamed to admit I have a thing for Diz’s ears—not that I’d ever tell him that.

He also has resting glower face.

When we worked as detectives for the police department, I was the good cop. Diz was the rip your arm off and beat you senseless with it cop. More times than not suspects would confess just because Diz glowered at them from the other side of the interrogation table. He didn’t even have to move a muscle. We had an amazing closure record. The department was sorry to see Diz go.

Me? Not so much. I don’t blame them. I’m a plain old human who’s pushing thirty, and my only superpower is an unreliable ability to see things that might happen. At some unknown time in the future. Maybe.

Magdalena is used to Diz and his glower. She gives him massages every now and then. He even treated me to one of her specials—a two-for-one Valentine’s Day deal. (He was the two to my one.) Although I’d been mildly disappointed that we hadn’t been in the same massage room, I’d managed to catch a glimpse of his towel-clad derriere. I’d had extremely pleasant dreams for weeks afterwards.

Diz usually excuses himself whenever a new client comes in the office so that his glower doesn’t intimidate someone who doesn’t know him. Since our new client was Magdalena, he sat down in his favorite place in our front office, a little loveseat we keep in the front office to make it look less like a police interrogation room and more like your best friend’s home office.

Instead of launching into what was wrong, Magdalena looked around herself uncertainly. She’d never been in our office before as a client, and I guess she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do next. Kind of like how I felt walking into her massage parlor for the first time and wondering when I should start taking my clothes off and exactly how naked I was supposed to get.

What are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I’m always working on more than one thing. Besides putting the finishing touches on “Maggie’s Missing Mojo” (the Diz & Dee stories are always a lot of fun), I’m finishing up a crime novel while I’m noodling around with a mystery story that’s due in a few weeks for the winter issue of MCM (Mystery, Crime & Mayhem). I’ll also be working shortly on a story for SILENCE IN THE CITY, a really cool anthology project recently funded through Kickstarter and edited by Shaun Kilgore.

I have such a blast working in multiple genres. That’s what makes writing fun for me. I tell people I have butterfly brain, flitting from one genre to the next, but I really think it’s just because I love reading all sorts of stories in all sorts of genres. Same with movies and TV shows. My viewing habits are all over the place. Writing in a lot of different genres keeps me—and I hope my readers—entertained.

About Annie

A prolific and versatile writer, Annie’s a frequent contributor to both Fiction River and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Her recent work includes the near-future science fiction short novel In Dreams, the gritty urban fantasy novel Iris & Ivy, and the superhero novel Faster. Annie’s stories appear regularly on Tangent Online’s recommended reading lists, and “The Color of Guilt,” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. She’s even had a story selected for inclusion in study materials for Japanese college entrance exams.

Annie also writes sweet romance under the name Liz McKnight, and is a founding member and contributor to the innovative Uncollected Anthology series of themed urban and contemporary fantasy anthologies.

Find Annie

Website ~ BookBub ~ Amazon ~ Goodreads

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

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Interview: DeAnna Knippling on “A Shrewdness of Swindlers”

Dames, detectives, and deception…magic meets the decadence of the Roaring Twenties in ten tales of glitter and jazz.

The year is 1929. It’s two months after the financial collapse on Wall Street, and the world is bating its breath, unsure of what will happen next. Is it the end of an era?

At the Honeybee’s Sting, a speakeasy in the basement of a laundry, a group of unusual figures meets to discuss the past—and perhaps some possible futures: the Detective turned writer, the Dame who’s older than she looks, the Vampire who’s been riding the financial markets for generations, the Spy from across the ocean, the Actress who’s only just learned the truth about Hollywood, and more.

But one of their number is missing, a man connected to the mob, a man who holds the prize for a mysterious storytelling contest—a prize that can give you your heart’s desire.

Ten stories, woven together in the style of The Canterbury Tales, follow the contest along a long, dark night where nothing is what it seems and the best way to tell the truth is to lie.

Pour yourself a cocktail and join us at the liar’s table for the divine, the slapstick, the tragic, the transcendant 1920s today!

A Shrewdness of Swindlers is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

Ala patiently explained to me what would happen when the witch arrived. In great detail.

First, the witch would arrive in a traveling house or hut. It could be on walking chicken legs, or it could appear down the street, hidden amongst the other houses. I would know the witch’s house by the bones, Ala said. Either the house would be made out of bones, or it would be decorated with bones. Sometimes the bones would be disguised, and sometimes they would be made up with strings, sticks, and hollowed-out, painted eggs into a kind of windchime that witches used for casting spells.

Second, she would have bony legs. All witches, Ala asserted, had bony legs. If someone accused of being a witch had fat legs, well, that person wasn’t a witch. They could have a fat middle, even a fat face and fat arms, but their legs would be like sticks.

Third, a witch will always give you the chance, if you ask, to do three tasks for her. If you are asking her a favor, three tasks. If you are trying to escape her wrath, three tasks. The tasks are always impossible. The only way to win is not to play. Or you can cheat. In fact, the only times that Ala and Elias had heard of someone getting anything out of a witch was by tricking her somehow. Say a witch asked someone to bring her the moon. You would cup your hands full of water dyed with ink, so that the ink would shine like a mirror. And then you would stand under the moon and say, “I brought you the moon, now you only have to take it.”

I immediately thought about hiring a lawyer. This witch stuff sounded like lawyer-talk to me. But they said no, a lawyer wasn’t going to help.

If you complete the three tasks, they said, then the witch has to do whatever you asked of her. You can’t make her a slave or anything. But you could ask her to kill someone, or give you a magical trinket that would make your fortune, or turn you beautiful, or let you go, or whatever you wanted. If you didn’t, though, she would eat you.

Eat me, that was, if I dared helped Ala and Elias get out of their servitude.

—from A Shrewdness of Swindlers by DeAnna Knippling

The Interview

A Shrewdness of Swindlers takes us back to 1929, where a group of liars, cheats, and thieves meet to compete for a stolen treasure by telling tales. Each of these tales is a separate story in the book. What inspired you to create this collection?

I was inspired by a specific book, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man, by David W. Mauer. The author, a professor of linguistics, interviewed a ton of con artists about the slang they used, and ended up with so many good stories that he wrote a book spelling out how cons worked. Not that that stopped anyone from getting conned, of course.

My favorite part was the author noting that cons actually get conned a lot (although not by the same trick they use) and end up rarely keeping hold of their conned money. It’s almost like the insight into who makes a good victim comes from being exactly the same kind of person.

The book is set in the 1940s, though. What inspired me to move it earlier was that I really just like the 1920s better! I’ve definitely done more research on the 1920s. I decided after reading The Big Con that I could probably get at least a half-dozen stories out of the idea of conning or fooling people in the 1920s, and mentally bookmarked those stories for a future collection as I wrote them. I was trying not to write stories in the same subgenres, but they ended up mostly tinged with fantasy elements.

What folklore did you incorporate in the Dame’s tale, “Myrna and the Thirteen-Year Witch,” and how did you modify it to fit the setting of Hollywood in the 1920s?

Oh, that’s the Baba Yaga story! She comes from Slavic traditions. Whenever someone asks Baba Yaga for a favor, she gives them a deliberately impossible task, like finding a blue rose. She also has a hut that has chicken feet; I put the house in there as a Spanish mansion.

A friend made a suggestion about turning some of the supernatural creatures into things they normally wouldn’t have been—I think he mentioned turning dragons into trains—and I liked that idea, too. In Slavic fairy tales, characters are always getting transformed into something else. Why not change them into machines? It’s a cruel form of slavery, which made me think Baba Yaga would be in favor.

In the Actress’ tale, “The Page-Turners,” the book the protagonist accidentally ends up used to be a person. How did you come up with the idea, and what did you most enjoy about writing this story?

Er, well. At the time I was working my way through a list of horror novels and read The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric. The book ended abruptly and my imagination just kind of carried on trying to sort out the story and how I felt about it. In the end I went, “Murder is like killing someone so you can overwrite their story.”

About the same time, I ran into a trailer for the movie Europa (also called Zentropa) by Lars von Trier. I’d seen the movie years before but it had stuck with me—it’s a second-person point of view movie, with Max von Sydow hypnotically narrating the tale. So I decided to write a second-person point of view story. I’ve written them before and I like writing them.

But my favorite part was researching Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American actress who was one of the first to adopt the “flapper” look and who almost broke into top-tier Hollywood stardom. When things fell through for her due to racism, she toured China for a year. Eventually she starred as a detective in her own show, but the episodes weren’t preserved and are lost now, sadly. The idea of an artist who was held back, not because of her own lack of talent but because of outside forces, who then pivots to something with more depth, that resonated with me.

Why do you think so many people are drawn to reading stories about magic?

On the one hand, I think we all have some unhealthy coping mechanisms. Stories about magic generally tell us that, at least for a little while, there’s a workaround for reality. The dead are brought back to life, injustices are overturned, the impossible becomes reality, mostly because you wish it so. I feel like the stories that are most heavily anchored in magic systems are really invested in this concept. Like, “If you follow the rules of magic, you don’t have to follow the regular rules.” People say that if you’re going to write a magic system, you have to put a price to the magic; otherwise, it’s getting something for nothing, but if you pay a price, then you get the “right” to change reality.

I mean, I’m gonna criticize that sort of story, but I love that sort of story, too. It’s like these stories are complex con jobs. “If I could just fool reality for five minutes…”

On the other hand, I feel like stories about magic are also good ways to create stories about our values and beliefs. There are things we each deeply believe in that have no basis in fact, but that we believe in order to cope with reality and with being human. Sir Terry wrote about those things a lot, and I’ve always admired him as a writer. I like those stories a lot, too. I think they speak to our craving for meaning. Why do bad things happen? Why is there death? What will the world be like, after I am gone? What was this all for? Not so much myths about the universe as answering questions like, “Was the important thing all the pain in the ass paperwork I filled out for my job? Or what I felt like when I looked out over the ocean? Or…both?”

Writing Craft Volume 1 is your first book on writing and publishing fiction; you’re working on the next book now. Why did you create this series, and what have you learned from it yourself?

I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts on how to write for years on my blog. I finally got to a point where I saw this meme going around Facebook that said something like carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man on the same day that some mediocre white man was going off about his book about writing and how great it was, etc., etc., and how he’d written over a dozen books. I’d written over seventy by that point.

Another meme that I find inspiring is I do all things through spite, which strengthens me.

The Magicks & Enchantments anthology includes your short story “The Coffee Shop Ghost.” Why did you decide to have the main character be able to smell spirits?

I went to the coffee shop where the story happens and it smelled weird that day, like an electrical fire. I was journaling, and wrote down that the building must be possessed of a ghost made out of smells. Then I went, “You know what would be funny? Is if there was a name for the talent of being to smell out ghosts. Smell-o-mancy.” One Google search later, I had an idea for a story.

I wrote the first half of the story or so at the coffee shop. I’d been to the bar next door before that, too, but didn’t write there.

What are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I just finished a short story set in the same world as one of the stories in A Shrewdness of Swindlers. The story in the collection is “All the Retros at the New Cotton Club,” and it’s about a future version of the 1920s where what’s being bootlegged aren’t alcoholic spirits, but AIs based on the dead, called “retros.” The new story is called “Be Careful What You Steal” and it’s set in the same world but different characters and gets into the backstory behind the technology that created the retros.

I’m also working on a space opera novel called The House of Masks that’s a combination of all my favorite melodramatic opera things, from Moulin Rouge to Repo: The Genetic Opera to The Phantom of the Opera, with some Dickens and Aliens movies thrown in. It’s the longest project I’ve ever worked on, though, so sometimes I take breaks 🙂

About DeAnna

DeAnna Knippling has written over 70 novels across multiple genres for herself and her ghostwriting clients. But what she writes for herself are historical gothic fantasy and horror novels about characters who free themselves from monsters—somehow. Haunted houses, mysterious bumps in the night, twisted family dramas, hidden passions, and secret hopes populate her works.

Find DeAnna

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Instagram ~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub ~ Patreon

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

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Interview: Alicia Cay on “Campbell County Cook-Off”

In Alicia Cay’s “Campbell County Cook-Off,” the oldest of three elderly witch sisters always wins the County Fair’s chili cook-off…but this year, things are going to be different!

Rebecca and Leah steal their sister’s prize-winning recipe, whip up their own batch of chili, and head off to the competition ready to surprise their sister—and win the contest. But they didn’t follow the recipe correctly…or did they?

“Campbell County Cook-Off” is one of the 15 tales in the Magicks & Enchantments anthology, which is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

A tower of flame erupted from the stock pot, instantly tarnishing the stainless steel into a burnt black. The volcanic eruption pushed Rebecca, Leah, and the three judges off their feet. The Mayor was knocked onto his butt and slid across the floor into the opposite wall. His eyes were circles of surprise, and the bottom of his beard was singed and smoking. He smacked at the sparks in his beard to put them out. “What in the hell was that?”

The answer unfurled its wings from the burnt stock pot that teetered on the edge of the table. The wings, brown and red and webbed, were followed by a gnarled creature covered in scales. It slowly pulled itself from the pot’s narrow confines. The thing looked like a mix between a baby dragon, a newborn kitten, and the daemon Leah had accidentally summoned from the Unders in the 12th Century.

Its body was the color of campfire chili, and its kidney bean scales clinked against the pot as the chili-daemon stepped onto the table. Red chili pepper flakes dotted its flesh and clumped into its slitted eyes—red, tan, and full of heat. It grabbed the stock pot with a beak formed of ground beef and launched the pot across the room. The chili-daemon screeched out a roar, another plume of flame spewing from its mouth. The pink and yellow flowered drapes on the community center windows burst into flames.

The silent shock in the room erupted into chaos. Suddenly, everyone was screaming, but the towers of fire surrounding each window made escape through them impossible. This sent everyone in the same direction:toward the double doors. A walker flew through the air, and old Ms. Emerson was pushed to the floor in the kerfuffle. In the rush, several pots of chili were bumped or pulled off their tables. Pots clattered, and beef and beans pooled onto the floor. Folks slipped and slid their way away from the rapidly growing chili-daemon, their Sunday-best clothing covered in stains that no amount of club soda would ever render wearable again.

—from “Campbell County Cook-Off” by Alicia Cay

The Interview

How on earth did you come up with the concept of a daemon made out of chili for your short story “Campbell County Cook-Off?”

Chili cook-offs were popular things when I was growing up in the South. I knew I wanted to write a story that puts witches in an environment where they aren’t often thought to be, e.g. the deep south/Texas. From there it was: what if my witches mixed up a cookbook and a grimoire when making their chili recipe—what would that create? Well, a summoned daemon made of kidney beans and chili flakes, of course! 🙂

Do you plan to write more stories about the three witch sisters from this story?

The sisters in my story were a nod to Shakespeare’s three witches (the Wyrd Sisters), and I can’t say they won’t ever pop up again in a future story, but I don’t have current ideas to feature them.

Why do you think so many people are drawn to reading stories about magic?

I think it’s because stories about magic show us that things beyond what we can see and hear are possible and do exist, that dragons can be slayed, and that everyone, even a simple hobbit from the Shire, is capable of great things.

You received an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future Contest for the very first short story you ever wrote! Wow! You’ve now won 10 Honorable Mentions, 4 Silver Honorable Mentions, have been a Semi-Finalist once and a Finalist once. Why do you keep submitting to this contest, and why is the Writers of the Future important to you?

My mom knew I was meant to be a writer long before I did, and years ago she bought me a copy of the Writers of the Future anthology (Vol. 27) to encourage me to start writing by reading the stories and entering the contest. Sadly, it took me a couple of years after she passed away to get the message. I entered this contest as a connection to my mom, but I continued because it gave me a place to send my stories as a new writer, a deadline to meet (you can enter every three months), and encouragement to keep going in the form of a beautiful certificate when your story places. I’ve also made many writing friends through this contest, built a writer’s group, and I was awarded a scholarship to Superstars Writing Seminars that was sponsored by Writers of the Future (one of only two awarded in 2020). I have a deep admiration for how this contest helps up-and-coming writers, and for how much it helped me get started and continue to develop as a writer.

You suffer from wanderlust. 🙂 Tell us about your travels—and where would you most like to go in the future?

Yes, I so do love to travel! My best friend and I like to select a new city every year to explore. We soak in the art scene, enjoy the food, see the sights, the history, and museums, etc.

I also try to get in one trip abroad. The last couple of international trips have been to Aruba to sit on the beaches, Mexico, we visited Chichen Itza and swam in a cenote, and Iceland, where we watched the aurora borealis dance, walked around inside a glacier, visited the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, and ate Hakarl, which is fermented Greenland shark (it tasted, umm … interesting).

Our next U.S. trip will be to explore Austin, TX (to keep it weird), and then Scotland as soon as we can, where the fairy lore and folk tales abound!

Traveling is a balm for my soul, and helps me keep my well refilled. ♥

Is there something from a legend, fairy or folk tale, or myth that you haven’t yet used in your writing, but would like to?

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of Nephilim, the (giant) offspring of fallen angels and humans, and after a recent trip to the San Luis Valley in Colorado, I got the spark of a story idea to put them out there beneath the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I get a kick out of using Colorado places and mixing them with legends or myths. My last Silver Honorable Mention story was the Pied Piper in the old west, in Gunnison, Colorado. I have fun mixing up things like this.

You’re working on a novel! Tell us about it!

I’m currently outlining a novel that falls into the Mystery/Thriller genre and plays with people’s preconceived ideas of who society views as villains. Should be fun!

What are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing??

I’m currently working on a short story that combines Spiritualism (think Mediums and the Victorian era) and Science Fiction. I tend to do a lot of research for my writing, and this one has sent me down many fascinating and fun rabbit holes! 🙂

About Alicia

Alicia Cay is a writer of Speculative and Mystery stories. Her short fiction has been published in several anthologies including “Hold Your Fire” from WordFire Press, and “The Wild Hunt” by Air and Nothingness Press. In 2020 she was awarded a scholarship to attend SuperStars Writing Seminars, and later that same year made Finalist in the Writers of the Future contest.

She grew up on her Dad’s hand-me-down collection of classic Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror, which now influences most of her writing. She has a B.F.A. in Interior Architecture, but worked as a 9-1-1 dispatcher and Evidence Technician for over a decade before retiring to pursue the things that bring her to life.

Alicia suffers from wanderlust, fears her to-be-read stack will one day topple over and crush her, crochets, collects quotes, and currently lives beneath the shadows of the Rocky Mountains with a corgi, a kitty, and a lot of fur.

Find Alicia

Website ~ Twitter ~ Instagram ~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

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Interview: James Pyles on “No Place Like Home”

What would have happened if Dorothy hadn’t wanted to leave Oz and return to Kansas? What if the “good witch” Glinda had craved the ruby slippers for her own? What would the transformed Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion really have been like with their new attributes?

You’ll never think of Dorothy and her friends the same way again…

“No Place Like Home” is one of the 15 tales in the Magicks & Enchantments anthology, which is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

After all their adventures, the dangers, the terrors…after the Yellow Brick Road, the poppy field, the witch’s castle—and most importantly, confronting the wizard—Dorothy regarded her closest friends, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodsman, and her dearest friend, the Scarecrow. Each had received their heart’s desire (though no one was sure co-ruling Oz was part of that). Now, in the throne room of the Wizard of Oz in the palace at the center of the Emerald City, it was her turn—she was supposed to finally get her wish and return home.

But…how?

The Wizard would have taken her home in the same hot air balloon that had brought him to Oz. But just as they were about to climb aboard Toto had wriggled out of her arms, and when she ran after him the balloon took off with the Wizard—and without the two of them.

The large, chamber they all stood within was green, the citizens of Oz were dressed in green, and even the munchkins wore green little hats and jackets. Everything was green in keeping with the city’s name except for Dorothy, her friends, and her ruby slippers. Then a soft, shimmering crimson glow warmed the room, and as it vanished, Glinda the Good Witch of the North appeared.

How like an angel she appeared, albeit one with a very long wand and very tall crown. All the subjects present bowed toward her. Glinda gently ascended the platform where Dorothy and her companions had stood and watched the Wizard ascend heavenward.

Dorothy, though trembling, gave a polite curtsey, and then wailed, “The Wizard’s gone, Glinda, flown off in his balloon! How am I supposed to get back home?” The witch was powerful, but even she couldn’t conjure up another big balloon and make it sail to Kansas.

Dorothy expected to cry, but the tears didn’t come—which frankly, was quite a surprise. She stood shivering in the center of the jade throne room, her tiny black terrier held tightly in her arms, along with Wicked’s captured golden cap. Her three friends no longer seemed outlandish, or even foolish.

“You’ve had the power to return to your cherished aunt and uncle all this while, Dorothy.” Glinda, the good witch, dressed in an overbearingly fluffy white-and-pink dress made out of clouds, smiled kindly down at Dorothy. The tall, cotton candy crown on her head, magically held in place, didn’t even wiggle. She spoke precisely, as if her every word was part of a prepared speech to be presented before royalty.

“I have?”

“Then why didn’t you tell her about it?” the Scarecrow asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

Dorothy saw a twinkle in Glinda’s eyes, just for an instant, an unpleasant glint she had never seen before. The Wizard said he needed Wicked’s broomstick, but it turned out he didn’t really want it at all—it was just an excuse to get Dorothy and her friends to kill the witch. Except for her three friends, Dorothy wondered if she could trust anyone in Oz.

—from “No Place Like Home” by James Pyles

The Interview

“No Place Like Home” is an interesting twist based on the world and characters of Wizard of Oz. What inspired you to write this story?

Originally, I wrote a version of the short story for an anthology submission call involving phobias. I chose koinophobia which is the irrational fear of being normal. I imagined that after all of her fantastic adventures in Oz, Dorothy might regret or even dread going back to being a 1930s farm girl. After that, it was just a matter of leveraging the endings of both the film version of the Wizard of Oz and the novel by L. Frank Baum to create an alternate outcome for Dorothy.

Do you plan to write other stories in this version of Oz?

No plans for a sequel or other version. My whole point was describing how not only Dorothy, but her friends the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Lion as well as the White Witch were never really what they seemed. If Dorothy never returned to Kansas, all of those concealed traits would come tumbling out. Dorothy changes most of all, filling the only open niche (besides the Wizard) in Oz. In her case, she really did end up becoming what she had fought hardest against.

You regularly post book and film reviews. What do you enjoy most about this?

I like being able to put my own, unique thumbprint on these reviews. Many book and film reviews get pretty repetitive or focus on the same elements of the work. I like to think that I possess an alternate perspective and can bring a more refreshing angle in how to regard even classic movies and novels.

Your first science fiction novella, Time’s Abyss, will come out in October, and is up for pre-order now! Tell us about it!

The official blurb is: It starts in the present with eccentric billionaire Theodore Falkon commissioning and using what he thought was a timespace projector. He wanted to bring extinct life and ancient treasures from the distant past to his personal island for the amusement of his internationally famous guests. It starts with a 3,000 year old alien starship being discovered by the Soviet military under the Siberian wastes in 1965. It starts with the projector’s inventor, brilliant physicist Carson Everett leading a covert military and scientific team aboard a submarine to Falkon’s island chain to shut down the most dangerous experiment in the history of humanity. Where it ends will depend on which versions of reality take over the Earth, if it’s possible to end it at all.

It was written for a series with the theme “Underground.” A much shorter version of “Abyss” was one of my first SciFi stories, written for a submission to an Australian military-scifi action periodical. They didn’t accept it, but a significant portion of the action happens underground. I leveraged that for this story (I was tempted to call it “The Time Tunnel,” but that was already taken). I had to extend the adventure quite a bit, actually resolving the cliffhanger I’d originally created. It’s also something of a homage piece (at least the ancient alien spaceship part) to one of my favorite authors Andre Norton (Alice Norton). When I was in junior high, I read her novel “The Time Traders” and became hooked on the series and the underlying concept of modern people attempting to retrieve ancient technology to achieve space travel.

Imagine if a time experiment went wrong and began temporally fracturing parts of the Earth into different points of actual and alternate history. Too many fractures and time itself might end. Then imagine that it wasn’t really an accident and there’s some intelligence behind these occurrences, manipulating them for an unknown purpose. Are Dr. Carson Everett and his team of time lost specialists merely pawns, or can they seize control of a world being thrown into chaos, saving the planet and all of history? The conclusion is nothing that anyone, including Everett or Falkon could have imagined.

Is there something from a legend, fairy or folk tale, or myth that you haven’t yet used in your writing, but would like to?

I’m always interested in ancient gods, legends and such, but not the ones we tend to think of in western culture. How many tales are there of mermaids from different cultures across history? What if you wrote a story based on a mermaid fable almost none of your readers had ever heard of before? That’s just an example, but I like taking human lore that is all but unknown to readers in North America and Europe, and making something new.

What are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

A publisher I’ve worked with before extended a personal invitation to work on a “secret” project. A number of authors are crafting a series of short stories and novellas based on a shared world. Without giving too much away, for centuries a series of extraterrestrial events have been shaping people and objects, altering the nature of their existence and their effect on the world around them. For that same amount of time, a secret organization has been suppressing all knowledge of these events. In the present, the hidden truth is explosively released in a global event. With their presence exposed, these “agents” are in a race to find and conceal a growing group of extraordinary people and artifacts before governments, wealthy magnates, and others use them to take power over nations or even the world.

I’m working on my second story for the anthology right now and I’m having a blast. Although I use some of the “pre-created” characters, I’ve been given the opportunity to expand their histories, introduce new characters, and even to change the past.

About James

James Pyles is a science fiction and fantasy writer. He is also an Information Technology textbook author and editor, and technical writer for the IT department of a multi-state corporation located in the U.S. northwest. He currently has over 30 short stories published in various anthologies and periodicals and has just sold his first novella. He won the 2021 Helicon Short Story Award for his science fiction tale “The Three Billion Year Love,” which appears in the Tuscany Bay Books Planetary Anthology Mars.

Find James

Website ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

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Interview: Melissa McShane on “The Smoke-Scented Girl”

Evon Lorantis, magician-inventor of spells for his country’s defense against the power-mad Despot, is stumped by the mystery the government brings him: a rash of spontaneously occurring fires, hotter than any natural force can produce, melting stone and vaporizing flesh wherever they strike. The government believes it is a weapon that will finally defeat the Despot. And they want Evon to harness it.

In investigating the problem, Evon discovers these fires are no accident. He sets off on a journey across Dalanine to track down the rogue magician behind the fires, hoping to persuade her to turn aside from her vigilante crusade to serve her country. But the woman he finds is nothing like he expected.

As Evon attempts to untangle fact from myth, what began as an assignment becomes a challenge that will require every ounce of magical ability he has—and will irrevocably change the course of his life.

The Smoke-Scented Girl is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

He breathed shallowly, inhaling the scent of char and snow and, distantly, someone’s dinner. He had no idea if this next part would work. He’d worked it out by candlelight the last two nights while Piercy muttered in his sleep, scribbling notes and crossing them out and sketching the shape of a spell he wasn’t sure was even possible. Tracking someone when you had a piece of them, a hair or a drop of blood, that was a commonplace. His quarry hadn’t left anything like that behind. But she had left something else, if Evon could manage to find it. If it even remained here. If the spell worked.

He chalked a rune on the back of his left hand, then closed his eyes and let his mind wander. The bitter brown scent of burned earth. The clear crystal smell of snow melting. Mutton boiling over a fire, cold damp stone like ancient caverns. He pinched his nostrils shut with his left hand, pressed down on his eyelids with his right, and whispered, “Olficio.”

Even with his fingers clamped over his nose, the raucous clamoring of a thousand odors made him stagger. There was a river—he remembered their coach passing over it—a quarter of a mile away, and he could smell the water rushing past its banks, throwing up the rougher scent of the rocks it wore away at. The nearer smell of mutton drilled into his lips and tongue, warring with the bitter coffee flavor of olficio and making him want to vomit. He swallowed hard and kept his eyes shut. Trees with green sap flowing through their veins waiting patiently for spring. The sharp musk of a fox in its den. And somewhere, in all of this olfactory noise, a scent that didn’t belong.

He became gradually aware of a more human smell, the noxious odor of a body infrequently bathed and the warm, slippery scent of greasy hair. It permeated the stones, but faintly, as if the air was tugging it free and blending it with the wind that blew through the wrecked cottage. Fullanter. Then, even more faintly, the scent of smoke. Not the smoke of a campfire or even of a burning building, but a darker, thicker smell, slightly sour, as if someone had smeared grease on a hunk of ancient cheese and then set it alight. Evon let it seep into his closed nostrils and into his lungs. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant smell, but it made him uneasy, as though he’d invited something to take residence in his body that might not be the most gracious of guests. But nothing happened. He let the scent fill him to the core, then said, “Desini,” and the smells vanished so completely that even after he lowered both his hands, he felt as if his sense of smell had been surgically excised. Only the thick, sour smell of smoke remained, trailing away out of the cottage and down the road south toward Chaneston.

—from The Smoke-Scented Girl by Melissa McShane

The Interview

Where did the idea for The Smoke-Scented Girl come from?

I don’t actually come by ideas easily. I have to fight for every one. In this case, I had actually run out of things I wanted to write, and I decided to try a brainstorming technique where I came up with dozens of potential book titles and chose one that appealed to me. The Smoke-Scented Girl felt like it had a lot of potential. It wasn’t until much later, after the book was written and published, that I discovered I’d seen that phrase before—in the opening scenes of Andrea K. Höst’s book Hunting! I’m not sure how much I was influenced by that glimpse, but I’d like to think I was subconsciously inspired.

Both The Smoke-Scented Girl and The God-Touched Man are set in the world of Dalanine. What did you most enjoy about creating this world?

I wanted a world that would feel familiar to readers and yet be its own place. The original idea had Dalanine as a Victorian-inspired alternate reality, with magic as a utilitarian force replacing technology. That meant magic had to be something anyone could learn, not something they were born to. The magic system was probably the most fun part of this world creation, because I drew on a lot of common elements—magic words, gestures, symbolic material components—and tried to reach beyond the way they’re often used. For example, the spell words Evon uses are based on Latin words, but I used ones that aren’t instantly recognizable as roots for English words. Looking for alternatives was a lot of fun, not least because I discovered Latin words I’d never heard of.

What magical elements in The Smoke-Scented Girl are not based on folklore and legends, but instead are completely made up—and why?

The magical elements that come closest to being entirely made up are the places of power that exist here and there throughout Dalanine. They are places saturated with magic from the wizard wars that happened hundreds of years ago, and their basic natures have been altered by that magic. Some of them are offset in time, while others are summer or winter year-round, and there’s one that is permanently on fire. I liked the idea of magical fallout, so to speak, and magic as a contaminant. They started out as background detail that explained why the magicians of Dalanine’s present don’t do magic the way magicians used to, and about halfway in, they became a major part of the plot.

Why do you think so many people are drawn to reading stories about magic?

I know for me, stories about magic make me feel in touch with something greater than I am. The world is a big place, and so much of it is still strange and unknown, and I think that appeals to a lot of people. Magic is an extension of that. Stories about magic promise to expand our horizons by inviting us to step outside the mundane world. And, like any good story, they offer us the chance to experience things outside our own lives.

You moved quite a bit growing up. How has this influenced your writing?

I never put down roots anywhere because I was always conscious of how my family would eventually leave. Among other things, this kept me from feeling tied to one place and therefore falling into the trap that sometimes happens of believing that the way things are done in my hometown are the way they are done everywhere. I think that shows up in my writing as the wide variety of fantasy subgenres and tropes I’ve tackled over the years; I want to explore different ways of thinking and different personal expectations. The constants in my life were family and family traditions, and I like to write about the ways people build connections that aren’t based on place.

Set in England in the early 1800s, your series The Extraordinaries focuses on women who use their magical talents not only to fight a war, but also challenge the expectations and prejudices of society. What inspired you to create this series?

The Extraordinaries started as a dare by my husband after I said how much I like Regency fiction but didn’t think I could ever write one. I had a magic system I liked (really superpowers like the X-Men) and the idea of combining what is a more modern take on magic with the sensibility of the early 19th century captured my imagination. From there, the intersection of magical talent with society and culture inspired each woman’s story as each of my heroines mastered her talent as well as discovering where she fit into society.

Is there something from a legend, fairy or folk tale, or myth that you haven’t yet used in your writing, but would like to?

I want to write about elves—not friendly, wise Tolkien elves, but the powerful, alien creatures who have no compassion for humanity (kind of like what Terry Pratchett did in his book Lords and Ladies). I’d like to tell a story about how elves were locked out of our world for centuries and are only just finding a way back in, and what happens when they do. I think I have a plan for that, but it’s some distance in the future.

What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I started working on a series about werewolves in northern Italy in the late Renaissance—or, more specifically, a fantasy analog of that time and place. I started writing it because my daughter loves werewolves and I thought it would be fun to write a series she would want to read, but it soon became something I’m passionate about for its own sake. Part of what makes it fun is that it’s a procedural series, with the two main characters investigating mysteries or solving problems, which means I can go on writing about them indefinitely. Since my other series to date have all had arcs that eventually came to an end, this is an exciting change.

About Melissa

Melissa McShane is the author of more than forty fantasy novels, including Burning Bright, first in The Extraordinaries series; The Book of Secrets, first book of The Last Oracle; and the Crown of Tremontane fantasy series, beginning with Pretender to the Crown. She lives in the shadow of the mountains of the West with her husband, children, three very needy cats, and a library that has finally overflowed its bounds, which means she needs more bookcases.

Find Melissa

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

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Interview: T. Thorn Coyle on “By Moon”

A witch who wants to live in the shadows. A dandy who feels he has failed. To protect their friends, Selene must battle a corrupt magician, and survive.

Artist Selene feels overwhelmed by life, and their Goth club friends are dropping like flies. But when the witch realizes the situation involves handsome dandy they’ve been avoiding, they don’t know what to think. As Joshua keeps showing up trying to help, Selene realizes they can’t hide from a trauma hidden in their past…

With the help of their coven, Selene must uncover the root of the tainted magic that has put one friend in a coma and killed another. A magic that threatens Selene. What—or whom—stalks the community? To figure it out, Selene must risk exposing heart and soul to cast the spell that will save their friends, and maybe even themself…

By Moon is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

Limning a bright line along the edge of the deer’s skull, Selene tried to tune in to the painting again. The moon was almost full. Selene could feel it. They had always been attuned to the moon. Their childhood fascination with the glowing orb was what led Selene to witchcraft, and, of course, to their name.

Selene, Goddess of the moon. Daughter of Titans, sister of the sun.

Selene had been raised by ordinary, flawed humans, and was an only child, but they felt as if they could be sibling to the sun. Maybe. Mostly, though, even though the full moon was gorgeous, Selene tucked themself away like the moon did behind the perpetually cloudy Portland skies.

Besides, darkness was good for a lot of the magic it turned out Selene was best at. Bindings. Uncrossings. Banishings. Oh, they could work the mechanics of prosperity or love spells, and of course collaborated with their coven on spells for justice, but…they were just more comfortable with working magic on the dark side of the moon.

Cassiel would give Selene shit if she knew her coven mate wasn’t comfortable doing magic for themself. Not after Selene had given Cassie a hard time for not asking the Gods for help with her own little situation last winter.

They rubbed a long hand across their forehead, careful not to smudge any paint on their skin. Selene spent too much time on their makeup to mar it with the thick paint that slicked the horsehair brush.

Arrow and Crescent coven was a good fit for a witch dedicated to the moon. Coven members all had different deity affiliations, but the coven itself was dedicated to Diana, another Goddess with ties to the moon.

It was funny—gazing at the moon always grounded Selene more firmly on earth. It reminded them that they were on a rock in the middle of space, and that the rock was home. Just like Portland was, and likely always would be, home.

They stepped back from the painting a moment, trying to see the whole. The bright edge of the skull reflected the moon in the water. The blade edge needed drawing out to form a magic triangle created by the lines of light. A triangle of edges.

Just like Selene.

Sometimes it really felt as if they were nothing but edge. No center. No core. No soft, beating heart. No warm lips. No laughter.

It was as if Selene had been built to be a weapon. A sharp sword to be wielded against those who intended harm.

It wasn’t a good feeling. Never had been.

Selene was a sharp sickle, not the lush fullness of the moon that practically set their long, dark hair afloat around their head.

“Fuck. May as well pack it in for the night,” they murmured. Once this mood hit, there was nothing to do but drink or dance, have sex or sleep. No way were they ready for bed, and sex? Yeah, unless it was with Selene’s own hand, that wasn’t happening. It had been too long since they’d found someone interesting enough who was also interested in them.

“Drink and dance it is, then,” Selene said. Setting the brush in the soaking jar, they began to scrape the paint off their palette. “I just hope you know what you’re up to, moon.”

Selene felt the small hairs on their arms stand up, as if something had just walked over their grave. They whipped their head around, looking for danger. Nothing. Selene’s dark eyes rested on the still life. The water in the chalice on the table moved, rippling for a moment, as though a form attempted to take shape.

A trick of the eye? Or a message to pay attention? All Selene knew was, the studio didn’t feel so homey anymore.

—from By Moon by T. Thorn Coyle

The Interview

The Witches of Portland series, which includes By Moon, combines magic, romance, and activism. What inspired you to combine these elements together?

Magic, love, and activism are all important to me. They flow through the communities I’m part of, and more importantly, they underpin the world I want to help create.

Why did you make Selene, one of the main characters in By Moon, a painter?

Making Selene a painter wasn’t a premeditated choice. They just were a painter. Some characters show up how they are, and I uncover more about their lives as the story unfolds. Art is a big part of how Selene interacts with the world, so that influenced the storyline, too. All of this is part of what I like about writing!

A few years ago, you moved from California to the Pacific Northwest. How has this change affected your fiction?

I’m the type of writer that not only builds imaginary worlds, but tries to reflect the world around me through the lens of fiction. So—except for some of my science fiction—my stories are mostly set in California or Oregon. It took me a few years of living in the Pacific Northwest to be able to write from this place. Place is its own character, so I needed to establish a relationship with this biosphere in order to write it properly.

A sign on the wall of your workspace says “Eat Words Drink Stars.” What does this mean to you?

“Eat Words Drink Stars” captures my imagination and reminds me to always reach for wonder. To not get bogged down in worry or fear. This is especially helpful when I’m writing about challenging topics. If my stories are infused with a sense of wonder and hope, I’ve been successful.

The banner also reminds me to take in words—other people’s thoughts and stories—and to glory in the natural world, and reach for the stars.

(The banner is handmade by Brooklyn artist Rayo and Honey, by the way).

Your series The Panther Chronicles is set in 1969, and combines magic and community with the politics of the U.S. in the late 1960s. What did you most enjoy about writing these books?

I loved doing all the research on the times. So much was happening then! I had already studied a lot of it—which inspired the novels—but needed to dig even more deeply to get the right flavor. It was also very satisfying to add magic into the history, and turning J. Edgar Hoover into an evil magician made me cackle. Plus, actual shape shifting members of the Black Panther Party? That was marvelous to write.

Your tagline is “Magic is real. Justice is worth fighting for.” Tell us what this means to you, and how this phrase comes through in your fiction.

I live my life as if those words are true. We can change our consciousness through actions and beliefs, and changing consciousness is one step toward greater justice. I believe in a world filled with wonder—both seen and unseen—a world that embraces paradox and the unexpected. I live with the sense that magic is always just around the corner.

I also believe it is up to us to create a society where justice is better distributed, where kindness and compassion take the place of punishment and oppression. My stories—whether serious or lighthearted—reflect this worldview. My activism is informed by my desire for justice, and my stories are informed by my activism.

Stories matter. Look at how history is taught: Whose lives are important? What stories get told and how? And from whose perspective? We see how policy is made according to what we believe, and what we believe is influenced by the stories we tell, whether we think they are “true” or not.

Stories capture the imagination, and once that happens, anything becomes possible.

What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I’m working on two series right now. One is a post-apocalyptic epic fantasy trilogy called The Steel Clan Saga (that might get a second trilogy added to it someday). It’s got motorcycle riding, sword wielding anarchist knights, dragons, trolls, elves, and magical creatures from many different cultures. I love near-future culture building, and it’s been great fun to get to do that on a grand scale. The Steel Clan Saga has multiple points of view, cool world building, and strong characters going on adventures. I wanted swords and motorcycles in one world and it’s been great to just say, “you can create that.” Book One—We Seek No Kings— is out now. Book Two—We Heed No Laws—is up for preorder, and releases in late July.

The other series is almost the polar opposite, and equally fun. It’s a paranormal cozy mystery series set on the Oregon Coast in a fictional town called Seashell Cove. It’s quite bonkers and I’ve been allowing my imagination to run wild. There are centaurs in the woods? Great! Actual garden gnomes and sprites? Awesome. A witch who owns a bookstore? What could be better? I’m really enjoying letting my mind play in this world. The first book is called “Bookstore Witch” and should be out in late September.

About Thorn

T. Thorn Coyle has worked in several strange and diverse occupations and been arrested at least five times. Buy them a cup of tea or a good whisky and maybe they’ll tell you about it.

Author of The Steel Clan Saga, The Witches of Portland, and The Panther Chronicles, Thorn’s multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft.

Thorn’s work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections. They have taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states.

An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn stalks city streets, writes in cafes, loves live music, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.

Find Thorn

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Instagram ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub ~ Patreon ~ YouTube

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

Sign up for the Blackbird Publishing newsletter!

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Interview: Tao Wong on “A Gamer’s Wish”

Henry Tsien has been living the quiet life of a mundane mortal until he stumbles upon a magical ring which contains an ancient jinn resides. Henry wishes for magic, and stumbles into a world of adventure and a hidden magical world that is more banal and wondrous than he could ever imagine.

A Gamer’s Wish is available for a limited time in the Wild Magic bundle.

There’s the real world…
…and then there are our worlds, secret, wild, and free.

The Wild Magic bundle holds ten volumes of the magic. Ten books about what we find after we have passed through the illusion that we can live without wonder in the world, and come out the other side.

Pack your bags, put on your good walking shoes, and make sure you bring plenty of water. We’re going out into the wilderness, and who knows when we’ll be back?

The Wild Magic bundle is available through July 14th, 2021.

Excerpt

“Are you done yet?” the blond woman, who had formed in my apartment from smoke, asked me. Clad in a pink bra, tiny vest, and billowy sheer pants, she reminded me of an actress from an old, cheesy TV show, almost uncannily so. Seriously, the blond genie that stood in front of me with her sardonic smile would have sent copyright lawyers salivating at the fees they’d earn. If they could have seen her. And if she hadn’t wished them away.

“You… you’re a genie! But that was a ring, not a lamp!” I spluttered, the ring that the smoke had streamed from still clutched in my hand in a death grip.

“Jinn! And yes, I am. What may I do for you, Master?” the genie said. Turning her head, she looked around my bachelor suite with a flicker of distaste. “Maybe a bigger residence?”

“You’re a genie…” I stared at the blonde, my mind caught in a circular trap as it struggled with the insanity in front of it. After all, genies didn’t exist. But there, in front of me, was a genie.

“Oh, hell. I really can’t wait for this entire ‘enlightenment’ period to be over,” the genie said with a roll of her eyes after I just continued to stare at her blankly. She turned away from me and walked around the room before she stopped at my micro-kitchen to open the fridge. Bent over, she fished inside before extracting day-old fried rice and popping a bite into her mouth. A conjured spoon later, she was digging into last night’s dinner and prodding my stove, flat-screen TV, and laptop. “What is this?”

“Fried rice.”

“I know what fried rice is. And this isn’t bad,” she complimented me, ignoring my mumbled thanks while she pointed at the TV screen and then laptop. “This. And this.”

“TV and laptop.”

“Huh.” She returned to the TV before she prodded at it a few more times and inevitably adjusted its angle. “That’s amazing. I guess your science actually does have some use. Well, outside of indoor plumbing. That isn’t as good.”

My brain finally stopped going in circles after I decided to stop trying to actually understand what was going on. If I had a genie in my house, I had a genie. “So, your name isn’t Jeannie, is it?”

“Do I look like a Jeannie to you?”

—from A Gamer’s Wish by Tao Wong

The Interview

A Gamer’s Wish is the first book in Hidden Wishes, a series with shadowy supernatural organizations, a beautiful, game-addicted Jinn, and lots and lots of magic. 🙂 How did you come up with the premise for this world?

I’ve been reading urban fantasy forever, starting with the Anita Blake series and Dresden Files and then just branching out. So when I started writing LitRPG (when the magic mimics a role-playing game) I wanted to put the two together, so I had to figure out why a leveling system—a way to gateway the magic into Henry—would work. Which then came via giving him his magic via a magic wishing ring, and… voila! A Gamer’s Wish.

Why did you decide to include a Jinn in this series?

Well, Lily, the Jinn was necessary to give Henry his magic. I needed something powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to both gateway the magic he received as well as bend reality, and so… jinn! She started out as a typical ‘genie’ at the start, before she morphed in her interactions with Henry to her true nature as she realised he wasn’t really part of the supernatural world.


You live in the Yukon! What do you most like about living there?

Summer! 24 hours of daylight, gorgeous sunny days with nice, warm temperatures and so much beautiful, gorgeous wilderness. There’s so much wildlife, from the eagles that nest on Millennium Trail to the foxes that run around the neighborhood I live in, you’re always able to see something new.

What do you enjoy about weaving elements from mythology, legends, and folklore in your own writing?

For me, I love looking for new creatures that might not be as well known and weaving them into my worlds as well as giving them little twists, sometimes humanising them like with Lily or offering alternative explanations of the stories like in the System Apocalypse. Playing with old ideas and twisting them sometimes also lets me play other fantasy ideas straight and leave my readers guessing.

In your series A Thousand Li, which draws upon traditional xianxia and wuxia fiction, Long Wu Ying grows from a peasant farmer to a cultivator in the search for immortality. What inspired you to write this series?

I’d been reading a lot of the more recent xianxia work coming from China via the translated webnovels, and one thing I noticed was that many of the works were missing certain aspects that drew me into traditional wuxia works. The philosophical struggle between honour and enlightenment, between being the best and, at the same time, the desire to retreat from social constructs like rankings, a lot of that was missing and replaced by this rush for power, the progression of power and basic power fantasy tropes.

On top of that, I’d been reading and studying Daoism myself a little, and I found the idea of enlightenment and gaining immortality via understanding the Dao fascinating. In a way, A Thousand Li lets me play with both exploring Daoism myself via my protagonist and how that interacts with the need to exist in a world that is, in many ways, inimical to Daoist principles. That push and pull creates a lot of the internal conflict in Wu Ying and the world around him.

In the end, A Thousand Li was my way to hopefully introduce some readers to what I thought were the more interesting aspects of xianxia and wuxia works, in a form that is slightly easier to digest than some of the other works out there.

Is there something from a legend, fairy or folk tale, or myth that you haven’t yet used in your writing, but would like to?

Dragons! I’ve had them as tertiary characters, but not really had a chance to really make a dragon the star. I’d love to make them integral to the plot as a companion or even protagonist. There’s just something fascinating about dragons—both Western and Eastern ones.

What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

Hah! I have a hummingbird brain. Right now, I’m editing book 11 of my post-apocalyptic LitRPG the System Apocalypse which is super exciting because this is the penultimate work before the series ends in book 12. It’s fun, but hard work, weaving together the end of the plots and things I’ve foreshadowed many books before while also weaving in some other thematic elements for the end.

I’m also working on a few other projects because hummingbird brain. One’s a weird epic fantasy LitRPG mashup with thematic overtones of family and responsibility and fatherhood which probably won’t sell well but is a ton of fun to write. And the other is the final book on my new adult fantasy series which I’ll be rapid releasing at the end of the year / early next year with the other two books I’ve already written for it. That’ll bring the Adventures on Brad series to a proper series end.

About Tao

Tao Wong is a Canadian self-published author based in the Yukon. Yes, that Yukon. As a reader, he’s an avid fan of science fiction and fantasy, having cut his teeth decades ago on Dragonlance, Terry Brooks and Asimov before graduating to Jordan, Gaiman, Bujold and more.

When he’s not writing and working, he’s practicing martial arts, reading (even more!) and taking care of his family. Other hobbies include occasional RPGs and board games as well as picking up random skill sets.

Tao became a full-time author in 2019 and is now a member of SF Canada, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and ALLI.

Find Tao

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Instagram ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub ~ Patreon ~ YouTube

Find the Wild Magic bundle!

The Wild Magic bundle is available for a limited time at StoryBundle.com/Fantasy.

Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of the purchase price to the charities Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now.

   
 

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Magicks & Enchantments


Set your cauldron to bubbling, and read these fifteen tales of magic, sorcery, and enchantment!

What if you could smell magic—or go to a bar and get a shot of magic to go with your cocktail? Will an aging sorcerer’s last pupil ever learn anything? And what could possibly go wrong when a pair of witches enter the local chili cook-off?

Includes stories by DeAnna Knippling, Leah R. Cutter, Robert Jeschonek, Debbie Mumford, Annie Reed, Rei Rosenquist, Alicia Cay, James Pyles, Grayson Towler, Jamie Ferguson, Dayle A. Dermatis, Thea Hutcheson, Leslie Claire Walker, Sharon Kae Reamer, and Steve Vernon.

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The Stories

“The Coffee Shop Ghost” by DeAnna Knippling

Pink-haired goth Tiff Cordero isn’t a witch. She’s a clairaliant, someone who smells spirits. And she’s been hired to sniff out a ghost who has recently started to give migraines to the patrons of a local coffee shop.

Only problem: nobody’s died anywhere near the building recently, no one has cursed the place, and the only odor Tiff can pick up is the smell of burnt plastic.

If she can’t solve the case, all the cool patrons will ditch the coffee shop—and it’s already in a neighborhood getting updated and plasticized out of existence.

“Dreams of Saffron and Lace” by Leah R. Cutter

Regina Victoria Edmondson rules as Queen over the nursery she shares with her twin brother Tobias.

Except when she allows him to direct their play as Raj.

However, on the rambling country estate where they live, neither of them control the gardens, where time moves in an unorderly, disquieting fashion.

Secrets hide there.

Deadly secrets.

“A Spice Most Demanding” by Robert Jeschonek

Most guests at The Unicorn’s Egg in downtown Philadelphia come seeking shots of magic—just one more belt to satisfy their addictions to spells and sorcery. Newcomer Oliver Box breaks the mold, though, coming to the pub to help others—bringing old-timers to warlock bartender Homan Teatree to restore ruined memories in minds burned by dementia. But when those memories connect to each other and an ancient mystery in unlikely ways, Teatree suspects a game’s afoot, and he’s a loser in the making. Layers of lies peel away to reveal secrets undreamt of, as Oliver’s shocking true agenda points to the miraculous restoration of a flavor of the world long thought lost…and a piece of his heart lost and found along with it.

“The Solitary Sorceress” by Debbie Mumford

It’s been ten years since the Firestone turned Kaitlyn into a sorceress to be reckoned with. Since that fateful day, she’s been in seclusion, mastering herself as well as the artifact. But now her mentor and friend, Aelfric, has died and King Lorien has called her to court to take her place as the King’s Magician. Is she ready? Can she maintain control of the Firestone while surrounded by courtiers?

“The Fixer” by Annie Reed

When Amelia botched her first spell as a kid, her parents enrolled her in an after-school program that taught her how to fix her screw-ups. She loved doing this so much that as an adult she opened her own business to help people who couldn’t get their spells to work quite right.

Now the best spell reclamation wizard in the business, she’s never run into a spell she couldn’t fix…until now. And to make matters worse, the spell in question is one of her own, pirated by a shady online wizarding school out to bilk unsuspecting wannabe wizards—and ruin Amelia in the process.

“A Worthwhile Sacrifice” by Rei Rosenquist

Cedar had a simple task: get water from the northern well and bring it back to their town before dark, when all doors are sealed with magical locks to keep everyone safe inside.

Instead of completing the task on time, Cedar got distracted and dawdled.

But the wolves come every night, and tonight is no different.

“Campbell County Cook-Off” by Alicia Cay

The oldest of three elderly witch sisters always wins the County Fair’s chili cook-off…but this year, things are going to be different!

Rebecca and Leah steal their sister’s prize-winning recipe, whip up their own batch of chili, and head off to the competition ready to surprise their sister—and win the contest. But they didn’t follow the recipe correctly…or did they?

“No Place Like Home” by James Pyles

What would have happened if Dorothy hadn’t wanted to leave Oz and return to Kansas? What if the “good witch” Glinda had craved the ruby slippers for her own? What would the transformed Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion really have been like with their new attributes?

You’ll never think of Dorothy and her friends the same way again…

“Terminal Sorcery” by Grayson Towler

Kenryk the Magnificent once cast demon princes back to the darkness, and brought demigods to their knees. Now he’s just an old man trapped in his own tower, shivering under a stack of grey, threadbare blankets, unable to walk more than a few steps on his own without the help of his fool of an apprentice. No matter what Kenryk tries to teach her, the woman just is not good at magic—and she’s going to be his last apprentice. But Kenryk has one final lesson for her…

“Diamond Betty” by Jamie Ferguson

It’s 1883, and the silver boom is well underway in Colorado. Penelope heads to Denver to use her witchcraft to steal a necklace from Diamond Betty, a beautiful woman with a questionable past who recently married a wealthy silver magnate almost twice her age. The diamond pendant contains a demon, and Penelope plans to put the necklace in a place so safe that no one would ever be able to harness the creature’s magical powers. But things don’t always work out as planned, especially when magic—and demons—are involved.

“Telling the Bees” by Dayle A. Dermatis

Some kind of weird Sleeping Beauty curse has hit a Portland, Oregon, suburb—the entire town has fallen asleep. Hedgewitch sisters Holly and Willow, and Holly’s fae familiar, Cam, head out to help. But “weird” doesn’t begin to describe what’s really happening….

“The Final Initiation” by Thea Hutcheson

Sindal returns to the village she left years ago with the goal of completing her final initiation into witchcraft. To do so, she must kill her former husband, who’d beaten and humiliated her after she’d been forced to marry him as a young girl. When she arrives at his hut, she finds he took a second wife to replace her. Sindal needs to complete her task in order to be a full-blooded witch, but her once easy decision is no longer as simple as it had seemed.

“Fight or Flight” by Leslie Claire Walker

Little Charlie Nobody fights to survive on dangerous streets. Each time he hovers between life and death, he not only sees the future, he enters it.

He falls in love with the wonders he sees, the people he meets, and even the trouble he finds. No one captures his heart more than Sunday Sloan, who wields the kind of magic that others would kill to possess.

He wants nothing more than to become part of her world. Will magic allow him to leave his own time and remain in hers?

“Witches of Cologne” by Sharon Kae Reamer

Gwen and her best friend Faigel are imprisoned in medieval Cologne, waiting to be burned for bringing the Great Death down on the city. But they weren’t responsible for the plague—the only thing they did wrong was fall in love with the same man. And it was this love that caused Gwen to make a deal with the Raven Queen…Cathubodua.

“Travis Alamo Boone – Witchhunter” by Steve Vernon

Twelve-year-old Travis Alamo Boone went to the eye doctor to get 20-20 vision; that’s where he saw the one-eyed witch. Travis had something that the witch wanted. And that’s how he started on the road he’s still on today.

Find Magicks & Enchantments

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Hauntings: Fifteen Ghostly Tales

Not all ghosts can be laid to rest…

Whether you’re sitting around a campfire, or staying up late to read—you’ll eventually have to turn off the light, you know—you’ll love these fifteen tales of ghosts, haunted houses, and spooky goings-on!

Imagine waking every day in an old house, unable to leave the grounds because every time you do you get lost in the gray mist. What if the haunted section in the library was actually haunted? Seeing a ghost in a haunted house would be one thing…but what if it followed you home?

Step into the haunted worlds of the fifteen ghostly tales in Hauntings…if you dare!

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Hauntings is the first volume in The Haunted Anthology. Follow the series on Facebook to learn more!

The Stories

A young girl wakes every morning to find a note from her father in Travis Heermann’s “Daubs of Color.” She’s stuck in their old house, all alone, with endless gray sky and mist just beyond the hedgerows. Her only company is the many paintings which always change, as if someone comes during the night to replace them. The eyes of the people in the paintings watch her as she passes by.

The ghost of a 70s British rock god asks Nikki Ashburne, former Hollywood party girl who can now speak to ghosts, for help finding a song he wrote for his favorite groupie in “Communication Breakdown” by Dayle A. Dermatis. The only problem is she needs help from her musician brother, who doesn’t know about Nikki’s spectral ability.

In Jamie Ferguson’s “Haunted,” Jill is walking through an old, abandoned cabin in the mountains when she sees the ghost of a man who murdered his wife in 1893. Three days later he appears in Jill’s house: the ghost followed her home!

It’s the twenty-eighth birthday of the seventh son of a seventh son in Debbie Mumford’s “Seventh.” He is investigating a crime scene, and is startled when the dead woman speaks to him. The ghost helps him identify who killed her, but there’s no evidence…and now the murderer is after his next victim.

The tavern maid Blake dallied with killed herself—and her unborn child, who she claimed was his—in P.D. Cacek’s “The Lingering Scent of Apples.” He goes back to the tavern, which she now supposedly haunts, to make his peace with her family. But not all ghosts can be laid to rest.

Ellen Sugimori is afraid of ghosts, which is making it hard for her to write the ghost story due for her fifth-grade class, in “The Sugimori Sisters and the Haunting in the Library” by Brigid Collins. Her little sister decides to help Ellen by doing a scientific experiment to prove ghosts exist and that people can protect themselves from them. The girls head to the library and sneak into the Haunted section…which is, of course, actually haunted!

In Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Waltzing on a Dancer’s Grave,” Greta and her ballet company arrive at Grayson Place, and prepare for the company’s fiftieth-anniversary gala—but her memories haunt her. Karl Grayson died there twenty years earlier, and his death freed her once. Or did it?

Meredith has set up shop as a private detective in Rebecca M. Senese’s “Hanging On Letting Go,” but she’s not getting any clients until Priscilla, the ghost who only Meredith can see or hear, shows up with a case. Naturally, the client is also a ghost!

The Waverly Inn is one of the oldest hotels in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Steve Vernon’s “Lying in the Gutter, Gazing at the Stars.” The inn’s claim to fame is that Oscar Wilde haunts room 122…which is, of course, the only room available since the local blues festival has filled every other hotel in the area.

An angel made of tarnished concrete sits in the center of the cemetery in Jeff Wood’s “Gray Angel.” Years before, a young, pregnant woman died next to the statue and—according to the ghost stories—sometimes she appears…sad, weeping, and covered in blood. But those are just stories—she’s not real. Or is she?

In DeAnna Knippling’s “Nurse Kimberly Sits Vigil,” Wanda, Kimberly’s mother-in-law, is fading, and the only person she wants to see before she dies is Kimberly. At the urging of her sons—and the ghost of their father, who the kids are convinced still sits in his old chair—Kimberly heads to the nursing home in Atlanta, where she learns why Wanda wanted so badly for her to visit.

A young girl appears at Meredith’s grandfather’s funeral in Elaine Marie Carnegie-Padgett’s “The Haunting of Penelope,” but no one else sees the child. At first Meredith doesn’t know why the girl seems so familiar, then she remembers they played together when Meredith herself was very young, and didn’t realize Penelope was a ghost. Is there something Meredith can do to help the little ghost girl?

The high school Tiana and her friends attend has been transformed into a haunted house for Halloween in “Professor Polter In The Computer Lab With The Banshee,” by Tami Veldura. But it’s not just a haunted house—it’s also an interactive virtual reality game! The friends team up on their adventure, knowing the ghosts aren’t real…but what about the banshee?

In “Hoarding,” by Thea Hutcheson, the previous occupant of Selena’s house might have died, but he hadn’t gone, and he certainly hadn’t changed his ways as her belongings regularly disappeared. Dealing with a klepto ghost was annoying, but at least Selena had escaped her controlling, abusive boyfriend…or had she?

Carol haunts Bobby, her husband and murderer, as well as the new woman he’s seeing in Alicia Cay’s “At the Edge of the Well.” They can’t see, or hear, or touch Carol—she is not that kind of ghost. But in dreams, she can do many things.

Find Hauntings

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The Wild Hunt: 13 Tales of Magic & Enchantment


Ride through the sky with the Wild Hunt!

A fierce host rides across the winter sky at night
In wild pursuit of whoever crosses their path

Peals of thunder follow the horses as they gallop through the clouds
Fire flashing from their hooves

The baying of the hounds echoes across the sky
Their sharp teeth glinting in the light of the moon

The Huntsman blows his horn, and the Fae ride behind him
Their faces both beautiful and terrible to behold

When the nights are long and the winter winds howl, stay inside
Lest you cross the path of the Hunt…and become their prey

The Wild Hunt contains thirteen stories based on the wide and varied folklore of the Wild Hunt. In some tales, the leader of the hunt is Odin; in others it’s King Arthur, Herodias, or Herne the Hunter. Sometimes the riders are Fae; sometimes they are specters, or skeletons, or strange beasts never before seen by mortal eyes.

But no matter who the hunters are, you definitely don’t want to be the one they’re after…

Let the Wild Hunt begin!

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The Stories

Go on the Wild Hunt from a hound’s perspective in Thea Hutcheson’s “My Last Hunt,” and learn about the Fae—and humanity—from a new perspective.

Anthea Sharp’s “The Faerie Invasion” takes us to a world where the faeries have invaded the mortal realm. Ric and his little sister scrounge for food and hide from creatures they never imagined were real—especially after dark. But no matter how hard they try, they can’t hide from the Wild Hunt…

In Brenda Carre’s “Gigglebark Tea,” Lewis and his annoying neighbor are in the middle of an argument about a strange illness that’s going around, when Herne the Hunter shows up…and he and the hunt are after Lewis. Herne’s afflicted with the mysterious malady, and thinks Lewis is the cause. To buy time, Lewis brings out what’s left of his long-passed wife’s Gigglebark tea, not realizing what he’s going to learn as a result.

Emma is unable to move or speak in the real world, but in the virtual computer game of Feyland, her body is fully functional. Deb Logan’s “Emma: A Feyland Dryad” takes us along with Emma as she learns what it’s like to stand, to run, to dance…and to be chased by the Wild Hunt, which she discovers is as real as the Realm of Faerie, which Feyland is a portal to.

Linda Jordan’s “The Turning” tells the tale of a young woman who stands in between a man and the Wild Hunt, not realizing her stance will lead her to learn things about her past that she never even imagined could be true.

In “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” by Rebecca M. Senese, Detective Maeve Hemlock is looking forward to a well-deserved vacation from her job at the Spells and Misdemeanours Bureau. But the Wild Hunt has arrived, and as a faerie from the North Court, Maeve knows just how dangerous this is for Crossroads City, which lies between the mortal and faerie realms. There goes her vacation…

Mary, a Ute woman, is married one of the Aos Si in Shannon Lawrence’s “Of Earth and Fae.” Conor left his ancestral lands for the Americas, and thought himself safe from those who had persecuted his people for centuries. But as Woden and the Wild Hunt approach, Mary and Conor realize he’s in grave danger after all.

James spends his time being a nobody in DeAnna Knippling’s “The Last Private in the Gray Hoodie and Blue Jeans Brigade.” He found if he practiced hard at being unremarkable and unnoticeable for long enough, the walking trails in his neighborhood got seriously weird, and led to someplace—or some places—completely different from the regular world. It’s kind of cool. An escape. Or is it really that cool after all?

In Lousa Swann’s “Scraggles Goes Hunting,” Scraggles the cat expected his night to be like any other night. He certainly did not expect to find himself the steed of a pixie, compelled to fly through the sky as part of the Wild Hunt. And he definitely did not expect to run into a dragon…

An Unseelie Fey breaks free of her prison and begins her own wild hunt in Kim May’s “Of Blood and Bone, Earth and Air.” Can the genuis loci who cares for the land vanquish his terrible foe before she is beyond his power to contain?

In “Getting Good,” by Brigid Collins, Stelli realizes her friends have been taking the game of Feyland far more seriously, and now they’re cutting her out because she’s not as good as they are. Determined to get better at the game on her own, she begins the quest of the Midnight Huntsman…only to find that Feyland is not just a game after all.

Married to the tetrarch of Galilee in Jamie Ferguson’s “The Call of the Huntress,” Herodias lives a life of luxury, but also a life of misery. She prays to the goddess Diana, but of course Diana isn’t going to respond to the pleas of a mere mortal. When Herodias’ daughter Salome arrives for a visit, she disrupts the fragile balance of Herodias’ life. Herodias calls to Diana, just like she has so many times over the years…but this time, the goddess answers.

Twig hadn’t planned to spend her night running from the Wild Hunt, but that’s exactly what she finds herself doing in Annie Reed’s “Murder’s Revenge.” An elf who spent years undercover in a motorcycle gang so she could find a way to rescue the gentle water spirit they’d enslaved, she’d managed to save the water spirit—but earn the wrath of the gang’s leader, who now rides with the hunt and wants revenge.

Find The Wild Hunt

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A Procession of Faeries

Learn more about the series, and follow A Procession of Faeries on Facebook and Goodreads!

   
 

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