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Story spotlight: “Brown and the Hotel Colorado Haunts” by J. A. Campbell


Join Brown for some ghost hunting fun!

When she’s not busy herding sheep, she uses her border collie eye to keep wayward spirits in line.

As the guest of honor at a Halloween celebration at haunted Hotel Colorado, she’ll have plenty of ghosts to keep her busy, but she’s the dog for the job.
 
 
 
 
 
 
“Brown and the Hotel Colorado Haunts” is in the Haunted collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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When Julie is not writing she’s often out riding horses, or working sheep with her dogs. She lives in Colorado with a handful of cats, some sheep, Kira and Bran her border collies, her Arabian endurance horses Triska and Cavalier, and her Irish Sailor. She is the author of many Vampire and Ghost-Hunting Dog stories the Tales of the Travelers series, and many other young adult books. her passions include horses, writing about horses, dogs and writing about dogs. She writes fantasy, sci fi, horror, and all related genres. She’s a member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Dog Writers of America Association and the editor for Story Emporium fiction magazine.

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Story spotlight: “Salt Water” by Deb Logan

Maris, a fifteen-year-old girl from Wichita, Kansas has never seen the ocean. Intentionally. Her parents have an unreasonable fear of the sea. When Dad allows Maris to accompany her best friend on a family vacation to Portland, Oregon, he has no idea that their ultimate destination will be Cannon Beach … and the wild waters of the Pacific Ocean. Maris is about to learn the truth behind the family taboo against salt water.
 
 
 

“Salt Water” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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A prolific copywriter by day, Deb Logan has been published in WMG Publishing’s Fiction River anthologies, Dreaming Robot Press’s Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide anthologies, Windrift Books’ Chronicle Worlds anthologies, and other markets. She has also released several short stories, short story collections, and novels for young readers, including the popular “Dani Erickson” series.

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The Faery’s Choice

Three faery boys—Nuár, Aodh, and Táinar—are spending their day pretending to be great hunters when they come across a human girl. Annie accidentally crossed from her world to the Land of Faerie, but doesn’t know how to return to her home.

Táinar tells Annie she can’t go back to her world, and offers to show her the wonders of Faerie. The children head off to visit a group of river naiads, and maybe even see a kelpie, but Nuár is troubled.

Why did Táinar tell Annie she can never return to her own world? And is he truly interested in showing the girl the magic of Faerie—or does Táinar have something else in mind?
 
 
“The Faery’s Choice” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Jamie focuses on getting into the minds and hearts of her characters, whether she’s writing about a saloon girl in the Old West, a man who discovers the barista he’s in love with is a naiad, or a ghost who haunts the house she was killed in – even though that house no longer exists. She’s curated a number of short story bundles and anthologies, and is working on several more, including a monster-themed anthology series she’s co-editing with DeAnna Knippling. Jamie lives in Colorado, and spends her free time in a futile quest to wear out her two border collies, since she hasn’t given in and gotten them their own herd of sheep…yet…

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Story spotlight: “And the Sea Shall Give Up its Dead” by P.D. Cacek


 
Mac, retired professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, spends his time watching The Weather Channel and talking to George, the ghost Gerald invented so that he didn’t have to talk to himself.

When the bodies start washing up on beaches around the world, Mac has a lot more to say to George – and George has some things to say as well.
 
 
 
“And the Sea Shall Give Up its Dead” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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P.D. Cacek originally aspired to be an actress, but her dreams were dashed when, while playing Dinosaur Number 1 in her high school’s production of By the Skin of Our Teeth, she inadvertently crawled off the stage and landed in the orchestra pit. Dinosaur Number 1 died that night, but the experience put her on the significantly less perilous path of writing horror.

P.D. is the author of over 200 short stories, and has won both a World Fantasy Award and a Bram Stoker Award for her short fiction. She’s written five novels: Night Prayers, Canyons, Night Players, The Wind Caller, and The Selkie.

“Horror is an emotion, something that reaches past all the barriers and finds the one dark corner of our self-image that has not grown up. Horror doesn’t have to include dismemberments or gushing wounds or ancient demons dredged up by a new housing development. Anything, even a simple evening’s walk, can be horrific if you look at it the right way … and I do.”

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Story spotlight: “Stormrider and the Lady of Soul” by Karen L. Abrahamson


 
The glamour of living on his boat wears off for Earl James soon after he gets tossed off the police force. With winter storms brewing, the engine having fits, and a broken heater, he figures not much else can go wrong. Then otherworldly Sylvana Stormrider steps aboard and offers him the one thing he truly wants: redemption.

Or maybe not.
 
 
 
 
 
“Stormrider and the Lady of Soul” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Karen L. Abrahamson is the author of literary, mystery, romantic and fantasy fiction including the highly regarded Cartographer fantasy series. She is a well-traveled writer who has explored cultures and countries around the world but British Columbia, Canada is her favorite place to come back to. She lives on the west coast of Canada with two Bengal cats that aren’t quite as well traveled as she is.

When she isn’t writing she can be found with a camera and backpack in fabulous locations around the world.

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Story spotlight: “To Each Her Own” by Rebecca M. Senese


Lead detective Maeve Hemlock arrives at a crime scene at the banks of the Incantation River to find the remains of a human liver containing magic residue.

What creature would kill and leave a liver behind?

To save a colleague’s career, Maeve must find a magical killer loose in Crossroad City before he can kill again.

Urban fantasy with an edge, the stories of Crossroad City weave tales where magic and the normal world collide. Where detective Maeve Hemlock and the Spells and Misdemeanours Bureau struggle to keep the law and the magic in check to save all.
 
 
“To Each Her Own” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Based in Toronto, Canada, Rebecca M. Senese survives the frigid blasts of winter and boiling steams of summer by weaving words of horror, mystery, science fiction and contemporary fantasy.

Garnering an Honorable Mention in “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” and  nominated for numerous Aurora Awards, her work has appeared in Fiction River: Superpowers, Fiction River: Visions of the Apocalypse, Fiction River: Sparks, Fiction River: Recycled Pulp, Tesseracts 16: Parnassus Unbound, Imaginarium 2012, Tesseracts 15: A Case of Quite Curious Tales, TransVersions, Future Syndicate, and Storyteller, amongst others.

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Story spotlight: “By Dawn’s Bloody Light” by DeAnna Knippling

A small Midwestern college town. A series of murders that ape the Jack the Ripper killings. Then Laney Miller is butchered just after dawn in front of a second-hand bookstore. The one witness didn’t see anything…except Laney getting dragged out of her car and murdered by an invisible force.

One that carries a straight razor.

It’s a town that has attracted the weird and strange as far back as the eighteen hundreds. Since then disappearances, murders, suicides, and kidnappings have only grown worse. Especially targeted are a group of local girls that carry the same face…

Laney’s face.

Laney’s girlfriend Joy and her friends decide to find the seemingly-supernatural killer and take him down before he strikes again.

In as violent and bloody a manner as possible.

By dawn’s bloody light…they will have revenge.
 
“By Dawn’s Bloody Light” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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DeAnna Knippling is always tempted to lie on her bios. Her favorite musician is Tom Waits, and her favorite author is Lewis Carroll. Her favorite monster is zombies. Her life goal is to remake her house in the image of the House on the Rock, or at least Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. You should buy her books. She promises that she’ll use the money wisely on bookshelves and secret doors. She lives in Colorado and is the author of the A Fairy’s Tale horror series which starts with By Dawn’s Bloody Light, and other books like The Clockwork Alice, A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters & the Macabre, and more.

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Story spotlight: “Abby Crumb: Bad Luck, Good Fortune” by Louisa Swann


Melting noses, withering limbs—growing up the daughter of a necromancer prepares one for almost anything…except a voyage around the Horn on a vessel that feels as if it has been cobbled together expressly for this trip…

Creaking decks, smoky furnaces, torn sails, violent weather, the S.S. Raven seems to be attracting bad luck. Could it simply be fate? Or could it be…her mother?

Abby Crumb suffers misery after misery on her trip to San Francisco. The weather finally clears, only to reveal an even more sinister twist of Fate: The captain’s brought the bad luck with him.

Abby and her friends must discover the source of bad luck and turn the tide before the tide turns them in this rollicking high seas adventure.
 
 
“Abby Crumb: Bad Luck, Good Fortune” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Growing up in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada mountains, surrounded by deer and beaver, muskrat and bear, Louisa Swann found ample fodder for her equally wild imagination. As an adult, she interweaves her experiences with that imagination, creating tales of fantasy and science fiction, mystery and thrillers, steampunk and historical fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Fiction River anthologies, including Reader’s Choice; Mercedes Lackey’s Elementary Magic and Valdemar anthologies; and Esther Friesner’s Chicks and Balances. Novels include light-hearted mysteries (It Ain’t No Bull, The Trouble with Bulldogs) and her new steampunk/weird west series, Abby Crumb and Myrtle Creek (with Brandon Swann).

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Story spotlight: “Lizards and Lying Men” by T. Thorn Coyle


 
 
Dagger was working as as stripper. Less stress than the witchcraft her grandmother kept pushing her toward.

Then a man in distress showed up at her favorite cafe.

The lizards weren’t far behind him.
 
 
 
“Lizards and Lying Men” is in the Witches’ Brew bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.

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A salty-tongued, tattooed mystic, Thorn is the author of the nine book Witches of Portland series, the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two short story collections. The Witches of Portland series will be out in Spring, 2018. She has also written multiple non-fiction books including Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, Kissing the Limitless, and Crafting a Daily Practice. Thorn’s work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections.

She has taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states. Her other occupations have been numerous, and include working four years each on the Pacific Stock Options exchange (as a young Anarchist punk with a blue, flat-top Mohawk), in a woman-run peep show, and full time in the San Francisco soup kitchen she ended up volunteering at for twenty years. All of this, along with her activism, informs her fiction.

An interloper to the Pacific Northwest, Thorn joyfully stalks city streets, writes in cafes, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.

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Story spotlight: “Contact” by Marcelle Dubé


 
Every day, Kalupiak hunts farther and farther from the underwater ice caves of the People. Hunting has grown increasingly dangerous with the melting of the ice and the arrival of new creatures—none more dangerous than the humans. Legends tell of earlier confrontations with the humans where they tried to kill the People.
 
On the day Kalupiak finally comes face to face with his first human he must make a choice: kill or be killed.
 
 
“Contact” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Marcelle Dubé grew up near Montreal. After trying out a number of different provinces—not to mention Belgium—she settled in the Yukon, where people outnumber the carnivores, but not by much.

She writes science fiction, fantasy and mystery stories, and has 12 novels to her name. Her upcoming novel, Epidemic: An A’lle Chronicles Mystery, will be released in late 2018. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies.

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