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Story spotlight: “Like at Loch Ness” by Karen L. Abrahamson

A dangerous creature. A female scientist with something to prove.

If she lives that long.

Something dangerous lurks in Cambodia’s murky waters, destroying fishermen’s villages along the flooded shore. Jean Aubry, fledgling marine biologist, tries to solve the mystery, especially after she and her colleague find a lone, beautiful survivor of the most recent destruction. Can Jean solve the mystery before more people die? Can she do it and not worsen her already tarnished professional reputation?

“Like at Loch Ness” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’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: “Of Cats and Lost Socks” by Liz Pierce


 
 
A witch. A cat. A curse.

When Emmaline McMurtree falls victim to a rival witch’s curse, it’s up to her familiar, Marley, to save the day.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Of Cats and Lost Socks” is in the Witches’ Brew bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.

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Whether it’s the exploits of the teenage offspring of the Gods walking the halls of Olympus High, or Faerie Folk moving to the Real World and trying to cope with jobs, neighbors, and everyday life, Liz Pierce writes “suburban fantasy” – stories that blur the boundaries between the real world and the fantastical, but are lighter and less edgy than their urban cousins. And, hopefully, a little more fun.

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Story spotlight: “Fox and Hound” by Leah Cutter


 
 
Gou, a peddle cab driver in modern-day Beijing, gets more than he bargained for with his latest client.

“Fox and Hound” is Leah’s first story to feature Huli Transport, a company that specializes in rides and transportation for those who aren’t completely human.
 
 
 

“Fox and Hound” is in the Fantasy in the City bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.

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Leah Cutter writes page-turning fiction in exotic locations, such as a magical New Orleans, the ancient Orient, Hungary, the Oregon coast, rural Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many others.

She writes literary, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and horror fiction. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Talebones, anthologies like Fiction River, and on the web. Her long fiction has been published both by New York publishers as well as small presses.

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Story spotlight: “Monkey Sea, Monkey Do” by Robert Jeschonek


When Ida got her wish to become a Sea Munky, she didn’t realize the greatest drought of all time was about to dry up the bodies of water she needed to survive.

Now, in one of the last pools of water on Earth, she and her fellow aquatic creatures fight to survive an attack by savage beasts who rule the dry land.

The end of everything looms…unless a secret at the bottom of the pool can turn things around and bring a wetter world back into being.
 
 
“Monkey Sea, Monkey Do” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Robert T. Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. His young adult fantasy novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth. His cross-genre science fiction thriller, Day 9, is an International Book Award winner. He also won the Scribe Award for Best Original Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers for his alternate history, Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows. Simon & Schuster, DAW/Penguin Books, and DC Comics have published his work. He won the grand prize in Pocket Books’ nationwide Strange New Worlds contest and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award.

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Story spotlight: “The City Trees” by Jamie Ferguson


Giulia moved to the city after her husband’s death, but the city trees won’t talk with her – even though she’s a dryad.

One evening, while attempting to speak with the trees in a park, she finds herself caught in the middle between a thief and his pursuer. The thief stole something magical and dangerous, but what? And will Giulia choose escape, or fight to help foil the crime?
 
 
 
“The City Trees” is in the Fantasy in the City 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: “The Wishing Ring of Old Queen Maab” by Steve Vernon


A tale about a very young farmer named Ramsey who, although his heart was as good as one million pieces of gold, had not a single ounce of good luck to his name except his beloved wife Glorinda.
 
One day an old woman appeared, her face as wrinkled as a field filled with dried-up mud. In return for a kindness Ramsey did, she told him she was Queen Maab of the Faeries, and gave him a wish ring.
 
But gifts from faeries are more complicated than those from humans…
 
 
“The Wishing Ring of Old Queen Maab” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Steve is a writer and an oral tradition storyteller; he learned the storytelling tradition from his grandfather, and regularly tells stories to in-person audiences ranging from 5 to 5,000 spectators. He writes horror, paranormal, dark fantasy, and ghost stories, and specializes in the fine old art of booga-booga.

Think of Steve as that old dude at the campfire spinning out ghost stories and weird adventures and the grand epic saga of how Thud the Second stepped out of his cave with nothing more than a rock in his fist and slew the saber-tooth tiger.

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Story spotlight: “The Storyteller” by P. D. Cacek

Telling stories is Walter Book’s responsibility and his joy, just like it’d been his daddy’s, and his granddaddy’s and his great-great grandaddy’s before him. Because what good’s a Book without a story?

Every night he tells the children their bedtime story, and this evening he tells one called “The Princess,” the tale of a little girl named Veronica who’s waiting for her daddy to return.

Veronica is well past the mid-point of her twelfth year, and is of course no longer a child in spite of what her father thinks. So when she’s at the hotel, waiting for her father to return from his business trip on the last train of the day, she’s grown-up enough to know to ignore the voices when she hears ghosts. Her father taught her if you don’t acknowledge a ghost, it will feel so ill used that it will depart of its own free will.

But the ghosts at the hotel are restless…

“The Storyteller” is in the Haunted bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’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: “Skydiving to the Gods” by Stefon Mears


A beautiful sunrise over the ocean west of Hawaii. A perfect morning for a skydive. An even better opportunity for murder. Eric Jarlsson plummets toward his death. His parachute sabotaged. Two thousand feet above an unforgiving sea.

He couldn’t know a god’s net awaits him.

“Skydiving to the Gods” a contemporary fantasy short story featuring adventure, magic, romance, conspiracy and Norse gods. From Norse myth scholar Stefon Mears, author of the Ars Portlandia series and the Rise of Magic series.
 
 
“Skydiving to the Gods” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Stefon Mears grew up in California, Middle-Earth, and Amber. He went to U.C. Berkeley intending to major in Genetics, but the call of storytelling compelled him to graduate with a B.A. in Religious Studies (double emphasis in Mythology and Ritual). He later earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, with a Fiction major, and has published many short stories, poems and essays.

Stefon has been an invited guest at a major Vodou ceremony in New Orleans, taught classes in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira, spoken on a panel at one World Fantasy Conference and given a reading at another, and engraved his own set of Norse runes.

Stefon has worked as a professional audio engineer and played straight pool for money. He is an avid, lifelong fan of the San Francisco Giants. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and three cats, and when not writing he can often be found playing roleplaying games.

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Story spotlight: “Snap A Trap, Inc.” by Louisa Swann


 
What do trolleys, bananas, and impudent fairies have in common? A fairy hunter named Zola and her newest blind date: Milton B. Flannigan, III. Unfortunately, dear old Miltie isn’t everything he’s been made out to be. He’s more.

Then again, so is Zola.

A laugh-out-loud tale from the streets of San Francisco.
 
 
 
“Snap A Trap, Inc.” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’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: “Midnight Oil” by Lisa Silverthorne


 
 
Mistaken identities, misplaced sympathies, and witches on the eve of Beltane.
 
And the man caught between Halloween magic and mayhem.
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Midnight Oil” is in the Witches’ Brew bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.

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Writing has been Lisa’s life-long passion. She’s been writing since she could hold a pen and have published two novels and over 70 short stories in the fantasy, science fiction, romance, horror, and mystery genres.

Lisa writes about the magic of ordinary things and about things that scare or anger her. Anything that moves her in some way is an inspiration for new work. That and the Pacific Northwest, which is a great inspiration to this Midwesterner. Much of her work is dark, and it often falls between the many cracks in between genres.

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