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Story spotlight: “Mother of the Waters” by Leigh Saunders


In the spring of 1810, the death of his father – and discovery of an unknown uncle – sends fifteen year-old Samuel Harlowe from his simple life in England across the sea on a journey filled with dangers and wonders he never imagined.

And when a kraken attacks his ship, Samuel must choose to whether to let his crewmates perish in the watery depths, or to pay the price demanded by the Caribbean goddess Mami Wata, the Mother of the Waters.
 
 
 
“Mother of the Waters” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Leigh Saunders grew up as a “military brat.” And while she’s long-since settled in her Rocky Mountain home (with her husband and a pair of feuding cats that vie for her attention), her life-long wanderlust regularly inspires her to write about the people and places that spark her imagination. In her day job, Leigh writes user materials for a large software company—an endeavor which is often not all that far from writing science fiction.

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Story spotlight: “The Fake Path to True Memory” by Brigid Collins


“Those memories might be important some day,” Charlie’s husband whispered. “You might want them after I’m gone.”

Charlie did remember two things about his husband: the man had known Charlie wasn’t human, and he’d made Charlie promise to always remember his Faerie Realm origin. Now old age has left Charlie with nothing to occupy his time but those two facts and his quest to reclaim his most treasured memory: the name of the man he spent a mortal lifetime with.
 
 
“The Fake Path to True Memory” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Brigid Collins is a fantasy and science fiction writer living in Michigan. Her short stories have appeared in Fiction River, The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, and The MCB Quarterly. Her fantasy series, Songbird River Chronicles, are available in print and electronic versions on Amazon and Kobo.

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Story spotlight: “The Curse of the Soiled Doves” by Dale Hartley Emery


As California’s Department of Thaumaturgy battles a deepening drought, a mysterious force limits the flow of magic in downtown Sacramento.

Tasked to find an answer, Purvis Klemp—Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Thaumaturge General of the State of California—must entertain all manner of crackpot theories.

When the latest crackpot offers the most outlandish theory of all, Purvis must struggle to keep his cool …

… And to keep his job.
 

“The Curse of the Soiled Doves” 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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Dale Hartley Emery writes fiction in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, and mystery. His short stories include Tailor’s Tears, Yantriel’s Privy, and The Last Whiskey Bacon Cheddar Burger at Saint Florian’s Abbey.

Dale has worked as a failed shoemaker, reluctant dairy farmer, and ruthless ice cream man. For several years he monitored the nuclear test ban treaty, making sure those pesky commies didn’t blow up the planet. (They didn’t.)

When he isn’t writing, Dale advises software teams and leaders about how to play nice together. Colleagues in Dale’s industry once created a special award for him for being reasonable.

Dale lives in California with his wife.

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Story spotlight: “The Rusalka” by DeAnna Knippling


Vlad’s secrets surround him like a cloak of mist: one secret hides another. He’s a gay man in Volgograd, Russia…and a drug dealer…and a vedmak, a witch, who can release the souls of the dying, if they wish it.

His secrets keep him safe…until he meets a rusalka, an undead water spirit who drowns the men who get too close to her, and has to face the terrible truth she brings…
 
 
 
“The Rusalka” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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DeAnna Knippling is a writer, a parent, and an overthinker who boldly paranoids where no one has paranoided before. Her superpower is speed reading. She ghostwrites novels for fun and profit. She has an essay in the award-winning Women Destroy Science Fiction! collection. She has had stories published in Penumbra, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Black Static, and more. Her latest novel, Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts, comes out of her obsession with all things Alice. She writes books for middle-graders as De Kenyon.

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Story spotlight: “The Body Plot” by Rebecca M. Senese

Called to a crime scene, Detective Maeve Hemlock identifies the body as a faerie.

A faerie dead in the normal world.

No identification. No obvious cause of death.

As a faerie herself, Maeve feels obligated to investigate.

But that means crossing back into the Nether Realm. The one thing she hates. All because of a dead faerie.

Visit the strange world of Crossroad City, where magic and the normal world collide. And where detective Maeve Hemlock and the Spells and Misdemeanours Bureau struggle to keep the law and the magic in check to save all.
 
“The Body Plot” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Rebecca lives in Toronto, Canada where she survives the frigid blasts of winter and boiling steams of summer by weaving words of horror, mystery and science fiction. Garnering an Honorable Mention in “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” and nominated for numerous Aurora Awards, her work has appeared in Fiction River, Tesseracts, Ride the Moon, TransVersions, Deadbolt Magazine, On Spec, The Vampire’s Crypt, Storyteller, Reflection’s Edge, Future Syndicate and Into the Darkness, among others.

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Story spotlight: “Chains” by T. Thorn Coyle

Clara just wanted to bake bread, read her tarot cards, and find a girlfriend.

And then the candles started doing something weird…The flames were each two inches high, and wavering. Like something was moving in the room.

And it wasn’t her.

“Read for me.”

“Who are you?” Clara asked.

The candles wavered once more.
 
 
“Chains” is in the Haunted 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: “All Hallow’s Hangover” by Annie Reed


Teddy woke up the day after Halloween with the mother of all hangovers. The kind that comes complete with wagging tail and a lack of opposable thumbs.

Tabby owns a magic shop that carries just what Teddy needs, but Tabby’s dealing with her own brand of post-holiday hangover. The last thing she wants in her life is another complication.

Even if this particular complication has the cutest grin and the most soulful brown eyes she’s ever seen.
 

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

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Annie divides her time between writing short fiction (her first love) and novels in whatever genre strikes her fancy. Her most popular fantasy stories, including her Diz and Dee fantasy detective stories, are set in a fictional version of Seattle called Moretown Bay. She has two mystery series: the Abby Maxon mysteries featuring Reno private detective and single mom Abby Maxon, and the Jill Jordan mysteries about rural Nevada Sheriff Jill Jordan.

Annie’s background is as diverse as her writing. She’s been in a rock band, worked as a radio DJ, and taught tole painting. These days when she’s not writing, Annie spends her time in a law office working for a busy litigation attorney. She lives in Northern Nevada, and together with her husband and daughter, she shares her house with a number of high-maintenance cats. (Aren’t all authors required to be owned by cats?) A friend to backyard bunnies and kamikaze quail, Annie would probably befriend dogs, too, except they’d chase the rabbits.

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Story spotlight: “The Girl with the Candy Cane Legs” by Louisa Swann


Three months ago, the gates to the Otherside failed, flooding the normal world with creatures both supernatural, demonic, and just plain weird.

Diane Swift, a bicycle cop with thighs of iron, calves of steel, and the ability to see the strange monsters infiltrating her world, keeps the beaches and her city safe from scumbags. Then someone steals her patrol bike along with a bag of fossilized fairies.

And Diane ends up patrolling the beach with a partner straight out of a lunatic’s nightmare.

“The Girl with the Candy Cane Legs” 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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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: “Vale of Semūin” by Eric Kent Edstrom


 
 
 Mountaineer and hunter, Wenton Sigh, stumbles upon a lost girl seeking her mother.  
 
But when he discovers her mother is the legendary water spirit Semūin, he becomes embroiled in the schemes of the gods.
 
 
 
 
 
“Vale of Semūin” is in the Beneath the Waves collection. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the collection’s Facebook page.
 

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Eric is the author of the science fiction and fantasy series The Undermountain Saga and The Scion Chronicles. He lives in Wisconsin with his family.

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Story spotlight: “Proof of Devotion” by Dayle A. Dermatis


 
If Claire can’t prove Jason loves her, a faerie curse will rip them apart forever. But how do you prove someone’s devoted to you?

Short story “Proof of Devotion” cleverly blends fantasy and romance in the magical Welsh countryside and proves why bestselling author Dayle A. Dermatis has been called one of the best writers working today.
 
 
 
 
 
“Proof of Devotion” is in The Faerie Summer bundle. You can learn more on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and the bundle’s Facebook page.
 

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Called “one of the best writers working today” by bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith, Dayle A. Dermatis is the author or coauthor of seven novels and more than a hundred short stories in multiple genres, including the first seven Uncollected Anthology anthologies and the forthcoming urban fantasy novel Ghosted. She is a founding member of the Uncollected Anthology project.

A recent transplant to the wild greenscapes of the Pacific Northwest, in her spare time she follows Styx around the country and travels the world, which inspires her writing.

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