Two Fictional Beatles Books

As a Beatles fan, I always enjoy finding new books about them. And if these books are written or edited by my friends, I have to help them get by, right?

Randee Dawn, a writer friend from Broad Universe, is co-editing an anthology of alternate Beatles stories. It's called Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles. They're currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund it (see the link). The project is about two-thirds funded, with about two weeks left. Authors currently signed on to the anthology include Spider Robinson, David Gerrold, Cat Rambo, Gail Z. Martin, Jody Lynn Nye, and many more. If the project meets certain stretch goals, the editors will open up a few slots for submissions. I used to write Beatles fanfic, so it would be nice to get back to where I once belonged....

Actually, my Beatles fanfiction used to be on the e-zine Rooftop Sessions, which was run by my Beatles friend Susan Ryan. Unfortunately, I don't think the site is live any more, though you can learn more about it here and even access back issues. (You might even find very early versions of Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, along with other stories of mine, through the Wayback Machine.) Susan's husband, Jim Ryan, was another contributor, and he recently collected some of his alternate Beatles stories in Alt Together Now: The Rooftop Sessions Fiction of James Ryan. It's been a long times since I've read them, but they include references to Live Aid, The Twilight Zone, Lord of the Rings, and Doctor Who. Sounds like a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Please support both books if you can. In the meantime, I need to see if I can find my old fanfics. It would be interesting to see if they're worth republishing. Hello Goodbye for now...

MCSI: Magical Crime Scene Investigation Kickstarter

Today is a very important day: my son's eleventh birthday! Happy Birthday, Alex, and many more birthdays to come! (And no, you can't drive my car--at least, not yet.)

And now for something completely different: MCSI: Magical Crime Scene Investigation. This is the anthology (by Otter Libris) that will include my short story "Henry's Harness," and it's live on Kickstarter! Pledges start at $2, ebook rewards at $6 (available in multiple formats), and paper copies at $20. Higher tiers offer multiple copies of this book in multiple formats, and you can add on custom dice and other books by Otter Libris. This project only needs $1,500 to proceed, and with over $1,100 already pledged after the first week, it's likely to meet goal. If the project reaches $2,000, it'll unlock a secret stretch goal. There are still almost four weeks left to back this project. Back it today, and you can read "Henry's Harness," along with many other intriguing stories, this August.

Short Story Sale!

The contract is signed and mailed, so I suppose it's safe to make this announcement: I sold my urban fantasy short story "Henry's Harness" to Otter Libris' MCSI: Magical Crime Scene Investigation anthology. This is only my second sale to an anthology; the last one was so long ago my author byline for that story ("A Reptile at the Reunion" in Firestorm of Dragons) is my maiden name. I don't want to say too much about my current story, but it's set in my beloved city of Madison, Wisconsin, and the main character is a former pet detective. Further details about the anthology will be coming out soon, as the publisher is planning to start a Kickstarter to fund the project. I'll share more details once the Kickstarter is live. I'm excited to be part of this project and am looking forward to reading the other stories in the anthology. Hope you are too!

SF Women A-Z: Hats off to Hoffman, Hogarth, Hopkinson, and Huff

H stands for "Help! There are too many great authors under this letter!"

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is an award-winning (Nebula, Bram Stoker, plus nominated multiple times for the World Fantasy Award and several other awards) SF, fantasy, and horror novels. Her style reminds me a bit of Patricia McKillip. I've read a few of her works, such as The Thread that Binds the Bones, The Silent Strength of Stones, and A Red Heart of Memories. Learn more about Hoffman on Wikipedia and Amazon.


 I discovered M.C.A. Hogarth through her Kickstarter for Black Blossom. The concept intrigued me enough to make me back it, and I wasn't disappointed. Since then, I've gone on to enjoy other stories of her, particularly those set in the Pelted Universe. (It features genetically engineered animal-human hybrids who colonize space.) She's a hybrid author and artist, and she recently helped persuade SWFA to open its doors to indie authors. I don't qualify (yet), but I would definitely support her for SWFA office. Learn more about Hogarth on her website, Wikipedia, and Amazon.

Nalo Hopkinson has won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, The Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award, and others. She was a Guest of Honor at WisCon in 2002, and if my memory serves me correctly, I was part of her group for the writers' workshop that year. Learn more about her and her work at her website, Wikipedia, and Amazon.

I discovered Tanya Huff through her Blood books, which features a vampire paired with a detective. I've read some of her other series too, such as the Wizard Crystal and Enchantment Emporium series. Learn more about her on Wikipedia and Amazon.

Honorable Mention: Sarah Hoyt (blog, Wikipedia, Amazon)

How many other SF women authors with "H" names can you add to this list?

Guest Post: How I Became a Publisher

The following is a guest post by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who recently started her own press. She currently is running a Kickstarter for the anthology Tales of the Weird Wild West. To support it, click here.

How I Became a Publisher…Accidentally on Purpose

One of the things I swore I would never do was start my own press.

(Never make such claims. It is generally the most certain way to ensure that you eventually do whatever you say you’ll never do.)

Having worked in the publishing industry for over twenty years as a career taught me all the various headaches that come with publishing books. However, absorbing all that knowledge and doing virtually every job there is in the industry pretty much meant it was bound to happen eventually. At least I’d gathered a wealth of knowledge beforehand. Now I have only half as many mistakes to make on my own.

This doesn’t tell you how I became a publisher, though.

Earlier this year I ran my first Kickstarter. It was for a little personal project called Eternal Wanderings, a continuation of my Eternal Cycle series of Irish myth-based novels (you can learn more here if you are curious: http://kck.st/1tv0cq7) The campaign was successful and the book needed a brand, an imprint to serve as a foundation. Thus eSpec Books (www.especbooks.com) was born.

A few weeks after the campaign completed I received an email from my friend, Misty Massey. She remembered that I work for Dark Quest Books (www.darkquestbooks.com) and was hoping they would be interested in a project for which the original publisher had fallen through. That project was to become The Weird Wild West. Unfortunately Dark Quest had a full schedule through 2016 and Misty and her co-editors, Emily Lavin Leverett and Margaret S. McGraw, didn’t want to wait so long to see their vision become a reality.

(Yep…here comes the accidentally on purpose part…)

When I saw how disappointed they were I found myself saying…If you don’t mind taking a chance on a brand-new press, but with plenty of experience, eSpec Books could help you out.

We hashed out the particulars and the rest, as they say, is history!

Being a new press, with little capital, this fun, quirky collection—a speculative fiction/western mash-up, is being funded through Kickstarter, which in effect, allows us to take pre-orders: http://kck.st/1udizgM.

In addition to some pretty fantastic pledge rewards there are a bunch of stretch goals that are pure gold…all donated by our esteem contributors. Speaking of which…

Our editors did a fantastic job corralling high-quality authors for the project, such as R S Belcher (Six-Gun Tarot), Tonia Brown (Railroad!), Diana Pharoah Francis (Trace of Magic), John Hartness (Bubba the Monster Hunter), Jonathan Maberry (Code Zero), Gail Martin (Deadly Curiosities), Misty Massey (Mad Kestrel), and James Tuck (Blood and Bullets).

And, because we are optimistic that way, if we raise enough funds there will be a second volume, for which the editors already have commitments from Faith Hunter, Barb Hendee, Devon Monk, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Charles E. Gannon and Laura Anne Gilman.

But it’s not just about the known talent. Both eSpec Books and the editors are very dedicated to giving new authors a chance. To this end the first collection will have a minimum of four open submission slots, with two additional slots to be added if we hit the appropriate stretch goals. If we unlock a second volume, that will have open-submission slots as well. Submission guidelines can be found at the bottom of the Kickstarter campaign page.

Won’t you help us make this dream a reality? Back, share, or like…it all helps:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dackley-mcphail/tales-of-the-weird-wild-west

BIOS

The Publisher

Award-winning author Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. Currently, she is a project editor and promotions manager for Dark Quest Books and has started her own press, eSpec Books.

Her published works include five urban fantasy novels, Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court: and The Redcaps’ Queen: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale, and a young adult Steampunk novel, Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo science fiction collection, A Legacy of Stars, the non-fiction writers’ guide, The Literary Handyman, and is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Dragon’s Lure, and In an Iron Cage. Her work is included in numerous other anthologies and collections.

She is a member of the Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers, the New Jersey Authors Network, and Broad Universe, a writer’s organization focusing on promoting the works of women authors in the speculative genres.

Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail, mother-in-law Teresa, and three extremely spoiled cats. She can be found on LiveJournal (especbooks, damcphail or badassfaeries), Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail), and Twitter (DMcPhail). To learn more visit www.especbooks.com, www.sidhenadaire.com, or www.badassfaeries.com.

The Editors

Misty Massey is the author of Mad Kestrel (Tor), a rollicking fantasy adventure of magic on the high seas, and Kestrel’s Voyages (Kindle DP), a set of stories following Captain Kestrel and her daring crew. Her short fiction has appeared in Rum and Runestones, Dragon's Lure and The Big Bad II.  Misty is one of the featured writers on Magical Words (magicalwords.net). When she’s not writing, she studies Middle Eastern dance and performs with Mythos Tribal and Chimera. You can see more of what Misty’s up to at her website, mistymassey.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Emily Lavin Leverett is a fantasy, sci-fi, and (occasional) horror writer from North Carolina. Her works have appeared in Flash Fiction Online and Drafthorse: A Journal of Work and No Work, and will appear in Summer 2015 in Athena’s Daughters II from Silence in the Library. She also edits, with short story collections including The Big Bad: an Anthology of Evil and Big Bad II with John Hartness, from Dark Oak Press.  She freelance edits as well. When not writing or editing, she also is a Professor of Medieval English Literature at a small college in Fayetteville. She teaches English literature including Chaucer and Shakespeare, as well as teaching composition and grammar.  Medieval studies, especially medieval romance, heavily influence her work. When neither writing nor teaching, she’s reading novels, short stories, and comic books or watching television and movies with her spouse and their cats.

Margaret S. McGraw’s writing includes the daily prompt-writing blog WritersSpark.com, several short stories currently in circulation for publication, and two novels in progress: Mira’s Children is a YA science fiction adventure, and OceanSong is a fantasy begun in the 2012 NaNoWriMo challenge. Her imagination draws on her lifelong love of science fiction, fantasy, and anthropology. Her education and experience range from anthropology and communication through web design and IT management. Margaret lives in North Carolina with her daughter and an array of cats, dogs, Macs and PCs, and too many unfinished craft projects. For more details on her writing, follow Margaret on Twitter @margaretsmcgraw or visit her daily blog at WritersSpark.com.

Blog Ring of Power--Ripley Patton

Today on the Blog Ring of Power we have Ripley Patton, author of Ghost Hand and Ghost Hold. She's currently running a Kickstarter to help her publish the third book in the series, Ghost Heart, and you can check it out HERE. This is the first part of her interview; you can find the rest of it at the following links:

The Writing Life
The Creative Process
About Your Current Work
Words of Wisdom

How long have you been writing?

I started writing for publication in 2005, mostly short stories, and sold my first story that year. I loved the way short story writing allowed me to experiment with genre, form, craft, and style, all without the huge commitment of a novel-length work. It was my literary playground and I romped happily in it for five years, publishing over 25 stories in online and print magazines and anthologies. I even won a Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Short Story 2009. But ultimately, I wanted to make a living at writing, so I decided to turn my attention to longer works of fiction. I've been writing novels now for four years and I love it.

Tell us about your early works—what was the first thing you ever wrote?

I wrote my first poem when I was thirteen. It was titled "When She Dies, She Flies," and was one way I processed the death of my mother to terminal cancer. I still have it on the original yellowed paper in my swirly teen handwriting. I wrote a lot of poetry as a teenager and that was when I learned that writing makes meaning. It creates order out of chaos and beauty out of pain. Now, I understand that poetry is the gateway drug to other writing. Almost every writer I know started as a poet and it escalated from there. 

When did you first consider yourself a professional writer?

I remember the exact moment I decided to BE a writer, to call myself that and not let anyone call me anything else. I was walking in the woods at my parent's house beside my older brother. And I just suddenly realized I was going to do it, so I told him. "I've decided to be a writer. I'm not going back to that other thing that makes me money." And he said something doubtful, but I don't even remember what he said, because it didn't matter. I wasn't telling him. I was telling me.

What genre do you write?

My short stories vary in genre from sci-fi, to fantasy, to literary. However, my fiction series, The PSS Chronicles, is young adult paranormal fiction. One reason I write YA is because I love to read it. I love its unassuming voice, its sense of humor, its innocence and energy and fearlessness to tackle current issues. I think because I started writing at thirteen, that is how old my writer self is and she really likes those stories about people her age. 

What is your favorite theme/genre to write about?

I tend to write about death, fear, and loss. These are all things I experienced at a young age, as I think many young people do, and grappling with them in the fictional realm helped me grapple with them in the real world. I've heard people complain that YA has gotten dark, and that is a bad thing. But I think YA has always had its dark side. Crossing over from childhood to adulthood isn't easy. In fact, it's damn hard. And our young people are dealing with darker stuff than my generation had to. Why wouldn't we write that into our stories and give them a safe place to wrestle their demons?

GHOST HAND: Seventeen-year-old Olivia Black has a rare birth defect known as Psyche Sans Soma, or PSS. Instead of a right hand made of flesh and blood, she was born with a hand made of ethereal energy.

How does Olivia handle being the girl with the ghost hand? Well, she’s a little bit morbid and a whole lot snarky. 

Her mother thinks her obsession with death, black clothing, and the local cemetery is a bid for attention. But when Marcus, the new guy in Olivia’s calculus class, stares at her like she’s a freak, Olivia doesn’t like it. And when her hand goes rogue, doing things she never imagined possible, Olivia finds herself running for her life with Marcus from a group of men bent on taking the power of her hand for their own nefarious purposes.

GHOST HOLD: Olivia Black is back.

 Only this time she’s not the one in need of rescue.

Samantha James, rich, popular, and an award-winning composer at age seventeen, is the next target on the CAMFers’ list. In order to convince Samantha to come with them, Olivia and Passion must pose as cousins, blend into the most affluent high school in Indianapolis, and infiltrate a mysterious cult known as The Hold.

Olivia doesn’t expect it to be easy, even with the PSS guys backing them up. But what she discovers over the course of the mission will call into question everything she ever believed about herself, her family, and especially about Marcus, the guy she is undoubtedly falling in love with.

You can find Ripley at the following links:

Blog:  

Facebook page:

Goodreads author page: 

Twitter: 

Amazon: 

GHOST HEART KICKSTARTER PROJECT:

Paying Forward with Kickstarter and Petridish

Are you familiar with Kickstarter? It's a crowdfunding site for various creative projects. There's also an analogue site for funding science projects; that one is Petridish. Today I'd like to share with you some of the projects I'm backing on both sites. Some of the projects are getting close to their deadlines. If you'd like to back these projects (or others that appeal to you), that would be wonderful, but of course it's up to you.

Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology

This anthology will include works from the 1970s onward. I found out about it through BroadUniverse. There are 35 days left to fund this project.

THE WARLOCK'S CURSE: #3 in the Veneficas Americana series
 
With less than twenty days left for funding, this project will allow a Nebula-nominated author to continue her series.


Miles to Go/Promises to Keep: a Cosa Nostradamus Project

I've been reading this author since she spoke at my local library a few years ago. Her other works in this world have been traditionally published, but she wants to tell the story of one of the secondary characters. There are less than ten days left to fund this project.


Here are the two science projects I'm backing on Petridish. Both of them involve genetics, which is what drew me to them.

Tracking ancient dog populations in Africa

Village dogs in Africa are intermediate between wild canines and domesticated ones. Studying their genes will not only tell us more about the history of dogs but could also lead to the discovery of genes that affect human and canine health. There's less than a month left to fund this project.

Using Ancient DNA to Reconstruct Avian Extinctions

This project will look at DNA from museum specimens of extinct birds (including the passenger pigeon and the ivory-billed woodpecker, as well as two other species) to determine exactly when these populations began to decline and if habitat loss played a role in their extinctions. It costs $2,000 to sample enough birds to analyze one species. They are asking for $2,000, but they need $8,000 to study all four species listed in the project description. There are less than two months left to fund this project.

Have you backed a crowdfunded project--or started one yourself? Please share your experiences with us.