Hello, my fourteen subscribers! 😀 I am delighted to announce that my collaborative anthology group, Wandering Grove Press, has just published a second anthology!
You may remember The Ceaseless Way, our first anthology, which we produced a few years ago. (If you missed that one, you can find it here.)
Become the Sky was developed in the same way. About two years ago, a group of us decided on a theme and word count for the new book and set a timeline for writing our stories, then edited them critique-group style over several months and produced the book together. This book’s team included some of the same people from The Ceaseless way (Ada Milenkovic Brown, Fraser Sherman, and me) as well as several new stars: Ryan Merrill Jones, Sonya Lano, Maggie Maxwell, and Giles Tineold.
Our first anthology was built around the theme of “journeys.” For this year’s book, we chose the theme of “escape.” As before, we have a mix of speculative genres ranging from space opera to fairy tales, and stories vary in length from 1,000 to 18,000 words. (Most writers were able to create multiple short stories with their word count allotments. Others (my dear Sonya Lano and myself) are unable to write short things and had to write novelettes instead. ^_^)
Sonya also created our beautiful cover and has produced many promotional videos for our stories, which you can see here or here. She and Fraser Sherman produced the manuscript documents, and Fraser has been our MVP in managing the actual publication and distribution process. We are deeply grateful to them both for all their work on this. Special thanks are due as well to Giles Tineold and Ada Milenkovic Brown, who have both put in a lot of work on publicizing the project in the Durham, NC bibliosphere (where most of the book is based). Thanks as well to our friend Raj, who sadly was not able to join us this time but who was kind enough to write us an introduction. Additional thanks to all those who read advance copies of our stories and provided other support during the publication process.
Here are the stories you can find in this book:
- Menagerie (Maggie Maxwell): An outer-space creature caper set in a space tycoon’s private interstellar zoo.
- Winter Rain (Giles Tineold): A tense, quiet, terrible exploration of the lives of a group of alien abductees.
- Crumpet Bagel Setting (Ada Milenkovic Brown): A near-future science fiction piece that explores the singularity in a humorous way.
- Sirena’s Eden (Ryan Merrill Jones): The Little Mermaid meets Rapunzel meets the ice-covered ocean depths of Europa.
- Neptune Oubliette (Ryan Merrill Jones): Gas miners in Neptune’s orbit move softly under the gaze of a fascist space dictator while deciding whether the message they just got is from a robot trying to kill them.
- Saving Dr. Bloodflask (Katherine Traylor): My story is a comic-book-inspired novelette in which the two estranged children of a violent mad scientist team up to break their father out of supervillain jail.
- Obolos (Fraser Sherman): What starts as a classic noir thriller is pushed sharply sideways by a surprise encounter with the Ferryman.
- Survivalist’s Guide to Faeryland (Maggie Maxwell): A woman hiking the Appalachian Trail is unwillingly adopted by a fellow hiker and must deal with the consequences of his bad decisions.
- Winter’s End (Ada Milenkovic Brown): A time-and-space-travel drama set during the Salem Witch Trials.
- Flight from the Hub (Giles Tineold): Sentenced to years of labor on an interplanetary space station, a human with a secret teams up with a new alien friend to make a break for freedom.
- Serpents and Gems and Bones (Sonya Lano): Star-crossed lovers raised on a children’s prison planet negotiate their own strange powers and try to escape from those who want to control them.
- Backstage with the Hypothetical Dead (Fraser Sherman): A fun modern ghost(?) story set during a series of community theater productions.
- The Nixie of Alken Enge (Ada Milenkovic Brown): An archaeologist trying to study a fascinating bog mummy is suddenly forced to deal with its ancient supernatural escort.
Beyond the Sky is on sale now in ebook form. The print book should be available in a couple of days. You can find buy links on Books2Read, or purchase directly from Amazon.
Check it out! We really hope you like it.
