Here's What You Get for 2017

(It's me, age 46!)

Well, People of Earth, here's a little summary of what I can remember of what I did this year (because as you may or may not have noticed, I did not blog. Except for today).

Let's just get this out of the way: I spent the entire year being mad about political things in the United States, because I'm a proud liberal and I like diversity, equal rights for everyone, taking good care of the environment, and sharing our resources to lift up people who don't have enough. I'm not seeing those things getting enough support. This entire paragraph has been the most understated expression of my feelings I have ever achieved. 

Big things I did this year:

• Attended the event formerly known as Mo*Con, which will again, in 2018, be called Mo*Con.
• Repainted the entire exterior of a playhouse/shed in my back yard, which was a bigger project than I thought it would be! Several hours a day for over a week (the priming and multiple colors added to the time, but it looks fantastic).
• Co-wrote a short story with Maurice Broaddus, which will be included in the Do Not Go Quietly! anthology in 2018. Click the link to see the impressive list of authors involved!
• Traveled to southern Illinois to watch the total solar eclipse, WHICH WAS AWESOME.
• Participated in Inktober for the month of October, creating one ink drawing each day for the entire month. You can see all 31 of my drawings in my Instagram gallery, but one of my favorites was Wednesday Addams:

I've also read 32 books this year! Some of my favorites:

• Borne: A Novel, by Jeff VanderMeer (I also went on a short road trip to see him read from this book, and that was well worth my time. He is a great reader. Also, his outstanding editor wife Ann VanderMeer interviewed him afterward, and it was hilarious).
• Provenance, by Ann Leckie.
• Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
• And a set of books by Leigh Bardugo: Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.

And all through this year, that kitten I got in November of 2016 (Annabelle) has been tremendously entertaining, not to mention increasingly LARGE. From a tiny, wee iddle thing, she has turned into the biggest cat I've ever had. Tall, long, solid, muscular, and around 11 pounds the last time I weighed her. As far as I can tell, she is simply a basic American Shorthair cat, but she has personality plus and she caught her first mouse when she was about four months old. I don't get mice in here often, but when one shows up, it is nice to have a team of cats to get it under control while I go and fetch the Mouse Removal Kit, which is a piece of cardboard and an old plastic storage container that is now dedicated to this one purpose only. I put the container over the mouse, slide the cardboard under, and take the mouse across the street to a conveniently-situated field. I assume none I've taken that far have ever returned since there's always been several months in between mouse invasions, so it seems the field is far enough away.

Plus, you know, day-to-day life stuff and knitting a few blankets on a really clever, twisty-shaped knitting loom I found in 2016. It gives me an easy way to make full-bed-sized blankets while watching my way through all the Netflix shows I can take in, which turns out to be a LOT. I just finished Season 2 of Travelers. It's a good science fiction show that I don't hear much about from other people, so check it out if you're interested in time travel!

Even with all this stuff I've listed above, I feel like I've forgotten way too much of how I spent my time this year. That leads me to my plan to briefly jot down what I do each day next year, and to summarize each month for myself, to keep track of it all better. I have a system in mind that I don't want to describe right away; I just want to use it for a while and see how it works out. Taking the premise of "underpromise and overdeliver" to the next level, I guess, wherein I promise nothing and you're happy to get anything. Right?! MAKES SENSE, YES???

A New Steampunk Story from Me, WITH GHOSTS

My next short story publication will be "Tipping Point," in a new anthology from Broken Eye Books called Ghost in the Cogs. Coming soon! Here's a description of the book, from their website:

Ghosts. Gaslight. Gears.

In the wondrous age of steam, pirates, rust, and syphilis aren’t all you need to worry about. Ghosts abound!

In this hissing and clanking steampunk world, there are moments that science just can’t explain. All the mechanical geniuses scratch their heads and whisper words of ghosts and powers, of spirits and demons. Possessed automatons take on lives of their own. Superstitious pilots take all necessary precautions. Avant-garde machinists harness the spirits to power their creations. Revenge-minded ghosts stalk haunted gasworks. This is a mechanized playground for the souls of the dead.

I'm really excited about this anthology! Want to know who else has stories in it? Click here for the official announcement! 

Getting My Voice Back with NaNoWriMo

This year has been very stressful and strange for me. I'm separated and living in my own place now, but getting here involved a lot of work, tension, and pain, and I just could not write fiction for most of the year.

My NaNoWriMo novel cover.

CC image by J.K. Nilssen, with title added (no other modifications).

I had a few promising fiction ideas, but nearly every time I thought about writing, an awful feeling of emptiness would stop me from doing it. Then I saw friends of mine excitedly getting ready for NaNoWriMo, and I thought that maybe the speed of writing required, and the friendly competition, could get me to set aside my perfectionism and self-editing and really allow myself to write a ROUGH draft, an approximation of the story. Anything that I could work with later, because writing something is much better than writing nothing. So I'm doing it! I started late, on the third day of the month, and I'm up to 6,300 words so far. That's short of the target for today, but not by much, and I still have time for at least a couple more writing sprints today. I'm rewarding myself with bragging and chocolate every time I finish a sprint!

In the meantime, the Kickstarter for my next anthology is almost at its end, but not fully funded yet, so if you'd like to be a helper, please check it out and tell your friends about it! Not Our Kind: Tales of (Not) Belonging. 

My New Anthology: the Kickstarter!

THIS IS HAPPENING:

Oh, didn't I mention? I have a new book in progress. NOT OUR KIND: Tales of (Not) Belonging. "A genre-defying diverse collection of fantasy and sci-fi stories of cultures, their problems, and seeing life from a new point of view."

"Edited by Nayad Monroe - who also edited What Fates Impose - these nineteen stories bring us tales of being the other, of belonging, and not belonging. Our contributors have won a wide range of awards for their previous work, and include: Wes Alexander, Alex Bledsoe, Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Amanda C. Davis, Sarah Hans, Janet Harriett, Tyler Hayes, Michael Haynes, Erika Holt, Gary Kloster, Marissa Lingen, Remy Nakamura, Andrew Romine, Ekaterina Sedia, Lucy A. Snyder, Reinhardt Suarez, Juliette Wade, Tim Waggoner, Damien Angelica Walters ...and perhaps YOU." (We're hoping to reach the goal of an open submission call to add more stories!)

In order to pay the authors a professional rate, we have this fundraising campaign going. The book is currently 59% funded, with six more days to get to 100%. If you'd like to help get this book made, please head over to the Kickstarter page, and/or tell all of your friends about it! Because there's some great new fiction and rewards to get out of this!

The One with the Year Ending

This year was, to be all cliché about it, a roller coaster. BIG GOOD THINGS alternating with BIG BAD THINGS in a way that I haven't really experienced before, most years. I'm not going to get into the bad ones, because I dwelled in them at the time and I don't want to dwell anywhere near them anymore. I think I've learned some things from them, at least, and I'll be using the knowledge I've gained for the rest of my life, which should turn out to be helpful. I think that's the best way to look at it.

So. In my writing and editing news, the good thing that's the most current is my story for Steampunk World, a multicultural steampunk anthology that's now in the last days of a popular Kickstarter campaign! "The Emperor Everlasting" is an alternate history story in which the Incas were much more successful in the world than they were in the actual past you may have learned about. Intrigue unfolds as a royal Deviser is thwarted in her every effort to complete the most important job in her nation's history! Who wants to read about a country that features battle llamas? Maybe you? Then here's what you need to know:

Steampunk World Kickstarter

Featuring stories by Jay Lake, Lucy A.Snyder, Ken Liu, Nisi Shawl, and many more!

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My most exciting professional development was editing my first anthology, What Fates Impose, which was published after its own successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. The fundraiser allowed the publisher to pay professional rates for all of the stories, because paying writers well for their work was one of the top goals for the project. And so we created this anthology of new tales of divination!

 

What Fates Impose

Featuring stories by Cat Rambo, Ken Scholes, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, and many more!

 

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2013 included the planning stages for TWO new editing projects for me, so I'm looking forward to doing that work in 2014! I will write more about those projects as more of the details are sorted out.

 

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There's only ONE MORE MONTH left to get copies of two soon-to-be-discontinued science fiction anthologies that contain stories of mine. It's not great news that they'll be gone, but at least there's time to grab them! Because they contain many wild stories about life in space, including my own "An Assessment of the Incident at Camp Righteous" and "Running in Wonderland."

 

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I did some good reading this year, too! My project of reading a Story Each Day for the whole year fizzled out at the end of August, but by then I had read over 250 stories, so I still feel good about it. That's approximately a million words of fiction, at minimum, which is around ten novels' worth. That's in addition to the other thirty-four books I read! Some of the best books I read this year were:

 

• The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
• Salvage and Demolition, by Tim Powers
• American Elsewhere, by Robert Jackson Bennett
• At the Edge of Waking, by Holly Phillips
• Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, by Sarah Monette
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• World War Z, by Max Brooks
• Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

 

(I realize that I was WAY LATE to reading many of these, but they were definitely as excellent as everyone had been saying!)

This concludes 2013! Best wishes and good luck for 2014! I'll leave you with a recommendation for my favorite blog, which offers science-backed recommendations for living well and being happy:

Barking Up the Wrong Tree: How to be awesome at life.





Two Books I'm In Will Soon Go Out of Print!

I got a letter this week that told me the company which published a couple of my stories will be dropping most of its books. It's a struggle to run a small press, and often the profits don't even come close to matching the level of work involved, so the decision is understandable. But in case you're interested in grabbing some books that may be rare collector's items one day (I CERTAINLY HOPE), I'll post the links below. The books will be discontinued as of January 31, 2014, so order before then because it's your last chance! I will get a tiny cut of any sales that transpire, but more importantly, I hope to get more copies out into the world because soon they'll be gone forever...

Space Grunts: Full-Throttle Space Tales #3 is a military science fiction anthology edited by Dayton Ward. It contains my short story of a militant theocracy gone terribly wrong, "An Assessment of the Incident at Camp Righteous." The story is set in a prison camp for native aliens on a planet that's been conquered by humans.

Space Tramps: Full-Throttle Space Tales #5 is a science fiction anthology about vagabonds in space, edited by Jennifer Brozek. It includes my novelette, "Running in Wonderland," which is about a mentally ill refugee who must navigate through the criminal parts of a huge space station as part of her quest to find a home on a frontier planet.

In other news, I AM MOVING. I've lived in my current house for over twelve years, which is the longest time I've ever lived in the same place, and I've accumulated ABSOLUTELY TOO MUCH STUFF. Sorting through it and getting rid of the excess has been taking up lots of my time, but that's a good idea in itself AND the new house is in a much more convenient location, so the effort is worthwhile. The official move will be in early January.

I hope you'll enjoy any holidays you celebrate, and also all of the other days coming up!

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Amanda C. Davis

Note from Nayad: Last interview of the series! I've been posting interviews

with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination, which is all about the conflicts and problems that make people want to predict the future, followed by the new problems that come from trying to find out what's next.

It's also the last day of the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE, and although we are fully funded (yay!) you can still get in on it to pre-order the book and get awesome rewards until 8pm Central TODAY, July 14th, 2013. All extra help we get will go toward the finishing details for the book and making more books like it possible, because we want to keep on creating anthologies and paying authors the pro rates they deserve.

You can easily tell your friends about the project by using this page to give us three clicks. Time's almost up!
 

Amanda C. Davis writes short stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her work has appeared in Shock Totem, IGMS, three Triangulation anthologies, and others. She works in the combustion industry by day and spends her nights baking, live-Tweeting horror movies, and embarking on the occasional harebrained scheme (with varying results, but at least her failures make entertaining blog posts).

Amanda's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination, "The Scry Mirror," shows how managing one's expectations is a crucial element of happiness, and it digs into some seriously creepy depths.

Here's Amanda with her thoughts on writing and what looks like an awesome egg recipe: I'm going to have to try it! *for a solid three minutes, mirrors around the world reflect the wrong images*

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Depends. Put enough coffee in me and I'll lecture for hours. On the other hand, I'm constantly telling my crit partners that I'm always wrong about everything. I'd probably better just stick to that for now.

Which subjects and themes do you write about often, and why?

I'm definitely one of those writers who pulls the same themes over and over again. I love sacrifice and loss, dread, the realization that you've been wrong for a really long time. Following your duty to a terrible end. I like to treat magic like science and science like magic. And I've got this stable of character types who keep appearing in various shapes and sizes, to the point where I've named them, and can recognize them and their hybrids even where I didn't expect them. I couldn't speculate on why. It'd just get embarrassing.

What's your favorite story of all the stories you've written, and why?

I don't necessarily have a number-one favorite, though within genres, I'm more satisfied with some than with others. Can I pick two? People seemed to like "Drift" and "Shimmer."

What do you like and dislike about the process of writing a story for a themed anthology?

I pretty much love everything about it. I thrive on deadlines, and I approach prompts and themes as puzzles where I have to find the approach that's maximally appropriate, unique, and interesting to write. The only downside might be that stories written to theme can be harder to place elsewhere, which is why (shh, trade secret) I often incorporate a second or third element that's in regular demand. And anthologies! I adore them. Don't get me started. I'm so excited about the table of contents in What Fates Impose, so excited to read it.

Where can people find other published work of yours?

All my published work is linked from my bibliography. Earlier this year, World Weaver Press released a collection of my sister Megan Engelhardt's and my fairy-tale retellings, available in a vast bouquet of formats, and we're very proud of it: http://worldweaverpress.com/books/wolves-and-witches/

What else would you like to tell people about any subject?

One egg. Quarter teaspoon coarse-ground black pepper. Half tablespoon crumbled feta cheese. Two tablespoons chopped baby spinach. Scramble, fry on medium-high, flip when the bottom holds together on a spatula and the top is solid enough not to slide off. Fold in half. Top with ketchup or hot sauce according to taste, but you don't need it; that's a lot of black pepper.

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Last day to get involved! The WHAT FATES IMPOSE Fundraising Campaign closes TODAY, July 14, 2013, at 8pm Central. Join us and be a part of making history!

Become a Beloved Backer on Kickstarter!

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Other posts in this series:

GUEST POST: Jennifer Brozek and her Karen Wilson Chronicles
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Wendy N. Wagner
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Alasdair Stuart
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ferrett Steinmetz
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Sarah Hans
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Lucy A. Snyder
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Beth Wodzinski
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Tim Waggoner
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Jamie Lackey
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Remy Nakamura
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Cat Rambo
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: David Boop
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Andrew Penn Romine

AUTHORINTERVIEW: Erika Holt

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Erika Holt

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read twisty tales about struggles with destiny, this anthology is for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this posting we have only 30 more hours to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE, and WE ARE FULLY FUNDED. Yay! We're up to $5,185 from 217 Beloved Backers!

You can still pre-order the book and get awesome rewards until 8pm Central on Sunday, July 14th. All extra help we get will go toward the finishing details for the book and making more books like it possible, because we want to keep on creating anthologies and paying authors the pro rates they deserve.

You can easily tell your friends about the project by using this page to give us three clicks.

Erika Holt lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she writes and edits speculative fiction.  Her stories appear in Shelter of Daylight Issue 6, Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, and Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales.  She is also co-editor of two anthologies from EDGE and Absolute XPress: Rigor Amortis and  Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring ’20s, and assistant editor of Nightmare Magazine. I can give you my personal guarantee that she's fun to drink with!

Erika's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination is called "Murder of Crows," and it's a chilling tale about the nature of trust, belief, and terrible choices.

Now here's Erika to tell you about her methods of developing stories, some of her favorite writing themes, and her thoughts on divination. *all the crows in the world startle into flight*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Andrew Penn Romine

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read twisty tales about struggles with destiny, this anthology is for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this morning we have only 57 more hours to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,862 from 202 Beloved Backers. That's a thrilling 97%, but we still need $138 to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening! We're SOOOOOO CLOSE. :)

Thanks to everyone's efforts, we have unlocked a new bonus for backers! Everyone gets two bonus art downloads for contributing any amount from $1 on up. You can easily tell your friends about the project by using this page to give us three clicks. Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

Andrew Penn Romine lives in Los Angeles, where he works in the visual effects and animation industry. A graduate of the 2010 Clarion West workshop, his fiction appears online at Lightspeed Magazine and Crossed Genres as well as in the anthologies Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring 20s, and Rigor Amortis, and in Fungi from Innsmouth Free Press.

Andrew's story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination, "Ain't Much Different'n Rabbits," is, I believe, the most disturbing story in the whole book, AND I LOVE IT.

Here's Andrew, explaining himself. *swarms of fireflies all light up at once*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: David Boop

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read twisty tales about struggles with destiny, this anthology is for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this afternoon we have only three more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,663 from 192 Beloved Backers. That's an amazing 93%, but we still need $337 to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening. We're SO CLOSE. :)

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get our first bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose, and we're only 8 backers away from making that TWO bonus art downloads. Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

 

 

David Boop is a novelist, short story writer , and super-friendly guy. I first met him after he was on a panel at NorWesCon. I don't remember the topic of the panel, but I remember the title of his book, which was such a good title that I needed to compliment him on it: She Murdered Me with Science. He's is also in a table of contents with me in Space Grunts: Full-Throttle Space Tales #3, edited by Dayton Ward, as well as having stories in a bunch of other tables of contents! He offers flash fiction critiques for one of the reward levels in our fundraising campaign.

 

David's story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination is called "Dipping into the Pocket of Destiny." It shows how trying to get an edge over the competition depends on both the quality of your information and the context around it, so you need to keep an eye on cause and effect.

 

Here's David with some context for you! *as the strand of fate that brought you here is woven into place, Events of Significance begin to play out*

 

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Cat Rambo

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read strange tales about predicting the future, you've found the right book. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this afternoon we have only four more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,356 from 183 Beloved Backers. That's 87%, but we still need $644 to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening. But we're so close!

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get our first bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose, and we're only 17 backers away from making that TWO bonus art downloads. Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

 

(Photo by On Focus Photos, http://onfocusphoto.com)

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012.

Cat's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "To Read the Sea," is a powerful and unsettling flash fiction story about the magical objects that come from the ocean, and the dark motivations of the people who want them.

Here's Cat to tell you about divination and the many ways to do it, as well as her thoughts on writing. *tides around the world impossibly rise all at once*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Remy Nakamura

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read strange tales about predicting the future, you've found the right book. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this afternoon we have only five more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,267 from 178 Beloved Backers. That's almost 85%, but we still need some help to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening.

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get a bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose! Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

Remy Nakamura is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop, and one of the excellent writers contributing to Inkpunks, and I personally covet at least one of his shirts (the one he was wearing when I met him in the middle of the night at WorldCon in Reno). His story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination is called "Pick a Card." It features Tarot cards and a tortured man in prison who seeks a way out.

I'll let Remy take over now to tell you about his reasons for using Tarot cards, his themes, and the way he came up with the idea for his story.
*Ferris Bueller-style group dances start up on stairways across America*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Jamie Lackey

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read weird stories about fortune-telling, this is the book for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this morning we have only five more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,116 from 171 Beloved Backers. That's 82%, but we still need some help to get to $5,000. The Clock of Let's Get Serious is now ticking.

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get a bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose! Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cat. Her fiction has been published by over a dozen different venues, including The Living Dead 2, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Daily Science Fiction, and she has appeared on the Best Horror of the Year Honorable Mention and Tangent Online Recommended Reading Lists. She reads slush for Clarkesworld Magazine, works as an assistant editor at Electric Velocipede, and helped edit the Triangulation Annual Anthology from 2008 to 2011. Her Kickstarter-funded short story collection, One Revolution, is available on Amazon.com.

Jamie's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "Another Will Open," gives us a look at the difference between easy answers and hard choices, and how to pick a direction. Here she is with her thoughts on where that story came from and some advice for aspiring writers.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Tim Waggoner

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read weird stories about fortune-telling, this is the book for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this morning we have only six more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $3,879 from 160 Beloved Backers. That's almost 78%, but we still need some help to get to $5,000. The Clock of Let's Get Serious is now ticking.

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get a bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose! Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

Tim Waggoner is a popular, award-winning horror writer who has published over thirty novels and three short story collections, and also a creative writing teacher at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. His story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "The Goggen," is a creepy modern fairy tale about the darkness lurking behind waterfalls and inside human minds.

Here's Tim with great stuff about his writing themes, writing advice for you, and how the I Ching gave him the right wisdom to get him started as a professional writer. *out of nowhere, an orchestra starts playing dramatic classical music*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Beth Wodzinski

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews of the authors contributing to WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. FYI: There is some outrageously imaginative work in this book, and I can't wait for you to see what these writers have accomplished. I hope you enjoy what they have to say in their interviews!

As of this morning we have only seven more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $3,732 from 153 Beloved Backers. That's almost 75%, but we still need some help to get to $5,000. The Clock of Let's Get Serious is now ticking.

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends about this book project is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

In addition to being an excellent writer, Beth Wodzinski is the editor of an outstanding magazine, Shimmer. Her story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE is called "One Tiny Misstep (In Bed)." It features fortune cookies, gives the reader many choices, and demonstrates exactly how deceptive choices can be.

Here's Beth, testing out various methods of online divination to find answers to my questions! *flocks of shimmery birds take to the skies in what is clearly an omen of some kind*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Lucy A. Snyder

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week and next I'll post interviews of the authors contributing to WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. RECOGNIZE: I am working with some of the most fun and interesting people in the speculative fiction field. I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

As of this morning we have only eight more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $3,550 from 144 Beloved Backers, but we still need some help to get to $5,000!

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

(Photo by Michelle Pendergrass)

 

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Dark Faith, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.

Here's Lucy, letting you in on her thoughts about divination and a bunch of her diverse interests! *a triumphant fanfare of trumpets*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Sarah Hans

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week and next I'll post interviews of the authors contributing to WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. FACT: I am pleased and proud to be able to work with each of the authors in this book, because they're all great people. I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

As of this morning we have only nine more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $3,448 from 140 Beloved Backers, but we still need some help to get to $5,000!

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

Sarah Hans is a writer, editor, teacher, and steampunk enthusiast. Her first anthology, SIDEKICKS!, contains one of my short stories, and has inspired at least two short films that are in development right now. Her story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "Charms," explores blackmail, identity, and difficult choices, using runes as a method of predicting the future.

Here's Sarah! Sharing her thoughts on Tarot, reluctance to get her fortune told, and writing from the perspective of characters different from herself. *showers of glitter confetti*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ferrett Steinmetz

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week and next I'll post interviews of the authors contributing to WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. KNOW THIS: every one of these authors has a shot at becoming your next favorite author, because they're all that good. I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

As of this morning we have only ten more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $3,398 from 137 Beloved Backers, but we still need some help to get to $5,000!

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

Ferrett Steinmetz is a Nebula Award-nominated author. He has been mentioned by Neil Gaiman in at least one public speech as an example to show that creative writing can, in fact, be taught. His story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "Black Swan Oracle," gives us a chilling look at how predictable people and their choices can be, and the outcome of making such predictions.

Now here's Ferrett! Who can explain to you how vacuum cleaners lead to Deep Thoughts about the divination prospects of social media, and also give you solid, get-to-work writing advice. *a thousand muppets flail at once*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Alasdair Stuart

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week and next I'll post interviews of the authors contributing to WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. ADVISORY: every one of these authors is full of talent and marvels. I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

As of this morning we have only eleven more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. We're up to $3,368 from 136 Beloved Backers, but we still need some help to get to $5,000!

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

Alasdair Stuart's introduction to WHAT FATES IMPOSE is the kind of inherently interesting piece of writing you often see as a non-fiction article but rarely get to have at the beginning of a book, because someone wrote in some Publishing Scripture somewhere that nobody actually reads introductions, but you still have to have one for Reasons. Well, you're going to want to read this one. I mean, first of all, it's called "Singing from the Book of Holy Jagger." It must come from a different sect than that Publishing Scripture I mentioned. But you don't have to just believe me about how good it is. You can listen to Alasdair reading the heck out of a portion of his intro on the project's page by clicking that great big arrow in the middle of our cover image.

And here he is! It's Alasdair! With ideas about divination, and thoroughly correct writing advice. *cheers*

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Wendy N. Wagner

Note from Nayad: This week and next, I will post interviews with as many authors as possible from WHAT FATES IMPOSE, in addition to anything else I write about. BE ASSURED that every one of these authors is an interesting person I would gladly hang out with for an evening (and I have done so, in many cases). I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

As of this morning we have only twelve more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. We're up to $3,223 from 134 Beloved Backers, but we still need some help to get to $5,000!

If you'd like to help out, telling your friends is free and easy by clicking here, and there are reward levels from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page.

Wendy N. Wagner's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE features fortune cookies. It shows a struggling couple coping with an unexpected stop on their road trip, with much larger consequences than they could have expected.

Here's Wendy, sharing her thoughts on fortune-telling and writing! *applause*