Chimeric Contributor: Beth Cato

April 18, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

We’re continuing the Chimeric contributor interviews with a familiar name on my blog–Beth Cato. Beth and I first met a long time ago on Livejournal, when Livejournal was still relevant, and even though we live a very long way from one another she’s one of my best friends. She’s also an incredibly talented writer who I would admire even if I didn’t like her on a personal level (which I do, obviously :-p) 🙂

What letter were you assigned?

Did you struggle with the letter you were given?

A little bit, yes. When I think of chimeras, I think of the gremlins in my Clockwork Dagger series, and I really wanted a fresh take on the concept.

What kind of chimera is your story about?

A genetic modification of a little boy who assumes a “tiger” nature in his post-apocalyptic world.

What, other than the letter you were assigned, helped inspire your story?

I write a lot of stories that take place after the collapse of civilization. As I tried to think of a good setting for an ‘S” story, I gravitated to my familiar, horrible places.

Lion, goat or snake–which are you more like?

More leonine, I think. I’m a cat person all the way.

If you were going to be magically transformed into a chimera composed of three different creatures, what would you want them to be?

Gosh, probably cat, horse, and human. Which would surprise absolutely no one who knows me.

What if it wasn’t limited to creatures? What three things would you want to be composed of?

I don’t even know how to answer this one, though I am laughing at the thought of being rendered into some sort of multi-purpose Kitchen-Aid and oven chimera.

Unrealizable dreams have been called chimeras. Taking the ‘unrealizable’ part out of the equation, what is one of your fondest dreams/goals?

Um, I had the goal of being a Nebula or Hugo nominee, and now I’m a Nebula finalist–for a novella about chimeras. It’d still be awfully nice to win one of the big awards.

Can you share a short excerpt from your story?

“Be careful out there, Tiger,” Doctor said, as she did every day when she let Tiger Boy out through the narrow basement window.

“Tiger Boy,” he corrected, as he did daily.

“Yes, Tiger Boy.” Her smile was more wobbly than usual.

He knew she didn’t like letting him out by his lonesome, but he couldn’t stay pent up for days and days on end. He started to get restless and toy around with things, and that was really, really bad in a laboratory. She used to joke that she wasn’t sure if his mischief came from his Tiger or Boy nature, but she hadn’t said that in a long time.

She didn’t say too much at all, these days.

Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in a lair west of Phoenix, Arizona. She shares the household with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham.

She’s the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER (a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel) and THE CLOCKWORK CROWN from Harper Voyager.

Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.

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C is for Chimera, Interview

Chimeric Contributor: Michael B. Tager

April 14, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

It’s kind of become a tradition that I interview the contributors to my anthologies and share those interviews on my blog. It’s also kind of become a tradition that it takes me a very long time to get them all posted. I plan to continue the first tradition but I’m hoping to avoid the second. Just to be different. We’re going to start off this week with a newcomer to the Alphabet Anthology series–Michael B. Tager. As seems to happen every time someone new joins the crew Michael was assigned one of the trickier letters in the alphabet, but I’ll let him tell you about it in his

What letter were you assigned?

Q. Because there’s no better way to inspire creativity than to be given constraints like that.

Did you struggle with the letter you were given?

Kind of? Sometimes I like to write from the title backward, so I looked up interesting words that start with Q. in a way, it’s easier (imagine looking through all the Ms for a fun word).

What was your favourite idea for the ‘word’ to use in your title that you didn’t use?

The story that appears in C is for Chimera was actually the second story I wrote. Quietus was the first word, which didn’t pan out for this anthology, unfortunately, but it’s still a dope piece (and published elsewhere).

What kind of chimera is your story about?

It’s both a creature—though not the directly mythological—and one of the other meanings: illusory.

What, other than the letter you were assigned, helped inspire your story?

Who knows where inspiration comes? While sometimes I can find a direct source, most often it’s a combination of inspirations. This is one of the latter occasions.

Lion, goat or snake–which are you more like?

That’s like asking what magical house you’d be Sorted into. We all want to think we’re the lion or the snake, but hell, I’m probably a goat (though I’m not particularly sure-footed).

If you were going to be magically transformed into a chimera composed of three different creatures, what would you want them to be? Honey badger, otter, porcupine.

What if it wasn’t limited to creatures? What three things would you want to be composed of?

Air, tacos, haughty.

Unrealizable dreams have been called chimeras. Taking the ‘unrealizable’ part out of the equation, what is one of your fondest dreams/goals?

Well, I’m making a go of it at this writer thing/publisher/editor thing. I think it’ll happen, albeit slowly. .

Can you share a short excerpt from your story?

While the master regained energy, the student chanced and look down, past her flowing amber robes, past the next fifty yards of ladder, to the jutting outline of their destination. The ancient cold metal of the ladder burned through her sandals and into her callused feet. She ignored the depths below her. She repeated the mantra of the monastery. Life is the illusion before death. We were nothing before we were something. We will be nothing again. The quaking in her gut subsided.

When the master was ready, they continued. It rained briefly, a harsh, cold rain that set their teeth to chattering. She missed her long hair that would have kept her degrees warmer. She wished for better under things than the shapeless rags under her robes. But she repeated the mantra over and over. She was not special. She was part of the world.

Michael B. Tager is the author of the fiction collection “Always Tomorrow” and “Pop Culture Poems,” a poetry chapbook (Mason Jar Press). He is currently writing a book of memoir told through essays about video games. He likes Buffy and the Baltimore Orioles. Find more of his work online at michaelbtager.com.

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Cover Reveal, Sirens

Sirens Cover and Table of Contents

April 13, 2016 R. Parrish 2 Comments

Here she is, the much-anticipated cover and table of contents for the fourth of my Magical Menagerie anthologies: Sirens!

Cover by Jonathan C. Parrish

Sixteen siren songs that will both exemplify and defy your expectations.

Sirens are beautiful, dangerous, and musical, whether they come from the sea or the sky. Greek sirens were described as part-bird, part-woman, and Roman sirens more like mermaids, but both had a voice that could captivate and destroy the strongest man. The pages of this book contain the stories of the Sirens of old, but also allow for modern re-imaginings, plucking the sirens out of their natural elements and placing them at a high school football game, or in wartime London, or even into outer space.

Featuring stories by Kelly Sandoval, Amanda Kespohl, L.S. Johnson, Pat Flewwelling, Gabriel F. Cuellar, Randall G. Arnold, Micheal Leonberger, V. F. LeSann, Tamsin Showbrook, Simon Kewin, Cat McDonald, Sandra Wickham, K.T. Ivanrest, Adam L. Bealby, Eliza Chan, and Tabitha Lord, these siren songs will both exemplify and defy your expectations.

Table of Contents:

Siren Seeking by Kelly Sandoval
The Fisherman and the Golem by Amanda Kespohl
We Are Sirens by L.S. Johnson
Moth to an Old Flame by Pat Flewwelling
The Bounty by Gabriel F. Cuellar
The Dolphin Riders by Randall G. Arnold
Is This Seat Taken? by Micheal Leonberger
Nautilus by V. F. LeSann
Siren’s Odyssey by Tamsin Showbrook
Safe Waters by Simon Kewin
Notefisher by Cat McDonald
Experience by Sandra Wickham
Threshold by K.T. Ivanrest
The Fisherman’s Catch by Adam L. Bealby
One More Song by Eliza Chan
Homecoming by Tabitha Lord

Coming July 12, 2016

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Books, C is for Chimera, Published

C is for Chimera

April 12, 2016 R. Parrish 2 Comments

Today is the day! C is for Chimera is here! *happy dance*

This installment of Rhonda Parrish’s alphabet anthology series asks skilled storytellers to write around the theme of chimera. The resulting tales are part fable, part poem, part dream. But like any chimera, the parts make up a greater whole.

Blend reality with fantasy. Mesh science fiction with mystery. Mix history with what should have been. They are all chimera.

A shadow tells a tale of schoolyard bullies. A long-vanished monster returns from the cold dark. Make-up makes up a life. Alchemy, Atlantis, and apocalypse. These 26 tales bring both chaos and closure to dark and elusively fantastic geographies.

Contributing authors include:

~ Alexandra Seidel ~ KV Taylor ~ Marge Simon ~ Pete Aldin ~ Michael M. Jones ~ Simon Kewin ~ BD Wilson ~ Gabrielle Harbowy ~ Sara Cleto ~ Megan Engelhardt ~ Michael Fosburg ~ Megan Arkenberg ~ Lilah Wild ~ Laura VanArendonk Baugh ~ Milo James Fowler ~ Brittany Warman ~ Michael B. Tager ~ L.S. Johnson ~ Beth Cato ~ C.S. MacCath ~ Sammantha Kymmell-Harvey ~ Steve Bornstein ~ Suzanne van Rooyen ~ Michael Kellar ~ Jonathan C. Parrish ~ Amanda C. Davis ~

Buy It Now

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…and once you’ve had a chance to read it, please leave an honest review for us at Goodreads and/or Amazon. Word-of-mouth powers most of our sales and we are sincerely grateful for every endorsement and review we receive.

C is for Chimera, Guest Blogger

The Importance of Slides

April 11, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

C is for Chimera is coming out tomorrow and in honour of that I’d like to share this guest blog from contributor Beth Cato 🙂

The Importance of Slides by Beth Cato

The table of contents for C is for Chimera will do a great job of hiding the words attached to the letters that inspired our stories, and I’m going to give away my secret right now: S is for Slide.

My story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world and follows the scamperings of Tiger Boy. He is a boy who is (don’t gasp too loudly in surprise) also part tiger. That chimera mix allowed him to survive when most of civilization did not. He’s not particularly damaged by the experience, though. Tiger Boy is the ultimate unreliable narrator: a child who sees the world through a particular, rather oblivious perspective.

To him, a playground slide means everything. It’s a relic of a past when he was pure Boy, when he had a mother, an apartment, and schooldays. He still plays on the slide, but not in the same way. The world changed. He changed.

When I became a parent, my own concept of slides changed, too. I was of pretty average physical ability as a kid. I took things like slides for granted. Climb up, climb down. Stand in line if there are other kids. Don’t push. Don’t be the jerk who tries to climb up the slide when other kids are there.

My son has autism. His gross motor skills made climbing slides a precarious act when he was young. I was the hovering mother, there to help him up or catch him if he slipped. The social dynamics, however, were the greatest obstacle. Much of that he had to learn at school. I couldn’t hover. All I could do was try to reinforce his awareness of other people–give others enough personal space, say please, say thank you, slide down and skedaddle out of the way.

I worked part of my son’s experience into my creation of Tiger Boy. When you have physical limitations, the very act of climbing a ladder has new meaning. It makes the view from the top all the sweeter–or the fall all the worse. And Tiger Boy doesn’t have anyone close by to catch him if he slips.

She’s the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER (a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel) and THE CLOCKWORK CROWN from Harper Voyager.

Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.

Reserve your copy of C is for Chimera now and be among the first to read about Tiger Boy and all the other chimeras in this exciting collection 🙂

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Corvidae, Interview

Corvidae Contributor Interview: Laura VanArendonk Baugh

April 8, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

Over the coming weeks I’d like to share interviews that Magnus and I conducted with the contributors to Corvidae and Scarecrow. This week we’ll talk with Laura VanArendonk Baugh. I really probably should have combined this with Laura’s interview for Scarecrow but, uh, well I didn’t. So there you go 😉

Interview with Laura VanArendonk Baugh

What is it about corvids that inspired you to write about them? Corvids are kind of underappreciated. That is, lots of people like them, but they like them for their gothic reputation and associations, like Poe’s poem. Don’t get me wrong, I like gothic associations! but corvids are more than that. (I’m also a big fan of bats and all their vampiric trappings, but bats are also cool for more than just their Transylvanian relatives. Build a bat house!)

Was there one corvid characteristic you wanted to highlight more than others? So here’s the thing – my story features a corvid cognition researcher and a trainer, and yet nothing in it remotely stretches the truth of corvid capability. As far as cognition and behavior goes, the story is pretty boring. So when truth is more impressive than fiction, they must be pretty clever birds.

My day job is in animal behavior, so it was fun to get to write a nerdy behavior story where that stuff was actually plot-relevant. And in fact this story was directly inspired by a friend’s impressive research in counting (in dogs), so I enjoyed that!

Do you think you were successful? I hope so. In the sequel story, in Scarecrow, a character mentions that humans only respect and conserve those bits of nature which fascinate or impress them. As a professional I can tell you that all animals are much more clever than you think – you just don’t generally get a chance to see them in action. If we thought of them as sentient and smart, it would change how we do a lot of things, from industrial farming to environmental conservation.

As you may know, one of Edmonton’s local Twitter personalities is Magnus E. Magpie who haunts Twitter as @YEGMagpie. I invited him to read an advance copy of Corvidae and Scarecrow and offer a short cawmentary on each story from a magpie’s point of view, which he did. When he was finished I asked if there was anything he’d like to ask the contributors. The italicized portions are mine because Magnus didn’t ask straight-forward questions on account of he’s a magpie 🙂 Laura’s answers may sound familiar on account of that Scarecrow contributor interview thing, but it’s too late for me to change that 😉

Mr. Yegpie: I also would sure love to know where they got their ideas from! I caught several familiar references from existing books and mythology and fairy tales; I like seeing people riff off stuff. (What inspired your story/poem?) At a training and behavior conference, a training friend (the always-amazing Ken Ramirez) shared some of his research on what I’ll describe simply as counting in dogs. As we sat at the faculty table for dinner the next night, I told him he’d given me an idea for a story. This story ended up being only partly related to that first idea, but that’s how ideas work, right?

Mr. Yegpie: I think I would like to know what people’s favourite corvid is though; and if it isn’t a magpie, WHYEVER NOT?!? (If they come back with some guff about crows using tools, PLEASE LET ME KNOW AND I WILL SEND THEM A COPY OF MY ROGERS BILL. Pffft, crows.) (What is your favourite corvid?) Okay, after all my guff about people liking corvids only for their gothic associations…. I confess to liking ravens in particular just because of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem. I mean, come on. Vincent Price, enormous black birds, despair, what’s not to love?

But magpies can be very striking, visually. I wish we had magpies locally to admire.

I guessed, but I had to Google to confirm – a Rogers bill is for wireless and internet, so Mr. Yegpie uses a smart phone for all his tweeting! Clever bird. 🙂

Laura was born at a very early age and never looked back. She overcame childhood deficiencies of having been born without teeth or developed motor skills, and by the time she matured into a recognizable adult she had become a behavior analyst, an internationally-recognized animal trainer, a costumer/cosplayer, a dark chocolate addict, and a Pushcart Prize-nominated author with a following for her folklore-based stories and speculative fiction. Find her at www.LauraVanArendonkBaugh.com.

Available Direct from the Publisher:
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Corvidae, Interview

Corvidae Contributor Interview: Megan Engelhardt

April 6, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

Over the coming weeks I’d like to share interviews that I conducted with the contributors to Corvidae and Scarecrow. This week we’ll talk with Megan Engelhardt. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Megan before, but she and her sister also have the rather dubious honour of being the first people I ever took a selfie with ;0)

Interview with Megan Engelhardt

Please share a short excerpt from your story:

A feather is mounted on the wall in Zinnia’s study. It is just over two feet long. The feather is iridescent blue with hints of green, yellow and even a little red revealed in just the right light. It is very soft to touch. I remember how soft.

It is on her wall, Zinnia says, to remind us of our great failure, of the time we were neither quick enough nor clever enough. It is the reason we will never again work for hire. It is the reason why even now, years later, we pay our respects to every magpie that crosses our paths.

We owe it to them. We owe them our lives.

What is it about corvids that inspired you to write about them? They’re so smart — almost creepily so.

Was there one corvid characteristic you wanted to highlight more than others? That intelligence, and their adaptability, as well. Corvids are birds that get the job done, whatever the job happens to be.

If you were a corvid, what would you build your nest out of? Judging from my kitchen junk drawer, my nest would be built of bits of ribbon, slips of paper inscribed with things that I’m supposed to remember, Sharpie pens and small toys I’ve taken away from my children.

Despite being terrorized by chickens as a child, Megan Engelhardt still enjoys and respects birds — from a distance. She lives in northeastern Ohio with her husband and two sons and can be found online at megengelhardt.wordpress.com or on Twitter @MadMerryMeg.

Available Direct from the Publisher:
World Weaver Press

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Sirens

Sirens Submission Stats

April 5, 2016 R. Parrish 2 Comments

Wow.

So that’s the latest installment of the Magical Menageries anthology series put to bed. Okay, okay, I exaggerate slightly. I’m not quite done my end of things, but it’s close. Submissions have been solicited and read. Decisions, difficult decisions, have been made, contracts signed and edits have been sent to all the contributors.

At this point I’ve done a fair number of anthologies and each one comes with its own unique challenges. The biggest challenge with Sirens was that I had an embarrassment of riches. So many amazing stories to chose from. I’m not even kidding.

I received 199 submissions in total. I shortlisted 48 of them. That’s crazy! I’ve never had a shortlist that big before — nearly a quarter of my submissions. And what’s more, usually as an anthology develops it becomes apparent (with some few tricky exceptions) which stories from the shortlist you’re going to keep and which you’ll be passing on simply because they aren’t compatible with the others. That was not the case with this anthology. I wanted to accept every story from the shortlist.

In the end, I whittled those 199 submissions down into a table of contents of sixteen diverse stories that are going to blow you away.

Anthologies kind of take on a personality of their own as I work on them. Obviously they are strongly influenced by my choices, preferences and the theme, but they also have an energy of their own that helps determine the shape the book takes but in this case I had several completely different directions I could have gone in.

I’d been aiming for an equal number of ‘sea’ sirens as ‘sky’ sirens but that’s not how it turned out. Sometimes the lines between sea and sky are blurry, but I would say I’ve got ten sea stories, five sky stories and one space story, which reflects the general proportion of sea to sky submissions I received. The breakdown of those looks something like this:

Sea: 103
Sky: 35
Both: 13
Uncertain or Other: 48

Submissions came from all over the world including Australia, The Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Scotland, England, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, the Isle of Man and the United States of America.

Three of the submissions were duplicate submissions—where someone sent me the exact same story twice—and nine of them didn’t have an identifiable siren. Oops.

Four of the submissions were resubmissions where someone sent me something, received a revise and resubmit letter from me and took me up on that offer. I use a lot of labels in my email to keep things sorted and by the time contracts were being sent out one story had all the following labels on it:

Submission
Rejected
Shortlisted
Accepted

We’ll have an actual table of contents and cover reveal coming up in a couple weeks (I’ve seen the cover, it’s awesome!) but I wanted to give you a bit of a peek into my slush for this anthology. It was an adventure, but the resulting book is something I am incredibly proud of. I can’t wait to share it with you!

This blog was originally posted at http://www.worldweaverpress.com/newsblog/sirens-anthology-submissions-statistics

Corvidae, Interview

Corvidae Contributor Interview: Mike Allen

April 4, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

Over the coming weeks I’d like to share interviews that Magnus and I conducted with the contributors to Corvidae and Scarecrow. This week we’ll talk with Mike Allen.

Interview with Mike Allen

Please share a short excerpt from your story:

A spider with a leg span wider than my outstretched hand squeezed out from the space behind the light switch, and spread its wings.

I froze, my finger still on the toggle. Behind me the dust-draped ceiling fan hummed to life, the light bulb beneath it flicking on to paint the monster with my shadow.

The marks on its body formed a single staring eye above a screaming mouth.

What is it about corvids that inspired you to write about them? In this case a little bird approached me, heh, heh, and asked me to consider creating a corvid story that didn’t involve crows, ravens or magpies. I was intrigued with the idea of writing about a bluejay, because I have a thing for blue, and the more I read about these birds, the more inspiration I found. I had already written two short stories (“The Hiker’s Tale,” “Follow the Wounded One,” published) and a whole novel (unpublished) that take place in a world where certain special people have spirit animal forms possessed of immense power. I didn’t start out intending to set “The Cruelest Team Will Win” in that universe, but the elements just snapped into place unbidden.

Was there one corvid characteristic you wanted to highlight more than others? In the case of the bluejay, the ability the bird has to smash open acorns with a single peck of its beak.

If you were a corvid, what would you build your nest out of? The scalps of my enemies.

What’s your favourite ‘shiny’ thing? For me, there’s nothing shinier than a wickedly good story.

As you may know, one of Edmonton’s local Twitter personalities is Magnus E. Magpie who haunts Twitter as @YEGMagpie. I invited him to read an advance copy of Corvidae and Scarecrow and offer a short cawmentary on each story from a magpie’s point of view, which he did. When he was finished I asked if there was anything he’d like to ask the contributors. The italicized portions are mine because Magnus didn’t ask straight-forward questions on account of he’s a magpie 🙂

Mr. Yegpie: It would be cool to know where all these stories came from, I mean geographically – like I think I could tell who was from Edmonton and who was from Vancouver! (Where do you live, and did that affect your story/poem at all?) I live in the Appalachians, and though “The Cruelest Team Will Win” isn’t explicitly set there, all the other stories in the series most definitely are.

Mike Allen edits the digital journal Mythic Delirium and the critically-acclaimed Clockwork Phoenix anthology series. He’s a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry; his short story “The Button Bin” was a Nebula Award finalist. His newest poetry collection, Hungry Constellations, offers a 20-year retrospective on his career, while his first collection of horror stories, Unseaming, debuted in October to starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. By day he’s the arts columnist for the daily newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and frequent project co-editor Anita Allen, as well as a dog named Loki and two sister-felines, Persephone and Pandora.

Available Direct from the Publisher:
World Weaver Press

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Just Stuff

Aurora Story Bundle

April 2, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

If you’re looking for a great bundle of books to read have I got a link for you! Story Bundle has a bundle going on right now that contains 8 books which have won the Aurora Award. The Aurora Award, for those who don’t know, is an award for excellence in Canadian speculative fiction.

Check this out:

Our curator, Douglas Smith, has won the Aurora three times and been on the final ballot another sixteen. One of his goals when putting this bundle together, aside from offering the best books possible, was to have a gender balance in the selected authors. Mission accomplished. The bundle includes five female and five male authors. You’ll also get a great mix of SF and fantasy, adult and YA novels, as well as a selection of short fiction. The bundle also reflects the long history of the Auroras, with titles spanning over twenty years of Canadian speculative fiction.

Click Here to check ’em out

And for the record, I don’t have a book in this bundle, I’m just spreading the word because a friend asked me to and writing is a team sport 🙂

Corvidae, Interview

Corvidae Contributor Interview: M.L.D. Curelas

April 1, 2016 R. Parrish Leave a comment

Over the coming weeks I’d like to share interviews that Magnus and I conducted with the contributors to Corvidae and Scarecrow. This week we’ll talk with M.L.D. Curelas whose story allowed me to check off the ‘Steampunk corvid story’ on my TOC wishlist for this anthology 🙂

Interview with M.L.D. Curelas

Please share a short excerpt from your story:

“Right.” Hanna leaned forward and adjusted the knob of the gaslight lamp, brightening the alcove where they sat. “Let me see her up close.”

He lowered the bird to the table, and she hesitated, then stepped down, wings held aloft for balance, croaking irritably.

Jenny was mostly black and white, with streaks of blue on her wings and tail–a magpie. One of her legs was artificial, brass, by the look of it, with miniscule gears and cogs serving as joints. One eye was also clockwork. It click-clacked and a telescopic lens protruded from the socket.

What is it about corvids that inspired you to write about them? They’re so intelligent! Recommended reading for everyone: In the Company of Crows and Ravens. And I love Charles de Lint’s stories that focus on the Crow Girls and Lucius the Raven.

Was there one corvid characteristic you wanted to highlight more than others? I wanted to have the magpie muttering and participating in the conversations. I remember a few years ago hearing people talking in my backyard. It sounded almost like a cocktail party! I went outside and it was a magpie, having a conversation with herself.

Do you think you were successful? I think so. Jenny has opinions!

If you were a covid, what would you build your nest out of? Goat hair.

What’s your favourite ‘shiny’ thing? New books.

As you may know, one of Edmonton’s local Twitter personalities is Magnus E. Magpie who haunts Twitter as @YEGMagpie. I invited him to read an advance copy of Corvidae and Scarecrow and offer a short cawmentary on each story from a magpie’s point of view, which he did. When he was finished I asked if there was anything he’d like to ask the contributors. The italicized portions are mine because Magnus didn’t ask straight-forward questions on account of he’s a magpie 🙂

Mr. Yegpie: I also would sure love to know where they got their ideas from! I caught several familiar references from existing books and mythology and fairy tales; I like seeing people riff off stuff. (What inspired your story/poem?) Corvids are known for their attraction to shiny things. It seemed that a magpie would be a good thief. Crows will often help wolves locate carcasses, so the magpie’s partner had to be a wolf.

M. L. D. Curelas lives in Calgary, Canada, with two humans and a varying number of guinea pigs. Raised on a diet of Victorian fiction and Stephen King, it’s unsurprising that she now writes and edits fantasy and science fiction. Her most recent short fiction, an Old West set steampunk story, can be found in the anthology Kisses by Clockwork. She is also the owner of Tyche Books, a Canadian small-press which publishes science fiction and fantasy.

Available Direct from the Publisher:
World Weaver Press

Or Find it Online:
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Reserve your copy now!

Buy It Now

The Importance of Slides by Beth Cato

Interview with Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Interview with Megan Engelhardt

Interview with Mike Allen

Interview with M.L.D. Curelas

I write, I edit and I take a lot of naps.