Tag Archives: Greg Bechtel

Prairie Starport, Sister Margaret

Prairie Starport

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Prairie Starport: Stories in Celebration of Candas Jane Dorsey

I wanted to to do something to honour Candas Jane Dorsey, because she has done so very much to help me and countless other people. And not just writers or editors or publishers. No. Though she does that as well, Candas doesn’t limit herself to working to benefit people in the publishing industry, she has dedicated her life to helping people. Period.

That deserves recognition.

In fact, it deserves more recognition than I have the power to give, but I wanted to contribute what I could. As did all the authors and artists who contributed to creating Prairie Starport. Though my name is on the cover as the person who put all these things together I could not have done anything without the support and contributions of tonnes of other people — including, of course, my fellow contributors.

This collection contains work by Timothy J. Anderson, Greg Bechtel, Eileen Bell, Gregg Chamberlain, Alexandrea Flynn and Annalise Glinker, Barb Galler-Smith, Anita Jenkins, Laina Kelly, Derryl Murphy, John Park, Rhonda Parrish, Ursula Pflug, Robert Runté, Diane L. Walton, BD Wilson and S.G. Wong.

My contribution is “Sister Margaret” which is a short story about a vampire hunter and a half-incubus swordsman trying to save prostitutes from a vampiric pimp. I wrote it a looong time ago but it still remains one of my favourites.

And because my goal with this anthology is to show appreciation for and celebrate Candas, not to turn a profit, I am giving the electronic version away for free.

 

Download it for free at:
BookFunnel
Kobo
Playster
Apple
More coming soon!

Also available at Amazon

Paperback available at Amazon:
.com
.co.uk

And add it to your shelves at Goodreads

All profits from this collection will be donated to the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society in Candas’ name.

 

(In case you’re curious, yes, I could have used the word contribute in its various forms more if I’d tried. I really could have :-p )

 

One of the stories was accompanied by art. Since the interior only allowed for black and white art, we also included the piece on the back cover so that it could be displayed in colour… albeit with a text overlay.

Tesseracts Twenty-one

Nevertheless Table of Contents

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Greg Bechtel and I co-edited Tesseracts Twenty-one and our theme was optimistic speculative fiction. After working very hard for months to craft a call for submissions, put it out, read submissions, narrow them down, narrow them down further. Greg and I live in the same city so we were able to meet in person to discuss the anthology as a whole and individual stories, and thank Gawd for that. I don’t know how we’d have come up with the Table of Contents otherwise. There’d have been an anthology worth of emails involved I’m sure LOL

Once we had the Table of Contents all finalized Greg and I had one more in-person meeting to figure out the title.

It took several hours, and then several emails back and forth afterward, but then the perfect title just stood out. The obvious title. The one that had been staring us in the face the whole time only, for some reason, we’d been too blind to see it.

And we named the anthology:

Recently, in an email explaining this title I said something like this (edited for clarity but still using blockquote because it’s pretty),

“…one of the best reasons for doing an anthology of optimistic future this year was because of the current political situation, and other relevant social and political movements ongoing in the world. It’s been a really tough year (no matter which side of the political or social spectrum you land on), but ‘Nevertheless’ we try to remain optimistic despite the darkness. Nevertheless, we don’t give up. Nevertheless, yes, we persist.

The stories in this anthology of optimistic SF are some of the darkest optimistic stories you’ll ever read but, nevertheless, they are optimistic. And they are awesome.”

I stand by that. And these are those stories:

1. “Inside the Spiral” by Dorianne Emmerton
2. “Pin and Spanner” by Pat Flewwelling
3. “Red” by Alison McBain
4. “Tera & Flux” by Leslie Van Zwol
5. “A Breath for My Daughter” by Jason M. Harley
6. “Steve McQueen and the Hope Particle” by Gavin Bradley
7. “On Reading to the End” by Buzz Lanthier-Rogers
8. “Missed Connections, Mactaquac” by James Bambury
9. “Pirates Don’t Make Amends” by S. L. Saboviec
10. “A Walk in the Woods” by R.W. Hodgson
11. “Hill” by Ryan Creighton
12. “Anhedonia” by Meghan Bell
13. “A Room of His Own” by Ursula Pflug
14. “It’s in the Eyes” by Jerri Jerreat
15. “Across the Seas of Sand” by Jason Lane
16. “Lt. Anderwicz Goes Applepicking” by Natalia Yanchak
17. “With Two Left Feet” by Lisa Timpf
18. “A Threadbare Carpet” by Kate Heartfield
19. “Green Leaves Don’t Fall” by Stephen Geigen-Miller
20. “Proteus in the City” by Fiona Moore
21. “The Garden” by Darrel Duckworth
22. “One Way Ticket” by Michael Milne
23. “The Rosedale House” by Michael Reid

I’m proud of this anthology and look forward to sharing more of it with you this spring 🙂

 

Post edited on 6/4/2018 to reflect the fact that, due to circumstances beyond my control the Table of Contents has changed slightly.

Call For Submissions, Editing, Tesseracts Twenty-one

Tesseracts Twenty-one Opens to Submissions

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EdgeEDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
www.edgewebsite.com

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – (Embargo to February 15, 2017) 

Tesseracts Twenty-one opens to submissions!

The submission period for Tesseracts Twenty-one officially opens, February 15, 2017. Submissions will be accepted until Midnight April 30, 2017.

Edited by Rhonda Parrish and Greg Bechtel, the anthology focuses on optimistic speculative fiction and will be released by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing in the spring of 2018.

The theme of the anthology is ‘optimism’ – which doesn’t necessarily exclude dark or scary settings – but requires some sort of optimistic twist or element. Whether that takes the form of a solar-punk tale set in a sustainable world with a post-scarcity economy, a POV character existing as an advocate of optimism or something else entirely, the editors want to see it.

“We’re not looking for saccharine sweetness, but rather stories which offer a little brightness and hope in one way or another,” says Rhonda Parrish, co-editor.

“While we’re certainly interested in submissions where a Canadian setting (a specific city, region, or province) plays a role, we’re also open to stories set anywhere in the world, the universe, or the multiverse,” says Greg Bechtel, co-editor.

Stories must be previously unpublished, in English, between 500-5000 words.

Submissions are only open to Canadian writers (citizens, residents, expats, etc.). The editors will accept stories previously published in a language other than English, but they must first be translated into English before submission.

Submissions should be e-mailed to: tesseracts21@edgewebsite.com. The e-mail must contain the word “submission” in the subject line. Submissions must be sent as an attachment: in .DOCX, DOC. or .RTF format.

For more information please read the submission guidelines:

http://edgewebsite.com/books/tess21/t21-catalog.html

 

About the Tesseracts Series

The Tesseracts anthology series is Canada’s longest running anthology. It was first edited by the late Judith Merril in 1985, and has published more than 563 original Canadian speculative fiction (Science fiction, fantasy and horror) stories and poems by 335 Canadian authors, editors, translators and special guests.

Some of Canada’s best known writers have been published within the pages of these volumes – including Margaret Atwood, William Gibson, and Spider Robinson.

Tesseracts Twenty-one will be released in Spring, 2018 in paperback and eBook editions.

 

About the editors

Rhonda Parrish is driven by a desire to do All The Things. She was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Niteblade Magazine, is an Assistant Editor at World Weaver Press and is the editor of several anthologies including, most recently, Sirens and C is for Chimera.

In addition, Rhonda is a writer whose work has been published in Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast, Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 & 2015) and Mythic Delirium.

 

Greg Bechtel’s occasionally prize-winning writing has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Avenue Edmonton, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, the Tesseracts anthologies, and Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. His first story collection, Boundary Problems, won the Alberta Book of the Year Award for trade fiction and was a finalist for the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, the ReLit Award, and the City of Edmonton Robert Kroetsch Book Prize. Currently, Greg is serving as 2016-2017 Writer in Residence for the Canadian Authors’ Association (Alberta branch), and he also teaches writing and literature at the University of Alberta, where he completed his PhD on Canadian syncretic fantasy.

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For further information please contact:
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
www.edgewebsite.com
events@hadespublications.com
403.254.0160