As we wrap up the series of blog posts which began here, in order to say goodbye to the Magical Menageries series as they begin to make their way toward being out of print continues with us revising several of them at once — because some authors were in more than one of them 🙂
If you haven’t got your copy of it already now is absolutely the time because soon it will be impossible the best way is to buy it direct from my publisher — World Weaver Press. They have the ebooks discounted and are offering free shipping on the paperbacks they have in stock.
And then here are some excerpts and ‘Ten Year Updates’ from some of the contributors of Sirens. Give it a read, it’s fun to see what people have been up to since their stories were included in this anthology.
Excerpt from “Antlers” by Amanda Block (from the Fae anthology):
(Death)
The garden is a crypt. Vines grasp at the walls, pulling themselves upwards, right towards the throats of the tallest trees, which bow forward to meet one another, branches clasping branches.
Inside, there is no breeze, and the air is thick with the musk of pollen and damp, dark earth. The birds that remain stand still in the shrubs, their songs low and mournful.
At the centre, lies the Lady. Under the netting of shadows, her skin seems to shine and shift, like moonlight upon water. The only colour is at her breast, opening up like a red flower thrust forward through time, blossoming around the arrow that has pierced her heart.
What has changed for you since these anthologies came out?
In 2021, my debut novel, The Lost Storyteller, was published by Hodder and Stoughton (Hachette). It’s about a young woman who, after finding a book of fairy tales written by her long absent father, decides to investigate his whereabouts, soon discovering his magical, melancholic stories contain more truth than make-believe…
The book did pretty well, despite the pandemic, and upon its paperback release was named Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month (Waterstones being our biggest bookshop here in the UK).
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lost-storyteller/amanda-block/9781529360806
(I believe it’s also available to buy in North America!)
Since then, I’ve been working away on Book 2, which is yet to be announced but will be published this June – eek! So, watch this space… 🙂
Excerpt from “Eli the Hideous Horse Boy” by Michael Leonberger (Equus anthology):
Boys stared. Even those adequate at conversation, polite enough to maintain eye contact and crack a joke until Taryn walked away. But if she looked back at the right moment, she’d catch them looking.
With Derrel, it was worse. There was a meanness there, a possessiveness, and he didn’t ever talk to her in real life. Just looked. Tried to touch her. Spoke about her loudly and showered her with vulgarities if he was drunk. How good she looked, how much he wanted her, always with the smug air of someone waiting. She’d catch him waiting in places she didn’t expect, outside of her house at night, or in the library when she was working, with that piercing, childish meanness in his small eyes, and she did her best to avoid him.
He’d taken to sitting at the diner for hours, just so he could pinch her.
She’d told him off but he figured she was joking. Most people did, actually. He was attractive. Athletic. Going nowhere, but in this town that didn’t count against you, so people didn’t understand maybe why she wouldn’t just take what was given to her.
Well, she wouldn’t. Not from him or anyone else. She had her own designs on life, and he wasn’t anywhere near being a part of her plan.
The only thing they had in common would have repulsed him, and she let it warm her heart on cold nights when she’d look out her window and catch his brake lights peeling away, down the road, curving with drunk imprecision.
She’d wonder how long he’d been outside her home, drinking in his car, thinking about her, and to prevent herself from screaming she’d think about her secret.
The sideshow girl.
What has changed for you since these anthologies came out?
I am a special education teacher, and I have mostly devoted the last several years to that (I also self-published a kids book called “The Weirdness at Winston Middle” during the pandemic, and had an article published in The Washington Post about the pandemic and anxiety disorders). I got married on Halloween to the girl I took to prom some thousand years ago (who is also a special education teacher), and we have a rescued bearded dragon who is remarkably lethargic.
Excerpt from “A Fist Full of Straw” by Kristina Souders (formerly Kristina Wojtaszek) (Scarecrow anthology) :
Sometimes I forget that my face can change and my feet can move, and I get slugged by an exhausted coworker for standing around with a sewn-on grin. I can never keep track of shifts in time and spells undone, and often confuse the night shift with my day job as a scarecrow. Nights I stock spices and turn apples on store shelves for flighty shoppers while by day I stare out over a bedraggled garden and nod at fickle birds. The problem is the jobs are too much alike. Except when she comes in. Because there is nothing in the world like her.
The apples blush beneath his calloused fingers as he stoops over them, his broad shoulders like folded wings under the fluorescent dawn. I can’t help but watch him sometimes, standing there turning swells of red and gold and green in the hollows of the display hiding bruises or scars, so customers only see perfection. I wonder if he feels as I do, that one day has stretched on into a year, the lack of sleep grinding me down to a rough, woody ache. I have stepped too near. He lifts his head and neither of us can help our smiles. I want to ask him. Do you? Ache? Of course I don’t dare, but ask instead, “Don’t you ever get a day off?”
She appears suddenly, like the moon from behind a cloud, and my grin stretches at the seams. I could stand this way forever, just taking her in, but being more human than I, she feels the need to speak.
She comes in late while her children are asleep so she can shop without the toddler yanking on her hair and the older boy knocking tomatoes onto the floor. I know this because I used to work days, until the witch decided I was more useful to her during sunlight hours. Since the old woman provides most of the store’s organic produce, she had no problem convincing the manager to switch my shift.
I can’t seem to stop smiling as I stare at the spill of her hair, the very color of sun-warmed earth. I shrug, “I like to work. Keeps me busy.” And I ask if there’s anything I can help her find. “Actually,” she says, holding up her tattered little grocery list. I’m beside her in an instant, so close I can smell her faux leather jacket and the Pantene Pro-V radiating from her hair.
He stands so close I can feel the heat from his skin. He’s nervous, my grocery list trembling in his hand…
What has changed for you since these anthologies came out?
Shortly after the publications of Scarecrow and Fae, I finished my sequel to Opal in my Fae of Fire and Stone series published through World Weaver Press. Char involves a story of isolation and hard-won healing after trauma, which ironically speaks to what I experienced after the writing of that book. I went dark as a writer- and dark on social media, just as the Char Witch did in her world. It was not purposeful, but it was necessary. I have since divorced, moved, remarried a wonderfully supportive man, lost family, gained family, and balked as my little boys grew into sweet-hearted young men. I have not stopped writing, but as yet, have kept my musings to myself. Some seeds take decades and firestorms to crack open and take root. Should my words reach the light again, it will be as a new species, written under a new name.
As I say, it simultaneously feels like a long time and an incredibly short one since these books came out, but I really enjoyed this look at what some of the contributors have been doing in that time — I hope you did too!
At the risk of repeating myself (I am totally repeating myself LOL) if you haven’t got your copy of it already now is absolutely the time because soon it will be impossible the best way is to buy it direct from my publisher — World Weaver Press. They have the ebooks discounted and are offering free shipping on the paperbacks they have in stock.
