ECOTONES: the art!

The last six or so months of my life have been largely entangled with what’s certainly going to be my major project for 2015: SFFWorld.com‘s fourth annual anthology, ECOTONES, of which I am proud to be both editor and one of the fourteen story contributors.

However, in the interests of keeping our costs as low as possible, I’m also handling numerous other minor tasks… like creating the cover art. And here it is:

I’m really happy with how it came out, especially given the prehistoric nature of my computer, and the scratched and dusty copy of Photoshop I just about manage to get working on it. Including covers I’ve designed for other writers I’m into double-figures now, and I’m getting better with each one — certainly I’m learning new things all the time.

I’m less than a week away from launching my first ever Kickstarter campaign too, also on behalf of this project. It’s a surprisingly easy system to use, but the devil is in the details, of course — most devilish of all being the high recommended inclusion of a promotional video. So, as you might guess, I’ve been working on making one of those as well.

As of yesterday, that video is finished and the campaign has been given the green light by Kickstarter’s evaluation team. All that’s left for me to do is press the big green button marked…

 GO

…next Tuesday!

Wars to End All Wars

Published!

 

Wars to End All Wars – Alternate Tales from the Trenches is a collection of seven short stories inspired by the “Great” War, though not necessarily following exactly where it led. In addition to a piece from the award-winning Elizabeth Moon, it contains original stories by Dan Bieger, Wilson Geiger, G. L. Lathian, Igor Ljubuncic, Lee Swift, and, bringing things to a close, myself. My story, The Foundation, is a supernatural examination of why we should never forget the tragedies of the past–but also argues that how we remember them is important too.

As with the previous two anthologies put together by SFFWorld.com’s N. E. White, the first year’s proceeds from Wars to End All Wars will be donated to charity: this time to Doctors Without Borders, so every copy represents not just some interesting fiction for you but a little bit of valuable aid to a very worthy cause. Plus, it’s only 99 cents!

I hope you’ll give it a try, and let me know what you think.

AmazonUS | AmazonUK | AmazonES | Kobo

Barnes & Noble  |  Smashwords  |  Goodreads

Incoming!

I have a little news: in 2013 I had a short story included in an anthology – called Lucky or Unlucky? Thirteen Stories of Fate – and very proud of it I was too. Well, in 2014 I’m going to be in a follow up anthology marking the centenary of World War One, and it could be available before the month is out.

This is an Alternate History collection, so instead of the War to End All Wars, we have…

There are seven stories in the collection, all written by members of the SFFWorld.com forum. Wilson Geiger and I were both in the last volume, and are joined this time by Igor Ljubuncic, Lee Swift, Dan Beiger, and the double-headed entity G. L. Lathian. Our headliner is Elizabeth Moon, a fine science fiction author and winner of the 2003 Nebula award for The Speed of Dark, a novel about the future of autism that I happen to really like.

As with the previous anthology, some of the proceeds from Wars to End All Wars will be going to charity – this time, we’re supporting Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders), which also happens to be my personal charity of preference, so all things considered I’m delighted to be involved. I hope you’ll buy a copy, links to follow when we’re published…