Well, I was home for a week and now I’m traveling again. I’m making up for the lost travel time due to brain surgery, then the pandemic and the lost pet year.

This time, I’m in Savannah, Georgia, visiting my father and stepmother with my daughter, Nola. We haven’t seen my dad since he flew out for my aforementioned brain surgery in March of 2019.

I’m lucky. I can work from anywhere. Have laptop, will travel, so to speak. The freedom to do that would have seemed like science fiction when I was growing up. Heck, even when I was in grad school.

It’s weird because it has felt the past few years like we’ve been living in an alternate reality. But it also feels in some ways like we’re reliving history, too.

I grew up in the Cold War, where the threat of nuclear holocaust felt very real. The regular air raid drills I experienced in grade school guaranteed that. As did Chernobyl.

And here we are again, with my daughter asking about Russia and their nuclear arsenal and the threats to the nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

My parents couldn’t keep reality from me then and there’s no way for me to keep it from Nola in today’s interconnected world—one which would seem like sci-fi to my past self.

And there’s the paradox. Same old problems, modern high-tech world.  

Of course we need an escape!

And I’ve got two options for you there: one to the past and one to the future. I’ve talked about both of them recently (there’s that history repeating itself again) but they end soon, so here’s a reminder.

The Past Crimes Bundle, curated by Dean Wesley Smith, features three WMG books: Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, edited by Kris; Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel by Kris Nelscott; and Heads Up: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery by Dean.

You can read Dean’s full blog about the bundle and all the other pertinent details here. And if you want to just go straight to the bundle page itself, click here.

But hurry. This bundle ends this Thursday, Aug. 18.

If you prefer to travel to the future instead, there’s the Stars of Sci-Fi Summer book bundle, and WMG has three titles in this jam-packed offering: The Diving Series Box Set: Books 1-3 by Hugo-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch; The High Edge: A Seeders Universe Novel by USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith; and Fiction River: Moonscapes, edited by Dean.

It also features titles by Brandon Sanderson and Alan Dean Foster, as well as writers who have graced the pages of WMG projects, including Kevin J. Anderson, Frank Herbert, Robert Jeschonek, Tao Wong, and Leah Cutter.

There are 35 total titles in this bundle ($308 total value), and you can get them all for $18.

Click here to learn more!

Both bundles donate a portion of the proceeds to charity, as well, so you can rest assured you’re helping make the world a better place, right now.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.