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Publisher’s Note: Wishing you a Very Merry Pulphouse!
At long last, Christmas is almost here! My daughter is so excited. She’s on break for the next two weeks and I’m taking some time off, so we’ll be spending time together finishing up the shopping, making Christmas cookies, going out to lunch, and all sorts of other things we don’t have time for when she’s in school and I’m working.
So, if you’re like us, and you’re still celebrating everything holiday, our latest new release is just in time for some last-minute holiday reading.
For Pulphouse Fiction Magazine: Issue #21, editor Dean Wesley Smith gathered some of the best Pulphouse writers and their strangest holiday season stories.
Of course, Pulphouse stories are not “normal” in the usual sense of the word. But they are fun. And unexpected. And entertaining. After all, attitude, feel, and high-quality fiction equals Pulphouse.
Just take a look at this table of contents, and you’ll see what I mean:
“Santa’s Shrinkage” by David H. Hendrickson
“A Crafty Christmas” by Annie Reed
“The Ghost of Christmas Beta” by J. Steven York
“Emergency Elf” by Stefon Mears
“A Grave Kind of Love” by Robert J. McCarter
“The Asshole of Christmas Present” by Ezekiel James Boston
“Christmas at Lake Mead” by Lisa Silverthorne
“The Ghost of Christmas Present” by David Stier
“Christmas Weather” by O’Neil De Noux
“Max, Marilyn, Murder, and Me” by Ray Vukcevich
“Scurvy and Forgiveness” by Rob Vagle
“The Friendly Beasts” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
“Christmas at Glosser’s” by Robert Jeschonek
“A Corner of the Mind” by Ron Collins
“Other People’s Stupidity” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Click here to buy this issue of Pulphouse.
Happy reading, and from all of us here at WMG, we wish you a very merry and happy week full of fun and festivities, no matter what you happen to celebrate!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Holiday Happenstance
Isn’t it strange when fiction bleeds into real life? Sometimes, it’s a sense of déjà vu, where you could swear you’ve read or seen something before. Sometimes, it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (also called the Baader-Meinhof effect or frequency illusion) where you learn something new and suddenly start noticing it everywhere. (It’s an interesting phenomenon…you can read more about it here.)
And sometimes, it’s just a strange coincidence.
That happened to me last week when I was rereading one of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s holiday stories so that we could publish it as a standalone. The story, called “Frank’s Corner Bar,” takes place, unsurprisingly given the title, in a bar. That’s not the weird part. The weird thing was just as I was reading about a bottle of Grand Marnier in the story, I got a text from a friend asking me if I had any Grand Marnier. She needed it for a recipe, and since she doesn’t drink or normally use alcohol while cooking, she didn’t even know where the liquor store was.
Adding to the strange coincidence, I had actually been meaning to pick up a bottle of Grand Marnier (not something I normally have on hand) for my own recipe needs and I was about to head out the door to run an errand for my daughter, which would take me right by the liquor store.
So, within 30 minutes, she had a cup of Grand Marnier and we both were marveling at the strange happenstance of it all.
Now, Kris has written several stories set in bars. But she has never mentioned Grand Marnier in the hundreds of titles I’ve published for her (I double-checked).
Until “Frank’s Corner Bar.”
And since the story is available for free this week as Kris’ weekly free fiction offering, you should read it, too, and see if you suddenly find yourself making a run for Grand Marnier.
But even if you don’t, it’s a great read and perfect if you like a little holiday in your crime stories.
You can see for yourself here.
Cheers!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Travel without Traveling this Holiday Season
I don’t travel for the holidays anymore. At least, not if I can help it. Between the brain surgery and the pandemic, I have a really hard time with crowds now.
And traveling at the holidays is a guaranteed way to find crowds.
So, I’ve found ways to travel without traveling. We have family Zooms with my parents and sister back East. We take walks together while we’re on the phone. We Facetime on Christmas morning.
There are so many ways to travel. You just have to get creative.
Like fiction. That’s the original form of creative traveling.
And right now, Dean Wesley Smith offers the perfect solution to travel without traveling with the latest StoryBundle he has curated: the Time Travel Fun Bundle. Here’s what Dean had to say about it:
Time travel fits in any genre and almost every type of story. Everyone seems to have their favorite kind of time travel. I know I sure do, and all the writers in this great bundle do as well.
As a genre distinction, time travel is considered science fiction, but actually it fits in fantasy much better. Diana Gabaldon characters rub a rock and magically travel into the past. Stephen King has his characters go into a closet. All fantasy.
Also, romance writers use time travel as a romantic element in their story, often to bring two characters together. So even though time travel, as a plot device, is considered science fiction, I thought it would be great fun in this Time Travel StoryBundle to show how really diverse time travel stories can actually be.
And it’s everywhere.
Read more about the 10 books in the bundle, which includes The Chase: A Diving Novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Tombstone Canyon: A Thunder Mountain Novel by Dean, and Colliding Worlds, Vol. 3 (featuring 20 stories by Kris and Dean) here. But hurry. Like any trip, this bundle will be over before you know it.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: I can finally say it: Happy Holidays!
Okay. It’s official. The Christmas season has begun!
Our tree is up, our lights are strung, our house is decorated, and the holiday music and movies are streaming!
I love the Christmas holidays, as you might have gathered.
My daughter is very excited, too. And we haven’t even started the advent calendars yet. This year we have three: our annual Jacquie Lawson electronic advent calendar, an Escape Advent Calendar (which I supported via Kickstarter), and one I do myself (little drawers that I fill with different things year after year).
As you can see, we love advent calendars here at WMG. That’s why we came up with the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories. Because there was nothing like an advent calendar for fiction on the market.
Of course, our stories cover all sorts of holidays and span the genres. And you get to open them every day from American Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
That’s why we call it a Calendar of Stories. Advent calendars inspired the idea, but ours is so much more.
And it’s not too late to get in on the fun. You have until Sunday, Dec. 18, to give it as a Christmas or Hanukkah gift and have the recipient get sent all the stories they’ve missed, plus start getting new ones every day, on Monday, Dec. 19. You have until Sunday, Dec. 25, to make it in time for Kwanzaa.
You can still sign up for the calendar after that, too, if you realize you missed someone on your list or just didn’t have time to read until after the holidays.
Just click here to go to the Calendar of Stories page on our website and find out all the details.
Happy Holidays to one and all!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: With Gratitude
I was talking with a friend recently about vision issues, and I was trying to articulate what it’s like to have lived for as long as I can practically remember with extreme nearsightedness. I’ve needed a correction of more than -10 diopters for my entire adult life, and I was at greater than -3 by middle school. For those of you who are mercifully not nearsighted, -3 diopters of nearsightedness puts you at about 20/400 vision (unable to see even the big E on the top of the chart).
I’m currently at a correction of -15 diopters, which puts my vision at about 20/2,000. But that’s not really accurate, either, because who can see 2,000 feet away?
What’s really relevant here is that I haven’t truly seen the world since I was 8. I mostly see it. But not what it really looks like.
Here’s the best way I can describe it: Think about being inside your house and looking at your yard through the window. Maybe you see trees, grass, flowers, birds. You can see the green of the grass, the individual blades. But then, you open the window and look again. Same trees, grass, flowers, birds, but everything is brighter and sharper. You see the variation in the green, the definition of the blades of grass.
My whole life has been looking at things through glass. Either glasses or contact lenses. Without aid, I can only see between .5 and 1.5 inches in front of my face. And what I do see is magnified. So, I have a vague sense of what I’m missing, but not a clear one (yes, I realize the pun I used there).
On the plus side, I’m a master splinter remover. That comes in handy more than you might think.
But it’s strange to never see the world as it truly is. It’s sometimes disorienting and exhausting. However, I’m grateful for the sight I do have. And I’m grateful for the technology that corrects my vision as much as it does and will someday allow me to see clearly again (my ophthalmologist says cataract surgery will be life-changing for me, so I will be grateful to one day get cataracts, too).
I have a friend who is hearing impaired (since birth) and is now also going blind. Yet, she’s one of the sweetest, kindest, most positive people I know. She could absolutely feel angry and frustrated all the time at the cards life has dealt her. And sometimes she does, but she doesn’t let those feelings consume her. She acknowledges them and then thinks about her loving husband, great kids, supportive friends. She’s the living embodiment of why it’s so important to focus not on what you don’t have but instead on what you do.
With American Thanksgiving approaching, now is the perfect time to focus on what we’re grateful for.
One of those things, for me, is always working in a field that I love. Fiction is a great way to escape what troubles us in the real world, and during challenging times, I’m very grateful for that.
And I’m grateful for the readers, like you, who support our fiction.
So, with my gratitude, I’m giving you a free short story this week to celebrate this time of Thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorites.
Click here to download “Pudgygate” for free.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: A Free Trip to the Old West
I promised last month that I’d tell you about another of our free first-in-series ebooks in November, and that time is now!
Dean Wesley Smith’s Thunder Mountain series deftly blends together science fiction and time travel with the old west, and even throws in a little romance, to boot.
Here’s the synopsis for the first book in the series, the eponymous novel Thunder Mountain:
USA Today and New York Times bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith weaves a science fiction tale of love and survival of two modern professors dealing with the past.
Offered a free trip into a remote Idaho wilderness that she loves and studies, Professor Dawn Edwards agrees. On the trip she meets Professor Madison Rogers, and they fall for each other before they even reach their destination.
But living in the Old West proves to be a brutal task.
A science fiction novel of new times in the old west by one of the best and most prolific writers working in fiction today.
Click here to get the ebook for free now.
And while we’re talking about free books, don’t forget that we’ve put the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories on a Buy One Get One Free sale for all of your holiday gifting.
Just click here to go to the Calendar of Stories page on our website and add two calendars for the price of one. Or get four for the price of two. Or…well, you get the idea. There’s no limit to how many BOGO deals you can get, so add as many calendars as you want.
Happy reading to one and all!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: BOGO for the Holidays!
It might still be a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, but I’m already feeling gratitude. Our WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Kickstarter was a great success, with more backers than ever before. Thank you so much to all of our supporters.
If you missed the Kickstarter but just realized that the Calendar of Stories makes great gifts, I understand. Maybe you were in a candy-induced sugar coma. Or maybe you just can’t bear the thought of starting your holiday shopping until after Halloween. Or maybe you were just waiting for a different kind of deal.
Regardless of the reason, we’ve got you covered. Because starting today and running up to Thanksgiving, we’ve put the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories on a Buy One Get One sale for all of your holiday gifting.
Just click here to go to the Calendar of Stories page on our website and add two calendars for the price of one. Or get four for the price of two.
And so on. I’ll let you do the math from there. There’s no limit to how many BOGO deals you can get, so add as many calendars as you want.
You can read all about the calendar on that page, too, including instructions on how to tell us who to send the gifts to.
One gift to rule them all. Holiday shopping managed.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Free Fiction Monday: All Treats, No Tricks
Happy Halloween!
Although the ghosts and bats and skeletons and spiders decorating my house will get packed up tomorrow, the pumpkins will be with us for a while longer. Those hang around until the day after Thanksgiving, when I can finally decorate for Christmas!
Not that I’m not enjoying the fall holidays. I love them. But Christmas is my favorite holiday season of the year.
That’s one of the reasons I love our annual WMG Holiday Spectacular!
We’re in the final days of the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories, which is edited by the amazing Kristine Kathryn Rusch and gives readers 39 stories over 39 days, from American Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
We’ve hit four stretch goals so far, which means anyone supporting the project at the $25 level or higher gets the following bonus treats:
Stories
- “Christopher’s Crummy Christmas” by Kris
- “The Last Christmas Letter” by Kris
- “Sprinkle on a Memory” by Dean Wesley Smith
- “The Taste of Miracles” by Kris
Workshops
- Writing Class Bundle #1: How to Write a Short Story lecture & Short Story Strategies Pop-Up #57
- Writing Class Bundle #2: Think Like a Science Fiction Writer lecture & Writing Science Fiction classic workshop
We’ve got lots more great stretch goal rewards, too, so keep spreading the word. (And a huge thank you to those who already have backed the project!)
We have so many great rewards and gift options available, it’s the best holiday one-stop-shopping ever created for readers and writers.
Click here to learn more. But don’t wait! The Kickstarter ends Thursday.
No tricks here. Only treats.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Gift-Giving Season is in Full Swing
My daughter’s seventh-grade year is in full swing. She just wrapped up her volleyball season. And we’ve just completed the fall parent/teacher conferences (all six of them).
During our conference with her Advanced English Language Arts teacher, we got to read a poem she wrote in class, which was inspired by the jazz poetry of Langston Hughes, whom they studied. The students had to choose five random words from one of his poems and create a whole new piece.
I have to say, I was stunned at her result. I guess I shouldn’t have been, but I was. Her natural gifts never cease to amaze me.
Looks like I’ll have one more writer to work with in the future.
But for now, my attention is focused on the writers of our annual Holiday Spectacular.
Much like my daughter’s school year, the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories, which gives readers 39 days of something to look forward to, is also in full swing.
We funded within an hour, hit our first stretch goal in a day and have since hit more stretch goals and been named a “Project We Love” by Kickstarter.
Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and featuring stories by more than thirty professional writers, the Calendar of Stories makes a great gift all by itself.
But you can get so much more with this Kickstarter!
For readers, we have gift packs of this year’s holiday calendar, bundles of holiday collections, and variety packs of holiday books. Plus, we have all of the past anthologies, calendar compilations, and the upcoming anthologies available for purchase.
For writers, we have two special Kickstarter-exclusive workshops (How to Write a Hardboiled Holiday Story and How to Write a Secrets Holiday Story) as well as discounts on workshop bundles and even lifetime discounts.
The Calendar of Stories comes with every reward, so no matter what you choose, you have 39 days of holiday short stories to look forward to: for yourself or as a gift.
Click here to learn more.
Holiday shopping managed!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: The Calendar of Stories Returns!
This fall feels different. The world is in motion again, with all the distraction and worry that comes with it.
So, with that semblance of normalcy in mind, I’m getting settled into my holiday routines.
I’ve already started my holiday shopping. And you can, too, with this year’s WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Kickstarter, which launches on Tuesday, Oct. 18, and features our annual Calendar of Stories.
With the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2022 Calendar of Stories, you’ve got 39 days of something to look forward to. And that’s just for starters.
Backers of this project at the $25 level will get an original holiday story delivered to their inbox every day from November 24, 2022, through January 1, 2023, plus an ebook compilation of all the stories and introductions, in order, when it’s released in July 2023.
These stories, which range from sweet romance to dark crime, will also be released in anthology form in the fall of 2023 in three books: Candy Cane Kisses, Crooked Little Christmas, and Time Travel Holidays, all edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
Plus, all backers at the $25 level and higher will receive all of the stretch goals we unlock to get extra ebook and pop-up workshops for writers.
Speaking of writers, we’ve got Kickstarter-exclusive workshops, as well.
We also have rewards that help you catch up on your holiday reading if you’ve missed the past years’ projects.
And that’s just a sample of the reward levels, which also include gift options (for easy gift-giving), paperback editions, and so much more.
To read all about the Kickstarter, watch the fun video Kris narrated about this year’s project, and see all of the available rewards and stretch goals, click here.
I wish you a very happy Season’s Reading!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.