I’ll never forget my first adult fantasy novel. Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. I was more of a Little Women and Jane Eyre reader up to that point, and The Eyes of the Dragon was a totally different kind of fiction for me (and for King, at the time, but that’s another story you should look up).
I was a freshman in high school when the book came out in mass market paperback. I didn’t connect at the time (or for years afterward) that it was by Stephen King. It’s a good thing, too, because if I’d known it was written by that Stephen King, I wouldn’t have read it. His horror was (and still is) too much for me.
But that first foray into fantasy fiction paved the way for my enjoyment of so many other fantasy works.
Including the many incredible short stories of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.
And now we’re collecting their fantasy stories together into special volumes for this year’s Make 100 Kickstarter, just like we did with Crimes Collide last year for the mystery stories and Colliding Worlds the year before for their science fiction.
Kris and Dean have been writing professional fantasy short stories for four decades that have won awards and sold millions of copies, plus they have been acclaimed and enjoyed by fans over the entire world.
Now, for the first time, Kris and Dean are collecting 100 of their fantasy short stories together into a five-volume set called Fantasies Collide. Fifty stories from each author in the series; ten stories from each author in every volume.
In addition to such fantastic rewards as the five Fantasies Collide volumes in ebook, trade paperback and signed/limited hardcover, we have some amazing rewards for writers, and a special workshop series for writers is included in the stretch goals.
Check out the Kickstarter here, and be sure to watch Kris and Dean’s fun video about the project.
What a fantastic way to kick off the new year!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Well, it’s officially 2023! Back in 2020, we weren’t sure we’d get here, but here we are. It seems like we’ve found our new normal. It’s weird, but, well, I’m trying to look, as Monty Python says, “on the bright side of life.”
As such, I’m looking ahead to the coming year with lots of exciting changes afoot.
But first, a little insider background on the publishing industry.
For those of you who don’t follow all the ins and outs of publishing, our industry is, to simply things, divided into two factions: traditional publishers and indie publishers. Trad features the Big Five (who almost became the Big Four last year until the DOJ stepped in). The Big Five have long acted as gatekeepers: the theory being that only the best books get published.
We all know that’s crap, but bear with me.
The whole book industry is built around that assumption. Bookstores, online retailers, libraries, the list goes on. More gatekeeping.
But the indie revolution changed the landscape. As indie authors and publishers gained ground, new voices emerged that proved the gatekeeping was really, as gatekeeping is wont to be, oppressive.
Indie publishers are constantly fighting to find ways to allow more voices to be heard. WMG has long been on the front lines of that fight.
But the gatekeeping infrastructure is pervasive. It’s not enough to publish independent voices; we must also be able to allow those to be heard by getting the books to readers. Selling through retailers means going through gatekeepers. As we’ve already established, gatekeepers hinder. Those gatekeepers keep changing the rules.
So, how do you circumvent the gatekeepers? You cut out the middleman. What this leaves us with is direct sales.
WMG has already been investing in various direct sales delivery methods. Our Kickstarters are direct sales. So are our subscriptions (such as the weekly Every Day’s a Holiday at WMG newsletter). And we’ve long offered ebooks for sale directly on the WMG website.
But this year, that last is getting a big upgrade. We’re moving to a Shopify store to enhance and streamline our direct sales to make it more convenient and easier to navigate for our readers. (That store officially launches tomorrow but you can click here to get notified as soon as it’s live!)
We hope you’ll consider this new store as your go-to place to buy our ebooks. Because when you buy the books from WMG directly, you’re directly supporting the authors who write and edit them—that would be the two writers who own this company: Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.
Those are the same two writers who give back so much to other writers through all the workshops they teach.
Speaking of workshops, another new thing we’ve done for this year is enhance the wmgworkshops.com website to make navigating our enormous catalog much easier. Want to know what workshops allow you to study directly with the master (aka Dean)? We’ve got a tab for that. Looking to enhance your craft or change your attitudes about writing? We’ve got tabs for that too. And every workshop listing now has a link directly to that workshop on Teachable.
Check it out here.
And we’re just getting started. So many exciting things ahead.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
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
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.
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.
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.
