The Angels of Our Better Beasts, a collection of short stories. 15 selections, 13 stories, two poems. Published by ChiZine Publications, Nov 2016.
The Beasts have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. But you’re going to have to trust them.
The Lemmings are really researching the Arctic biologists, the werewolves sing sweet Christian praise songs, and the signing gorilla just wants someone back in the cage for a minute or two. The Gryphon can fight your war for you, and there isn’t really a problem when the man you’ve been online dating turns out to be a bear, is there? No worries. Those old lions in the canyon aren’t up to something, are they? The vampires just want to cure you of a terrible blood disease. Trust them. In the forest, the sasquatch has fallen in love with the cryptozoologist who follows him, while the god of the Brazos River courts the young, pretty Texas college students.
These 15 stories of beasts, and the beasts we sometimes become, ask us how much influence we have over each other—
to bring out our beast or best sides—
and how much control the beasts already have over us.
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Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Literature with introduction by Margaret Atwood. Published by ChiZine Publications, July 2016.
THIS IMAGINARIUM HAS SOME RULES
Don’t take your film crew into the ancient ruins. Don’t be an exorcist for your old girlfriend’s baby. Don’t underestimate the mermaid at Seaworld and don’t split up the twins. You may, however, rebuild your lover out of snow, take a celestial ride out of your stinkin’ hometown, keep time on your drums to ward off the creatures lurking on the beach, follow the bees where they lead you. Flirt with Death, make love to the Devil, speed between the suns, sell the moon.
Or break the rules.
IT’S ALL IN YOUR HANDS NOW.
Imaginarium gathers the succulent, terrifying and breathtaking Canadian voices in speculative writing and serves them to you to eat at your leisure.
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A mechanical Jesus for your shrine, the myths of cuttlefish, a vampire in residential schools, a Muslim woman who wants to get closer, surgically, to her god, the demons of outer space, the downside of Nirvana. The 24 science fiction and fantasy stories and poems included in Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods take their faith and religion into the future, into the weird and comic and thought-provoking spaces where science fiction and fantasy has really always gone, struggling with higher powers, gods, the limits of technology, the limits of spiritual experience.
At times profound, these speculative offerings give readers a chance to see faith from the believer and the skeptic in worlds where what you believe is a matter of life, death, and afterlife.
WRESTLING WITH GODS: TESSERACTS 18. Published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. March 2016.
Bear Witness 