Amazon's ebook lending scheme unsettles the usual suspects

Amazon has a new feature for Kindle books where someone who has bought one may lend it to someone else for a limited period of time. I'll skip all the really boring details that would only interest a publisher--if even. I'm a small publisher, and even I find the numbers and terms and little nuts and bolts of it really fucking boring. But for Kindle users, it seems pretty damn cool. But for some small e-publishers, it's the end of the goddamned world because people will illegally steal all their books, because Amazon is a hegemonic Great Satan, they will opt out and even pull all their titles from Amazon, et cetera (at least today, and really just in the way that everything Amazon ever does is the end of the world for a day or two until everyone either forgets about it entirely or takes a pill).

I'm a lurker member of a forum for digital publishers. I keep up on what they discuss by way of emails from a Google Group. I have only commented to the group twice in about a year and a half because I generally don't know much about what they are talking about since I am not as big an ebook publisher as most of the other members and I don't feel as smart as most of them on most topics that they discuss. The first time I spoke up in the group was to suggest to some members that they call off the hysterical lynch-mob mentality over that douche in Colorado with the stupid pedophile book on Amazon (that no one would ever have heard of were it not for internet echo chambers). The second time I commented was just a little while ago this evening. This is what I said in response to a thread of comments that seemed overwhelmingly of the "AMAZON IS THE DEVILLL" and "PEOPLE ARE STEALING OUR STUFF" bent:

What about the possibility that lending could attract new readers that you don't have now to buy new titles? That's exactly how it works with print books. Nearly every author that I have gotten excited about and bought books from is one that I learned about because someone lent me a copy of a print book that that they liked or I read something cool that I got from the library and then ended up buying my own copy or buying other titles by the same writer. Or bought a used copy of something and then later bought new stuff from the same author. This is especially true of some of the more obscure and unknown stuff.

Things are always changing with e-publishing and none of it's perfect yet, but I think that any publisher who believes that they can expand their business by NOT dealing with Amazon is living in a total fantasy world. Amazon's not going away and they are not going to give up on all their plans because a few minor pubs are worried about file-sharing. And opting for a lower percentage to avoid the lending scheme is going to do nothing but reduce your royalties and probably ultimately limit your readership. We'll see how this plays out over time, but I will be shocked if anyone loses a dime because of this. Because the people "borrowing" your reader's copy weren't ever going to buy it from you anyway--you didn't even have that customer to begin with and probably were never going to get them. But now you might because someone new, some friend of friend, might say, "Wow, this is cool! Where do I get more?" Almost everything on my shelves of print books got there in exactly this way, and it can work like that with ebooks, too.

So, what does anyone think about this? Did I make any sense, or am I totally smoking something? It just seems like common sense to me that if you have an interesting book and author to offer, then the more people who know about it will ipso facto result in better sales. My little press makes no money, but it brought in a lot (relatively speaking) more in Year Two than it did in Year One. Year Two was a year in which I straight up gave away lots and lots of content just to get it in front of some new people. I'd really like to sell a lot more copies of M-Brane SF Quarterly #1 (a print book, not a Kindle book). While it has not been made available as an ebook, I do have a PDF of it that I could release if I wanted to. I bet that if I gave away a hundred copies of that for free and encouraged those hundred recipients to share it with at least one other person, I would sell at least ten copies of the print book to people who had never heard of M-Brane before. And I'd have at least two hundred people who would have thought about us recently and might buy something from us later. And what I would lose? Nothing. In fact, I'd gain about thirty bucks in royalties from selling ten print copies and I'd get new readers that I didn't have before. Who might buy stuff later. Because of how frakkin' cool our stuff is. I'm considering it. 

Issue 23...still late!

OK, I probably owe the one or two people who may have given a damn about it an explanation for the ridiculous tardiness of issue #23, the December issue. Knowing that there was no way I was going to make the normal first week of the month, I announced a date of 12/15. Which I have now missed by two weeks. I could offer excuses, even reasonable ones. But what it boils down to is that I just got so busy with too much other late-year stuff that carried deadlines of Greater Consequence and Dire Urgency.

So here's the current status and the new plan: Stories have been selected for M-Brane #23. But their authors have not been informed of this yet. I will get to that by Friday. Writers generally reply with their delighted acceptance of our publication terms immediately. Indeed, we have published as soon as next day after all writers answered affirmative. We're a machine like that. So a Saturday, January 1 release is not impossible. Yes, I said it: the December 2010 issue may actually release in January 2011. This is quite embarrassing, but there it is. What this means, however, is that January will see the release of two issues (because #24 is coming hell or high water on 1/20, our second anniversary). I'd considered a single double issue, but the numbers bother me. I want 24 to be truly the 24th monthly volume of M-Brane SF, therefore there must be a 23 before it. So what's probably going to happen is that writers will be notified of acceptances for 23 and 24 shortly and the two issues will go into production more or less simultaneously with 23 releasing in a few days, followed by 24 on 1/20. The contents of these two issues plus November's issue 22 will also comprise the printed book M-Brane SF Quarterly #2. As with the first Quarterly, this will contain some bonus material not seen in the electronic editions. The second Quarterly will release sometime in February. And then we'll be rolling into our third year back on schedule and in high style.

Book plug: New Apex imprint releases queer zombie novella

Apex Publications offers Asylum by Mark Allan Gunnells as part of its new zombie imprint. I haven't read the book and don't know the author, so I can comment on neither directly, but I do know Apex Publications and publisher Jason Sizemore and have a lot of respect for him and his publications. Also, I am delighted any time that I see gay content in the zombie subgenre, which is sometimes rather conservative despite its outré premise (odd also considering that the whole thing derives from a film franchise created by Romero, a lefty). So, sight unseen, I will point people who are into zombie fic toward this novella. That Jason published it is sufficient recommendation as far as I am concerned.

The blurb:

"Curtis, a young college student is dragged to his first gay club by

his best friend Jimmy for a night of dancing, drinking and sex...at

least until the dead start to rise and attack the club. Trapped inside

the Asylum are a small band of survivors, including a drag queen, a

male stripper, a Vietnam vet bartender, a pretentious gay couple, and

an unstable DJ.

Will this motley crew survive the hungry undead rattling the sealed-

off doors? Will they survive each other? Will they survive their own

personal demons? Asylum recalls George Romero's classic Night of the

Living Dead--except with more gore and a more current social message.

FU #1 RELEASED

[This is much the same post as the announcement on the M-Brane Press site, but I added a personal note and a taunting pic at the end] 

The inaugural issue of our beautiful new fantasy quarterly Fantastique Unfettered is officially released in print today. Edited by Brandon H. Bell (Aether Age co-creator and M-Brane contributor), FU is a "Periodical of Liberated Literature," all of its content released under a Creative Commons license. As such, we think it is probably unique, and we know of nothing else quite like it. As a physical object, FU #1 is a delight to hold in one's hands. It's lovingly designed and full of terrific artwork to compliment the really amazing writing (11 items fiction and three poems). 

We're using a new printer and distribution system for this first edition of FU, and its availability will probably trickle through the system gradually over the next few days, but it is available right now on the Barnes & Noble site with a sweet discount. Our cover price is $9.95, but it can be had on B&N for $7.01. We can't even sell it that cheaply directly, so we are encouraging everyone to get over there and grab it up. We do not have ebook versions available yet, but will have news of that forthcoming reasonably soon.

Please visit the FU site for more information on the magazine, its content and philosophy.
----

On a personal note, I need to say that I am so proud to be the publisher of this new periodical and so delighted with editor Brandon's fine, fine work in putting it together (not just selecting its content but designing its entire package as well). I am also delighted to be sitting here  holding the first printed copy of it. The jealousy that readers of this post must be feeling now can be alleviated with a quick visit to the B&N site!

Personal writing update: New story out now

Just popping in to plug this book, Zombiality: A Queer Bent on the Undead, from Library of the Living Dead Press. Edited by Bill Tucker, it is an anthology of zombie short fiction focused on LGBT characters, and it contains my new story "The Cairn." I just received my contributor copy of it yesterday and haven't had a chance to read many of the other stories yet, but I have enjoyed what I have read so far and I am delighted to have been included in such a book. Some readers may recall that this book was the subject of some foofaraw on the intertubes earlier this year because it was cancelled by the publisher after some controversy about its subject matter and some people's reaction to such. At the time, I offered some of my own commentary on the matter here and there. Because the book ultimately did get rescheduled and did get published, all that stuff can probably be left in the past, and since I am in the book, I should probably recuse myself from speaking of it anyway. But I will say that there were two very different versions of why the project was originally controversial.

But now that it's done and published, I give major kudos to its editor (who is a very cool guy) for coming up with the premise, and its publisher for taking a chance with such an anthology concept. Long live the Library of the Living Dead!

[Pick up a copy on Amazon and throw in Aether Age and 2020 Visions--free Super Saver Shipping!]

M-Brane #23 due around the 15th; Some slush-pile thoughts

The new issue will be out around the 15th. I'm still reading for it, and remain rather behind on things. I'm still in the final push toward completion of far too many projects, but the end is near. I've decided it's good enough if I get it out sometime this month and not worry over much about the exact date. As I continue reading for it, I may make a number of short posts on some problems that I am seeing in the slush pile and some thoughts about what I'd like to see more of in this zine. I was reading a few stories out of a collection of stuff published by Amazing Stories back in the late 1920s and 1930s, and I was reminded of a huge problem that blights perhaps as much as a third of all submissions to M-Brane SF. I call it "Professors Talking About Shit." Here, read the following passage:


'It is remarkable.' said Dr. Manners, 'how the scope of our pharmacopoeia has been widened by interplanetary exploration. In the past thirty years, hundreds of hitherto unknown substances, employable as drugs or medical agents, have been found in the other worlds of our own system. It will be interesting to see what the Allan Farquar expedition will bring back from the planets of Alpha Centauri when -- or if — it succeeds in reaching then and returning to earth. I doubt, though, if anything more valuable than selenine will be discovered. Selenine, derived from a fossil lichen found by the first rocket-expedition to the moon in 1975, has, as you know, practically wiped out the old-time curse of cancer. In solution, it forms the base of an infallible serum, equally useful for cure or prevention.'


'I fear I haven't kept up on a lot of the new discoveries,' said Rupert Balcoth the sculptor, Manners' guest, a little apologetically. 'Of course, everyone has heard of selenine. And I've seen frequent mention, recently, of a mineral water from Ganymede whose effects are like those of the mythical Fountain of Youth.'

That is not from the M-Brane slush, but rather the opening paragraphs of a story called "The Plutonian Drug" by none other than Clark Ashton Smith (shown here in the pic at age eighteen or nineteen, rather   attractive if melancholy-looking as a young man) published by Amazing in 1934. In its day, this may have evoked some "sense of wonder" and been really interesting to readers of the earliest sf, but it's well nigh unreadable now and such an opening passage certainly would get a story bounced at M-Brane. Indeed, a lot of stories do open like this and get bounced. And the passage above is actually a lot better than much of what I usually get in the slush, probably because Smith was a talented writer even when he was writing such tedious material as "The Plutonian Drug." But it doesn't let up after those first two paragraphs. It goes on for at least fifteen hundred words in this fashion. Eventually, the story itself starts, which is about Dr. Manners's guest sampling some of the drug from Pluto and having a trippy experience where he sees his own (very short) future. That part's actually pretty decent, but one must first slog through pages of these dudes blathering to each other about stuff that they both know already (selenine, "as you know," practically wiped out cancer). I see story after story after story where various kinds of scientists, doctors, and academics sit for the first few pages and discuss at length whatever the sciencey business of the story is. Instead, I'd rather open with an event happening to the characters that is perhaps based in whatever they are talking about, but bypassing altogether the long discussion of it. Also, characters in very narrow and elite professions, like "nuclear physicist" or "professor emeritus of biology," are especially hard to relate to or care about unless some kind of human action is happening to them right away. They need to be more than their job title.

2020 VISIONS released!

The fabulous anthology of near-future sf, edited by Rick Novy, has finally, after a few little production snags, become available to the reading public. It's available as a trade paperback for $13.95 on here on Amazon. Those of you who pre-ordered copies can expect them to ship to you within a few days. Readers who did not pre-order should grab it on Amazon right away and take advantage of "Free Super-Saver Shipping!" on orders of $25.00 or more by also buying this week's other major release, The Aether Age (if I may make a suggestion).

I'm very proud of 2020 Visions and the fine work that editor Rick and all the great authors did for it. It's a very good anthology, and I think people will be duly impressed. Same goes for the amazing Aether Age, so just go ahead and get them both while you're at Amazon!

AETHER AGE goes on sale today!

After a year and a half of anticipation, from the summer of 2009 when we dreamed up the Aether Age universe in online discussions, the book is finally done and available for purchase. We'd love to see some excellent sales of it today--which happens to also be the fifth anniversary of our publisher, Hadley Rille Books. So go to Amazon to buy your copy of The Aether Age, and consider also picking up another of Hadley Rille's many fine titles (just search "Hadley Rille Books" on Amazon, and you'll find a lot of cool books). And consider, also, picking up a copy of the recently-released M-Brane SF Quarterly #1. 

See the Aether Age trailer.

Glenn Lewis Gillette

I just heard the sad news that author Glenn Lewis Gillette has passed away after a fight with cancer. Here is a remembrance of him here on the SFWA site. Please, everyone, take a minute to read it. Glenn was the first author that I ever published in M-Brane SF. His story "Time Enough for a Reuben" led issue #1 in February 2009. When I launched the zine, I wondered if any real pro-level writers would ever bother to submit to my new and very small effort. Glenn's submission was one of the first few--it arrived a day or two after my guidelines went online--and it was the first that I accepted for publication. That issue has been available for free reading on Issuu since its release and it may be read here. Earlier this year, I published Glenn's work a second time, his story "Why Look Down?" in issue #16. I've decided to make that issue available as a free download now. You can get a copy here.

I didn't know Glenn well personally, though we chatted via Twitter now and then. I had no idea he was ill, and I am stunned to know now that he is gone. He was a fine writer with a really quirky, weird, and funny sensibility. He was also very well-read in the genre, a real expert on sf with a lot of awareness of the literature's history. It's our great loss that we have heard the last from his capacious imagination, but also our great fortune that we got to know him when we did.

M-Brane SF #22 released

The new issue was released tonight in PDF format. It is comprised of a lovely quartet of new stories by Gustavo Bondoni, Patty Jansen, Joseph Auslander, Jr., and Bryce Mainville.

This issue may be purchased here. Money received keeps the magazine going from month to month. Allow a day for response--copies are distributed by way of download links emailed to readers. For readers who prefer print, the stories in the issue will be compiled with those from the next two electronic issues in our next print quarterly omnibus edition, due in late January.

Issue #22 contents announced

Just a day or two before publication, I can finally announce the contents of M-Brane SF #22. The largest number of fiction submissions in a month has oddly yielded our shortest issue ever, a mere four stories. But it is a quartet of gems:

Gustavo Bondoni leads with "Wyrm of the Mangroves," a quite unsettling story of life engineering and created intelligence. Gustavo has appeared twice previously in M-Brane SF. Patty Jansen also makes a third appearance, this time with a rather humorous item titled "The Invisible Fleas of the Galaxy." Next, Joseph Auslander's bizarre "The Delivery" offers a remarkable idea that I really can't say anything about lest I spoil the whole thing. Bryce Mainville wraps things up with "Wild Arms," a thoughtful tale of a near-future young woman and her amazing body modifications.

M-BRANE SF QUARTERLY #1 in print on Amazon

The big print omnibus, compiling the stories from electronic issues 19, 20 and 21 plus some bonus items is available now at Amazon. It's a lovely book with nearly 300 pages of spectacular work by some really fine writers. Further details can be found in previous posts about the Quarterly and about the individual electronic editions from which it is compiled.

Zine publishing schedule update; slight delay with issue #22

Publication date for issue #22 will be moved from the expected November 1 to November 6. I'm not even calling this "late," just re-scheduled. A few days ago, as I was trying to finalize the content for the next issue, I found that I did not have what I feel is a sufficient quantity of appropriate items for it. So I considered either putting out a short issue on 11/1 or reading some more submissions that I might not have otherwise gotten to this week and delaying publication a few days. It's an odd situation: I have received more submissions than ever in the last month or so (a trend that seems to continue from month to month lately), but the batch hasn't contained a lot of items that have grabbed my attention. I've considered that the problem may lie with me. One night, as I was whittling down the submissions, I realized that in less than two hours I had sent several dozen items to the "no" box without a single one being sent to the "maybe" box. That never happens, so I stepped away and decided I'd better look again later. But whatever the deal is, I think it's best to work on this issue a few days longer.

In other "delay" news, M-Brane Quarterly #1, the fancy print-only omnibus which contains the stories from electronic issues #19-21 plus some bonus items, is done but I am awaiting my proof copy from the printer. As soon as that is here (was expecting it today), I can put it up for sale. I'd hoped to have that out in the world at least a week ago, but life intervened. Stories from electronic issues #22-24 will be in the Quarterly #2 in January, which will also mark the zine's second anniversary. I'll probably have some extra-specialness in store for that auspicious occasion.

2020 VISIONS US pre-order begins

Last night we began the pre-order on the forthcoming anthology of next-decade science fiction 2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy. Information, including the table of contents and a preview of the cover art is here at the Press page. The more I look at this book (and I have been doing a lot of looking at it lately as we complete the final edit and formatting) the more convinced I am that this is not only a very cool collection of short fiction but also an Important Anthology of This Year. This is some really good work, y'all. People will be impressed. Some doubt may surround it because of the fact that I am a micro-publisher of no real great reputation, but once some people finally read it, the truth will be obvious: 2020 Visions is a really fine book and will soon accrete around itself great gravitas and high stature. The authors in the ToC are no slouches either--we have the likes of Mary Robinette Kowal, Jason Ridler, Alex Wilson, Cat Rambo and many others (even David Gerrold, the inclusion of whom just about makes me swoon). These stories are not conventional, run-of-the-mill stuff either. There's some real adventure and risk here in concept and execution. I'd go so far as to say that some of the stories will appear in this book, rather than in one of the pro mags or in a major publisher's antho, because they are too good, too ahead of the curve, too dangerous for the majors. In a few weeks, readers will be thrilled.

Site construction update

Though I took down the obnoxious "SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION" banner a couple days ago, I am still entirely unsatisfied with the design and functionality of this site. But it has fallen to deep into the basement of priorities during the past couple months. So I guess it's not "under construction"until I do something to it again. After the next couple book projects are put to bed and the day job gets a little less hectic (both things to happen quite soon), I will probably attempt another redesign and finally make this thing do the stuff I want it to.

LITTLE DEATH available in print

I have been sufficiently swamped with activity lately, that a lot of things that I should have posted about or promoted already have been piling up on the to-do list. Last week, a lovely print version of Little Death of Crossed Genres became available here on Amazon. Electronic versions (in a multi-format bundle) can be had directly from Crossed Genres for a mere ninety-nine cents. Little Death is a publication of erotic genre fiction edited by Jaym Gates and me. It features fine work by Lorna D. Keach, Jason S. Ridler (an M-Brane SF alum), Wendy N. Wagner, Jennifer Brozek (who's also appeared in M-Brane), and Shanna Germain. This was intended as a quarterly zine, but has since been placed on an indefinite hiatus. If this first issue should prove to be the only one ever, then at least it's a terrific one.

Here are my introductory comments from it:


I love with great passion both speculative fiction and sex. That the two can be combined with writing of fine, beautiful quality was a formative revelation to me as a very young man when I first encountered the eroticism in science fiction stories by the likes of Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) and Samuel Delany. I was at an age when I was too young and inexperienced to really understand these writers’ subject matter but old enough to know that I wanted to understand it. I’d pore over certain fascinating passages again and again, trying to absorb their meanings and implications, awed that writers could say something like that like this. 
Many years have passed since I first discovered that intersection of literary speculative fiction and sex, but it still turns me on just as deeply, and so it was easy for me to accept Bart and Kay’s invitation to participate in The Little Death. Honestly, I probably didn’t really have time in my schedule to add another project, but I felt I would have been a fool to pass on this one. Now that our inaugural issue is complete, I am proud to join Jaym in presenting the five fine stories within, which range across genres and occupy the unclassifiable spaces between them. I hope you will join me in being enticed, thrilled, creeped out, turned on, delighted, seared by words, and seduced.


I much enjoyed this little project, and hope many readers will treat themselves to it.

Pre-order THE AETHER AGE

Hadley Rille Books has begun a pre-order special for The Aether Age, our awesome shared-world, alternate history anthology. Eric is offering discounted prices on both the paperback and hardcover editions, with free shipping. Publication date is November 29. When you go to the Hadley Rille site to order your copies (the holidays are coming soon, yo), take time to browse the rest of this fine publisher's great titles and pick up a few more of them. Publication of The Aether Age happens to coincide with Hadley Rille's fifth anniversary, and we hope that they will sell 5000 copies of their various titles (or 5000 copies of The Aether Age..ahem!)

As an added bonus, I will give anyone who pre-orders The Aether Age a free 12-month subscription to the electronic (PDF) edition of M-Brane SF. Just forward a copy of your PayPal e-receipt to mbranesf at gmail dot com, and you're on the subscrips list.

Go here for more info on this book and to see the cool trailer.

M-Brane #21 RELEASED

The new issue is available in PDF form right now, featuring great new work by Cesar Torres, Therese Arkenberg, Kaolin Fire, Ian Sales, Fredrick Obermeyer and Sunny Moraine, with cover art by Mari Kurisato. It's a really good issue. If you are not already a subscriber and would like to see it, the single issue may be purchased right here for only two dollars, and funds thus raised support future issues. Allow about a day for receipt of your copy (copies are delivered by way of an email containing a link).

An Open Letter to Harlan Ellison

Dear Mr. Ellison,

Just yesterday, I read this article anticipating your final convention appearance, at MadCon. I had not been aware that you are, as you say, dying, and I am very unhappy to hear that. Though I do admire greatly your own attitude about it and hope that I will feel the same way when my own time comes.  But that's not the subject about which I try to reach out to you today. This is:

"My wife has instructions that the instant I die, she has to burn all the unfinished stories. And there may be a hundred unfinished stories in this house, maybe more than that. There's three quarters of a novel. No, these things are not to be finished by other writers, no matter how good they are. It could be Paul Di Filippo, who is just about the best writer in America, as far as I'm concerned. Or God forbid, James Patterson or Judith Krantz should get a hold of The Man Who Looked for Sweetness, which is sitting up on my desk, and try to finish it, anticipating what Ellison was thinking -- no! Goddammit. If Fred Pohl wants to finish all of C.M. Kornbluth's stories, that's his business. If somebody wants to take the unfinished Edgar Allan Poe story, which has now gone into the public domain, and write an ending that is not as good as Poe would have written, let 'em do whatever they want! But not with my shit, Jack. When I'm gone, that's it. What's down on the paper, it says 'The End,' that's it. 'Cause right now I'm busy writing the end of the longest story I've ever written, which is me."

OK. I totally get where you're coming from (and always love it when you take yet another swipe at Judith Krantz). But for the fucking love of all that's good and decent on Earth, do not burn your unfinished stories! Jeeezus keee-rist on a crutch, dude! Look: your admirers would buy any goddamned thing you have ever written, finished or not. I would right now pay for a hardbound edition of a freaking grocery list typed by you. Please, please, please, rescind this horrible, bloody directive to your wife! You are well acquainted with legal machinations, and I am certain that you could guard in some kind of iron-clad, steam-powered, smoke-billowing titanic way your literary legacy from such obscene ravages as Krantz or her ilk trying to finish your novel. How about this: authorize the publication of at least some of your unpublished items and will the money generated from such toward endowing a scholarship, or maybe even one of the writing workshops like Clarion. Create the "Harlan Ellison Fellowship" or some such thing.

OK. I understand that this unfinished and unpublished writing is entirely your stuff to do with as you please. But you need to understand that you are, to many, many readers and writers and dreamers, an even bigger deal than what even you may have thought. Yeah, even if you keel over right now and all your unpublished stuff is burned as per your orders, you will still have a legacy that may last as long as people read stuff worth reading. But why not go a little bit further? Find some way to make a lasting gift of your unpublished work. You don't owe it to anyone, but do it anyway, if not for your successors who will be inspired by you, then for the cranks who will be pissed off that your name keeps showing up all the time long after you're gone.

Best wishes,
Christopher Fletcher, Editor M-Brane SF
(who read "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" when he was 11 years old and has never been the same since)

Announcing M-BRANE #21 writers and TOC

Here is the table of contents for M-Brane SF #21, due out October 1. The cover art is once again by the fabulous Mari Kurisato. This issue will complete the first "quarter" under the new scheme for the print edition, so its stories and those from the the previous two issues will all appear together in a print omnibus in October along with some bonus material. More info on that will come forth soon.

Cesar Torres:  "The Nagual's Elision"
Therese Arkenberg: "Outlive"
Kaolin Fire: "Thirty Since the Reckoning"
Ian Sales: "Human Resources"
Fredrick Obermeyer: "Harmday"
Sunny Moraine: "Centralia"

I will warn you: this one ain't a cheery issue, y'all. But you won't regret reading it either. This is some really fine and thoughtful work by some fine writers. Other than Sunny Moraine--she's new to me, and I am glad to have made her acquaintance--these folks have been in M-Brane's pages before. Ian Sales and Kaolin Fire are both well known in these genre press lands, and both appeared fairly recently (Fire in issue #15 with "Immersion" and Sales in #19 with "Through the Eye of a Needle"). Fredrick Obermeyer previously appeared about a year ago in #9 with the bizarre "Graftworld." Therese Arkenberg appeared in #4 with "Mother" and in our LGBT antho  Things We Are Not with the spectacular "Reila's Machine." The issue leads off with a fine new story by one of my favorite writers, Cesar Torres. Earlier this year, M-Brane Press published his collection The 12 Burning Wheels.