The Iron Writer 2014 Winter Solstice Championship is almost over! Today’s your last chance to read the fantastic flash fiction entries by the best of the best the Iron Writer has to offer. This time around, that includes ME! This is my first time advancing to the Finals and I am excited! Please check out the stories and vote for me if you like mine best!
Oh, and if you want to see and hear me read my story aloud, see my most recent post for the video I recorded!
My story, “The Book of the Dead”, tied for first in the Donna Tarrt Bracket of the Iron Writer Winter Solstice 2014 Tournament, which means… *drumroll* I am a FINALIST! I am so excited about this that I did a reading of the story I have in the tournament, “One Night (With You)”:
The elements are: 1968 Elvis Presley Comeback Special, Someone mowing/cutting grass, A note left on a car, and Argyle socks.
I am up against some spectacular writers, so I think you will enjoy them all. Please please go read the stories, and if you like mine best, I’d very much appreciate your vote!
Today’s Whiteboard Wednesday is inspired by my Road Ghosts story, “Spectral Delivery”. It’s a 6,000 word short introduction to the Road Ghosts world through the eyes of Enid, a King’s Pizza trainee on a scary delivery run with ghost hunter Brett on Valentine’s Day night. “Spectral Delivery” is a spooky/comedic adventure that’s just 99 cents in the Kindle store and does not require that you read any of the other books first.
Enid also appears as the main character in “Christmas Special”, which is part of the Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Holiday Collection, where she battles a pissed-off teenage Winter Fae named Jacqui on an ill-fated double-decker bus.
In November, I had a dream so vivid, so action-packed, so FUN that I got up in the middle of the night and scribbled down everything I could remember on a couple of sheets of grocery list pad. I decided even to backburner another project to start work on this one ASAP. In early December, I belted out a couple of chapters and then spent the rest of the month worldbuilding. This month I am back in the story, and my characters haven’t stopped running since. This is a story set in the “silly hat” steampunk world that first appeared in my novel Reality Check. Trans-Continental stars Ida, a young transgender woman, running from her past. Ida’s caught up in another fine mess with Duffy, an Artful Dodger trickster/vagabond whose skills at getting out of trouble are only matched by her knack for getting into trouble.
I don’t usually post about works in progress, but I’m excited about this one. Plus, I needed a subject for Whiteboard Wednesday, and this is what was on my mind. I’ll let you know how it’s progressing later!
Well, this is MY story in the Gifts of the Magi anthology. It involves characters from the Road Ghosts Trilogy and the upcoming Tipsy Fairy Tales, including that magical rascal, the Transit King. Didn’t we just see him— yes, yes we did. 🙂 Let’s just say that I had a lot of fun drawing on Rankin & Bass as my muses for this story.
This will be my last blog post until after Christmas, I hope you’ve enjoyed the drawings, and I hope they made you curious about the book we put together to benefit Indy Reads Books literacy charity. It’s been a blast, and a learning experience. I’m very proud of the result.
Happy Holidays from me to you! And if you travel this Christmas, may the Transit King watch over you and yours.
Lee Majors? Santa kicking Martian butt? A possessed Teddy Bear? What’s going on here? To find out, you have to read Nicole Cushing’s hilarious take on some major speculative fiction holiday failures she calls “Lumps of Coal”.
Hint hint: it’s in this book:
Ivory Blaque takes a favor – in the form of a magic ring – from that whimsical fairy godfather, the Transit King, as he whisks her across Chicago in a magical taxicab in “An Ivory Christmas”. I have to shout out to John for doing a wonderful job of capturing the Transit King’s essence in his story, I could not have written him better.
The anthology is still on sale today until the stroke of midnight beginning Christmas Day.
No, don’t look at your calendar, today isn’t Wednesday (as I type this anyway), it’s Tuesday! This is a special whiteboard post to show off yet another of the stories within Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Holiday Collection! This time, J.P. Bastin’s characters Cassie and Quin toast the new year from space station Daedalus as part of the series of thrilling capers they’ve been sent on in a dystopian future that’s just beyond the horizon.
The Kindle edition of the anthology is still on sale at $2.99, a dollar less than the usual price, today and tomorrow. The paperback can be had for Amazon’s sale price of $9 (plus shipping, unless you’re a Prime member like me) or you can get it in person at Indy Reads Books, if they have any left.
Bonus Whiteboard drawing, and it’s not even Wednesday! Since we have an Amazon Countdown sale running, and Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Collection is on sale for 99 cents until tomorrow (Saturday, December 20), I thought I’d sneak in another one of our stories: How Krampus Saved Christmas, by S.H. Roddey. Here we have Kringle having a pint with Krampus at Imagination’s End. Who’s the clown? Why, that’s the 8 foot tall bartender, Benedict.
E. Chris Garrison 
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