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“I Hate Meat Loaf!” is my 500-word take in this week’s Iron Writer Challenge. The elements are particularly bizarre this time, and the stories I’m up against are clever and have more Star Wars references in them than mine, but I hope you like what I came up with. Please go read the stories and vote for mine if you like it best. Thank you!
http://theironwriter.com/challenge-94/
Han Solo refrigerator
A jury summons
A tame dinosaur
The story must begin OR end with: “Will you take me away and will you make me your wife?”
Is this Halloween? More like the Nightmare Before Christmas, when all through the house, not a living creature was stirring – but no one said anything about the undead! Yes, this is our anthology’s zombie Christmas tale, “The Dead of Night”, with some excellent apocalyptic mythology-making by debut author David Jobe!
This, along with 13 other holiday speculative fiction stories (plus “Lumps of Coal” by Nicole Cushing) are in our collection, “Gifts of the Magi”, whose profits go to Indy Reads Books, a nonprofit bookstore and literacy charity.
My guest this week is Dr. Debra Holland, one of our fantastic Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Collection authors! Depicted is a solemn scene from her short story, “Season of Renewal”. You might not be able to tell but the blue wavy part with circles is water with votive candles lighting it, and not the lunar surface from my Reality Check sketches.

Gifts of the Magi is on sale for 15% off at Createspace this week. Even though you’re getting a discount, this gets more money in the hands of Indy Reads Books, the nonprofit bookstore literacy charity that the collection benefits, than if you ordered it at Amazon’s price. If you would like to take advantage of this deal, click the book cover to the right and use the Coupon Code: NLFSFAEC
If you’re more in the mood for an ebook version, click the whiteboard drawing above to be whisked away to Amazon.
Now thru Friday, you can order the paperback edition of GIFTS OF THE MAGI: A SPECULATIVE FICTION COLLECTION at 15% Off, delivered just in time to fill out your Christmas list! Click here to read all the details on the SFG Website!
>>> Click the image to go to the event page <<<
Tonight (Thursday, December 4th) from 5:30-7pm, join me and 7 other authors of the Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Holiday Collection as we read from our stories, sign books, and hopefully raise some money for Indy Reads Books! There will be GotM paperbacks for sale for $10 (all proceeds benefit IRB, a literacy charity and non-profit bookstore) along with thousands of other titles in their store. It’s a fantastic bookstore, a rare find as brick-and-mortar bookstores have become endangered species. If you are a bibliophile like me, just the scent of all those books in one place is enough reason to come out.
You’ll also get to see me wear a silly hat for my reading, which is always a bonus, right?
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year, and Matthew Barron’s “The Longest Night” takes us into a tale of cold, hunger, and things that lurk in the darkness as we wait for the sun to return. It is yet another featured tale from Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Collection, and it’s this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday.
Here is another reading, this time from Four ’til Late (Road Ghosts #1), which will be on sale for 99 cents this coming Monday, along with A Chimerical World: Tales from the Seelie Court (which has my “Seelie Goose story in it). Well, and a slew of other Seventh Star Press titles too.
Check these other 99 cent deals too, since if you like my books, I’m pretty sure you’ll like theirs:

A Sword of the land of Layounna is tossed into the Fiddlewood River by a jealous dairy husband in Marian Allen’s “The Warmth of Midwinter”. This continues my Whiteboard Wednesday series of “illustrating” each of the stories from the Gifts of the Magi: A Speculative Holiday Collection. The proceeds of GotM benefit Indy Reads Books, an Indianapolis area nonprofit bookstore and literacy charity.
See more from Marian Allen at http://www.marianallen.com/
Spread the word! More details soon!
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