It's time for some free fiction, and for the second story of the Alice and Thomas era. The year is 1954. Thomas Price is new in town, and Alice is just trying to be hospitable. Honestly, that's all she's doing at the house.

With "The Lay of the Land," we begin the slow dance between Thomas Price, Covenant researcher, and Alice Healy, too young, too untrained, and too foolhardy by half. It's going to be a long one. Best that we get started.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page.

This also serves as your discussion post.

Title: Velveteen vs. The Retroactive Continuity.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

( The four women were locked in an uneasy standoff, none of them willing to be the first to move and hence kick off the fight...Collapse )

To thank you all for your help and forbearance during Thomas's entry, it's time for some free fiction, and for checking in on Verity and Dominic as they continue their trip from New York to Oregon, with plenty of stops along the way. They've finally reached Oregon...which means it's time to deal with the parents.

This concludes the Verity and Dominic road trip cycle, and I am absolutely thrilled to have made it all the way across the country. I hope you've enjoyed the trip as much as I have.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page. Please download and save to read locally, rather than trying to read on my poor server.

This also serves as your discussion post.

...a signed copy of Rolling in the Deep!

Welcome to the twelfth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The twelfth giveaway is for a signed copy of Rolling in the Deep, now totally out of print. This is going to be a random number drawing, because honestly, that is all I am managing to keep up with. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Monday, December 19th.

Game on!

...a copy of When Will You Rise!

Welcome to the eighth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The eighth giveaway is for a copy of When Will You Rise, the first Mira Grant book released by Subterranean Press. (As an FYI, this is also the one that you can still order directly from the publisher, and it makes a lovely holiday gift.) This is going to be a random number drawing, because I am not feeling creative right now. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Thursday, December 15th.

Game on!

ETA: This drawing is now CLOSED.

...a signed copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination! Win this awesome tome for yourself, for a friend, or for a local library!

Welcome to the fifth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The fifth giveaway is for a signed copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, in hardcover, including some truly awesome stories. This is going to be a random number drawing, because I am not feeling creative right now. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage. Please be aware that this is a LARGE hardcover: the cost of mailing this internationally will be considerably more than the value of the book.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Monday, December 12th.

Game on!

ETA: This drawing is now CLOSED.

...a signed copy of Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Short Fiction! Win this awesome tome for yourself, for a friend, or for a local library!

Welcome to the fourth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The fourth giveaway is for a signed copy of Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Short Fiction, published under the Mira Grant byline. This is going to be a random number drawing, because I am not feeling creative right now. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage. Please be aware that this is a LARGE hardcover: the cost of mailing this internationally will be considerably more than the value of the book.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Sunday, December 11th.

Game on!

ETA: This drawing is now CLOSED.

...signed copies of two recent anthologies I'm in: Were and Alien Artifacts! Win them for yourself, for a friend, or for a local library!

Welcome to the third of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The third giveaway is for signed copies of Were and Alien Artifacts, two recent anthologies by Zombies Need Brains Press. This is going to be a random number drawing, because I am predictable like that. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Saturday, December 10th.

Game on!

I usually start these posts with "I am pleased...". I'm not pleased right now. I'm not sure I'll ever be pleased again. Like so many of us, I am sick and scared and sad. I'm wishing I weren't getting so many random apologies from people who found the villain in Feed cartoony and unrealistic, but now find him horrifyingly plausible. I'm wishing a lot of things.

But time passes; the Turtle moves; the work goes on, and my fear and my sadness do not mean I can let y'all miss things you might want to know about. So:

It is my privilege to announce that I (as Mira Grant) am doing another novella with Subterranean Press. Final Girls is a story about virtual reality, psychotherapy, corporate espionage, and figuring out exactly who you are. According to the website...

What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?

Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they've been missing their whole lives—while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But...can real change come so easily?

Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father’s life. She's determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb’s budding company. Dr. Webb’s willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther's not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other's only hope of survival.

Limited to 1,250 signed, numbered copies, Final Girls is available for pre-order now, and will be shipping in April. This is going to be a gorgeous book. Julie Dillon, who did the cover for Rolling in the Deep, is doing the cover for this one too, and I am so excited. Remember that Rolling in the Deep sold out fast, and is now virtually unattainable unless you're lucky or have a book budget I really envy, and order yours today!

Title: Velveteen vs. Everything You Ever Wanted.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

( The mirrors stretched out to infinity around them, recognizable as mirrors only while they were at a distance...Collapse )

I have some traits in common with a vending machine.

Lee Harris, the commissioning editor of Every Heart a Doorway, purchased three novellas from me at the same time, which was delightful, and very much appreciated (still is). The first one, which I pitched to him, was EHaD. He liked it quite a lot, which was also very much appreciated. After it was done, we were out to tea, talking about what he wanted for the second.

"I write better from a prompt," I said. He laughed and replied that he would like to see a coming-of-age American road trip ghost story.

So I wrote him one. He was quite surprised.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day is the story of Jenna, dwelling in New York, working at a suicide hotline, and waiting for the afterlife to catch up with her and end her time in this world. It's the story of ghosts in glass, of corn-witches and Kentucky, of the shadows that lurk around the edges of our lives, waiting to be seen. I am very proud of it.

It will be released January 10th, 2017, which means you can buy it for my birthday, and you can see the cover here.

It's a story!

I live! I write, I cry, I write again!

The move, its associated complications, and my own unavoidable commitments continue to conspire to keep me hopping, hence my current scarceness: I promise I'm not dead, and am still reasonably active on Twitter, even if I'm not managing to keep up with my blog. I'm really hoping that will change soon. I'm sliding toward normalcy one day at a time, I swear. Please let me swearing to something true.

Ahem. But! The disclaimer is not the reason I finally managed to break my silence. No, it's this: the first-ever Quentin-narrated story has been released today! "Full of Briars" is available now from an e-book retailer near you. (US-only at this time. I'm really sorry about that. I don't control the foreign rights, and unlike a story I've released myself, for free, this one I got paid for, and that means the publisher calls the shots.) I am super excited about it, both because a) this fills in a gap that's always bothered me, between Chimes at Midnight and The Winter Long, and b) this is the first time DAW has directly commissioned an e-original from me. IMAGINE HOW MUCH TOBY I COULD WRITE IF THIS IS SUCCESSFUL. The mind boggles, the fingers weep, and the heart rejoices.

A steal at only two dollars, please consider picking up "Full of Briars," if you haven't already, and find out what happened when we weren't looking.

This will serve as your discussion post: please be aware that there will almost certainly be spoilers in the comments.

Whee!

RISE, by Mira Grant (me) is now available from fine bookstores and e-retailers in North America and the United Kingdom! This brilliantly hefty collection includes the following previously published stories:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

It further includes the following brand new stories:

All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

Because many of these stories take place after the original trilogy, I do not recommend RISE until you've read Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, but if you have, boy do I have some tales for you! All pieces are accompanied by a new introduction, written by me, because why would you not do that when you have your own single author short fiction collection?

RISE!

This will serve as your discussion post; expect spoilers in the comments.

It's time for bullet-point updates! Hooray!

* Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 21st) marks the release of RISE, the complete Newsflesh short fiction collection. This book gathers everything from "Everglades" through Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus, along with two never-before-published pieces, All the Pretty Little Horses and Coming to You Live. It's not intended as an introduction to the world--at least four of the novellas are post-the original trilogy, which makes them great whopping slices of spoiler--but I'm incredibly proud of this material, and over the moon about finally having a short fiction collection of my very own. I feel like Stephen King. It's pretty awesome.

* Today is the last day of the Unicorn Empire T-shirt pre-sale for their gorgeous Toby Daye design. Don't miss out!

* CrossingsCon is this weekend! The first ever Young Wizards fan convention, and I'm one of their guests of honor! I keep closing my eyes and remembering standing in my middle school library with So You Want to Be a Wizard in my hand, and I'll be honest: I feel like a wizard right now. In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I feel like a wizard. Because somehow, I have willed the adulthood I wanted into being, and for all that it's not perfect, it's the imperfection that makes it all seem real.

Everything is amazing.

It's time for some free fiction, and for checking in on Verity and Dominic as they continue their trip from New York to Oregon, with plenty of stops along the way. They've managed to get out of Buckley Township, Michigan with no casualties, and that means they deserve a break, right? It's time for a vacation.

It's time to visit scenic Las Vegas, Nevada.

Now, most of the time, I sort of throw things out and let y'all do with them as you will, but in this specific case, I ask that you please catch up on any previous road trip stories you may have missed before reading onward in the timeline. Because this is a party you want your invitation to.

There's gonna be cake.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page. Please download and save to read locally, rather than trying to read on my poor server.

This also serves as your discussion post.

We are now exactly fifty days from the publication of RISE, my first short fiction collection--and more, the first collection of short fiction from the Newsflesh universe. This stunning hardcover book will include, in order:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

If those last two titles are unfamiliar, it's because they are two all new novellas, written specifically for this collection. Also new to this collection, introductions providing more information about every single story.

I am so excited about this collection, y'all. Copies will be available from bookstores all over North America on June 21st, right before CrossingsCon in New York. I'll be appearing at Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, CA on July 9th as part of the Superhero Team-Up book tour with Sarah Kuhn and Amber Benson, for all your signed copy needs.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support, which has made this book, and so much else, possible.

Rise up while you can.

Well, here we go.

As many of you have no doubt heard, through one channel or another, I'm getting ready to move to the Seattle area. The move is becoming increasingly, terrifyingly real, and at this point, I'm not sure I could slow down the process if I tried. (Which is probably a good thing, because let's be honest here: if I thought I could slow down something this stressful, I very well might.)

As part of my prep, I am opening a short-term Patreon called The Toaster Project, which you can read about here. The formal launch will happen in late May/early June, but as physical rewards are limited, I wanted to give all y'all the first crack at claiming them. A banner image and welcome video and all that good stuff will be forthcoming. In the meantime, Tara made me some snazzy welcome images, and also there are cat pictures.

Hooray for cat pictures.

It's time for some free fiction, and for checking in on Verity and Dominic as they continue their trip from New York to Oregon, with plenty of stops along the way. They've weathered their time at the Carmichael Hotel with no fatalities. So where to next?

Why, back to Buckley Township, Michigan.

No tour of the history of the American Price family would be complete without a stop in Buckley. That's where Enid and Alexander settled down; where Jonathan brought home the Fabulous Fran, Star of New Mexico; where Alice Healy met Thomas Price. That's where it began.

It isn't where it ended.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page. Please download and save to read locally, rather than trying to read on my poor server.

This also serves as your discussion post.

Just in case any of y'all managed to miss it:

There is a new Fighting Pumpkins story in the world! Read "Fiber" now at Tor.com.

For those of you keeping track, this is the same iteration of the Fighting Pumpkins as appeared in "Gimme a 'Z'!" and "Turn the Year Around" ("Dying With Her Cheer Pants On" ended in a total party-kill). This takes us to four published stories about everyone's favorite genre-savvy cheer squad. (I estimate we need ten for a Fighting Pumpkins story collection.)

Gimme an "F"!
Gimme a "U"!
Gimme a OH SHIT RUN THEY'RE AFTER US GO GO GOOOOOOO--

If you want to support more Fighting Pumpkins in the future, "Fiber" also appears in the anthology Unbound, which is fine and swanky and would look great on your shelf!

We have successfully weathered both the release of A Red-Rose Chain and the start of a new year, complete with my birthday (it's my birthday!), which means you deserve a treat. And here it is:

A brand-new story about Patrick and Dianda's first meeting! "Heaps of Pearl" has been posted on the Toby Daye short fiction page. It is available in ePub, MOBI, and PDF formats, and is free for download. Please download rather than trying to read locally; my server will thank you. (It's at the bottom of the page; scroll down.)

This story is best read after The Winter Long if possible, as it contains relationship spoilers through that point in the series. It is a story about meetings, and mermaids, and the terrible strain of living up to expectations. It is narrated by Patrick, because he's less likely to punch people for funsies.

Cover graphics are by Tara O'Shea. All short story electronic conversion thus far has been done by scifantasy. As both of them are awesome, we applaud them now.

Go forth, read, and please feel free to use this as a discussion post, which means there may be spoilers in the comments. Tread carefully.

Enjoy.

It's time for some free fiction, and for checking in on Verity and Dominic as they continue their trip from New York to Oregon, with plenty of stops along the way. They've weathered their meeting with Rose Marshall remarkably well. So where to next?

The Carmichael Hotel, of course.

"Snake in the Glass" takes us back to Chicago, where Dominic is going to continue meeting the family...whether he likes it or not. Let's just hope Verity can keep him from getting himself into too much trouble.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page. There is currently a problem with the cover graphic on the page: it is smaller than the others. I am aware, and am working to get it fixed, but didn't want to make you wait any longer over something so (relatively) trivial. (ETA: Fixed.)

Big thanks to Will, for emergency last-second eBook conversion, and to Tara, for getting me the replacement cover so quickly.

This also serves as your discussion post.

I love Kelley Armstrong. I mean, I've only met the actual human being Kelley Armstrong a few times, so I guess what I feel for the real person is strong affection tempered with professional respect, but her work? Her work, I love. So when I was offered the opportunity to co-write a story with her, I died a little bit. Of joy.

Announcing the Urban Allies anthology.

Kelley and I co-wrote a story called "Tailed," in which Verity Price meets Elena Michaels while both are investigating strange events in a New York forest. VERITY MEETS ELENA, Y'ALL. My protagonist and her protagonist kicking ass not...well, not together, exactly, but very close to one another. I'm so excited.

The story itself is non-canon, because reasons, but we had a great time writing it, and Sarah is there being snarky, and it's just amazing, all told. I am so pleased.

July!

It is with absolute joy and no small amount of confusion that I make the following announcement:

Velveteen vs. The Seasons is under discussion to be released this coming Memorial Day weekend at Marcon in Columbus, Ohio. Like the first two volumes, it will be a hardcover from ISFiC Press. It will include all the stories released after the end of volume two (and possibly a few that I haven't had the chance to post yet, depending on how my schedule shakes out).

Action! Adventure! Punching things! Vel having a really, really lousy time! Honestly, I can't wait.

This does, however, bring us to a point of administrative order: my contract terms with ISFiC are for two year periods. This means that at the end of this month, the first two Velveteen volumes will no longer be available for purchase in eBook form. The physical books will remain available until they sell out, and the stories will remain available for free on this blog, but the collected eBooks? Gone. So get 'em now or get 'em never.

I am so thrilled to know that Vel's next big adventure is going to be a book, and I think you're really going to like where things go. My bunny-girl sure did make it a lot farther than I ever thought she would.

For justice!

FOR CAKE!

The random number generator has spoken, and the winner of a copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination is...

loree!

Instructions for the winner: Please comment on this post letting me know that you're claiming your prize and send me an email via my website (www.seananmcguire.com) with your mailing information. Both comment and email must be received by Friday, December 18th to be considered valid.

Five more days to go!

So hey, remember how at the end of Chimes at Midnight, Quentin was all "now you get to meet my parents," and Toby was all "OH FUCK NO," and then we got The Winter Long, but we never got to see the meeting?

We're going to get to see the meeting.

"Full of Briars" is a novelette set between Chimes at Midnight and The Winter Long, narrated by Quentin as he faces that most terrifying moment in a young squire's life: the meeting between his parents and his knight. With bonus "how Quentin sees Tybalt" and "how Quentin and Raj interact when Toby isn't around" (hint: they're glorious shits to one another).

"Full of Briars" will have a price point of $1.99 USD/$2.59 CD, and be released in August 2016, a month before the next October Daye book comes out. The cover art is being done by Tara O'Shea, who does the short story covers for my website. (Right now, it is only available in the US and Canada, because of regional rights issues. I have faith in all y'all's ability to get around that without resorting to illegal downloads. Since wow do I want DAW to let me do more of these.)

Quentin!

Glee.

...either a copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination OR a copy of Indistinguishable From Magic!

Welcome to the ninth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules, and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, avoiding the post office until that other winter holiday is over).

The ninth giveaway is for a copy of either The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination OR a copy of Indistinguishable From Magic. This is going to be a random number drawing, because I just got a big deadline dropped on my head. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage.
3. Indicate which prize you are hoping to win.
4. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Wednesday, December 16th.

Game on!

Title: Velveteen vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

( Once again, Velveteen woke to find herself staring at the rotting rafters of a decaying house...Collapse )

Ahem:

You might want to click this link and find out my exciting news for next summer.

This beautiful book will include all the Newsflesh short fiction to date, from "Everglades" through to "Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus," as well as two brand-new novellas that no one has ever seen before. I'm super-excited, and I think you will be too, once you see what's in store.

I'm also super-excited because this is my first short fiction collection. Another item checked off the bucket list!

Happy blonde is happy.

When will you rise?

It's time for some free fiction, and for the first story of the Alice and Thomas era. The year is 1954. Frances Healy has been gone for almost a decade. Things have changed in Buckley Township, Michigan. But a remarkable number of things have managed to stay the same.

With "The Way Home," we welcome Thomas Price, Covenant researcher, to Buckley, and we see what the future is going to hold. There's no question that it's going to be a party. It always is, when there are this many knives involved.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page.

This also serves as your discussion post.

Hey, players, get your quarters and slap 'em down, because Press Start to Play is available today! This awesome video-game themed anthology includes a lot of awesome stories, including "Survival Horror," which features Antimony Price and Arthur Harrington versus a 7th Guest-style puzzle adventure with sinister goals in mind.

You can find more information here.

Available now at a retailer near you!

We are all of us built from the materials we had close to hand when we were children. Fairy tales and songs and pop culture icons and whatever books our parents left on low shelves; comic books and liturgy and playground rhymes and media. Give twenty children access to the same cultural touchstones and they'll come away with twenty different sets of internal stories, building twenty distinct foundations. It's pretty amazing.

For me, one of those foundational texts was a novella called "Cabal," written by a man named Clive Barker, that told the story of Boone, who believed himself a monster, and Lori, who loved him anyway, and Midian, where the monsters were. I wanted Midian more than I wanted anything else, for a long time. I wanted the necropolis, the drums in the dark, and the tribes of the air with the moon inside. I wanted to go home. Everything about the story told me that if I could just find Midian, I would be home.

There was a movie: Nightbreed, which wound up equally, if not identically, foundational. And then there was a long, long time with no clear route to Midian...until I was asked if I wanted to participate in an authorized anthology of stories set in that world. Stories about going home.

Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker's Nightbreed is available today from a bookstore near you. (If it isn't available in your region, remember that Borderlands Books in San Francisco will happily ship.) My story, "The Moon Inside," is the first anchor for a book filled with wonder, and sorrow, and people I am proud to call my friends and peers.

This is the first paragraph:

"Once, Midian. Once, the caves carved from the living rock, the warrens and rabbit-runs like veins through the flesh of the earth. Once, a world lived in constant descent, down, down, ever down, until it seemed that one day in their expansion they would strike the hot molten core of the world, where magma flowed like the blood of Baphomet. Once, safety. Once, home."

Home.

I am so proud, and so honored, to be a part of building something that created my own foundations.

I hope you will enjoy it.

Title: Velveteen Presents Polychrome vs. The Court of Public Opinion and Not Punching Anyone.
Summary: And now for something completely different. Velveteen is gone, and Polychrome is still putting her life back together, one heroic escapade at a time.

( Victory Anna's whoops of joy echoed over the rooftops. Someone on the ground below might have mistaken them for screams, but Polychrome was close enough to see the sheer glee in the other woman's face as pursued the giant clockwork bats across the sky...Collapse )

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow will mark the release of "Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus," a new Newsflesh novella focusing on the lab, life, and times of Dr. Shannon Abbey. The novella will be available through the Orbit Short Fiction Program, as well as through a friendly e-book retailer near you.

After release, when some of you have finished the text in fifteen minutes, this will serve as your discussion post. (So basically, starting tomorrow, there will probably be spoilers here.)

Newsflesh!

...remember the Old Ones. The Old Ones are here.

I am really delighted to be able to announce that I will be a part of the anthology The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Aaron J. French and published by Journalstone Press. For this collection, twelve authors (including my darlings Jonathan Maberry and Rachel Caine) were approached and asked to write novelettes about the main deities of Lovecraft's world.

I got the Deep Ones.

My story, "Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves," is about grad students and experimental ethics and coming home, and I am very, very proud of it. The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft will be available in December 2015.

When the stars are right.

It's time for some free fiction, and for the last story of the Johnny and Fran era. The year is 1945. Frances Healy, born Frances Brown, is gone, and the time has come, however little we might want it, to say goodbye to a friend.

With "Star of New Mexico," we close the book on Johnny and Fran, and look to the future. It's the end of an era. It's the beginning of something new.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page.

This also serves as your discussion post.

As an author's note, if you want the perfect song to accompany this story, download "Chasing Twisters" (the song, not the EP) by Delta Rae. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Goodbye, Fran. I'll miss you.

Popping in from Florida to make a quick announcement, namely that the table of contents for Press Start to Play, edited by John Joseph Adams and Daniel H. Wilson, has been announced.

Check it out for some familiar names.

My story in this one, "Survival Horror," is about Artie, Antimony, and a rather...challenging...game in the vein of The 7th Guest. Thrill to their adventures, and to the many awesome stories that surround them, this coming August.

Back to Disney!

Better late than never, and I'm in England, which makes a little tardiness forgivable (because I don't live here, not because the English are chronically tardy, although if one judges by my friends, the English are maybe a little chronically tardy), so...

Rolling in the Deep, my story of mermaids and deep sea exploration and why maybe combining the two is a bad plan, is out! Yay!

The print edition is already sold out at Subterranean Press's website! I, er. Less yay.

But! There are other ways to get this fabulous tale of sirens and slaughter. The eBook edition is available now, from many fine retailers. If you still want to have a physical copy to stroke and love and call your own, I have called Borderlands and confirmed that they have five copies (5) on order. (They might be able to get a few more from their distributor. It's all a matter of timing. So.)

If you want to get a physical copy of your very own, please call—don't email, as email can take a while to be answered—Borderlands Books at 415 824-8203. The books are en route and are definitely coming to the store. If they go quickly, the store will attempt to obtain more from their supplier, but cannot guarantee any additional stock at this time.

Mermaids!

This seems to be an "every six months or so" thing, which is nice: I don't feel too demanding, but I'm able to keep prioritizing the free shorts in my lists. And so, as promised, I am now taking "tip jar" donations to fund the next InCryptid story or stories. To tip, please PayPal to...

delirium@xocolatl.com

Please choose "friends and family," not "goods and services," as I have no physical goods to send. The tip jar will remain open from today (Friday, April 10th) through next Friday (April 17th). I will then close it and post a total for what was collected.

If I get $200, I will prioritize finishing and posting "The Way Home," aka, "the next generation begins."
If I get $300 or more, I will prioritize finishing and posting "Lay of the Land," aka "Thomas and Alice are awkward cookies."

"Star of New Mexico" will be posted this year even if no one tips me a penny; I'm not holding anything finished hostage, just trying to justify my perpetually shuffling things around. Thanks so much to everyone who's ever donated in the past; you've done a lot to make my current situation possible.

Thank you!

ETA: Thank you so much to those who have already chipped in. Please do remember, however, that I am not selling anything; there's nothing to ship. Please choose "friends and family," to avoid both PayPal prodding me about sending your non-existent product, and to keep fees at bay.

I am really excited about this, y'all.

Basically, I have a story in the forthcoming anthology, Genius Loci. Which is very exciting for me! I am very excited. Only I'm a lot more excited by the fact that several of my friends—Carrie, Sunil, among others—have stories in the same book. We're gonna be ToC buddies! Squee!

The Kickstarter is running now.

While the project has already funded, there are still exciting perks to claim, and even more exciting stretch goals to be unlocked. Help us bring the spirit of place home, and blow the roof off.

Squee!

...and I feel fine.

Wastelands 2, chock-full of exciting stories about the apocalypse, is now available, waiting eagerly for your interested eyes. It's a beautiful book, assembled by one of my favorite editors (John Joseph Adams in the house!), with stories by an amazing assortment of people. I highly recommend giving it a look.

(As a note: if you are a completest trying to make sure you have all my stuff, the story included here is a reprint of "Animal Husbandry" from Grants Pass. So please don't buy the book expecting a new story and then become sad. On the other hand, if you don't have Grants Pass, or you trust my taste in apocalyptic fiction, this is totally the book for you.)

Hooray the end of the world!

It's time for some free fiction. Hooray! It's Valentine's Day in Buckley Township, Michigan. The year is 1945...and it's almost the end of the world.

In "Broken Paper Hearts," Alice Healy is getting ready for her school Valentine's Day party, complete with pink sugar cupcakes and paper hearts for everybody...and Fran, her beloved mother, has not come back from her latest trip into the woods.

It's the end of an era and the day we've all known was coming for a long time.

Happy Valentine's Day.

You can download the new story now from the InCryptid short fiction page.

This also serves as your discussion post.

Psst. Hey. Check out the inaugural Tor.com publishing announcement. See those names? Lovely names. See my name, in amongst all the others? Lovely names.

So lovely.

I am excited to be sharing this press release and program with some of my favorite Earth residents, like Paul Cornell (probably from a planet somewhere near Betelgeuse), Mary Robinette Kowal (voice of Toby, originally from Deep Faerie), and Michael Underwood (traveler from a parallel dimension where saddle shoes are still cool). And all those debut authors! It's super-exciting, and I can't wait to read them.

My novella, "Every Heart a Doorway, Every Word a Prayer" is basically "Wicked Girls" meets Clue, and I think you're going to really enjoy it. I'll announce the pub date as soon as I have it.

Onwards and upwards, for awesome!

The Toby-universe short I probably get asked about the most often is "Rat-Catcher," a novella which first appeared in the Subterranean Press anthology A Fantasy Medley 2, and later in the 2012 Hugo Voters Packet. Mostly what people ask is "Will you send me a copy of this story?" and "Why haven't you posted it for free?"

Um.

So there are two kinds of short stories around here. There are the ones I write for my own amusement/based on the most recent tip jar, which are posted, for free, either here (as in the case of "Velveteen vs.") or on my website (as in the case of the majority of the Johnny and Fran stories). And then there are the ones I write because someone offers to give me money. I like money. It lets me eat; it keeps my lights on. I know it's considered crass for me to say, flat-out, that I enjoy money, but it's true. I grew up incredibly poor. I know what it's like not to be able to keep the lights on. This is much more fun for me, and hence for everyone who has to deal with me ever.

When someone offers to give me money for a story, it's generally because of the assumption that my presence in a publication will help them sell copies of the publication. I have a good relationship with many of the editors who buy my stuff, which means they think of me early in the process, and I am incredibly grateful for that, but it's not all altruism. They keep buying things from me because I continue to help them sell things. That matters. Which is not to say that y'all have a responsibility to buy everything I am published in! That would be...a lot of things. I have copies of everything I've been published in, and at this point, we're talking about five shelves, between the novels and the anthologies and the collections. Sometimes, you're going to have to make choices about your money that do not include supporting my career, and that is more than okay, that is the correct way to do it. Pay your bills before you pay mine.

That being said, because of that initial "Seanan will help us sell things" assumption, I am not comfortable posting stories from paid anthologies for free until those anthologies have become completely unobtainable. The limited edition of A Fantasy Medley 2 is still available from the publisher. Looking at the ordering system, it appears that twenty-five copies remain.

Basically, until those twenty-five copies are gone, I won't post the story anywhere, no matter how often I'm asked.

I have been reluctant to say this, both because a) I don't want people who have already bought the collection to feel cheated; it's a beautiful book, and if you have the money, it's absolutely worth the price, and b) I don't want anyone to say I'm holding "Rat-Catcher" somehow "hostage" to extort people into buying things. I'm not. I don't make any money from sales of the collection at this point; I've already been paid. Yeah, I'd like to be asked to contribute to books in the future, which does sort of inform my position, but more than that, it feels unethical to take money in exchange for helping to sell a book and then turn around and give the goodies away for free. But the question keeps coming up, so it feels like I need to say something.

For those of you who want to read "Rat-Catcher" and can't afford AFM2: please, be patient. Someday, the book will sell out, and I will be able to consider posting the story on my website. In the meantime, it's not essential to understanding or enjoying the series; it's an extra, it's deep background, and while I love it, it's not going to suddenly change everything. I promise.

For those of you who have already purchased AFM2: thank you so much. Isn't it a beautiful book? It's a beautiful book. All the stories are awesome. I treasure my copy.

For those of you with room in your budgets for AFM2, who have been considering a copy: it's a beautiful book. I highly endorse it.

And that is that.

We have successfully weathered both the release of The Winter Long and the start of a new year, complete with my birthday, which means that you deserve a treat. And here it is:

A brand-new story about Tybalt, Toby, and their first real date. "No Sooner Met," has been posted on the Toby Daye short fiction page. It is available in ePub, MOBI, and PDF formats, and is free for download. Please download rather than trying to read locally; my server will thank you.

This story is best read after Ashes of Honor if possible, since it is set very shortly after that book, and contains unavoidable spoilers for the series up to that point. It is a story about falling in love, and cats, and how to get a really good steak in San Francisco. It is narrated by Tybalt, because he's the romantic in this relationship.

Cover graphics are by Tara O'Shea. All short story electronic conversion thus far has been done by scifantasy. As both of them are awesome, we applaud them now.

Go forth, read, and please feel free to use this as a discussion post, which means there may be spoilers in the comments. Tread carefully.

Enjoy.

The random number generator has spoken, and the winner of a signed, personalized copy of Oz Reimagined is...

bookblather

Please contact me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to provide your mailing information. All information must be received via my website to be considered valid. If I do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, you will no longer be eligible to receive your prize.

Seven more drawings to go!

The random number generator has spoken, and the winner of a signed, personalized copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination is...

professor

Please contact me via my website contact form within the next twenty-four hours to provide your mailing information. All information must be received via my website to be considered valid. If I do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, you will no longer be eligible to receive your prize.

Ten more drawings to go!

...a copy of Oz Reimagined!

Welcome to the fifth of the Twelve Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 25th (some other winter holiday). Each giveaway will have different rules, and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 29th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, still mailing shirts).

The fifth giveaway is for a copy of Oz Reimagined. This is going to be a random number drawing, because that's working well so far.

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate that you are willing/able to pay postage.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Friday, December 19th.

Game on!

...a copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination!

Welcome to the third of the Twelve Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 25th (some other winter holiday). Each giveaway will have different rules, and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 29th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, still mailing shirts).

The first giveaway is for a copy of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination. This is going to be a random number drawing, because that's working well so far. Because this is a hardcover, this giveaway is open only to US residents and those with US shipping addresses. Mailing it internationally would cost more than the value of the book. I'm sorry, I just can't do it.

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. Indicate that you are in the US/have a US shipping address.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Wednesday, December 17th.

Game on!

In December of 2013, we followed Istas and Ryan through "Red as Snow," which appeared in the December issue of Fiction River, subtitled Hex in the City. (Need more details on Fiction River? Look no further than this link.)

In January of 2014, we followed them through "Black as Blood," and met Ryan's family.

It's time to finish things.

Ryan and Istas have been together for a while now, and while he's ready to take the next step in their relationship, she still has a few loose ends to be tied off. Like her father, who became her husband when her mother died, and is still waiting for her at the top of the world.

You can download "White as a Raven's Wing" now from the InCryptid short fiction page. While this story is best read after "Red as Snow" and "Black as Blood," it should stand reasonably well on its own, providing you have any familiarity with the InCryptid setting. (If you don't, there's a lot of short fiction set earlier in the world continuity also posted on that page. Enjoy!)

Please download and read locally, rather than reading on my server.

This also serves as your discussion post.

I am extremely excited to remind you all that I-as-Mira Grant will be returning to San Francisco's own Borderlands Books on Tuesday, November 25th, to celebrate the release of Symbiont.

In this sequel to 2013's Parasite, everything that was bad already gets much, much worse, with the war between the humans and the tapeworms reaching a horrifying new peak. As a reminder, this is a trilogy now: I couldn't wrap everything up in just two volumes, and Chimera will be coming out in 2015. So while I really, really want you to buy this book and feed my cats, I can't promise to put a tidy bow on things just yet.

Actually, I can promise the exact opposite.

On a sideways but related note, Borderlands also has a limited number of copies of Harvest Season, the new anthology from the SF Squeecast. With cover art by the lovely Ursula Vernon, this book boasts three never before seen novellas, two short stories, and a poem. The copies in the store are also signed by all the authors, and the cover artist. So they're super-special, and way pretty, and make great gifts. (Because copies are so limited, they are not on the Biblio page: you need to contact the bookstore directly. Retail is $25 USD.)

I hope to see you next week!