The updates from the skeleton crew continue while our fearless leader, Allyson Longueira, braves the wilds of Holiday Land with her family.

For the past few years, we have experimented with ways to find new readers for our books. Among the most successful ways we’ve discovered are bundles. We partner with other publishers and organizations to merge our audiences, and introduce readers to writers they’ve never encountered before. We also “bundle” writers with our anthology series, Fiction River.

This month, we’ve bundled a bundle. We’ve partnered with StoryBundle in a Holiday Bundle curated by Kevin J. Anderson. We have three books in the bundle: Dean Wesley Smith’s Heaven Painted As A Christmas Gift, Kristine Grayson’s Visions of Sugar Plums, and Fiction River: Christmas Ghosts.

Kevin J. Anderson, Keith J. Olexa, Jody Lynn Nye, Mark Teppo, David Sakmyster, and Carole Nelson Douglas also have books in the bundle.

All Covers Large

But if you look very carefully, you’ll realize that you can discover other writers here as well. In Fiction River: Christmas Ghosts, you’ll find stories from Louise Marley, M.L. Buchman, Lisa Silverthorne, Anthea Lawson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Mary Jo Putney. There’s crossover, of course. Dean Wesley Smith and Carole Nelson Douglas have stories in the volume as well.

The crossover continues in the other two anthologies in the bundle. Dean and Kris have stories in A Fantastic Holiday Season, and Kris has one in A Fantastic Holiday Season: A Gift of Stories. But you’ll also find authors that might be new to you, like Patricia Briggs, Heather Graham, and Mike Resnick.

Lots of reading to do, lots of writers to discover.

From a reader’s perspective, the best thing about the Holiday Bundle is that you can get all of this reading for as little as $12. (You can get some of these books for as little as $5, but pay the $12. You’ll be happy you did.) From our perspective, we get to share our audience with some of our favorite writers and they get to share their audience with us.

And as a bonus for all of us, anyone who buys the bundle can designate a few dollars to one of three charities: The Challenger Center, Girls Write Now, or Mighty Writers.

The bundle runs until Christmas and then won’t be available again. So pick up a copy now.

Lots of holiday cheer. Don’t tell Allyson, but we might just warm up some eggnog and sit in the library of WMG with our tablets, and read the Holiday Bundle. After all, we deserve a little holiday time too—even if it is only on our lunch break.