You know that scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair’s head spins around while Max von Sydow throws out the Devil in the name of the Father? (I only know about the scene because it became famous apart from the movie; I don’t go to scary movies, as a rule, because I am so easily fooled and I scream in the movie theater, which is embarrassing, and then have nightmares later, which is annoying.) Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’ve been feeling lately. Not because I am possessed, although you never know, but because WMG is producing so many terrific books I can’t keep track of them all!

June is chock-a-bloc with romance and science fiction. Kristine Grayson’s fourth omnibus, The Charming Trilogy Vol. 2, comes out June 18. And later this month we’re publishing a Fiction River Special Edition edited by Kristine Grayson called Summer Sizzles, and boy does it in this volume. Sizzle, I mean. Nine tales of romantic suspense set in the sweltering, lurid kind of summer when inhibitions are thrown aside like a cheap dress and passion burns so hot it makes the night air billow with steam.

Then the Diving series latest magnum opus, The Renegat, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch,will be available for preorder—unless you happen to be one of the lucky people who supported the Diving Kickstarter, in which case you’ll get the ebook at the end of the month.

There’s a new science fiction Storybundle coming called Space Travelers; WMG will have several works in that. Both Kris and Dean Wesley Smith are in it and you won’t want to miss it.

Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, no one writes science fiction like Dean Wesley Smith. And if you don’t believe me look no further than the Earth Protection League series about a couple of elderly people living in a nursing home who periodically get zapped across the galaxy to protect Earth from danger. The novel, The Life of a Dream, and four short stories in the series will charm and delight you and leave you begging for more.

And if that doesn’t convince you, some of the weirdest, most intriguing of Dean’s sci-fi stories are in Alien Vibrations: Five Strange Science Fiction Short Stories. Here’s the description:

From two androids falling in lust on an alien planet to a story that spans generations, Dean’s science fiction reads like no other. Here he takes you along on an alien first contact to a movie, then jumps you a thousand years into the future to take a peak at a basic university class. The collection ends with a multi-generational story of looking for a lost gold mine and what finding it really means.

Funny, sexy, and just plain strange, these stories keep the reader turning pages.

And I’m not even going to mention Buckey the Space Pirate and Poker Boy, two characters who are so wacky, so resistant to the normal rules of even fictional behavior, they have no counterparts anywhere in the Known Universe. Fact.

While I’m at it, I’d like to mention my favorite stories of Dean’s; the Bryant Street stories. They are kind of science fiction, and they’re kind of surreal; they take the reader into a dimension of their own that can be odd, or strange, or even kind of tender. Try out a few. A collection of the strangest will be coming soon. At least I hope so.

And now it’s time for me to say my prayers and hope my head doesn’t twist off like Linda Blair’s and go spinning into space. Of course, if it did, Dean would just write a story about it landing somewhere on Bryant Street…

My dad was a veteran of the largest and deadliest war in human history: World War II. Dad was in the US Army, infantry, deployed first to North Africa and then Italy. His unit was in combat, but the Army wisely did not ask Dad to shoot at anyone or anything since he was so short-sighted he’d had to memorize the eye chart in order to pass the physical. He also had pes planus, more often called flat feet, which could also be a medical disqualifier, but somehow he hid that, too. Despite his physical limitations, or maybe because of them, he left the army at the end of the war with a bad back and impaired hearing from getting too close to mortar fire, but otherwise as fit as when he joined up.

Anywhere from 56 to 85 million people, both military and civilians, were not so lucky; they died during the six years between 1939 and 1945 from combat, torture, starvation, and disease—all part of the war. Here’s the part that gets me: World War II was mass destruction that included both the historic and systematic murder of six million European Jews and the dropping of two atomic bombs that slaughtered a quarter of a million Japanese people.

I’m proud of my dad and his buddies. Dad kept in contact and met up with a couple them periodically for the rest of his life. George Roth was president of Spiral Binding Co. of New Jersey and also a wonderful storyteller. He invented a character named Whispering Jack Smith, a member of their army unit who couldn’t speak above a whisper, and George told stories in a whisper about their escapades together in order to get his three rambunctious sons to quiet down at bedtime. Cooper was a chemist and went on to some kind of illustrious career that was Top Secret, or so I thought as a kid. They all joined up to fight Fascism, to fight Hitler, and to fight for Freedom with a capital F. And I’m glad they did and that they all survived.

But it was madness, all of it, and so much destruction of life and beauty and art, it was a diabolical madness. I would say, let us not forget. But many have already forgotten.

***

One thing that reminds us of what we human beings are composed—imagination, compassion, creation, destruction, brutality, viciousness, transcendence—is art. At WMG, what Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith write is sometimes funny, sometimes scary or sad, sometimes astonishing, and sometimes thrilling. It’s all about humans, even the stories about aliens, and it covers everything we humans are composed of, as listed above, and more. We’re focusing on Kris’s Diving Universe this week in particular because the new novel in that series, The Renegat, is due to be published in September, but we are offering it early as part of the Diving Universe Kickstarter that ends this week.

A very cool thing about the Diving Universe is the novels take the reader on a ride through space as though space were the human spirit—vast, full of mystery and conflict with forces we don’t understand, fascinating. An early reader of The Renegat said “the 800+ pages go by so quickly, really at a thriller pace.” Because it is a thriller!

Check out the Kickstarter page and check out all the cool stuff you can get. And if you want a thrill, one that will pose no threat to your pes planus or aching back, you can get an early epub of The Renegat as a reward for a $5 pledge.

To a Child Dancing in the Wind

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water’s roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool’s triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind!
                         —W. B. Yeats

I didn’t love this poem until I was old enough to really get it. It is so loving and tender and enchanted by the ineffable charm of innocent youth; and it is also so bitter.

When I was young I remember seeing that bitter look on older peoples’ faces at the oddest times. Just when I expected them to join in my delight at some wonderful plan my friends and I had cooked up—we’ll spend a whole winter in a cabin with nothing but a wood stove to keep us warm and we’ll write and paint and make maple syrup in the spring; or after my friend Mina and I read Peter S. Beagle’s I See by my Outfit and we wanted to ride across the country on motor scooters, when we were twelve—and suddenly there it was, trusted faces suffused with affectionate amusement, and laced with bitterness.

But why? Why?

Now I know.

There comes a day, the first of many days, when we tumble out our hair that the salt drops have wet, and feel not joy but confusion and even fear. Not yet dread, we’re still too optimistic for that. But the pure sweetness of dancing in the wind, oblivious to the water’s roar, is gone forever even though we don’t know it yet.

It is on a day like that, or shortly after, that Tiffany, Crystal, and Brittany, all daughters of Zeus, begin their stories in the Daughters of Zeus Trilogy, Kristine Grayson’s omnibus that we are publishing this week. It’s the third of four Grayson omnibuses WMG is publishing this spring.

In it, the girls have been stripped of their magic and their positions of power on Mount Olympus, and now they have to grow up. And like many teens, they must deal with a) Dad, who in their case is Zeus and doesn’t realize that the lusty days of his power and glory are over; b) their moms, human and protective, who don’t realize that despite the girls’ childhoods with the Gods, the girls aren’t as out of touch and incompetent as their moms think; c) relatives, such as Athena, Dionysus, Eros… you know; and d) the Fates. What could possibly go wrong?

Lots, of course. The girls are young and have not known a fool’s triumph, nor love lost as soon as won. But they’re about to know the ups and downs of being both teens and extraordinary.

Get the omnibus Tuesday, May 21. Also, get the individual novels, Tiffany Tumbles, Crystal Caves, and Brittany Bends, in brand new editions both as ebooks and paper.

I imagine the conversations between my two elderly male cats as sounding like Vladimir and Estragon (Didi and Gogo) from Samuel Becket’s play Waiting for Godot. Didi and Gogo’s dialogue runs along the lines: “Gogo: Let’s go. Didi: We can’t. Gogo: Why not? Didi: We’re waiting for Godot. Gogo: (despairingly). Ah!”

My Ollie and Grayson would no doubt sympathize with Cookie Monster when he called Sesame Street’s production, Waiting for Elmo, “A play so modern and so brilliant it makes absolutely noooo sense to anybody.”

But, really, waiting is as natural to cats as napping. Deep thoughts, likewise. Given the time and a quiet space, cats will solve all problems, mostly by out-waiting them.

Sadly yesterday, the noiseless tenor of Ollie and Grayson’s way was abruptly demolished. It happened like this:

(Ollie, svelt black and white; Grayson, large and gray; both washing up in readiness for their post-breakfast naps.)

(A sound of footsteps outside.)

(They lift their heads in unison.)

Grayson: What was that?

Ollie: What was that? Is someone here?

Grayson: Someone’s here.

(pause)

Ollie: Who is it?

Grayson: Who?

Ollie: Who?

Grayson: Who knows?

(pause, more footsteps)

Ollie: Let’s go.

(He jumps off the bed where most of these conversations occur. Ollie pauses by the bedroom door. He thinks, “Closet? Kitchen cupboard?” Where to hide? What’s closer, safer? He makes his calculations .)

(Then—all hell breaks loose outside. Banging so loud it hurts the eardrums and knocks a picture off the wall. Men yell to each other and laugh—the brutes! An excruciating wrenching sound, like the Titanic breaking up as it goes down in icy waters. Pounding, pounding—will it never stop? Ollie bolts for the closet. Grayson, fatter and arthritic, looks around helplessly, and then heaves his bulk off the bed and lumbers down the hallway to the “safety” of the kitchen.)

Let us draw a curtain on this tragic scene. It went on all day. The drama did not end well. For cats, anyway. Certain indignities and hurt feelings should be relegated to the dark shadows of unrecorded history.

The new siding for the house looks nice, but boy it makes a lot of noise going up.

At WMG, we are all cat lovers. Cats pop up fairly often in WMG fiction. Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes about that tiny black familiar, Ruby, so cute and yet so mouthy among others. And this week, Dean Wesley Smith has chosen a cat story to begin the latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, which comes out April 30.

As always, Pulphouse offers up a smorgasbord of short fiction, some of which tickles you, some knocks you upside the head, and some slaps you on the back with slightly off-color bonhomie. The first story this time is called “The Fur Tsunami,” by the late Kent Patterson. It, like Beckett’s Godot, is an absurdist comedy with tragedy at its core. And it’s about cats. Lots and lots of cats.

This new issue includes stories from Pulphouse favorites such as Patterson, Annie Reed, Kevin J. Anderson and O’Neil De Noux, along with some who are new to this publication, Brenda Carre and Robert J. McCarter.

Here’s the description:

The Cutting Edge of Modern Short Fiction.

A three-time Hugo Award nominated magazine, this issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine offers up fifteen fantastic stories by some of the best writers working in modern short fiction. No genre limitations, no topic limitations, just great stories. Attitude, feel, and high quality fiction equals Pulphouse.

“The Fur Tsunami” by Kent Patterson
“Unnatural Law” by J. Steven York
“A Cherub by Any Other Name” by Annie Reed
“PMS and a Hand Grenade” by Brenda Carre
“The Disappearing Neighborhood” by Robert J. McCarter
“Hello Brain, It’s Me” by Ray Vukcevich
“Eye of Newt: A Dan Shamble Zombie P.I. Adventure” by Kevin J. Anderson
“Knock on Wood” by Rob Vagle
“Featuring Martin and Lewis” by O’Neil De Noux
“Double Date” by William Oday
“Sleeping with the Devil” by Kelly Washington
“Upgrade? Up Yours” by Jerry Oltion
“Between” by M. L. Buchman
“The Thousandth Atlas” by Robert Jeschonek
“The Injustice Collector” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Minions at Work: Burn Noticed” by J Steven York

Get this lively issue full of entertaining stories by your favorite authors starting Tuesday, April 30.

Meanwhile, if you could just spare a sympathetic thought for cats; the demons who are replacing the siding on our house will continue their dark rites on Monday.

I am an opera lover—not a taste that I share with many of my friends. Years ago when the Metropolitan Opera still toured the country every year, I would go and sit night after night alone to experience La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Carmen. Opera is really about emotion and music, and particularly in the great tragic operas, it’s about Fate.

The stories themselves could be ripped from today’s headlines: poor young girl dies of tuberculosis after quarreling with her lover; woman commits suicide when her heartless foreign lover deserts her; when a rather naïve soldier falls for a gypsy dancer, he kills her after she leaves him for a famous matador. They could have ended differently; Butterfly blackmails her unfaithful former lover into providing for herself and their child, and becomes a wealthy businesswoman, for example.

But Fate! Fate will not be hoodwinked into prosaic endings. When Carmen turns over her cards and each one says La Mort, death!, she understands quite well that nothing awaits her but doom. (No one tries to comfort her by saying, “Well, everything happens for a reason.”)

All of this came to mind this week as we prepare to release Kristine Grayson’s whimsical trilogy, The Fates. Her Fates are quite different. For one thing, there are three of them, and they can’t agree about much of anything let alone dooming lovers to premature death; for another, Grayson’s Fates do not hide in the background and move people around like chess pieces; they get right into the action and mix themselves and everyone else up. But the biggest difference is that no matter what they do, their endings are always happy. Ever after, in fact.

Tomorrow, The Fates Trilogy; A Fates Universe Omnibus will be available everywhere, and you can read Simply Irresistible, Absolutely Captivated, and Totally Spellbound back to back. One after the other, each one says not La Mort, but L’Amour!

Sunday I spent a couple of hours talking to my oldest friend. She is exactly three months younger than I am and we’ve been like sisters our whole lives. We live on opposite coasts, so our main communication these days is very long phone conversations a few times a year.

Sunday, after catching up on life and family, old friends and books, we ended up talking about writing. Our fathers were English professors, so maybe it was natural that we both loved reading books and writing from the time we were little. We wrote stories and poems and plays, performed some of them, too. Because it was fun.

Mina went on to get an MA in English and teach professional writing for many years. I ran off to the theater, filmmaking, and journalism. Neither one of us writing fiction. Every ten years or so I’d painfully crank out a short story. Stash it in the proverbial drawer and go back to real life.

But if you work at WMG for Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith—among all the other wonderful writers who contribute to Fiction River and Pulphouse and participate in workshops—the joy of writing fiction kind of sneaks up on you, slips its little hand in yours and asks you to come out and play.

So I did. And do. For fun.

Kris blogged about her youthful writing adventures last week, and it rang a bell for me. Of course, she and Dean do much more than write for fun. Among other things, they have written a whole series of books on the profession of writing, the WMG Writer’s Guides, and Kris has a magnum opus called The Freelancer’s Survival Guide. Countless people have turned to these books for guidance. And now, just in time for Kris’s Spring Writing Storybundle, we are publishing her latest, Writing With Chronic Illness.

Here’s the description:

In this WMG Writer’s Guide, award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch offers words of wisdom for writers who suffer from chronic illnesses and who want to keep working, to improve their craft and spread their creative wings.

A long-time sufferer herself, Rusch reports from the trenches. She tells us her own struggle with health issues and how they challenge her. But none of it actually derailed her career; she worked out ways to keep writing, and in the process became an international bestselling author with hundreds of books in print.

Rusch helps writers customize a plan of action based on the writer’s individual experience. She shows how to increase productivity by developing a positive, and realistic, outlook.

Importantly, Rusch points the way to reclaim the joy of writing, and celebrate success.

The bundle has LOTS more in it, too. Look out for it on Thursday; it includes Dean’s lecture on Carving out Time for Your Writing, Kevin J. Anderson’s The Million Dollar Writing Series Boxed Set, and Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s Killing it on Kobo, and six more wonderful books of information and advice for writers.

And now you see why I mentioned the importance of joy. Even if Dean and Kris didn’t talk, write, and lecture about joy often, anyone paying attention would surely detect that the enjoyment of writing is at the heart of what they do and why they do it. And I’m here to tell you it’s infectious.

My friend Mina said I had inspired her to have some fun writing, too. Maybe we can trade some stories before the next time we talk…see? Infectious.