GMM Quick-Hit-a-Thon #2

My second "Quick-Hit-a-Thon" post for the Stone Skin Press Gods, Memes and Monsters anthology is the "Ahuizotl" entry by "Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination" author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The Ahuizotl is mythological Aztec creature and Moreno-Garcia's prose poem begins with "There, in the alley, a starving dog,"
 

GMM Quick-Hit-a-Thon

In the countdown to the World Fantasy Awards being announced at the end of the October and with Halloween/Monster month about to begin, I'm embarking on a mini social media "quick-hit-a-thon" mentioning the authors and mythological creatures from Stone Skin Press' Gods, Memes and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary anthology, edited by yours truly.

As the book is an alphabetical bestiary, the first creature in GMM is the "Agave" by the wonderful Arinn Dembo of Vancouver, BC. The entry opens with: "She comes down just once a year from the dry hills of Los Altos..."

More recognition for Gods, Memes and Monsters

As editor of Gods, Memes and Monsters, I'm delighted to congratulate Arinn Dembo, Dave Gross, Jonathan L. Howard and Malcolm Devlin - their GMM stories all made Ellen Datlow's best horror of the year long list!

Part 1 of the long list is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here.

In her Best Horror of the Year Volume 8, Ellen Datlow called the GMM anthology "an entertaining mix".

I also want to congratulate Sandra Kasturi who was nominated for an Aurora Award for her GMM poem “Typhon & Echidna: A Love Story” earlier this year.

Kudos and congrats all round!

World Fantasy Award Nomination!

Much to my complete shock and surprise, I am greatly honoured to have been nominated for a 2016 World Fantasy Award in the Special Professional category for my work on Gods, Memes and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary. I am some very stellar company!

As anthologist, I am deeply aware that an anthology is a joint effort involving all of the contributors, the proofreaders the copyeditors, the publisher and all of the publishing staff. I thank Cat and Simon and everyone else at Stone Skin Press for making the anthology happen, and I especially thank Robin D. Laws for bringing me on board the project in the first place.

Most of all, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of the authors in the anthology for their amazing work. They are:
Arinn Dembo, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Greg Stafford, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Rupert Booth, Sam Agro, Steve Berman, Marie Davis & Margaret Hultz, Laura Lush, Patrick O’Duffy, Dennis Detwiller, Jerry Schaefer, Chris Lackey, Ed Greenwood, James Ashton, Sandra Kasturi, Peter Birch (Aishling Morgan), Molly Tanzer, Monica Valentinelli, Peter Dube, Peter M. Ball, Carrianne Leung, Dennis E. Bolen, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Isabel Matwawana, Peter Chiykowski, Jacqueline Valencia, Kyla Lee Ward, Jim Webster, Jean-Francois Chenier, Kenneth Hite, Jonathan Blum, James Wallis, Helen Marshall, Charlene Challenger, Bill Zaget, Myna Wallin, Robin Laws, Julia Bond Ellingboe, Jonathan L. Howard, Kurt Zubatiuk, Emily Care Boss, Ann Ewan, David Barnes, Malcolm Devlin, Greg Stolze, Andrew J. Borkowski, John Scott Tynes, Richard Dansky, Kate Story, Ekaterina Sedia, Kate Harrad, Nancy Kilpatrick, Dave Gross, Lilly O’Gorman, Nick Mamatas, JM Frey.

Toronto Launch of Gods, Memes and Monsters

Join me (the anthology's editor) and over a dozen local contributors for the Toronto launch of the international anthology, Gods, Memes and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary (Stone Skin Press, UK). Readers include Robin D. Laws, Jacqueline Valencia, Laura Lush, Myna Wallin, Peter Chiykowski, Sam Agro, Isabel Matwawana, Jerry Schaefer, Kate Story, Kurt Zubatiuk, Andrew Borkowski. So make your way to the Victory Cafe (581 Markham Street, Toronto) on Sunday, June 26, 7pm, for an awesome night of "genre meets literary fiction" and stories about the beasts that lurk about in our modern age.

Featuring more than 60 authors, GMM brings a fresh take on the bestiary, the dictionary of mythological creatures, by imagining how beasts such as gorgons, minotaurs, and mantichores would cope in the modern age. From the casino where the griffin has taken up residence, to the gorgon’s new occupation and love interest, to the now happy sphinx who has moved to Manhattan, this bestiary is a unique and contemporary twist on the creatures that have captivated the human imagination since ancient times.

Authors for Indies Day

April 30 is Authors for Indies Day! I'll be at Book City In the Beach hand selling books from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. Come by 1950 Queen Street East to say hello! Sarah Elton, Tanis Rideout, Joyce Grant, Angela Misri, Jason Ramsay-Brown, Ann Elizabeth Carson, Lisa de Nikolits, Nettie Cronish, Lesley Livingston, Ken McGoogan, Zoë S. Roy are the other fabulous authors at the store that day.

My publisher has my books on holiday sale!

My two books, Roll With It, and Fortune Cookie are currently on "festival sale" from Tightrope Books, so here comes the shameless self-promotion: one or both books might make for great holiday gifts!

Charlene Challenger, author of the Aurora nominated The Voices in Between, says she re-reads Fortune Cookie every year—“Heather J Wood’s Fortune Cookie is my annual end-of-the-year read—as classic a tale for me on December 31st as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is on December 24th.”