The Call for Submissions for Fantastic Detectives, our next paid fantasy anthology, just dropped today. It’s a sequel to Fantastic Defenders, and curated by the same editing team, Donna Royston and David Keener. The due date for submissions is the end of the year, with expected publication in March, 2023.
Check out the PDF for more details.
Welcome to the Forever Inn, the finest cross-dimensional tavern in existence. Our 5-star chef is a reformed eldritch horror, our top bartender is a refugee combat mage with PTSD (don’t even THINK about messing with her), our bouncer is an orc, and one of our waitresses is a hominid. We carry beers from across the timelines, and you never know who will be stopping in.
So, join us in September when The Forever Inn anthology is released. The volume is edited by Donna Royston and David Keener. They’re both experienced editors who previously produced the anthology Fantastic Defenders.
Contributors include: Cora Baker, Evan Friedman, C. M. Frost, Jerrik Hjort, David Keener, Stephanie Mirro, Sheila O’Shea, Martin Wilsey, and more.
There’s a hardcover of the anthology, Fantastic Defenders, coming out in March. The anthology was edited by David and Donna
So, above, you’ll see a preview of the full wraparound cover, including flaps, for the hardcover edition of the book.
The second volume of the Worlds Enough anthology series is now in the planning stages. The series was always envisioned to span the different sub-genres of the speculative fiction field. Since the first volume, Fantastic Defenders, covered fantasy heroes, the second will be targeted at the fantasy/detective sub-genre.
The title for the second volume will be “Fantastic Detectives.” We’re looking for stories about crimes in fantasy settings, ranging from urban fantasies to “second world” settings. The fantasy detective sub-genre can obviously lead to some dark stories, which is fine, but there should be at least a little ray of hope somewhere in each tale.
With this volume, we’re adding more variety to the story lengths, so stories may range from 5K to 20K words. Since we’re targeting 100K words for the entire volume, longer stories are welcome but will need to hold up under harder scrutiny.
Note that this is a pre-announcement. The official Call for Stories has not yet been released, though the schedule for the Call for Stories, submission deadlines, and anticipated publication dates are already available on our Schedule page.
Worlds Enough has done the packaging for The Curator, the new anthology from the Hourlings writing group. Although not responsible for editing, we formatted the print edition, created the ebook, and did the cover design. The cover painting, of course, was licensed from the incomparable Luca Oleastri. The cover design was commissioned from Don Anderson.
The anthology will be published by Tannhauser Press around the end of December, 2018.
Donna Royston, Martin Wilsey, and David Keener were interviewed a week ago for Episode 44 of the Three Hoarsemen podcast. They got to discuss the new anthology, Fantastic Defenders, in their various roles as editors or, in Marty’s case, as the publisher (Tannhauser Press) of the volume. That podcast episode is now available online.
Of the interview, David Keener said, “We had a lot of fun being interviewed. We got to talk about the anthology, our other works, Tannhauser Press, and a few other subjects.” The podcast is an hour and forty-two minutes long, but you can skip to the interview at the 1:07:48 mark if you’d like.
Since the podcast hosts also discussed the movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, earlier in the podcast, the title they chose for the episode was: “Fantastic Defenders of the Guardians of the Galaxy.” Check it out now!
Fantastic Defenders launched today. It’s Volume 1 of the “Worlds Enough” anthology series, edited by David Keener and Donna Royston. Now available on Amazon in print and ebook.
The volume features five novelettes about the kind of heroic defenders that refuse to give up. You know, the ones that keep fighting no matter what the odds are. Check it out on Amazon!
Martin Wilsey, best-selling author of the Solstice 31 trilogy and publisher of Tannhauser Press, released an interview with David Keener on his blog. Martin does a regular “Fast Friday Interview” feature where he runs interviews with fellow indie writers.
In the interview, David talk about things like how he became a writer, as well as his mutant writing method that STILL has all of the other folks in his writing group shaking their heads in bemusement. He also talks about some of his upcoming projects, including Fantastic Defenders, volume 1 of the Worlds Enough anthology series.
So, that’s right, go over to Marty’s site right now and check out the interview.
The stories are all in for Volume 1 of the Worlds Enough anthology series, with Fantastic Defenders clocking in at a highly respectable 88K words. Now that the stories are off to the copyeditor for final revisions, we thought it would be interesting to share the back cover blurb for the volume:
YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD HERO DOWN
Across astounding and magical worlds, five heroes step forward to defend against fantastic threats:
- A sorceress in a besieged city faces a malignant force even more dangerous than the city’s would-be conquerors.
- An unassuming bureaucrat stumbles upon a threat to a vast empire and deals with it in his own inimitable fashion.
- A resourceful bodyguard for an infant princess, trapped and surrounded by merciless assassins, finds a unique way to hold them at bay.
- A mage press-ganged into the Royal Navy finds himself volunteered for a dangerous, secret mission on foreign soil.
- A disgraced royal guardian who failed in protecting his king hunts down those who cost him his honor.
These are…the Fantastic Defenders!
David Tatum, author of fantasy books like In Treachery Forged and The Kitsune Stratagem, has been selected for the fifth and final slot in the anthology, Worlds Enough: Fantastic Defenders.
His story is “A Gun for Shalla,” about a hapless wizard named Kusk who gets press-ganged into the imperial navy. After serving on board a ship-of-the-line, he’s singled out thanks to his unique combination of magical talents. He’s forcibly volunteered to assist in a dangerous mission to rescue the imprisoned relative of a high-level diplomat. Naturally, things don’t go as planned.
Look out for it on May 5, 2017, when Worlds Enough: Fantastic Defenders is published.