Donna Royston (1955 – 2024)

Worlds Enough editor and author Donna Royston passed away on December 24th after an almost five year struggle with cancer. Donna collaborated with David Keener on three anthologies: Fantastic Defenders, Fantastic Detectives, and the upcoming The Forever Inn.

According to David Keener, “We met through the Hourlings, the writing group that we’d both been part of for the last twelve or more years. Since then, she’s copyedited, and sometimes edited, just about every story I’ve published, and that’s after critiquing them in our writing group. She was my go-to fixer whenever I had a story that wasn’t working…she’d tell me, with stunning accuracy, exactly what was wrong. There was a reason I asked her to co-edit all those anthologies with me.”

David continued, “While I knew of her ongoing medical struggles, and thus her passing wasn’t a complete surprise, it’s still shocking to me that she’s not with us in 2025. No more will we hear her calm voice critiquing our stories at our Hourlings meetings, her low chuckle at our literary shenanigans, her dry wit, and her dependable friendship. She’s going to be missed by a lot of people.”

From the obituary that her husband, John Skowronski, released:

Donna Faye Royston was born in 1955 in Winchester VA, daughter of James R. Royston and Wanda G. Royston.

She attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg VA, earning a BA and MA in English literature.

She married John J. Skowronski in 1991 in Middletown VA.She worked as an editor on academic publications, most recently for 17 years on Variance, the journal of the Casualty Actuarial Society. She published several fantasy stories in online magazines and in the anthologies of her writing group, The Hourlings. She also loved spending her spare time gardening.

She is predeceased by her parents.

She is survived by her husband John, sister Phyllis Gamble (Vernon) of Winchester, nephew Stephen Gamble of Winchester, half-sister Jane Devereaux of Roanoke, and faithful canine companion Luke.

Please consider a memorial contribution in Donna's memory to the American Cancer Society or Capital Caring Hospice of Falls Church VA.

Website Revamped

We’ve finally had the opportunity to revamp the Worlds Enough website. Unfortunately, the website has been plagued by a number of small glitches ever since its hurried migration to a new hosting service last year when the old service was shut down. These glitches have been fixed, including the most obvious one that affected the header display. Most of the content has also been updated.

Update: Website Successfully Moved

The website was successfully moved on September 11th. There are still a few tweaks that need to be done to the look-and-feel, since the move also encompassed an impromptu WordPress update and a theme update. Since there’s nothing urgent with regard to those tweaks, they’ll have to wait a week or so until our other web properties and associated emails get moved.

The Worlds Enough email addresses have also been ported over, so any interruption in email delivery should have been minimal (and we did receive one new submission for the Fantastic Dectectives today).

Moving to a New Host

Due to circumstances beyond our control, our hosting company is going out of business. Accordingly, the WorldsEnough website will be moving to a new hosting company over the next week. For the website, the transition should be relatively seamless. However, with regard to emails, there may be some temporary interruptions in our email support.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Three Hoarsemen Interview

Interview on The Three Hoarsemen 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.

Fantastic Defenders 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!

David Keener Interview

David Keener Speaking to a CrowdMartin 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.

Notable Release: Reliquary

Reliquary A new anthology called Reliquary was just published on January 6th by our publishing partner, Tannhauser Press. The anthology features twelve stories by new writers on the theme of relics.

We’re proud to announce that four of the writers for our upcoming anthology, Fantastic Defenders, are represented in that volume. Those writers are David Keener, Jeff Patterson, Donna Royston, and Martin Wilsey.

David Keener, an IT specialist in his day job, has also been pressed into service to assist Tannhauser Press with ebook production. Due to some logistical issues, the Kindle edition of the anthology will be available on Amazon in about two weeks.