(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best fantasy anthologies

r/Fantasy! You can currently get my collection of short stories, Tide of Shadows and Other Stories, for free!

Get Tide of Shadows and Other Stories:

• Amazon*
  
• Barnes & Noble
  
• Kobo
  
• iTunes
  
  About the book
  
  > From Aidan Moher—Hugo Award-winning editor of A Dribble of Ink—comes Tide of Shadows and Other Stories, a collection of five science fiction and fantasy stories spanning adventure, comic whimsy, and powerful drama—from a star-faring military science fiction tale of love and sacrifice, to a romp through the dragon-infested Kingdom of Copperkettle Vale.
  >
  > “A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” is the story of a young man reliving the last moments of his fellow soldiers’ lives; “The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down” tells the tale of a broken family and a girl with mechanical wings; “Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons” introduces a typical prince, princess, and dragon—and a not-so-typical love triangle; “The Colour of the Sky on the Day the World Ended” follows a girl and her ghost dog as they search for a bright light in the darkness; and “Tide of Shadows” is about a soldier and his lover, a mother, and planetwide genocide.
  
  *Unfortunately, Amazon has been dragging its heels in price matching the other stores, so I've set the price there to $0.99 (the lowest possible), and I'll be donating all proceeds from sales to Room to Read, a terrific charity dedicated to youth education and literacy.

As someone who appreciates classic Swords & Sorcery, I would recommend The Kormak Saga by William King. While a few details differ from your request, the main character being slightly less rootless than Kane or Conan in his mercenary days, the stories are very much written in the spirit of such classics. Normally, you can get the first omnibus with the first four standalone novels (none of them longer than a few hundred pages) and a short story for free by signing up to King's newsletter, but his domain name is down right now. Still, you can start off by getting the [first novel] (https://www.amazon.com/Stealer-Flesh-Kormak-Book-Saga-ebook/dp/B007OWVJ4I/) for free on Kindle.


If you enjoy Stealer of Flesh or feel like taking a $5.99/£2.99 chance, I would very much recommend King's [Sky Pirates] (https://www.amazon.com/Sky-Pirates-William-King-ebook/dp/B0071MPFIM), which is more S&S goodness with a touch of Vance's Dying Earth.

Lagrange Books (that's me!) is proud to announce our newest edited anthology, The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family. Featuring eight short stories from new and award-winning authors, including Misha Burnett, third-place winner of the 2019 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award!

$3.99 on Kindle (in pre-order until tomorrow), $11.99 for paperback.

Family is filled with magic. It can be the warm magic of love, with bonds that can never be broken; it can be the bitter magic of old resentments and keen disappointments. It can be achingly beautiful or terrifyingly cruel.
Explore the hidden depths of family in this anthology of stories from celebrated and award-winning authors. Transport yourself to dazzling settings like an isolated lake cottage watched over by a mysterious protector, a reality-TV show about a family of witches, a world besieged by dragon-wielding terrorists, an oddly relaxing coffee shop, and New Orleans after the rise of the unquiet dead.
Experience the wonder and magic of family.


The Wand that Rocks the Cradle features the following stories:

“Bellwethers Know Best,” by Marion Deeds
“Legacy,” by Joanna Michal Hoyt
“Coffee Break,” by W.O. Hemsath
“She That Was So Proud and Wild,” by Misha Burnett
“Dead in First Grade,” by P.L. Sundeson
“The Dragon Detector,” by Elana Gomel
“The Lake Cottage, by Michelle F Goddard
“To Find a Peach,” by Frank Saverio

With an introduction by editor Oren Litwin.

If you like Japan and fantasy short stories, please check out Tales of the Sunrise Lands. It was released today and has a Japanese themed story by me and 17 more by other authors who are doubtlessly even more talented ;).

Also, my epic fantasy Aetheria's Daemon is now on Kindle Unlimited! And if you don't have Amazon Prime and want a free copy, please let me know and I'll be glad to exchange one for an earnest promise to leave an Amazon review (I really need reviews!).

I have Flowertown and Confessions of a D-List Super Villain that can be lent. Both were very good. I'm sure there are many others, but it is so hard to search for the lendable titles on Amazon!

EDIT: Adding more lendable SF titles - only adding books that I liked a lot.

The Forever War

The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011

Bob Moore, No Hero - this is currently free in kindle store

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

Warbreaker

The God Engines

13 Bullets

Agent to the Stars

Old Man's War

Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair and writer/editor of several essays/anthologies about writing and SF, is bisexual (and has several LGBT characters in her work).

Joanna Russ was a lesbian. She's probably best known for The Female Man, and also wrote tons of (very good) pulp novels in the 60s, as well as nonfiction about writing and feminism. And apparently she studied with Nabokov, as I just learned from her Wiki page.

James Tiptree Jr., aka Alice Sheldon (also aka Raccoona Sheldon), was a phenomenal sci-fi author with the coolest life ever. Her parents, a naturalist and a travel writer, took her on trips to Africa as a child. She dropped out of Berkeley, NYU, and Sarah Lawrence. She was an art critic, an Army Air Force major (in intelligence), ran a small business, and worked for the CIA at various points, then got her PhD in experimental psych. And she wrote amazing SF under her male pseudonym and hid her identity so well that Robert Silverberg said in an introduction to one of her short story collections that there was no way Tiptree could be a woman - there was something 'ineluctably masculine' about Tiptree's work. She also said this about her sexuality: "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up.""

Malinda Lo is a fantasy author with a few YA books under her belt and her stories feature queer women.

Lightspeed published an issue called Queers Destroy Science Fiction as part of their Destroy series. All of the authors are queer!

I can't remember if Kameron Hurley is queer or not, but I think her recent book The Stars Are Legion is worth a mention regardless. It's a kick-ass war/quest novel full of biological stickiness and features lots of women-loving-women. One of the best books I've read this year.


And in the spirit of the thread I'd like to mention the Tiptree Award, which is given every year for great works of SFF that do something interesting with gender.

Oh wow, I'll definitely have to look into that, thank you! I didn't know him and GRRM were such good pals until recently. I've noticed some similarities in their writing.

Some other Amber short stories, not sure if they're the same as in this book you mentioned, but really good. One is completely from Frakir's POV. It's called Manna From Heaven and I strongly recommend it.

edit: oh and I read the prequels too. The first one was okay, certainly not great. The rest were ridiculous. I'm glad he's not finishing the series.

Apologies if this sub isn't for other Cypher system games but since MCG is promoting it I thought I'd toss it up here as well.

Haven't decided if I'll back it but fantasy noir with zombie legions sounds pretty cool. If you're unsure like me you can download Goblintown Justice, a short story by the author as an ebook to check out the setting. Links to it are on the kickstarter description and here's Amazon's.

http://www.amazon.com/Goblintown-Justice-Shotguns-Sorcery-Forbeck-ebook/dp/B0077HPBCG

GUESS WHAT'S OUT TODAY! Third Flatiron's Fall 2018 anthology, featuring my short story "Winter War"! It's packed with 24 new stories that run the genres from deep sci-fi to creeping horror to whimsical urban fantasy (that's me!), plus reprints, poems, jokes, and everything that makes a collection worth it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GYDBKS8

It's free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, but only $10.49 in paperback, which works out to less than 50 cents a story--and believe me, these are excellent uses of your pocket change.

Here's the synopsis for my entry: "At Hyde Park's Christmas Fair, three tribes of sidhe battle for the heart of a young girl. Their weapons of choice? Scents, memories, and the world's greatest fudge, in Samuel Chapman's whimsical "Winter War"."

>Has anyone done this?

0_o

Even limiting one's self to the readers of this subreddit, I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be 'yeah'.

On a less sarcastic note, I've got two short story collections and a novel up on Amazon. Fiction can work well there and be profitable, if you are willing to do the legwork on the marketing. I'm still getting that side of things down, but there are others who have done very well.

Erotica does sell well, at least in certain subgenres. I recommend checking out /r/eroticauthors and /r/selfpublish for more information.

Do you have any other specific questions?

I did pursue the traditional route for some time with my first novel. I queried dozens of agents (60+, I think) and had been researching the industry for years. Then I wrote The Swordsman of Carn Nebeth. There aren't a ton of avenues available to publish stories of 18k words, and some of my beta readers suggested self-publishing.

I've never been much of an early adopter, so I was waiting to see how self-publishing developed a bit before taking the leap myself. Suffice to say that the number of successes convinced me - more the modest ones than the breakouts. I published Swordsman at the beginning of 2012 and enjoyed the process enough to decide on self-publishing as my route for the foreseeable future.

For someone new to my work I'd suggest they start with the first two stories of The Wandering Tale: The Swordsman of Carn Nebeth and The Three Fingers of Death. These two stories are about half a novel's length together so they won't take forever to read. They encapsulate a lot of different moods and, between them, have something for pretty much any fantasy fan to enjoy: some fighting, some magic, some history and some danger - and, of course, characters who feel like people.

The Fantasy-Faction Anthology featuring short stories and articles by Jessalyn Heaton, Richard K. Morgan, Anne Lyle, Jon Sprunk, Rene Sears, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Myke Cole, Miah Sonnel, James Barclay, Daniel Beazley, Richard Ford, Mark Charan Newton, Kameron Hurley, Edmund Wells, Michael J. Sullivan, John Yeo Jr., and Mark Lawrence has had a price drop to celebrate 2016 (It's now £3.36 / $5.00)

The link to the UK version is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0112NF1Z2 I think if you are from another country it will re-direct you. If not just type 'Fantasy-Faction Anthology' and hit 'search' on Amazon :)

For those interested, work on our second Anthology Guns and Dragons is currently underway. We're in talks with a few top class authors and designing the setup for the short story competition (which will be open to everyone). We've learnt a lot from the first one about how to make things more efficient (production and distribution!), so we're thinking details will be released over the course of the next few weeks about how to submit a short story for consideration and it will be published and distributed early next year. If you've any questions before then just message me.

Working my way through The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition. And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead
was a neat cyberpunk story. Cat Pictures, Please wasn't really cyberpunk, but still fun. I had a hard time getting into Capitalism in the 22nd Century, though in hindsight you could almost call it kind of cyberpunk. It has the themes but none of the aesthetic.

What I meant to get was The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Ten instead, but I'll get to it eventually.

Well, I'd order them all, but Sword Staff and Crown is apparently $355.00 for a Kindle edition, and while I like supporting you, Wordsmith, that's a bit rich for my blood.

Kindle Price: 355.00inclusive of all taxes

https://www.amazon.in/Sword-Staff-Crown-Lee-Hadan-ebook/dp/B07XVT4P1G

This episode was adapted from the short story of the same name by Alastair Reynolds. It actually was a young man working in tech who invented the cleaner robot in the original novel. But it was indeed a talented girl in the show though. Not so sure exactly why Netflix made this change, but the novel is a well-written collection of engaging separate short stories. Highly recommended.

The Mammoth Book of Best Sci Fi is a series of sci-fi anthologies of short stories, and there are some fantastic works in those that are definitely worth checking out.

Those books got me into Ian R Macleod, who has a short story collection called Breathmoss and Other Exhalations.

Ferius Foxfur and the Bottle of Violet

It sounds like an interesting read. Also, congrats on the new job. :)

Prester John will intersect strongly with China in the third book, but not Japan.

I lived in Japan for two years and a huge portion of my writing deals with it either directly or indirectly. The yokai are certainly my favorite folklore to write about. If you're interested in getting a big dose at once, I had a collection of my Japanese writing come out this year called The Melancholy of Mechagirl.