Maria’s Ephemeral Finds – Fantasy Worlds

Short Story of the Month:

Nancy Fulda, one of my favorite short story authors, has a story or two out at Darwin’s Evolutions, very enjoyable; worth a read as always.

After reading her stories, I read the latest story posting and wow, I was very pleased. It’s a longer story than your typical short, but the world building and action make it worth it. I even made it through two viewpoints because it was just that good. I haven’t read too many stories where the “talent” is the making of dice. Okay, I don’t think I’ve read any.

Check it out. FateCraft by Lindsey Duncan. The artwork isn’t my favorite of the art out on the site, but there are some nice works shown with most of the stories. I’m finding that I am drawn more to online zines that have artwork, at least on occasion.

    
Other Zines

Blackgate has a new issue out, issue 13. And lo! They decided to continue offering the online PDF. No, it’s not free this time. But it’s a very reasonable $4.95. I think that’s a good price point considering all the art and stories. It’s basically almost as large as a book and the quality of stories is as good as it gets. The cover work for issue 13 is very nice–done by Malcolm McClinton.

Fantasy Magazine has a new submission form–and is it ever fast. Cat Rambo, the editor, is trying to keep response times down to less than 3 days. That’s a really nice feature for writers, almost unheard of in the industry, but very admired by me at least. There’s even a way to check where your story is in the queue. Very professional, very easy to use. As for the stories, well, as they say in the guidelines, I too, would like to see more of the “light” stories.

    
Artwork

Dark Wolf has been doing a thread at BSC called Fantasy Artwork and Artists for a while now. Check it out in general, but this week’s post led me to Marc Simonetti’s website where I clicked on the 3D art and…was blown away by the atmospheric collection as I paged through. Really great stuff out there.

Speaking of art, I’d like to start finding out more about…this is going to make some of you cry…cozy cover artists. Yes, really. They get less daylight than fantasy artists (who don’t get much.) Anyone know of any sites at all that highlight this type of art?

    
_{These and other fascinating picks (including fresh vegetables, stories, and miscellany) can be found at Maria’s blog at Bear Mountain Books.}

About Maria

Maria is the author of a few short stories, including the anthology Sage: Tales from a Magical Kingdom. She enjoys reading, cooking, gardening and forums. Stop by her website, www.BearMountainBooks.com and say hello.