Run J Run contract signed

SF Canada member Su Sokol is pleased to announce her forthcoming novel, Run J Run. The book will be published by Renaissance Press, and is scheduled to release in 2019.

Su also has a short story, “Studies in Shadow and Light,” included in a post-Trump speculative fiction anthology titled After the Orange. The anthology is a project of B Cubed Press and is due to release this summer.

And if you’re in or near Seattle, Washington, mark your calendar for June 21st. Su will be appearing at Left Bank Books for a reading/discussion entitled “Towards a Liberated (un)imaginable.”

Audiobook Released

OATTS-audibleThe audiobook version of One’s Aspect to the Sun by SF Canada member Sherry D. Ramsey is now available through Audible.com.

The novel, published by Alberta’s Tyche Books, was named Speculative Fiction Book of the Year by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta in 2014. The audiobook is narrated by Shannon Burgess and follows Captain Luta Paixon as she searches for the secret behind her failure to age.

Sorcerer’s Heir, by M. D. Benoit

M. D. Benoit is announcing the publication of her first Urban Fantasy Novel, out on 3 November 2014.
SorcerersHeir223

Is one woman enough against such powerful, timeless sorcery?

Pragmatic, cynical Jane Brockwell never gave magic a thought, so it comes as a shock when she awakes one day with magical powers and the ability to see the future through terrifying visions.

Almost immediately, Jane becomes embroiled in competing Guilds of witches and warlocks who want to recruit her. But it is soon obvious that her magic is different and immeasurably powerful, perhaps as potent as that of Demos the Great, the most revered and reviled sorcerer of all time, who lived in 300AD.

Is Jane the descendant and heir of Demos, and a sorceress herself? Garrick Ramsay, an ambitious, ruthless and powerful warlock believes so and sees her as a threat to his ambitions. He attacks her, nearly killing her and Hugh MacLean, her boss and love interest. Ramsay is relentless in his pursuit of them; a dark, hovering presence surrounds him and, with each encounter, he seems to gain strength.

Jane and Hugh begin to wonder if there may not be a more sinister force guiding Ramsay’s actions. Where did Ramsay get the Book of Secrets, a grimoire of spells from the Dark Arts? And how important is the Void, a place between worlds Jane can use to travel? Could it be the key that unlocks the mystery of the dark presence that seems to support Ramsay?

Unwillingly dragged into a world not of her choosing, Jane will stop at nothing to neutralize Ramsay and protect the allies she makes along the way…

Read an excerpt

Mark Shainblum and Claude Lalumière to edit Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen

Anthology opens to submissions on 30 October 2014

Image: Wikimedia. Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.0.Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Multi-award winning author and editor Claude Lalumière and SF Canada member and past-President Mark Shainblum will be co-editing the 19th edition of the Tesseracts anthology series from EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing.

Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen will be just what the title implies, the best in prose superhero fiction from the best authors in Canada,” said Shainblum. “I’m thrilled to be working on this project with Claude and EDGE. It’s going to be something special.”

From the official call for submissions

Superheroes! Supervillains! Superpowered antiheroes. Super scientists. Adventurers into the unknown. Costumed crimefighters. Mutant superterrorists. Far-future supergroups. Crusading aliens in a strange land. Secret histories of covert superspies … and more! We want to see any and all permutations of the superhero genre. Any genre-mashing goes: alternate history, crime, horror, romance, SF, fantasy, surrealism; we want a variety of tones, approaches, subgenres, cultural perspectives, etc. We’re interested in submissions where Canadian setting (a specific city, region, or province) plays a role, but we’re open to other types of stories, too, set anywhere in the world, the universe, or the multiverse!

Click here for full submission information

PsyBot, a Literate Cyber-Thriller

PsyBot e-cover (200x320)SF Canada member Nowick Gray has released a new speculative novel. PsyBot is every programmer’s nightmare: the bug that gets loose on the user side of the interface. Virtual reality, Joe Norton discovers, is not confined to hardware. Is the only way out, to go further in?

PsyBot, in the best “cyberpunk” tradition, is both speculative technothriller and character study. Its themes comprise both personal growth and corporate machination. The language aims for that balance of gritty description and eloquent quest that can satisfy equally readers of sci-fi or morality tale. The use of genre elements—alien abduction, offworld travel, astral projection—is effectively ironic, introduced by the antagonistic computer virus to tempt and tease, to call into question the arbitrary fabric of every virtual reality we yearn for or claim to inhabit.

PsyBot: A Novel of the Near Future is available from Amazon.ca in both Kindle and paperback formats.

Read a preview chapter here, and more about the novel here, at the author’s website.

Nowick Gray’s Rendezvous, an adventure novella with a paranormal twist, was published by World Castle in 2013. His short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of periodicals and anthologies. Reviewers have praised the “standout fiction” ( James A. Lee); “gripping story technique” (Frank Burnaby); “captivating forward momentum” (Sally Ross); and “fully fleshed-out characters, living and breathing” (S. L. Saboviec).

Connect with Nowick Gray and his writings at nowickgray.com.

Eileen Kernaghan launches Sophie, in Shadow

Sophie, In Shadow

Eileen Kernaghan’s new YA/teen historical fantasy, Sophie, in Shadow, will be launched on May 10 at the Arts Council of New Westminster’s gallery in Queens Park. The time is 1:30 p.m.

Sophie, in Shadow, set in India under the Raj, continues a narrative which began twenty-five years earlier in Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural. It’s 1914. Sixteen year old Sophie Pritchard, orphaned two years earlier by the sinking of SS Titanic, is about to begin a new life in British India. For Sophie, still devastated by her parents’ death, India proves a dangerous environment. Kidnapping, enemy spies and terrorist plots play their parts against the background of a world at war and growing unrest in the Indian subcontinent. Soon Sophie’s powers of precognition will be called upon to help thwart a conspiracy that could incite a bloodbath in Calcutta and deliver India into enemy hands.

Thistledown Press, March 2014, $15.95   Available in both print and e-book editions.