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Naïda by Scott Overton

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SF Canada member Scott Overton just launched a new novel about an alien artifact found in a northern Ontario lake. Naïda is the story of how this artifact changes its discoverer, Michael Hart, in a way that has implications for the whole world.

The glowing structure at the bottom of a lonely northern lake is clearly not of this Earth, but scuba diver Michael Hart can’t stay away. It could be a scientific treasure like no other. It could be a trap. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be someone special.

The alien artifact is ancient but not abandoned, and what it offers will change him forever, leaving him with astonishing abilities and a destiny he would never have imagined. Except it might be a destiny he no longer controls. He might not even be human anymore.

Ocean researcher Sakiko Matthews is desperate to find a cure for Earth’s dying seas, willing to put her career on the line to learn the answers she needs. In Michael Hart she finds a mysterious ally who could be the key to her success, but the price will be terribly high.

The very future of the human race is in the balance, and the actions Michael takes will make him a hero, or the greatest traitor the world has ever known.

Because he is no longer alone, not even in his own body.

There is another.

Naïda.

As the host of a radio morning show for most of his 30+ years in broadcasting, Scott Overton entertained and informed thousands of groggy people as they faced each new day. He brings those same skills and perspectives to his writing, which includes science fiction and fantasy, mainstream and thriller fiction, and even a children’s book.

Scott’s debut novel Dead Air was first published by Scrivener Press. Read a sample chapter, watch the book trailer, and more here. His short stories have been published in On Spec, Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, the anthologies Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound, Doomology: The Dawning Of Disasters, Canadian Tales of the Fantastic and elsewhere. Scott’s a member of the Canadian Authors Association, SFCanada, and a past President of the Sudbury Writers Guild.

Learn more about Scott’s writing at scottoverton.ca.

Purchase your copy of Naïda from Amazon, Kobo, and other booksellers.

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The Electric Girl by Christine Hart

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SF Canada member Christine Hart just released a new YA novel, The Electric Girl. The story features a dual POV narrative, a rural BC setting circa 1988, and plenty of retro pop culture.

Polly Michaels is trying to forget that her mom has cancer. She keeps busy at school and plods through a normal social life. Until a freak electrical storm and a unicorn appear in the orchard next to her house.

Sy’kai wakes on an orchard floor to the smell of rotting cherries and wet earth. She doesn’t know where she is-or what she is-but she knows something is hunting her.

Polly recruits her friends to find the mysterious creature she saw from her window while Sy’kai, a confused shape-shifting endling from another dimension tries to piece her mind back together. Once the human girls find Sy’kai (whom they nickname Psyche) the mystery unravels and the danger facing all of them comes into focus. 

A gritty struggle ranges throughout the girls’ rural hometown and in the wild terrain around it. All while two questions hang over their heads. Can an alien deliver a miracle for a human mother? Can a group of teens defeat an interdimensional demon?

Christine Hart writes from her suburban home on BC’s beautiful West Coast. She specializes in speculative fiction for young readers. Her stories feature detailed real-world landscapes as a backdrop for the surreal. Her backlist includes YA, NA, and MG titles, including The Variant Conspiracy trilogy and Watching July.

Christine works as a content and communications specialist for a technology studio in Vancouver. And when not writing, she melts metal under the guise of her Etsy alter-ego Sleepless Storyteller.

Learn more about Christine and her books at www.christine-hart.ca.

Order your copy of The Electric Girl from Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.

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A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Munteanu

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In June 2020, SF Canada member Nina Munteanu released her fourteenth book, cli-fi eco-novel A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications).

A Diary in the Age of Water follows the climate-induced journey of Earth and humanity through four generations of women, each with a unique relationship to water.

Centuries from now, in a dying boreal forest in what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, yearns for Earth’s past—the Age of Water, before the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity. Looking for answers and plagued by vivid dreams of this holocaust, Kyo discovers the diary of Lynna, a limnologist from a time just prior to the destruction. The diary spans a 20-year period in the mid-20th century and describes a planet in the grip of severe water scarcity. Lynna, in her work for a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water, witnesses and records the disturbing events that will soon lead to humanity’s demise.

A Diary in the Age of Water received a silver award from Literary Titan for a book that “expertly delivers complex characters, intricate worlds, and thought provoking themes. The ease with which the story is told is a reflection of the author’s talent in exercising fluent, powerful, and appropriate language.”–Literary Titan

“Evoking Ursula LeGuin’s unflinching humane and moral authority, Nina Munteanu takes us into the lives of four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. In a diary that entwines acute scientific observation with poignant personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Particularly harrowing are the neighbourhood water betrayals, along with Lynna’s deliberately dehydrated appearance meant to deflect attention from her own clandestine water collection.”—LYNN HUTCHINSON LEE, multimedia artist, author, and playwright

 

“Lyrical and dystopian, ‘A Diary in the Age of Water’ is as much an ode to water as it is a cautionary tale about the dire implications of climate change.”—FOREWORD CLARION 5-STAR REVIEW

 

“In poetic prose with sober factual basis, Munteanu transmutes a harrowing dystopia into a transcendentalist origin myth. An original cautionary tale that combines a family drama with an environmental treatise.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS

 

“An exceptional and thought-provoking dystopian fiction.”—LITERARY TITAN

 

’A Diary’ is a brilliant story…Munteanu writes with fresh, stimulating style.”
—CRAIG H. BOWLSBY, author of The Knights of Winter

 

“The story like water itself fills you, moves you, hypnotizes you, and eventually, totally engulfs you.”—GOODREADS REVIEW

 

“Thoroughly researched and cleverly executed, A Diary in the Age of Water is a must-read, especially for those who are longing for nature, and touch, while fearing both.”

—CARAMOYNES, Amazon Review

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and award-winning novelist and short story writer. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Nina has coached writers to publication for several decades using her Alien Guidebook Series writing guides.  Nina’s non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada.

Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books, short stories and essays. For more about Nina’s coaching and writing workshops, visit www.ninamunteanu.me. You can also find Nina on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

A Diary in the Age of Water can be purchased through Amazon,Chapters-Indigo,Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Inanna Publications.

 

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Orthicon by David Perlmutter

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SF Canada member David Perlmutter has just released his debut novel, Orthicon. The story draws on David’s many years of studying animation and cartoons.

This sci-fi/fantasy world is based on the idea of cartoon characters being real living people. Orthicon’s plot follows their exile from Earth into space, carried out by the US government. We see the creation, rise, and fall of the Cartoon Character Colony of Orthicon (CCCO) located on the planet of the same name.

“This is Orthicon,” he said. “A sub-orbital lunar projectile located approximately twenty-five million lightyears from Earth. The U.S. government discovered it during the Apollo missions in the 1970s, but we had to keep it a secret from the rest of the world, lest Russia found out about it, for obvious reasons. We have spent approximately thirty years terraforming…”

This was a new term to me, so I asked what it meant.

“Haven’t you read any science fiction?”

“I have never been much of a reader, sir,” I said.

“Well, all you need to know is that it means to make an alien planet look and feel as much like Earth as possible, and therefore, allow Earth people to settle and colonize the planet’s territory!”

These cartoon characters, creatures of ink and paint, may have been created by human minds, but they are remarkably lucid and intelligent. Are they threats to their human creators? Or simply discarded commodities?

David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His published works include the non-fiction books America ‘Toons In: A History Of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.) and The Encyclopedia Of American Animated Television Shows (Rowman and Littlefield); as well as a number of speculative fiction collections and novellas, including Orthicon (September 2020). His short stories can be read on Curious Fictions and Medium, and his essays on Vocal.

Connect with David on Twitter or Facebook.

Order your copy of Orthicon via Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Draft2Digital.

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The Adventure of the Crab Bisque by Margaret Curelas

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Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Tech & TinkerSF Canada member Margaret Curelas has been published in the anthology Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Tech & Tinker. This is the fifth book in the Brave New Girls series.

Margaret’s story, “The Adventure of the Crab Bisque,” is a steampunk tale set in Vancouver, BC.

“This compilation in the latest publication of Brave New Girls is both inspirational and thought provoking to young girls and all readers as well, proving girls are capable of anything and can change the world!” – Amazon reviewer

Proceeds from the sales of this series go to STEM scholarships for women. Funds from the Tech & Tinker collection will go specifically to the Society of Women Engineers scholarship fund.

Margaret is the publisher of Tyche Books, a Canadian small-press specializing in science-fiction and fantasy anthologies, novels, and non-fiction. She enjoys Victorian fiction, a Proper Tea, and stalking authors at conventions. She is disappointed that the “no capes” rule applies to publishing.

Get your print or ebook copy of Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Tech & Tinker at Amazon.com and all major book sellers.

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Edward Willett releases new collection of short stories

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Edward Willett‘s new short-story collection, Paths to the Stars: Twenty-Two Fantastical Tales of Imagination, has just been released by Shadowpaw Press. Willett says, “The stories in it span my writing career–the oldest is one I wrote at age 19 (or possibly 18, I’m not sure) at Harding University; the newest just came out earlier this year.  They’re roughly fifty-fifty young adult and adult stories.”

The 320-page book is available in print and all popular ebook formats from most online (and some brick-and-mortar) bookstores, including:

Shadowpaw Press| Amazon.com| Amazon.ca| Chapters/Indigo| Barnes & Noble

Autographed copies are available directly from Willett through his new online shop.

Here’s the official description:

From Edward Willett, Aurora Award-winning author of Marseguro, The Cityborn, and Worldshaper (DAW Books), among many others, comes twenty-two tales of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, drawn from a long career of telling fantastic tales.

A young musician dreams of playing his songs among the stars…A Broadway performer on the lam is forced to direct aliens in The Sound of Music…Strange vegetables with dangerous properties crop up in small-town Saskatchewan…A man with a dark secret gets his comeuppance on a windy night on the prairie…An elderly caretaker on the Moon preserves the memory of the millions who died on Earth’s darkest day…A woman and a bat-like alien must overcome their own prejudices to prevent an interstellar war…

From the far future and the farthest reaches of space to the Canadian prairie, from our world to worlds that have never existed to world’s that might some day, rich realms of imagination and the fascinating characters and creatures that populate them await within these stories, some previously published, some seeing print for the first time.

Time to go exploring…

A review…

“From exploding fruits and vegetables to a shrine on the moon, dedicated to the memory of a devastated Earth, these stories will not disappoint. If you’re a Fantasy and Science Fiction fan like I am, you’re sure to enjoy this rollercoaster of stories every bit as much as I did. I can sum my thoughts up in two words: ‘READ THEM!'” –Lorne McMillan, Author of Isaac’s Blood