Book Smugglers Publishing Presents Summer 2016: Superhero Short Stories

Introducing Book Smugglers Publishing’s summer 2016 season of superhero short stories!

BOOK SMUGGLERS PUBLISHING

PROUDLY PRESENTS

Five Short Stories (and a brand new series) for the SuperReader

First, there was the season of Subversive Fairy Tales. Second, there were Tales of First Contact and the pulpy, hard-boiled Spindle City Mysteries. This year, we Book Smugglers are proud to bring you THE YEAR OF THE SUPERHERO!

This season’s Origin Story started when our Intrepid Editors Ana Grilo and Thea James embraced their long standing love for Superheroes (practically speaking, this season’s short story theme was as inevitable as a full-blown X-Men retcon and as inescapable as a Batman-Superman crossover movie).

When we put up the Bat Signal (e.g. opened up the submissions call), we could not have predicted the amount of sheer awesomeness that landed in our inbox. Trying to decide which short stories to publish was excruciating–harder, even, than choosing sides between Iron Man and Captain America.

After weeks of agonizing over the submissions, we selected five short stories–and one new series. One short story is Urban Fantasy Noir, starring a superhero mantis who keeps the peace over a pine tree. Another story takes an imaginative twist on basically every superhero trope you can imagine, but simultaneously also embraces everything the genre stands for. One features super-soldiers, mommy issues, the power of brotherhood, and an unexpected love story. The next story is a traditional superhero v supervillain setup, framed by an LGBT YA snarky romance between two sidekicks from both sides of the hero/villain dichotomy. Finally, we end our superhero season with a story of magic, romance and the end of a world (and the story legit reads like a tribute to Good Omens).

Each of these authors embrace and subvert tropes, play with different ideas and motifs, and manage to transcend several genres. We hope you are ready for the five super awesome stories we’ve selected for you.

And so, with that introduction made–without further ado, behold the Superheroes lineup from Book Smugglers Publishing!

The Indigo Mantis
Written by E. Catherine Tobler
Available 05/24/16

E. Catherine Tobler is not a mantis, indigo or otherwise. Among others, her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and on the Sturgeon ballot. You can find her online at ecatherine.com, and @ecthetwit.

Boy’s Own Superhero Bingo Card
Written by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Available 06/14/16

Tansy Rayner Roberts lives in Tasmania, Australia with her partner & two daughters. She has written and edited various science fiction and fantasy books including the Mocklore Chronicles, the Creature Court trilogy, Love & Romanpunk (a short story suite) and Cranky Ladies of History. She is the host or co-host of three podcasts: Galactic Suburbia, Verity! and Sheep Might Fly, and has won two Hugo Awards, for Best Fan Writer & Best Fancast. You can find Tansy on Twitter (@tansyrr) and at her blog tansyrr.com which features fiction, feminist essays, comics reviews and pop culture criticism.

How To Piss Off a Failed Super-Soldier
Written by John Chu
Available 07/12/16

John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared at Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine and Tor.com. His story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Superior
Written by Jessica Lack
Available 08/16/16

Jessica is a proud superhero nerd from California, currently living across the pond in London. When she’s not telling stories about super-sidekicks, she’s busy writing about fairy tales and jabberwocks to earn her Master’s degree in Children’s Literature.

The Life and Times of Angel Evans
Written by Meredith Debonnaire
Available 09/13/16

Meredith Debonnaire, hermit-in-training, lives in Gloucestershire, England. She owns more notebooks than she will ever use, but enjoys trying to fill them all up anyway. Her first attempt at writing fantasy (aged 5ish) involved dragons and little else. She has expanded her horizons to include all sorts of magical creatures since then, and sometimes attempts poetry. She does marketing administration for an independent publishing company, which is a lot of fun.

In addition to the five stories outlined above, we will also be publishing…

Hurricane Heels
A New Series by Isabel Yap
Available Fall 2016

HURRICANE HEELS is a series of five interconnected and serialized short stories by Isabel Yap!

Growing up isn’t easy, even with goddess grace and supernatural ass-kicking powers. The Hurricane Heels series looks at the lives of five magical girls – Alex, Ria, Natalie, Aiko, and Selena – through the years, as they balance slaying the forces of evil with school, secrets, falling in love, and staying friends.

Each story will be told from a different character’s point of view – one story for each of the five girls – starting with a bachelorette party gone terribly wrong.

Isabel Yap writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California, Tokyo (for 96 days!), and London. In 2013 she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Tor.com, Shimmer, Interfictions Online, and Nightmare. She is @visyap on Twitter and her website is isalikeswords.wordpress.com.

And there you have it! Our Superhero Season kicks off in May–we cannot wait to share these stories with you.

For more information about Book Smugglers Publishing, our books, artwork, and authors, make sure to check out our shiny brand new publisher site: www.booksmugglerspub.com