Synopses & Reviews
A dynamic collection of stories that explore the mystery, awe and dread that we may have felt as children when encountering a special toy. But it goes further, to the edges of space, where games are for keeps and where the mind plays its own games. We enter a world where the magic may not have been lost, where a toy plays for keeps or computers and gods vie for the upper hand. Dolls, stuffed animals, wooden games of skill, ancient artifacts misinterpreted, and items that seek a life or even revenge; these lost toys and games bring tales of companionship, loss, revenge, hope, murder, cunning, and love, to be unearthed in the sandbox.
Review
“Usually at least once in a person's childhood we lose an object that at the time is invaluable and irreplaceable to us, although it is worthless to others. Many people remember that lost article for the rest of their lives. Whether it was a lucky pocketknife, a transparent plastic bracelet given to you by your father, a toy you had longed for and never expected to receive, but there it was under the tree on Christmas... it makes no difference what it was. If we describe it to others and explain why it was so important, even those who love us smile indulgently because to them it sounds like a trivial thing to lose. Kid stuff. But it is not. Those who forget about this object have lost a valuable, perhaps even crucial memory. Because something central to our younger self resided in that thing. When we lost it, for whatever reason, a part of us shifted permanently” —Jonathan Carroll, winner of the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award and the French Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire
Review
“Stories [that] are the kind you want to carry around with you for those days when it feels like you’re living in a strange and incomprehensible world; stories will make you feel less alone. They are wondrous and unique little creatures that desire nothing more than to play fetch with your weirdest dreams. They are wild inventions built of words and sentences that dig into your psyche and send back reports about all you never knew of the world.” –Matthew Cheney, World Fantasy Award winning US author and editor
Review
About co-editor Ursula Pflug: “Incendiary, surreal short fiction that immerses the reader in a unique world. The effect is like nothing I’ve felt from reading any other writer's fiction. Pflug manages to find the extraordinary and the epiphanal in reality, and bring out the reality of her fantastical settings. She isn’t about escapism or giving readers a comfortable, familiar experience. If you like daring, if you want to experience something truly different, to come out the other end somehow...changed...then you’re the kind of reader who will love After the Fires. She’s a true original and this collection is Pflug at her best. A first-rate talent who should be more widely known. -Jeff VanderMeer, best selling US author of The Southern Reach trilogy A picaresque miniature, Motion Sickness describes a young urban woman’s bewildering adventures on the verge of the real as she learns to trust friendship, and finally, love.This little book is a winner. Each of the facing pages forms a delightful and inextricable unit: a starkly-incised illustration and a 500-word chapter, with titles that read like a poem. Ursula Pflug’s voice is unique, funny and tough, and the dialogue is so exact it can be heard. SK Dyment’s dark and whimsical illustrations play with and enhance the tersely visual prose. -Heather Spears, author, artist, winner of Governor-General's award for poetry About co-editor Colleen Anderson: “An Ember Amongst the Fallen” was simply a visionary masterpiece… A lovely complement to “Egyptian Holiday” and “The Book Of Doors”. On “The Book with No End” Dagan Books —Neon Magazine "Anderson is an enigma. Many of her stories evoke the tense subtleties of Shirley Jackson, but then I go on to another story and it breathes of Richard Matheson or the late Ray Bradbury. Few people can pull off the whipsaw of terror to wonder and back, but Colleen makes it way past easy." —Wayne Allen Sallee, Horror author
About the Author
Colleen Anderson has published fiction and poetry in over 200 publications with recent work in Cemetery Dance, Deep Cuts, Imaginarium, and the Exile Book of New Canadian Noir. She is an Aurora Award finalist and co-edited Tesseracts 17. Ursula Pflug is the award winning author of the novels Green Music, The Alphabet Stones, and Motion Sickness, as well as the story collections After the Fires and Harvesting the Moon. She edited the anthology They Have To Take You In.