May is fantasy month and to celebrate we’ve put a number of our fantasy anthologies on sale!
Welcome to Magic Malfunction, edited by Muse’s War author Wally Waltner!
“A misspoken incantation. A miscalculated potion. A wish made in desperation, or a spell cast with too much confidence. Magic Malfunction is an anthology that explores the consequences, both comic and catastrophic, when the arcane arts—or the pacts to acquire them—go awry.” - from the introduction by Wally Waltner
“There’s a revenant thrusting its hips up against the door.” Bardu leaned back with a frown. “Got any idea why a walking dead man is humping the door?”
— “Mail Order Malediction” By Spearman Burke
Her hand streaked down the patterned glass, leaving a greasy smudge that she thoughtfully wiped away with the tip of her linen shirt. Peshea stared at the golden ash framed painting on the other side of the storefront glass, a vibrant depiction of a shimmering, white-shored pond with a solitary chair near the sandy bank. Peshea and her mother had often stopped in this very spot and would discuss the intricate brush strokes in depth, like seasoned aesthetes, but now her mother was gone, and the painting was a joyful reminder of days in the unrecoverable past.
— “The Ring Thief” By J. VanZile
“Come back here, you soggy spawn of Satan,” Lars shouted at the doll. “Let me blow out those split ends.”
— “The Trouble with Kitchen Witches” By Ted Begley
“What were you smoking, Gideon?” I shouted in exasperation.
Grand Magus Gideon Amritus looked as if he had melted into his plush reclining chair. The tails of his long coat fanned out to either side of the chair similar to the wizard robes of old. His rune-adorned top hat covered his shoulder, rather than his silver hair.
“Oh, it was just my normal mix—with a bit of pixie dew,” he said as he took another puff from his pipe. Slowly and with a contented sigh, Magus Amritus blew out a faintly glowing cloud. He seemed to sink even farther into his recliner.
— “A Malady of Unicorns” By Trent Cantrell
“It’s not about what I want. Magic—all magic—has a price. That’s the one inviolate rule: a gift for a gift. You really can do just about anything with magic, but you have to be willing to pay the cost.”
“And what’s the cost for this?”
Mickey’s grin altered, and he suddenly didn’t look young at all. He looked very, very old. “That, at last, is the right question.”
— “Pink Light, Blue Heat” by Misha Burnett
Ava found the Jefferson Building and made her way up to the fourth floor. She opened the door to Professor Morgenstern’s lab and gasped in delight. This is what an alchemy lab is supposed to look like. Lab benches lined the walls, each covered with vials of strangely colored liquids. Bins of ingredients were contained behind glass doors, and looking inside, Ava could see everything from basic grasses to clumps of jackalope hair to phoenix and thunderbird feathers. Best of all, in the center of the room was a real, eight-foot diameter, black iron cauldron. Ava remembered her high school alchemy class, where they had mixed pigeon feathers with diluted wyvern blood in a stainless-steel pot that the cafeteria didn’t want any more in hopes of transforming the graphite from their pencils into cubic zirconia; the best they usually managed was some vaguely rectangular greyish crystals. Ava had read so much about alchemy, about what could be accomplished with the proper equipment. And now she finally had it.
— “A Freshman Research Experience” by Z.M Rennick
He winked at me above a wide, cheesy smile. “I know exactly what you need.” His eyes and fingertips glowed green, and he tapped the computer. The screen bubbled. The excel spreadsheet stretched into a bulge, pushing out toward me.
A head popped out of the screen followed by two little legs. It crawled across my desk, pulling out two more legs and a tail. A pair of wings flexed, and its mouth opened wide, squeaking. A tiny dragon the size of a tape dispenser walked around my desk.
“Feed him, and he’ll take care of it.” Danny the Magic Man turned away and called over his shoulder, “Be careful, though; dragons tend to become what they eat.” With a soft poof, he disappeared, leaving me alone with this new creature.
— “Profit the Magic Dragon” by Jarrod K Williams
She wiped sweaty palms on her grease-stained bell-bottoms and scribbled an incantatory stanza of the automotive animation epic for her application to the Turing Institute of Kinopoetics. She read it aloud to test the rhythm.
Stalwart parking brake
Button disengages you
Freedom of movement
Not her most inspired haiku ever, but the energy resonated perfectly.
—“Turing Car” By Robert F. Lowell
He started with the spell that reduced weight. The words, as Bolan had warned, came from a dozen different pages; some symbols with names he needed to learn, some puns, some word fragments, and two syllables that came from a completely different book. Apparently, “magna glandem” had a meaning passed on by word of mouth, only recorded in a disciple’s scribbled notes in the margin of a different volume.
He wrote the spell syllables down together with the pages they came from to see if he could find a numerical pattern. The pad of paper drifted off the desk and into the hall.
He needed to be more careful.
—“By the Book” By James Bellinger
The Jarl did not laugh, but his expression brightened at the exchange. “Have you been teaching him the old sagas, Master Sonoran?”
“I have. Though I find the best teacher is a longhouse’s expectations.”
—“My Name is Simon” By Wally Waltner
That was convincing. Added to the library.
“Got any idea why a walking dead man is humping the door?”
Gah! What a schlockingly clever way to trick the unwary and weak-minded into buying a book by introducing outré anthology snippets. Yeah-Okay...I'll buy it but ain't paying until the Visa bill comes in at the end of the month. And I'm earning 2% back.