Last year, Jason Pitre of Genesis of Legend contacted me about editing a fiction anthology based on his upcoming Spark Roleplaying Game. I liked the game and Jason’s ideas for the book, so I signed on. He launched a Kickstarter for the game back on March 12, and today he announced the anthology as a stretch goal for the drive.

We’ve already lined up a number of fantastic authors for the book. They include:

• Mur Lafferty (Parsec Award winning Host of the “I Should be Writing” Podcast)
• Mike Resnick (five-time Hugo Award winner)
• J. Daniel Sawyer (Author of The Antithesis Progression)
• Greg Stolze (Game designer of the Unknown Armies RPG and prolific author)
• Alasdair Stuart (Host of the “Pseudopod” and co-host of the “Escape Pod” podcasts )

If the drive hits its stretch goal, everyone who backs the drive at the $10 level or greater gets a copy of the ebook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats. Otherwise, it won’t happen, at least for now.

The drive ends on April 12, just four days from now. Jason has set the anthology as the drive’s final goal at $16,000. The drive’s already up to almost $8,500 as I write this, but that’s a long way to go within so little time. If it sounds like fun to you – especially if you like games like Spark – consider backing the drive. Either way, if you could help spread the word, I’d appreciate it.

Here’s hoping the drive makes that last goal, as I’d love to read those stories, and I think you’d enjoy them too.

The last anthology in my trilogy of recent write-ups is GI Joe: Tales from the Cobra Wars. This is a re-release of the book that came out from IDW a couple years ago as a trade paperback, but this time it’s being brought out as both a mass-market paperback and an ebook in partnership with Open Road Media.

The book was edited by Max Brooks of World War Z fame, who’s about as big a GI Joe fan as you’ll ever come across. My old pal Jeff Conner did a great (uncredited) job setting it all up as well. The book features stories from Jonathan Maberry, Duane Swierczynski, Dennis Tafoya, John McGoran, and John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow, and it features interior illustrations by Michael Montenat. The stunning cover comes from Gabriele Dell’Otto.

My story, “Just a Game,” posits that Destro has been laundering money through the unregulated economies of MMORPGs, and it’s up to a team of Joes to put a stop to it. This brings Duke and Scarlett to Siberia along with Barrel Roll and the geeky Braintrust, who’s perhaps better suited to driving a desk than a special op. I had a ball playing in this universe, and if you’re a fan of GI Joe, or even just sharp stories of international intrigue, you’ll enjoy the book.

When Robin Laws asked me to pitch him a story for The Lion and the Aardvark – one of two books from his Stone Skin Press I have a story in – he called it Aesop 3.0. He wanted short and sweet story with clear messages, post-modern fables for a post-modern age.

I wrestled with a number of different ideas for the story, and I wound up throwing them all out. None of them quite fit.

Then I sat down and just wrote one. They’re short things, after all, only a page or two at best, and I emailed it to him.

It’s called “Cow and Dog.” It’s about the cow (who has one calf) and the dog (who has a litter of them) and how they deal with the ways this requires different things of them as parents. Robin loved it, so it’s in the book.

The book features a cover by the multitalented Jim Zubkavich, best known these days for writing his fun fantasy comic Skullkickers. Besides “Cow and Dog,” it’s packed with dozens of tight little stories by dozens of authors, including Emily Care Boss, Richard Dansky, Graeme Davis, Ed Greenwood, Dave Gross, Rob Heinsoo, Will Hindmarch, John Kovalic, Nick Mamatas, Sarah Newton, Sandy Petersen, Epidiah Ravachol, Aaron Rosenberg, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Greg Stolze, Monica Valentinelli, Chuck Wendig, and Jim Zub(kavich), among many others.

This is next on my reading list, and I cannot wait to crack it open and dip into this blizzard’s worth of snowflake tales.

Two fresh anthologies and a revamped one either hit shelves in the recent past or are just about to appear, and I have a story in each of them. First up, we have two books from the all-new Stone Skin Press, which is run by my pal Robin Laws. Robin’s a fantastic game designer, but it turns out he has a sharp eye as a fiction editor as well. He assembled fantastic slates of writers for both books.

The first one is The New Hero: Volume 2. The New Hero series is based on the idea that not all heroes change, as you’re often told they must in your literature classes. Instead, some are iconic, the kinds of heroes that force the world to change around them by being true to themselves. This includes most heroes in serial fiction, from Spider-Man to Sherlock Holmes.

The story I wrote for this was the first-ever Shotguns & Sorcery yarn, “Friends Like These.” I liked it so much I followed it up with another short called “Goblintown Justice” – which you can grab here for free – and a trilogy of novels, starting with Hard Times in Dragon City.

The book features a fantastic cover in the ancient Japanese style, created by incredible comic-book artist Gene Ha. If you look closely, you can see Max Gibson and Moira slipping out of the front door of the building there.

A stack of great writers joins me in this book, including Alex Bledsoe, Emily Care Boss, Jennifer Brozek, Tobias Buckell, Jesse Bullington, Robin D. Laws (himself), Will Hindmarch, Jean Rabe, Christina Stiles, Greg Stolze, James L. Sutter, John Scott Tynes, and James Wallis.

Next comes The Lion and the Aardvark, but I’ll tell you about that one Monday.