R.W. Hodgson
Aitvaras
R. W. Hodgson lives with her husband and two children in Ottawa, Ontario. As a child in Nova Scotia, she got some cute baby chicks for pets, two of whom turned out to be roosters, who then one day tried to kill each other in a bloodbath battle-royale. Her story “A Walk in the Woods” appeared in Tesseracts Twenty-One: Nevertheless.
Chadwick Ginther
Midnight Man versus Frankie Flame
Chadwick Ginther is the Prix Aurora Award nominated author of the Thunder Road Trilogy (Ravenstone Books) and Graveyard Mind (ChiZine Publications). His short fiction has appeared recently in Abyss & Apex Magazine, Equus, and Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinn. He lives and writes in Winnipeg, Canada, spinning sagas set in the wild spaces of Canada’s western wilderness where surely monsters must exist.
Wendy Nikel
Breath of the Caldera
Wendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and elsewhere. Her time travel novella The Continuum and its sequel The Grandmother Paradox were published by World Weaver Press in 2018. For more info, visit wendynikel.com
Annie Neugebaur
Cilantro
Annie Neugebauer is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author with work appearing and forthcoming in more than a hundred publications, including magazines such as Cemetery Dance, Apex, and Black Static, as well as anthologies such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3 and #1 Amazon bestseller Killing It Softly. She’s a member of the Horror Writers Association and a columnist for Writer Unboxed and LitReactor. She lives in Texas with two crazy cute cats and a husband who’s exceptionally well-prepared for the zombie apocalypse. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com for news, poems, organizational tools for writers, and more.
J.G. Formato
The Midwife and the Phoenix
J.G. Formato is a writer and elementary school teacher from North Florida. Her short fiction can be read in Bracken, Allegory, Equus from World Weaver Press, and elsewhere. You can listen to her stories at The Centropic Oracle and Manawaker Studio’s Flash Fiction Podcast.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
By Rhonda Parrish
She Alone
Blake Jessop
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Strange Attractor
Kevin Cockle
Magnesium Bright
Lizbeth Ashton
Permanence
Old Flames
V.F. LeSann
The Hatchling
K.T. Ivanrest
The Djinni and the Accountant
Hal J. Friesen
The Second Great Fire
Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Bait
Krista D. Ball
Double or Nothing
Mara Malins
A Girl, Ablaze with Life
Claude Lalumière
Light My Fire
Susan MacGregor
Ring of Fire
JB Riley
Aladdin’s Laugh
Damascus Mincemeyer
Phoenix Rising
Heather M. O’Connor
Cold Comfort
Gabrielle Harbowy
Aitvaras
R.W. Hodgson
Midnight Man versus
Frankie Flame
Chadwick Ginther
Breath of the Caldera
Wendy Nikel
Cilantro
Annie Neugebauer
The Midwife and the Phoenix
J.G. Formato
Biographies