Escape Velocity: The Anthology

The anthology of best and new stories submitted to Adventure Books of Seattle’s Escape Velocity magazine is nearing fruition. Last night I finished proofreading 35 stories for the anthology. Not all will be used in it because some are now rather dated and we want the publication to excite readers with its brilliance. Names you might know that are in it are in random order:

Rebecca Latyntseva, Ian Whates, Rosie Oliver, Robert Harkess, William C McCall, Clyde Andrews, Gayle Applegate, David Tallerman, Brian Koscienski and Chris Pisano, Mark Lewis, Gareth D Jones, Joshua Blanc, Gavin J Carr, David Wallace Fleming, Karl Bunker, Sheila Crosby, Ben Bamber, Branden Johnson, Barbara Krasnoff, Ian Smith, Tina M Crone, Bec Zugor, Barry Pomeroy, Lawrence Buentello, Richard Jay Goldstein, Paul Freeman, Adam Colston, Kaolin Fire, Derek Rutherford, and a couple of stories from me and Robert Blevins. Hopefully, we can squeeze in a cartoon by Roberta Gregory too.

We have March 17th as a release date. That may be optimistic but best to have goals. The stories range from edgy noir near future, to struggling on a space rock, weird stuff in future in-ear audio devices to how can a child-bride save herself, both from a violent husband and the psychiatrist. I am exuberant over this anthology. It’s taken a lot of time and work – the nearest an editor gets to giving birth – in a literary sense!

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…

My wife found me stripping woodchip wallpaper in our spare bedroom. “Why are you doing this, you hate decorating and you are doing it all wrong?”

“Because I want a summer house to write and read in down in the shady part of the garden. Before I can put up a summer house I have to get rid of both the dilapidated shed. Before I can dispose of the sheds I need to make room in the garage to house the lawnmower, spare bikes and essential (maybe) bric-a-brac. To make room in the garage I have to dispose of its largest incumbent – dissembled bunk beds. To put those bunk beds in the spare room, it needs to be decorated first.

I was doing it wrong. I should have paid a professional.

Great news for the publishing company, Adventure Books of Seattle, for whom I do editing. The true-life account of DB Cooper who skyjacked an airplane in 1972, jumped out with the money over the Rockies and never caught is called Into The Blast see here. A TV programme company is working with Robert Blevins and PI Skipp Porteous to make a programme about the book and the research that went into it. I only edited the book so I don’t expect to be involved but I’m chuffed to bits for Robert, who did and still does an enormous amount of research (including travelling up and down the Rockies in winter snows).

Intrigued and British? Then you can buy Into the Blast on the UK Amazon site here.

Dimensions improved

Adventure Books of Seattle have released the science fiction anthology with stories from me and Robert  Blevins. There are two new stories in there in addition to re-edited versions from the first edition.

Amazon UK link

Amazon com