BEHIND THE MASK

BEHIND THE MASK

by Kelly Link, Carrie Vaughn, Seanan McGuire, Cat Rambo, Lavie Tidhar and others

Behind the Mask is a multi-author collection with stories by award-winning authors Kelly Link, Cat Rambo, Carrie Vaughn, Seanan McGuire, Lavie Tidhar, Sarah Pinsker, Keith Rosson, Kate Marshall, Chris Large and others. It is partially, a prose nod to the comic world—the bombast, the larger-than-life, the save-the-worlds and the calls-to-adventure. But it’s also a spotlight on the more intimate side of the genre. The hopes and dreams of our cape-clad heroes. The regrets and longings of our cowled villains. That poignant, solitary view of the world that can only be experienced from behind the mask.

Excerpt from “Pedestal” by Seanan McGuire –

. . . did you see what Lady Thunder was wearing at the Oscars? Puh-LEEZ, she needs to start dressing her age and not her maturity . . .

. . . OMG, met Shock Star, and he is SO AMAZING, your favorite could NEVER. . .

. . . all six Moths are suing each other over their name, and it’s like, grow up, people, life isn’t just about merchandising . . .

. . . perfect . . .

. . . problematic . . .

. . . so pure . . .

. . . such a skank . . .

. . . they asked for this, you know? That’s all I can think when one ofthem pretends to be upset about the paps. They asked for this, and we gave it to them. You’d think they could manage to be grateful. They owe us.

We own them.

You can do this. My reflection looked back at me dubiously, as if it wanted to argue with my self-affirmation. I did my best to ignore it, staring into my own eyes and firmly repeating the thought. You can do this. You can put on your coat. You can pick up your keys. You can leave the house.

“This is a terrible idea,” said my reflection. “I want to register my objection ahead of the crowd. And there will be a crowd.”

“Maybe there won’t be,” I said.

My reflection tilted her head and looked at me through her—through my—eyelashes. I glared and turned away. Somehow, I can never manage to look quite as judgmental as my reflection. It’s not fair. I’m the real person. I should be the one with the full arsenal of expressions.

Instead, I get to be the one with the full arsenal of anxieties and expectations. The blue light on my phone was blinking, signaling that more email had come in while I was arguing with myself. I bit my lip and threw the phone into my purse. If anything important came through, it would trigger an alarm, and I’d drop whatever I was doing to race off and save the world. Until then, I was going to focus on saving something a little closer to home: myself. I hadn’t been outside the house when I wasn’t in costume in over a week. The thought of pizza was starting to give me acid reflux. I needed a change.

I needed to go grocery shopping.

Fresh bread. I took a step toward the door. Lunch meat. Another step. Grapes, green grapes, that haven’t been in the back of a delivery van. That was the last nudge I needed. The team delivery service was all too happy to keep me fed and healthy, but the person they used to pick their produce always went by perceived shelf life, and not by potential tastiness. One too many shipments of rock-hard pears and tasteless tomatoes had driven me into the comforting arms of takeout, which at least never pretended to be good for me.

Fruit, fruit, fruit. The silent chant got me through the process of putting on my shoes, willfully ignoring my reflection making faces at me from the shiny brass surface of the umbrella stand. Fruit, fruit, fruit. I shrugged my coat on and put my headphones in, blocking out anything my reflections had to say. Fruit, fruit, fruit. Fruit and ice cream.

~Buy BEHIND THE MASK:

–Amazon
–B&N
–Powell’s

Other links:

–book page
–publisher

AN INTERVIEW WITH SEANAN MCGUIRE
-What inspired you to become a writer?

The sudden and awe-inspiring discovery that there were people in the world who wrote books; that it was a thing people were actually allowed to do, and not some sort of mysterious process via which the chosen ones were permitted to write things down for all eternity. I was a very wide-eyed child. As soon as I knew being a writer was something I was allowed to do, I decided I was going to do it.

-If you could visit your book’s world for a day, what one thing would you do?

Hide. Regardless of the book in question: hide. Anything else would end with my messy and untimely death.

-Which of your characters would you go out for drinks and/or pizza with?

The Luidaeg. She\’s terrible and terrifying and of near-infinite power, but she\’s also resigned to her lot in life, and would just sigh a lot and insist on getting anchovies on her half.

-You’re in a tavern, and a dwarf challenges you to a duel. What do you do?

I remind them that the challenged chooses the weapon, and spend the next two hours in an epic poetry writing competition with the dwarf. We write a lot of sonnets. Someone ends up engaged. It\’s probably not me.

-Is there a genre you could never write? Which and why?

Nope.

ABOUT SEANAN MCGUIRE

Seanan McGuire lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest, in a large, creaky house with a questionable past. She shares her home with two enormous blue cats, a querulous calico, the world’s most hostile iguana, and an assortment of other oddities, including more horror movies than any one person has any business owning. It is her life goal to write for the X-Men, and she gets a little closer every day.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye and InCryptid urban fantasy series, both from DAW Books, and the Newsflesh and Parasitology trilogies, both from Orbit (published under the name “Mira Grant”). She writes a distressing amount of short fiction, and has released three collections set in her superhero universe, starring Velma “Velveteen” Martinez and her allies. Seanan usually needs a nap. Keep up with her at www.seananmcguire.com , or on Twitter at @seananmcguire.

OTHER AUTHORS OF BEHIND THE MASK
Kelly Link is the author of four short story collections: Get in Trouble, a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Pretty Monsters, Magic for Beginners, and Stranger Things Happen. She lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, who hosts a talk radio show for the supernaturally disadvantaged, the fourteenth installment of which is Kitty Saves the World. She\’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of 80 short stories. She\’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. Her second novel, Hearts of Tabat, appears in early 2017 from Wordfire Press. She is the current President of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of America. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see http://www.kittywumpus.net

Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning and Premio Roma nominee A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), the World Fantasy Award winning Osama (2011) and of the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century (2013). His latest novel is Central Station (2016). He is the author of many other novels, novellas and short stories

Kate Marshall lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and several small agents of chaos disguised as a dog, cat, and child. She works as a cover designer and video game writer. Her fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, and other venues, and her YA survival thriller I Am Still Alive is forthcoming from Viking. You can find her online at katemarshallwrites.com.

Chris Large writes regularly for Aurealis Magazine and has had fiction published in Australian speculative fiction magazines and anthologies. He\’s a single parent who enjoys writing stories for middle-graders and young adults, and about family life in all its forms. He lives in Tasmania, a small island at the bottom of Australia, where everyone rides Kangaroos and says \’G\’day mate!\’ to utter strangers.

Stuart Suffel\’s body of work includes stories published by Jurassic London, Evil Girlfriend Media, Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, Kraxon Magazine, and Aurora Wolf among others. He exists in Ireland, lives in the Twilight Zone, and will work for Chocolate Sambuca Ice cream. Twitter: @suffelstuart

Michael Milne is a writer and teacher originally from Canada, who lived in Korea and China, and is now in Switzerland. Not being from anywhere anymore really helps when writing science fiction. His work has been published in The Sockdolager, Imminent Quarterly, and anthologies on Meerkat Press and Gray Whisper.

Adam R. Shannon is a career firefighter/paramedic, as well as a fiction writer, hiker, and cook. His work has been shortlisted for an Aeon award and appeared in Morpheus Tales and the SFFWorld anthology You Are Here: Tales of Cryptographic Wonders. He and his wife live in Virginia, where they care for an affable German Shepherd, occasional foster dogs, a free-range toad, and a colony of snails who live in an old apothecary jar. His website and blog are at AdamRShannon.com.

Jennifer Pullen received her doctorate from Ohio University and her MFA from Eastern Washington University. She originally hails from Washington State. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are upcoming in journals including: Going Down Swinging (AU), Cleaver, Off the Coast, Phantom Drift Limited, and Clockhouse.

Stephanie Lai is a Chinese-Australian writer and occasional translator. She has published long meandering thinkpieces in Peril Magazine, the Toast, the Lifted Brow and Overland. Of recent, her short fiction has appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction, Cranky Ladies of History, and the In Your Face Anthology. Despite loathing time travel, her defence of Dr Who companion Perpugilliam Brown can be found in Companion Piece (2015). She is an amateur infrastructure nerd and a professional climate change adaptation educator (she\’s helping you survive our oncoming climate change dystopia). You can find her on twitter @yiduiqie, at stephanielai.net, or talking about pop culture and drop bears at no-award.net.

Aimee Ogden is a former biologist, science teacher, and software tester. Now she writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Asimov\’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Baen.com, Persistent Visions, and The Sockdolager.

Nathan Crowder is a Seattle-based fan of little known musicians, unpopular candy, and just happens to write fantasy, horror, and superheroes. His other works include the fantasy novel Ink Calls to Ink, short fiction in anthologies such as Selfies from the End of the World, and Cthulhurotica, and his numerous Cobalt City superhero stories and novels. He is still processing the death of David Bowie.

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the 2015 Nebula Award winning novelette \”Our Lady of the Open Road.\” Her novelette \”In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind\” was the 2014 Sturgeon Award winner and a 2013 Nebula finalist. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov\’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Galician. She is also a singer/songwriter with three albums on various independent labels and a fourth forthcoming. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and dog. She can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and twitter.com/sarahpinsker.

Keith Frady writes weird short stories in a cluttered apartment in Atlanta. His work has appeared in Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, Literally Stories, The Yellow Chair Review, and The Breakroom Stories.

Ziggy Schutz is a young queer writer living on the west coast of Canada. She\’s been a fan of superheroes almost as long as she\’s been writing, so she\’s very excited this is the form her first published work took. When not writing, she can often be found stage managing local musicals and mouthing the words to all the songs. Ziggy can be found at @ziggytschutz, where she\’s probably ranting about representation in fiction.

Matt Mikalatos is the author of four novels, the most recent of which is Capeville: Death of the Black Vulture, a YA superhero novel. You can connect with him online at Capeville.net or Facebook.com/mikalatosbooks.

Patrick Flanagan – For security reasons, Patrick Flanagan writes from one of several undisclosed locations; either—
1) A Top Secret-classified government laboratory which studies genetic aberrations and unexplained phenomena;
2) A sophisticated compound hidden in plain sight behind an electromagnetic cloaking shield;
3) A decaying Victorian mansion, long plagued by reports of terrifying paranormal activity; or
4) The subterranean ruins of a once-proud empire which ruled the Earth before recorded history, and whose inbred descendants linger on in clans of cannibalistic rabble
—all of which are conveniently accessible from exits 106 or 108 of the Garden State Parkway. Our intelligence reports that his paranoid ravings have been previously documented by Grand Mal Press, Evil Jester Press, and Sam\’s Dot Publishing. In our assessment he should be taken seriously, but not literally. (Note: Do NOT make any sudden movements within a 50\’ radius.)

Keith Rosson is the author of the novels THE MERCY OF THE TIDE (2017, Meerkat) and SMOKE CITY (2018, Meerkat). His short fiction has appeared in Cream City Review, PANK, Redivider, December, and more. An advocate of both public libraries and non-ironic adulation of the cassette tape, he can be found at keithrosson.com.

~Follow the rest of the tour </P

GIVEAWAYS

THE PUBLISHER IS OFFERING A SPECIAL CONTEST – ONE COPY OF THE BOOK (CHOICE OF Epub or Mobi) WILL BE GIVEN AWAY TO A RANDOMLY DRAWN COMMENTER AT EVERY STOP (Drawing will be held 5 days after the stop’s date and is separate from the rafflecopter drawing – to enter, the entrant must leave a comment at the stop).

And enter the rafflecopter giveaway.

The authors will be awarding a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.