BONES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN, the debut fiction collection by Paul Michael Anderson, is available in trade paperback for $16.95, or eBook for $6.95. Fiction; 426 pages; 9×6 format; illustrations and cover artwork by Pat R. Steiner; introduction by Damien Angelica Walters; afterword by Bracken MacLeod.

Fourteen stories from the intersection of pain and anxiety, rage and fear. On a Nevada highway, a vampire familiar loses faith. At the edge of known space, a man drives himself insane. A would-be mother hears the sounds of a child from another dimension. A piece of stained glass might be all that stands between us and the end of the world. Triumph and tragedy, terror and transformation, are realized in the stories of Bones Are Made to Be Broken.

YES TRESPASSING, the debut fiction collection by Erik T. Johnson, is available in trade paperback for $16.95, or eBook for $6.95. Fiction; 436 pages; 9×6 format; doodles and insanity by Erik T. Johnson; introduction by John F.D. Taff.

Twenty-five, or maybe twenty-six or -seven or perhaps twenty-eight (let’s say it’s twenty-eight) individual works by Erik T. Johnson, some previously-published, some appearing in this book for the first time, stories like “The Leaf” and “Krug’s Pen,” “The Depopulation Syndrome,” “The Invention of the Mask” (which you can find on the front cover), “The Depopulation Syndrome” and the novella Scissors Seldom Come. Trespass. Read the horror, the wonder, the mindscrewing. This book will change you.

THE FAR FUTURE (The Cal Wild Chronicles, #4) by Gene O’Neill is available in trade paperback for  $16.95, and coming soon in eBook. Fiction; 356 pages; 9×6 format; illustrations by Orion Zangara; introduction by Scott Edelman.

Gene O’Neill’s magnum opus of speculative fiction, The Cal Wild Chronicles, comes to a close with The Far Future, a meta-novel with interconnecting tales that takes place shortly after—and also intertwine with—those in The Near Future and the rest of this colorful series. Collecting some of Gene’s more recent works, such as memorable short stories like “Down on the 01 Level,” where for a price one can transform into skins of past celebrities, “Nostalgia,” in which full-body art is commonplace and sometimes useful when hiding from the law, and even “The Hungry Skull” (a love story), which takes place around an illegal histro-bistro where historical events are reenacted in ‘deathplays’ by actors and commonfolk alike, this final book in the series perhaps offers us warning glimpses into possible futures of our own, wherein prejudices and stereotyping might one day take us if we allow them into our lives. Also included are connected novellas such as The Great Northern Sweet Water Raid, and Jade, and two new futuristic novelettes, “On the North Slope of Little Agony” and “The Dark Green Woman,” which further explore post-apocalyptic Cal Wild and its colorful tales of Dyed People, mutants, and other wonderful creatures. With this final piece of the Cal Wild puzzle placed, we can finally understand the metamorphosis and importance of a not-so-unrealistic future.

THE NEAR FUTURE (The Cal Wild Chronicles, #3) by Gene O’Neill is available in trade paperback for  $16.95, and coming soon in eBook. Fiction; 314 pages; 9×6 format; illustrations by Orion Zangara; introduction by Megan Arcuri.

In The Near Future, Gene O’Neill covers an immense spectrum of color in a post-apocalyptic vision of California. A meta-novel of sorts, part three of The Cal Wild Chronicles collects some of Gene’s most memorable fiction, cohesively connecting stories such as “The Armless Conductor,” which was published over thirty years ago in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, to Doc Good’s Travelling Show, a Bram Stoker Award nominated novella, and “Coyote Gambit.” Tying these stories together are completely new chapters of Cal Wild, such as a new short story, “Return of the Ice Man,” as well as a new novelette, Mohave Transfer, and a new novella, The Scarlet Man, in which the lives of colorful DP’s, or Dyed People, cross paths as they try to survive a world left in ruin. Gene O’Neill masterfully blends decades of literary creation in this penultimate book of a genre-building series that may one day be called his magnum opus of his speculative work. Horror, fantasy, and science fiction collide with unforgiving, unflinching abandon as The Near Future of Cal Wild draws closer to The Far Future.

THE BURDEN OF INDIGO (The Cal Wild Chronicles, #2) by Gene O’Neill is available in trade paperback for $16.95, or eBook for $6.95. Fiction; 278 pages; 9×6 format; illustrations by Orion Zangara; introduction by Lisa Morton.

The Cal Wild Chronicles continues with The Burden of Indigo, the story that started it all. In 1981 Gene O’Neill published a five thousand word short story in The Twilight Zone Magazine called “The Burden of Indigo,” which launched his award-winning career of writing horror, science fiction, and fantasy. This novel-sized expansion of Gene’s original well-loved story is the second of the four volumes, illustrated throughout by Orion Zangara. The Burden of Indigo begins where The Confessions of St. Zach left off, and follows the story of an indigo man. Dyed long ago for perhaps the ultimate crime, he believes his color is starting to fade, and with visions of a Rainbow Man on his mind, he wants to know why. Is he beginning to heal? Also included in this volume is a short history and background by Gene, as well as the original short story version of “The Burden of Indigo” as it originally appeared in The Twilight Zone Magazine.

THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. ZACH (The Cal Wild Chronicles, #1) by Gene O’Neill is available in trade paperback for $16.95, or eBook for $6.95. Fiction; 380 pages; 9×6 format; illustrations by Orion Zangara; introduction by John R. Little.

A post-apocalyptic vision of California comes to life in the first book of The Cal Wild Chronicles, a series of novels by Gene O’Neill that span horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Over the last 30 years, Gene has explored this colorful world called Cal Wild through award-winning short fiction, long fiction, and novels, and now his magnum opus is collected within four volumes, and illustrated throughout by Orion Zangara. It all stars with this recently expanded version of the Bram Stoker Award nominated novella, The Confessions of St. Zach, where the accused are judged and permanently dyed for their crimes. DP’s, or Dyed People, roam Cal Wild, and every day they are faced with prejudice and brutality while they try to survive a new non-colored world. A crimson man, a lime green woman, the rightfully and wrongfully accused, some dyed amber, some dyed indigo … The Confessions of St. Zach will take you from the beginning of the end, and lead you to The Burden of Indigo, the story that started it all.

INKBLOTS AND BLOOD SPOTS, a fiction and poetry collection by Michael Bailey, is available in trade paperback for $12.95, or eBook for $4.95. Fiction / poetry; 286 pages; 8×5 format; illustrations and cover artwork by Daniele Serra; introduction by Douglas E. Winter. This book was originally published by Villipede Publications. This second edition trade paperback and eBook are now published by Written Backwards.

From the mind of award-winning author and editor Michael Bailey comes Inkblots and Blood Spots, a painfully beautiful collection of short stories and poetry that reaches deep into the imagination, breaking hearts and boundaries along the way …

Stories include the Bram Stoker nominated “Fireman / Primal Tongue,” which also received an Honorable Mention for Year’s Best Horror; “Dandelion Clocks,” a haunting, melodic tribute to the tragedy of 9/11; “I Wanted Black,” where a young boy’s birthday is anything but cause to celebrate; “Mum,” a tale of two sisters unfolding like the bandages on their mother’s badly burned body. Take a surreal stroll through a carnival in “Underwater Ferris Wheel,” where the biggest attraction may be your last ride; witness a pregnant woman’s harrowing encounter with soul-stealing faerie in “Not the Child”; and find out why it gets cold in a little girl’s room at night when she sees “A Light in the Closet.”

SCALES AND PETALS, the debut fiction and poetry collection by Michael Bailey, is available in trade paperback for $12.95, or eBook for $4.95. Fiction / poetry; 242 pages; 8×5 format; cover artwork by John Hornor Jacobs. The print edition includes a bonus graphic adaptation of the story “Plasty,” in collaboration with artist L.A. Spooner, as well as three previously unpublished flash fiction pieces.

Between writing the novels Palindrome Hannah and Phoenix Rose, Michael Bailey penned and published a number of these dark short fiction and poetry pieces, some of which can be found in literary magazines and  anthologies  around the world.  A few of these fallen dragon scales and flower petals, as he likes to call them, are reprinted here, while others are seeing print for the first time, hand selected and arranged by the author. Once you crack the spine, there’s no going back.

---