Book Release: Overcoming Adversity: An Anthology For Andrew Edited By Nick Wilford

Today's the release date of Overcoming Adversity, the book compilation of all the blogfest entries from the Overcoming Adversity Blogfest Nick Wilford hosted a month ago.

I should probably mention my short story's in the anthology; not only am I excited to contribute to a book created for such a good cause (see the blurb below) this is actually the first time a piece of fiction I wrote has appeared in anything other than my blog.


Here's the info for Overcoming Adversity:


Blurb:

Cover design by D.R. Cartwright; concept by Ella Wilson.

A collection of seventy moving and uplifting original pieces - real life, flash fiction, and poetry - about battling against the odds and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. The contributors include Amazon bestselling authors Alex J. Cavanaugh and Kyra Lennon, and the cream of upcoming talent.
     The anthology is part of a fundraising effort to send the editor's stepson, Andrew McNaughton, to a specialist college in England. Andrew has cerebral palsy, and is a remarkable young man with a promising future. However, the free further education options offered in his own country of Scotland will not challenge him and allow him to progress. In order to access the education he deserves, Andrew will have to pay exorbitant fees, thus creating a situation of discrimination.
     Help us get Andrew to college by buying a book that runs the full gamut of human emotions, ultimately leaving you inspired and glad to be alive. Whatever struggles you are going through, our sincere hope is that this book will help.

Purchase links:

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Adversity-Anthology-Andrew-ebook/dp/B00BM62EZA
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Adversity-Anthology-Andrew-ebook/dp/B00BM62EZA
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/290822
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17452314-overcoming-adversity

Editor Bio: Nick Wilford is a writer and stay-at-home dad. Once a journalist, he now makes use of those rare times when the house is quiet to explore the realms of fiction. When not writing he can usually be found spending time with his family or cleaning something. He has four short stories published in Writer’s Muse magazine. Nick is also co-running a campaign to get a dedicated specialist college built in Scotland. Visit him at http://nickwilford.blogspot.co.uk.









-----The Golden Eagle

The Overcoming Adversity Bloghop: In Which I Write A Short Story

Nick Wilford of Scattergun Scribblings is hosting a blogfest today! From his blog:

I asked you to contribute a short story on the theme of overcoming adversity, to be compiled into an anthology to help raise funds to send my stepson to a specialist college.

More information here.

And so, here's my story, which is called "Endurance" because I can't think of anything better, regardless of how obvious it may be. Anyway. I hope you enjoy it!

**********

Endurance

Four thousand years and the monolith still stood. Four thousand years had seen kingdoms, empires, civilizations rise and tumble off the edge of history like water over a fall, to crash against the rocks below and the memories of them to scatter into mist. Trees had shrouded it and merged their roots with its surface; the mountain had changed, the rocks shifting and half-burying the thing like a body whose consciousness had long vanished.

   It didn’t have a name. It had always had a title, an honorific by which it was acknowledged by those same civilizations that had tried to pry it apart, to chip away at its skin until all that was left was the hole in which it had been placed.

   It wanted a name.

   It wanted to get away from the cloying aura of the past and the memories of the rituals it had endured because it could not move, to avoid the horrible worship from others that persisted, tireless, only because they could not understand it. To escape from the refusal to acknowledge all it wanted was to get out, out, out.

   Another thousand years couldn’t do too much damage. Processing time behind the wall of its shell, it decided another two thousand years would be bearable. But to feel the organisms crowding around it, even the inert, brainless ones of the trees and the grass and the fungi, that was too much. It wanted company.

   Four thousand and three hundred and twenty seven years after its memory began, it sensed a more complicated presence. It was immediately recognizable as something more advanced, one of the things in this world bigger than plants but hardly more complex.

   It waited. Those things always passed by.

   The thing touched the hard surface as though it was an egg, capable of bearing the weight of a galaxy on its end—but if one knocked it wrong, liable to spill the trauma of history onto the mountainside, an outpouring of the past assumed forgotten.

   It continued to wait. It could sense that the birds had quieted, and the wind hung close to the ground like a scared child, and the mountain had stilled.

   But . . . there was a new thing, besides the air and the trees and the mountain. The thing had somehow exposed its surface, brushing away the organic detritus that had gathered over those millennia, for once being gentle instead of trying to crack it open.

   It did not recognize sunlight. It did not recognize that new thing in the sky, hovering like its own counterpart a million miles away. It felt an unburdening, a release of four thousand years of pain.

   Perhaps the sun was supposed to be its company. It tried to communicate.

   The sun replied.

**********

Any thoughts on the story?


-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows

Cover of The Starry Rift

Title: The Starry Rift

Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Contributing Authors: Stephen Baxter, Cory Doctorow, Greg Egan, Jeffrey Ford, Neil Gaiman, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ann Halam, Margo Lanagan, Kelly Link, Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Garth Nix, Alastair Reynolds, Tricia Sullivan, Scott Westerfeld, Walter Jon Williams

Publisher: Viking

Genre: Science Fiction/Anthology

Page Count: 525

Rating: 5 out of 5

Cover Rating: 5 out of 5. Awesome cover for this one!

Inside flap:

Truly successful science fiction does two things: it gives a credible glimpse into the future while entertaining the reader. With this in mind, noted anthologist Jonathan Strahan asked sixteen of today's most inventive, compelling writers to look past the horizon of the present day. Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, and their colleagues have crafted a dazzling range of stories. Whether on spaceships, in suburbia, or in simulated gaming worlds, whether about cloning, battle tactics, or corporate politics, the stories of The Starry Rift will give every reader something to consider.

   This original anthology is crucial in reading for those who want to see where the future--and the future of science fiction--is headed.

My expectations: High. I loved Strahan's other anthologies, so I pounced on this one when I saw it in the library. (I really should go back and read The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year again.)


It exceeded my expectations!

About the book: There are some amazing authors in this book. I've read Gaiman, Lanagan, Link, McDonald, Doctorow, Westerfeld, Nix, and a few others before, and I enjoyed most of them. This book didn't disappoint, either. With different formats, completely different ideas, and a whole host of characters, I loved reading all of the stories.

1. A**-Hat Magic Spider by Scott Westerfeld

Can you imagine nearly starving yourself to go onto a ship with just one other object with you? Having to make yourself weigh nothing over a certain allotted number of grams, because of how much food and fuel you take up? That's what this boy has to do.

2. Cheats by Ann Halam

Gaming seems to be on the rise when it comes to SF. Personally, I was never a fan of it, but as long as the story is well-written and free of the usual cliches I'm fine with it. This short story isn't cliched, and the idea of "cheats" in the game I hadn't heard of before..

3. Orange by Neil Gaiman

It's 70 answers. You don't know the questions being asked, but you do know the replies. It's an interesting set up--the reader has to fill in the questions on their own.

4. The Surfer by Kelly Link

An epidemic has hit Earth. People are being quarantined, planes are grounded, parts of the world have stopped and Adorno is stuck in the middle of it.

5. Repair Kit by Stephen Baxter

Spaceships in this one. The Flying Pig is equipped with a special drive, a prototype--Paul Tielman is Captain, and he is known for being cautious when it comes to flying. But the company wants him to get into space without the precautions, a mistake that could be deadly for the crew.

6. The Dismantled Invention of Fate by Jeffrey Ford

I love this one. Parts of it sort of reminded me of Pocahontas/Avatar (I kid you not) but it's completely different in other respects--yes, there's the foreigner who falls in love with one of the people indigenous to the planet, but he thinks he accidentally killed her, and now lives alone. His life changes when a strange creature appears and stabs him.

7. Anda's Game by Cory Doctorow

A take on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Again, it's a gaming story, this time about a girl who belongs to an elite group of gamers; she and one of her friends are sent, with the promise of a large reward, to kill everyone inside one building.

8. Sundiver Day by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Sundiver's brother has been killed in the war. She misses him terribly, as does her mother. She works for a place conducting research on cloning, being a scientific genius herself. Then something occurs to her, out of missing him so badly--what if she cloned her brother?

9. The Dust Assassin by Ian McDonald

Padmini was told by her father that she was a weapon. To be used against a rival family, she was brought up in the city, always wondering how and why she was a weapon. When her family is attacked and killed, leaving only her living, she escapes with one of her family's most trusted yts, to go into hiding, to wait until--the reason still unknown to her--she can act as the weapon she was brought up to be.

10. The Star Surgeon's Apprentice by Alastair Reynolds

Peter Vandry needs to get off Mokmer. He doesn't have enough credit though, to buy his passage--so he agrees to become an apprentice aboard the Iron Lady. The Star Surgeon, Zeal, takes care of the crew members onboard, and they are usually half-people, half-machine. When the Iron Lady gets into a fight with another ship, Peter learns something else--this isn't just a ship. It's one of the fabled and infamous pirate ships. And he can't get off.

11. An Honest Day's Work by Margo Lanagan

(This is the story I did one of my Teaser Tuesdays on.) Amarlis is a cripple, one leg withered. He can't find work very often--but when one, huge job comes along, everyone gets a spot. They're dismantling of a huge, massive, living human replica. Of course, things start to go wrong when they realize that the creature's brain wasn't completely sedated.

12. Lost Continent by Greg Egan

Ali is taken away by a man his uncle says is trustworthy. He's forced to stay under a blanket for the entire trip, while they travel through deserts and tunnels, until they accidentally crash. Ali finds himself in a strange world; apparently, in a different time, on a different continent.

13. Incomers by Paul McAuley

Strangers on the moon are rare, especially in some parts. Which is why Jack, Mark, and Sky decide to follow the man they see in the market; they think he is a spy of sorts. It all starts to go wrong when Mark decides to break into his house and find out what the man's really about.

14. Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome by Tricia Sullivan

Maja is a fighter. There's such a thing as M-space, and she uses an M-ask to access it. She can travel anywhere in the Universe with a single thought; the purpose is to fight others who are on the enemy side. Her body is programmed to reflect parts of the universe, which means, for example, that her leg may connect with a power plant, her arm to a factory, and so on. If she's injured, that place goes down. But when the fight comes, something happens--her communication is shut off, and she's suddenly feeling pain when no one's there.

15. Infestation by Garth Nix

Mechanical vampires, and their hunters. There are the freelance hunters, with their Wood-N-Death (r) weapons, their crosses, but Jay has none of that--just a scar in the shape of a cross, and a wooden weapon. He and four others are sent to a vampire lair, with ten of the creatures living inside. Their goal is to kill all of them.

16. Pinocchio by Walter Jon Williams

The pitfalls of fame and being "popular". Sanson starts out his story as a gorrillaloid, a human who's taken on the shape of a gorilla. He has a huge following of people (much like, say, Justin Bieber). When his girlfriend, Kimmie, dumps him, he's at a loss at first to think of what to do--she's now his rival. His popularity begins to slide continually, and Sanson is forced to scramble to think of something--anything--to do.

Other: Some language, b-, d-, and s-words, and violence.


I don't usually like anthologies. But sometimes anthologies can pull it off like nothing else can, and this one did that for me.

Do I recommend this book? Yes!

-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: Krik? Krak!

Title: Krik? Krak!

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 4 out of 5

Cover Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Good. Normally, people on the front cover don't really jive with me, but I believe this image fits the story well enough it's not an issue. I wish--once again--that the title font had been bigger than the author's font, but oh well.

Back Cover: 

When Haitians tell a story they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners say "Krak!" In Krik? Krak! Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to the narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

My expectations: It was a National Book Award Finalist, so I expected a well-written book.


I got a well-written book.

About the book: Many of the stories in Krik? Krak! are disturbing. Focusing on the lives of women in Haiti, it's not exactly a feel-good collection, because of the way women are treated, by their husbands, by soldiers,  by society.


The stories are, however, realistically portrayed. Haitian culture isn't exactly calm and reasonable under normal circumstances--after reading this, the earthquakes in January are put into a more stark light. I can't imagine what it would be like living in that sort of destruction and society, and surviving.


Edwidge Danticat writes well. The stories--while unusual to what I am used to--flowed along with the words, and I enjoyed her style.

• Plot:

Each of the nine stories is different; the endings are usually unexpected, and most of them are disturbing. Not in a bad way, exactly, but they did sort of startle me. Like when it turned out that one woman had been thrown out of her husband's home because she kept delivering stillborn children, and then, out of some sort of mental breakdown, started taking care of a child--as if it was her own--that turned out to be dead. 


The stories made me wonder at the psychological strains that the characters were going through to commit such acts of suicide and desperation--but also hope.

• Characters:

The characters are diverse, and they are mostly focused on women, although some stories are told through a man's perspective. I did not really like any of the characters, though I did find many of them interesting. What happens to the characters can be horrific; the way they're treated and the way that the others around them deal with the situations is not like what you'd expect in a rational society.

• Setting/Elements:

The first story has an interesting format; it's written in the form of letters two lovers are writing to each other, one out in the sea, the other still living in the violence back at home. (The others are in the third and first person.) I think the way they they put this together as a collection worked well for the book.

Other: Suicide, violence, references, disturbing events, some sex (it's not actively described or anything, but it's on the minds of a few of the characters). Sometimes the actions of the people are strange and out of control (such as witch burning/trials).

Do I recommend this book? Yes, but it's not for the faint-of-heart.

-----The Golden Eagle