Mighty Mighty

What if some people really had superpowers? How different would the world be?

Not much.

In the world we live in, plenty of people virtually burst with skills, talents or abilities. And they work retail, watch the clock on a government job or run errands for less talented but more ambitious bosses.

But in the world of Mighty Mighty, these workaday heroes don’t have that luxury. If they don’t rise above their lot, it could spell doom for all sentient life on earth.

Be ready for some sharp left turns as you page through Mighty Mighty. It starts as parody, becomes a satire, an adventure, a thriller, a mystery and even a romance. But however the story moves along at any point, you’ll find yourself caring about and rooting for Our Heroes.

Read more about Mighty Mighty.

That’s not what happened.

The first thing that became apparent once the reading period opened is that genre writers – as much as they consider theology to be complete hokum – love their speculative elements, and the ones who submitted the best work all took the position that God is among us. Without making a blanket statement, my further correspondences with the selected authors suggests that they, as a general rule, have little to no religion in their lives – but that doesn’t make God any less a fascinating character to them.

The next thing that I noticed is that there are quite a number of devout Christians who write speculative fiction. I was really rooting for one of them to break out of the slush pile with a story worthy of inclusion here. Sadly, all I got from that choir was Jesus Christ fanfic devoid of any social commentary, but replete with wish fulfillment.

I confess I’m disappointed by the paucity of good stories submitted which posited that it’s unlikely that God exists. Certainly, nobody can prove a negative thesis, but you can prove that there’s a simpler, more elegant explanation for phenomena up to and including the existence of the universe. Stanley Schmidt has no trouble filling up Analog with such tales every month, but Age of Certainty got few takers. Sadly, that handful of hard science fiction authors who did submit all misinterpreted the submission guidelines. They spent so much time on theory that they made the same mistake as the Bible thumpers and missed the whole point of the book: What would be the effect on society?

Still, I’m happy with how this collection ended up, whether through Divine intervention or happenstance. It’s my privilege to present to you tales from ten talented authors who answer the question, “What if God existed?”

William Freedman
West Hempstead, N.Y.
11 February, 2013

You can pre-order your copy HERE.

A full description and a list of authors can be see at the Age of Certainty pre-order page. Order your copy today!

From a publication standpoint, eBooks are easy. We receive the manuscript, it goes through an extensive editing process, we hire an artist to do the cover and the book is professionally formatted. It is then uploaded to various distribution sites. No printing presses, no warehouses, no distribution nightmares and the book is available most anywhere eBooks are sold.

Sadly, this is not the case with printed books.

While eBooks are becoming a large part of the book-buying world, printed books still reign. From a marketing and promotion standpoint, having a book on bookstore shelves is supreme. While the larger presses have no problem with this, the high cost of a print run, even a very small print run, is enormous and out of the reach of most small presses. Add to that warehousing, distribution and returns and it becomes all but impossible for a small press to get its author’s name out there for the world to find.

But, in the new spirit of innovation, we may have found a way around that.

Are you familiar with Kickstarter? It’s an online funding platform to fund creative projects. In the
three-and-a-half years it has been around, more than 2.5 million people have generated $350 million to support at least 30,000 projects in the arts and technology.

Rebel has now joined the Kickstarter groundswell.

You may have heard about our first anthology. It’s called Age of Certainty and it asks the questions, What if we had proof positive of the existence or non existence of God? What would that proof
look like? What would be the immediate impact on society? And what would be the long-term consequences? Out of scores of submissions of up to 6,000 words each, we selected the nine best, and all those selected authors have sent us back signed contracts.

So we are definitely going ahead with the e-book.

But are we going ahead with the bound edition? That’s up to you. If we can successfully raise $3,000 on Kickstarter, that will cover the costs of an offset print run, which lowers our costs while improving our quality. It’ll allow us perhaps to land on bookstore shelves, lowering our distribution costs while making this Rebel title accessible to more people. And, if this is successful, it’s a formula we can use to gauge the interest in future Rebel print books.

So we call upon you to contribute what you can to our Kickstarter campaign. Please visit the site today and view our trailer. If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, donate what you can. We’ll take infusions of any amount, $1 and up. If you can donate $10, you’ll be among the first to get the e-book, including a special bonus story by editor William Freedman that will be available only via Kickstarter pre-orders. If you can help with $25, you’ll get a first edition signed by the editor, plus an e-single of the bonus story. If you can go the full distance and help with $50 or more, you’ll get all of the above, but also signed by at
least two of the contributing authors. At all levels $10 and up, you’ll also be acknowledged by name in the Age of Certainty prefatory notes.

But all that is contingent on Rebel raising $3,000 for that venture. Time really is limited. We have only a few weeks to get to that milestone. We’re already 10 percent the way there after only a few days, and that’s
encouraging, but it might well be up to you, singular, to put us over the top.

Please support your favorite independent publishing house and this worthy project by visiting Age of Certainty on Kickstarter today.

In one panel, he will be discussing applying your job – project principles, timelines, work breakdown – to your writing. He will also be presenting a Power Point presentation on “Writing the Southern Gothic Novel” and will be a panelist on “Writing the Strange and Horrific”.

His book 2012 Montezuma’s Revenge is a contender for the Library of Virginia Literary Award which will be presented by Tom Robbins during the conference.

Tell us a little about Homemade Sin, what inspired you to write it?

When I write a book I take two or three things and figure out how they are connected then I write about it. Everything is connected in some way. With Homemade Sin I was on a trip to Florida and someone told me about this town called Casadega. It is supposed to have the most psychic energy than any other place in the country. A man named George Colby established it as a “Spiritualist Camp” in 1895 and now it is full of psychics, mediums, Crystalmancers, etc. So I went to see it and I noticed the one area of magic they didn’t have was voodoo. So I imagined a Voodoorine living in the town, and that led to Mama Wati the Casadega Vooderine, her apprentice Hussey and Hussey’s boyfriend Cutter and so on. On the next leg of my trip I stayed at this semi-seedy hotel in Madera Beach for a few days, the beach was awesome but the hotel had seen better days. As I looked out at a group of retirees in the pool, floating on those Styrofoam noodles I was reminded of zombies, which connected back to Mama Wati and Hussey. Stinky the cat, I met in a bar in Key West…

You can read the entire interview HERE.

Over at Murder is Everywhere, Rebel e itself got a glowing review. Our editor, Jayne Southern, was interviewed and several of our books were highlighted. You can check that out HERE.

In other news, if you don’t already know, we’ve opened our website bookstore. Through August 15th, all Rebel’s books are half off our already-lower-than-retail 3.99 USD. Yep, just 1.99 USD per title. Want a most excellent read? Now’s the time to stock up for winter if you’re in the southern half of the globe, or find that perfect beach read in the northern half.