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When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.? Diana Gabaldon

Welcome to the Big Time StoryBundle, where you can find ten books on time travel and all things weird and timey wimey. Pay $5 for four ebooks, or a minimum of $15 to unlock all 10 ebooks. Once you purchase, you will be sent download links for your ebooks. More info about this StoryBundle is here.

This StoryBundle helps send money toward the Oregon Food Bank, which has been hit particularly hard due to the Oregon wildfires in the area, as well as the increased need from COVID-19.

But unless you’re a time traveler, don’t wait! Because from time to time…it’s a good time to save on ebooks!

Lisa Silverthorne is a prolific short story writer, with over a hundred of her stories published across multiple genres. We’re lucky to have her new novella exclusive to our StoryBundle! She is also included in the Fiction River Presents: Time Travelers collection!

1. Tell us about your book. What’s it about, and how does time travel or other timey wimey weirdness fit into your book?

Hi DeAnna, my time-travel novella is about a lonely ghost hunter, Jackson Mayfield, who is obsessed with the strange portrait of a beautiful opera star that leaped to her death in 1896 and the local Port Townsend, WA, legend about a portal in the old, abandoned opera house. According to the legend, a portal will open for forty-eight hours, until leap day ends.

Jackson and his ghost hunting group test out the legend, and he steps back in time to meet this mysterious opera star. Never expecting to fall in love.

But the abandoned opera house holds secrets. And protects those willing to do anything to keep them. Until Jackson challenges them all—to save the woman he loves.

This novella is the first of three novellas I’m calling the Haunted Portraits series. Beauty: Captured and Framed is the first one, followed by Monster: Loose and Unhinged and Harmony: Recaptured and Under Glass.

My story in Fiction River Presents: Time Travelers is called “Christmas, Interrupted.” This novelette is the story of a young woman’s tragically missed love connection that turns ghostly when a lost cat shows up at her apartment and helps her go back in time to try and stop a Christmas murder.

2. What is one of your favorite time-related works? (Fiction, non-fiction, games, etc. all count!)

Gotta go with a couple of classics and a couple of moderns: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (in the literal sense) and Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (in the figurative sense) started it all for me. And for modern books: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (in the literal sense) was amazing like most of Connie Willis’ novels. But Passage by Connie Willis (in the figurative sense) just blew me away. Dandelion Wine and Passage are probably my two favorite books in the whole world. And if I could only take three books with me in that time machine, two of them would be Dandelion Wine and Passage. The third one would be a reference book.

3. What is one of your favorite songs featuring time? Or, if you used a theme song/playlist for your work, what was it?

One of my favorite time travel movies is The Lakehouse. The soundtrack for this movie has some great music on it and I’ve listened to it many times while writing. Not for this particular novella. I love listening to atmospheric music when I write, so when I wrote both of these stories, I listened to music by October Project, Enya, Grey Eye Glances, 2002, and the CD Victorialand by The Cocteau Twins.

ABOUT LISA:

Lisa Silverthorne has published over a hundred short stories in the fantasy, science fiction, romance, and mystery genres. Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of professional publications including: DAW Books, Roc Books, Prime Books, Pulphouse Magazine, and WMG Publishing.Lisa’s novels and many of her shorter works are available online. For more information, please visit lisasilverthorne.com.

YOU CAN FIND HER AT:

lisasilverthorne.com

Leap via hyperlink portal to find Lisa Silverthorne’s Beauty: Captured and Framed and other tales at StoryBundle!

A wanderer in darkness, she followed an eccentric orbit, each new disturbance angling her closer to some long-awaited rendezvous. She could only hope that when the moment came, she’d be wise enough to know it, and brave enough to act.–Matt Ruff

Welcome to the Big Time StoryBundle, where you can find ten books on time travel and all things weird and timey wimey. Pay $5 for four ebooks, or a minimum of $15 to unlock all 10 ebooks. Once you purchase, you will be sent download links for your ebooks. More info about this StoryBundle is here.

This StoryBundle helps send money toward the Oregon Food Bank, which has been hit particularly hard due to the Oregon wildfires in the area, as well as the increased need from COVID-19.

But unless you’re a time traveler, don’t wait! Because a stitch in time…saves on ten excellent ebooks!

DeAnna Knippling is me 🙂 I almost forgot to post my own interview!

1. Tell us about your book. What’s it about, and how does time travel or other timey wimey weirdness fit into your book?

The House Without a Summer is my version of how a collapse of space and time might work, or not work, in a multiverse. It’s what happens when the wealthiest man in all of Britain decides he’s going to cordon off his own private bubble in time, damn the cost, and might be a little influenced by certain recent events. 1816 really didn’t have a summer; a volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year dumped so much volcanic ash in the skies that the entire world suffered.

2. What is one of your favorite time-related works? (Fiction, non-fiction, games, etc. all count!)

My favorite is the Bioshock series, particularly Bioshock Infinite.

There’s always a lighthouse. There’s always a man. There’s always a city.

3. What is one of your favorite songs featuring time? Or, if you used a theme song/playlist for your work, what was it?

I normally have a playlist, that is, a list of multiple songs. But this entire book was writte to one song, “Cascade,” by Peter Murphy.

My favorite song about time, though, is “Time in a Bottle,” by Jim Croce.

ABOUT DEANNA:

DeAnna Knippling has a browser history full of murder, gore, and Victorian street maps. She has ambitions to have that house, the one where people laugh nervously and say, “It’s not real, is it?” and spread rumors of a secret room in the basement. She loves crows, cheese, chokecherry jam, and hot sauce, but not all at once. She has been published in Black Static, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Aliterate, Crossed Genres, Cast Macabre, The Fog Horn, Penumbra, Big Pulp, Horror Without Victims, and more. You can find her in Colorado, on her website at WonderlandPress.com, or on Facebook.

YOU CAN FIND HER AT:

wonderlandpress.com

Give space and time a shake with DeAnna Knippling’s The House Without a Summer and other tales at StoryBundle!

But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years – and it opens.–Marcel Proust

Welcome to the Big Time StoryBundle, where you can find ten books on time travel and all things weird and timey wimey. Pay $5 for four ebooks, or a minimum of $15 to unlock all 10 ebooks. Once you purchase, you will be sent download links for your ebooks. More info about this StoryBundle is here.

This StoryBundle helps send money toward the Oregon Food Bank, which has been hit particularly hard due to the Oregon wildfires in the area, as well as the increased need from COVID-19.

But unless you’re a time traveler, don’t wait! Because if you miss your chance to get these books at such a bargain price, you’ll discover that lost time…really is money!

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a prolific author, editor, and teacher working under several pen names. I like her romances best. Wickedly Charming by Kristine Grayson (in other words, Kris) and Assassins in Love by Kris DeLake (also Kris) are my current favorites.

1. Tell us about your book. What’s it about, and how does time travel or other timey wimey weirdness fit into your book?

My book, The Renegat, is a standalone in my Diving Universe. When ships in the Fleet (in that universe) use their anacapa drive, things can go wrong. Sometimes they lose an hour, sometimes a day, sometimes a year. In the regular Diving universe, one of my heroes lost 5,000 years. The Renegat, a ship, is heading on a long anacapa trip, and they might lose more than years. They might lose everything.

2. What is one of your favorite time-related works? (Fiction, non-fiction, games, etc. all count!)

Favorite time-related work. Hmmm. I don’t have favorites, really, although I’m very fond of Back to the Future. Right now, my go-to time travel series mixes time travel, regency romance, and forensic crime fiction. (Not kidding) It’s Julie McElwain’s “in time” series. The latest is Shadows in Time, but start with Murder in Time. These books are fun. (The first chapter of the first book is a bit nuts, but go with it.)

3. What is one of your favorite songs featuring time? Or, if you used a theme song/playlist for your work, what was it?

Again, I don’t do favorites but I have several major playlists for running. By major, I mean days’ long. I switch them out, and once in a while, I hit Clint Black’s “No Time To Kill” which includes this idea–if we knew years ago that today will occur, would we change it? Would we do something? Would we spend “tomorrow’s yesterdays”? And each time I hear it–which is many times since the song first appeared years ago–I am thankful that I didn’t know what was ahead. But I contemplate it every time I hear the song.

ABOUT KRIS:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, has written more books than she can count. She’s currently finishing a long sequence of novels in her Diving series. Her Retrieval Artist series has been optioned for television, and her Kris Nelscott mysteries are also under option. She writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, nonfiction and anything else she can think of. Find more at kriswrites.com.

YOU CAN FIND HER AT:

kriswrites.com

Search for what has gone missing with Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Renegat and other tales at StoryBundle!

Evelyn: Look, I… I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am.
Rick: And what is that?
Evelyn: I… am a librarian.—The Mummy (1999)

Welcome to the Big Time StoryBundle, where you can find ten books on time travel and all things weird and timey wimey. Pay $5 for four ebooks, or a minimum of $15 to unlock all 10 ebooks. Once you purchase, you will be sent download links for your ebooks. More info about this StoryBundle is here.

This StoryBundle helps send money toward the Oregon Food Bank, which has been hit particularly hard due to the Oregon wildfires in the area, as well as the increased need from COVID-19.

But unless you’re a time traveler, don’t wait! Because you don’t want to have to say…you lost track of time!

Ryan M. Williams writes some of the most elegantly weird fiction I’ve ever had the pleasure of editing. He also works as a librarian! My hero 🙂

1. Tell us about your book. What’s it about, and how does time travel or other timey wimey weirdness fit into your book?

It’s a mystery in space. Brock’s lover and partner, Muriel, is lost in his past a hundred years ago with their alien intern. There’s a missing alien artifact, trying not to change the past, discover the reason behind all of this, and the fate of the whole galaxy is at stake. I think it’s a lot of fun!

2. What is one of your favorite time-related works? (Fiction, non-fiction, games, etc. all count!)

One? That’s so hard, but really, it’d have to be Dorctor Who. If I could go back in time and pick another, I’d choose Connie Willis’s time-traveling historians.

3. What is one of your favorite songs featuring time? Or, if you used a theme song/playlist for your work, what was it?

“Out of Time” by the Divinyls.

ABOUT RYAN:

• Librarian who writes
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Horror and Mystery

YOU CAN FIND HIM AT:

• Website: ryanmwilliams.com
• Instagram: @ryanwriter
• Twitter: @ryanmwilliams

Investigate spacetime mysteries with Ryan M. Williams’s Past Lives and other tales at StoryBundle!

Time could bifurcate, like a pair of trousers. You could end up in the wrong leg, living a life that was actually happening in the other leg, talking to people who weren’t in your leg, walking into walls that weren’t there anymore. Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of Time.–Terry Pratchett

Welcome to the Big Time StoryBundle, where you can find ten books on time travel and all things weird and timey wimey. Pay $5 for four ebooks, or a minimum of $15 to unlock all 10 ebooks. Once you purchase, you will be sent download links for your ebooks. More info about this StoryBundle is here.

This StoryBundle helps send money toward the Oregon Food Bank, which has been hit particularly hard due to the Oregon wildfires in the area, as well as the increased need from COVID-19.

But unless you’re a time traveler, don’t wait! Because this deal will come to an end…in a matter of time!

Michael W. Lucas has adorable pet rats and has written one of my favorite business books for creative types, Cash Flow for Creators. These two facts may or may not be connected.

1. Tell us about your book. What’s it about, and how does time travel or other timey wimey weirdness fit into your book?

The Montague Portal tales are about a future where humanity hasn’t been able to colonize space, but has found a way to travel to alternate universes with different physical laws. Perhaps there’s no law of gravity, or you don’t age, or it looks like ours but genes are contagious. Hydrogen Sleets takes us to a universe that’s much like ours, but right after the Big Bang. Humanity has built a space station to study how the first stars were formed. It’s an empty universe, what could possibly go wrong?

The answer is, of course: everything.

2. What is one of your favorite time-related works? (Fiction, non-fiction, games, etc. all count!)

Oh, that’s a hard question. There are so many good ones to choose from!

I’d have to go with Doctor Who. There’s a certain glee to saying “we’re going to have lunch in eighteenth-century Moscow, and then we’ll visit the Borgias!” The DW storytellers, both old and new, have a blissful fecklessness for any rules of time travel, twisting them to suit the current story, that I find delightful. You need it to work this way? Okay, that’s what we do this episode.

3. What is one of your favorite songs featuring time? Or, if you used a theme song/playlist for your work, what was it?

I enjoy music that gives me a sense of far distant times. Blue Oyster Cult is really good at that, with songs like “Black Blade” and “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.”

ABOUT MICHAEL:

Michael W Lucas is the author of a few dozen books, and has more on the way. His most popular novels include the cozy mystery git commit murder and the thrillers Butterfly Stomp Waltz and Terrapin Sky Tango.

YOU CAN FIND HIM AT:

mwl.io

Take a dip into another universe with Michael W. Lucas’s Hydrogen Sleets and other tales at StoryBundle!

My latest adventures have involved straightening out my business and personal finances. It’s something that I knew I needed to do, but found so overwhelming that I kept putting it off. So much to accomplish, no real understanding.

It turned out I only needed two things in order to get started:

• A road map.
• An attitude adjustment.

The road map turned out to be in a book I read this previous May, Cash Flow for Creators, by Michael W. Lucas. I’ve been friends with him on Facebook for a while, and I know him as a goofy smartass with rats. But, it turns out, he’s a financially responsible smartass as well, and is able to explain things clearly.

That addressed the first half of the problem.

The second half involved a bunch of random crap.

When I initially tried to write out this article in my journal pages, I went on a three-page-long, handwritten rant about the ways my parents had screwed me up about money, which were not insignificant, but not really relevant to the article I wanted to share. And, further, my education was the sort that separated art and money: if you make art, then why on earth would you expect to make money?

When you’re living your life with the attitude that money is scary and you’ll never make money doing what you love…well, that’s kind of terrible, and it sets you up for all kinds of failures. I may not have discovered all the ways it is possible to fail regarding money, but I think I found most of ’em.

Sadly, reading financial books wasn’t enough.

Most people who write financial books already respect money; they take for granted that it’s obvious that money should be treated in certain ways.

I had no idea that money was a thing that required respect.

I didn’t approach my attitude shift consciously; I didn’t even know there was an attitude that needed to be shifted. But here’s what ended up being important:

• Studying tarot for an upcoming series of novels.
• Starting on The Artist’s Way for the second time.
• Starting on a huge cross-stitch project.

None of these things make sense, if you’re starting from a position of respect for money. Why would studying the occult lead to solid financial advice? Why would doing a twelve-week artistic recovery program have anything to say about money? What on earth do craft projects have to do with being fiscally responsible? We all know the kind of financial damage a crafter on Etsy can do.

But when you’re looking for a fundamental change in attitude, it’s difficult to make changes from a starting point that assumes you already have the desired attitude.

Consider:

• Becoming a confident public speaker.
• Facing a serious phobia, like agoraphobia.
• Going to that dentist’s or doctor’s appointment that’s been put off for years now.
• Drawing boundaries with an abusive family member.
• Standing up to bullies on Facebook (as in last month’s newsletter article, ahem).

Most people who can competently do those things—or at least not feel anxiety when considering them—give positive-sounding but useless advice: all you have to do is get started! Just take it in small steps! Just don’t let it be so hard!

What most well-meaning advice givers miss is the attitude change that happens before those techniques can work.

So how do we change our attitudes?

• Examining our assumptions.
• Situations that are so desperately urgent that they’re more compelling than our attitudes.
• Random crap.

The last item, random crap, is often known as “synchronicity,” “coincidence,” or “the universe providing a helping hand.” I’ve been trying to allow random crap more influence in my life. It’s a gentler way to change than the other two.

So here’s why those odd elements helped me change my attitude:

• Tarot: More than a few of the cards are about money, craftsmanship, and material success that drives other accomplishments.
• Artist’s Way: Every day, you have to journal about what’s bothering you, and right now what’s bothering me are money and finances…and creative blocks related to those things.
• Cross-stitch: I am working on a project that focuses me on literal material, but more figuratively on being consistent in small details, solving organizational puzzles (how can I stitch the front so the back doesn’t look like a spiderweb?), and not letting myself get tangled up as I try to make an ideal image of something.

Gradually, I started putting together the idea that I didn’t respect money. I feared any situation involving a close look at my finances, because money was dangerous.

But anyone who’s ever handled anything dangerous—like a car—knows that people who are terrified of a dangerous thing usually screw it up. Fear of a thing can be just as bad as being arrogant about it. The terrified student driver is just as bad as the one who learned everything they know in Grand Theft Auto.

My tarot deck whispered to me that I was letting other people push me around about money. The Artist’s Way rolled its eyes and told me that I had to bring what was in my head out into the material world, which would cost money…and, hey, treat myself better while I was doing it. My cross-stitch project said, You know how to do this already. The hardest part is choosing the big picture. After that, do your best, assume that you’ll make mistakes, and adjust the pattern slightly as you go.

If you’re struggling with money, you, too, may be having issues of fear and/or disrespect. In addition, you may have serious external setbacks that you have no control of, but still have to find a way to cope with. I’m sorry. Things will be even harder for you.

My advice here:

• Admit that you’re not where you want to be.
• Let it be uncomfortable. Don’t force yourself to move forward…but don’t blow off your discomfort, either.
• Listen to whatever coincidences come your way.

Coincidences, metaphors, inspirations, and other bootstrapping methods will come your way. Once you stop hiding from yourself the fact that you’re not where you want to be, they turn out to be all over the place. It’s called the “frequency illusion.” When you’re thinking about something, you’ll see it everywhere.

In other words: allow yourself some time for some random crap. Your subconscious is already shining a spotlight on what you need to see.
…
Here’s the cross-stitch pattern I picked, by the way:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/704131682/honeysuckle-and-primrose-floral-panel


(Artist’s Way: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/615570.The_Artist_s_Way)
(Cash Flow: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53402810-cash-flow-for-creators)

Stories We Tell After Midnight

Universal Sales Link | Goodreads

Revenge, hunger, and horror—all after midnight. 24 tales edited by Rachel Brune. Includes my short story, “The Thing These Relationships Have in Common Is You.”

The Wild Hunt

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A fierce host rides across the winter sky at night, in wild pursuit of whoever crosses their path, when the nights are long and the winter winds howl, stay inside, lest you cross the path of the Hunt…and become their prey…

Thirteen tales of those who hunt, and those who are hunted! Contains my story, “The Last Private in the Gray Hoodie and Blue Jeans Brigade.” Click here to ride out!

Here Be Zombies

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Brainsssss! The dead are walking, hungry and brains taste so good… !3 tales of eater and the eaten! Contains my short story “Zombie Girl Invasion” (as De Kenyon) and my novel Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts.