DeAnna Knippling Books: 2011

The year in review for my DeAnna Knippling ebooks…

Novel:

Chance Damnation: A Tale of the Weird West

A little girl with the power of a God. Invaders from another world. When demons rewrite history on the Great Plains, three brothers follow one of their own into a strange Hell to change it back.

(Related short story) The Vengeance Quilt

God’s work weighs on Sebastian, a new priest, harder than most. But dealing with demons is his penance, and God never makes a burden harder than you can carry. Or so he believes when the rivalry between two of his parishioners spirals into the supernatural. A Weird West tale.  Can be read independently of the novel; happens after the novel.

Novellas:

Haunted Empire

SF Adventure in the vein of Firefly/Serenity: When Aoife Cavenaugh is kidnapped by her thieving, smuggling bastard of a cousin-in-law, she’s torn between the need to avenge her beloved cousin and her greed for the research lab on his spaceship. If only she can trick him into satisfying both of her obsessions…

Death by Chocolate

Ellie doesn’t like chocolate. So when the Devil makes her a deal—she can be skinny, pretty and immortal, but if she ever eats chocolate, she’s going to Hell—she takes it. Then the bad boy at the top of her sexual bucket list appears.. She’s tempted, but she trusts him even less than she trusts the Devil…

Nonfiction:

How to Fail & Keep on Writing

Afraid of rejections? So afraid that you never put your stories in the mail? This book will show you how to overcome fear of failure when It comes to writing, submitting, and publishing your fiction.

(Track record to date for my submitting process: 156 rejections, 12 accepts. Duotrope tells me this is better than average.)

Standalone Short Stories:

• The Procrustean Mirror. Tom tracked his wife as far as the Zorcico before he ran out of leads. Now the bartender’s trying to tell him he can either have what’s in an old wooden box, or he can find out what Betty was coming to the dive bar for. “What’s in the box?” he asks. “Your marriage.”
• The Cliff House. Ardahl loves his land, even though he’s been crippled in its service and trapped in the Cliff House to work the magic that brings water. But using the magic twists the land so tightly that it must break, sooner or later…
• Threads of Life, Threads of Guilt.  Mattie’s ready to give up when her twin, Matt, drags her to Casa Eva, reputed to be St. Augustine’s “fountain of youth” for cancer patients. But can she be cured of losing her will to live?
• Creators of Small Worlds.  Andrea had one chance to talk to Chris Demoulin before he unleashed horror on Las Vegas—and failed. Now the question isn’t, “could she have stopped him?” but, “can she keep stop herself from becoming just like him?”
• The Woods Behind Grandmother’s House.  Ellen warned her fiance Philip not to get involved with the Rockford brothers. But now he has gone with them down a dark path heavy with deadfalls and demons, and only she can bring him back.
• Hand of Glory.  Like a thief in the digital night. Georgia’s brother didn’t hang himself for being gay or for being bullied about it. He was murdered over something that happened in the game—possibly over a mysterious hacker’s item called the Hand of Glory or Butler’s Candelabra, that lets you go anywhere, kill anyone, and steal anything. And now it belongs to Georgia.
• The Edge of the World.  His best friend Felix kidnapped him on dragonback to make him go to his abuser’s funeral, then tried to blackmail him into abducting changlings for them—the same thing that had happened to him. Fairies suck. Honorable Mention, Best Horror of the Year Vol 3.
• Basement Noir.  Private Investigator Spade comes up from the basement to investigate the death of Gramps in an old hotel run by a monkey and populated by lunatics. But sometimes the person who hires you insn’t the one in charge. And sometimes the crime you’re investigating isn’t the one that needs to be solved.
• Miracle, Texas.  The man rode into Amazon Valley the same way they all did, blindfolded, hooded, and with his hands tied behind his back. Men were trouble, and Justine liked them that way. A Weird West tale.
• Lady of the Floods.  The gods can build in a single night a tower that would require the toil of many men over many seasons. Balathu, chief of scribes, brings the King’s offerings. Balathu is a virtuous man, but the tools of the gods are lovely in his sight, and in the sight of the King. Truly, weak men are always seized by fate.
• Blind Spot.  An artist who sees what nobody else sees: the visual code generated by the eye’s own blind spot. A VR developer who sees the possiblities–including the threat to her life.
• Devil Mountain.  The alien called him her beloved devil for tempting her away from her brood and tried to make him promise not to take revenge if the other humans turned on him. Now he’s on top of Devil Mountain, looking down at the town that murdered his wife, and he has no promises to keep.
• Monsoon.  Too old to flirt with the Norwegian meditation teacher. Too young for menopause. It’s “Eat, Pray, Love” for sarcastic people.
• Things You Don’t Want But Have to Take.  She hid from the thing for years, but it found her and came to her in a box with no real return address and her own handwriting on the label. She knew what would happen if she tried to fight the cold thing with its claws in her neck. Her only hope was to hide it from her husband…
• Family Gods.  A young soldier returns from a war to bury his mother, only to find that his wife has betrayed him. His rage doesn’t come from his wife’s betrayal, but from the family god, a god of murder, fire, and anger that has haunted them for generations…and killed his mother.
• Lanes of the Living Dead. It ain’t easy being divorced. But Bart’s ex-wife’s lawyer, also a voodoo priest, didn’t make it any easier.
• The Debt:  A Zombie Tale.  He hired Dr. Skalos to put his brother to rest. He paid and paid and paid, yet still his brother walks, and hungers…
• Mother & Child.  A boy who wants to rescue his mother from her perfect, imaginary life—at any cost. A girl who finds her life’s calling in a journal entry about a classmate’s pain. A mother who knows that just because everyone else has decided it’s Judgment Day, her daughter doesn’t have to get judged, too. Three extremely short stories of mothers, children, and the uncanny bonds between them.
• Abominable.  You find the love of your life, and work your ass off to get her what she wants. Now she doesn’t love you anymore. You need something. You need something warm. You’re not the only one.
• The Business That Must Be Conducted in the Dark. Master Zorac wants sexbot Annalise to follow him into the dark, but her programming won’t allow it…until she’s sent to capture him.
• A Fly in Amber.  Three bottles of the Shackleton Scotch have returned to Scotland over 100 years after the failed Antarctic expedition. But how do they taste?

You can find my work online at all good ebookstores, including Amazon.com, B&N, and Smashwords.