Heyo, everybody! Amy here. I just wanted to let you know my next collection of short stories is available for preorder 🙂 You can order right here via Inkprint (and no promises, but usually the Inkprint site is where the early copies of the book drop…) or grab a copy from your favourite online retailer in print or ebook – the collection is out April 29.
Here’s the blurb, first of all, and then I’ll tell you a little bit about the stories in the collection:
Six magical fantasy stories of transformation.
Perhaps transformation is common-sense, a thing we feel self-conscious about that perhaps we’re afraid others won’t understand – but which ultimately keeps us safe.
Perhaps transformation reveals who we really are, which is sometimes a startling realisation of our own belonging, and sometimes reveals uncomfortable truths about our motivations and desires.
Perhaps transformation is what reveals to us how supported we really are, how the people who love us do so regardless of who we dare to become.
Perhaps transformation is how we grapple with ideas, taking familiar stories and twisting them, turning them, challenging them to see what we can learn when we transform the lens of our viewing.
And perhaps transformation reveals to us the depth of our significance—and that when we dare transform, we do the brave, courageous thing that gives back to the world by becoming our truest selves.
Transformation is inevitable. We might as well enjoy it.
Okay, and now the stories themselves. Let’s see.
The collection starts with In Which Leaves Are Common Sense, a neat little hiking story I wrote for a prompt late last year. I really LOVED hiking as a teen/in my 20s pre children, and every so often stories about hiking in the Australian bush pop up in my writing 🙂 This one’s about a hike that goes wrong when our main character wakes up to discover that their hiking companion has shifted into a wolf. A hiking companion who had a pack full with half their camping things. A wolf who can’t actually, you know, carry a pack… Oops 😀
Next up is Tims Testing Day, which is set in a world that was born when I was driving home from work one day and passed yet another of the ubiquitous Jim’s trailers, this one for yard maintenance. Jim’s is, like, a franchise brand but it covers almost every odd job you can think of? There’s Jim’s Mowing, Jim’s Cleaning, Jim’s Plumbing, Jim’s Painting… So many. (Over 50, apparently, according to their website?!) Anyway, it set me thinking about the concept of a Jim who did all this stuff… but my mind took it in a different direction, and I was wondering specifically about the franchisees, and what if there was some particular skill (magical, of course) involved that got passed down to the franchisees, but only as long as they could convince the magic they were all one person? That fit with another idea I had kicking around, where a character called Tim steals/is gifted something from the fey that grant him some magical abilities… And so the Tim Group was born. If you’re lucky, you can train as a Tim. If you’re good, you can convince the magic to believe you ARE Tim. And if you’re successful, you’ll pass on Tims Testing Day.
Familiars Need Enrichment Too is a fun little romp that takes place after the end of How Not To Take Over The World, while (small spoiler) Bystar has been cooped up in confinement for WAY too long, and convinces Mercury to let him go explore the town for a couple of hours. Things don’t QUITE go according to plan, and Bystar does NOT return the same as when he left :’D (Remember, the theme of this collection is transformation!!)
Had Kafka Been A Teenage Girl is right what it says on the can: teen girl wakes up as a bug, because there was a classroom I was supervising in once where the Year 7 class had put up photos of their faces stuck onto the bodies of ladybeetles, their house mascot. This one is delightfully sassy and relentlessly chipper, and honestly, you need to read it because it contains quotes like:
two more joined the crowd of Stella’s one-person—one-bug?—circus: it was Mum, in a flour-battered apron, and Tiffany, whose chestnut ponytail seemed, if anything, to have grown even more in height and volume since Stella had seen her this morning. But was anyone going to comment on that, the real miracle of the day? No. Instead, they were all going to hang out by the door, staring wide-eyed at her, who was merely a bug in a wig and a dress.
and
Tiffany leaned in for the world’s most awkward, one-sided hug. Not that Stella didn’t want to contribute a side. Just that, you know. Having exoskeletal sides made sharing a side more difficult.
and
Stella supposed she didn’t have shoulders anymore, really. But for want of a better word, that’s what she was going to call it, and no one—least of all her shoe-wielding homicidal maniac of a father—was going to tell her different.
:’D
AND THEN, because I couldn’t possibly amuse myself any harder, we have A Plague On Both Your Colonies, which, y’all, is the Romeo-and-Juliet-as-stomach-bacteria story I was plugging on Instagram back in October/November 2023 when I wrote it.
Like, Romeo and Juliet as stomach bacteria. You want to buy the collection literally just to see if I can pull this off 😀 hehe.
The final story in this collection doesn’t have a name yet, because the story that was SUPPOSED to be the final story got too long and is now going to be released in 2025 as a standalone, ha, so I’m in the middle of finishing the final story for the collection now (don’t worry, it’ll definitely be finished in time, all is well) and it doesn’t have a title yet. BUT! Think modern-day Persephone retelling where Persephone is dying and a replacement is needed, which is what the story is but what it’s about is knowing what you can and can’t control in your life and how to tell the difference and be at peace with uncertainty and NOT knowing, even when you really really really want to know and Be Certain. Guys. This one’s for the perfectionists, the control freaks, and the A-types among us. We can do this. *strong arm emoji*.
There! *flourish* That’s the six stories in the collection, which I hope piques your interest enough for you to check it out. At only $5.99 AU or $5.99 US, that’s literally a dollar a story – AMAZING value and I love you all <3 <3
Amy