David Lee Summers

"Fountains of Blood" appears in the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone edited by David Boop. In this story set in 1896, Billy McCarty of my Clockwork Legion novels is hired to protect prominent attorney and former Texas governor Albert J. Fountain who is returning home with his son after collecting evidence in the Lincoln County War. Ambushed by a strange creature of the night, the Fountains disappear and Billy turns to Marshal Larissa Seaton for help.

This weird western anthology also features stories by Jim Butcher, Phil Foglio, Alan Dean Foster, Kevin J. Anderson, Robert E. Vardeman, Jody Lynn Nye, and Nicole Kurtz.

Straight Outta Tombstone may be ordered from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

"The Vrykolakas and the Cobbler's Wife" appears in issue 66 of Cemetery Dance Magazine. Set in Greece at the beginning of the twentieth century, the story was inspired by a Greek folktale related in Montague Summers' The Vampire in Europe and tells the story of a cobbler who was turned into a vrykolakas and then comes back to haunt his family. The story is illustrated by GAK, who I had the pleasure of working with back in the early days of Hadrosaur Tales Magazine.

This issue of Cemetery Dance also features stories by Steve Resnic Tem, Jeremy C. Shipp, and Bill Pronzini, plus a number of reviews, interviews and articles by folks such as Ellen Datlow, Bev Vincent, and Brian James Freeman.

Cemetery Dance issue 66 is available at Amazon.com.

In "Horsefeathers," it's the 1980s and Baba Yaga has learned an artifact from the 1001 Nights could be real and in the hands of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. She sends her best pilot from the Soviet Night Witch squadron to retrieve it at any cost.

What if monsters were real? How would the existence of monsters play out on the international stage? How about Amelia Earhart working for the US government on a mission to an island in the Bermuda Triangle where prehistoric life abounds? Or Sherlock Holmes teaming with his goddaughter Jane Watson and the simian head of DAT, France's paranormal spy network, to stop a dangerous hybrid of monster and machine from destroying London? There's Adam Frankenstein working in the German resistance to stop the Nazis from creating more of his kind from the bodies of their victims. During the Cold War, Baba Yaga and the Night Witches make a stealth attack on the King of Transyvania-Dracula. A very unusual assassin works the frigid waters of the Russian sea. The Invisible Madame tries to track down her son who was kidnapped by the British MI-7. And the legendary Phantom of the Opera, now a murderous body-stealing ghost and the top French operative, may have met his match in a teenage girl.

Staring Into the Abyss is available from Amazon.com.

Innovation Goes Rolling Along, But Who Keeps the Engines Running?

In the midst of war and a changing world, you seldom hear tales of the dedicated souls that keep ingenuity and progress moving. The mechanics who not only hear the music of the machine but can tear them down and put them together again better than before. Those who love to get their hands dirty figuring out how things work, those without whom progress would grind to a halt. That changes now. In addition to my story, you'll find tales by Aaron Rosenberg, John L. French, Heather E. Hutsell, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Ken Schrader, Misty Massey, James Chambers, Derek Tyler Attico, Maria V. Snyder, and Bernie Mojzes.

My story in Grease Monkeys imagines an alternate past in Colorado's San Juan Mountains when a pair of disreputable gangsters with an airship go into competition with an aging rail line. Of course the gangsters aren't going to play by the rules. How can a plucky narrow-gauge railroad keep the mail moving when they can't buy new locomotives in the age of diesel?

Grease Monkeys: The Heart and Soul of Dieselpunk is available at Amazon.

"Dusty Violet and Bleached Bones" is a dieselpunk fairy tale set during New Mexico's dust bowl. Billy Bones dreams of getting as far away from the desert southwest as possible. He'd love nothing more than joining a pirate crew and look for buried treasure. Violeta is a Native American girl escaping Santa Fe's Indian School. The two find themselves pursued by none other than La Llorona.

It Came From Her Purse is an anthology of literal and figurative purses, not to mention a variety of containment systems! Viewing the contents of a woman's purse can be a frightening experience, or so I've been told … the editors would extend this fright to include men's satchels, go-bags, and such. Check out this anthology that peers into the collective psyches of artists, poets, and storytellers to bring forth these oft quirky, occasionally demented, and definitely fantastical tales! Edited by Terrie Leigh Relf and Marcia A. Borell, this anthology constains stories and poems by Tim Mendees, Marge Simon, t. santitoro, and Gary Davis. It Came From Her Purse is available at Amazon.com and directly from the publisher, Hiraeth Publishing.

Life and Death and All Points In Between. Crows have seen it all, and though they haven't always lived to tell the tale, still they play their part. We bring you ten tales inspired by the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, paying tribute to his undying fascination with mankind's decaying state, both mental and physical.

In conjunction with the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, this anthology bringsyou stories by Aaron Rosenberg, Judi Fleming, Dana Fraedrich, James Chambers, Jessica Lucci, Doc Coleman, Michelle D. Sonnier, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and Ef Deal. Introduction by Levi Leland and Virginia Poe of the Beyond the Oblong Box Podcast.

My story in A Cast of Crows is "Dreams of Flight." Set at the Grand Canyon in 1876, itenerant inventor and mad scientist M.K. Maravilla endeavors to create a mechanical crow as a tribute to his dead daughter and soon finds it takes on a life of its own.

You can pick up your own copy of A Cast of Crows at Amazon.com.

DeadSteam edited by Bryce Raffle and published by Grimmer and Grimmer Books features my story "Specter in the Light." The story is set during the early days of my alma mater, New Mexico Tech, when it was known as the New Mexico School of Mines. It imagines staff members using Nikola Tesla's innovations to bring electric light to mines. The problem is, the electricity awakens something sleeping deep within the mountain where they conduct their test!

DeadSteam is an anthology of dreadpunk, gaslamp, and dark steampunk. These are tales of the ghoulish and the gothic, chilling stories of haunted streets, of vampires and demons stalking the city from fog-drenched alleyways lit only by gas lamps. 17 chilling stories of the monsters lurking around every corner, the ghosts haunting the darkest streets of Victorian London, and the dead things crawling out of their graves to consume the flesh of the living. In addition to my story, you'll find stories by Jen Ponce, Karen J Carlisle, Jonah Buck, James Dorr, Alice E Keyes, and Steve Carr. The foreword is by Leanna Renee Hieber.

DeadSteam is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Dinella Stanton returns in "The Sun Worshipper's Ghost." Professor Augustus Harriman hoped the spirit of a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh would possess the mummy he reanimated with clockworks. Instead the pharaoh has started tormenting the professor. Can Dinella save him before the ghost exacts its revenge on the professor?

Just when you thought the nightmare was over, what was dead comes crawling back from the beyond. We warned you not to open that fateful tome. But you just couldn't resist, could you? Back with more chilling tales of the dark and supernatural, the anthology of dreadpunk, gaslamp, and dark steampunk returns to haunt you with mummies, witches, vampires, gorgons, ghosts. The second installment in the DeadSteam series from Grimmer & Grimmer Books, DeadSteam II promises an even darker, grimmer gothic than the first offering.

DeadSteam II is available at Amazon.com.

While mankind can scarce hope to pierce the Veil without crossing it, a few intrepid souls will ever bend their will against the aether, combining artifice and the arcane to uncover its secrets.

From voodoo death cults to the Day of the Dead, mummy parties, the wheel of reincarnation, the practice of death portraits, and so much more, these tales leave no gravestone unturned.

Be it heaven or hell or the limbo in between, the hereafter is about to get ‘Punked.

My story, “The Sun Worshiper,” is about a spiritualist named Dinella Stanton who is invited to a mummy unwrapping party in London hosted by a prominent scientist. When she arrives, she finds all her fellow guests are scientists who have denounced her as a fraud. To make matters worse, it would appear that the scientist who invited Dinella is attempting to perpetrate a deception of his own.

After Punk is available at Amazon.

Once Upon a Time, ageless tales were told from one generation to the next, filled with both wonders and warnings. Tales of handsome princes and wicked queens, of good-hearted folk and evil stepmothers. Tales of danger and caution and magic … classics that still echo in our hearts and memories even to this day, told from old, cherished books or from memory at Grandma's knee.

Oh yes, tales have been told … but never quite like these. Journey with us through the pages of Gaslight and Grimm to discover timeless truths through lenses polished in the age of steam.

I retell Grimm's "The Dragon and his Grandmother" as "The Steam-Powered Dragon." Three British soldiers pressed to fight in India encounter a steam-powered dragon who offers to take them away from life in the army and gives them an alchemical device that turns coal into diamonds. The catch is that the dragon will return and ask three riddles. If the soldiers can’t answer, they will become the steam-powered dragon’s slaves, keeping his boilers stoked for the rest of their lives.

Gaslight and Grimm is available at Amazon.

Once Upon a Time… tales of wisdom and warning were passed from one generation to the next. Tales of humble makers and ruthless nobles, of helpful fae and evil tricksters. Tales of making and unmaking, caution and magic… classics that still echo in our hearts and memories even to this day, told from old, cherished books or from memory at Grandma's knee.

Oh yes, tales have been told… but never quite like these. Journey with us through the pages of Grimm Machinations to rediscover timeless truths through lenses polished in the age of steam.

My story in the anthology is called "The Porcelain Princess" and it's a retelling of "Snow White." To tell this version, I went back to notes left behind by the Brothers Grimm and explored the story of Snow White's birth and how the wicked queen came to rule the land. In my version, the queen's mirror isn't polished glass, but an automaton who stands in for the queen. What's more, the princess's precious heart takes on new significance, since it live on in an immortally beautiful, dancing doll. Explore politics and machineries in this adaptation of the classic legend and see it through a new lens.

Grimm Machinations is available at Amazon.