An unnamed paralegal, brought back to life through a controversial process, maneuvers through a near-future world that both needs and resents him. As the United States president spouts anti-reanimation rhetoric and giant pharmaceutical companies rake in profits, the man falls in love with lawyer Faustina GodÃnez. His world expands as he meets her network of family and friends, setting him on a course to discover his first-life history, which the reanimation process erased. With elements of science fiction, horror, political satire and romance, Chicano Frankenstein confronts our nation's bigotries and the question of what it truly means to be human.
As a last-ditch effort to save his marriage, Lewis--an East Coast suburban Jew who has run from his roots--buys a cabin on a wild and scenic river in the Cascade foothills; after the marriage falls apart, he moves to the woods and makes the long commute every morning to Salem, the state capital, where he works a tedious government job. Skye stays with him on weekends, leaving behind her middle-school friends, her cellular service, her cat, and her mom in exchange for ancient trees and clear water and moss-covered rocks. In fifty-two vignettes--one for each week of the year--that alternate between Lewis's perspective and Skye's, the novel traces their days foraging for mushrooms and searching for newts, arguing over jigsaw puzzles and confronting menacing neighbors, hosting skeptical visitors and taking city jaunts, finding pleasure in small moments of wonder and coping with devastating loss. By turns comic and heartbreaking, Trust Me is a study of the uneasy bond between a hapless father and his precocious daughter, of their love for a complex and changing landscape, of the necessity and precariousness of the relationships and places we cherish most.
Too often, science fiction and fantasy stories erase--or cure--characters with disabilities. Soul Jar, edited by author and bookstore owner Annie Carl, features thirty-one stories by disabled authors, imagining such wonders as a shapeshifter on a first date, skin that sprouts orchid buds, and a cereal-box demon. An insulin pump diverts an undead mob. An autistic teen sets out to discover the local cranberry bog's sinister secret. A pizza delivery on Mars goes wrong. This thrillingly peculiar collection sparkles with humor, heart, and insight, all within the context of disability representation.
Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, Bella is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis, her newfound family of queercentric outcasts, and a top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peekaboo striptease routines, a doomed mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love. It all leads Bella back home, to the scene of her original sin, where she boldly faces matters of life and death, questions of forgiveness, and a holy mess only the healing properties of great Italian cooking can fix.
If you want to get your manuscript published, read this book.
There's no secret handshake or golden key in these pages, but Imagine a Door offers a more equitable and empowering prize: information delivered with gentleness. Author and publisher Laura Stanfill started working on this project in 2016, ultimately interviewing more than seventy-five authors and industry experts, including Wendy Chin-Tanner, Tove Danovich, Omar El Akkad, Erin Harris, Ari Honarvar, Juhea Kim, Dan Lazar, Fonda Lee, Emme Lund, Daniel A. Olivas, Rosanne Parry, Keith Rosson, Amy Stewart, Sonja Thomas, Addie Tsai, and Lidia Yuknavitch.
Is a writing routine worthwhile? How do you pinpoint the why behind your storytelling? What exactly is distribution? Can we reframe success in a less capitalistic way than defining it by sales numbers? While prioritizing genuine community over platform building, Imagine a Door intersperses case studies, sidebars, and checklists with personal stories about writing, revising, and the emotional complexities of sending your work into the world. Foreword by Beth Kephart, author of Handling the Truth.