ANNOUNCING….PRE-FUNDING BONUS REWARDS

If you’ve backed one of our recent projects you are familiar with these; if you haven’t…let me ‘splain.

We love to give away loot. We appreciate all of your support. And we really want to say thank you for helping make these cool projects possible. To that end, once we get about halfway through the campaign we like to start giving back to show you our appreciation. So, for every $500 closer to our funding goal we get, you guys score more bonus fiction…whether the project funds or not. 

Also, did I mention we love to give away loot? 😉 Once we hit our funding goal all backers at the $20 or higher level has a chance to win our Funding Goal Prize Pack. This will be a bundle of physical goodies, details to be announced. So…spread the word or consider upgrading, because the more the merrier! 

$1500 Pre-Funding Bonus Rewards – UNLOCKED!

• a DRM-Free digital download of James Chambers’ “A Cat’s Cry in Pluto’s Kitchen.”
• a DRM-Free digital download of James Daniel Ross’s “Not One Word”
• a DRM-Free digital download of Jeffrey Lyman’s “Lord of Fire, Lord of Wind”
• a DRM-Free digital download of Danielle Ackley-McPhail’s “Carbon Copy”

$2000 Pre-Funding Bonus Rewards – UNLOCKED!

• a DRM-Free digital download of Gail Z. Martin’s “Airship Down”
• a DRM-Free digital download of L Jagi Lamplighter’s “Feeding the Mouth That Bites You”
• a DRM-Free digital download of Jeff Young’s “A Talent Beyond My Talents”
• a DRM-Free digital download of Jean Marie Ward’s “The Wizard of Woodrow Park”

Funding Goal Prize Pack – UNLOCKED!

We have not fully pulled together what the prize pack will contain, but these are the components we have confirmed:

• Season 1 of Grimm on DVD
• Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (Unrated Cut) on BluRay and DVD
• Snow White and the Huntsman on BluRay and DVD
• a physical copy of Jonah Knight’s original album: Age of Steam

Back in 2012 Diana Bastine approached me with a fantastic idea for an anthology of steampunk faerie tales. The moment the suggestion left her mouth the title Gaslight and Grimm popped out of mine. Little did Diana know what she was getting in to… I agreed to do the collection as long as she joined me as co-editor.

If we would have been able to produce the book back then we would have broken the trend. Sadly, life happened. We did all the work and even had one of the stories outgrow the collection and become a novel, but the project sat the shelf for much longer than we would have liked. 

Since the anthology’s inception loads of steampunk faerie tale novels and collections have come out. Does that matter to us? NO! It was a cool idea then and it is still a cool idea now. We can’t wait to bring you this wonderful, fully illustrated collection in the fine tradition of all those classic fairy tale books we all grew up on, not because of any trend, but because we believe in it and our authors believe in it. Because we enjoy taking amazing ideas and making them a reality.

After all…books are the magic we make.

Once upon a time… ageless tales were told countlessly from one generation to the next. Tales of brave heroes and common men. Of beautiful princesses and good-hearted youths. Tales of danger and caution and magic…classics that still echo in our hearts and our fondest memories even to this day, told from worn, cherished books or from memory at Grandmother’s knee.

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

In Wolf’s Clothing by James Chambers based on Little Red Riding Hood

The Clockwork Nightingale by Jean Marie Ward based on The Nightingale

When Pigs Fly by Christine Norris based on The Three Little Pigs

From the Horse’s Mouth by Bernie Mojzes based on The Goose Girl

A Cat Among the Gears by Elaine Corvidae based on Puss n’ Boots

The (Steamy) Tale of Cinderella by Danny Birt based on Cinderella

The Steampowered Dragon and His Grandmother by David Lee Summers based on The Dragon and His Grandmother

All for Beauty and Youth by Kelly A. Harmon based on Hansel and Gretel

The Giant Killer by Jonah Knight based on Jack the Giant Killer

The Walking House by Jeff Young based on Baba Yaga

The Hair Ladder by Diana Bastine based on Rapunzel

NOTE: all ebooks listed available in .epub, mobi, or .pdf

UNLOCKED! FIRST 50 BACKERS – Get a DRM-Free download of Jeffrey Lyman’s The Troll King.

UNLOCKED! FIRST 100 BACKERS – Get a free digital download of Jonah Knight’s original steampunk album “Age of Steam”.

FIRST 150 BACKERS – Get a DRM-Free download of Jeffrey Lyman’s The Fall of Autumn.

UNLOCKED! $2700 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of David Lee Summer’s “The Slayers”.

$3000 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Danielle Ackley-McPhail’s steampunk story “On the Wings of an Angel”.

$3300 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Jean Marie Ward’s “Four for More”. 

$3600 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Gail Z. Martin’s “Grave Voices”.

$3900 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Kelly A. Harmon’s newest Charm City Darkness short story, for a limited time only available through this campaign.

$4200 – we will add an original story by Jody Lynn Nye, based on “The Red Shoes,” to the collection.

$4500 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Danielle Ackley-McPhail’s steampunk story, “Looking Back”.

$4800 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Jean Marie Ward’s “Dangerous Dames”.

$5100 – we will add an original story by Gail Z. Martin to the collection.

$5400 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Jeff Young’s steampunk collection The Kassandra Leyden Adventures.

$5700 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Jean Marie Ward’s “Glass Transit”.

$6000 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a DRM-Free download of Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Day Al-Mohamad.

$6500 – all backers at the $5 or higher level receive a free download of Danny Birt’s original album “Songs Of My People (Let Me Sing You Them)”.

$10,000 – we will produce a hardcover edition of Gaslight and Grimm.

Quick Explanation: Kickstarter doesn’t really have an intuitive way to do add-ons, and the process can be confusing, so here’s a quick explanation. To add one of the below onto your current pledge, just click on the “Manage Your Pledge” button at the top right of the page, click in the “Pledge Amount” box, and change the pledge amount to reflect the addition of the amount of the add-on you want. 

Example: if your current pledge amount is $10, and you want to add a $5 add-on, you would click into the “Pledge Amount” box and change the pledge amount to $15. At the end of the Kickstarter, we’ll send out a questionnaire to find out what add-ons you contributed for. 

NOTES: all ebooks listed available in .epub, mobi, or .pdf. Also, we can autograph a book to whomever you want and you can order more than one copy of the same book when doing an add-on. 

$5 – Add a DRM-Free digital copy of Gaslight and Grimm to your order. 

$5 – Add a DRM-Free digital copy of The Side of Good / The Side of Evil to your order. 

$5 – Add a DRM-Free digital copy of The Weird Wild West to your order. 

$5 – Add a DRM-Free digital copy of The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Greg Schauer to your order. 

$10 – Add DRM-Free digital copies of the Jeffrey Lyman eShorts collection: The Fall of Autumn, Lord of Fire, Lord of Wind, and The Troll King.

$20 – Upgrade your digital copy of Gaslight and Grimm to a print copy. 

$25 –  Add a print copy of Gaslight and Grimm to your order. It makes a great gift! (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.)

$25 – eSpec Books Special – Add an autographed print copy of The Weird Wild West to your order. It makes a great gift! (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

$25 – eSpec Books Special – Add an autographed print copy of The Side of Good / The Side of Evil edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Greg Schauer to your order. It makes a great gift! (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

$25 – eSpec Books Special – Add an autographed print copy of The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Greg Schauer to your order. It makes a great gift! (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

$20 – Add the eSpec Books chapbook collection to your order, including a print copy of Drew Bittner’s The Girl in the Hourglass (superhero fiction) and Jeffrey Lyman’s Lord of Fire, Lord of Wind (magical fantasy) and The Troll King (steampunk faerie tale). (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

$45 – Add a one-of-a-kind, handcrafted steampunk pendant to your order. (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

$45 – Add an autographed print of the interior illustration of your choice to your order (Includes domestic shipping. If you’re a backer outside the U.S. who has backed at a level that does not include shipping, please add $25 for shipping.) 

Award-winning author and editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. Currently, she is a project editor and promotions manager for Dark Quest Books and has recently started her own press, eSpec Books. 

She is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Dragon’s Lure, In an Iron Cage, The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson, and The Side of Good / The Side of Evil. 

Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail, and two extremely spoiled cats. She can be found on Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail) and Twitter (DMcPhail). To learn more about her work, visit www.sidhenadaire.com or www.badassfaeries.com. 

Diana Bastine is presently a free-lance author and editor living in the mountains of NC. She is the author of the YA fantasy series starring consisting of The Source, Shapeshifter, and Selkie. These novels, and the final, previously unpublished volume, Gabriel’s Secret, will be released by Double Dragon e-books in 2016. 

Diana is known to her friends and family as the “Fairy CatMother” and sells t-shirts and tote bags with this logo. She is a certified Reiki Master/Teacher as well, and practices other forms of energy healing, including Crystal Energy Therapy and Energetic Cord Cutting. Diana loves to read, knit and improve her brain! She loves puzzles of all sorts, including jigsaws, math and logic puzzles, and word puzzles of every variety. She enjoys exercising first thing in the morning, eating healthy foods and swears her only vice is 85% and up dark chocolate…. 

Tee Shirt Sizes available: Adult: (No Sm. or Med.) five Lg, two XL, three XXL, three XXXL, one XXXXL, three XXXXXL, Youth sizes: two Sm, four Med, one Lg, one XL. Tee Shirt Color: Lavender.

Danny Birt has been a contributing author to several sci-fi, fantasy, and professional magazines, anthologies, and journals, as well as a writer for an app. Formerly, he was an editor for Flashing Swords Magazine and Ancient Tomes Press, and is now a freelance editor. Most recently, Danny’s 2014 short story To Thy Sylph Be True was recognized by Tangent Online as a Two-Starred Recommended Read. In addition to literary publication, he composes classical and filk music, such as his nonstop hour-long piano solo “Piano Petrissage,” and the ever-peculiar album “Warped Children’s Songs.” Danny’s humorous music has been featured on radio and internet programs such as The Dr. Demento Show and The Funny Music Project. He’s also performed in ensemble at Carnegie Hall.

Career hats Danny has worn other than author, editor, and composer include being a music therapist, a massage therapist, a college instructor and program director, and an on-screen actor. 

Currently he lives in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia with his wife and kiddo, where he owns and operates an integrative therapy business.

James Chambers writes tales of horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction. He is the author ofThe Engines of Sacrifice, a collection of four Lovecraftian-inspired novellas published by Dark Regions Press which Publisher’s Weekly described in a starred-review as “…chillingly evocative….” He is also the author of the short fiction collections Resurrection House (Dark Regions Press) and The Midnight Hour: Saint Lawn Hill and Other Tales, in collaboration with illustrator Jason Whitley as well as the dark, urban fantasy novella, Three Chords of Chaos andThe Dead Bear Witness and Tears of Blood, volume one and two in his Corpse Fauna novella series. His short stories have been published in the anthologies The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible, Bad-Ass Faeries, Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad, Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory, Bad-Ass Faeries 4: It’s Elemental, Bad Cop No Donut, Barbarians at the Jumpgate, Breach the Hull, By Other Means, Chiral Mad 2, Clockwork Chaos, Crypto-Critters (Volume 1 and 2), Dark Furies, The Dead Walk, The Dead Walk Again, Deep Cuts, The Domino Lady: Sex as a Weapon, Dragon’s Lure, Fantastic Futures 13, The Green Hornet Chronicles, Hardboiled Cthulhu, Hear Them Roar, Hellfire Lounge, In An Iron Cage, Lost Worlds of Space and Time (Volume 1), Mermaids 13, New Blood, No Longer Dreams, Shadows Over Main Street, Sick: An Anthology of Illness, So It Begins, The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, Qualia Nous, To Hell in a Fast Car, Truth or Dare, TV Gods, Walrus Tales, Weird Trails, Warfear, and With Great Power; the chapbook Mooncat Jack; and the magazines Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex, and Allen K’s Inhuman. 

His tale “A Wandering Blackness,” one of two published in Lin Carter’s Doctor Anton Zarnak, Occult Detective, received an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Sixteenth Annual Collection. He has also edited and written numerous comic books including Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, the critically acclaimed “The Revenant” in Shadow House, and the Midnight Hour in the anthology Negative Burn. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the current chair of its membership committee, and recipient of the 2012 Richard Laymon Award. He lives in New York.

Elaine Corvidae has worked as an office assistant, archaeologist, and raptor rehabilitator, but she always wanted to be a writer. Her fantasy novels have been praised by reviewers and readers alike, and have won the Dream Realm and Eppie awards. She lives near Charlotte, NC, with her husband and several cats.

Kelly A. Harmon used to write truthful, honest stories about authors and thespians, senators and statesmen, movie stars and murderers. Now she writes lies, which is infinitely more satisfying, but lacks the convenience of doorstep delivery. She is an award-winning journalist and author, and a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. A Baltimore native, she writes the Charm City Darkness series, which includes the novels Stoned in Charm City, A Favor for a Fiend, and the soon to be published, A Blue Collar Proposition. Her science fiction and fantasy stories can be found in Triangulation: Dark Glass, Hellebore and Rue, andDeep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace and Misery. 

Ms. Harmon is a former newspaper reporter and editor, and now edits for Pole to Pole Publishing, a small Baltimore publisher. She is co-editor of Hides the Dark Tower along with Vonnie Winslow Crist. For more information, visit her blog at http://kellyaharmn.com, or, find her on Facebook and Twitter: http://facebook.com/Kelly-A-Harmon1,https://twitter.com/kellyaharmon.

Jonah Knight is a multiple time musical guest of honor at various SF/F conventions up and down the east coast, from The Steampunk World’s Fair to his home base at MarsCon. The songs on his six (soon to be seven) albums range from supernatural steampunk to creepy Christmas to paranormal modern folk. Although primarily known for his music these days, he spent three seasons in the Kennedy Center’s playwright training program and had a number of his plays produced around the country as well as an official performance at the Faust International Theatre Festival in Hong Kong. He occasionally takes a break from writing music to work on a script or short story. His music can be heard all over the internet includingwww.jonahknight.com. He lives in Frederick, MD, though not for too much longer.

Gail Z. Martin is the author of the new epic fantasy novel War of Shadows (Orbit Books) which is Book Three in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga; Iron and Blood: The Jake Desmet Adventuresa new Steampunk series (July 2015, Solaris Books) co-authored with Larry N. Martin andVendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel in her urban fantasy series set in Charleston, SC (2016, Solaris Books); and. She is also author of Ice Forged and Reign of Ash in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, The Chronicles of The Necromancer series (The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven, Dark Lady’s Chosen) from Solaris Books and The Fallen Kings Cycle (The Sworn, The Dread) from Orbit Books. 

Gail writes two series of ebook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures and the Deadly Curiosities Adventures and her work has appeared in over 20 US/UK anthologies. Find her at www.AscendantKingdoms.com, on Twitter @GailZMartin, onFacebook.com/WinterKingdoms, at DisquietingVisions.com blog andGhostInTheMachinePodcast.com, on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/GailZMartin and free excerpts on Wattpad http://wattpad.com/GailZMartin.

Much to his embarrassment, Bernie Mojzes has outlived Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Janice Joplin and the Red Baron, without even once having been shot down over Morlancourt Ridge. Having failed to achieve a glorious martyrdom, he has instead turned his hand to the penning of prose, in the pathetic hope that he shall here find the notoriety that has thus far proven elusive. In his copious free time, he co-edits and publishes Unlikely Story (www.unlikely-story.com).

Christine Norris is the author of several YA works, including A Curse of Ash and Iron and theLibrary of Athena series. She is overeducated, however, she has never flown an airship. She has a complete weakness for British television, an addiction to movies, re-told fairy tales, and police procedural shows. She also believes in fairies.

 Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as ‘spoiling cats.’ When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction books and short stories.

Since 1987 she has published over 45 books and more than 140 short stories.  Her newest books are Rhythm of the Imperium, third in the Lord Thomas Kinago series; an e-collection of cat stories, Cats Triumphant! (Event Horizon), Wishing on a Star, part of the Stellar Guild series,with Angelina Adams, (Arc Manor Press) and a collection of holiday stories, A Circle of Celebrations (WordFire Press) , and her novella in the second in the Clan of the Claw series,Tooth and Claw. 

Coming next in the pipeline is the next Myth-Adventures novel, Myth-Fits, scheduled for June 2016. 

Over the last twenty or so years, Jody has taught in numerous writing workshops and participated on hundreds of panels covering the subjects of writing and being published at science-fiction conventions. She has also spoken in schools and libraries around the north and northwest suburbs. In 2007 she taught fantasy writing at Columbia College Chicago. She also runs the two-day writers workshop at DragonCon. 

Jody lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with her husband Bill Fawcett, a writer, game designer, military historian and book packager, and a black cat, Jeremy. Check out her websites at www.jodynye.com and mythadventures.net. She is on Facebook as Jody Lynn Nye and Twitter @JodyLynnNye.

David Lee Summers is the author of ten novels and numerous short stories and poems. His novels include Owl Dance, a wild west steampunk adventure which tells the story of a microscopic alien swarm manipulating events in 1877 New Mexico, and The Solar Sea which imagines the first voyage to the outer planets aboard a solar sail spacecraft. His short stories and poems have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Realms of Fantasy, Cemetery Dance, and Human Tales. In addition to writing, David edited the quarterly science fiction and fantasy magazine Tales of the Talisman for ten years and has edited three science fiction anthologies: A Kepler’s Dozen, Space Pirates and Space Horrors. When not working with the written word, David operates telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Learn more about David at davidleesummers.com

Jean Marie Ward writes fiction, nonfiction and everything in between, including novels (2008 Indie Book double-finalist With Nine You Get Vanyr) and art books. Her stories appear in numerous anthologies, such as Athena’s Daughters, The Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens, and Tales from the Vatican Vaults. The former editor of Crescent Blues, she is a frequent contributor of video interviews and short subjects to BuzzyMag.com. Her website is JeanMarieWard.com.

Jeff Young is a bookseller first and a writer second – although he wouldn’t mind a reversal of fortune. He received a Writers of the Future award for “Written in Light” which appears in the26th L.Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future anthology. Jeff has contributed to the anthologiesBy Any Means, Best Laid Plans, Dogs of War, In an Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk, Clockwork Chaos and Fantastic Futures 13, as well as the upcoming anthologies Gaslight and Grimm and The Ministry of Extraordinary Weapons. He is the editor for the Drunken Comic Book Monkey line for Fortress Publishing as well as the anthology TV Gods. He has led the Watch the Skies SF&F Discussion Group of Camp Hill and Harrisburg for thirteen years.

Dustin Blottenberger learned his love of carving from his father, a woodworker. Dustin works in various media, but focuses on printmaking, painting, and blacksmithing. In 2014, he and Brigitte Winter co-founded No Discipline Arts Collective (NDAC), an informal collective of artists, writers, and art-lovers. He also writes short-form fiction and is at work on a fantasy novel that features hairless dog-people and man-eating forests. He was most recently published in the December Issue of 101Fiction (101fiction.com). You can find him on Twitter, Tumblr and WordPress: @NeverSayDustin.

Brigitte Winter is a jewelry-maker, writer, and Executive Director of Young Playwrights’ Theater, a Washington, DC nonprofit that inspires young people to realize the power of their voices through creative writing (yptdc.org). Brigitte’s short fiction is featured in Columbia Writers’ 2014 anthology, Trapped Tales, and the upcoming October 2016 City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales anthology by Forest Avenue Press. Stay tuned for her latest project: a pre-apocalyptic coming-of-age adventure novel. In her jewelry, Brigitte loves to create at imaginative intersections where old meets new, organic meets industrial, and fine art meets upcycled trash. Every jewelry piece she makes is one-of-a-kind. Visit her at brigittewinter.com, follow her on Twitter and instagram @bwinterose, and check out her steampunk and upcycled jewelry atEtsy.com/shop/GearsAndRoses.

Source: ICNW