UNNATURAL ORDER: The Kickstarter!
We-ee-ee-e’re li-ii-ii-ii-ive!
Monsters! Monster stories! Enamel robot pins! Plushie tentacle guinea pig beasts! Do we have it? Yes we do! Can you get it? Yes you can! So… go do!
/flails, screaming into the void
Adventures in Kickstarter.
… is it really only like three days until we launch the Unnatural Order Kickstarter? Eek!
Kickstarter is hard, y’all. Like, my husband literally had an MBA from Harvard and his childhood best friend (and our neighbor) is a professional modeller for a Big 4 firm and it’s still hard to work out exactly what money we need and what rewards to offer. Like… I think we’ve got it. But… yeah. Phew. Yikes.
Tentaplush!
Mum’s tentacle monster plushie prototype for the Unnatural Order Kickstarter.
Sekret project reveal: UNNATURAL ORDER!
Hey, y’all. You remember these guys? And how they were from a totally “secret” project I couldn’t announce yet?1 Well now I can announce it; I’m editing an anthology. About monsters!
The dragon on her hoard. The horror in its void. The word-spanning AI. The demon reaping souls. Too often fiction portrays the non-human as Other; as a threat to be destroyed, to be conquered… or to be “saved”, assimilated back into the teeming throngs of humanity.
Not this time. This time, it’s the non-humans’ turn. What is life like, to be imperfect. To observe humanity from without? What does it mean to be seen as horrific, to be rejected… and to overcome that? Or embrace it? To embrace it or reject it? And what does our love of these stories tell us can we, as human readers, learn from that about ourselves?
Unnatural Order is an anthology for strange days and grotesque beauty, as the monstrous seeps out from the dark, and makes the light its own.
Sounds awesome? OF COURSE IT DOES! Monsters, man! Monsters! I can’t believe someone gave me and Lyss the opportunity to make an entire goddamn short story anthology of monsters.
Oh, and did I mention we’re looking to launch this at next year’s WorldCon? Because we totally are.
Because that’s a super-tight timeframe, submissions are open, like. Now. Until October. Next month we’ll also be launching a Kickstarter, managed by Rivqa, who you may remember from the totally awesome, multi-award-winning Mother of Invention anthology. The base project is funding (i.e. there’ll be something at the end), but the Kickstarter is for things like paying authors more, commissioning interior art,2 and actually paying the people we’ve currently got volunteering on services like copyediting and layout. For you guys, however, the Kickstarter is a way to, a) pre-order copies of the final anthology, including an exclusive hardback edition, and b) get sweet, sweet monster-related merch. So… definitely keep an eyestalk out.
And, finally, to celebrate: Liesmith will be free on Amazon for the next week. So… monsters! Eee!
- Though, confession, totally talked about anyway on Mastodon.↩
- We already have a cover artist lined up and I… might just be a teeny tiny bit excited about it.↩
Ai!
What’s this? A mascot for a (semi) secret new project? Ooh…
Also: yes! I actually inked something! And then cell-shaded it! I, like, never do either of those things but… this turned out okay? There are a few spots I’m not happy with and might revisit eventually before [SPOILERS REDACTED] but, other than that… whee! Crab-robot person! Their name is Ai! Because lawlz obvious jokes.