Publisher's Note

We’re launching a very special Kickstarter just in time for the holidays. This one is ebook only and will be fulfilled by Christmas, so if you’re shopping for mystery-lovers, we’ve got the gifts for you!

This new Kickstarter, called Never Before Seen: Six Original Mysteries by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, features six brand-new mysteries, ranging in length from novella to short story.

Kris is known for her award-winning mysteries, and getting six new stories at one time is really special!

Happy Cyber Monday! I know that’s not a real holiday. It’s a made-up retail holiday. Just like Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. But still. Deals!

We celebrate all of those here at WMG because we are a small business with a series of online stores. And we’re celebrating all that this year with a huge sale and some brand-new holiday merchandise!

Now through midnight PST on Tuesday, Nov. 28, you can save 30% on books, 25% (plus free shipping) on merchandise (US only), and 50% on everything we offer on WMG’s Teachable site.

I’m all geared up for Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, check. Sides, check. Pies, check. Heck, I even bought fresh cranberries this year to make homemade cranberry sauce.

But what I’m looking forward to most is the downtime with my family. We’re a quiet bunch (well, my husband and I are, at least), and once we’ve eaten our fill, we’ll be ready to settle in with a good story or two.

And if you love reading as much as we do (and I suspect you do because you’re reading this blog), the WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories is the perfect way to enjoy some season’s reading.

I got my annual flu shot and Covid booster last week, which reminded me of how much has changed since the pandemic but also how much has settled back into its new normal.

I’ve been getting Covid vaccines since I was first eligible, and the annual booster the past couple of years. But the Covid booster experience was different this year. Gone are those vaccination cards we guarded with plastic sleeves and took with us everywhere a couple of years ago. Now, it’s just another shot in the arm.

The world is different now, but vestiges of the old world sometimes come back to life.

We’re very cheery here at WMG headquarters this week. Not only are we all aglow at the incredible support we received from our Kickstarter backers for the 2023 WMG Holiday Spectacular, but we’re also glittering with excitement at the launch of our new WMG Holiday Spectacular online store!

The WMG Holiday Spectacular store joins our other recently launched stores: The Diving Universe store, the Pulphouse Magazine store, and, of course, the WMG online bookstore (aka the Mothership. And we’re having another grand-opening sale this week to celebrate!

You can save 30% on books, 25% (plus free shipping) on merchandise (US only), and 50% on everything we offer on WMG’s Teachable site.

It felt only appropriate to write my blog this week from a local restaurant called the Coven Café, where I enjoyed a Black Magick mocha and a pumpkin pastie. (Well, I enjoyed those before I wrote this blog because there is no magic spell that can get pastry crumbs out of a Mac laptop keyboard.)

And unlike in the world of Harry Potter, there is no magic spell to knit bones back together. Dean Wesley Smith could have used one of those spells last weekend after he shattered his shoulder in a fall during a race (read more on his blog here), but his orthopedic surgeon worked his own form of magic to fix Dean right up. He’s now on the mend, thank heavens.

This time of year, it feels like magic is all around us. From the darker magic of Halloween to the lighter magic of Christmas.

And this week is your last chance to grab a bounty of fabulous fiction appropriate for each of those holidays.

The latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, edited by Dean Wesley Smith, hit the shelves last week, and we’re thrilled with its new paperback format! Pulphouse is now an easy-to-carry 6x9 trade paperback!

Our ebook readers won’t notice anything different, of course. Your version has been easy-to-carry from the get-go.

But you’ll all be able to benefit from our new monthly publication schedule. So, win-win for everyone! 

And we have a fantastic new crop of stories to offer in this issue.

It was 80 degrees on the Oregon Coast last week, but despite the really weird (and even more unseasonal) heat, WMG headquarters was decked out for the winter holidays.

That’s because we’re testing out merchandise for our annual WMG Holiday Spectacular Kickstarter (and new store), which are set to launch over the next few weeks. More on this year’s Kickstarter in a minute.

In addition to testing out holiday merchandise, we’re also prepping for the distribution of the three holiday anthologies from last year’s Kickstarter for the 2022 Calendar of Stories. As always, Kickstarter backer get the books earlier than everyone else, and those will ship out this week.

It’s October, which means it’s time to get my pumpkin on!

I love this time of year. It’s the best time to have a birthday, in my opinion, because I can celebrate all things fall, like pumpkin patches and apple cider and light-up ghosts and…well, you get the picture.

To start, I took my daughter to a pumpkin patch this weekend so that we could pick out our annual pumpkins. We get several every year, some of which become jack-o-lanterns and some of which stick around until Thanksgiving (at which point they are referred to as simply gourds so as to justify their continued presence).