It’s time for another magical trip into the minds of the Uncollected Anthology authors! Check out our new cover design, by the immensely talented Allyson Longueira…it’s perfect.
This quarter, the theme is Enchanted Emporiums: magic shops of all types. From a Manhattan bodega run by a two-thousand-year-old djinn to a magic shop that can cure a Halloween hangover, this issue gives you places to spend your hard-earned money—urban fantasy style.
Rebecca Senese is our Guest Author this issue. I can’t wait to read her story about a magical coffee shop! (Aren’t all coffee shops kinda magical when you need that hit of caffeine?)
All the stories are listed below—happy reading!
“What You Wish For”
Why does a two-thousand-year-old djinn own a convenience store and spice shop in Manhattan?
The world has changed, for one thing, and Wadid isn’t proud of some of the things he’s done in the past. But really, he loves that he can help the magical community—and enhance the cooking skills and palates of some of his customers.
That’s all well and good until two gunmen burst through the front door and threaten him and one of his customers. Wadid breaks his personal code and uses his darkest ability to make them go away.
Not that it matters. Because the next person who walks through the door is the last person he would wish for.
“What You Wish For” is kind of a sequel to my story “These Chains,” which appeared in Uncollected Anthology, Issue 5: Magical Libraries.
Buy it at any of these fine online retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Omnilit | Smashwords | iBooks
The other incredibly fabulous authors—go check out their stories!
“Fear’s Mirror,” Michele Lang
Viv Levy, owner of the Sacred Circle magic store in New York City, knows she runs a big risk in her job. All kinds of supernatural currents, including quite dangerous ones, run under, through and above the streets where regular people walk. And evil often seeks a place of power…
A mysterious stranger seeks Viv’s help in dealing with a sinister magic mirror, and another stranger arrives when all appears lost. But will Viv herself have the courage to look into Fear’s Mirror?
An urban fantasy short story set in the world of the Ms. Pendragon series!
“All Hallows’ Hangover,” Annie Reed
Teddy woke up the day after Halloween with the mother of all hangovers. The kind that comes complete with wagging tail and a lack of opposable thumbs.
Tabby owns a magic shop that carries just what Teddy needs, but Tabby’s dealing with her own brand of post-holiday hangover. The last thing she wants in her life is another complication.
Even if this particular complication has the cutest grin and the most soulful brown eyes she’s ever seen.
“When Gods Hunger,” Leslie Claire Walker
Beth embraces her new, immortal life and forever job as apprentice to Malek, the serpent from the Garden of Eden cursed into human form. Neither immortality nor her magical gig changes her essential curious, risk-taking nature. In fact, the power Malek passes to her opens the door to greater risk—and more disastrous consequences.
When she takes a short cut with her new magic, she finds herself in Hell—or a hell, anyway. She comes under the watchful gaze of a new enemy—a power of Biblical proportions whose unrivaled skill at temptation threatens to trap Beth forever. Finding a way out—a way home—becomes Beth’s priority number one, but there are more lives and souls at stake than her own.
“For more than a decade now,
I have adored the work of Leslie Claire Walker.”
— Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“The Sweet Shop,” Leah Cutter
Tong Yi waits for something to happen—for his brother to return from the war zone, for his boss to trust him again, for his magical training to be expanded.
Something. Anything.
Then powerful wizard Uncle Bei takes him to The Sweet Shop—a magic shop more special and strange than Tong Yi has ever imagined.
Tong Yi finally returns to the war zone as well, delivering a message to a client he’d never expected.
But he must now make a decision about the war, about his place in it, about his magical training.
And everything, everything, has a price.
“The Sweet Shop” is a sequel to “Dancing with Tong Yi” and “War on all Fronts,” both also available from Uncollected Anthology.
Guest Author
“The Magic Bean,” Rebecca M. Senese
After a safe life, an inheritance affords George the chance to leap for his dream: his own coffee shop. He even finds the perfect spot: a small, rundown shop.
Soon George is planning and polishing. Every day the shop looks cleaner, feels newer. Flaws melt away.
But every night strange images haunt him and threaten his sanity.
Is George’s desire to run a coffee shop a dream or a nightmare?
Final Info
As a reminder, we do have a website and a newsletter, for the sole purpose of telling you when the next batch of stories is available. Check them out!
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I’m also chuffed to announce my story, “Queen and Fool,” in Clowns: The Unlikely Coulrophobia Remix. Now, coulrophobia is a fear of clowns, so be warned, this anthology of flash fiction about clowns is…disturbing. And when I say “disturbing,” I mean that in the best possible way.
