IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The cat jumped out of the bag in my author’s newsletter last month (subscribe now and you’ll be first to know all the big news!):
My short story collection, Cul De Sac Stories, has been accepted for publication by Aqueduct Press!
Cul De Sac Stories by Tamara Kaye Sellman (Aqueduct Press: 2024)
ISBN: 978-1-61976-262-6
EISBN: 978-1-61976-263-3
Cul De Sac Stories is set in exurbia, where the cul de sacs are not the safe spaces we once imagined. You’ll find man-eating mutant flower vines, cannibalistic witches, carpets of spiders, magic dolls, wars with forests, lying psychics, second civil war stories told backwards, and community-binding tornadoes. A little sci-fi, a little fantasy, a little horror, and a little … I don’t know what!
Many thanks and mad respect to L. Timmel Duchamp for seeing value in the feminist underpinnings of this gnarly and often dark collection of speculative works. Also, many thanks to Beth Thorpe, editor extraordinaire, lifelong literary aficionado, and Port Townsend vortex resident, who has been with me every step of the way.
It’s early yet: the book is not in production, and we have to pick a cover, etc. It should release sometime in the first half of 2024. You can bet I’ll keep you posted on its progress in my newsletter.
A word about Aqueduct Press (PO Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787
From their website:
“Aqueduct Press dedicates itself to publishing challenging, feminist science fiction. We promise to bring our readers work that will stretch the imagination and stimulate thought.
“Although feminist science fiction has been thriving for decades, its role as an oppositional literature means that it will almost never be ‘mainstream’ enough to attract an audience that makes works best-selling blockbusters or even meets the bottom-line criterion of corporate publishers and booksellers that prevails in the industry today. As a sad consequence, the leading publishers often decline to bring fine works of feminist science fiction into print. André Schiffrin, in The Business of Books, writes,
‘Books can afford to go against the current, to raise new ideas, to challenge the status quo, in the hope that with time an audience will be found. The threat to such books and the ideas they contain-what used to be known as the marketplace of ideas-is a dangerous development not only for professional publishing, but for society as a whole. We need to find new ways of maintaining the discourse that used to be considered an essential part of a democratic society.’
“Fortunately, a few small presses include feminist science fiction in their lists. Aqueduct Press is pleased to be among their ranks. Let the discourse continue.”
I’m humbled (not a strong enough word for how I feel, frankly) to be included in a community whose long list of members includes Celeste Rita Baker, Christopher Barzak, Kelley Eskridge, Gemma Files, Karen Joy Fowler, Theodora Goss, Nicola Griffith, Eileen Gunn, N. K. Jemisin, Gwyneth Jones, Ellen Klages, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tanith Lee, Maureen McHugh, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Nnedi Okorafor, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lawrence Schimel, Nisi Shawl, Sheree Renée Thomas, Cynthia Ward, and Batya Susan Weinbaum (and so many other amazing authors whose work I need to become familiar with).