Starward Tales Release!

The anthology STARWARD TALES is now available, featuring my science fiction Cassandra retelling, "As Dust Rolls Toward the Mountains." STARWARD TALES  is a collection of short stories, poems, and visual art retelling legends, myths, and fairy tales as science fiction, published by Manawaker Studio.

Below is an excerpt of my story, "As Dust Rolls Toward the Mountains." This story was originally published in Kasma SF Magazine in April 2014, and I'm thrilled that editor CB Droege thought it was a good fit to reprint in STARWARD TALES. It will be a real treat to receive the physical copy of this book (though of course, it's also available in ebook). Apparently there will also be an audiobook version? I'll post about that when more details are available.

Cassie went blind the day before the asteroid struck.  There had been no warnings from NASA or the White House, just as Cassie's loss of sight had not been foreshadowed by blurriness or headaches.  Once blind, though, Cassie warned our mountain town about the asteroid.  No one believed her, of course.

"It's projection," my brother said at the dinner table.  "Blindness is the worst thing that could happen to her, so she's coping by imagining the worst thing that could happen to the rest of us."
           
My brother and Cassie had dated in high school, until he left to study psychology at the state university.  Now they worked together at the grocery store on Main Street.  He'd been there when her sight disappeared.
           
"Right in the middle of a sale," he said.  "She was handing Mrs. Ross her change and all of a sudden she dropped the money and started feeling around."
           
My father took a second helping of mashed potatoes.
           
"See now, if you'd stayed here and married her, that would be your problem.  Probably have to bring up blind kids too.  I always knew something wasn't right with that girl."
           
"Is she okay?" I asked.
           
"She's home now," my brother said.  "Her parents don't want visitors.  Especially after she started with all that crazy talk about the asteroid."
           
But we knew the next day it wasn't crazy talk after all.

If you pick up a copy of STARWARD TALES, please leave an honest review! Books without reviews tend to sink into Amazon's black holes. Help keep this one sailing through space?