“At Wits’ End” • by Roxana Arama

“It’s so hot and my A/C is broken,” I told the Tarot card reader. “Last winter, during that cold snap, my furnace froze. My car died before my job interview! My garden wedding is next week and with my bad luck? I can’t sleep, I’m terrified.”She consulted her cards. “You’re doomed.”“No! Is there something—”“Cancel the wedding.”“What? No…”I left her place, tears blurring my...

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“The Secret to a Happy Marriage” • by Carol Scheina

 In their seven years of marriage, Gino had never kissed his wife.He watched other dragons kissing, forked tongues darting about, wrapped in curls of blue flame and white smoke.His soft human lips could never endure such heat, but with a freeze spell, maybe he’d be able to withstand just one peck before the ice melted. Almadine deserved that, and more. He told her his...

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“Me Time” • by Lorraine Schein

 It’s cold as hell down here—which is where I live now, so I should know.My husband Hades likes the cold, but I’ve never gotten used to it. It can never be too hot for me.“Hades dear, I need a vacation to a warmer climate.”“Okay ‘Sephie sweetie, I’ll ask Hermes to book you a trip to Circe’s island.” I got a wing-mail from Hermes later.“Circe’s Resort is booked-up...

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“Too Hot to Handle” • by Ray Daley

 I’ve been inside the reactor fourteen times. Now I’m in the cleanroom, wondering if I can bear one final trip to repair the injector system.If I don’t, everyone is dead. And if I do, that’s me done, forever. Two minutes. That’s all the time I’ve got. Then my eyes are gone. If I make it out alive, I’m gonna need more than ice cream to get me over this.There’s no coin...

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“What’s a Monster to Do?” • by Melissa Mead

 When I was young and my fangs were sharp, I devoured half a dozen humans a day, and munched their pets for dessert. Those miserable bipeds trembled at the merest glimpse of my shadow.Then I made the mistake of catching dinner on their Taco Night. That infernal belch, and its aftermath, brought every wretched biped in a five-block radius running. Now they all wear...

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“The Summer of Phoenix Spotting” • by Sylvia Heike

 The summer heat had become unbearable long before the first phoenix arrived. Always soaring above my house, I feared the moment it might land on the roof.Next came the birdwatchers, sweating as they carried their telescopes and propped tripods in the scorched field. How they endured the heat, I’ll never know, and indeed many dragged themselves into the shadow of my house,...

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Karl and Abe's Excellent Adventure

 One of the problems with being an old science fiction writer is that the world is just overflowing with ideas for great SF stories that I will never have the time to write. Rather than let these ideas accumulate in notebooks my heirs will someday throw in the trash, I’ve decided to start tossing ideas out there for public consumption, in hopes that someone might be able...

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Exploring Strange New Worlds with a Hearing Loss • by Carol Scheina

I have my hearing loss to blame for my love of science fiction and fantasy. I became deaf at age 5—the medical term is bilateral profound hearing loss resulting from a hereditary gene. After I was diagnosed, my parents fitted me with rather large behind-the-ear hearing aids that amplified what little hearing I still had. This was a challenging time, as my brain had to learn...

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Talking Shop: Eric's Writing Challenge Update 5

I just realized that I forgot to do my weekly update yesterday. So, here is where things stand with the writing challenge. To date, I've written approximately 27,900 words. That puts me around 32% of the way toward the ultimate goal of 87,500. I've written approximately 7300 words since the last update. Broken down across 8 days, that works out to just over 900 words...

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THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING: yet another update

 Henry Vogel’s new serial, THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING, continues to climb in the Kindle Vella reader rankings! Check it out! Or if you prefer to read entire books, check out the parent trilogy—literally, the parent trilogy—THE FUGITIVE HEIR series, on Kindle, in trade paperback, on Audible, and free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Better yet, why not do bo...

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Of Karen and Cancer

Pete Wood asked:“You told me once that it was Karen’s idea to do an anthology of  my short stories. I imagine she has had a great impact on Stupefying Stories and your writing. You should do a blog on how she affected your writing over the years.”I don’t know that I can do that. I first met Karen when we were both fourteen. When someone has been a part of your life...

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Talking Shop: Producing Good Writing • By Eric Dontigney

Photo by fauxels from Pexels Good writing is one of those topics that comes up a lot in relation to books and especially among writers, yet remains one of the more ineffable goals of the craft. I always think of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous declaration about pornography that “I know it when I see it” as the general standard for good writing for most...

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Speaking of selling books...

 A while back, through a process too complicated to explain now, I wound up with several hundred copies of REBEL MOON, still in the boxes in which they were shipped from Simon & Schuster. I had been using them as promotional items at con appearances, but first my wife’s health issues and then COVID-19 pretty much put the kibosh on doing those sorts of in-person meet...

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The Hostage in Hiding: an update

The Kindle Vella platform launch remains the strangest thing we’ve seen out of Amazon in a long time. While it’s very cool that THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING is a “Top Faved” (that’s what that crown means) and Top 40 book, finding the blessed thing remains a challenge.Things we’re learned so far:• the easiest way to find it is to go directly to this link in a web browser:https://www.amazon.com/The-Hostage-in-Hiding/dp/B095C1LGD8/Chrome,...

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IT’S ALIVE! BWA-HA-HAAAAAAA…

Rampant Loon Press is delighted to announced that after a difficult labor and some last-minute complications, the print edition of SCOUT’S FIRST MISSION came into the world at 2:56 a.m. this morning. The print edition listing is already linked to its sibling Kindle edition and the rest of its family, author and baby are fine and resting comfortably, and the 5-star reviews...

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Meanwhile, back in the office...

SCOUT’S FIRST MISSION is out on Kindle and racking up sales and KENP page reads. Not outstanding numbers thus far, but it’s still early. I really like this reader review: “My 14 year old son enjoys this entire series. Definitely fun-filled adventure books for boys!” So for those of you who keep complaining that “No one writes/publishes books for boys anymore” … Henry does, and we do! We’re still having some issues with the cover art for the...

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BOOK RELEASE: SCOUT'S FIRST MISSION

NOW LIVE ON KINDLE!SCOUT’S FIRST MISSIONBook 6 in Henry Vogel’s best-selling Sword & Planet series!I know I said we’d be releasing this one on July 20th, but the Kindle edition went live earlier than planned while we’re still fixing some fiddly problems with the cover of the print edition. In the meantime, you can read SCOUT’S FIRST MISSION on Kindle now, and get it free...

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The State of the Loon • 18 July 2021

Just a quick note here for those who have been wondering why I have been so quiet these past few days. My wife, Karen, has had another medical misadventure. Things were pretty alarming for a span of about 72 hours but she seems to have turned the corner and is on her way back to something approximating normal. However, this has meant that my attention has been focused elsewhere...

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Talking Shop: Eric's Writing Challenge Update 4

 Another mostly quick update on the work of writing.First up, the writing challenge. To date, I've written about 20,600 words, which is a little under 24% of the way toward the final goal of 87,500. This last week, I wrote about 4400 words. So, I averaged about 628 words a day across seven days. On to Rinn's Run.Total words: 28,900 wordsChapters Completed: 18Percentage...

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Talking Shop: Death in Speculative Fiction • by Eric Dontigney

Death is a complex subject in speculative fiction, in large part because speculative fiction covers so much ground. There are simply so many ways to circumvent death in speculative fiction, be it magic, divine intervention, or super-science. Even Frank Herbert played around with the conventions of death by resurrecting Duncan Idaho over and over again as a ghola and allowing...

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THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING - more news

 The first ten episodes of THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING are now live on Kindle Vella. It’s already a “Top Faved” book, which I assume means something important. Better yet, to entice you to try Vella, Amazon is giving away 200 free tokens which you can use to buy this and other books on the Kindle Vella site.To claim your free tokens, click the little key icon in the upper right...

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“Poe Turns the Screw” • by Jason Wittman

 The esteemed Mr. Bethke informs me that someone requested an expansion of my response to his “Why do you write?” post, in which I described how watching the (very bad) 2020 movie The Turning inspired me to write a story called “Poe Turns the Screw.” Specifically, he requested, “a blog post that is part review of The Turning, and then goes into the Edgar Allan Poe take...

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Book Release: THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING, by Henry Vogel

Kindle Vella went live this morning, which means that THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING is now live as well, at this link:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095C1LGD8/ The jacket copy:In a family full of heroes, Nora Connaught is the normal one. She's never fought space pirates. Never saved anyone's life. Never done anything remotely heroic. But now she's 18 and going off to college on...

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Updating contact info

URGENT UPDATE! Because this old post from 7/12/2021 keeps bubbling back to the top, it's necessary to update this update. In 2022 our ISP unilaterally decided to move all our email accounts to Microsoft Exchange, which had the unintended consequence of rendering all our @rampantloonmedia email accounts unreliable at best and also accidentally erased several thousand archived...

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