While A Single Spark did not make it into the semifinalists for Philip Chase, he gave it a nice review on his YouTube channel.
Posts by Mandy
We created an anthology of irreverent poetic trash. You can buy it here.
Mandy’s new YA fantasy novel A Single Spark is now available! Click the image for more information and the universal book link, which will show all major retailers.
Tainted Love: Women in Horror Anthology launched in February 2021 and features Mandy’s story “My Lady Báthory.”
“My Lady Báthory” is a queer romantic historical horror story following a young lady named Mariska, who is unfortunate enough to find herself at the finishing school of the notorious serial killer and sadist Countess Báthory.
Read by Dusk included this in their review of the anthology: “My Lady Báthory by Mandy Burkhead is a take on the real-life horror of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed who reportedly murdered more than 600 young women in the 1600s. This beautifully written tale is seen through the eyes of her victims where they fight not just to survive but to have the freedom to be who they really are.”
The anthology can be purchased through Amazon.
Well, we made it to the last 50 out of the original 300 titles before our book was cut. While The Black Lily didn’t make it into the top 10 finalists, our reviewer Kitty G enjoyed our book and left us a wonderful review on her Youtube channel. Check it out!
Video not loading? Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/lkM7fQMnmR0?t=780
Heart of Sherwood was an enjoyable read. I love the idea of Robin Hood being a woman in disguise, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen it done before (the closest I’ve seen is the movie Princess of Thieves, in which Keira Knightley played Robin Hood’s daughter disguised as a boy). The story included the well-known beats and characters of the Robin Hood legend but also sprinkled in historical details and political intrigue appropriate to the time period of the Third Crusade.
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Our dark fantasy novel The Black Lily is a contestant for SPFBO 6. SPFBO is short for Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off. It is a competition for self-published fantasy books that is currently in its sixth year.
This year, 300 books were entered in the competition. We’re currently in the first round, where the 10 judges read (and often review) the 30 books, weeding out the ones that won’t go on to the semi-finals.
After that, each blogger chooses their favorite book to go on to the semi-finals (10 total). Then, they each read the semi-finalist and choose their favorite book from those. The one with the most votes is the winner.
The judge assigned to our book is Kitty G, a booktuber. Her channel can be found here.
We adore our book, but the competition is fierce. While we have no expectations of winning, we would be happy if we just got a review from Kitty G, as she has a large audience (15.1K subscribers)!
I absolutely loved this book. I love faerie lore (both traditional and reimagined in a second world setting), and Shadowfell is full of faerie creatures. While there are your more well-known creatures like will-o-wisps, pixies, brownies, and redcaps, there were a few new ones to me, such as the stanie mon, brollochan, and urisk. Probably my favorite was the Guardian of the South, a trickster figure of fire that can shift between an old man, a young boy, and a fierce warrior. He definitely reminded me of Loki, and I’m anticipating reading more about him as the series goes on.
The steampunk anthology Gears, Ghouls, and Gauges (and its companion Cogs, Crowns, and Carriages) is now available for purchase. Distribution was exclusive to Kickstarter backers and authors for the first four months of publication. If you weren’t able to get a copy from us directly, you can now order it on Amazon by following the link: https://www.amazon.com/Gears-Ghouls-Gauges-Steampunk-Anthology-ebook/dp/B085MN5KJK/
We are so pleased by the new cover for The Black Lily. The cover was created by J Caleb Design, who is an absolutely amazing artist with very fair prices. He was willing to do multiple versions to make sure the cover perfectly captured Lily and Adrian. He even worked our self-designed Arestean Crest into the banners and book spine. If you are looking for a badass cover designer, definitely check him out. He also posts a weekly premade on his Facebook page. https://www.jcalebdesign.com/
The Monsters We Forgot Vol. 3 is now available for purchase. In this horror anthology, you can find lots of creepy tales about monsters, demons, and cryptids, including Mandy’s short story “The Cursed Isle.”
Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/MONSTERS-WE-FORGOT-3/dp/1671299620
This story is set is set in the year 1709 and follows a monk and priest who visit the French town of Brouillard to investigate claims of witchcraft and demonic possession. The townspeople believe that the source of their troubles is a cursed island just off the shores of the lake that the town is built on. Brother Dominique is a man of science and is not certain that he believes in demonic possession, witchcraft, or hauntings, but he soon begins to experience unexplainable phenomena.
This story was partly inspired by Le Grand Hiver (the Great Winter) of 1709, which was the coldest European winter on record in the past 500 years. “The Cursed Isle” offers a supernatural and demonic origin for this devastating cold spell that killed tens of thousands of people.
Mandy is being published in yet another anthology, so it’s Kickstarter time again! This horror-themed anthology titled The Monsters We Forgot is being published by Soteira Press. Mandy’s story “The Cursed Isle” will be appearing in Volume 3 of the anthology. Please consider backing it on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/…/dopabe…/the-monsters-we-forgot
Mandy is pleased to announce that her short story, “The Lady Defiance,” will be published in the steampunk anthology Gears, Ghouls, and Gauges. This anthology is part of a set; its companion is Cogs, Crowns, and Carriages. This publication is pending successful achievement of the funding goals on Kickstarter. More information on how you can support the anthology coming soon.
Avast, Ye Airships! is a wonderful little gem of steampunk airship fantasy. All of the stories in it are well-written and intriguing. While they all have the same premise, a steampunk story set on an airship, each author contributes a story that is completely original and different from the others. While some are more “traditional” steampunk (Victorian England), there are others that are romance, adventure, scifi, horror, and even Southern steampunk. The stories are varied in length and style.
My personal top five were “Maiden Voyage,” in which a lesbian couple must outwit the pirates seizing their ship, “Captain Wexford’s Dilemma,” in which a captain suddenly finds her airship has been possessed by ghosts after mooring near a cemetery, “Hooked,” in which a young lady, on her first airship adventure, finds the ship under attack by a dashing rogue, “A Steampunk Garden,” in which a clever mechanic must outwit her captors, and “Lotus of Albion,” in which an airship captain falls for a beautiful woman whom he believes to be a damsel in distress.
What I really appreciated was the careful attention to diversity. The stories in this book included people of color, queer characters, those with disabilities, and strong female characters. This one is well-worth the read.
Out of the Shadows by Dana Fraedrich really scratched the steampunk itch I’ve been having lately. I especially enjoyed that the book was set in a unique steampunk world, rather than Victorian England. In fact, the unique world that it is set in means that one could also classify it as magicpunk.
The book takes place in Springhaven, a London-esque city in the small country of Invarnis. While Springhaven appears idyllic and tranquil on the surface, in reality, it is a dystopian society run by Enforcers who take a zero-tolerance policy to what they deem criminal activity. Criminal activity includes your usual—theft, rape, murder—but also means any sort of resistance against the established order. This includes befriending or assisting anyone deemed a criminal.
The main character, Lenore Crowley, has been an orphan for around a year at the start of the book because her parents were taken away for defying those in charge. She believes them to be dead, but learns later on that their fate was much worse—they are in a prison where they are tortured daily for information and the sheer sadistic pleasure of the Enforcers.
What I found especially interesting about the world building in Out of the Shadows is that Lenore’s society is built upon the remains of the Old World. Nobody is entirely certain what the Old World was or what happened to it, but they do know that in the Old World, magic, supernatural creatures, and fantastical events occurred which no longer exist (or so everyone believes). As readers, we are not even entirely sure how long ago the Old World ended. Thousands of years, hundreds, or just decades? It is my guess that the end of the Old World may have been brought about by the same iron hand that now rules Lenore’s society.
The Surface’s End by David Joel Stevenson is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi that follows teenager Jonah Whitfield, a hunter living in a small town at the edge of the Deathlands. Even though his hometown is full of lush greenery, the Deathlands nearby are a desert wasteland stretching on for what seems like eternity, with an unnaturally sudden change between the two.
While out hunting one afternoon, Jonah’s prey darts into the Deathlands, and he follows, stumbling upon a hatch in the ground. He returns over the next week, drawn to the curious hatch, and finally manages to open it, revealing a tunnel down into the ground.
The beginning of the book starts out a bit slow. We get a lot of details about Jonah’s family, his town, and some hints as to what happened in the past that our modern way of life no longer exists. Despite being post-apocalyptic, Jonah’s life is actually pretty great. He has a loving family, the world has not descended into anarchy despite the lack of established government, nor is there a dystopian government ruling over everything with an iron fist (at least, not in his world).
I had a bit of a difficult time believing that society would have completely forgotten all about the world that came before the destruction that wiped out a good portion of humanity. Even if they no longer have working technology, they would still have books and left-over infrastructure, and I couldn’t imagine that people wouldn’t try to keep their knowledge of the past alive. However, we do only see a small portion of the world, Jonah’s hometown, which is pretty secluded, so it’s possible that this knowledge was kept alive in other locations.
The beginning is slow to give us a detailed sense of the “normal” world, at least from Jonah’s perspective. That way, we really feel how foreign the underground society he discovers is (though it may seem uncomfortably familiar in some ways). When Jonah descends into the hatch, he finds himself in a strange dystopian facility. At first he acts as an observer, hiding in small crevices and watching the family he comes across.
Disclosure: I received a galley copy of The Grey Bastards from the publisher. Also, I’m friends with the author. He’s a cool dude and an excellent writer. Go read his shit.
Also, spoilers ahead.
The Grey Bastards is a fun, foul-mouthed read. If you’re turned off by bad language, steamy sex, or a good plot with plenty of action and twists, then this book isn’t for you. The Grey Bastards falls into the fantasy sub-genre known as grimdark. Where high fantasy has your Tolkien beautiful and noble elves, dwarves, humans, and wizards with epic battles between good and evil, grimdark takes all of that and covers it in shit, pus, and blood. Notice how in high fantasy nobody ever takes a piss or fucks? In grimdark, everyone does.
But don’t be fooled into thinking this book will be any less intelligent, epic, or heartfelt for it. The Grey Bastards is all of that and more. The novel follows Jackal, a half-breed orc living in the Lot Lands, the barren desert wasteland of Hispartha. He is a Grey Bastard, one of many half-orc hoofs, each protecting its own small town in the Lots. Members of a hoof are elite warriors that ride out on their Barbarians—giant warthogs—and slaughter invading bands of orcs.
Hispartha is a vibrant world, with a mix of fantastical species (orcs, half-orcs, elves, humans, halflings, and centaurs) with unique cultures and religions. Hispartha itself takes influences from Reconquista Spain, which is especially noticeable in the nomenclature, geography, and architecture.
I love fantasy novels, but I have a hard time sticking with a series that has more than four books, especially if they follow a single main character. What can I say; I’m a trilogy kind of girl. However, Maria V. Snyder did an excellent job of keeping me hooked all the way through the end of her nine-book series, The Chronicles of Ixia (AKA Poison Study, AKA Soulfinder—publishers really need to learn to just find one series name and stick with it). It helps that the nine books are divided into three sub-trilogies.
The first trilogy, comprised of Poison Study, Fire Study, and Magic Study, follows Yelena Zaltana. The second series, also called the Glass series, follows her friend Opal Cowan in Storm Glass, Sea Glass, and Spy Glass. The final trilogy, Shadow Study, Night Study, and Dawn Study, is where things get a bit odd. Maria V. Snyder had thrown in a few short stories/novellas throughout from different characters’ points of view. Perhaps she got bored of just sticking to one POV, or maybe fans wanted more from the other characters, so the third trilogy is from Yelena’s POV in first person and the POV’s of multiple characters (mainly Valek, Leif, and Janco, with a few others popping in from time to time) in third person.
I’m not sure which editor thought it would be a good idea to have POV switch from first person to third person in the same novel, but—yikes—is it jarring. I don’t know if the editor thought readers would be too confused because the first two trilogies were first person, but I think the entire last trilogy should have been third person. Now, I will admit my bias here—I personally always prefer third person, and I especially love third-person limited that switches between multiple characters. I think the first two trilogies in the series would have been much stronger if they had been written as such.
But enough of my rant. Because even with the wonky POV stuff in the third trilogy, these books are amazing and absolutely worth your time to read. Snyder’s world-building is compelling, detailed, and original. The books take place mostly between two pre-industrial countries: Ixia and Sitia. Ixia is a post-revolution country ruled by Commander Ambrose. His personal body guard and assassin is Valek. In the first novel Yelena is in prison for murder and is offered the choice to be the Commander’s food taster in exchange for her life. She agrees, and throughout the first book she and Valek begin to fall in love.
In celebration of Read An Ebook Week, The Black Lily is available for free on Smashwords from March 4-10, 2018!
Click on the image below to get your free copy, and while you’re at it, check out the thousands of other free ebooks available on Smashwords.
Blogger Ammar Habib interviewed us about our writing style, technique, and current works in progress. The full interview can be read here.
I’m being published in an upcoming anthology: Tennessee’s Best Emerging Poets by Z Publishing. My poem is titled “My Imagination.” You can purchase a copy by clicking on the image below. I will receive a $4 royalty for any copies purchased through this link. -Mandy
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Mandy Burkhead
G.D. Burkhead
