Happy Wednesday! It’s time to update our weekly deals.
June 5th, 2024 99 cent WordFire Wednesday update
Make sure to check the store every Wednesday for a fresh set of 99 cent deals just for you.
New 99 cent deals!
Zen In the Art of Slaying Vampires by Steven-Elliot Altman
How to control the bloodlust?
How to find inner peace as the living dead?
The Way of the Wooden Stake.
One man rises in a SoHo alleyway to find his lover dead and his own body terribly transformed…
He strains to overcome his murderous instincts through zen meditation and blood deprivation.
He is reclaimed by The Ministry, an underground society waging war with the undead.
Again and again he will find his will tested, and his thirst tempted, by the killers who demand his allegiance … and the zen masters who will burn him down at his first missed step…
He must walk a tightrope between the living and the dead ... to master himself and his hunger. And the way of the wooden stake...
The 25th Anniversary Revised Author Edition of LA Times bestselling author Steven-Elliot Altman’s controversial Zen in the Art of Slaying Vampires. Foreword by New York Times bestseller Nancy Holder, author of Angel, Smallville, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels.
The Best of Penny Dread Tales edited by Kevin J. Anderson and Quincy J. Allen
Four years of Penny Dread Tales have revealed some fantastic talent. In this edition we’ve collected the cream of the crop. Herein lies the very Best of Penny Dread Tales: fourteen stories of boiler-splitting steampunk with a blend of sci-fi, paranormal, western, and horror. These stories will take you on a thrilling ride and you will love every minute of it!
Including stories by: Cayleigh Hickey, Aaron Michael Ritchey, J.M. Franklin, Gerry Huntman, Laura Givens, Keith Good, Quincy J. Allen, David Boop, Vivian Caethe, Aaron Spriggs, David W. Landrum, Sam Knight, Mike Cervantes, and Jonathan D. Beer.
The Aeronaut by Bryan Young
Action, espionage, and romance in an alternate version of World War I
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Europe is at war. Bloody trenches on the front lines form a new kind of hell that has never before been seen on the battlefield.
Computational machinery has allowed great technological leaps on both sides—and trench warfare is even deadlier for soldiers at the front.
Some men go to war to defend their homeland or to prove themselves. But Robert Preston flees America and joins the French Army to escape heartbreak.
He's placed in the 5th Aeronautic Corps, an elite unit that specializes in using high-tech jetpacks to leap over trenches and the No Man’s Land between them. It’s a dangerous job with a low survival rate, but Preston is determined to make a difference.
There, he meets a man he calls his best friend, and a woman he believes is the love of his life. But a top-secret mission behind enemy lines, and a heart full of jealousy, threatens to tear the three of them apart forever.
Coming Soon
Summer with Original Forword by Johanna Parkhurst by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s Controversial Coming-of-Age Novel
A story full of spirit and scandal…
Charity Royall longs for more in life. She can’t stand her sleepy little village or the people who walk its streets.
Then, Lucius Harney strolls into town.
He awakes an excitement within Charity that can’t be chastened. They have no shortage of valid excuses to meet together, but it doesn’t take long for whispers of scandal to snake their way through the community.
“[Summer] is about a character scraped down to the barest elements of her vulnerabilities by her emotional and physical passions. It is a story of how love, relationships, and sex reshape and redefine one person’s entire world.” —J.E. Birk, author of Booklover
This beautifully designed rendition of one of Wharton’s classics is a must-have for anyone who also loves stories such as Emma, The Age of Innocence, and Little Women.
About the author:
Edith Wharton, born into old money, was brought up in the aristocratic society of New York in the late 1800s. She was a rebel of a woman, born before her time. Edith was raised with a lot of pressure to be a proper woman and wife, though her limited beauty and insistence to read and write brought trouble into her romantic life. What dalliances she did indulge in with men in her social circle always ended poorly. Even her eventual marriage was not a happy one, and she and her husband were both unfaithful. Ultimately, she moved herself to Europe and filed for a divorce.
This theme of romantic frustration is seen frequently in her works as an author, which include well known stories like House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence. It was due to her father’s extensive library and a governess’s intentional teachings that Edith developed such a powerful literary voice. In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman in history to win the Pulitzer Prize with a story that criticized the mating rituals of New York society. She spent her golden years in the French countryside, where she passed away on August 11, 1937.
About the Student Editor:
Dakota Hadley is currently a student at Western Colorado University, where she is studying the business of publishing under successful industry icons Kevin J. Anderson and Allyson Longueira. She has had a fervent love of books ever since childhood, when she often got in trouble for taking books to the dinner table and many a social gathering.
In a recent bought of frenzied bravery, Dakota determined it was time to follow the dreams of her youth and began the scary journey of changing careers in her 30’s. Since that decision, she has worked on several aspects of various publishing projects, from contract review to cover design. Her current projects include a team anthology called Feisty Felins and Other Fantastical Familiars, funded in part by Draft2Digital, and a reproduction of an Edith Wharton classic called Summer.
When not working on books or reading for fun, Dakota can often be found taking pictures of houses or spending time with her family. She resides in Northeast Oklahoma with her husband, two daughters, and a rotund rottweiler named Roxy.
New Releases
The Call of the Canyon with Original Foreword by Jeffrey J. Mariotte by Zane Grey
From one of the greatest writers of Western fiction.
It’s the early 1920s, and Carley Burch loves New York City life.
Carley Burch also loves Glenn Kilbourn.
Will Carley travel all the way from New York City to the wilds of Arizona to bring Glenn, her fiancé, back to civilization?
Recovered from injuries he received during World War I, Glenn found a home in Oak Creek Canyon. Can he convince Carley to make Arizona her new home?
Zane Grey is well known for his rough-and-tumble westerns, soaring descriptions, and love of the outdoors. He includes all of that in this tale of Carley’s journey to what is truly important to her—whether it’s life as a New York socialite or Glenn’s wife and partner.
This fine new edition of the Zane Grey classic includes an original foreword by multiple award-winning writer Jeffrey J. Mariotte.
About the author:
Pearl Zane Grey, the fourth child of Alice Josephine Zane and Lewis Gray, was born in Zanesville, Ohio. After Zane’s birth, the family changed their last name from Gray to Grey. Lewis Grey, a dentist, did not want his son to waste his time writing stories. Lewis ripped up Zane’s first story when he was only fifteen. The only thing Zane wanted to do was play baseball and write, but he was forced into dentistry for practical reasons.
Zane attended the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship. He was a decent athlete and played in the minor leagues. After graduation with a degree in dentistry, Zane moved to New York and opened his dentistry business where he struggled with his need to write. He went camping and fishing with his brother in Pennsylvania where he met Lina Roth, known as Dolly. Zane and Dolly were married in 1905. He warned her he would not stop being a free spirit and had numerous affairs after his marriage.
In 1918, the Zanes moved to California and settled in Altadena in 1920. Dolly, a former schoolteacher, edited all of Zane’s manuscripts and managed his career including all his contracts. Zane traveled and explored the west, went fishing, and wrote. He had a cabin in Oregon on the Rogue River, and in the desert by the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona. He wrote articles for magazines, serializations, and novels. His most famous novel was Riders of the Purple Sage. In 1939, Zane Grey died at the age of 67. After his death, his wife and son published some of his unfinished novels. At least fifty movies were made based on his novels.
About the editor:
Eva Eldridge, Student Editor, Biography
Eva Eldridge has edited three editions of SandScript, an award-winning art and literary magazine. Recently she curated and edited Trouble in Tucson, an anthology of mystery stories located in the Tucson, Arizona, area. She is currently enrolled in the Publishing cohort of Western Colorado University’s Graduate Programs.
Traveling to cooler climates is one of the ways Eva manages to avoid the desert heat, but she always returns to Tucson where she enjoys gardening, food, summer storms, and writing about her travels. Eva’s travel writing and podcasts can be found at https://blendradioandtv.com/.
She lives with her husband and Sera, a pushy old dog. Her website can be found at http://evaeldridge.com.
The Call of the Canyon was released June 4th, 2024.
Some exciting reminders
Exclusive Wordfire Press Pre Order Launch of Midnight Lullabies by Jonathan Maberry!
WordFire Press is proud to share an exclusive pre-order of Midnight Lullabies: Unquiet Stories and Poems, a collection of the horror short stories and poems –both old and new—by NY Times bestselling author and 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, Jonathan Maberry. Cover Art by Lynn Hansen.
It’s dark out there…and it lasts a long time…
In the darkest hours of the night the natural world yields to the creatures who dwell in the dark. A serial killer who adopts orphaned children during the apocalypse; a heartbreaking reconciliation of two estranged brothers; a paralyzed MMA fighter receiving an offer he can’t refuse; strange voices crying out from the heart of a collapsed mountain; a little girl who enlists the aid of the monsters in her closet to battle cosmic horror; a delicious revenge by a refugee from the death camps; rednecks battling zombies; a terrified child whose family has become monsters; Earth-borne horrors taking hold on an alien world; and more! Plus, new horror tales and eerie poems.
With a foreword by New York Times bestselling author, Joe R. Lansdale.
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 4-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, editor, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action; for adults, teens and middle grade. He is the editor many anthologies including The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Don’t Turn Out the Lights, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, Captain America, Pandemica, Highway to Hell, The Punisher and Bad Blood. He is the editor of Weird Tales Magazine, and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. Website: www.jonathanmaberry.com Find @jonathanmaberry on Instagram, Twitter, and Threads; and https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.maberry.5/