Turn the Other Chick

One good turn deserves another and those unpredictable amazons are back, swords sharpened, chainmail polished, and makeup in place, ready to fight the good fight on the field of battle (and also on the bookstore shelves). And if you think they're just male wish-fulfillment fantasies, you'd better say it under your breath where they can't hear you, because these barbarian babes were born to battle. All new adventures by fearless women warriors by Eric Flint, author of 1632; Nebula-winning author Harry Turtledove; Jody Lynn Nye, co-author of the best sellingThe Ship Who Won; Campbell Award-winner Wen Spencer, and many more, including the inimitable Esther Friesner herself, as fantasy adventure takes a turn for the lighter side.

John G. Hemry is the author of A Just Determination, the first SF military legal series, as well as the Stark's War series. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Amazing and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. He lives in Maryland with his wife (the enigmatic and incomparable "S") and three challenging but great kids. Laura Frankos has published a mystery novel and short fiction, as well as science fiction and fantasy short fiction in venues as diverse as Analog and, well, this one. She also indulges her love of Broadway trivia by serving as quiz-mistress at fynsworthalley.com. Mike Turner is a university dropout who served in the Air Force and has worked as a receiving clerk, warehouse manager, convenience store night clerk, store Santa, door-to-door vacuum salesman, school lab attendant, machinist, and security guard. He spent half a decade living in Japan, has lived all over the United States from Hawaii to Alaska to Rhode Island, and currently resides in Colorado Springs with his wife, three obnoxious teenage sons, and a dozen or so cats. Jan Stirling hails from Massachusetts originally and misses it something fierce. But she happily left there in '88 to marry SF author S.M. Stirling and move to Toronto. Thinking this would be the biggest change ever to occur in her life, she little suspected they'd end up in New Mexico, a much more foreign country than the middle of Canada. She also never suspected she'd end up writing but she caught the writing bug from Steve (she swears it's contagious) and computers, bless 'em, make it possible for her to write comprehensible prose. And the rest, as they say, is history. Cassandra Claire is a twenty-something writer living in New York City, where she has painted her apartment green. She has loved fantasy since her father introduced it to her when she was a child. This is her first published story. Yvonne Coats says, "I'm originally from Dubois, Wyoming, a town where the wintering bighorn sheep outnumber the humans about ten to one. I now live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city with more people than the entire state of Wyoming ... but a lot less snow. I share space with my handsome mathematician husband Mike Collins and our bad-but-beloved cat Magpie. My first story was published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. I have also been published in the Penguin/Roc anthology Treachery and Treason, and I was shortlisted for the first James White Award in 2000." Catherine Shaffer is a writer, a mother, and a molecular biologist living in the Detroit area. She has now tickled funny bones on both sides of the Atlantic, since her first story was published in Great Britain, and a small collection of silly ferret stories first published on the web have been translated into Swedish. Her science articles have appeared in various newsletters, newspapers, and magazines, including Analog. In her free time, she plays the violin, runs, swims, and tries not to acquire ferrets, which is a more difficult thing to avoid than it would seem. A wise writer once told Jim C. Hines that, to be a writer, you should avoid stressful day jobs that keep you hard at work and sap your brainpower. Otherwise you end up too tired and drained to write. Following this advice, Jim quickly landed a job as a state employee. So far, so good-he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, and his humorous fantasy novel GoblinQuest should be hitting the shelves this month. He lives in Michigan, along with his wife and daughter, and 2.75 cats. D. S. Moen has finally achieved one of her lifehood ambitions by combining shopping, surfing, Herb Alpert tunes, and swords into a single story. She lives in the San Francisco area with her husband, their cat, and a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. Nebula Award winner Esther Friesner is the author of twenty-nine novels and over one hundred short stories, in addition to being the editor of six popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. She is also a published poet, a playwright, and once wrote an advice column, "Ask Auntie Esther." Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in Writer's Market and Writer's Digest Books. Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story (1995 and 1996), she was a Nebula finalist three times and a Hugo finalist once. She received the Skylark Award from NESFA and the award for Most Promising New Fantasy Writer of 1986 from Romantic Times. Her latest publications include the novelization of the movie Men In Black 2 and a short story collection, Death And the Librarian And Other Stories from Thorndike Press. Raised on the Southwestern Pennsylvanian farm where her father, grandmother, and great-grandfather were born, Wen Spencer is slightly bewildered as to how she ended up living outside of Boston, Massachusetts. It had something to do with owning four houses in two states, an eighteen-month pause in the Berkshire Mountains to finish construction on one of said houses, and stock options. Currently her family is down to one house and resisting all offers to move them out of the country. Wen is a two-time finalist for the John Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her books include the recently released Tinker, whose heroine is a chick that kicks butt. Excerpts from all her novels can be found at her web site at www.wenspencer.com. Selina Rosen's short fiction has appeared in the new Thieves' World anthology, Turning Points, Sword and Sorceress 16, Such a Pretty Face, Best of MZB's Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2, and Distant Journeys, to name a few. Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc. has released several of Ms. Rosen's novels. Among them are Queen of Denial and the sequel Recycled, and the Chains trilogy, the first two of which (Chains of Freedom and Chains of Deliverance) are out, and the third (Chains of Redemption) is due out in April of 2004. Strange Robbie, another of Ms. Rosen's novels scheduled for release by MM in September of 2004 will be her first hardcover release. She and a few other masochists own Yard Dog Press, a micro press that specializes in truly odd work and is presently producing four perfect bound trade paperbacks per year in addition to a variety of chapbooks and smaller anthologies. Their motto being: "If anyone else wants it, we probably don't." She edited the children's book Stories That Won't Make Your Parents Hurl, and the sequel More Stories ... Hurl, and the shared-world anthology Bubbas of the Apocalypse. The Host Books, The Bubba Chronicles, The Boat Man, Fire and Ice, and Hammer Town have been published by Yard Dog Press-about which Ms. Rosen says: "It's so hard to get published by your own publishing house. There's all the writing and then the telling yourself 'yes' over and over again. It can be quite tiring." You can write to Ms. Rosen from her website www.yarddogpress.com. Lee Martindale's short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including three collections and both Bubbas of the Apocalypse anthologies from Yard Dog Press. She edited Meisha Merlin's first original anthology, Such A Pretty Face: Tales of Power and Abundance, and has a story in its second, Lee and Miller's Low Port. When not slinging fiction, Lee is a Lifetime Active member of SFWA, a member of the SCA, a member of the SFWA Musketeers, and a Named Bard. She and her husband George live in Plano, Texas, where she keeps friends and fans in the loop at http://www.HarpHaven.net. J. Ardian Lee is the author of historical fantasy novels Son of the Sword, Outlaw Sword and Sword of King James, all featuring hot, sweaty men wielding long, hard weapons. She is a former actor, a former journalist, and a former award-winning short story writer, and began writing fiction for publication at a late age when she finally realized it was the only way to make the voices in her head earn their keep. Lesley McBain could tell all sorts of tales about herself-following her familial predilection of never letting the truth stand in the way of a good story-but That Would Be Wrong. (Worse, that might provoke the Wrath of Esther Friesner, which would be Very Bad Indeed.) She will tell two truths here, though: this is her first fiction sale, and she wishes the real Father Doonan were still alive to read it. K.D. Wentworth has been channeling biographical information from Hallah Iron-Thighs for some time now, and is under strict orders to Get it Right. Hallah is an exacting subject and tolerates no mistakes in her chronicles. Wentworth has seven novels in print now, including This Fair Land, an alternate history Cherokee fantasy, and The Course of Empire, written with Eric Flint. In her spare time, she writes short stories and serves as Coordinating Judge of the Writers of the Future Contest. She is owned by a hundred-pound Akita named Bear, and lives in Tulsa with her husband. Robin Wayne Bailey is the author of numerous novels, including Dragonkin, Night's Angel, and Shadowdance. His short fiction has appeared most recently in 2001: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Future Wars, Thieves' World: Turning Points, and Revisions. He's also edited Architects of Dreams: The SFWA Author Emeritus Anthology and Through My Glasses Darkly: Five Stories by Frank M. Robinson. He's the current chairman of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, an avid book collector, and student of Ryobu-kai Karate. He lives in North Kansas City, Missouri. Laura J. Underwood is the author of over 150 short stories, articles and books reviews, as well as several novels and short story collections. Her latest publications include, "The Gingerbread Man" in Femmes De La Brume, and a collection titled Magic's Song: Tales of the Harper Mage from Wildside Press. Future publications include her novels The Black Hunter, Dragon's Tongue, and Wandering Lark. When not writing, she is a librarian, a SFWA Musketeer and an occasional harpist. She lives in Tennessee with her family and a feline of few grey cells that she fondly calls Gato Bobo. Steven Piziks teaches English in Walled Lake, Michigan, and he is appalled that the school requires him to teach Romeo and Juliet, which contains horrifying violence and shocking dirty jokes. His students think he's hysterical, which isn't the same as thinking he's hilarious. When not writing, he plays harp, dabbles in oral storytelling, and spends more time on-line than is probably good for him. Writing as Steven Harper, he has produced the critically-acclaimed Silent Empire series, which so far includes Dreamer, Nightmare, and Trickster. Visit his web page at http://www.sff.net/people/spiziks. Eric Flint was born in southern California in 1947, and since lived in France (as a child) and in various states around the country before settling in Indiana. Although he began dabbling in writing in 1970, he didn't turn his hand to it full time until more than twenty years later, and in between was a political activist, longshoreman, machinist, and glass-blower. He has collaborated with such authors as David Drake and Mercedes Lackey, and his own series, which began with the novel 1632, has spawned a sequel, with more books set in that universe to come. He has also tried his hand at editing, with reissues of James Schmitz's and Keith Laumer's works in progress. Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as "spoiling cats." She lives northwest of Chicago with three of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published twenty-five books, including six contemporary fantasies, three SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including The Ship Who Won; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!; and written over seventy short stories. Her latest books are Myth-Told Tales and Myth Alliances (Meisha Merlin Publishing), co-written with Robert Asprin. Harry Turtledove is known for his alternate history, but does other things as well. His recent books include Ruled Britannia, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, Conan of Venarium, and, writing as H.N. Turteltaub, The Sacred Land. He also enjoys getting silly every now and again.