The following entry was originally posted as a Clockwork Phoenix 5 Kickstarter update. There’s just 8 days left, and the campaign still needs a lot of help. Check it out here.
 

Hello, Clockwork Phoenix 5 backers!
 
We’ve been idling today at just over $6,300 with about 9 days left. I’m still holding a giveaway at $6,500, of two story collections by Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner and Clockwork Phoenix contributor John Grant. I thought this might be a good time to double back and better explain just what all these e-books that we’re offering as rewards actually are.
 
First, the most important thing to know–if you pledge at the $25 tier or higher, you get all 14 of them. (And to those who have already: thank you and I hope you will enjoy them!)

(And all but one are or will be available as trade paperbacks, too.)
 
So what are these books?
 
Well, aside from the obvious one, the one we’re hoping to make, Clockwork Phoenix 5:
 

• The first four Clockwork Phoenix anthologies, obviously, laid the foundation for the book we’re Kickstarting. Combined they hold over 1,000 pages of original, poetic, exciting, mind-bending fiction, several best-of-the-year picks and award finalists among them.
• The first Mythic Delirium anthology holds all the poems and stories from our ‘zine’s first year as a digital journal. A Publishers Weekly starred review called it “a winner from cover to cover.” Mythic Delirium Vol. 2, forthcoming in October, will hold, you guessed it, the stories and poems from the ‘zine’s second year. Both sport beautiful covers from Hugo winner Galen Dara.
• Bone Swans is the debut fiction collection from Clockwork Phoenix and Mythic Delirium contributor C.S.E. Cooney. My Mythic Delirium Books imprint will release it in July. It’s our first single-author collection, with an introduction by none other than Gene Wolfe. Catherynne M. Valente calls Cooney “one of the most moving, daring, and plainly beautiful voices to come out of recent fantasy” and Delia Sherman says, “These stories are a pure joy.”
• Francesca Forrest, who copy edits for Mythic Delirium, generously allowed her debut YA fantasy novel Pen Pal to be part of our reward package. At SF Site, Sherwood Smith called it “a vivid, memorable book that is one of my favorite picks of 2013.” And Little Red Reviewer wrote, “if you’re just looking for a damn good book with two empowering women, Pen Pal is that.”
• Unseaming is my own debut collection of horror and dark fantasy short stories, now a Shirley Jackson Award finalist. Laird Barron wrote the introduction. Thomas Ligotti wrote a very flattering blurb in which he called my stories “fun” — try to picture that, if you’re familiar with his work and nihilistic outlook. (I consider it a badge of honor.) The creepy cover comes from British horror photographer Danielle Tunstall.
• I’m a heavy metal fan, and heavy metal bands often release EPs between albums. That’s basically what The Spider Tapestries will be — a short collection containing some of my science fiction and fantasy stories, which are way weirder than my horror stories. It’ll come out in January, about the same time as Clockwork Phoenix 5, knock on wood.
• The Black Fire Concerto is my first novel, a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy with a dash of zombie trouble. I like Little Red Reviewer‘s description of it best: “Exploding with magic, music, and violence, this short novel has the magical feel of an old school suspenseful fantasy adventure as filtered through the eyes of H.R. Giger.”
• For something completely different, The Sky-Riders is a light-hearted steampunk Western co-written with my friend Paul Dellinger, whose forthcoming book, Fuzzy the Robot, was co-authored with New York Times–best-selling middle grade author Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame. Our graphic novel-style cover came from the team of Orion Zangara and Derek L. Chase. (Note: this title is only available as an ebook or audiobook. The rest all have trade paperback editions.)
• Lastly but not leastly, Hungry Constellations is a retrospective on my 20+ year career as a poet, with the selections made by up-and-coming anthology editor Dominik Parisien, an introduction from Locus Award finalist Amal El-Mohtar, and a beautiful cover by Paula Arwen Owen.

 
So that’s what you get at $25 and up. On top of whatever else you pledge for.
 
Later tonight I hope to share more giveaway news. I intend to stay hard at it until the train reaches the end of the line. Once again, my thanks to all of you for climbing on board!

 
#SFWApro