UPDATE: IT’S APRIL 1ST, AND IT’S OUT!

Check your email if you pre-ordered, check your spam folder if it’s not there, and if you did not get in on the fun, check out this link.

Well, folks, it’s been a long journey from there to here, but just over a year on, we are ready to send out the absolutely amazing e-anthology put together to help genre poet and lawyer Elizabeth R. McClellan in her time of need. Angels of the Meanwhile has an official release date, and it’s one of immense personal significance to her and her spiritual community down there in Tennessee: April 1st.

That’s right. On April 1st, we’re going to be sending out a zip file with this collection of prose and poems, many brand-new or otherwise unavailable, to everyone who has pitched in to help her out since we first sent out the distress call last spring.

And if you want to get in on this outpouring of love or you just want some shiny pretty words tied up in a neat package, you can do that by clicking this link and making your contribution. (Recommended amount: $10).

Since the car accident that started all this, Elizabeth has dealt with a considerable amount of pain and uncertainty. She has medical debt to pay off, she’s exhausted her sick leave, she’s had to deal with a broken ankle, and she’s not done recovering from her current shoulder surgery. Things are stretched so thin, she has an immediate need for $250 to keep her car insurance that she needs to keep her car that she needs to keep her job, and she needs that in a week, before March 26th.

The table of contents for the book has some changes, due to evolving rights issues, but all of the contributors are still there:

Table of Contents

Bits of Prose (Flash Fiction, Prose Poems)

• This Is The Place Where Lost Things Go – Kythrynne Aisling
• The Merry Knives of Interspecies Communication – Bogi Takács
• Upon The Land, On The Sea – Sonya Taaffe
• Foam – Dusti Morton
• The Sweat of their Brows – Alexandra Erin
• The Dirty Fairy – Deborah Walker
• Beauty Sleeping – Ellen Kushner

Verse

• Beastwoman’s Snarled Rune – Rose Lemberg
• Pain Shared Is Catching (For April Grant) – Erik Amundsen
• Gorgon Girls – Saira Ali
• This Is What It’s All About – Lupa
• Blodeuwedd – Amal El-Mohtar
• Burning Wings (For C.S.E. Cooney) – Jennifer Crow
• The Changeling Always Wins – Nicole Kornher-Stace
• The Witch’s Girl – Alexandra Erin
• The First Wife – Lev Mirov
• The Secret of Being a Cowboy – Catherynne M. Valente
• Firstborn – Christina Sng
• Children of the Faun and Fae – Merideth Allyn
• Ivan Icarus – by C.S.E. Cooney
• The Freeman’s Dance – Jack Ralls
• We Named Our Grief Irene – Virginia M. Mohlere
• Fucking Doughnuts – Legoule
• Allison Gross Speaks of the Worm – Gwynne Garfinkle
• Sand Bags – Dominik Parisien
• Hot Wet Mess – S.J. Tucker
• Getting Winterized: A Guide to Rural Living – Elizabeth R. McClellan
• Uncommon Law – Lisa Bradley
• These Are Days – Roni Neal
• lis pendens – Mike Allen
• Thread Between Stone – Bryan Thao Worra

Prose Stories

• The View of My Brother’s Profile In The Rear-View Mirror – Randee Dawn
• Inside, Looking Out – Alexandra Erin
• Changed – Nicolette Barischoff
• Fire Flight – A.M. Burns
• The Legacy Box – Satyros Phil Brucato
• Illusions of Safety – Angelia Sparrow

(Yep, I’m in there three times. Well, I couldn’t ask anyone to do something for Pope Lizbet I wouldn’t do myself, could I?)

Well, folks, Angels of the Meanwhile has had typesetting/formatting issues, rights issues, computer issues, communication issues, and my own personal issues, but it’s very close to being a done thing and there will be an announcement of the actual “street date” soon.

I apologize for the delay, as I did not mean for this “little chapbook” to be a year in the making… I’m sure a more experienced editor could have done this better and faster, and shown better coordination with the talented contributors. For a long time, I’ve let this knowledge paralyze me, certain that I’m not worthy to complete what I foolishly started. Now, I look back on the past year and realize that I myself am now a more experienced editor than I was when I started. I’ve gone from feeling like “I’m never doing anything like this again” to “Well, of course I’m not… because next time I’m doing it right.”

Anyway, thank you for your patience.

Okay, folks. Back in the spring I started an ambitious project to help the beloved friend of many in the community, Elizabeth McClellan (Pope Lizbet) with mounting expenses relating to an accident. Many talented poets and authors joined me in this action by contributing their work to an anthology. There have been a lot of ups and downs along the way for both Lizbet, myself, and the project, but the long process of turning these acts of charity into a finished product is coming to an end.

About this time next week, I’m going to be sending out proof copies to the contributors so they can check their work and verify that it’s being presented to best effect, and also update their bios if they desire. I’m going to try to turn things around from there in a week, meaning that we’ll start sending the finished e-book out to those who’ve sent Lizbet aid on Monday, November 9th. To allow for life happening, we’ll have a fallback date of November 16th.

That’s the good news.

I mentioned that there have been ups and downs along the way. Things have continued to be tough for our intrepid Pope. She’s been dealing with illness, a broken ankle, and more car-related woes in the months since we started this. Coupled with the desire of many participants in the project to not see such a wonderful collection of poems and prose be a one-shot that fades away, we’ll be asking the contributors for permission to keep selling the e-book in a more permanent fashion, and looking at options for a print-on-demand version.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to help Elizabeth out, we’ll add them to the list to receive the e-book.

Hey, folks! I’m Alexandra Erin, author of Tales of MU, Sad Puppies Review Books, and that blurry screenshot of a Tumblr post where Superman is singing to Batma that you saw on Facebook that one time.

Can I tell you a secret? I’m terrible at self-promotion. It’s my greatest weakness as an independent author. I’m lousy at networking, I just hate putting myself out there, I’m always worried that I’m making a nuisance of myself, that I’m annoying people, that what I’m doing is not good enough to call attention to…

Right now I’m at WisCon, and I’m doing my best to get over it because there are just ten days left to reserve your copies of Angels of the Meanwhile, an electronic chapbook of poetry and prose put together by caring friends to help Elizabeth R. McClellan (@popelizbet) with the unexpected medical expenses from the shoulder injury that has kept her from joining us.

I would not be here in Madison if she had not come first and then dragged me along with her the next year. I first met many of the people who have contributed their words to the collection here, too: people like the inimitable Amal El-Mohtar, the incomparable Saira Ali, and the unstoppable C.S.E. Cooney. Later today I’m going to be on a panel with the celebrated author and poet Ellen Kushner, who has also generously contributed a piece. Many of the other contributors are part of the larger WisCon community

The whole long list of authors and poets who have stepped up to contribute both new and previously published works is both astonishing and humbling. You can find the table of contents here, though there are also a few late additions I’m still slotting in. All the works listed there and more can be yours. How? Just make a payment in any amount you deem fair in the PayPal form below, and the money will go directly to Lizbet, helping her recoup out-of-pocket medical expenses, lost income, and other related losses from her shoulder injury.

I am sorry to interrupt your web surfing day, but I need to ask your help with something very important to me.

A few months ago, genre poet, author, and my functional muse Elizabeth R. McClellan was injured in the process of avoiding an auto accident. What’s a functional muse? It means she inspires me to get stuff done, mainly by saying, “ALEXANDRA, GET STUFF DONE.” It’s a rare gift, don’t ask me how she does it.

It is not exaggeration to say that she’s the reason I kept writing fiction when I started out, nor is it an exaggeration to say that she’s the reason I started writing poetry.

She needs help dealing with the unforeseen expenses that mount up in the aftermath of an unforeseen injury. To that end, I’ve been putting together a e-chapbook of sorts, a quick-and-dirty anthology consisting of poetry and prose and stuff in-between from the people in our extended community of artists.

This book, Angels of the Meanwhile, contains works by such numinous luminaries as Bryan Thao Worra, Rose Lemberg, Catherynne M. Valente, Phil Brucato, Amal El-Mohtar, S.J. Tucker, Ellen Kushner, and many more. You can read more details and the entire table of contents so far beneath this post, minus some late additions still being slotted in.

In order to raise funds quickly while they can still have an impact, we’re offering this book as a pre-order on a pay-what-you-can basis. The way it works is this: you PayPal any amount directly to Elizabeth, we add your email address to the list. On our release date (currently estimated to be late July, so we have time to deliver the best product possible despite the haste), we’ll send you a packet containing both Kindle and epub formats and a PDF, for easy reading on whatever device pleases you best. All 100% DRM free.

We are only able to offer this remarkable book through June 1st. That’s today. Please make your contribution before midnight today 

Just use this simple form. If you don’t fill in an address, we’ll use your PayPal one.

Thank you.

Table of Contents

Bits of Prose (Flash Fiction, Prose Poems)

• This Is The Place Where Lost Things Go – Kythrynne Aisling
• The Merry Knives of Interspecies Communication – Bogi Takács
• The Choices of Foxes – Sonya Taaffe
• Foam – Dusti Morton
• The Sweat of their Brows – Alexandra Erin
• The Dirty Fairy – Deborah Walker
• Beauty Sleeping – Ellen Kushner

Verse

• Beastwoman’s Snarled Rune – Rose Lemberg
• Pain Shared Is Catching (For April Grant) – Erik Amundsen
• Gorgon Girls – Saira Ali
• This Is What It’s All About – Lupa
• Blodeuwedd – Amal El-Mohtar
• Burning Wings (For C.S.E. Cooney) – Jennifer Crow
• The Changeling Always Wins – Nicole Kornher-Stace
• The First Wife – Lev Mirov
• Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Lost at Sea, 1527 – Lisa Bradley
• The Secret of Being a Cowboy – Catherynne M. Valente
• Firstborn – Christina Sng
• Children of the Faun and Fae – Merideth Allyn
• Ivan Icarus – by C.S.E. Cooney
• We Named Our Grief Irene – Virginia M. Mohlere
• Fucking Doughnuts – Legoule
• Allison Gross Speaks of the Worm – Gwynne Garfinkle
• Sand Bags – Dominik Parisien
• Hot Wet Mess – S.J. Tucker
• These Are Days – Roni Neal
• lis pendens – Mike Allen
• Thread Between Stone – Bryan Thao Worra

Prose Stories

• The View of My Brother’s Profile In The Rear-View Mirror – Randee Dawn
• Inside, Looking Out – Alexandra Erin
• Changed – Nicolette Barischoff
• Fire Flight – A.M. Burns
• The Legacy Box – Satyros Phil Brucato
• Illusions of Safety – Angelia Sparrow

Angels of the Meanwhile, the e-chapbook/anthology to benefit Elizabeth R. McClellan (@popelizbet), is available for pre-order for now. We’ve extended the pre-order window through June 1st in order to be able to promote the collection through the Memorial Day convention season and in order to give more time to highlight some of the newer additions to the collection.

That’s right, I said new additions! We are welcoming Ellen Kushner (Swordspoint) and Randee Dawn to the fiction categories, along with Christina Sng in poetry! They join an already impressive cast of talent that must be read to be believed. (See below!)

We have fairies and fauns, we have love and loss, we have grief and growth, we have mermaids and sirens, we have dragons and firebirds, we have night hags and gorgons, and far, far more.Pre-Order Today at the Price of Your Choice!Get your order in by June 1st This special benefit anthology is a unique assemblage of talents and words to aid a cherished community member in need. This kind of collection is not easy to come by. Blink and it will pass you by!