The Project Mayhem roll-out continues!

Mouldwarp Press Presents #1: Project Mayhem is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.  I couldn't be more proud about the anthology.  When the Dead Letter Quarterly debacle unraveled in 2007/2008, I was pretty humiliated personally.  I was one of three editors in the start-up literary journal, and took great pride in providing feedback to everyone who submitted to us, whether or not we accepted them into the subsequently nonexistent first issue.  Years later, I had another look at the stories I personally edited, and now am almost glad that the venture fizzled, because I was no longer happy with my efforts in that regard, so it was a personal redemption to get that part right with Project Mayhem, especially since I had eleven other contributors to account for, regardless of how long the stories were.  In the end I ended up retyping each of the stories, just to make sure I was perfectly happy with the end results.  It was another triumph just to get the thing released, closing the loop of a disappointment that I felt not only for myself but for everyone who'd been accepted into DLQ.

Aside from PT Dilloway and Christy Wiabel (a member in good standing of the WriteClubCo that I've previously written about), I didn't know any of the contributors to Project Mayhem prior to last December, when the submission period originally opened.  Dana Jerman contributed the most stories, three in all, and prior to her I hadn't even considered that anyone would do that.  Dave Elsensohn gave me two as well as the cracked concrete photo (the crack is visible behind the yellow box with the title in it, and is the most obvious indication of where the title "Project Mayhem" came from, other than a response to the WRiTE CLUB exercise last summer) that's the background image on the cover.  Every one of the writers in the anthology has earned my everlasting gratitude.

And for anyone who doesn't know where "Project Mayhem" actually comes from, it's Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, which was later adapted into a David Fincher movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.  It's what Pitt (who's really Norton) is up to besides the eponymous club, urban anarchy that probably wouldn't have been possible after 9/11 as a pop culture event.

I'm not really up to describing the origins and background to anyone else's story (although if they want to share, feel free to, assuming any of you follow this blog), but "Seventy-One and Counting" works two ways.  Personally, it's a tribute to my mother, who turned 71 yesterday, an achievement considering she's been battling advanced-stage cancer for two years now, as well as a piece of Space Corps history.  Space Corps, you'll remember, is my science fiction saga, the subject of my current WIP, Seven Thunders, and what I've dedicated 2013 to advancing as a reality in my fiction writing activities.

The story is based on a crucial period of Space Corps lore, although one that heretofore had not really been visible in my stories, and is notably absent from any of the seven other books that will follow Seven Thunders.  It's the story of the first Danab War, the version of the classic alien invasion story that's most relevant to the Space Corps saga, how humanity first battled the Danab, a prequel of sorts to the conflict at the center of Seven Thunders.  It also features the first print reference to the Space Corps covert division, which plays a huge role in A Tremor of Bones, which is the fourth book in the cycle.

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound like my contribution is the only one of note.  Project Mayhem is a small (42 pages in print) anthology packed with big goodness.