The Mermaid’s Madness is out! This is the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme, which was a fun, Charlie’s Angels-ish take on the world of fairy tales, with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White teaming up to save the kingdom. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the story go on, since I’m a big sucker for that kind of thing. But I’m not allowed to buy the book until I finish my own revisions (which I hope to do before I leave for India next week), so you all should go buy it now to make up for my own delay.

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I posted a while back about Save the Dragons, a crowdfunded novel whose proceeds are going toward paying the quarantine costs for the author’s pets, a group of rescue cats and dogs he does not want to abandon when his family emigrates to Australia. That’s made good progress so far, but he needs to pull together the remaining money by Christmas, so if you can spare him a few bucks, please do.

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Looks like the Dell Award has a spiffy new webpage! This was the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing back when I won it; the name has changed, but the mission has not. If you’re an undergraduate, or a recent graduate (i.e. you left college last spring), you’re eligible to submit short stories. If you’re neither of these, but you know some college-age SF/F short story writers, pass the word along. It’s a great award, and I would recommend it even if I hadn’t won.

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A review of the second issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. In discussing “The Waking of Angantyr,” the reviewer says “A piece of heroic fantasy starring a woman is a nice surprise.” Even after twenty-some-odd Sword and Sorceress anthologies, heroines are still enough of a rarity in that subgenre that they’re worthy of comment. I bring this up because it would warm the cockles of my heart to see HFQ get a slew of good stories with female protagonists, so that we can take another little step towards a world where characters like Hervor aren’t unexpected.