Get a free story when you subscribe
Menu
Shadowrun: Magic, Machines, and Mayhem, co-edited with John Helfers, is my 24th edited anthology. The pre-order link for the anthology is live. (Released on 20 Sep 2024.) This anthology is also my first official edited thing as an Editor-at-Large for Catalyst Game Labs. What a beautiful cover and just look at that Table of Contents!
Introduction by John Helfers
“An Apple a Day” by Bryan CP Steele
“Beer and Waffles” by R. L. King
“Licensed to Die” by Bryan Young
“Night Shades” by Jason M. Hardy
“To Fix a Broken Heart” by Marie Bilodeau
“The Price of Art” by Andrew Peregrine
“A Tale for Munchausen’s Merriment” by Jennifer Brozek
“Life at 9000 RPM” by RJ Thomas
“Out of Dodge and Into the Fire” by Ken’ Horner
“A Casual Glance” by Dylan Birtolo
“Dog Days” by Aaron Rosenberg
“One Night in Bellevue” by Crystal Frasier
“Can’t Trust a Trickster” by Alina Pete
“The Wastelands Speak” by Jaym Gates
“Where the Heart Is” by Michael A. Stackpole
“Incidents, Accidents, and Consequences” by Russell Zimmerman
I will note that I am not usually in the ToC of an anthology I’ve edited but I wrote the story and got it accepted before John brought me on as an official co-editor.
The rough draft of the current novel in progress is done and now I’m in the process of fixing it. Have a Bubble & Squeek!
Interview: I was interviewed by Kevin of Productivity Alchemy on episode 337! I had such a blast with this one. We talked about all kinds of things.
Kickstarter BackerKit: I am launching a Kickstarter for in late March 2024 called “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980.” It is a cozy, Middle Grade appropriate, ghost story, loosely based on fictionalized me at ten years old while living in a 300-year-old manor house in Belgium. Won’t you be my penpal?
Publication: Shadowrun: Auditions (The Mosaic Run Collection). My four YA Shadowrun novellas with a new through-put line and an extra short story–in ebook and print. Also linked on the HWA Seattle chapter page because it is cool.
Publication: 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology in ebook and print. Flash fiction stories from all over the world! Featuring stories from Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Crystal Frasier, Jody Lynn Nye, Jonathan Maberry, Premee Mohamed, Seanan McGuire, Wole Talabi, and many more!
Shoutout: Brandon O’Brien is having a poetry workshop on March 13! I’m most definitely going to to. You should too.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Twitch/YT: Shadows of Nox YT channel now has all of The Broken Hearts Club Buffy RPG Live Play mini-arc. I play Bethany, a psychic who isn’t having a great time but does meet some very cool people.
Leeloo being cute!
One of my editor friends declared it “Jennifer Brozek Publication Day” as I have not one but two new releases today! As an author, Shadowrun: Auditions has been released in ebook and paperback! As an editor, 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology has also been released in ebook and paperback. It is a good day. (How to get physical books signed by me.)
FOUR SECRET AUDITIONS…
Fixer BlotterBabe must have exactly the right actors for a production that requires very specialized talent. The actors must not only be skilled, they need to have the right attitude and an ability to adapt to extraordinary circumstances.
A Kiss to Die For: Kintsugi and Sartorial choose love over duty, but their respective families will do everything in their considerable power to stop them from being together.
See How She Runs: Terrapin witnesses a murder and is handed a package destined for some important and lethal people. Now she is running for her life.
Unrepairable: Landon and Liana love vexing megacorps for fun and profit with their Matrix show. Unfortunately, the megacorps always play dirty, and will do whatever’s required to shut them down for good.
The Kilimanjaro Run: Charlotte, Neema, and Elijah embark on an unexpected adventure that turns into a nightmare when they discover nothing is what it seems. They are left with no choice at all when choosing between the abhorrent and the right thing to do.
FOR THE MOST DANGEROUS RUN OF ALL…
Having auditioned thousands, BlotterBabe is out of time. It’s come down to these few teenagers. Either they will save the day or lose it all…
“Cons, lies, double-crosses, flat-out thievery—all the fun stuff. Auditions reads like that great first act of a heist movie. Everyone’s showing off their particular set of skills while Brozek teases us with threads of what’s to come.” —New York Times bestseller Peter Clines, author of The Broken Room
“Brozek spins a clever introduction into the world of Shadowrun in Auditions. It’s perfect for newcomers, but also showcases shadows that have never been explored yet feel perfectly familiar.” —Crystal Frasier, author of Pathfinder: Spiral of Bones
99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology UBL
EVEN A DREAM CAN BE CAUGHT IN PROSE…
There’s nothing better than a moment of whimsy and a dash of the fantastical to get the mind wandering. 99 Fleeting Fantasies is a flash fiction anthology readers can tiptoe through for a bit of wonder or while away an afternoon as they meander from old-time tales to far-flung fables to serious snippets of legend and lore that come from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, and the United States.
Featuring stories from the imaginative minds of Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Crystal Frasier, Jody Lynn Nye, Jonathan Maberry, Premee Mohamed, Seanan McGuire, Wole Talabi, and many more!
Cat and I are pleased to announce that we have final cover, release date, and table of contents!
December 12, 2023, The Reinvented Detective, the second installment of the Reinvented Anthology series from Jennifer Brozek and Cat Rambo, appears from Arc Manor.
The evolution of crime, punishment, and justice in the future.
What happens when time and technology change the definition of crime and punishment?
Science fiction often focuses on future technology without considering the society housing it. Social norms may change as tech changes — or not. What will criminals, investigators, judges, and juries look like in a complicated future of clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What stories emerge when we acknowledge the possibilities of new laws, new police methods, and the birth of sentient Artificial Intelligence, as well as all the ways they can clash or combine?
The Reinvented Detective presents stories that complicate law and order as well as the concept of criminals, detectives, punishment, and justice for all by showing how shifting technology, the rise of sentient AIs, and shifting social attitudes may affect what is not only acceptable, but expected, within both real world and digital communities—and everything in-between. These stories reinvent detective and true crime tropes, recasting them for the 21st century, and above all, experimenting, astonishing, and entertaining.
Table of Contents
Foreword – Jennifer Brozek
REPORTS
Poem: That Missing C: Police Report #1 – Jane Yolen
The Best Justice Money Can Buy – C.C. Finlay
The Gardener’s Mystery: Notes from a Journal – Lisa Morton
Someone Else’s Device – AnaMaria Curtis
Coded Out – Frog and Esther Jones
Murder at the Westminster Dino Show – Rosemary Claire Smith
The Unassembled Victims – Peter Clines
ARTIFACTS
Poem: Ghosts – Seanan McGuire
Agents Provocateur – Lazarus Black
Great Detective in a Box – Jennifer R. Povey
Color Me Dead – E. J. Delaney
The Unremembered Paradox – Maurice Broaddus and Bethany K. Warner
Go Ask A.L.I.C.E. – Lyda Morehouse
Request to Vanish – Lauren Ring
Overclocked Holmes – Sarah Day and Tim Pratt
JUDGMENTS
Poem: Final Judgement – Jane Yolen
Dead Witness – Marie Bilodeau
We Are All Ourselves Inside Our Skins – Sam Fleming
Inside, Outside, Above, Below – Premee Mohamed
To Every Seed Their Own Body – Guan Un
In the Shadow of the Great Days – Harry Turtledove
Gum5hoe – Carrie Harris
Afterword – Cat Rambo
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Powells Books
Surprise Book Release! Technically, it is on the 21st of the month but everything just kinda happened. I knew this was coming. We’d planned it. But, with Gen Con and all of my projects landing at once, it slipped off the radar. Of all the balls I’m juggling right now, this one isn’t too bad to recover from.
From 2014 to 2015, Jennifer Brozek wrote an “Author Story Card” for every convention she went to. On one side would be a piece of flash fiction: The Many Deaths of Jennifer Brozek: [Convention Name Year]. On the other side was a list of her currently available books and a QR code on where to find them. They were free for the taking and were a huge hit.
(A fact that still occasionally disturbs the author.)
With this edition, all of the convention story cards have been gathered up into a single collection, for the first time in ebook format. It debuted in the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium limited-edition ebook bundle to benefit Symposium writers and programs. Now it is available for you to enjoy.
Also included is Jennifer Brozek’s chapbook, Mastication. A chapbook created for Gen Con 2009 in an act born from desperation and a lack of experience because none of her books arrived in time to be sold at the convention.
I think 2023 is going to be a bit different for me work-wise. Right now, I have one small project under contract and that is it. As a freelance author and editor I should be terrified, but I’m not. Probably because I know there are a number of projects coming down the line, and even though you can’t trust a damn thing in the publishing industry until it is under contract (and even then it can be suspect), I’m confident at least one of these (rather large) projects is going to land.
The problem will come if more than one of them lands too close to another.
Fortunately, all of the projects in the air are awesome and I’m really looking forward to working on each of them. It’s part of my new professional strategy: Do not accept a contract that you are not in love with. If it doesn’t tick 90+% of the boxes, let it go and give someone else a chance to pick up the ball and run with it.
All this is to say that I won’t be listing out all my projects and their timelines because I can’t. This is rather like the year of the Iceberg Duck. Iceberg: because most of its bulk is unseen. Duck: because it seems smooth and graceful on the water as it sails by, but it is paddling like mad underneath.
What do I know? Not that much. Most of it speculative
At times like these, I turn to what I do know: I need to finish paying work first. I have two original projects that have been eating my brain for over a year. I also know my best bet is to work on the things I can control and the rest will sort itself out in its own time. Thus, I will begin by working on the bits of Shadowrun that I can and then I’ll dive into Dear Penpal—a fictional YA epistolatory project inspired by my time in Belgium living in a 300+ year old manor house in 1980. Those will keep me happily occupied for a few months. Then we will see what we see.
Per usual, I like to round up the year to see what I accomplished as an author, editor, and media tie-in writer. This year was a bit unusual. Year three of the pandemic and I knew I needed more rest than normal because of the general trauma of it all. Between that and anniversaries of my parents’ deaths and a whole host of other things, I structured the year a bit differently.
First, the cold hard numbers…
New words written thoughts: For the first time in a very long time, I wrote less than 100K new words in a year. When I first saw the numbers, I was startled and a little upset. Then I thought about the three month writing break I put in the middle of the year because I needed it. Then I looked at how much I had edited: 2 novellas, 1 novel, and 2 anthologies. That was where my time went and why my “new words” number seemed low to me.
Sometimes authors put too much emphasis on quantity over quality. It’s a bit like watching the scale and wondering why you’re not losing pounds while you are lifting weights and gaining muscle mass even as your waist line shrinks. I keep track of the numbers to tell myself about how I worked and what affected me where. Travel, grief, other work, teaching classes. All of it counts. This is why I keep track of everything I do in a day. I can always tell when I had to stop and spend an hour looking at a contract rather than writing. Or when the words wouldn’t come because I was grieving. My Freelancer Summary is invaluable to me. I’ve had enough people ask me about it that I’ve created a blank 2023 RTF document for people to download and use as they will. (Direct Download Link.)
This was an excellent year for submissions for me. I don’t think I’ve had such a high acceptance rate before and that makes me feel good. I like to get my short fiction out there. I like it more when it is accepted. I will never get over the rush I get at an acceptance.
New works published: I had a Shadowrun novel, Elfin Black, and a Shadowrun novella, Unrepairable, published along with a FiveFold Universe space opera novella, Truumeel’s Light, published. Then there were the two re-releases: Apocalypse Girl Dreaming and Last Days of Salton Academy. Also, I’m quite proud of the anthology, The Reinvented Heart, I co-edited with Cat Rambo. Yeah, 2022 was a good publication year.
I’ve forced myself to take an actual break for the last two weeks of 2022. It’s been good but weird. Part of me is desperate to rest. Part of me is desperate to get back to work. I think 2023 is going to be interesting in a good way and I’m looking forward to it. There’s a lot to think about and a lot to plan for. However, that is for 2023 Jennifer to deal with. 2022 Jennifer is in “potato” mode. In the meantime, I’ve got a fiendish puzzle from my sister to work on.
Thank you to every single one of you who reads me and enjoys my work.
I hope you have had a lovely holiday season and I wish you the brightest new year.
Today’s Bubble & Squeek is brought to you by the letter “E” for edit because that’s what my main focus is on right now.
Publication: Tales of Nightmares anthology edited by Loren Rhoads with my story “Twenty Questions” in it. It’s getting some nice reviews!
Pre-Order: Truumeel’s Light. Space opera novel. Part one of the Tears of Perseus story written with five other fabulous authors, including Kevin J Anderson.
Review: What a lovely and in-depth review of The Reinvented Heart anthology from http://www.llamareadsbooks.com/. I really do like this anthology.
Review: Cannonball Read reviews The Reinvented Heart anthology and likes it! Another good one.
Review: A great, detailed review of Tales of Nightmares anthology. One of my oldest stories is reprinted in this one.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
As the world continues to spin and time slips away, life happens. I’m back to writing as well as editing while trying to ignore social media. In the meantime, here’s what’s crossed my desk.
Awards: BattleTech: Crimson Night, Rogue Academy Three, has been nominated for a Scribe award! It’s always an honor to be nominated, but just look at that lineup. I’m in such good company.
Interview: I was interviewed on the Douglas Coleman show. This was a fun one. Listen to it on Youtube or in Podcast form.
Open Call: Announcing the 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology open call. All genres of flash fiction fantasy. One month open call from July 15-Aug 15. (Also, might I direct your attention to: Round One of Slush Reading from the 99 Tiny Terrors call. Or The Reinvented Detective Slushpile Tweets round up for insider tips and hints on making it through a slushpile.)
Publication: For the HWA Of Horror and Hope anthology: Words to Fill the Well. I wrote this one because I was in a terrible mood and needed to write it out. It did me so much good.
Released: New thing I edited now for sale from Priebe Press… 2d6 Superfast One Shot character sheets and game mechanics! It’s a fun, quick system to use.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Leeloo in my suitcase, trying to make sure I don’t leave without her.
There is much that goes on in a writer’s life. Here’s some of things I’ve been working on in the background.
Open Call: Announcing the 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology open call. All genres of flash fiction fantasy. One month open call from July 15-Aug 15. (And might I also direct your attention to: Round One of Slush Reading from the 99 Tiny Terrors call. Or The Reinvented Detective Slushpile Tweets round up.)
Interview: The ever-talented Cat Rambo interviewed me for Horror Tree and I got to tell one of my most favorite stories about frightening an entire room of convention goers.
Interview: My Favorite Bit about The Reinvented Heart anthology. Sometimes, the best part of the project is the people we work with.
Interview: Bookish Brews asked me and Cat Rambo what we love about The Reinvented Heart anthology. There is so much to love in this anthology.
Interview: From Nerds of a Feather… Six Books with Jennifer Brozek. Six is not enough. Some many books have touched my life.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Three kitties who did not want to get off my lap.
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.
