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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.
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
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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.
My fourth YA Shadowrun novella, The Kilimanjaro Run (Amazon link), is available for pre-order right now and will be released on August 22nd. I had so much fun with this novella. I think this cover (by Jori Bolton) is one of my favorite to date. It is so good. I mean, see for yourself.
Pre-Order Shadowrun: The Kilimanjaro Run here from your favorite ebook shop. (Books2Read link)
AN UNEXPECTED ADVENTURE…
Charlotte lives with her expatriate family in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While visiting her best friend Neema, a hippopotamus shaman, a commotion next door interrupts their weekend plans. Neema’s older cousin has been arrested, leaving her younger cousin Elijah responsible for a “job.” Charlotte insists on helping Elijah complete what seems like a simple task: drop off a car in a parking lot. Simple, easy, and doesn’t piss off the wrong people, right? Reluctantly, Neema agrees, and they set off.
On the road, they get a message from BlotterBabe, a known fixer, that they aren’t just delivering a car—they’re perpetrating a horrendous crime. Together, the trio must make a choice to do the job as they were told—and keep their cousin out of trouble with the worst of society—or do the right thing.
In the end, there is no choice. Charlotte, Neema, and Elijah do the only thing they can do: make a run for it…and hope they’re not too late to save a strange visitor to their world…not to mention themselves.
“The Kilimanjaro Run is a wildly entertaining story that takes us on a supernatural road trip from the urban sprawl of Dar es Salaam to the rocky slopes of Africa’s tallest mountain with a motley and lovable group of characters. It’s thoughtful, it’s fun, it’s The Transporter meets E.T. set in the fascinating world of Shadowrun served with a healthy portion of its own special sauce. Readers are in for a good time.” ~Wole Talabi (author of Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon)
My Bram Stoker nominated Melissa Allen trilogy is in print again, and for the first time, the omnibus is in ebook format! The cover art is by the ever-fabulous Peter Tikos.
The omnibus edition of Jennifer Brozek’s acclaimed Melissa Allen trilogy.
Never Let Me Sleep. What would you do if you discovered that everyone, in your house, on your street and in your town was dead? Then you discovered you weren’t alone–and whatever was out there was hunting you? Melissa Allen knows. With only a voice on the phone to help her, Melissa must find out what happened, stop it from happening again, and do it before the monsters get her. Finalist for the Bram Stoker award.
Never Let Me Leave. What would you do if you found yourself locked in an underground lab with a murderous alien hunting you? Melissa Allen and her new friends know. With no help from the outside and time running out, it’s up to Melissa to keep herself and the other teens safe. How can she do that when she’s not sure who she can trust? Someone in the lab helped that alien escape. Someone human.
Never Let Me Die. What would you do if your sister was shot and your brother was kidnapped? Melissa Allen knows. It’s been six months since the attack at PAR Lab. Melissa, Carrie, and Adam have settled into a semblance of domestic bliss with Agent Heather Shaker as their guardian. But someone has been watching them, taking photos and keeping notes. Someone who seems to know everything about them. Someone who has no problem trying to kill them.
This special edition features all three books in Jennifer Brozek’s Melissa Allen series: Never Let Me Sleep, Never Let Me Leave, Never Let Me Die as well as the bonus short story, “Never Let Me Feel.”
Behold the beauty of my newest cover reveal!
Book Three of the Rogue Academy trilogy!
Icing on the cake? Cats Labs updated all of the Rogue Academy covers. They are all beautiful. The cover artist for all three is the ever-talented Marco Mazzoni.
Iron Dawn and Ghost Hour look wonderful. What do you think? If you haven’t read the first two books, now is a good time to catch up. I didn’t get to celebrate the release of Ghost Hour. I will get to celebrate the release of Crimson Night at Gen Con and Origins this year. Woot!
Happy Goblinization Day! In the Shadowrun Universe, (from the Shadowrun wiki) “Goblinization began on 30 April 2021. On this day many humans (approximately 10% of the world’s population), without any evident reason, transformed into Orks and Trolls. In most cases, those humans started changing en masse before the very eyes of horrified spectators, causing much panic and alarm. This event made the population fearful and discriminatory, much more than UGE, meeting metahumanity with hostility and sometimes force.
Riots as a result of Goblinization escalated, especially after the 14th amendment of the UCAS constitution gave the same rights to metahumans, culminated into the Night of Rage in 2039. It has had a negative influence on Japan’s metahuman policy, and goblinization is indirectly responsible for the formation of the Humanis Policlub. This event caused the Coffee Famine of 2022.”
Happily, I get to announce that I have signed a contract for my next Shadowrun novel, Elfin Black, staring the main character, Elfin John, from the short story “Dark Side Matters” that was in the Drawing Destiny anthology. I’m super excited for this novel. It’s set on the outskirts of Seattle in the wilds of Snohomish—a place I am familiar with because of playing Ingress.
Elfin Black will draw in a couple of characters from Shadowrun: Makeda Red and Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. I think, eventually, all of the characters from all of my Shadowrun novels and novellas will be linked. I have a plan. It is a very cunning plan…
Shadowrun: Makeda Red. It was supposed be a simple extraction from the Brussels2Rome party train. With an eclectic crowd, a willing target, and a lot of nuyen at stake, what could go wrong? Everything—as Makeda Red discovers the hard way. There’s more than one target on the train, and more than one shadowrunner team in play. When someone sabotages the tracks in the middle of the Swiss Alps, she’s forced to extract her client much earlier than planned. (Also available in audiobook format.)
Shadowrun: DocWagon19. DocWagon—saviors of the needy, rescuers of the desperate. Reporter Amelia Hart has embedded herself with a DocWagon team to see what their life is really like. When the past comes to haunt the team, Amelia is in for a wild ride. (Novella, also available in audiobook format.)
Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. When Sartorial meets Kintsugi at a jabber—an illegal warehouse party—they fall in love as only teenagers can do. But the world conspires to keep them apart…as do the secrets the teenagers hold. (Novella)
Shadowrun: See How She Runs. Ridley Ruiz is an ambitious teenager from a poor family, but she’s got dreams of a bigger, better life. One night at a jabber changes everything. Ridley sees something she wasn’t supposed to see, and is given a package she isn’t supposed to have. After she makes the delivery to a dangerous person and receives a handsome reward, chance conspires against her, and this one-time event becomes a deal with the devil.
Hello everyone. I wish we were at Gen Con in person but circumstances have dictated that we cannot be. I miss you. Considered yourself hugged, or given a handshake, or a smile and a wave. I will be on twitter to celebrate one of my all-time favorite conventions.
Below are the books I have available. If you already have them all and would like to support me, please buy me a coffee. I really am made of caffeine and I sincerely appreciate your support. You are the reason I write. (That and the fact that I need to feed my cats.)
BATTLETECH
BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident. Eight cadets and a general on a PR event gone horribly wrong. This one will break your heart.
BattleTech: Iron Dawn, Rogue Academy One. A pair of war orphans lead their academy to rescue their own when the adults can’t do it.
(New!) BattleTech: Ghost Hour, Rogue Academy Two. After sibling cadets, Jasper and Nadine Roux rescue Emporia’s MechWarriors and ’Mechs, the enemy fights back because they—like the siblings—have nothing left to lose.
SHADOWRUN
(New!) Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. When Sartorial meets Kintsugi at a jabber—an illegal warehouse party—they fall in love as only teenagers can do. But the world conspires to keep them apart…as do the secrets the teenagers hold. (Novella)
Shadowrun: Makeda Red. It was supposed be a simple extraction from the Brussels2Rome party train. With an eclectic crowd, a willing target, and a lot of nuyen at stake, what could go wrong?
Shadowrun: DocWagon19. DocWagon—saviors of the needy, rescuers of the desperate. Reporter Amelia Hart has embedded herself with a DocWagon team to see what their life is really like. When the past comes to haunt the team, Amelia is in for a wild ride. (Novella)
URBAN FANTASY
The Karen Wilson Chronicles. Omnibus. Karen Wilson is a 911 operator in the city of Kendrick, who receives a very strange phone call and discovers that her city is not at all what it appears to be. Pulled into Kendrick’s hidden, supernatural world, she finds herself appointed as the mysterious Master of the City’s visible representative to-well, everyone-and then gets adopted by a baby gargoyle. Can things get any stranger? In Kendrick, they probably can.
Join Karen and her allies as they fight to protect not just themselves, but the entire city and its denizens, from dangers within that threaten to consume them whole. This omnibus contains all four of the Karen Wilson Chronicles novels (Caller Unknown, Children of Anu, Keystones, Chimera Incarnate) as well as bonus content including a never before published short story, “The Fool’s Path.”
A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods. Bram Stoker award finalist anthology edited by Jennifer Brozek. The ongoing battle against the immortal Elder Gods enters the modern age. Magic, mayhem, and murder no longer reign in dusty books discovered in decrepit libraries. Today’s monsters can be called by more than uncanny rituals in candlelit basements. Madness lurks on the internet and lives in the locker room. It breeds in the mall and ambushes its victims outside the club.
But those who fight this vast evil have also moved into the modern age. Teenagers from every walk of life use whatever they can to defend our world. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. Sometimes…they give into the temptations of eldritch power.
If you didn’t find anything you liked, check out my podcasts: Five Minutes Stories and Shadowrun: ShadowBytes.
Today’s Bubble & Squeek is brought to you by galley proofs, workshops, and the letter “C” for cover reveals!
Cover reveal and Release: Pre-Order/Order Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For. Meet Sartorial and Kintsugi. This happens the night they meet. The cover is by the ever fabulous Peter Tikos.
Review: Way of the Laser: Future Crime Stories. Five star review. “I’m very glad I picked this book up to review, and I know any science fictions fans will be glad they picked it up to read.” This one has the story, “When a Patch Won’t Do” by me and Katie Cord.
Cover reveal for BattleTech: Ghost Hour. Jasper and Nadine are having a very bad time of it. The blonde is Lyric, Nadine’s girlfriend and all around “Death Pixie.” This is by the wonderful BattleTech artist Marco Mazzoni. He does such a good job!
Workshop: Clarion West – The Business of Writing, June 30. NOTE: However, sign-up will take place through a lottery system and you have to register for the Write-a-thon in order to sign up. They are closing the class lottery next Wednesday, June 17, so anyone interested needs to have signed up by then!
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.
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.
