Cover reveal: Anne E. Johnson's LAUNCHING THE LUNCHROOM Gzzargles Alien Stories No. 1

"I hate Earth Studies!" John knows he'll never get that report on pollination done in time. "Why do we have to live on Earth? There’s all this stuff to learn, and it’s so boring."

In Launching the Lunchroom, some intergalactic visitors overhear John's complaint. Unfortunately, they misunderstand his meaning.

Launching the Lunchroom

Gzzargles Alien Stories No. 1

for kids aged 7-10

Written and illustrated by Anne E. Johnson

Coming July 1, 2018.

Now available: "Cat's Breakfast" Kurt Vonnegut Tribute Anthology from Third Flatiron

One of my recent fiction publications is a ridiculous science fiction story called "Formica Joe." It is told from the point of view of a man stuck in two dimensions inside a tabletop in a diner.

Kurt Vonnegut

I do love unabashed silliness and weirdness, which is one reason Kurt Vonnegut ranks among my favorite authors. So, imagine how thrilled I was to sell this story to Third Flatiron Publishing for their Kurt Vonnegut tribute anthology, Cat's Breakfast. All the stories in this collection share Vonnegut's sardonic strangeness.

Good beach reading? Well, it depends on the kind of beach you like.

The authors represented in this anthology are as follows:

Jonathan Shipley , Konstantine Paradias , James Beamon , Iain Hamilton McKinven, Jill Hand, Anne E. Johnson, Vaughan Stanger , Dan Koboldt, Rati Mehrotra, Benjamin C. Kinney , David A. Killman , Tim Jeffreys , Gregg Chamberlain , Christorpher Mark Rose, Keyen Bowes, Peter Hagelslag, James Lairamore, Ville Nummenpaa, Rekha Valliappan, August Marion, S.E. Foley, James Dorr, John J Kennedy, Ryan Dull, Veronica Moyer, Corrie Parrish, Neil James Hudson, Laurence Raphael Brothers, E.E. King, Edward Ahern

You can purchase Cat's Breakfast on Amazon.

CAT'S BREAKFAST:

The new "Cat's Breakfast" anthology from Third Flatiron pays tribute to the imagination and inspiration of the late author Kurt Vonnegut. Emulating Vonnegut's famous "gallows humor" and skeptical view, these all-original satirical stories are a delightful antidote for the malaise and division plaguing contemporary society.

John McRandle on his unusual picture book for grownups, THE AWFULBET

There's little in life I admire more than weirdness and originality, preferably both in the same work. And so, it's my great pleasure to introduce you to the oddest picture book you're likely to see today, The Awfulbet, written and illustrated by John McRandle.

*   *   *

The Tale of The Awfulbet

by John McRandle

The Awfulbet: A Bracing Compendium of Disease & Effluvia For Grownups is an ABC book with a collection of 26 letters who endure a wide range of amusing afflictions. From Acne to Zombification, and all infirmities in between, each letter has been given an alliterative assortment of awfulness. For example, meet ‘B, who is Beset by Bunions, Baldness and Boils’, or ‘R, who is Ripe with Ringworm, Rosacea and Rabies’—the characters of the book possess a certain comical charm that will appeal to kids and grownups alike.

This is my first book, and my first foray into the world of self-publishing. Starting as a germ of an idea two years ago, the project came to me in a late-night burst of creativity. The writing was the fastest part, with the droll diseases flowing from my pen. But the illustration took a lot of time, as each letter’s illness had to be anthropomorphized and personalized to build the character. I suppose the genesis for The Awfulbet can be traced back to my youth reading Mad magazine and collecting Topps’ Wacky Packages, which fueled my interest in the sort of subversive humor that kids love. Some of my largest influences are Dr. Seuss, Edward Gorey, and Roald Dahl, as they play a huge role in my literary and artistic interests—and my love for darker and more disturbing work.

As a young person I was fascinated by the creatures you would find when turning over rocks, or the strange old things you'd find packed in the attic or basement that had been discarded by their owners but still had stories to tell. Growing up as the child of a German historian and an audiology professor, I always had an interest in language and science. We had a large library filled with art, natural history, and science books, and linguistic humor and wordplay were always popular in our house. What I hope to do with The Awfulbet is make something curiously creepy and grossly entertaining that appeals to the 13-year-old rock flipper and attic explorer in all of us.

BLURB:

The Awfulbet: A Bracing Compendium of Disease & Effluvia For Grownups chronicles the sad state of affairs in which these endearingly ill letters find themselves. From Acne to Zombification, there is no end to the problems these troubled souls will endure.

This contagious interpretation of an alphabet book springs from the fevered mind of John McRandle, a New York-based illustrator and musician. Night after night, he toiled until the wee hours, delving into the lives of these 26 little creatures. Now, the fruits of his labor can be yours!

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Learn more about The Awfulbet on the book's website.

You can purchase The Awfulbet from the Blurb bookstore. 

See more of John McRandle's work on Tumblr and follow him on Instagram as @jdmcrandle

Webrid rides again...space picnics and fuzzy spies in RED SPAWN DELIVERY, out now! #funny #scifi

It's launch day for RED SPAWN DELIVERY, third installment of the Webrid Chronicles!

Time to go planet-hopping with a giant, hairy Yeril again as Webrid gets forced into another misadventure.

Buy it on Amazon!

Buy it on Barnes & Noble!

Get a paperback from the publisher!

How can a picnic go so wrong?

Ganpril Webrid's grandfather always told him not to use his cart unless he was getting paid for it. But this huge, hairy carter on the planet Bexilla let a friend talk him into carting beers and grub to a picnic with her old college roommate. 

Worst mistake he ever made. Before he can even burp up his first sandwich, the ol' roomie stretches out her ten shiny legs, and out pop a hundred spawn. And before Webrid can settle his churning stomach, fifty of those spawn have been kidnapped.

Like it or not, Webrid finds himself on another planet-hopping adventure with snarky, brainy pals Zatell and Stravin and a host of wacky aliens. This time, Webrid's cart turns into an interplanetary playpen--or it will, if he can only find those blasted spawn.

Like #funny #scifi? Win RED SPAWN DELIVERY at Goodreads Giveaway!

What more need I say? Candlemark & Gleam is giving away three copies of the third book in the Webrid Chronicles series, RED SPAWN DELIVERY.

Webrid’s grandfather always told him not to use his cart unless he was getting paid for it. But this huge, hairy carter on the planet Bexilla let a friend talk him into carting beers and grub to a picnic with her old college roommate.

Worst mistake he ever made. Before he can even burp up his first sandwich, the ol’ roomie stretches out her ten shiny legs, and out pop a hundred spawn. And before Webrid can settle his churning stomach, fifty of those spawn have been kidnapped.

Like it or not, Webrid finds himself on another planet-hopping adventure with snarky, brainy pals Zatell and Stravin and a host of wacky aliens. This time, Webrid’s cart is a playpen -- or it will be, if he can only find those blasted spawn.

Enter the giveaway by clicking here! Closes Feb. 28, 2017.

Cover reveal: RED SPAWN DELIVERY #funny #scifi #novel

It's here! The cover for book 3 in the Webrid Chronicles series!

How can a picnic go so wrong?

Ganpril Webrid’s  grandfather always told him not to use his cart unless he was getting paid for it. But this huge, hairy carter on the planet Bexilla let a friend talk him into carting beers and grub to a picnic with her old college roommate. 

Worst mistake he ever made. Before he can even burp up his first sandwich, the ol’ roomie stretches out her ten shiny legs, and out pop a hundred spawn. And before Webrid can settle his churning stomach, fifty of those spawn have been kidnapped.

Like it or not, Webrid finds himself on another planet-hopping adventure with snarky, brainy pals Zatell and Stravin and a host of wacky aliens. This time, Webrid’s cart is a playpen -- or it will be, if he can only find those blasted spawn.       

Watch for the release of RED SPAWN DELIVERY in Spring 2017.

If you'd like to be notified by email, please sign up here.

Excerpt: Blue Diamond Delivery, funny #scifi

Webrid is excited about the 2017 release of a third book about him. (Who am I kidding? Webrid couldn't care less.) RED SPAWN DELIVERY will be available in a few months. For

now, enjoy an excerpt from the second book in the Webrid Chronicles series...


Blue Diamond Delivery
by Anne E. Johnson

Ganpril Webrid woke up in midair.

“What the…?” He landed with a painful crunch, his wide shoulder wiping out his shelf of commemorative Valestin Hundred-Proof bottles (“Collect all twelve!”).

“Oof!” He pulled a shard of broken glass from his matted fur. That’s when he noticed he was naked.

“I guess it wasn’t a bar fight,” he slurred, as surprised as his muzzy mind would allow. At least he was at home. But something was seriously wrong. Looking around, he saw that most of his meager belongings were capsized or shifted. “Damn. How much did I drink?”

Webrid figured that, since he was on the floor anyway, he could think better if he stretched out on his back. That’s when he noticed the naked Entra lady suction-cupped to the ceiling. “Drarra, honey? Is that you? What you doin’ up there?”

With a resounding pop! pop! Webrid’s favorite paid companion loosened her head from the metal ceiling plates and bent backward to face the floor. “Oh. You still alive?” She didn’t sound thrilled. “What the hell happened?”

Webrid tried to do the gentlemanly thing and look at her face while he spoke to her. He wasn’t having much luck, so he closed his eyes. “Were we attacked by Blennf initiates, or what?”

“Nice one, Web. Mocking people of faith. Very classy.” Her sigh seemed rooted in her lower guts, in that way Webrid had heard from so many whores in his time.

“Seriously, though, what went on here?” he asked again.

Drarra pointed across the room. “I went flying off the bed, same as you. Only I’m lighter and stickier, so I grabbed the ceiling. Help me down,” she ordered, pushing a long, flexible limb toward him.

Webrid stood up in stages, fighting through aches in his hip and shoulder. “Grab hold, babe.” He reached up to get a firm grip on her appendage. “Here we go.” With gentle yanks, he unstuck her, cup by cup, pop! pop! pop!, until she was draped over his arms. “Flew off the bed, huh?” Webrid racked the one dusty corner of his brain that seemed to be working. “You’d think I’d remember sex that good.”

“Oh, please. What sex? You couldn’t manage anything but passing out when we got home last night.”

Webrid was hurt. “You gonna tell me how come we flew off the bed, or do I gotta read it in the paper?”

“It was a quake, I guess.”

Webrid picked some wax out of his ear. “You say quake?”

“Yeah, you know. Ground shaking? People flying off beds? Buildings collapsing, too, probably.”

Webrid rubbed his bruised shoulder. “Quake. Weird. And listen to that.”  

“What?”

“Outside.” Webrid was used to the sounds of downtown Bargival. He loved the wailing sirens and the vendors shouting at the honking commuters. The revving of engines was like a lullaby to him. But this morning sounded different. A whole new level of chaos.The screeching machinery sounded a lot bigger than usual, some of it hovering in the air. And more people were screaming louder. He’d have looked out the window of his tiny apartment had one. “Sounds crazy out there.” He let Drarra drip onto the bed and started searching for his pants.

“Never been a quake my whole life. And then, boom, there’s a quake? What’s that about?”

“How do I know? Something makes the rocks in the ground shift.”

Webrid, bending over painfully to look under a haphazard sculpture of piled-up furniture, turned his aching neck. “Why would the rocks in the ground shift?”

“What am I, ascientist now? It shakes, is all I know. Just look around you. This mess isyour scientific proof.” Drarra slid off the bed. “I’m hittin’ the Ladies’. Don’t bother me in there.”

Webrid dragged his gaze around his four dingy walls. “Too bad about my building.”

“What about it?” Drarra called from the bathroom. “It’s still standing.”

“Yeah. That’s my point. This lousy building stays upright, but I lose my Val-Hundred bottle collection. Where’s the justice, man?”

“Ha! You drink enough, you’ll have a whole new collection in half a moon.”

Webrid shook his head and pulled a glass shard from between two calloused toes. No point trying to explain to her that those were commemorative bottles. He’d have to deal with black market types to replace that set. Those Akardian salesmen made him cringe, skins covered in floppy lobes and tongues dripping with sweet lies.

Webrid sighed. A quake. Whoever heard of a quake in Bargival?

*   *   *

Want more Webrid? Buy BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY directly from the publisher, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, and at other online retailers.

Excerpt: Green Light Delivery, funny #scifi

We're gearing up for the release of the third Webrid Chronicles novel, RED SPAWN DELIVERY, in 2017. The style of these books has been described as a cross between

Douglas Adams and Raymond Chandler.

In anticipation, it seemed appropriate to acquaint (or re-acquaint) readers with the ridiculous but lovable mess that is Ganpril Webrid, carter of the city of Bargival on the planet Bexilla in the Raralt Planetary Circle. And so, let us start at the beginning...


Green Light Delivery
by Anne E. Johnson

Ganpril Webrid, carter for the Bargival district, handed a clod of jamboro cake to the blue-skinned businessman.

He took a dendiac note in payment. “You stayin’ here?” Webrid asked, “or can I bring my cart into your space?”

Obviously pretending that he hadn’t heard, the fellow closed his window and sucked the cake down whole through a slimy blue mouth.

Webrid hated these commuter types. Somehow, they never learned the basic courtesies of urban interaction. And they were always in Webrid’s way. So he tried again, louder this time. “Can I use your space, mate?” He enunciated clearly. “How long you stayin’?”

“Bivisher! Braaap!” came the reply, the first word being an expletive, the second a burp.

“Fine. I’ll go somewhere else.” Webrid knew when he’d been licked. But he couldn’t just keep rolling along. He needed to get off the street for a while, after several hours of selling cakes to commuters, pushing his cart through the hotafternoon smog.

As he thought about how tired he was, Webrid realized that someone was standing next to him. “Yeah? I got cakes today, friend,” was his automatic response. Then he turned his head and focused his eyes.

This guy did not want a jamboro cake; he could tell that much for sure. For one thing, this “guy” didn’t appear to be biologically based. Webrid could see the wires at its joints. A great metal head lowered itself on a slender tube of a neck. A brace of digital cameras absorbed the features of Webrid’s face, which made him squirm.

“Like what you see, sailor?” he joked, but only to hide his fear. This wasn’t a Vox police robot. Not one like he’d ever seen, and he’d seen them all, what with parking tickets and contraband searches every few days. The Vox, always watching and listening, seemed to be after him constantly for one thing or another.

The robot’s head came closer to his face. Webrid pulled back. Maybe it was a cop bot after all. “I ain’t parked wrong. I’m on the move, in search of a legal space, officer.”

The robot responded with a mechanical buzz and a series of clicks. A door retracted into its central chamber, revealing a speaker. Somebody—somebody biological—spoke. “Ganpril Webrid, Second-State Licensed Carter,” it announced.

That voice! Icy snakes of déjà vu scuttled up Webrid’s spine. Clear as the bot hovering before him, he pictured the squalid back alley where he used to play with his cousins when he was a kid. Webrid huffed and shook his head, chasing away the random vision.

“Ganpril Webrid,” the voice repeated. “You have been called.”

“Eh?” Webrid had just spoken this syllable when a delicate feeler came flying out of the robot’s head and wiped across his forehead. It stung. “Hey, now, what’s the idea?”

But the thing was gone. Upward. Out of sight.

Webrid felt a headache coming on, and a strange green light pattern was starting to flicker in one eye. The light coalesced into a shape. It was not a very familiar shape, but after a moment of painful concentration, Webrid thought he recognized it. A tree? There weren’t any trees in Bargival, or on the entire planet of Bexilla. Webrid had only seen trees in pictures at school years ago. But now there was one floating in front of him, made of a green cloud. Then its particles dispersed, and there was nothing to see but the comforting grunge of the Bargival streets.

Webrid decided he needed a drink.

* * *

Like Webrid so far? You can buy Green Light Delivery  directly from the publisher, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, and at other online retailers.

Acquisition Announcement: Candlemark & Gleam welcomes a new Webrid novel

Hey, Webrid fans!

You helped everyone's favorite snarky carter figure out where that laser in his forehead came from in GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY.

You watched Webrid and friends keep their solar system from cracking apart in BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY.

And now I am thrilled to report that Candlemark & Gleam Publishing has officially announced the acquisition of RED SPAWN DELIVERY. Poor Webrid, who just wants to sit around guzzling booze, has to hop from planet to planet, chasing down fifty kidnapped alien spider babies. This was not what he had planned for the week.

And if you have not yet been introduced to Webrid or the other madcap characters in the Raralt Planetary Circle, I promised you'll be tickled. These novels have been described as a cross between Douglas Adams and Raymond Chandler, so you know you won't be bored!

See the official announcement on the Candlemark & Gleam blog. The novel is scheduled for release in early 2017.

One for Every Taste: My Three Novels Coming Out in 2016

The year 2015 saw a lot of short publications by Anne E. Johnson, but nothing longer than five thousand words. And not for lack of trying. The fact is, when you deal with small publishers, you learn to expect various things not to go as planned.

Giving details would be gauche, so suffice it to say that I lived through a bookless 2015 and now look forward to the 2016 release of three novels, in three genres, from three different publishers. To wit:


WINTER 2016

SPACE SURFERS (Alban Lake Publishing) 
This YA far-future science fiction adventure takes place on a planet called Soranen and features a pair of twins whose ancestry is a mixture of the Ellarisor and Human species. The teens' secret, illegal jet flights above the planet's atmosphere uncover a great mystery that inspires them to figure out the origins of their Human blood.

SPRING 2016

FRANNI AND THE DUKE (Sunbury Press) 
Going back to my roots as a musicologist, I wrote this middle-grade historical novel as a celebration of one of my favorite composers, Claudio Monteverdi. It's May of 1608 when a 12-year-old girl named Franni and her older sister enter the glorious city of Mantua. Soon they find themselves working on Monteverdi's new opera in the Duke's impossibly glamorous Palazzo. But when the Duke of a nearby town goes missing and Franni's sister also seems to be in danger, Franni must piece together a puzzle even more complicated than the maestro's music.

FALL 2016

RED SPAWN DELIVERY (Book 3 of the Webrid Chronicles; Candlemark & Gleam) 
Webrid is back, and it's chaos as usual in the Raralt Planetary Circle. The every-alien who just wants to be left alone to belch beer is once again forced into an adventure. This time a whole litter of babies get stolen from under their mother's nose. And just because the mom went to college with Webrid's friend Zatell, Webrid has to help find the blasted things.

Save the Funny #Scifi. Pre-Order Alternate Hilarities: Weirder Science #AltHilKS4

If you know my work, you know I love funny.

And now I've gotten myself involved (embroiled?) in another funny project. Strange Musings Press is publishing Alternate Hilarities: Weirder Science, the fourth volume in a series that pays tribute to a previous sci-fi periodical of the same name, from back in the day when magazines existed only as bound paper objects.

I'm very pleased that my space mining caper, "The Motherlode," will be included in this new anthology. And now's your chance to pre-order through Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/809941908/alternate-hilarities-weirder-sceince

Here's some info from the series editor, Giovanni Valentino:

Science can be both savior and damnation. The inventions of the great minds of the world can make our lives easier, bring about our destruction and facilitate the delivery of terabits worth of funny cat videos. Technically, those last two might be the same thing.

Here is a collection of humorous tales of science like the perils of time travel, how body switching can both help and hurt the gender gap, the woes of the classic Mad Scientist in a modern world and the importance of pizza throughout the universe.

So grab your guide and towel. Get ready to brave the dangerous terrain of theory and hypothesis.

Madness and Science go hand and hand.

Skipping, Singing and Laughing Maniacally!

Muahahaha!

Seriously...don't you simply need to read this?

#SciFi is no joke: Milo James Fowler seriously serializes his Captain Quasar novel

Always a pleasure to welcome Milo James Fowler to Jester Harley's Manuscript Page. I admire anyone who writes as well and as consistently as he does, who shows such determination to get his work out there, and -- most important -- who isn't afraid to put some funny in his science fiction. I'll let him tell you about his latest project:

*   *   *

Meet Captain Quasar

by Milo James Fowler

For me, writing fiction is all about the characters. And when I create a protagonist I enjoy, I can't help but write more stories for him.

When I came up with Captain Bartholomew Quasar back in the spring of 2010, I was going for a mash-up between William Shatner's James T. Kirk and Dudley Do-Right from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (but in Quasar's case, things seldom ever go right). He's one of those classic pulp heroes with a heart of gold whose narcissistic tendencies often land him in hot water. The captain hasn't changed a whole lot in the dozen other tales I've written, but his relationship with Hank and the other characters is deepening with every story, as Quasar realizes he needs them in order to continue being as awesome as (he thinks) he is.

I don't write hard science fiction with a whole lot of actual science in it. I focus on the characters, and everything else I just make up—or I rely on osmosis to filter enough jargon into my brain from all the SciFi that I've read. I do my best to aim for universal themes and relatable characters, and I try to shoot for a high entertainment value that transcends any barriers to enjoying these space opera tales.

I hope readers can laugh at Bartholomew Quasar and root for him at the same time. He's ridiculous, but there's something about his fallible nature that most of us can relate to on some level.

My debut novel Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Space-Time Displacement Conundrum started serialization on April 20. 

Blurb:  

Captain Quasar is out of time.

Pursued by vengeful Goobalob toll collectors, savage Arachnoid bounty hunters, and formidable Amazonians, Captain Bartholomew Quasar must do whatever he can to keep the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude out of harm's way. All in a day's work—except time is not on his side.

Torn from the present to relive his past, he vows to keep mistakes from occurring the second time around. But is he doomed to repeat the past? Or can he erase his regrets?

Villains will be vanquished. Lives will be lost. Bonds will be betrayed. Heroes will be heroic.

Join the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude for a hilarious time-travel space adventure the likes of which you've never seen.

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You can learn more about Milo James Fowler on his website.
Read more about the series and subscribe to it here and read the teaser/prologue right here.