Works of Fiction
Small Rain And Other Nightmares
ISBN: 9781777144241
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Whether walking from the big city to beyond Hope, or from a secret house in the hills to what's left of town, the characters in these stories are in transition from coping with the past and fears for the future. They find small but astonishing strengths when tried and tested in the story collection Small Rain and Other Nightmares.
In stories of near futures uncomfortably like our own, author Paula Johanson brings elements of magic realism and eco-gothic fiction to focus on home and heart. The title story, "Small Rain", was a finalist for the Aurora Award for Canadian speculative fiction. All but one of these stories have been published previously in magazines that won awards for those issues. Doublejoy Books is pleased to bring these stories together for the first time as a collection.
"Quiet little nightmares that sneak up on you when you're not looking. Paula Johanson is a master of the bucolic apocalypse."
-Peter Watts, author of Blindsight
"Reads like a spec fic Raymond Carver. Paula Johanson crafts small gems of stories that suggest to the reader much larger worlds."
-Ira Nayman, editor, Amazing Stories
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Island Views
ISBN: 9781777144265
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After finishing her bachelor degree, an island holiday was just what Elise wanted, and the chance to discover stone carvings. Any place with a carrot juice stand couldn't be all bad. It might even be ... interesting. But the first thing she found was a jack-of-all-trades. Now, Dale knows about petroglyphs and how to find these carvings. Elise doesn't want to be one more project for this handyman hovering around her, until suddenly, she does need his help. Instead of relaxation, on Saltspring Island she's finding unexpected challenges ...and danger.
Doublejoy Books is pleased to present the short novel Island Views. In this romantic intrigue, the mystery story is made lighter with a little sweet romance and a real-life setting. If you're into boats and beaches or West Coast living, you'll find this tale worth a look.
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Plum Tree
ISBN: 9781989966006
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Driving with her Dad to visit Aunt May is his idea of how to help Tina out of a depression that's lasted months. But the highway is boring, the weather is hot, and she's seen enough rocks and sticks for a lifetime. Tina is so preoccupied with her thoughts and memories that she hardly sees the world changing around her. When Tina and her Dad stop in a small town that hasn't changed much since 1918, it's a chance for her thoughts and memories to shuffle into an order that might make a little more sense.
New from Doublejoy Books is the short novel Plum Tree, a story of transition from place to place and time to time. There's no fanfare or surprise when Tina meets young Tim, who lost his mother to the Spanish 'flu. As she shifts from childhood to youth, from present to past and future, she's thinking of how to connect her music with people. As Tina says, Local stories. There could be a lot of them, especially if you didn't need them to be about guns and crimes but maybe about sports or inventing things. Or just ordinary life but as if it counted.
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Tower in the Crooked Wood
Doublejoy Books
ISBN: 9781989966013 $4.99
They were stolen in the dark to work for a night and a day, building a tower for the wizard Krummholz on faraway Copper Island, in a place where the trees grow twisted in a poisoned bog. Some of the unwilling workers were returned bewildered, bruised and marked by whips — others died as the uncaring wizard called new workers to his tower. Now Jenia is the only one left of her family willing to leave her orchards and walk five hundred miles in search of her abductor, and the answers to questions burning inside her.
Why was she stolen out of the dark? What is wrong at the heart of the tower? And why does the magic twisting the very trees strike a strangely familiar note? All Jenia knows for sure is that she will not let herself be made a prisoner again, not by magic nor by force of arms. When a soldier tries to trap her in a lord's garden, and a village of gentle people tell her to give up her hopeless quest, Jenia has to choose where to place her trust: in friends, in strength, or in the cunning in her own two hands.
And then the wizard Krummholz sends his call out again….
Review of Tower
A wealth of realistic detail lends authenticity to this engrossing tale of a young arborist, “a scholar of trees.” Paula Johanson has created a magical alternative world both mythic in feel, and hauntingly evocative of our own.— Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Snow Queen
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an Okal Rel Universe Legacy Anthology
edited by Lynda Williams and Paula Johanson
Reality Skimming Press
ISBN:
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Contributors to Opus 6 were tasked with portraying failure, but not necessarily in a bad way. After all, the inspiration for the topic was Amel's multiple failures in Avim's Oath, Part 6 of the Okal Rel Saga, and Amel comes out ahead in the end. One suggestion to sum up the theme was "Fail. Try again, fail better."
Paula Johanson took on the job of editor. Author Randy McCharles looked at planned failure in a story set during Erien's childhood on Rire. In "Passion Past", Elizabeth Woods tackles a miscarriage of romance. The story by M. Alexis Pakulak deals with a grim situation from a time when Lorels were earning their bad reputation with the rest of Sevildom, while Angela Lott takes a humorous perspective on Perry D'Aur's failure to cope with her little granddaughter who is -- after all -- Alivda. So it s hardly Perry's fault.
The Stories:
"Seek and Hide" by Randy McCharles
"Passion Passed" by Elizabeth Woods
"Dresu Bondage" by M. Alexis Pakulak
"Acquiring Alivda" by Angela Lott
Dive in, enjoy, and remember there's more than one way to bomb the next time you need to fail better.
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Tesseracts 7
edited by Paula Johanson and Jean-Louis Trudel
Tesseract Books
Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
ISBN: 978-1-895836-59-2 (library binding) US$23.95
ISBN: 978-1-895836-58-5 (paperback) US$9.95
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Readers will find both familiar and new authors in this seventh volume of speculative fiction and poetry showcasing the very best in Canadian literature (including French-Canadian authors whose works are translated into English), as well as a special international Spanish translation.
Tesseracts7 includes top Canadian talents such as: M. A. C. Farrant, J. Marc Piche, Jan Lars Jensen, Eileen Kernaghan, Gerald Truscott, Andrew Weiner, Lydia Langstaff, Judy McCrosky, Scott Ellis, Nancy Johnston, Richard Stevens, Natash Beaulieu, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Pierre Sormany, Dora Knez, Lia Pas, Carl Sieber, Allan Weiss, Jacko Benoit, Carolyn Clink, Eduardo Frank, Aaron Humphrey, E. B. Klassen, Candas Jane Dorsey, Bob Boyczuk, Cory Doctorow, Teresa Plowright, Yves Meynard, Karl Schroder, Shirley Meier, David Annandale, Michael Skeet, Mildred Trembley, Paula Johanson, Eileen Kernaghan, and Élisabeth Vonarburg.
The Tesseracts series is still releasing new volumes and winning awards.
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