Let’s have a quick look at the new Kickstarter from ZNB. Okay, doing nicely so far but a fair way to go before the finish line. Do take a look because these anthologies promise a great choice of excellent reading – as well as the opportunity for new writers to submit their work to one or more of three thoroughly professional projects. And there are all sorts of bonus offers and incentives for backers.

What’s my incentive? I want to write a story for the ‘Death’ anthology. How could I not, with my lifelong fascination with myth and legend? It’s one of the universals, the book-end to the origin stories which tell us so much about a culture and its world view. Some belief systems have more than one aspect of Death personified. Some are benign, some are neutral while others are malicious. Some are male, some are female, some are animal. Some manifest with multiple aspects.

What about the various guides and guardians of the newly dead? Sometimes you’ll get some warning – is that a good thing or not so much? Sometimes who you meet depends on how you died. Got a couple of coins in your pocket for the Ferryman after breathing your last in bed? Or are you hoping that ‘the Kindly Ones’ will avenge your untimely slaying down some dark alley?

What about all the stories of those who thought they could cheat or mock Death and get away with it? That’s merely one aspect of encounters with Death which persists in popular fantasy fiction; in the Discworld most of all but cropping up here and there in TV series as varied as Supernatural and Reaper.

How could I not want to tackle the challenge of finding some new facet of all this to explore, in ‘The Death of All Things’?

Just as my fellow authors are keen to dive into the depths of ‘Submerged’ or get to grips with the nuts and bolts of ‘All Hail Our Robot Conquerors’.

Back the Kickstarter and help make all this happen 🙂