Another excerpt from Kudzu, an upcoming Pine Float offering by the lovely and talented A. E. Ash. When Lilah was old enough to drive, she worked the agricultural extension in the summers. The heat tore into her, wore her out--would do for anyone so on her lunch breaks she cut through the back twenty of the lab building, past the melon fields and out toward the channel. She slept at the knobbed-knees of a sprawling live oak tree. An ancient oak, several houses’ square’s width with branches that snaked along the earth around its own trunk.

She dreamed against the oak’s shaded bark. The stillness was complete.

Hot sun on leaves and moss, no wind. Summer noon and it was too hot for the cicadas to sing. Too hot to be awake so she slept.

Everything smelled like dirt and leaves and moss and heat. She stirred against moss-kissed bark and dreamed.

She dreamed of the churchyard--a muddy mouth with broken white teeth. Stones like chipped and crooked teeth, names worn away by coast-breeze and time. She stirred against the oak and felt a chill that wasn’t hers to feel. October-cool and rusted-brown, a dead place full of dead things that had long since surrendered themselves to dust.

Once-warm brown skin or strong hands or hair salt-scented from the coast-breeze over winding waterways and marsh. Once laughter-bent lips, teeth strong and white.

Once alive. Now not.

She slept and the oak stirred in a marsh-breeze that wasn’t there so far inland. Mossy-barked and patience, firm at her back…

She slept and the oak whispered to her in a voice of aged branch and leaf and rotted moss--

Delilah Gale,  there’s sleep, and then there’s sleep. Best you know the difference between the two while you’re still awake.

Best you don’t let them near you when you slumber.

Now that Palookaville’s in the tank (now available in print and electronic formats,) our eyes turn to the next project. We are excited to present an excerpt from A.E. Ash’s upcoming collection, Kudzu. As with all of her work, this one combines exquisite imagery and a keen grasp of story to create something very special. Enjoy.  The Echomancer’s Daughter Something is not right…             It’s summer. Late August, to be exact--her birthday’s come and gone with its tired attempt at a party, weak Kool Aid and sunburn. The early evening is so hot the asphalt is still melty and the air smells like honeysuckle and the papermill. Mosquitoes hover in clouds over puddles or human flesh and everything in the world buzzes--skeeters, yes, and frogs and cicadas and goodness knows what in the shrubs and shaded places.             This is what passes for silence in the Carolina lowcountry. The girl scratches idly at one of the many bites on her arm.             Something is not right…             “Delilah Gale--”             She freezes in place. First and middle name...she knows Aunt Hazel’s getting mad, trying to wrangle her and the other cousins back to the station wagon.         

The girl can’t worry about that. Something is wrong, and she keeps moving towards it. Towards the off-ness. It’s the most echoey of all the parks around town, after all--both a Civil War and Revolutionary War fort, and chock full of wrong.             “Delilah, you best get back here--”             “Innnaminute!” She calls out, all one hasty-yelled word.             Fireflies hover ahead of her in a whirl of flickering green, concentrating in one place in a copse of pines. They rise, fall, spin apart and draw back together like that magnet and iron filings experiment in school. When they reassemble, tighter than before, they form a shape.             The shape of a person.             It’s not very clear at first but the girl waits, knowing this is what she was feeling--the chill hiding in the heat, the goosebumps that had no sane reason but were there all the same.             The girl doesn’t move because where the firefly man stands--she sees him clearer now--the crickets and cicadas and even the wind make no sound.            

It’s not just chilly there, it’s flat-out  cold.             She shivers again, her summer perma-sweat freezing away and it feels like spiders are running a hundred meter dash along her arms and spine.             The firefly man raises his arm--he’s holding something. Something long... a sword.             The girl’s ears pop. She hears static, like radio or TV fuzz. Her world goes night-dark and even the firefly light dims to a swamplight green but she still sees him and now he’s not a cloud of bugs but a man with strange white hair in a ponytail, his pointy hat crooked and where his eyes should be there are only holes.            

His coat is bright, the girl notices. So bright red with a double row of shiny buttons.             PUT YOURSELF TO THE SWORD.             A voice like hurts curls through the air, a bruise-purple voice, thick and cruel.             NOW.             He obeys. In a strange, jerking motion the empty-eyed man in the bright red coat staggers forward until the girl sees the point of his sword sticking out of his back, shiny with a red more real and rich than any fabric dye.             The girl blinks then remembers what she’s been told by not one but two women who have now gone to the good Lord.             “You do not belong here. Leave--get on home, lost one. Echoes are not welcome here.” the girl almost always forgets the last part (the one her gramma said was the most important) but the man’s roar of pain and rage jogs her mind back to what she’s supposed to be doing.             She lifts her hands and shakes them a little, both wrists noisy with clacking beaded bracelets. Beads in what gramma called “haint blue.” Special beads on special thread--             COWARD--             The pain and smoke voice is not talking to the man anymore, the girl knows but she shakes her wrists again, claps three times and the vision fades. Red coat, scarlet blood melt back into twilight and the quiet green of firefly luminescence. 

Pine Float Press is pleased to expand the release of Palookaville, our newest shared-world anthology, to old-school printspace.  Books, my dear reader. BOOKS. 

Pine Float Press is proud to announce the publication of Palookaville, our second shared-world anthology. 

Palookaville is a blue-collar supervillain antholology set in the shadows of the superheroic world. Second-string criminals, masked mooks and clued-in henchmen leave the stresses of the criminal world behind and live “normal lives” in the sleepy bedroom town of Powell Heights until the outside world muscles its way in. Fortunately, the citizens of Palookaville know all about muscle work.

Powell Heights has always kept its distance from the City. The town, half an hour away from the Federal Penitentiary and the State Hospital and twenty minutes by train from the City, has made a handy living from crime since Vincenzo “Pretty Vinnie” Buonatesta muscled his way into defacto ownership of the prison during his incarceration and rebuilt the town as a place where his crew and hangers-on could regroup and live out from under the eye of the law.

In the spirit of the season, Pine Float Press is proud to present an excerpt from A.E. Ash’s upcoming collection, Kudzu. As with all of Ms. Ash’s best work, “Cypress” is lush, evocative and wonderfully, uniquely uneasy. We hope you enjoy this excerpt and are as excited as we are to see Kudzu make its way into the world in 2018.  Cypress

 Easy now my girl, my boy don’t

go past the

bottle trees. Stop. Shhh-

 --Don’t move--

 In the shallows, see it?

In the moss-shadow where

the moon can’t go?

 Hear it?

 Quiet now. Those scritches on bark,

that hissssssss,

that soft splash--

 --Stay where you are--

 Don’t tread soft ground,

my children, my loves...

Don’t go near the knees of cypress trees--

 Wait. Sniff the air.

 Pluff mud, fish gut,

no breeze by why does the moss stir?

Salty inland low tide--

 Watch. It parts the water,

cuts pondscum down the middle

dips back into the warm dark.

 --Back on up now--

 It doesn’t want to steal

your breath but

your bloodwarm hearts beat so strong…

 It doesn’t mean to borrow

your soul, to drain your marrow

through a hole in the light.

--hush, child, hush--

 Do as I say and fast.

Get behind the bottle tree, away

from water like oil like

 a long, late shadow. My children,

my loves, swamps ain’t for play.

The 47th annual ConQuesT science fiction and fantasy convention is shaping up to be hot as FIRE. In addition to special guests Nnedi Okorafor, Julie Dillon, Diane Lacey and Seanan McGuire, the Pine Float Press Floating VIP Lounge will be present to class the place up.  Pine Float Press authors Sean Demory, Marshall Edwards and Orrin Grey will be participating in the following panels:  FRIDAY, MAY 27: 

Marshall Edwards reading - 5 PM

Sean Demory reading - 5:30 PM

Authors Reading Their Favorite Authors - 6 PM Authors will select and read their favorite scenes from other author's books. (Sean Demory) Horror from the Headlines: Current Events as Inspiration - 8 PM This panel would discuss how current events can be used to inspire works of horror as well as what possible pitfalls to look out for. (Sean Demory, Orrin Grey)  The Classics - In Space and Beyond! - 9 PM A panel discussing adapting classic stories - Shakespeare, folk or fairy tales, Homer. etc. - speculative fiction. (Sean Demory)

SATURDAY, MAY 28

DC Vs Marvel: Who's Winning on the Silver Screen? SAT 12 PM Now that the DC movie franchise seems to have a long-term direction and we have seen The Dark Knight meet The Man of Steel on the big screen, is Marvel still ruling the box office? And what does the next five years hold in store for both superhero universes? (Orrin Grey)  Creativity and Mental Health SAT 2 PM There’s an old stereotype that writers and artists have a catalog of A-Z mental health issues. It’s one thing to joke about, but it’s something else entirely to deal with those illnesses. This panel will talk about the mental health issues we struggle against, how it affects our creativity, and productive ways to work through it. Talking about mental illness not only raises awareness, but also reduced the social stigma in the hopes that we can be more open with each other and maybe save lives. (Marshall Edwards) Deconstruction: What Happens When You Take Tropes Apart SAT 4 PM Genre fiction thrives on tropes, from the stalwart hero, the damsel in distress, and all the way to the nefarious villain, but what happens when a show takes those tropes and turns them on their head. Join us as we discuss how and why to do this and examine when it's done right and when it's done wrong. (Marshall Edwards) Film Adaptations: The Best and the Worst - 6 PM Film Adaptations of Books have a checkered history in Hollywood, giving us both masterpieces and stinkers. Panelists would share their favorite and least favorite adaptations and while they think they succeeded or failed. (Orrin Grey)  SUNDAY, MAY 29 Orrin Grey reading - 10:30 AM

Should Superheroes Age? -  11 AM If characters start showing signs of aging, that limits their longevity. Batman has been around for over 70 years. While it's good for character development to see him and others age, don't we want to be able to enjoy them for as long as we can? Don't we want our children to be able to enjoy them as well? We've seen an "older" Bruce in The Dark Knight Returns as well as Batman Beyond but it's not the same. Where should the line be drawn? How much should writers and publishers allow characters to age? You can't just age some characters, you have to age the entire comic universe. Should growing older be one battle that superheroes can win? (Marshall Edwards - moderator) 

Writer with a Day Job - 11 AM How to balance your "real" job and your dream job. Is everything possible, or does something have to give? (Sean Demory) Women In Comics - 3 PM Let's talk about women in comics and anime. From Wonder Woman to the Power Puff Girls. (Marshall Edwards)  The Big Three of Weird Tales - 3 PM H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard were the 'big three' in weird fiction in the 1920's and 30's. Where are they now in the relevance of speculative fiction? Can the younger fans of today appreciate their work?   (Orrin Grey)