Get the anthology I'm part of, The Crimson Pact, Vol. 2! Details and order links for Amazon, B&N, Apple's App Store, and more, are at http://thecrimsonpact.com/store.html#tcpv2.

There's an incredible mix of authors here, from New York Times best-sellers all the way on down to newbies like myself, and we cover pretty much every sub-genre of fantasy/dark fantasy I can think of. I'm honored to call several of my fellow CP authors friends (including three members of my writing group, Barbara Webb, Sarah Kanning, and Isaac Bell--who should also be congratulated on being named the next AboutSF director at KU) and some of those I call friends may not be too overly embarrassed to admit that they know me.

Once you've read it, if you could pretty please post reviews at Amazon and/or wherever else you can think of, I will love you forever. (Hyperbolically speaking, that is.) And the electronic edition is only five bucks--about the same price as a coffee shop latte, so me love you long time for cheap. (Note that if you buy it directly through the CP site, you get a zip of it in every major ebook format, and the authors get a larger cut. I'm just sayin'.)

Here's the promo copy from the back of the book (and since you're reading about this on my blog, I'm using that as an excuse to bold-ify references to myself):

The Pact is back and the demons are as devious as ever in The Crimson Pact Volume 2. Read 28 original stories, many of which are sequels to the stories in volume 1. Suzzanne Myers’s powerful flash fiction piece, “Withered Tree” continues with the exceptional short story, “Seven Dogs.” Chanté McCoy’s, “Inside Monastic Walls” is followed by the literally gut-wrenching follow-up short story, “Body and Soul.” Rising star Patrick Tomlinson is back with “Monsters in the Closet” and the urban fantasy mayhem is off the charts in his, and many other stories, especially D. Robert Hamm’s “Karma.”

The demon bots strike again in EA Younker’s steampunk apocalypse tale, “Stand.” If you want more steampunk, you’ll enjoy Sarah Hans’ sequel about professor Campion, “A More Ideal Vessel,” and the steampunk Western featuring automaton horses, “Wayward Brother” by Elaine Blose.

Sarah Kanning’s character, Danielle, from “Hidden Collection” must deal with the lingering effects of being possessed by a demon in “Dark Archive.” There are also fascinating sequels from Gloria Weber, “Crimson Mail,” and Justin Swapp, “The Merging,” and new stories from Lester Smith, Kathryn McGee, Adam Israel, Valerie Dircks, T.S. Rhodes, Elizabeth Shack, Daniel Alonso, and Nayad Monroe.

“The Long Run” by Isaac Bell is an indirect sequel to “Stained with Nightmare Juice” and features the tireless John Oldshoe, who must help a black teenage girl discover her superpowers and defeat the demons infesting the dying heart of a crumbling city.

New York Times Bestselling author, and Campbell award nominee, Larry Correia presents a wildly entertaining and exclusive short story, “Son of Fire, Son of Thunder” co-authored by Steven Diamond, about an FBI paranormal investigator and a bad ass marine who knows the exact moment of his own death.

Travel to the alternate history Earth of the “Red Bandanna Boys” by Patrick M. Tracy and find out how ruthless you have to be to survive the slums of St. Nikolayev. Follow “The Trail of Blood” by Alex Haig, a horrifying Western about a bounty hunter who wants vengeance, not money. Hunt for Nazis in a disturbing 1950’s America in “Hunters Incorporated” by Kelly Swails. Patrol the steaming jungles of Vietnam with a squad of soldiers in Lon Prater’s “Last Rites in the Big Green Empty.” Then enter the mind of a godlike demon in Donald J. Bingle’s ambitions tale, “Dark Garden,” or visit the creepy shadow world created by Richard Lee Byers in “Light and Dark.”

View some of the 23+ one minute story trailers on The Crimson Pact YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCrimsonPact) to learn more, and most importantly . . . watch your back, the demons are coming.

It's volume 2 of the Crimson Pact series of anthologies, which is scheduled to come out around the end of August. (Volume one is already out. See http://www.thecrimsonpact.com for details.) They even made trailers for our stories. Here's mine (plus an excerpt, below):

Exerpt from Karma:

We hit the interstate like an unguided missile. Needles of frozen rain and jagged blades of wind beat my face numb and turned what was left of my dress into a full-body ice-pack. Even with the heater on 'incinerate,' I couldn't stop shivering, but the outside air was all that kept me from gagging on the smell of my own puke and the rusty stench of blood, so the window stayed down. Between the black pavement and blacker sky, the air was wet and gray. It sucked the vitality from my headlamp beams well before their natural time, but that was okay. I wasn't paying much attention to the little they revealed anyway.

The man in the passenger's seat either didn't feel the cold or was too stoic to show discomfort. The dashboard glow turned his short white beard to green and deepened the age lines in his face. Gods, I'd loved that face growing up. It was my grandfather's face. But right then, I could barely look at it, because this wasn't my grandfather; just a sad, confused spirit wearing his body. And even though he was one of the good guys, that didn't mean it was easy to take.

"You're going to catch cold," Not-Grandpa shouted over the storm.

"I'm... what?"

Since last night I'd been shot at, whipped, and electrocuted. I'd watched a good man beheaded and disemboweled before my eyes, and learned things about myself, my family, and especially my past, that had already driven other people into padded-room territory. I was marinated in a vile concoction of blood and various other body fluids, quite a bit of it my own, and had spent the last however-many hours fighting horrors that should never have existed. In the middle of all that--because I'm an overachiever--I took time out to kill a man I loved.

And this guy was worried that I'd catch a fucking cold.

Once I started laughing, I couldn't stop. The kind of deep, full-body laughter that doubles you over and makes your stomach muscles ache for days afterward. The kind that shreds the lining of your throat and rises in pitch to rapid staccato squeaks, like sneakers on a hardwood floor. I held back the worst long enough to wrestle the car onto the shoulder, then let go. The laughter turned to howling, the howling into screams, the screams into sobs, and the sobs into a quiet whimper that finally, gods finally, tapered off, and I could breathe again, in great, ragged gulps. I wiped away a rope of snot hanging from my nose and sat hunched over with my eyes closed and my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking, while the rain pummeled my back with tiny, ice-cold fists.

In shock? Probably. Hysterical? Definitely. Look, I make sandwiches at my family's restaurant for a living, okay? Sandwiches.

Not-Grandpa waited until I quieted down before speaking. "I'm sorry," he said. It was the dozenth or so time he'd said it. The line of his mouth stayed hard, but his eyes and his voice were soft and broken. I believed him. Had to believe him.

"I know." I didn't mean for it to sound bitter. He'd saved my life, after all; he deserved better than that. I just didn't know if I could forgive him for not being who I wanted him to be.

#

A little too "in media res" for you? Yeah, me too.

So here are the vitals: My name is Karma Miranda Rodriguez. I'm twenty-three years old, five foot six, with brown eyes, light brown skin, and dark brown hair that I keep boy-short. I claim to be a size five, and I dare you to say otherwise. I like strawberry daiquiris, support equal rights for supernaturals, am indifferent toward long walks on the beach, and...

And oh, yeah—Apparently, I kill demons.