Where Connections Lead

         This post is to help spread the word about another Kickstarter campaign with which I’m connected.  Where Connections Lead is “a global speculative fiction anthology that celebrates diverse voices and imaginative storytelling,” and I’m very pleased that one of my stories is included.  To find out all about it, please do go check out the campaign on Kickstarter to find out more about the project and the authors whose work is included.  The editors made it an explicit goal to include a wide diversity of voices from around the globe and from different backgrounds, which makes this project especially interesting and important.

        My short story, “The Horn,” is unusually open-ended.  It was one of those stories that I absolutely loved imagining and writing, but then wasn’t really sure whether it would ever find a home.  But when I heard about the call for Where Connections Lead, it seemed like a perfect fit for these characters because the story is all about how art teacher Ms Lydia Bell and the Horn connect… and the open-ended hope that their connection might lead to a relationship that could widen the world for both.  Not only was the story accepted, but the cover artist Roxane Llanque also did an illustration for the story.  Since I am someone who generally does her own illustrations, and who is far from being famous enough to get much fan art, it’s especially exciting for me to see how someone else responds to my writing and pictures what I’ve imagined.  It’s fun to see how this isn’t exactly the way I pictured the Horn, but how it brings him to life in a new way.  And it's super fun that an art print of this illustration is one of the add-ons in the Kickstarter campaign.

        As for my involvement in the project, that is in itself an illustration of Where Connections Lead.  I met co-editor Sylvia Woodham several years ago through Yale Women Writers Group, an on-line group that builds connections between women writers of all sorts, all of whom have a connection with Yale University.  (In my case, Yale College.)  I then invited Sylvia to participate in Strong Women-Strange Worlds, a series of on-line readings that builds connections between authors and readers.  Sylvia read with Strong Women-Strange Worlds in November 2022, and you can watch a recording of that event on YouTube if you’re curious.  And it was through that connection that I was invited to submit to this anthology project, just proving that you can never tell where connections will lead.

I’m hoping that my connection with you will lead you to check out the Kickstarter campaign going on now, and see whether this sounds like something you’d like to support, thus building connections to more authors and readers around the world.

[Pictures: Where Connections Lead, cover artwork by Roxane Llanque;

The Horn, illustration by Llanque.]