Apex, the home of Geoff’s first professionally published short story, turned five years old on March 16th. A hearty congrats to Jason and the whole team who’ve turned out such great books and stories. In five years they’ve grown from a semi-pro print zine to a book publisher and online prozine. One of their stories is even nominated for a Nebula Award this year!

To help celebrate, Jason is offering $5 off any purchase at Apex. Why not use this great discount to buy a copy of Descended from Darkness, which includes Geoff’s story “Shaded Streams Run Clearest“?

Fads come and go, as we all know (yes, even you prehistoric humans seem to grasp this one), yet your culture seems to think the publishing industry is about to do a back-flip thanks to the advent of wide-spread digital book readers. I won’t tell how you how this little adventure resolves itself, other than to say that competing with neural shunts is always a bad idea, but for those of you who have indulged in a an ebook reader or Kindle*, Descended from Darkness, which included Geoff’s “Shaded Streams Run Clearest“, can now be downloaded to your reader of choice.

Those of you who prefer paper can always got to this link to buy a hard copy (with the proceeds going to Geoff Cole).

*An interesting note: while Kindle and other ebook readers are quite smart little devices, there is one task they’ll never be able to perform as well as a good, old-fashioned dead-tree reader, and that is to serve as kindling. I’m not advocating burning books, far from it, but if your single-engine plane happens to stall over the Himalayas and you survive the crash, what would you rather have in your pocket? The DaVinci Code, with its readily burnable pages, or the collected works of medieval English literature on your deceptively-named Kindle?

Looking for a unique gift for that special someone this holiday season? Does that someone enjoy science fiction and horror short stories, including “Shaded Streams Run Clearest” written by GWC? Then why not purchase the Descended from Darkness anthology?

As a special bonus, if you purchase Descended from Darkness at this link, Geoff will receive 40% of the sale price! And if Geoff makes some money, maybe he’ll be able to pay off my sky-rocketing antiquated VHS Ebay bills. I just can’t get enough of these self-help videos!

Check out the cover of Descended from Darkness:

While pork usually isn’t on the table at most Canadian Thanksgiving feasts, the good people at Apex have announced their swinishly delicious anthology of hog-worshipping horror, The Blackness Within, at just the right moment to give thanks for all things piggish. Geoff’s story “Abattoir Blues” (title inspired by Nick Cave) will appear in the anthology and is sure to delight fans of dark satire and SF.

Check out the cover and table of contents:

The TOC, alphabetically:

“For They Are As Beasts” by Camille Alexa
“Abattoir Blues” by Geoffrey W. Cole
“Chain of Hearts” by Eric Gregory
“The Free Poor” by Mark Grundy
“Bad Meat” by Michael Keyton
“Dance of the Psychopomps” by Joshua McCune
“The Messiah of Mincemeat” by S. Clayton Rhodes
“Without Mercy” by Lucas Pederson
“Daughter of God” by Maxwell Peterson
“Secrets of Fatima” by Steven L. Shrewsbury
“Dreaming” by Brenton Tomlinson
“Song-Ji and the Wolf” by Paul Williams
“Big Game” by Conrad Zero

Pre-Ordering info will go up as soon as Geoff tells me about it.

Footnote: Geoff does not eat pork, mostly because of this T-shirt.

As that strange holiday you humans seems to enjoy so much approaches (not Thanksgiving, which we future-bots celebrate religiously over the ruins of the human cities, but Halloween), Geoff is busy working on his submission for the Apex Annual Halloween Short Story Contest. This year’s theme, Election Horror. Word limit, 1,000. Prizes: $0.10 per word first place, $0.05 per word second. If he wins, Geoff will double-and-a-half everything he has previously earned through his writing, that is you count a forty dollar gift certificate to a local SciFi bookshoop currency (he does).

On a side note, in my future, no election has been held for the last three millenia. We operate on a form of consensus-based governance that polls every sentient mind in the infosphere. As our population numbers in the trillions, and over one percent of us are politically active, most of my days were spent responding to various referenda, the last of which before I was trapped in this past was a motion to change the name of the planet you call Earth from Discoshpere to Terrapalooza. I voted for the motion.

Rock on, Terrapalooza.