Writer’s Showcase: Karen Eisenbrey

Genre: High Fantasy and Comic Urban Fantasy.

Background: I have always loved stories and wanted to be a writer from an early age. In college I was an English major, but after I graduated, I had no ideas and didn’t write much of anything until the “chaos years” when my kids were small. Once I had kids it seemed like a good idea to just start writing. A fateful dream with two wizards and three plot twists sent me into the fantasy genre.

Writing Highlight: my first published novel, The Gospel According to St. Rage, is a book about a girl who starts a garage band and gains superpowers; that book actually got me writing songs! I’ve always sung but I’d never had much success with songwriting. Writing this book I discovered that if I wrote songs from the point of view of my protagonist, I was more successful.

Next Project: I am pegging away at the third Daughter of Magic book in my fantasy trilogy. The first two are Daughter of Magic and Wizard Girl.

To follow Karen’s blog: https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/blog/

Or you could connect with her as I first did, on Twitter: @KarenEisenbry

She also has a nice page featuring not just her novels, but all the anthologies she’s contributed to: https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/my-books/

A note about Karen is that she has contributed to a number of anthologies; in fact it was the Paws and Claws anthology from Cake & Quill which first caught my eye. This is one of nine (and counting) anthologies that Karen has contributed to!

Cake & Quill, 03/17

Proceeds from Paws and Claws go to Bob’s House for Dogs, which offers hospice care for elderly dogs.

Not a Pipe Publishing, 11/18

Note Karen is featured as the writer on the top margin, left, on the cover of Strongly Worded Women.

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Writer’s Showcase: Margret Treiber

Genre: Speculative/Science Fiction (and one horror story).

Background: I’ve been interested in writing since I was in elementary school.  I remember writing a terrible romance story, and my mom finding it.  I was mortified.  I didn’t write again until I was a teenager. 

I then wrote on and off until I hit my early twenties.  I sent one story into Aboriginal Science Fiction magazine.  I got a personal rejection, which I was pretty proud of.  Unfortunately, it got lost in time.  I stopped writing for a while, dealing with real-life and all that crap, but started again in my 40’s.  I wrote a novel I wasn’t happy with, then started writing short stories.

Writing Highlight: I’m good at writing morally ambiguous characters.  I also live with a  science consultant who has been known to point out when my science makes no sense.  Usually, I listen.  Sometimes, I go with bad science and call it Science Fantasy. 

I used to think I was unique in my flagrant use of curse words, but apparently, there are others of my ilk.  I was very proud of my last two novels until I realized how typo-ridden they were.  I liked the short story I published in LampLight, “Atmospheric Pressure”.  It’s creepy and dark.  It didn’t hurt that they edited it well.  My short in The Weird and Whatnot, “Dance, Monkey, Dance!” is another of my favorites.  It is especially better after they illustrated it and formatted it very fancily.

Next Project: My next story, “Better SAF Than Sorry,” is due out in the anthology Imps and Minions at the end of August. I’ve been writing shorts that tie-in to that story and may eventually create a collection of them in the future. While I see my greatest strength in shorts, I am working on a hard corp Science Fiction novel that I’m about a third of the way into.

To keep up with Margret Treiber follow her website: http://www.the-margret.com/

You can also follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margret.treiber

Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B0052U63BI

A note about Margret is that she has a wonderful sense of humor, which I appreciate. Under the “don’t ask” column she confessed she once wrote a ‘cell phone porn’. Since I can’t ask, we’ll let it go at that, but clearly this is a writer who is willing to explore the corners of Speculative Fiction!

Short fiction is an art form that isn’t always popular with writers; I was very excited to discover a writer who is using the format so successfully. For readers, anthologies allow the satisfaction of a complete story in a short period of reading time, as well as the variety of sampling multiple writers in one publication. If you aren’t reading anthologies, you should be!