The Magic & Mayhem anthology is going out of print!

With the RWP tenure ending, we’ll be taking down the Magic & Mayhem anthology, but we are making it available for free for a limited time. You can grab your digital copy from Smashwords. We will take it down on Sunday, February 4.

Why is Magic & Mayhem going out-of-print?

The purpose of the anthology was raise funds for the Read with Pride Northwest initiative. With RWP now closing after five years, there’s no more reason to host a charity anthology. It was a truly wonderful project which not only shared amazing stories, but also raised revenue to support the RWP conference, and allowed us to provide a free conference experience to attendees.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who purchased the anthology and to everyone who contributed to making it happen. Thank you!

Why can’t the anthology just be made free to download permanently?

Great question. The reason why we don’t make it free permanently is to respect the work of the contributoring authors, each who signed a contract to share their work with the anthology for the purpose of raising funds for RWP.

We are making it available for free for one week after our announcement about it going out of print. We understand how disappointing it can be as a reader when a book goes out of print and is no longer available, so for a limited time, it will be accessible for free, and after that, we will remove it from Smashwords. Thank you for understanding.

For those interested, many of the contributed non-fiction essays are also available on this site as they were past conference keynotes.

What is Magic & Mayhem about?

Everyone deserves to see themselves in stories, to see themselves get a happy ending. For the past few years, Gay Romance Northwest (GRNW) has helped to see those stories reach more of the LGBTQ community, and gain traction in libraries and beyond.

Furthering that goal is this collection of new fiction and essays, including information on how to get LGBT books in libraries, letters from authors sharing their personal reflections on writing, essays about why positive and happy queer books are so important, and short stories about tattooists, soldiers, mages, and cyborgs that span the LGBTQ spectrum and show that love has no bounds.

This anthology includes never-before-published short stories by Josh Lanyon, Karelia Stetz-Waters, Ginn Hale, Megan Derr, Dev Bentham, Alex Powell, EJ Russell and Austin Chant. Contributed essays include works by Radclyffe, Rick R. Reed, Jordan Castillo Price, Rose Christo, and EE Ottoman.

Magic & Mayhem Anthology Contents

STORIES:

“Broken Art,” by Dev Bentham
“Caroline’s Heart,” by Austin Chant
“Demonica,” by Megan Derr
“The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus,” by Ginn Hale
“Fade to Black,” by Josh Lanyon
“Charmed By Chance,” by Alex Powell
“Sun, Moon, and Stars,” by E.J. Russell
“Slack Tide,” by Karelia Stetz-Waters

ESSAYS:

“Romance for the Rest of Us,” by Jessica Blat
“Sad Queer Characters and the Revolution of Joy,” by Austin Chant
“Dear Rose,” by Rose Christo
“How to Get LGBT Romance Books Into Libraries” by Marlene Harris
“So What is “Character-Type Love Match” Anyway?” by Nicole Kimberling
“My Road to Romance,” by Susan Lee
“To My Future Self,” by EE Ottoman
“What I’ve Learned,” by Jordan Castillo Price
“Dear Len,” by Radclyffe
“A Letter to My Former Self,” by Rick R. Reed
“Five Things We Learned Running A Queer Romance Event (and the One Thing We Still Need to Do)” by Tracy Timmons-Gray

Our Deep Gratitude

THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this book a reality, from Nicole, Sam, and Amanda for leading the charge, to all the wonderful contributors for providing their stories and essays, to all the GRNW attendees who played Character Type Love Match and inspired this volume, and…

To all you readers for reading! Thank you!