Crused Genres is a magazine of science fiction and fantasy books with a twist. In advance of each month’s publication, they tease stories that mesh with science fiction or fantasy with another specific genre, such as Western, horror or dystopian. After the first magazine was published on December 1, 2008, the editors of Genres Crossed collected the best stories from each of the first twelve months of existence and published them as Genres Crossed: The First Year (ISBN: 978 -1449996949), which on 1 They come out in February 2010.
Various stories in Genres Crossed; Year One‘s just part of a bigger whole. “Cold” by Melissa S. Green is the first chapter from an untitled novel in progress. Author C. L. Rossman’s “A Time of Stories” is a short story that involves the mythical space-faring genre about which the Three Books he wrote “The Beginning” by Marilou Goodwin is a stand-alone story, but it hints at a larger story being told about the human mercenaries of the war in Dallas, Texas.
More ambitiously, they are often self-contained stories. Erika Tracy’s alternate history story, “Bat and the Blitz” tells a succinct story of witches and witches helping Germany bomb England defend Although short, this features a fantastic story explanation in a few pages, and top-notch dialogue. In “Condiment Wars,” Jill Afzeliu helped bring humor to the issue of Cross Genres magazine, Ketchup and Mustard, along with a slew of other condiments, during a full-on war dinner plate supremacy. Despite the pun, the dialogue is superb and the plot is fantastic.
Cross Genres: Year One features three Seattle-area authors: Jeremy Zimmerman, Nathan Crowder, and Jennifer D. Munro. While I was already very familiar with the work of the first two authors, I found Munro’s story from the anthropomorphism genre, “The Strangler’s Fig,” to be my favorite story in this anthology. This story is sure to grab the reader’s attention.
The first twelve genres and their stories collected in Genres Crossed: Year One are an eclectic mix of styles and authors, each with something to offer sci-fi and fantasy fans. You’ll find a good mix of the two primary genres, so there will be a story that you’ll be hooked on even if you’re strictly a sci-fi or fantasy fan. While every reader is sure to have a story or two that they don’t like, read more of these strong and entertaining stories. The Crossed Genres: Year One series is available at http://www.crossedgenres.com after February 1, 2010.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I typically sit between Nathan Crowder and Jeremy Zimmerman in a bi-weekly writer’s group. Jeremiah is a friend of mine, and I’m the one who encouraged him to submit “A Crazy Kind of Love” toGenres essay, which appears in this anthology. However, the impulse to write the review of Genres Crossed: One Year was mine.)
