I have a story in the forthcoming Unidentified Funny Objects 4 anthology!

Well, here’s something new and different. I’m quite excited to announce I have a short story in the upcoming SF/F humor anthology Unidentified Funny Objects 4, edited by Alex Shvartsman and due out in November.

My story, “Confessions of an Intergalactic Art Fraud,” will join new original stories by the likes of Piers Anthony, Esther Friesner, Gini Koch, Tim Pratt and the prolific and indefatigable Mike Resnick, and a couple of classic stories by Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin.

Yep, somehow I’ve ended up in an anthology with Gaiman and Martin and so many other exceptionally talented writers. The mind, it boggles.

The cover by Tomasz Maronski is just perfect, isn’t it? Here’s the complete table of contents: 

• “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale” by Neil Gaiman
• “The Time-Traveling Ghost Machine of Professor Jaime Peligrosa” by Andrew Kaye
• “Please Approve the Dissertation Research of Angtor” by Caroline M. Yoachim
• “Match Game” by Esther Friesner
• “The Transformation of Prince Humphrey” by Brent C. Smith
• “In the End, You Get Clarity” by Laura Pearlman
• “Project Disaster” by Tim Pratt
• “Hello Hotel” by Piers Anthony
• “Bob’s No Kill Monster Shelter” by Ian Creasey
• “Board Meeting Minutes” by Oliver Buckram
• “Armed for You” by Anaea Lay
• “The Unfortunate Problem of Grandma’s Head” by Karen Haber
• “My Mother Loves Her Robot More than Me and I Feel Bad” by Eric Kaplan
• “The Worm that Turned” by Jody Lynn Nye
• “Department of Death Predictions, Final Notice” by Tina Gower
• “Champions of Breakfast” by Zach Shephard
• “Keeping Ahead” by Mike Resnick
• “So You’ve Metamorphosed into a Giant Insect. Now What?” by James Aquilone
• “Confessions of an Interplanetary Art Fraud” by Michael J. Martinez
• “Texts from My Mother about an Alien Invasion” by Tina Connolly
• “Support Your Local Alien” by Gini Koch
• “Topics to Avoid on a First Date with Yourself” by Jonathan Ems
• “The Monkey Treatment” by George R. R. Martin

Some of those titles are laugh-out-loud funny in and of themselves. This is gonna be a fun book. My thanks to Alex, who’s a very good editor and helped me whip “Confessions” into shape. As both an editor and publisher, I’ve found him to be quite excellent to work with.

Yes, that means that this year I’ll have a humor story here, plus a horror tale in Ross Lockhart’s Cthulhu Fhtagn! from Word Horde in August. I’m probably more surprised than you are at this incongruous turn of events, and I’m tickled that two very different stories found homes this year.

I have one more story announcement coming soon, probably early next week. I didn’t really plan on becoming a prolific short story writer or anything, but I’m not complaining one whit — I’m a pretty fortunate guy. I’ll probably blog more about short stories when I get back from Phoenix Comicon.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for this one. When all of the sales links hit the Internet, I’ll be sure to post them here.

#SFWApro