There are also a number of stories that we would very much like to have, but do not yet have suitable companions for. It is a key part of the Wiz Duo project that the two stories work well together, and we want to keep to that. Everyone whose story is awaiting a partner should have received email from Roz & Jo about it.

If you haven’t heard from us as yet, then your story is well down the queue. And we have had a lot of submissions.

Given that it is not feasible to put out more than two more books this year, we are going to close submissions for now. The plan is to re-open in 2027.

If you are not one of the four authors whose story is in line for 2026 publication, do feel free to submit your story elsewhere. And good luck!

We wanted to give a few pointers as to why some submissions did not work for us.

The main issue has been that quite a few of you missed the community aspect of the brief. The book is not just about a lone person’s struggle, it is about how that struggle helps the local community. The main thing that we’re looking for that people seem to be struggling to achieve is that these are stories about community resilience and how that ties into the tradition of resistance as an aspect of Welsh identity throughout history. It is particularly difficult to meet this aspect of the brief in a very short story; you have 7000 words available so please feel free to use them!

Also please don’t forget that we are looking for stories set in Wales or about Wales – we’re a Welsh publishers and this is a Wales-themed anthology! We especially appreciate the use of a little bit of Welsh language or welsh vernacular – that’d be tidy!

We are still planning to announce the line-up at our book launch event at Eastercon. If we don’t have 15 stories that we definitely want by then we may need to announce a short extension, but we will announce those submissions that we are accepting.

Roz & Jo

How Fighting Has Shifted

I wrote the first story focusing on a girl trying to prove herself – to herself as much as anyone else. She is a lone wolf, trying to keep up with her own ideals, and ensure she doesn’t look weak or inferior to others. Her superpower was on being underestimated, and using that to her advantage.

This sequel, ‘Ready for Combat’, focuses a lot more on collective momentum, and on the division I’ve come to see in our real-world, and some of the story events draw inspiration from actual protests and marches I’ve seen or attended.

Expanding Definitions

Set decades later than the first story, we see how conflict has shifted with the changing world, including experiences of those who don’t fit the traditional roles of their gender or expected sexuality. We see the way that people exclude those of non-binary or transgender presentations, and how this fight requires all of us to fight for basic human rights for all women.

While the first story was about a woman finding her ability to fight, the second hones in on our little acts of kindness and solidarity and how those build to something greater than the sum of its parts – especially when all kinds of women come together to fight for the most basic rights.

Why I Wrote This Story

As the author, I am pansexual, which means I find people attractive across all gender spectrums, including those who present as or identify as non-binary. In this story, I tap into my experience of dating trans women, not by trying to tell their story, but by sharing some of my own experiences as a cisgender woman who has seen how society treats my friends and partners first-hand.

Alongside my own story, the themes in this second volume really explore the term of “girl” and “woman” and what we now understand of both the biological and social aspects of these terms.

Fighting like a girl just isn’t what it used to be. It sure isn’t an insult, if you’ve ever faced a woman who was ready for any kind of battle, and the arguments about how others identify are divisions we really don’t need to have.

And this is an anthology really exploring the truths of how we women fight in so many different ways. Want to know more?

K R Green

How can you refuse to read something with a background like that, right?

Lady Cona’s name is a subtle homage to the mighty Conan, whom I’ve loved and wanted to be since I was a little girl. I love old school sword and sorcery, grew up with it, was always aware from childhood that it maybe had some issues with women. Seriously: I kind of assumed it was obvious to everyone that the protagonists were borderline fascist rapey types living in a toxic and deeply unpleasant world of male pain, it still comes as a shock if someone has a different reading. I now write fantasy that interrogates gender roles and constructions of masculinity, goes deep into the lived experience of men and women inhabiting a Conanesque hyper-masculine world. What would it be like to be a woman in a world which fetishes male warriors? To be a mother raising sons to be warrior men? To be a man with Conan as his role model? Nightmarish, as far as I can see. Crushing. Destructive. And, as I’ve said many times before and will doubtless say many times again – a huge rush of power and wonderful and sexual excitement and fun. Obviously I always wanted to be Conan and still do. Hence: Lady Cona. Fights like the teenage girls in my home town shoplift. No interest in morality or ethics or deep questions. Just wants to have fun and get shiny things. The probably not all that funny joke image in my head which inspired her is a gender flip of the classic Conan cover, the barbarian warlord, sword erect and throbbing, mounted on the enemy’s ruin, naked woman clutching his tree-trunk thigh. So here she is in bloodied leathers, sword in hand, feet on corpses, a teenage boy before her all adoring all long fingers and long tongue. Only then I had a conversation with a friend at BristolCon, and she took a bit of a twist. About which I’ll say two things, mainly directed at that pedant who’ll 1 star it as ‘unrealistic’ within an hour of publication: 1) it’s sword and figgin’ sorcery, not social realism, ejit; 2) look up Bronze Age war chariots.

Lady Cona is nominally set in the same world as my The Making of This World Ruined series, which is itself in some complex way set in the same world as Empires of Dust and A Woman of the Sword only thousands of years in the past or the future or all in Marith or Lidae’s head. You might notice some self-snark references. There are certainly a few easter eggs. You might even find a tiny hint at the secret new project I’m planning to write after The Making of This World Ruined.

Anna Smith Spark

Lucia Del Toro and Independence ‘Hawk’ Hawkins are a pair of happy-go-lucky bounty hunters, united in their passion for adventure and each other. Hawk grew up on a hippy science commune on the Earth’s Moon and has always been rootless and carefree. Del Toro, however, has a more complicated past, which is about to come back to haunt her.

Politics in the Solar System are always fraught. A key player is the UN’s crack regiment of space marines, the ENForcers. They are as hardcore and testosterone-fuelled as military units come, and proudly all-male. Being cyborgs they are all connected through a bioware network known as boy.net. Lucia’s link to that network is one of many things that Del Toro thought she’d put behind her when she got out of the military and changed her life. But, with the security of the Solar System at stake, she will soon have a choice to make.

Contemporary as it may sound, AngeLINK is not a new SF series. It is 20+ years old. Back at the turn of the Millennium, Lyda Morehouse imagined a near future world in the aftermath of a terrible world war using bombs that turned cities to glass. Matters of religion are now vital to politics in most of the world. Angels have started to appear on the internet. Are they real? And if not, what is God going to do about this?

Over the course of four books, Morehouse takes us on a rollercoaster ride through politics and religion. Some of the key characters include a genius Muslim hacker, a loveable Japanese AI who hasn’t quite realised that the ‘family’ she works for are Yakuza mobsters, a trans archangel, and of course Satan, who takes to celebrity culture like a duck to water.

Come back with us to a simpler time, when much of the world in which we now live was just the stuff of some science fiction writer’s fevered imagination.

The AngeLINK books have been available from us for some years in eBook form, but finally they are back in paper. You can find purchase links on the following pages:

• Archangel Protocol
• Fallen Host
• Messiah Node
• Apocalypse Array

The books are available in paperback, and also in gorgeous hardcovers featuring the fabulous Bruce Jensen covers.

And if you are wondering what will happen with Ressurection Code, watch this space!

The Green Man’s Challenge, by Juliet E. McKenna, due out in September.

We are delighted to announce that The Green Man’s Foe, the latest contemporary fantasy from Juliet E. McKenna, is available for pre-order from Amazon and Kobo. (The links are to the UK stores, but the book is available internationally).

The book will be released on August 15th (the first day of Worldcon). The paperback and hardcover editions have gone off to the printer and we anticipate having copies available in Dublin.

When you do a good job for someone, there’s a strong chance they’ll offer you more work or recommend you elsewhere. So Daniel Mackmain isn’t particularly surprised when his boss’s architect brother asks for his help on a historic house renovation in the Cotswolds.

Except Dan’s a dryad’s son, and he soon realises there’s a whole lot more going on. Ancient malice is stirring and it has made an alliance in the modern world. The Green Man expects Dan to put an end to this threat. Seeing the danger, Dan’s forced to agree. The problem is he’s alone in a place he doesn’t know, a hundred miles or more away from any allies of his own.

A modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles.