Spotlighting new work by Writers Cantina participants (specifically, Nancy Frye and Spearman Burke):
They’ve been overlooked, underestimated, and politely sidelined for decades. Fine. That’s fine. Let them keep underestimating.
In the pages of Auntie Heroes, meet ten women of a certain vintage who possess particular sets of skills and absolutely zero patience for the alternative. A fire fairy stepmother navigating werewolves and blended family politics. A retired intelligence operative who knits Kevlar scarves and outsmarts Belarusian thieves in a foreign embassy. A grandmother farming fourteen hundred acres with alien assistance — and handling the unfriendly ones with a shotgun full of rock salt. A sharp-eyed matron in a Lovecraftian coastal town who defeats an elder god with Eternal Father Strong to Save and a can of extra-hold hairspray. A suburban gardener who discovers her neighbor’s invasive kudzu is a Cold War-era biological antenna siphoning encrypted data from Fort Meade — and handles it accordingly.
Across fairy tales, spy thrillers, alien farms, suburban horror, and the salt-choked streets of a town that smells permanently of low tide, these women share one defining trait: they have been here long enough to know exactly what needs doing. And they will absolutely do it.
Stories include: “Stepmother Ever After” by Nancy Frye • “Calhoun Blood” by D.S. Ligon • “The Squamous Among Us” by Spearman Burke • “Salon and Subversion” by Tuvela Thomas • “A Dressing Down” by Aelth Faye • “From the Ashes” by TC Ross • “Knit One, Sanction Two” by Ted Begley • “Pruning with Extreme Prejudice” by Michael Patrick Coady • “Walking the Beans” by Rick Cutler • “The Knitting Circle at Innsmouth” by Malory
The world has a great many hind ends that require a proper thrashing. We’re betting on the lady with the flamethrower.
