There are many strange places off the beaten paths in this great land of ours. From the abandoned shopping malls where squatters revel in violent nihilism to the new subdivisions built atop ruins where tragedies lay buried, Misha Burnett is your guide to the weird and out of the way places that are haunted by the past and the future.
This all new collection from Misha Burnett includes 16 strange tales of the macabre as well as 16 original poems, exploring the mysterious nature of the seemingly mundane world, where the run-down warehouses, shady night clubs, and even 24-hour gas stations may be home to magical fae creatures or skulking maniacs.
You’ve been offered a map to these beautiful vistas and disturbing local attractions. Just try not to get lost.
[In case you missed it, Misha Burnett was on Critical Blast with R.J. Carter last week. It was a fantastic interview! After you’ve backed An Atlas of Bad Roads, be sure to check it out!]
The Mongoose and Meerkat are back in six more exciting Sword & Sorcery adventures in this fully-illustrated collection.
Mangos, the brash and somewhat impetuous swordsman, and Kat, the mysterious Alnessi rogue, have been adventuring together for a year now and are finally building a reputation as competent adventurers who can get the job done when the price is right.
The duo sets up shop in the city of Alomar, a place where anything can be bought and sold. While seeking patrons for future plans, the Mongoose and Meerkat turn old enemies into new allies, but there’s always cost! While Mangos seeks flashy wealth and fame, Kat has her eyes on bigger prizes… and making some new and powerful foes among the elites comes with the territory when the Crown of Alness is on the line!
The Heat of the Chase collects the second year of Kat and Mangos’s adventures together, including:
The Golden Pearl
Hunt of the Mine Worm
The Grain Merchant of Alomar
The King’s Game
Too Many Mangos
The Wreck of the Cassada
Plus, as a bonus, we’re including the previously unpublished standalone novella, Thunderhead!
The Books
We’re offering The Heat of the Chase in eBook and three physical formats:
$3 – eBook
$18 – Pocket Paperback
$20 – Trade Paperback
$30 – Linen-wrapped Hardcover
As a bonus, we’re giving ALL backers a digital copy of Tales of the Mongoose and Meerkat Volume 1: Pursuit Without Asking so you can get all caught up!
Add-Ons
Signed Bookplate
$25
Mongoose and Meerkat Volume 1
$10 – Audiobook
$15 – Pocket Paperback
$15 – Trade Paperback
$30 – Linen-wrapped Hardcover
Original Art
$300– The Gate Demon
$250 – The King’s Game
$350 – Kat Killing Mangos
$300 – Mangos and the Submarine
Stretch Goals
$3000 – RPG Bonus Content
Like with Volume 1, we will be adapting elements of these stories into gaming content! The hardcover’s appendix will contain additional stats, items, and more! Plus, updated character sheets for Kat and Mangos.
100 Audiobooks – M&M Volume 2 Audiobook
Show us that there’s demand for an Audiobook of Mongoose and Meerkat Volume 2! We think that Erin Mitchell did a fantastic job reading for volume 1 [she absolutely nails Kat], and we’d love to do another! If 100 backers get the Audiobook add-on, we’ll do what we can to get her on board and record Volume 2 for us!
About the Author
Jim Breyfogle is one of Cirsova Publishing’s break-out stars. His swashbuckling duo Mongoose and Meerkat have become one of Cirsova Magazine’s most popular features. Cirsova Publishing released the smash hit collection Tales of the Mongoose and Meerkat, Vol 1: Pursuit Without Asking in 2020, and his fairytale romance, The Paths of Cormanor in 2021.
Jim began inventing stories to keep himself occupied during the school day, and later, as all good writers, created stories for the entertainment and delight of his children. He is a regular attendee of the World Fantasy Convention and in 2010 was accepted to attend the prestigious Odyssey Writing Workshop. Since that time, Jim has been published in numerous magazines.
About the Publisher
Cirsova Publishing began in 2016, launching its flagship fantasy magazine, which is now on its 20-somethingth issue. Cirsova has been serializing Mongoose and Meerkat’s adventures for a number of years now. They are also known for publishing Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars science fantasy saga and the strange fiction of Misha Burnett.
Last week, we did an interview with Critical Blast talking about the Wild Stars. I was hesitant to post it, because I feel like we were all over the place and didn’t really do a good job of conveying what the book we’re publishing is about.
On the face of it, Wild Stars may seem like a daunting IP to get into, because it’s been around for 40 years, has a huge cast of characters, and a wide varieties of stories and storytelling that takes place within it told across different media.
Michael looks at Wild Stars in the whole of what he’s doing and what he’s done with it, so his pitches can lack a bit of focus with his excitement for the work in its entirety. So, I’ll take this opportunity to try to give a more concise Wild Stars and Artomique Paradigm pitch:
Wild Stars is an action scifi epic in the tradition of the classic pulps that brings in innumerable elements to make it truly unique and, well, WILD! It’s the saga of two branches of humanity: those who left for the stars 75,000 years ago when Atlantis fell, and the human population of earth which remained. These branches have had occasional encounters over the course of that time [Ancient Aliens are really just our galactic cousins!] but the two have remained largely apart while Earth has caught up with the Wild Stars.
The Artomique Paradigm takes place when these two branches of humanity are attempting to formally establish relations. Achilles “Whip” Hister, the son of an alternate reality Hitler, is poised to take his seat on the head of the board of the Artomique Corporation, which now controls Earth. Whip is determined to walk his own path and lead the Artomique Earth in a different direction, but his father has other plans! A secret alliance between the Artomiques and Space Pirates almost guarantees the Artomique Earth’s dominance over the stars, and Whip finds himself on the run with his new friends Daestar, the telepath and wife of an immortal prince of the Wild Stars, and Bully Bravo the last Republican President of Earth before the Artomique takeover.
The Artomique Paradigm features covers by Anton Oxenuk, Genzoman, and DarkFilly, with interior illustrations by Dark Filly.
Softcover copies are as low as $20.
Critical Blast Interview is below the Kickstarter embed.
By now, just about everyone should have received their copies of Wild Stars!
Because we were able to fulfill both crowdfunds a month earlier than we’d planned, we were able to move up the world-wide release date.
The Wild Stars pages on Amazon are now live, so if you enjoyed Wild Stars and would like to continue to support Michael Tierney and Cirsova Publishing, you can do so by leaving reviews!
These help raise book, writer, and publisher profiles on Amazon and are a quick and easy way to help us out that doesn’t cost anything but the couple minutes it takes to leave one.
Thank you all again for supporting this exciting project, and we hope to be able to bring you much more exciting science fiction, fantasy, and adventure in 2020 and beyond!
If you missed it live, you can now catch the podcast version of our appearance from last Saturday on Shane Plays. Michael and I talk about his fantastic Wild Stars epic.
Also, I’ll be on the Superversive Sunday live stream with Ben Wheeler, so be sure to sub and tune in.
We really need our readers and supporters to back the Wild Stars IGG ASAP! We’ve only managed to raise $2k of our $8k goal, and… well, Cirsova Publishing REALLY needs to make this happen if we’re going to have any traction going into 2020!
Soon we’ll have the last cover from Mark Wheatley and the omnibus cover from Anton Oxenuk to show you!
Cirsova 