Today is the last chance to back Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds! The Kickstarter ends at 6PM Central Time this evening. While the book will go up on Amazon eventually, you won’t want to miss out on the deals to get An Atlas of Bad Roads on audiobook for only $10, not to mention the exclusive Kickstarter hardcover!
You’d better hurry, time is running out!
How do you hope your readers will react to these stories?
By feeling good about themselves.
That may sound strange coming from me, since my work so often deals with the dark and dismal side of human nature, but I mean it.
The fact of the matter is that I love the human race, in spite of everything. It’s not that I have many illusions about us being being good in any objective sense, but this is my species and you’re all I’ve got.
I try to use the Fantastic to shine a light on the Mundane. I like to present my characters with interesting and difficult ethical choices and show them choosing to take the best of a bad lot.
I want my readers to identify with my characters and to think, “If I was in that situation and I reacted to it like that person did, I’d feel good about myself.”
I don’t always succeed. And sometimes, to be honest, I change it up and write a story designed to make people think, “I’m glad I’m not the kind of person who would react to that situation in that way.” (There’s a lot of that in my last collection, An Atlas Of Bad Roads.)
In general, though, I am hoping that people will finish Small Worlds feeling good, and strong, and brave. I want to give people hope. And if many of my stories are dark, well that’s because when it’s darkest even the smallest candle can shine with a mighty light.
[Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds is on Kickstarter now but ends tomorrow! Be sure to pre-order this amazing collection, and don’t forget to check out the audiobooks of Endless Summer and An Atlas of Bad Roads as DRM-free add-ons, only $10 each!]
How do you think your own life and experiences have influenced your writing?
I paint what I see.
When I first started writing I tried to emulate the writers I admired. That’s a natural step in the process of learning the craft. I would advise anyone who wants to write to start by imitating the masters, just as art students do. (Or used to, anyway. I don’t know if they still teach art that way.)
But that’s just for learning technique. One’s voice, the nigh-indefinable something that gives humanity to words on paper, has to come from within.
I’m not sure how to describe the process of discovering your own voice except to say that it’s when you start to realize what the old masters got wrong. This sounds more arrogant than I want, but I haven’t been able to improve on the wording.
It comes when you are familiar enough with the tropes and beats of fiction that you can integrate them into your own experiences. You start to see both fiction and reality stereoscopically. When you read you think, “Yeah, but if that happened in the real world….” In your daily life you think, “If this happened in a story…”
Your voice is the point where that double vision becomes focused into one three dimensional image. And that image is different for all of us because it is based on what we know to be true from direct experience.
For me, it’s the nuts and bolts, the hardware of reality that I see most clearly. I am able to look at the Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions with the eye of a blue collar worker. I ask uncomfortable questions like “Where do starships dump the sewage tanks when they are in hyperspace?”.
Often the answers I come up with resolve themselves into stories.
Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds is live now on Kickstarter!
Ours is a culture that adores the elephantine, the cyclopean, the Brobdingnagian. Bigger is better, we are told, and the biggest is the best. People love big stories, with a cast of thousands, and Vista-vision widescreen special effects. Heroes must be larger than life, and devils blacker than they are painted, and entire worlds must be set aflame to create an ever-growing hunger for spectacle.
Oh, says I, that’s interesting. But that’s not what I do.
I write short stories, about little people in small worlds. That’s what you’ll find in this collection. In a couple of cases, they are literally small worlds, flyspeck heavenly bodies far out in space. In others the constraints are more metaphysical, worlds bounded by the vision of their inhabitants, an event horizon close enough to almost touch.
But one mustn’t suppose that the Lilliputian character of these stories means that nothing of significance happens in them.
Small worlds need saving, too. – Misha Burnett
Cirsova Publishing is proud to present Small Worlds, a brand new anthology of fiction [much of it previously unpublished], from short fiction master Misha Burnett.
Small Worlds has all of the hallmarks of Misha Burnett’s fusion of SFF with classic weird, inviting the reader into the uncanny realms where the mundane has been pervaded by the strange, but also brings to the table his unique brand of white-knuckle thrilling adventure sometimes seen in the pages of Cirsova Magazine.
This collection features “Better Off Dead,” an all-new novelette-length Erik Rugar fantasy-noir thriller, “This Green and Pleasant Sky,” a novella about farming… on an asteroid populated by women prisoners, “My Grandfather’s Grandfather Balled Goddesses,” a Sword & Sorcery adventure set in the world of Cha’alt, and much much more!
$3 – Small Worlds eBook
Receive digital copies of Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds.
$20 – Small Worlds Pocket Paperback
Receive a pocket paperback copy of Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds + ebook.
$20 – Small Worlds Trade Paperback
Receive a paperback copy of Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds + ebook.
$40 – Small Worlds Hardcover
Receive a linen-wrapped hardcover copy of Misha Burnett’s Small Worlds + ebook.
$70 – All Formats
Receive all physical formats of Small Worlds + eBook.
Add-Ons
$10 – Digital Add-on Pack
eBooks of An Atlas of Bad Roads, Endless Summer, and Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts
$10 – Signed Bookplate
Bookplate signed by Misha Burnett
$10 – Audiobook of An Atlas of Bad Roads
Audiobook of Misha Burnett’s An Atlas of Bad Roads, read by Brandon Cassinelli! Be one of the first to get this DRM-free audiobook edition BEFORE it’s available anywhere else!
$10 – Audiobook of Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer
Audiobook of Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer, read by Brandon Cassinelli.
$10 – An Atlas of Bad Roads Trade Paperback
Add on a physical copy of An Atlas of Bad Roads. [US-only]
$10 – Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer Trade Paperback
Add on a physical copy of Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer. [US-only]
$10 – Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Case Files of Erik Rugar Trade Paperback
Add on a physical copy of Bad Dreams and Broken Dreams. [US-only]
The Book is in the can! The biggest challenge is going to be fulfillment. Cirsova Publishing has a 7 year track record of delivering on high quality publications on-time and often early.
Ours is a culture that adores the elephantine, the cyclopean, the Brobdingnagian. Bigger is better, we are told, and the biggest is the best. People love big stories, with a cast of thousands, and Vista-vision widescreen special effects. Heroes must be larger than life, and devils blacker than they are painted, and entire worlds must be set aflame to create an ever-growing hunger for spectacle.
Oh, says I, that’s interesting. But that’s not what I do.
I write short stories, about little people in small worlds. That’s what you’ll find in this collection. In a couple of cases, they are literally small worlds, flyspeck heavenly bodies far out in space. In others the constraints are more metaphysical, worlds bounded by the vision of their inhabitants, an event horizon close enough to almost touch.
But one mustn’t suppose that the Lilliputian character of these stories means that nothing of significance happens in them.
Small worlds need saving, too. – Misha Burnett
If you missed it, Misha Burnett was on Superversive Sunday! Be sure to check it out!
$4,000 – Take a Card!
What better way to remember the strange places you visited on your trip than by grabbing a business card?
All physical backers will receive facsimile business cards from some of the odd and out of the way places in An Atlas of Bad Roads!
*Note: As we’re fulfilling international orders directly, these may be mailed out separately to those individuals.
$8,000 – Cheap Souvenir
Maybe you want to pick up something a little more from the gas station…. something that will remind you of the good times you had every time you use it!
All US physical backers get An Atlas of Bad Roads bottle opener keychain free! [International backers who want these will need to pay separate S&H. Sorry, but mailing things is expensive! ToT]
100 Audiobook Sales – Throw Something on the Stereo
Need something to listen to on your next road trip? If we sell 100 audiobooks of Endless Summer, not only will we commission an audiobook edition of An Atlas of Bad Roads, we’ll throw in the first story to backers of this Kickstarter for free!
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!]
It’s new to Cirsova, and if you haven’t read it, it’s new to you!
We’ve recently acquired the rights to Misha Burnett’s Urban Fantasy Detective Thriller, Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Case Files of Erik Rugar, from Lagrange Publishing. Lagrange is currently winding down their operations, so we’ve worked with Lagrange and Misha to ensure that the title stays in print. A second printing of the paperback edition from Cirsova Publishing and re-release of the ebook version will be out tomorrow!
Also, don’t forget that we also have Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer available now in multiple formats!
Cirsova 