Chilling Tales

Checking in today with some news for fans of my bride's fiction -- you can find a new Tia Travis story in Chilling Tales, an anthology edited by Michael Kelly and published by Edge. Tia's tale is called "The Weight of Stones," and it's the closer in this all-Canadian compilation of dark fiction.

Chilling Tales has a street date of March 1, so grab a copy soon (Amazon is taking preorders). Tia received her copy today, and it's a sharp little package. I'm looking forward to reading new fiction from Gemma Files (always a fave), my buddies Ian Rogers and Jason Ridler, and a host of Canuck talent whose names are familiar but whose work I've yet to sample. In his introduction, Mike Kelly promises "...a distinctly Canadian worldview, a disquieting solitude, perhaps, or a tangible loneliness, that permeates all these stories and makes them truly chilling tales."

For those who'd like a sample of Tia's story, check out the opening below:

She sleeps beneath ninety million tons of limestone.

A sigh that might be the wind siphons through the Pass. Gustiest corridor in the territory, a convergence of plates where mountains break loose from the sky, where violence is measured both in moments and eras, where sunlight splinters through crevices and flowers live and die in darkness. If you listen, you might hear a grain of sand sift through the labyrinth of boulders.

If you listen, you might hear her breathing.

I hold my own breath and map the movements of her heart... the rise and fall of her lungs. I held that last breath for her until I passed beyond the need for it. The desire for it.

Lie still. I will find you...