Announcing ALEYARA’S DESCENT AND OTHER STORIES — Kickstarter campaign open now!

It’s been over a year since I had anything new published except on my Patreon, but that’s about to change. To commemorate its tenth anniversary, eSpec Books is holding a massive Kickstarter campaign for seven new books from seven authors, including my second short fiction collection for eSpec, Aleyara’s Descent and Other Stories.

Here’s the cover blurb for the collection:

Infinite Dimensions. Endless Possibilities. Universal Questions.

Across multiple realities and millennia of past and future history, heroes human and otherwise challenge their limits and brave the unknown in pursuit of the fundamental truths of the universe—and each other.

From bestselling author Christopher L. Bennett comes Aleyara’s Descent, eleven tales portraying the search for understanding, connection, and hope that unites seekers of all species, eras, and realities.

In an alien past, four impetuous youths brave a forbidden realm to discover their world’s true nature.A first contact between a UFO believer and a real alien doesn’t go the way either one expects.Scientists battling a kaiju invasion must overcome the mistrust of the insular enclave they strive to protect.A government agent’s drive to safeguard the future hits a speed bump when she questions a suspected time traveler.The inheritor of a fabled superhero name must prove herself by solving the one mystery her predecessor never could.

These and other diverse tales, many in print for the first time, bring a multiverse of aliens, monsters, time travelers, and heroes to life with plausibility and sensitivity.

Includes the brand-new tale “Nilly’s Choice,” a companion story to the Arachne novels.

Only four of the stories in this collection have been professionally published before, while all but one of the rest come from my Patreon’s Original Fiction tier (index here), which has so few subscribers that they’ll be completely new to most of my readers. They come in a mix of different continuities, breaking down thusly:

Arachne/Troubleshooter Universe:

“Conventional Powers” (Troubleshooters): Analog Sep/Oct 2019“Legacy Hero” (Troubleshooters): Patreon“Nilly’s Choice”: Patreon“Aleyara’s Descent”: Analog, May/June 2023

Braneworlds:

“What Slender Threads”: Patreon“Though Worlds Divide Us”: Amazing Stories (online), April 2023

Standalone stories:

“The Moving Finger Writes”: Patreon“Abductive Reasoning”: Analog Sep/Oct 2017“Early Warning Systems”: Never before published“The Monsters We Make”: Patreon“Growth Industry”: Patreon

I’ve revised most of the stories to offer a little something new. Mostly it’s just a few minor textual edits, but I did a substantial polish on “The Moving Finger Writes,” whose version on Patreon was a little rough. In “Conventional Powers” and “The Monsters We Make,” I restored some material I’d deleted for space, about 300 words’ worth for the former and a paragraph for the latter. In “Growth Industry,” I added a few bits that didn’t occur to me until after the story’s Patreon publication.

In addition, a digital copy of my Troubleshooter vignette “They Also Serve” is one of the campaign’s stretch goals, and the bonuses include either digital or print copies of Aleyara’s Descent, Among the Wild Cybers, and Arachne’s Crime, plus the chance to be Tuckerized in my next novel. And of course there’s a whole bunch of other stuff from the six other authors represented in this campaign.

The campaign is open until June 26! The more pledges we get, the more stretch-goal goodies the donors will get!