I got home from WisCon last night to a wonderful review of  Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, edited by Mike Allen.

Allen finds his groove for this second annual anthology of weird stories, selecting 16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales. Marie Brennan’s thought-provoking “Once a Goddess” considers the fate of a goddess abruptly returned to mortality. Tanith Lee puts a stunning twist in the story of a morose prince in “The Pain of Glass.” Mary Robinette Kowal’s “At the Edge of Dying” describes a world where magic comes only to those at death’s door. In “Hooves and the Hovelof Abdel Jameela,” Saladin Ahmed tellsof a small village on the edge of a desert, a hermit and a woman who may be a witch. Each story fits neatly alongside the next, and the diversity of topics, perspectives and authors makes this cosmopolitan anthology a winner. (July)

via Fiction – 5/25/2009 – Publishers Weekly. (Scroll to the bottom)

The table of contents of Clockwork Phoenix is up. I’m totally thrilled by the company I’ll be in.

Claude Lalumière, “Three Friends”
Leah Bobet, “Six”
Marie Brennan, “Once a Goddess”
Ian McHugh, “Angel Dust”
Ann Leckie, “The Endangered Camp”
Mary Robinette Kowal, “At the Edge of Dying”
Saladin Ahmed, “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela”
Tanith Lee, “The Pain of Glass” (a story of the Flat Earth)
Joanna Galbraith, “The Fish of Al-Kawthar’s Fountain”
Catherynne M. Valente, “The Secret History of Mirrors”
Forrest Aguirre, “Never nor Ever”
Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, “each thing i show you is a piece of my death”
Kelly Barnhill, “Open the Door and the Light Pours Through”
Barbara Krasnoff, “Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance”
Steve Rasnic Tem, “When We Moved On”

I’m delighted to announce that my short story “At the Edge of Dying” will appear in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen. The first anthology was full of amazing stories and I’m thrilled to be in the second incarnation.

Here’s a teaser:

Kahe peeked over the edge of the earthen trench as his tribe’s retreating warriors broke from the bamboo grove onto the lava field. The tribesmen showed every sign of panicked flight in front of the advancing Ouvallese. Spears and shields dropped to the ground as they tucked in their arms and ran.

And the Ouvallese, arrogant with their exotic horses and metal armor, believed what they saw and chased the warriors toward him. The timing on this would be close. Kahe gathered the spell in his mind and double-checked the garrote around his neck. His wife stood behind him, the ends resting lightly in her hands. “Do it.”