{"id":225,"date":"2014-12-30T23:02:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T04:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=225"},"modified":"2014-12-30T23:02:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T04:02:56","slug":"scheherazades-facade-edited-by-michael-m-jones","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=225","title":{"rendered":"Scheherazade’s Fa\u00e7ade edited by Michael M Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>ebook $6.99
\nISBN 9781613900598
\npaperback $14.95
\n9781613900581
\n67,750 words; 206 pages<\/p>\n

[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=67]<\/p>\n

The ebook edition is also available at: Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Smashwords<\/a>, Kobo<\/a> & AllRomanceEbooks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buy the paperback edition<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n

About the Book:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFor starters, honey, I don\u2019t believe in Hell\u2013that\u2019s just some old man\u2019s way of telling me reasons why I can\u2019t be me. Like \u201cbiology is destiny\u201d means I have to be a boy.\u201d
\n\u2013 \u201cLady Marmalade\u2019s Special Place in Hell\u201d by David Sklar<\/p>\n

There have always been stories of those willing to blur or transcend the traditional gender roles. Some do it out of necessity, others are merely embracing their true selves. Sometimes it\u2019s for fun, other times survival. Every culture has their gender benders, their cross-dressers, their rule breakers. From Bugs Bunny to Mulan, Alanna of Trebond to Klinger, our folk heroes and cultural icons push boundaries and challenge expectations.<\/p>\n

In Scheherazade\u2019s Fa\u00e7ade<\/i>, twelve of today\u2019s most intriguing authors spin tales of magic, mystery, self-discovery and adventure, each with a twist. In these pages you\u2019ll find shape-shifting dragons, triumphant drag queens, tragic selkies, lost princes and would-be warriors. You\u2019ll find star-crossed lovers and mysterious travelers, cross-dressers and gender bending heroes of all sorts.<\/p>\n

This launch title for Circlet\u2019s new Gressive Press<\/a> imprint features all-new fantasy and urban fantasy from Tanith Lee, Sarah Rees Brennan, Tiffany Trent, Aliette de Bodard, Alma Alexander, David Sklar, Melissa Mead, C.S. MacCath, Paolo Chikiamco, Sunny Moraine, Lyn C.A. Gardner, and Shanna Germain.<\/p>\n

Look under the cut for an excerpt!<\/span><\/p>\n

from The Secret Name of the Prince<\/i> by Alma Alexander:<\/p>\n

The \u201cprivate\u201d Khshayarsha had been given a royal name\u2013but that was the only gift that he had of his family. He did not remember his father, only the story that armed men had burst into their home in the middle of the night when Khshayarsha was barely more than a baby and had taken his father away with them. The man who had been the head of the household, the man Khshayarsha might have called Father once he had learned to speak, had never returned. In the aftermath of this ruin, his mother had sat like a statue, blank-faced and silent; she had not eaten nor allowed a drop of water to pass her lips if she was not fed by another hand or forced to swallow water trickled into her mouth slowly from a chipped cup. She had clung to life even thus, stubbornly, perhaps waiting for her husband to come back against all odds\u2013she had put forth what protection and power she had, leaving herself vulnerable and out in the open, the only target left for those who had taken her husband\u2013but eventually she too was gone. Khshayarsha had still been too young, could not remember ever having heard the sound of his mother\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

It was Shahrazad who took care of him. Shahrazad, the elder sister, the only thing that stood between him and the place where both his parents had somehow vanished to and left him. Shahrazad, who had dressed him as the girl-child their mother\u2019s final glamour had made him seem like; Shahrazad, herself under the guise of a boy, who had smuggled him out of the place which had started to smell of death and abandonment\u2026 and taken him elsewhere, and hidden him in the dark, and told him that he must pretend\u2013at least for a little while\u2013to be somebody else, someone other than Khshayarsha.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should all take secret names,\u201d she told him. She had spoken in a soft voice which he would wonder, later, when he came to think about things, if she had used because she had wanted to soothe a fractious toddler or because she was so afraid of being overheard. \u201cA new name for a new being, and then we have to change to fit the new skin. You can pick your own. And then you have to work at your transformation. Everything depends on how good you are at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA creature, maybe,\u201d she had said. \u201cWhat kind of creature do you think would be able to survive, hidden, quiet, waiting for the right moment to come back out into the sun?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA mouse?\u201d he had offered, after a moment\u2019s thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cMouse,\u201d she agreed. \u201cWe will call you Mouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what are you?\u201d he had asked, rousing just a little.<\/p>\n

She had thought about it, but not for long. \u201cDesert fox,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a secret name. You must not tell anyone about it.\u201d
\nEven if there had been anyone to tell. They had been alone in the dark hiding place she had taken him to\u2013the boy glamoured as girl, and the girl glamoured as boy, disguised to muddy their trail for those who still sought them\u2013and often even she was gone, out somewhere alone, coming back with food wrapped in bazaar rags, or a skin of wine she would water down for him, or toys to amuse him in the dark.<\/p>\n

And once, a book.<\/p>\n

He had been too young to know his letters. He had no idea if his sister had ever been taught them or not, but she had brought the book and Mouse assumed that she knew how to read it\u2013and so he had demanded that she read it to him, to while away the hours in which she was there with him.<\/p>\n

She said yes, and she\u2019d sit there with him in the crook of her arm and halfway across her lap, and he had thought she would read to him. It was only later, much later, that he thought about the fact that there was little light and that she could not possibly have seen enough to read from the book she held open before them as fluently as she told her stories. Much later, when she was long gone. It was much later, too, that he realized that she had been telling him only the truth\u2013his favorite stories were those about Desert Fox, which was her own secret name between the two of them, and there could have been no stories written about the deeds of the Desert Fox in a book like the one she had brought back into their lair.<\/p>\n

Know, then, O Mouse, that Desert Fox went out into the streets of the city in the daytime, dressed as a dirty street boy, the hair that had been her pride hacked untidily away just above her shoulders and swinging in matted tangles from underneath a sloppily tied head-cloth.<\/i><\/p>\n

The streets were rough and dangerous, and there was a language to them all of their own\u2013and maybe a language that changed subtly if you rounded a corner and turned into a new street. And it all had to be learned. And it was tough out there for one who was also learning to thieve cheese and day-old unleavened bread and olives for the Mouse she kept safe in the secret den where Fox lived\u2026 to which she must never, ever, not even accidentally draw anyone\u2019s eye for the Mouse was a Prince of his nation and would have to be kept safe from harm.<\/p>\n

And the Fox would sometimes sit in the bazaar, cross-legged by the fountain where people wandered by, and would offer to sell stories for a coin if someone would give him\u2013the ragged storyteller boy\u2013a coin for his pains\u2026and a beginning. And people often did not know that it was their own stories that they were telling to the boy, and that the boy was collecting them all, and hoarding them, and winnowing from them nuggets of precious knowledge which those who had told it would have died of mortification to know that they had let slip without realizing it. Or killed, to protect it. The boy had to be all things, he had to be bright and intelligent and spin a tale worth the coin\u2013and he had to be carefully stupid, and pretend not to have heard the things that were left unsaid on the ground between them, those who bought stories and him who sold them\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

In the beginning Mouse was young enough to endure his dark prison\u2013the Desert Fox would take him out sometimes, at night, into streets empty of people, and wander with him on the cobbles still slimed by that day\u2019s market offal, and then away, into winding streets with high walls and secret gates and fragrant gardens whose scents spilled over the walls and into the street below.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember,\u201d Mouse sometimes said, pausing underneath a particular archway hung with purple flowers or some kitchen gate into an alleyway where scents of sumptuous feasts warred with the odor of wasted and rotting food collecting in the gutters where bright-eyed night rats would sometimes gnaw and nibble at it before scuttling away into the shadows as Mouse and Fox approached with light step, themselves keeping out of sight. \u201cI remember this. I remember, I was a boy back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read the rest, buy the paperback or ebook today!<\/em><\/p>\n

[wp_eStore_fancy2 id=67]<\/p>\n

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ebook $6.99 ISBN 9781613900598 paperback $14.95 9781613900581 67,750 words; 206 pages [wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=67] The ebook edition is also available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo & AllRomanceEbooks. Buy the paperback edition! About the Book: \u201cFor starters, honey, I don\u2019t believe in Hell\u2013that\u2019s just some old man\u2019s way of telling me reasons why I can\u2019t … Continue reading Scheherazade’s Fa\u00e7ade edited by Michael M Jones<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":875,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-225","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/225\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}