Ian Sales, the editor of hard science fiction anthology Rocket Science, has done a great job blogging about the work with the anthology and the authors that have been included.

This is his introduction to my story Dancing on the Red Planet:

“Berit Ellingsen’s story is one of three in Rocket Science about a mission to Mars. It didn’t surprise me that the Red Planet proved such a popular location for submissions, but Berit’s story did manage to surprise me in other ways.”

Here’s the rest of the introduction and a little more about Dancing on the Red Planet.

Thank you very much for including my story in this “must-submit-to”-anthology, Ian, and thank you very much for making us all feel like genuine rocket scientists!

I have the great honor of being guest editor for prose for issue 18 of the beautiful international literary journal

Asian Cha

Please send us your best Asia-themed stories before the 15th of June!

Submission guidelines

About Asian Cha:

• Named Best New Online Magazine of 2008 by storySouth’s Million Writers Award
• Selected as The Gatekeeper’s Site of the Week (Wednesday 1 July 2009), on Meet at the Gate, the website of Scottish publisher Canongate
• Works published in Cha have been included in Best of the Web (2009), selected as  a winner and finalists of Best of the Net (2009, 2010, 2011) and named StorySouth’s Million Writers Award Notable Stories (2008, 2009, 2010)

More information about Asian Cha here.

The Sparrows, a fairy tale about birds, wishes and transformations, is now in Lost In Thought Magazine.

Lost In Thought Magazine pairs beautiful stories with equally beautiful images into a fantastic synergy.

I’m honored to be in the same issue as fellow Fictionauts and strong writers MaryAnne Kolton, James Lloyd Davis, Lynn Beighley, Nicolette Wong, and in particular Susan Tepper and Robert Vaughn, who have been my editors and issue mates on several occasions.

Many thanks to editor Kyle Schruder for taking the birds in and to photographer Melania Brescia for creating such a beautiful image.

“When he became one hundred and twenty brown and black sparrows, he received the thoughts and feelings and the needs of birds.”

The Pachydermini books are beautiful little handmade booklets with strange stories inside. They have a new series of booklets out now!

Here’s an excerpt from and link to my interview at Pachydermini books about the story What Girls Really Think:

“2. Is this story based on a real experience?

Many of my stories are a mix of imagined and recalled experiences. Since all recollections are selective replays, they are also fiction. The line between fiction and non-fiction isn’t very strong.

I’m reminded about Odin in Norse mythology. His two ravens were called Hugin, which means thought, and Munin, which means memory. Memories are thoughts, they are not the actual events.”