Thursday, February 18, 2021

New Release: Hold Your Fire: Stories Celebrating the Creative Spark

Hold Your Fire: Stories Celebrating the Creative Spark is the sixth anthology edited by Lisa Mangum and published by WordFire Press in support of the Don Hodge Memorial Scholarship Fund for the Superstars Writing Seminar.

by Editor Lisa Mangum, Alicia Cay, Brian Corley, CJ Erick, Jace Killan, Kat Kellermeyer, Kevin J. Anderson, Kitty Sarkozy, Kristen Bickerstaff, M. Elizabeth Ticknor
ISBN 978-1-68057-174-5
ISBN 978-1-68057-175-2
258 pages
Publisher: WordFire Press LLC
Creativity comes from many places, but often the initial spark of inspiration can be traced to something or someone who challenged us to first put pen to paper or brush to canvas, to pick up a camera, to look at the world with new eyes. Maybe it was the lyrics of a favorite album. Maybe it was the encouragement from a beloved teacher. Maybe it was seeing a wonder of the natural world.


Maybe it was just a feeling deep down inside that demanded to be set free, a voice ready to be heard, a story begging to be told.

Hold Your Fire is a collection of nineteen short stories celebrating the power and influence of inspiration in all its forms—art, literature, music, astronomy, science, inventions, epiphanies.

Here you will find stories of people being inspired as well as stories of people inspiring someone else. Stories not only of artistic inspiration but of scientific discoveries. The “Eureka!” moments that change the whole world and the small moments when someone dares to fight one more day.

From a romance about a teenager’s attempts to win over his first crush with poetry to musicians and artists harnessing the inspiration of unexpected muses to a fairy tale princess seeking for happiness, every story in this anthology shines brightly. And since every fire casts a shadow, there are also a few horror stories that thrive in the dark.

EXCERPT
I ventured deeper into the arid wasteland than I had ever gone before, and finally I saw a shimmering mirage, something I had never expected to find. A gleaming expanse of a distant lake that lay like a moonstone mirror at the base of an enormous mesa that rose from the desert like an island in the sky. Exactly as the legends had foretold! The Seven Cities must be up there, the Elder Race separated from base mankind in their high fortress.

I froze like a starving man holding a spoon of food up to his mouth, afraid to take that first delicious bite. It was there, within a day’s journey—two at the most! I could traverse the shallow lake and climb those cliffs. I could find the Seven Cities of Gold at last.

But what if the cities were a disappointment when I found them? What if the gold was tarnished, the majestic cities no more than abandoned huts that were crumbling into dust?


About the Editor:
Editor Lisa Mangum has worked in the publishing industry since 1997. She is currently the Managing Editor for Shadow Mountain Publishing and has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors.

She edited One Horn to Rule Them All: A Purple Unicorn Anthology, A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology, Dragon Writers: An Anthology, X Marks the Spot, and Undercurrents: An Anthology of What Lies Beneath, also published by WordFire Press.

She graduated with honors from the University of Utah, and currently lives in Taylorsville, Utah, with her husband, Tracy.

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