Jan. 2nd, 2024

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Today’s author spotlight for Aether Beyond the Binary (the aetherpunk anthology starring outside-the-binary characters that we’re currently crowdfunding!) focuses on Nicola Kapron, one of the most prolific authors working with Duck Prints Press. She’s written numerous short stories and a novelette published on our website, but this is her first anthology contribution with us. And – she’s also the crafter of adorable dux plushies we’re selling as add-ons!

Better yet – we’ll be hosting an Ask Me Anything session with Nicola Kapron on Discord! Want to come hang out with Nicola, Nina Waters (ABTB lead editor), and other DPP authors, editors, and fans? Join us on January 6th, 2024 at 3 p.m. Eastern (time zone converter) and bring your questions!


About Nicola Kapron: Nicola Kapron has previously been published by Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine,  Rebel Mountain Press, Soteira Press, All Worlds Wayfarer, Mannison  Press, and more. Nicola lives in British Columbia with a hoard of  books—mostly fantasy and horror—and an extremely fluffy cat. Link: Personal Website

Read an interview with Nicola Kapron.

Stories Nicola Kapron has Published with Duck Prints Press: 

  •  The Act of Salvation (science fantasy, m/m, second person pov)
  •  Be Not Afraid (modern fantasy, m/m, omg they were roommates, the apocalypse happened and life didn’t actually change that much) (included in the contributor short stories add-on!) 
  •  Campfire Stories (modern horror, no ship, trading campfire monster stories)
  •  Dead Man’s Bells(fantasy, m/nb, dark romance, demonic possession)
  •  In Good Company (modern horror, m/m, enemies to accomplices)
  •  More Than We Deserve (dystopian sci-fi, m/m, friends to lovers) (included in the contributor short stories add-on!) 
  •  The Ocean Went on Forever (sci-fi, m/m if you squint, very hard to summarize – see “challenge: easy-to-tag works)

Nicola’s Aether Beyond The Binary Contribution:

Title: How Your Garden Grows

Tags: alternate history, attempted murder, character injury (serious), elemental (nature), environmentalism, genderfluid, natural disaster (unnatural), non-binary, non-human character, past tense, post-apocalypse, science fiction with magic, scientist, siblings, third person limited point of view

Excerpt:

The dive chamber was dark. The only light filtered upward from the moon window set into the floor. Large and circular, it served as the portal through which ze would exit and, hopefully, return. A transparent barrier of purple-tinged glass sat between Stone and the outside. The Nightmare Sea spread out below zir.

“Copy,” Leigh said. “Three…”

The color of the glass made the ocean of trees below look blue. Even with that tint, the swirls of cloud that clung to the spiralling shapes shimmered through every colour Stone knew and several ze didn’t.

“Two…”

Wind currents batted at the treetops. Most of them splashed off like water on the shore, faint trails in the sky the only evidence they’d even tried.

“One…”

Stone breathed in deeply, then let the air hiss out between zir teeth. Zir fingers flexed inside the heavy gloves. Far below, something in the shining sea reflected like metal instead of like heat shimmer or phantasmal crystal. It was near zir planned diving path.

“Diving.”

Learn more about the anthology and our other contributors by visiting our page on Kickstarter!


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Duck Prints Press LOVES kicking off the new year with one of our favorite annual recommendation lists: science fiction stories (ideally queer, but it wasn’t required) to celebrate National Science Fiction Day! For this year, 14 Duck Prints Press contributors suggested a whopping 32 awesome science fiction books. Note that there’s no overlap with last year (by design) so make sure you also check out Our Ten Favorite Science Fiction Reads of 2022 for some more titles to add to your 2024 TBR.

Our 2024 Science Fiction Recs:

  1. The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
  2. Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
  3. Little Mushroom by Shisi
  4. Always Human by Ari North
  5. More Than We Deserve by Nicola Kapron
  6. Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
  7. Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell
  8. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman
  9. Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
  10. CrashCourse by Wilhelmina Baird
  11. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
  12. We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
  13. Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
  14. Victories Greater than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
  15. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  16. The Fever King by Victoria Lee
  17. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
  18. Infomocracy by Malka Older
  19. Zero Sum Game by S. L. Huang
  20. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
  21. Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
  22. Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
  23. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
  24. Trigun and Trigun Maximum by Yasuhiro Nightow
  25. Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka & Katsumi Michihara
  26. In the Lives of Puppets by T. J. Klune
  27. Mega Man by Ian Flynn & Pat Spaz Spaziante
  28. Mega Man Megamix by Hitoshi Ariga
  29. Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
  30. Once & Future by A. R. Capetta & Cory McCarthy
  31. Five-Twelfths of Heaven by Melissa Scott
  32. The Big Sigma by Joseph R. Lallo

Want to come read some of these books with us? Join our 2024 Queer Book Challenge on Storygraph! One of our challenges there is to read a queer science fiction book, and there’s a lot on this list that’d count!

You can check out all our sci-fi recs on this Goodreads shelf.

Wish you could contribute to these lists? Back our Patreon, join our Discord, and you can!



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