Guest Blog - Fireun with a cool kickstarter

Personally I have always loved crows and ravens. I ate up Native American legends of Raven as a girl, Celtic lore too. I was fascinated by them and fed them for years though unlike that little girl who has been much in the news as of late I've never received gifts from them. It was at a Native American program on birds I saw just how smart ravens were (and how kinda dumb owls, a symbol of wisdom, were). So I find the idea of Mobbing Midnight really interesting. I'm going to let fireun take over from here.

kickstarter info here


Crows are peppered through world mythology and folklore- sometimes serving as a sign of ill luck, other times a trickster. From American crows to hooded and carrion crows, pied crows to jungle crows- they come in as many shapes and in as many environments as we can dream up.

Dreaming about crows, weaving stories around them, is the focus of this anthology. We have gathered talented writers to tell cunning tales of crows covering all aspects of fiction- fantasy to historical, with a bit of horror here and there.


(My current selling point is that a $25 pledge gets you all three of the anthologies -Fight Like a Girl, What Follows, and Mobbing Midnight- in DRM-free ebook formats.)


Here are some of the authors talking about the anthology. Enjoy


“From a young age I’ve been obsessed with creatures of the avian variety. Although I now have cats, I grew up with birds as pets –cockatiels, budgies, finches, and love birds were species I called mine. If I could have talked my parents into a cockatoo or African gray parrot my life would be less hairy now.

Pets aside, I’ve always been interested in bird-watching. My dad and I have shared many hours pouring over Audubon society books that weigh more than our coffee table. Nature walks, highway drives, and zoo visits always have me chattering about the different bird specimens spotted. Stopovers by the flocks of waxwings that pick our mountain ash clean provide moments of elation.

Crows though…crows are fascinating. Everyone I know sees them as noisy pesks, except myself. I have a flock –a murder– that nests near my house and uses the roof as a territory marker. I know if there’s something out of balance outside by their cries, whether it’s a new neighbourhood dog, a predatory hawk or owl, possibly a raven or eagle.

These scavengers even have a depth of emotion I haven’t witnessed in a lot of wildlife. I’ve seen how parents care for their nestlings –especially when teaching them to fly. The attentiveness is mesmerizing. I’ve seen flocks mourn for their dead. I’ve seen them scurry away from angry mother robins because they know their size is irrelevant in comparison to her ire.

Crows have so much personality and charisma, how could I not be elated at the chance to write about them? Any bird would have worked for me, but the possibilities crows present are endless. Between their habit variety and the lore affixed to them, the sky is seriously the limit. I just hope that my story lives up to their reputation!” -E.V. O'Day

“Three winters ago, I was driving to the store past a small park. But where the ground should have been white, it was black and moving. The park was covered with crows. The entire baseball diamond was held hostage beneath them and I looked up to find them draping the bare branches like dark leaves.


I pulled over. I got out of my car. They didn’t move but they watched me with hundreds of dark eyes, all watching me. Hundreds of eyes in the trees watching me. I stood in the snow, surrounded by crows, in their winter roost.

I was having that moment because my eyes were open. And there we were, together, sharing in that moment. I sat on a bench and lost myself to them, mesmerized by the thick blanket of life warming the winter air around me.

They cawed and took to the air in small and large formations in smooth swirling glides and frenetic chase sequences, each trying to top the last. I was awed they acknowledged my presence in their roost, that they deemed me worthy of notice. They crowed and groked in Hitchcockian fashion and it was beautiful. Their sound bounced off the edges of my body. I was a kite buffeting in their wind. To surrender to such nature… the power of the murder is a fluid force. It was a humbling experience. For every singular crow I spy in the drifting snow, I look to the tree tops, to the shadowy spaces. Even if I can’t see them, I know they’re near.

It comforts me.” -Sarah Lyn Eaton

“Strange as it sounds, I was drawn to this anthology most because when I asked April if my story had to be speculative fiction, she said no - I could write historical fiction if I wanted. That was such a refreshing change for me, I love historical fiction but most genre anthologies I've seen limit contributions to fantasy or science fiction or steam punk or magic realism or urban paranormal or horror or post-apocalyptic. I love that the unifying theme of this anthology is crows - that we can use the bird as a launching off point to write about whatever inspires us most. It's one of the best anthology themes I've personally encountered - narrow enough to help focus the thoughts of the writer, broad enough to allow for any kind of story. I'm really looking forward to reading this anthology, because it's going to be delightful to see how each of the writer's seizes the ball...er...bird and runs with it. My story is historical fiction (in a similar way to how Django Unchained is historical fiction) but this anthology has room for all of the genres I listed above, and many others as well. I'm so excited to be a part of it, and so excited to see what my fellow authors have in store for me! “ -Nina Waters