Tag: States of Deseret

States of Deseret is now available

Cover of States of Deseret featuring a Casey Jex Smith pen and ink illustration of a Mormon temple with the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate bridge in the backgroundPeculiar Pages in collaboration with A Motley Vision is pleased to announce the release of States of Deseret. With a foreword by Theric Jepson, cover illustration by Casey Jex Smith and 8 pieces of short and short short fiction, States of Deseret is, as far as I can tell, the first anthology devoted solely to Mormon alternate history.

It was a ton of fun to edit. My thanks to the eight contributors who authored such interesting and varied stories and who put up with my editing notes. This is a short anthology–it’s about 26,000 total words of fiction. It’s lean and mean and packs a punch. But that means that we’ve by no means exhausted this particular patch of the garden. I hope that it’ll inspire other Mormon authors to tackle the genre of alternate history.

Here’s the blurb:

What if the territory of Deseret had never joined the Union and instead became its own nation? What if Leo Tolstoy or Nikola Tesla had converted to the LDS Church? What if Brigham Young had gone all the way to California instead of stopping in Utah? The genre of alternate history invites us to imagine how the past (and thus our present and future) would be different if different choices had been made. These eight stories provide glimpses at alternate historical trajectories for Mormons and Mormonism—of other states of Deseret.

States of Deseret is available in several different ebook formats worldwide for $2.99* from: Amazon/Kindle | B&N/Nook | Kobo | iBooks

We don’t plan on offering a print version at this time, but if things change, I’ll be sure to let you know.

*or local currency equivalent

Announcing the States of Deseret table of contents

I’m delighted to announce the table of contents for the forthcoming Peculiar Pages alternate Mormon history anthology States of Deseret:

The Guns of Perdition by D. J. Butler
Latter-Day Confederacy of Nations by Lori Taylor
Richard Meets the Missionaries by Anneke Garcia
Not Even the Names Have Been Changed by Marion Jensen
Another Meadow by Eric A. Eliason
The Father by Inari Porkka
The Electric Apostle by David J. West
Subject to Kings by Lee Allred

It’s a fascinating, fun set of stories that range in time period from not too long after the death of Joseph Smith all the way to the modern day. More importantly, our authors tackles the idea of alternate Mormon history in very different ways, both in terms of concept and storytelling.

More news to come, including a release date, as we work through the stages of production. Most likely it’ll come out in the first quarter of 2017. May 2017 at the latest. I can’t wait for you all to read these stories.

On a personal note: I went into the task of editing this anthology with selfish reasons — I wanted the community of authors who are interested in Mormon fiction to pick up this genre and play with it in a way that’d be interesting to me because it’s something I’ve been thinking about (and even tried writing myself) over the past couple of years. So thanks again to all those who submitted and especially our contributors. It’s always nice to get what you want.