Improbable Press Blog — Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging

By Marlaina Cockcroft My short story, “Leviathan,” is one of those featured in the Improbable Press anthology Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging (Volume Silver). Since the anthology is all about cryptids, I was delighted to be able to do a library presentation about cryptids! Based on that fun experience, I learned some tips for future library presentations: Bring a water bottle, so you don’t spend the entire talk worrying that your voice is going to die on you. Remember that everyone knows what the Loch Ness Monster and mermaids are, but not everyone knows the word cryptid. You might need to correct...

By Kaitee Yaeko Tredway It still feels surreal to see my name in a book, the title of my story in a Table of Contents. Feels surreal to know that friends and strangers alike have read my words. Feels surreal that this little exploration of identity and self-othering wrapped up in the tale of a little cryptid girl wanting to play in the weekly pickup game has a spot within an entire collection of stories, that it helps to paint the picture of “joyfully emerging.” Last week, in a conversation with some dear friends, I realized just how much the...

By Ali Coyle I love to meet nonbinary characters in fiction. I love nonbinary protagonists, nonbinary antagonists, and nonbinary side characters hanging around in the background, waiting for their fleeting chance to exist and prod the plot along while the main characters catch a break. What I love even more is nonbinary characters who are sensitively written. But what does that mean to me? Below are my three favourite things about well-written, fictional, nonbinary characters. Disclaimer: this is my personal view as a nonbinary human and you are free to agree or disagree to whatever extent is comfortable for you....

By Cheryl Sonnier I didn’t know I had breast cancer when I wrote Investigating the Sea-Hag Menace, in April this year. I didn’t have the routine mammogram until mid-June, a month and a half after Improbable Press accepted the story for Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging (Volume Blue). A couple of weeks after that, I was called back for more tests, and on 2nd August I had a mastectomy on my right side. I know, however, that people who know about the breast cancer, when they read the story, they are going to think the line below from the story’s narrator...

By Julie Ann Rees Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden, or something a little…darker? I've always rescued things. I say things because they could be anything, animal, bird, insect, plant. Like having to put two peas into the food waste bin as a child if I'd dropped one to the floor, because then they could go on an adventure together, whereas one would just be lonely. Now our climate is changing it breaks my heart that all these things are suffering and the little bit I'm doing to help isn't enough on a global scale. It's not...