Duck Prints Press’s May Newsletter
We’re bursting into late spring in full bloom this May at Duck Prints Press! In this newsletter?
- get excited with us for the pre-launch of our next anthology!
- join us for our annual fandom event, May Trope Mayhem!
- come chat with us on Discord!
- are you an author? recruitment opening soon for our next anthology!
- changes to our release schedule starting in June!
- seven new releases: stories from R. L. Houck, Nicola Kapron, A. L. Heard, and more!
The Kickstarter for our next anthology, Aim For The Heart: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers,” will be launching on June 15th, 2023.
This book truly is “one for all”: we’ve got gorgeous art, fabulous stories, canon divergent works, original stories, modern aus, queer musketeers, gender shenanigans, and all the laughs and drama you loved in the original work, just – fannified!
Aim For The Heart features 20 stories, each up to 5,000 words long, 19 full-page art pieces rendered in black-and-white or grayscale, and a 12-page comic. You can learn all about our awesome contributors here.
We are so excited with how this project is coming together, and we cannot wait to share it with y’all.
Get excited, help us spread the word, and make sure you follow our pre-launch page so you’ll hear as soon as the Kickstarter is live!!
May Trope Mayhem: Our Annual Fancreation Event!
May Trope Mayhem is a multi-fandom/original creation event open to writers, artists, and content creators of all kinds! We’ve put together a list of 30 of our favorite tropes (plus one day f or you to pick YOUR favorite!), one per day through the month of May, and we encourage creators to join us for this month of fun tropey mayhem.
Our goal is to promote motivation and help with habit building, so we’re encouraging people to keep their ficlets under 1,000 words, or if you make art or a gif or some such, to stick to a sketch or a single image.
We’re about halfway through the month of May, and fancreators have already added almost 30 works to our AO3 collection! If you’re an author, artist, gifer, or other type of fan-creator, it’s not too late for you to get involved! And if you’re primarily a reader, we invite you to visit our collection on Archive of Our Own and give peoples’ creations a look, a read, and a kudos!
Do You Use Discord?
So do we! Come hang out with our authors and other queer book lovers, get news about our events and new releases, read lots of book recs, and more, as a member of our reader Discord!
(you’ll have to subscribe to get the link to join!)
Recruitment Opening Soon!
We’ll be opening recruitment for our next anthology, Many Hands: An Anthology of Polyamorous Erotica, on May 20th, 2023!
Do you write fanfiction?
Would you love to have the chance to get your original fiction published with Duck Prints Press?
Sign up to our “Calls For Authors” newsletter blasts to get notifications right into your inbox when we’re looking for new contributors!
Release Schedule Changes
Since October, we’ve been releasing at least one short story a week, every week! Since then, we’ve released a whopping 46 short stories! And we’ve got much more to come.
We know – it’s a lot.
So, starting in June, instead of flooding our lovely readers with new titles every single week, we’ll be publishing all our stories for the month on a set day. Erotica titles will come out on the Second Thursday of each month (in June, that’s June 8th).
General Imprint titles will come out on the Fourth Thursday of each month (June 22nd will be the next batch).
We’ll also be offering discounted bundles for people who buy all the releases that come out on a given day.
AND, you can claim short stories for free if you back our Patreon! We’re working on changing our model there so it will function almost as a subscription model: you give us a general idea of your preferences, and we’ll send you every release we make that matches! That’s more short stories for you, more royalties for our authors, and more support for Duck Prints Press – win, win, and win! So, there’s no time like the present to back us on Patreon.
Recent Releases from Duck Prints Press
“Settling Down” by Theresa Tanner
After Galerann suffers an injury during an adventure, Legardo worries what their lives will look like post-recovery. Will Galerann insist on continuing to quest for his missing father, or might he consider settling down?
“twin flame” by nottesilhouette
Ina’s life has had many ups and downs, and through them all Valin has been at her side. Sometimes, it’s hardest to see that what (who!) one’s been looking for has been at one’s side all along.
Androids and criminals and…mechanics? Oh my!
Pedro, captain of The Merry War, is planning a heist. But the real shenanigans are the trouble his crew gets up to before the ship even gets to the scene of the intended crime. Will B and Ben be able to get along? Will Pedro’s brother Jon cause more problems than he solves? You’ll have to read
the story to find out!
“The Princess and the Maze” by A. L. Heard
In a kingdom past the sea, a princess squares off against traditional misogyny as she uses her wits to claim the birthright that should be hers.
A. L. Heard spins a modern tale with a fairy tale feel and an oh-so-satisfying ending in The Princess and the Maze.
Eloise hates her daily commute into the city…until she has an intriguing fellow passenger to share the trip with!
This story was published as the backer-reward story in April! All backers can read it now here.
A young child finds a spot of color amidst the dust of a dismal future: a flower, blooming from the cracks.
And a mother finds hope and strength enough to keep going another day…
“The Ocean Went on Forever” by Nicola Kapron
Trapped on a distant ocean-covered planetoid.
Alone save for an expedition crew that ignores him and a father that hates him.
Rock never wanted wanted to move to Triton, but after the death of his mother, his father didn’t give him a choice. He’s the only teenager and only civilian on an underwater base, too far from civilization to even receive interstellar entertainment feeds.
And then his cochlear implants start picking up strange voices…
Now, Rock needs to figure out what’s going on, and what he should do about it, before it’s too late…
Thank you for joining us this newsletter! We’ve got lots in the works and way more to come, and we look forward to getting to know you as we continue along this publishing journey with you.
Thank you for your support and interest!
Claire Houck
Owner
Duck Prints Press