Shannon Connor Winward

The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink (HerStories Project Press) 

Featuring “Chrysalis Spring”
creative non-fiction by Shannon Connor Winward

Most people don’t know that butterflies are actually noisy little fuckers. We assume they flit through the ether like angel’s breath, but that, too, is delusion and hubris. By week seven of quarantine I hated the sound of butterfly wings— that spasm of miniature panic against plastic. The thud of a soft body falling.

What kills a butterfly, other than time, or teeth? The glossy pamphlet didn’t have as much to say on this subject. Can a butterfly have cancer? Stroke? Can a butterfly know heartbreak? I began to wonder if it’s really fair to compare people to butterflies, all things considered.

Twilight Worlds: Best of NewMyths Anthology Volume II
(New Myths Publishing )

Featuring “The Puzzleist”
short fiction by Shannon Connor Winward

The final piece.  How many eons had she spent on her creation, deciphering the framework, the order, the angles, placing each precious and perfectly unique being with painstaking precision.  Painstaking precision.  She giggled, congratulating herself for the alliteration—as pleasing, perhaps, as the taste of warmish Pepsi and a particular candy  on the lips of a seven-year-old girl from Montchanin, Ohio.

Endless Apocalypse (FlameTree Publishing)

Featuring “Lost & Found” 

a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

There was a Magic the Gathering™ card called Wanderlust – it dealt a point of damage for every turn, death by attrition. I took it out of the deck and kept it taped to my mirror because I never had any pictures of you.

I used to wonder what it felt like, to be touched by God, or Spirit, whatever you wanted to call it. I envied your specialness. You said He spoke to you, and I believed you.

I keep thinking about that night in the school parking lot. Not so Godly then, with your hand down the front of my jeans, though His name was surely on my lips. I ripped a tear in the shoulder seam of your jacket, gripping so hard like I could keep you from falling.  I thought I was touching something special, and if you left you’d take a piece of me with you. Isn’t it ironic, in the end, it was me who did the leaving.

 

A Plague of Shadows: A Written Remains Anthology

Featuring “To Heart’s Content” –
a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

“Something else draws my attention—a dangling shadow.  A foot. The hem of a robe. Turning back to where the altar should be I see a different sanctuary, superimposed—narrow, dark, featuring only a rough wooden altar with a white cloth and a man, my lover, hanging from the rafters.

Love me back.”

Purchase A Plague of Shadows through Amazon.com

 

Killing It Softly 2: A Digital Horror Fiction Anthology of Short Stories
(The Best by Women in Horror)

Featuring “The Devil Inside” – a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

Micah’s cries had reached a frantic pitch. Becca took the cards from the box and removed the first one. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” she began, but the words failed her. Let me not be crazy. Tears slid down her cheeks as she set each card aside, trying to focus on the candle while her baby screamed, sounding less like an infant than a demon raging.

The flame sputtered, bent, straining to go out, though there was no wind in her warm kitchen. Becca turned the card in her hand face-up.

How does it make you feel? her mother asked, as Becca wept.

Grinning up at her, triumphant, was The Devil.

Purchase Killing it Softly 2 through Amazon.com

 

White Noise & Ouija Boards: An Anthology of Ghosts & Hauntings

Featuring “Patience”- a flash fiction by Shannon Connor Winward

It started at his head; a shimmer, like sunset on a puddle.  It worked its way down his body to his toes and then broke free.  It began to float towards the ceiling – another moment and it would be gone.  Wait, thought Elsie.   “Me too,” she said, grabbing hold of her brother’s not-ankle. 

She felt a – POP! – then the floor, the room, the building fell away. 

Purchase White Noise & Ouija Boards through Three Drops Press.

 

 

Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus

 

Featuring “Cupid’s Mark” – a microfiction by Shannon Connor Winward

On Monday, I told my mother about the strange pain between my shoulders; how it’s been growing worse since the night you left.

She said, “Maybe you’re growing wings.”

Purchase Blood and Roses from Amazon.com.

 

The 2017 SFPA Rhysling and Dwarf Star Award Anthologies

2017 Rhysling Award Anthology for speculative poetry, Featuring “Terran Mythology” (Short Poem Category) and “Thirteen Ways to See a Ghost” (Long Poem Category) by Shannon Connor Winward

 

 

2017 Dwarf Star Award Anthology for short-form speculative poetry, Featuring “Craving”
by Shannon Connor Winward

 

Heiresses of Russ 2015: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

Featuring “Ghost-Writer” – a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

For a heartbeat, I hate her. For doing this, for fucking it up. For not telling me what she planned. She knew if she’d asked I wouldn’t have let her… would I? But it isn’t a choice now – or rather, it is – overwrite, or death.
INITIATE.
I raise my eye to the MEG projection of the left side of Carla’s brain, silent and gray, and the right side sluggish, spastic. She’s in a dream state, echoes of cognition. She is sinking – coma, perhaps. Or flat-lining. Likely, flat-line. I am watching Carla die.

Purchase Heiresses of Russ in print or e-book editions through Amazon.com.

 

The Dark Ones: Tales and Poems of the Shadow Gods

Featuring “Come Kali” – a poem by Shannon Connor Winward

Her dark lips grasping
blood tongue lapping
swallowing
one tower
whole

then the other

comes Kali

Purchase The Dark Ones through Amazon.com.

 

Currents: Selected Poetry & Prose from the 2014 Cape Henlopen Retreat Writers

One of the projects supported by the Delaware Division of the Arts is their biennial retreat open to Delaware poets and prose writers. The application process is competitive. Work samples are juried in an anonymous review, and participants are chosen based on the merit of their writing submissions. CURRENTS is a collection of poems and stories from the writers who attended the four-day 2014 Cape Henlopen Poetry & Prose Writers Retreat. These writings will stay with you and will hopefully make Delaware proud.

Featuring “Adjudication” and “Preverbal”  – poetry by Shannon Connor Winward

Children do not borrow their biology
or our echo (this is your
story to tell), though they do

engulf the future
each of them the oracle in us
we endure.

Currents is available through Delaware booksellers or from Amazon.com.

 

Something Rich & Strange: Tales From the Sea

Scheherezade’s Bequest Volume 1. Issue 2

Featuring “The Sea Witch’s Get” – a bipolar love poem by Shannon Connor Winward

                 When I carried you, I went down, and down again
                  bent my head, shed my skin
                  some serpents are born in fire, love

                  you were forged in tears.

 Purchase Something Rich & Strange: Tales From the Sea in print through Amazon.com.

 

Someone Wicked: A Written Remains Anthology

Featuring “The Devil Inside” – a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

Micah’s cries had reached a frantic pitch. Becca took the cards from the box and removed the first one. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” she began, but the words failed her. Let me not be crazy. Tears slid down her cheeks as she set each card aside, trying to focus on the candle while her baby screamed, sounding less like an infant than a demon raging.

The flame sputtered, bent, straining to go out, though there was no wind in her warm kitchen. Becca turned the card in her hand face-up.

How does it make you feel? her mother asked, as Becca wept.

Grinning up at her, triumphant, was The Devil.

 Purchase Someone Wicked in print or e-book editions through Amazon.com.

Read more about Someone Wicked authors and publishers at Smart Rhino Publications.

 

The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders

Featuring “Passage” – a short story by Shannon Connor Winward

Danu walked at the rear of the procession as the men carried her body down the corridor of stone.  The priest stared straight ahead and the others watched the ground, unwilling to see any more than they must in this place of the dead, but Danu saw how the torchlight brought the passage to life.  Symbols danced in the stones, at her sides and overhead – spirals and ovals and a thousand suns.  The passage was the night sky, reigned in and narrowed so that they could touch it, if only they had the courage to lift their heads.

                                                         Danu lifted her head, and Danu touched the sky. 

Purchase The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders through Amazon.com, Amazon.UK or Barnes and Noble.com

 

The Queen of the Sky Who Rules Over All the Gods:

A Devotional Anthology in Honor of Bast (Bibliotheca Alexandrina)

Featuring “Bast”, a poem by Shannon Connor Winward

Caught
in the procession of
cars and people, briefly
out of sync

She moved
with purpose
head high
tail
curled
in a perfect
question.

What if…?

Purchase The Queen of the Sky Who Rules Over All the Gods through Createspace.

 

Jack-O’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy (Raven Electrik Ink),

Featuring “All Souls’ Day”, a poem by Shannon Connor Winward*

 

It takes a certain alchemy

an arrangement of bones

crisscross, in a cradle of wood

bark, soil, flesh, and stone

 

Purchase Jack-O’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com.

 

*”All Souls’ Day” featured also in

Spec-tacular: Fantasy Favorites from Raven Electrick Ink

 

 

 

and

The 2012 Rhysling Anthology