DreamForge Anvil | Issue 7
Welcome to DreamForge Anvil Issue 7. When you see the words “The Meaning of Life,” does it call to mind the purpose of humans in the universe? Was there a meaning for Homo habilis? Is there one for the hyacinth in our backyard? For the populations of chemolithotrophic bacteria found in deep sea hydrothermal vents? Is the meaning of life to further the existence of life itself?


For Issue 07 of DreamForge Anvil, we have a story from Grant Carrington, who began publishing SF with "Night-Eyed Prayer" for Amazing in May 1971. We think you’ll find Grant’s “The Sweet Apocalypse Travelling Medicine Show & Gypsy Caravan” a glimpse into a future with a lovely theatrical past. From “The Meaning of Life” to “The Peculiar Constraints of Peacetime,” we have 8 great tales that consider our place in the universe. Enjoy.
Our Contributors
Tammy Komoff
The Hole in the Hedge
Tammy Komoff’s fiction has recently appeared in All World’s Wayfarer, Across the Margins, and Bards & Sages Magazine. She is currently studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida. When she isn’t writing or studying, Tammy can be found frantically chasing her headstrong
girls around the house.

About The Hole in the Hedge:

 I spent much of the pandemic chasing after my youngest daughter as she tried to escape through a broken fence in a neglected corner of the garden. My husband joked that one of these days, she’d outrun me, and we’d never see her again. That is where this story was born. But, it grew on late nights in dark rooms as I rocked her to sleep, knowing I wouldn’t have many more of these moments. 

The days are long, but the years are short. It’s a saying young parents hear a lot, and it’s true. The bad moments, the tears and injuries, the illness, and tantrums seem to last forever. While the good moments, gentle kisses on your cheek, whispered I love you’s in your ear, childhood triumphs great and small happen so fast, there’s no time to grab hold and savor them.

That’s why I wrote The Hole in the Hedge, to put into words the deep longing I have to make everything stop, hold my girls close. And to grapple with the hidden truths of parenthood: To love your children is to let them grow and ultimately let them go.

Grant Carrington
Sweet Apolcalypse
Grant Carrington, former associate editor of Amazing, is the author of 3 novels and a collection published by Brief Candle Press of Beaverton, Oregon.

About Sweet Apolcalypse

The story was inspired by my experiences as a lighting technician for the American Light Opera Company (which also inspired "His Hour Upon the Stage," which was a Nebula finalist in 1976).

Michael Zahniser 
The Peculiar Constraints of Peacetime
Michael Zahniser lives in Boston with his wife Christina, three housemates, and two guinea pigs. As a software engineer at an autonomous vehicle company, his job is to create robots that don’t kill people. 
 
About The Peculiar Constraints of Peacetime
Since the early days of science fiction, we’ve used anthropomorphic robots as a way to explore the boundary between what is an object and what is a person. Is Em One just a machine, one that suffered no lasting physical damage in the war and that should therefore be expected to perform flawlessly in its new role? Or could Em One have emotions, desires, and its own interior life… as well as injuries that the world doesn’t acknowledge because they left no visible scars?
David Hankins 
About A Properly Spiced Gingerbread
David Hankins writes from the thriving cornfields of Iowa. His writing journey began years ago in Germany as he made up stories to convince his daughter to go to sleep, which always backfired. Those midnight ramblings developed into a passion for creating new worlds while exploring the idiosyncrasies of this one.

David joined the US Army after college and, through some glitch in the bureaucracy, convinced them to fund his wanderlust for twenty years. He has lived in and traveled through much of Europe, central Asia, and the United States. Eventually, he hopes to fund his wanderlust through writing.

Story Notes for About A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

I wrote “A Properly Spiced Gingerbread” during one of Wulf Moon’s Kill Your Darlings (KYD) Master Workshops (see DreamForge Anvil Issue 5 to learn about KYDs). My first thousand words were rambling nonsense. Barely the framework of a story. Through the KYD process, I compressed that to 250 words, and this story was born. That is the power of the KYD exercise: to find the beating heart of your story. Expanded back up for publication, “A Properly Spiced Gingerbread” is a story about solving your mistakes through grit, faith, and ingenuity.
C.J. Peterson
The Meaning of Life & Science as Fiction
C. J. Peterson is a writer of science and science fiction with an academic background in physical anthropology and medical research.

The essay Science as Fiction began as the story notes to The Meaning of Life.
Crystal Crawford
One Shot at Aeden
Crystal Crawford is a homeschooling mom of four, part-time non-profit Director and writing teacher, and indie author. Her imagination is her happy place! (But a deserted beach is nice, too.) Crystal writes fantasy and YA, with a smattering of other genres, and loves to create deep, enveloping story worlds.

Crystal has one published YA fantasy series, The Lex Chronicles (Legends of Arameth), and is now writing a new YA paranormal folklore-inspired fantasy series, The Leyward Stones, which is currently publishing in weekly episodes on Amazon's Kindle Vella serial platform. Her previous story published with Dreamforge Anvil, "Our Kind," was a side story set in the Leyward Stones world, as is "One Shot at Aeden."
Elena Pavlova
Translated from the Bulgarian by Elena Pavlova and Kalin M. Nenov
Love in the Time of Con Crud
Elena Pavlova lives in Montana, Bulgaria. Her short stories have appeared in various Bulgarian anthologies and magazines, winning awards from national competitions. In 2019, her middle-grade SF novel „Камен и пиратите от 5г“ [_Kamen and the Pirates from 5-B_] won the Bulgarian national award Konstantin Konstantinov. In 2021, her novel „Коледари срещу хали“ [_Christmas Carolers vs Hallus Beasts_] won the ESFS Best Work for Children award. She has had five other novels, two collections of shorter fiction and more than two dozens of gamebooks published, and has translated into Bulgarian authors as diverse as Robert Howard, Robert R. McCammon, and Peter Watts. Her short stories "Love in the Time of Con Crud" and "Two Moons" appeared in _Future Science Fiction Digest_ #3 in 2019 and _Compelling Science Fiction_ #15 in 2020, respectively.

Kalin M. Nenov

Kalin M. Nenov is a translator, editor, publisher, agent, and writer. Currently, he lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, and acts as Trailblazer at the Human Library Foundation. His translations have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, most notably _Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors_ and most recently in _Compelling Science Fiction_ #15 in 2020. Find more on his Goodreads. .Author Profile:

Marisca Pichette 
Between Oak and Acorn, a Sunset Waits
Marisca Pichette is a queer creator of monsters and magic. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Daily Science Fiction, Uncharted Magazine, PseudoPod, and PodCastle, among others. She lives in Western Massachusetts, surrounded by bones and whispering trees.

Story Notes for Between Oak and Acorn, a Sunset Waits
Over the past couple of years, I've noticed how my work has skewed towards horror again and again, circling isolation and anguish. I wrote "Between Oak and Acorn, a Sunset Waits" to try to escape the darkness and find something brighter on the other side of the shadows. Like Hedgehog, I wasn't sure what I was looking for as I searched for the end of the path. I invite you to walk with her as I did. Leave the known behind, and go someplace you've never been before. Or maybe you have been, once--in another life.
Wulf Moon
Wulf Moon’s SUPER SECRETS: Mentors: The Fastest Way to Become a Jedi
Wulf Moon learned oral storytelling as a child when he lived with his Chippewa grandmother. He begged stories from her every night and usually got his wish—fireside tales that fired his imagination. If Moon had a time machine, those are the days he would go back to. Since he doesn’t have a time machine, he writes.

Moon wrote his first science fiction story at fifteen. It won the national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and became his first professional sale in Science World . He has won over forty writing awards, and thirty in public speaking. His stories have appeared in Writers of the Future Vol. 35, Best of Deep Magic Anthology 2, Future Science Fiction Digest, Best of Third Flatiron, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2 by Pocket Books. Moon is a professional voice-over actor and is podcast director at Future Science Fiction Digest .

Wulf Moon's award-winning SUPER SECRETS Writing Resource and Workshops have been attributed by many aspiring writers as the secret to their success in obtaining first professional sales. Two of Moon's books on writing will be published by Mark Leslie of Stark Publishing Solutions in 2022. Want in on the Secrets? JOIN THE WULF PACK at http://thesupersecrets.com.
DreamForge Staff
Jane Noel
Illustration, Design, Layout
Jane is the Founder of Chroma Marketing Essentials, a digital marketing agency located in Jeannette PA.  She holds a degree in Visual Communications from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and more years of experience than she cares to count. 
Before founding CME, Jane worked as an Artist, Art Lead, Art Director, and Project Manager for the computer game developer DreamForge Intertainment, where she worked on a number of early computer games, including Roger Zelazny’s Chronomaster.
Scot Noel
Editor, Editorial Selections, Essays, and more.
Scot Noel is a content writer for websites, blogs, social media, e-newsletters, and the like. Speculative fiction has always been his obsession, resulting in a Writers of the Future 2nd place win in 1990, a 7-year career in computer game development, and a handful of published stories, ranging from far future and zombie fiction to the tale of a fairy sheriff fighting an evil dragon. He serves as the editor and publisher of DreamForge Anvil.
Jamie D Munro
Editorial Assistant, Lead FLR
Jamie D. Munro is our number one fan, first Patreon Supporter, Kickstarter supporter, and our Editorial Assistant, too! It seems Jamie found us the minute we came online and sometimes I think he understands our mission better than we do. That’s why he became our initial First Line Reader and now our official Editorial Assistant too. Jamie is an aspiring speculative fiction author from Western Australia. 
Henry Gasko
Editorial Assistant
Henry Gasko was born in a displaced persons camp in Yugoslavia after World War Two. He was raised on a vegetable farm in Canada, and emigrated to Australia more than forty years ago. He has recently retired from a career in data analysis and medical research.

Henry has had stories published in the anthologies "Dreamworks", “Alternate Apocalypse”, “On Time”, in Australia's  Aurealis  magazine, and in the  SciPhi Journal .  He is a two-time semi-finalist in The Writers of the Future and he won first prize in Positive Writer's "Why I Write" essay contest. He also won the 2018 Sapiens Plurum short story competition, and came third in the 2020 competition.

When he is not writing, he enjoys cycling, kayaking, swimming and playing bridge.
Lloyd Penney
Copy Editor
Lloyd has been a science fiction fan for close to 45 years, busy with conrunning, clubs, and being a vendor, but has finally been able to match up his literature of choice with his career of being an editor/copy editor/proofreader. His has been a copy editor/proofreader with Amazing Stories Magazine, and book editor for Amazing and various other authors, and is looking further afield for new editorial challenges.

Photo credit to Yvonne Penney.