Ron Collins is a bestselling Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy author who writes across the spectrum of speculative fiction.

Ron's short fiction has received a Writers of the Future prize and a CompuServe HOMer Award. His short story "The White Game" was nominated for the Short Mystery Fiction Society's 2016 Derringer Award. With his daughter, Brigid, he edited the anthology Face the Strange.

His nonfiction book On Writing (And Reading!) Short is about his lifetime spent writing short fiction.

Holiday Hope by Ron Collins

From the bestselling author of Stealing the Sun, and Saga of the God-Touched Mage comes a volume of ten stories about love, family, betrayal, and the dreams we try to hold onto in the often-difficult times around the winter holidays.

In Holiday Hope, Ron Collins mixes up an eclectic recipe of insightful and uplifting stories with both contemporary and speculative settings, seasoned with characters yearning for better lives. From the light touch of fantasy in "The Light Man" to the uncompromising worlds of "Bobo" and "Mama Bird" and the unforgiving science of time dilation in "Home For Christmas," each story touches on what it takes to have and hold hope while navigating the complex world we live in.

Sometimes gritty, sometimes harsh, romantic, or beautifully heartwarming, Holiday Hope will stay with readers long after the season has passed.

Bestselling lists (Amazon and Barnes & Noble)

Writers of the Future (Prize winner)

Writers of the Future (Published Finalist)

CompuServe HOMer award (novelette)

Nominated – Derringer Award for short crime fiction

CURATOR'S NOTE

Ron Collins compiled this collection specifically for this StoryBundle. Ron's holiday fiction always has a bit of a glow, some light if you will, as well as meditations on family and the future. Fitting for a man who got his start as one of the major science fiction short story writers of his generation. Yes, there's sf in here, but magic as well as the inexplicable. In other words, a bit of something for everyone. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "An exploration of time dilation. Really enjoyed it. Well written."

    – Goodreads review

  • "Ron Collins is a master of short fiction."

    – Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Hugo Award winning editor and author)
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Foreword

When I sat down to put this collection together, I was surprised to see the array of stories that I had created around the concept of the holiday season.

As a time period, it's a mixed bag, now, isn't it?

Kind of like a holiday fruitcake.

On one hand, if things are aligned in your life, you get to spend your time with people you love and who foster your inner being. But if things are not so well-aligned, well, they can spin out of control in ways that are too numerous to count. Add to it the stress and strain of simply getting by in the world around us, and you've got a strange and unpredictable mess of a recipe.

Put it in the oven, and you just never know what you're going to get.

Perhaps more unsettling is that you can never know exactly what everyone else is feeling, either.

The world is complex and diverse. Emotions can run high.

You know what I mean.

I am a science fiction writer, though. And a fantasy writer. And a writer of other contemporary kinds of fiction. That means the holiday fruitcake I've put together here is a collection of stories that come from a lot of different angles. Heartwarming. Gritty. Harsh. Enjoyable. Real world. Romantic. Hard boiled. Science fictional. And even something from the realm of fairy.

As I look at the whole collection, I find myself liking them even more now that they are together.

I wrote them all at different times of my life and for different reasons.

Some are from somewhere close to me.

Others I'm trying out different viewpoints.

But I was more than a little surprised to see that all of them share a trait.

You'll find characters longing for something they've lost, and characters comfortable in their lives. You'll find adventurers and lovers and lost souls from (I hope!) different places than you're expecting. Perhaps you'll even run into a robot or two.

They are all dealing with life, though, in some way or another.

But all of them would love to have that happy holiday we all hope for if just their lives could line up just a little bit differently.

It's going to happen to some of them.

But, to find out which ones, well, I guess you're going to have to try the fruitcake.