Pick Your Potion
Weird and sapphic: 26 genre-blending fantasy, science-fiction, and horror stories.
by Ephiny Gale
Magic, mystery, and the macabre collide in Pick Your Potion, a mesmerising collection of genre-blending fantasy, science-fiction, and horror stories from award-winning Australian author Ephiny Gale.
The 26 weird tales in Pick Your Potion are female-centric, mostly queer, and always intriguing.
Within these pages, you’ll find:
A deadly and addictive magical board game.
A time-loop demon apocalypse.
A dimension-jumping cruise ship.
A competition to win a magical orchard.
A collection of murder victims’ last texts.
Heartwarming, heart-stopping, and heartbreaking in turn, Pick Your Potion offers a full apothecary of speculative stories to serve the curious reader.
REVIEW
5 out of 5
Wow, this was such a big mix of genres, styles, and stories, and I enjoyed reading it cover to cover. The stories vary in length, from the very short, to longer, but all fall under the short story category. Some of the stories I liked more than others, and while I can’t talk about them all, I will talk later about my favorite one after I give my review of the entire collection. Although the style/format isn’t the same across each story, you can see a bit of Gale as a connecting thread through it all. There’s vivid imagery, and you can see it unfold before you as you read. I do have to admit I’d love to see La Vie En Mer turned into an actual TV show (even though it isn’t my favorite in the collection). The shortest story you could have read in line at the market, and is probably, without a doubt, my favorite one in the collection – Restoration. Even after I’d moved on to reading the other stories, that one kept bubbling up again in my mind. There was just something so haunting about it, and it was so insanely short, and I can’t explain why, that even now, I can feel it lurking there. It’s like a gut punch in the best way possible. You’ll have to read it to understand. Overall, there’s a little something for anyone who loves fantasy and sci-fi in these pages, along with a little horror.
LEARN MORE
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ephiny Gale was born in Victoria, Australia, and is still there, alongside her lovely wife and a small legion of bookcases. She is the author of more than fifty published short stories and novelettes, which have appeared in publications including PseudoPod, Constellary Tales, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her stories have won the Best of the Net award for fiction and have been finalists for multiple Aurealis Awards.
She has also written several produced stage plays and musicals, including the sold-out How to Direct from Inside at La Mama and Shining Armour at The 1812 Theatre. Her script Time Scraps was a finalist in St Martin’s National Playwriting Competition, and Hearts up Sleeves won the Five Minute Play award at Dante’s.
Ephiny has a Masters in Arts Management, a red belt in taekwondo, and a passion for psychology, gaming, and storytelling in all its forms. She also especially enjoys Italian greyhounds, playing board games with friends, and eating raspberries in the sunshine.
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