Cryptozoowhat?

If you're a faithful follower of this blog, you already know plenty about the Kindle All-Stars and our (insane) project from 2011 that brought together 32 authors from 7 countries in one anthology. Our goal was simple: raise some money for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by releasing the compilation entitled Resistance Front.

Shortly after RF's release, my partner in literary mischief, Bernard Schaffer, and I announced our intent to do it again, this time with a cryptozoology-themed collection. This time, on a much smaller scale. We ended up with seven short stories, one of them a pseudo-teleplay, and a narrative interlude, written by Bernard, that ties them all together.

Now, I told everyone a year ago I had no intent of writing anything for the book. Cryptids aren't my thing. Maybe if we had chosen a vampire theme, or pirates, or even just another genre-bender, I might have dug a short story out of my hat. But terrestrial monsters lurking in our jungles, and forests, and oceans? Not exactly my forte. I enjoyed playing stage manager for this one.

Still, Bernard convinced me to throw a few words together and see what came of it. So I did. More because, as I said to him later, "I didn't want to be the only kid without a crayon." However, after reading the finished manuscript and then the essay I had written, B and I both decided my piece just didn't mesh with the rest, so I decided to bow out after all.

What does that have to do with anything? You ask. Well, I thought you'd all like to see what didn't make the cut:

Now available on Amazon.com.
All proceeds will benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Cover design by Tony Healey and Keri Knutson.

Medusa …

Lamia …

Was she the snake in the Garden of Eden? Or was she simply a myth created and morphed by the popular religion of the day? Reason would support the latter. Atheists will tell you reason would insist the Garden of Eden is its own myth. But my intent is not to debate religion versus reason. My intent is to get you to consider the impossible as possible.

For centuries, sailors and landlubbers alike spoke of mermaids and sirens whose hypnotic tunes lured sea captains to meet their doom. Beautiful voices raised in song convinced grown men to set course toward them. What other explanation could there be for otherwise intelligent men to sail so close to shore that they crashed their ships’ wooden hulls on shallow reefs? Surely they weren’t afraid of falling off the ends of the earth by traveling too far out to sea.

Countless sailors returned home with stories of sea monsters like the Kraken and giant squids that prevented safe passage across the oceans. Ah yes, monsters! A reasonable explanation for crews setting sail, never to be heard from again. Hurricanes be damned. But wait … haven’t scientists found carcasses and taken photographs of giant squids? Cross that one off our list. That one is no longer a myth.

And what of Nessie, and Ogopogo, and Ishi? Are they real? Are they, as so many scientists have theorized, plesiosaurs that became trapped in deep lakes as waters receded from the last ice age? Survivors from a long forgotten era? A pre-human era? We know that Loch Ness, Lake Okanagan, even Lake Michigan cover depths and areas vast enough to support a few dinosaurs, so why not?

Consider the coelacanth, thought to be extinct, headed for cryptid status due to “sightings,” removed from that list several decades ago. Why? Because live specimens were not only sighted, but documented in the 1930s. Two species. Turned out some survived after all. How many other species of fish remain undiscovered because we have yet to engineer a manned vessel that can safely travel to the depths at which they thrive?

For decades, explorers in Central and South America searched for Chupacabra. This goat-killing, blood-sucking, dog-like creature that terrorized farmers and their livestock in search of its next meal. Weren’t Chupacabra carcasses discovered back in 2010? Well, not really but a reasonable explanation for the mythos was found.

Bigfoot, Yeti, Skunk Ape – call it what you will – is it only a matter of time before specimens are in our zoos rather than our imaginations? Will we yet find a man-ape traipsing through some remote jungle, or along a forest path, or on the far side of a mountain? Surely not every photo, not every sighting, is the result of a hoax.

As we travel to Mars in search of signs of life long extinct … as we look to the heavens and theorize how life began on earth … let us continue to explore this third rock we call home …

Happy Hunting!

What if Cryptids Were Real?

Yet again, I've put out an invitation for my Kindle All-Stars friends to pop in and write a few words. In answer to my call to arms, our newest member/author, Jeff Provine, sent me a terrific guest blog which explains his approach in writing his short story contribution to Carnival of Cryptids, the latest Kindle All-Stars anthology. I'll let Jeff do the rest of the talking:

I love "what ifs". They make me all tingly as I set my mind to wondering (and wandering) "what if this" or "what if that." What if we had flying cars? We'd have to adapt traffic laws for three dimensions. Instead of left and right lanes, we could have different heights moving in different directions, which would make transit a lot more direct. Imagine having a down arrow for a blinker. The bottom zone would be crazy with landing and taking off. But what if the car stalled or, worse yet, there was an impact that caused both vehicles to plummet hundreds of feet onto an orphanage below?! Well, maybe we just won't have clearance above orphanages.

For a couple of years now, I've been blogging This Day in Alternate History, looking at events in history and asking what could have changed them. It all started with "What if Will Rogers had survived his plane crash?" Doing some research, it turns out his wife died a few years later. I can only imagine how deeply it would have affected the cowboy philosopher, Oklahoma's Native Son. But, it would have sent him looking for new purpose, just about the time FDR was looking to replace his vice-president …

My sci-fi-urban-fantasy YA Dawn on the Infinity is my biggest what if yet: What if you could explore all the what ifs? Fourteen-year-old Dawn fights off a vampire in the girls' room and a troll in her parent's house only to be kidnapped by inter-reality pirates needing her in their plot to better traverse the Multiverse. Every single world is a different what-if: what if a mutant zombie plague had broken out, what if Nixon hadn't been found out at Watergate, and what if you met yourself, but not you-you: instead, a you that was a cheerleader and used a lot of hair product? More importantly, if people were able to travel between alternate realities, who would govern them, and how terribly powerful could they become?

Lately, the what ifs have been about cryptids, those creatures believed to exist but not yet proven by science. For the new charity anthology by the Kindle All-Stars, Carnival of Cryptids, I wrote about what if someone went after a giant ground sloth in 1930s Brazil.  Called a "mylodon" by modern science and believed to be the "mapinguari" of native legend, this enormous beast could move through the jungle silently. It gave off a stench so foul it froze its victims, its skin was impervious to bullets and arrows thanks to bone chips that grew like internal scales, and supposedly it had powers to control the weather. Sounds crazy, but according to Brazilian newspapers and multiple eye-witnesses, whole herds of cattle were wiped out by this monster's attacks in 1937.

Going back to the original question, "what if cryptids were real," there are a lot of cases where they were in fact proven to be real. The most famous example is the platypus, which was rejected by scientific minds as a clear hoax with a duckbill stitched onto a beaver pelt until live specimens began arriving from Australia. Komodo dragons were believed to be just stories from over-excited pearl divers. Mountain gorillas were a folk legend of "ape-men" until 1902. And, of course, the armored fish known as the coelacanth was known to be extinct for millions of years until a fisherman caught one off the coast of Madagascar, much to the shock of just about everybody.

Makes one want to think again about Nessie or Bigfoot, doesn't it? There seem to be too many similar stories of lake monsters and bipedal apes in North America and Central Asia just to be a myth. For a fresh look at some of the world's more mysterious creatures, check out Carnival of Cryptids, which features a whole menagerie released at the end of January.

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"Where is Captain Rook?" is one of seven stories in Carnival of Cryptids, a Kindle All-star anthology with all proceeds going to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  Jeff Provine is author of YA ebook Dawn on the Infinity and the This Day in Alternate History blog, asking what if things in history had gone a little differently.