The Center of the Media Galaxy
On behalf of the team at StarkLight Press, we would like to wish all our readers, authors, fans, followers and customers a very happy holiday season. May your hearts be filled with light and peace, and may you have plenty of time to read good books in the coming year!
We thank you all for your incredible support.
Celebrating the holidays has become even more musical, thanks to the First Baptist Church in Dawson Creek, B.C. For over fifteen years, the Peace Songwriters Group has been hosting “A Place at the Table”, a benefit concert whose proceeds go to the Salvation Army.
Join the Peace River Songwriters for an evening of music, merriment, apple cider and AMAZING door prizes, including this Reader’s Delight package from StarkLight Press. Featuring four of our books, reading munchies and book lights, this door prize is only one of many you could win in between holiday carols and fun!
StarkLight Press is pleased to announce The Alaska Highway: The Definitive Guide will be at multiple events across the Peace-Liard region, northern Alberta, the Yukon and Alaska in 2017!
Kiosks featuring our beautiful coffee table book will be featured at this year’s Canada Day festivals in communities along the Alaska Highway as well as in Grande Prairie, Edmonton and Lloydminster… and throughout southern British Columbia. At national Aboriginal Day and Multicultural Day, StarkLight Press will be hosting informative presentations at events in these communities, where elements from The Definitive Guide that feature the contributions of these important members of Canadian society will be presented.
In addition, our shiny, evocative coffee table book has been integrated into school districts in the Peace Region, as well as in Grande Prairie! Copies will be used in learning modules for the 2017 anniversary year, and will be kept as part of the curriculum in coming years as well.
Copies of The Definitive Guide go on sale April 2017, and will be available at Tourism Dawson Creek locally, and in bookstores across Canada and five international locations as well.
If you would like to reserve your first printing copy of The Alaska Highway: The Definitive Guide– which is a limited run!- email us at starklightdesk@gmail.com today. We are roughly one-quarter reserved for first run copies, so contact us today for more information on how to get your first, numbered, signed copy of this remarkable book!
StarkLight Press is proud to internationally promote the stunning achievement of the Alaska Highway, and the singular beauty of the Peace region.
As everyone settles in for the winter season, we at StarkLight Press thought we would remind our prospective authors of our many short story contests now running!
Submissions are coming in, but, as always, StarkLight Press welcomes new authors, first time authors and authors with imaginative worlds to submit to our short story anthologies.
StarkLight Anthology Volume 5 Anthology
This anthology features speculative, science fiction, historical fiction, horror and fantasy stories. Submission guidelines and deadlines can be found at the following link:
Steam in the Gears: StarkLight Steampunk Anthology Volume 2
This sequel to our incredibly popular Holly & Ivy: A StarkLight Steampunk Anthology Christmas anthology opens up submissions to a more general, less seasonal steampunk genre. If you’ve been dying to share your tale of Victorian adventurers, mechanical marvels and marvelous vistas, now’s your chance! (Short story guidelines and deadlines are the same for this contest as for the one above).
A Vampire Christmas Anthology (seriously!)
This special, seasonal StarkLight offering features stories juxtaposing original vampire tales with the holiday season worldwide. Let your imagination combine the two… and send in your submission today! We are looking for original works in a horror, humor, sci-fi or speculative genre, but an original piece in any style will be welcomed!
The deadline for this anthology is Nov. 27, so get your submissions in soon to starklightdesk@gmail.com
Voices Heard: Surviving the Unsurviveable
This special anthology gives submittors three pages of photos, poetry and writing to discuss violent crimes committed against them, and how each submittor has survived and continued. We are looking for a brief bio and description of the scope of what submittors would present. Submissions can be made anonymously, although StarkLight Press requires an email contact address.
Proceeds from this anthology go to Endingviolence.org, an important organization that provides resources and aid to victims of violent crime.
Please send your query and bio to starklightdesk@gmail.com
There was a victim in my family that is rarely mentioned because what he experienced was insidious, tragic and ultimately a noble act of self-sacrifice. My little brother was born right before everything fell apart. There were problems before, big problems, but to all intents and purposes we looked like a pretty normal family for…
Every year around this time when my mother left this earth I have dreams about her. For all the ways she failed me it’s easy for people to think that she was a bad mother but the truth is that she was a delicate soul and when my father left her it tore her down…
This week’s interview with one of the authors of The Irregulars is with American author, Alex Benitez. He took some time out of writing his epic vampire saga to talk about his Irregulars character, Kevin Parker- the teenager who can move faster than the eye can see.
You can watch Alex’s interview with StarkLight Press’ Tony Stark here:
Thanks again to Alex Benitez for taking the time to talk to us- and for his awesome T-shirt!
Keeping those who walk on urban streets safe is an important issue for those of us at StarkLight Press.
Following our editor-in-chief’s pedestrian vs. taxicab throwdown last July, we have taken a local step in Dawson Creek, B.C. to try to make sure that sort of traffic accident doesn’t happen to anyone else.
We have donated sticky reflective tape strips (and safety pins, if one doesn’t favor attaching it with adhesive to their clothing) to local businesses that are open late and all night. As much as we’d like to StarkLight Press cannot hold the drivers who cause mayhem on city streets accountable… but we can try to keep pedestrians safer through visibility.
While we thoroughly recommend that everyone carry a high-visibility safety vest to use when they walk, or at least wrist and ankle cuffs, we realize that is not practical in every situation. Life happens, and sometimes one finds oneself on foot. We can therefore try to raise awareness of the need for pedestrians to be visible, and to try to minimize further accidents.
This awareness cuts both ways, however. Virginia Carraway Stark, in addition to being in a lit crosswalk, was wearing high visibility elements on her clothing, and still was struck. No high-vis sticker or vest will protect anyone, if drivers fail to use their vehicles with respect and consideration for those around them. StarkLight Press can only hope that, in addition to making pedestrian visibility a bit brighter, the displays will also make drivers think and act with more responsibility.
If you see a dangerous driver, or have a close call yourself, please report their license number and vehicle to the RCMP. We can only hope that enforcement of such infractions can increase, and that pedestrians- and drivers- will be safe this winter season.
StarkLight Press encourages everyone to copy and paste this reflective tape initiative in their own communities. Tape is available at Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart, as well as on Amazon.ca at links like these:
Pedestrian safety is an issue across the globe, not just in our little neck of the woods in Northern B.C. If you live in an area of high, dangerous traffic and pedestrian danger, please feel free to make a display of your own in this style! If it can save one life, make one driver more cautious, it’s worth it.
– Tony Stark,
Publisher and CEO,
StarkLight Press.
Tonight at 7 pm at Faking Sanity Bookstore in Dawson Creek you can hear poems from StarkLight Anthologies sung by their authors! Excellent musicians and poets are gathering for the Poetry and Music Cafe, where locals come to enjoy coffee, fresh baking and haunting songs and poems.
