Paths to the Stars, the first book from the new Regina-based publisher Shadowpaw Press, collects twenty-two stories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror from award-winning Saskatchewan author Edward Willett, drawn from his long career of penning fantastic tales. Through his personal introductions to each story, Paths to the Stars also offers a bit of a retrospective of Willett’s career.
In Paths to the Stars, a young musician dreams of playing his songs among the stars…A Broadway performer on the lam is forced to direct aliens in The Sound of Music…Strange vegetables with dangerous properties crop up in small-town Saskatchewan…A man with a dark secret gets his comeuppance on a windy night on the prairie…An elderly caretaker on the Moon preserves the memory of the millions who died on Earth’s darkest day…A woman and a bat-like alien must overcome their own prejudices to prevent an
interstellar war…From the far future and the farthest reaches of space to the Canadian prairie, from our world to worlds that have never existed to world’s that might someday, rich realms of imagination and the fascinating characters and creatures that populate them await within these stories, many of them previously published, others seeing print for the first time.
Willett, who won Canada’s Aurora Award for best Canadian science-fiction novel for Marseguro (DAW Books) in 2009, is the author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, poetry, and non-fiction for readers of all ages. His ninth novel for New York’s DAW books, Worldshaper, coming out September 15, will launch a new series. Other recent work for DAW includes The Cityborn, a stand-alone science fiction novel coming whose mass-market paperback edition comes out in August, and the Masks of Aygrima fantasy trilogy, written as E.C. Blake. Willett is also author of the five-book young-adult fantasy series The Shards of Excalibur, published by noted Canadian literary publisher Coteau Books.
Paths to the Stars is available to order from bookstores everywhere, including Chapters/Indigo, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, in paperback and all ebook formats, as well as from the publisher, Shadowpaw Press, at www.shadowpawpress.com.
Edward Willett is the author of more than 50 books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for adults, young adults, and children. Marseguro (DAW Books) won the Aurora Award for Best Long-Form Work in English in 2009, and the second book in The Double Helix duology, Terra Insegura, was short-listed the following year. His young adult fantasy Spirit Singer (Tyche Books) won the Regina Book Award at the 2002 Saskatchewan Book Awards, and several other of his novels have been shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards.
Ed’s eighth novel for DAW, The Cityborn, came out in July, and he’s currently working on a new fantasy series for DAW, entitled Worldshapers. Other recent titles include the Masks of Aygrima trilogy for DAW (written as E.C. Blake), Flames of Nevyana, a YA fantasy from Rebelight Books, and the five-book Shards of Excalibur YA fantasy series for Coteau Books, of which Door into Faerie, the concluding volume, like the second book in the series, Twist of the Blade, has been short-listed for an Aurora Award. His non-fiction runs the gamut from science books to biographies to history: his most recent is Government House, Regina, Saskatchewan: An Illustrated History.
Born in Silver City, New Mexico, Ed moved to Saskatchewan with his parents from Texas when he was eight years old, and grew up in Weyburn, where his father taught at Western Christian College. He earned a B.A. in journalism from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, and returned to Weyburn to being his career at the weekly Weyburn Review, first as a reporter/photographer (and columnist and cartoonist), and eventually as news editor. He moved to Regina in 1988 to become communications officer for the then-fledgling Saskatchewan Science Centre, and became a fulltime freelance writer in 1993.
For two decades Ed wrote a weekly science column that appeared in the Regina Leader Post and assorted other newspapers; an audio version also ran weekly on CBC Radio’s Afternoon Edition in Regina for 17 of those years. He hosted his own arts-oriented radio program on community radio in Regina for several years, and for ten years hosted a local weekly phone-in television show focused on computers. He has also appeared on CBC TV nationally to talk about science topics. In addition to writing, Ed is a professional actor and singer (he’s a member of Canadian Actors’ Equity), who has performed in numerous plays, musicals, and operas in Saskatchewan, as well as singing with various choirs, including the nationally auditioned Canadian Chamber Choir. He continues to live in Regina with his wife, Margaret Anne Hodges, P. Eng., a past president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan, and their teenaged daughter, Alice.
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