A Year with Duck Prints Press: Our 2024 Publications
We’ve had a busy year at Duck Prints Press – we published two anthologies, a novella, a novel, and moved many other projects along. All except our most recent, A Truth Universally Acknowledged, are available from our webstore and from many other retail and library sources. 46 short stories also debuted to our Patreon as new releases exclusively available to our backers, bringing the total number of titles available to our Patrons up to 94 stories. Many of our past titles are now available in print (instead of digital-only), including about half the short stories on our webpage (zines only sold when we vend in person, currently!) and our four novelettes (which can all be purchased online). And we didn’t only create books – our Mythical Creature Pride pins and stickers were a flagship art project for the year, and we’ve released 5 monthly art pieces exclusive to our Patrons. Basically: we’ve had an awesome year, made a ton of amazing stuff, and we’re so so glad that y’all have been along with us for the ride.
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Aether Beyond the Binary
How would Earth look if the very atoms around us were suffused with magical aether? How would our lives be different if this aether was discovered last year, or last century, or last millennia? How might the people who lived with this magic explore their gender identities? These are the questions we posed to the 17 authors who contributed to Aether Beyond the Binary. Their inventive answers comprise this must-not-miss collection about magical realms, adventures and mysteries, new chances and well-earned endings, and characters as gender-diverse as the worlds they inhabit.
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Hockey Bois by A. L. Heard
Nick Porter has always loved hockey. Ever since he can remember, it’s been his favorite thing in the world. It’s too bad he never learned to play, he’d tell himself, but it was too late to do it now. Adults don’t just magically learn to skate and join a hockey team. That’d be ridiculous.
Except maybe they do? On a whim, he decides to sign up for an adult beginner’s class. He learns to skate, joins a team, and meets a really hot teammate… and it’s pretty much a disaster from there on out.
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Many Hands: An Anthology of Polyamorous Erotica
For those who love their short stories spicy, we’re delighted to bring you Duck Prints Press’s debut explicit anthology Many Hands: An Anthology of Polyamorous Erotica. In this collection of brand-new stories, we celebrate many flavors of polyamory. Orgy? Yes please! Ménage à trois? C’est magnifique! Foursomes and moresomes? Delighted to attend! We asked our contributors to blow our minds with their fun combinations, unusual settings, favorite trope usage, and (of course) super sexy smut—and they didn’t disappoint. From a vampire free-for-all to a heartfelt reunion, from surprise soulmates to enemies-to-lovers, this collection has polyamory in lots of scrumptious varieties that lovers of erotica won’t want to miss!
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Scrap Metal Angel by Nicola Kapron
Reality, tiny and fragile, is cut off from the sea of chaos and nightmares that surrounds it by seven Gates. One of them is open—and has been since the Stone Age. Through that opening, strange creatures and energies slip through. Some are malevolent. None are harmless. And all of them must be kept a secret.
Every hidden magical world needs a shadowy clean-up crew. Adrian Somer is a Gatekeeper, sworn to protect the cosmic Gates, to defend reality from the unknown entities that exist beyond them, and to help those whose lives are affected by magic.
When a grieving sorceress starts punching holes in reality to try and resurrect her murdered fiancé, Adrian must turn to a ghost from his past in order to save the city, and perhaps the world—even if that means digging up someone he thought was safely buried: the twin brother he killed eight years ago.
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A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” With this third installment in our “Queer Fanworks Inspired By…” anthology series, we set out to explore the truth by which we at Duck Prints Press live: that a classic work without a single canonically queer character must be in want of a very LGBTQIA+ makeover! “A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice,'” with 21 short stories and 20 full-page color artworks, is just that. 38 creators have contributed to this project, drawing inspiration from Pride and Prejudice’s characters and story to create delightful, thoughtful, intriguing, and (of course) very queer fanworks and Pride and Prejudice-inspired original works. For this collection, we encouraged our creators to focus on Sapphic/wlw relationships and/or transgender and genderqueer interpretations for their inspiration, though those are definitely not the only types of queer we’ve fit into this diverse collection.
Happy New Year, everyone! We wish you the best for 2025!