We’ve also got the regular Fall issue cover by Wistmoor Studios. The cover story is Heart of the Goddess, by Harold R. Thompson, the latest Anchor Brown adventure!
It’s been no secret that even in the face of some major triumphs like the EBSCO deal Cirsova Publishing has (or rather I personally have) been struggling to make ends meet to where we’d have resources for 2026.
A lot of people have been coming out of the woodworks to support us lately, though, by picking up things from our eBay page or taking out ads in the magazine.
You’ve probably already seen the Living Urf Gaming Club ads in Cirsova Magazine this year, and these have done a lot to give us the funds to keep going.
Beyond this, however, the Living Urf Gaming Club has elected to extend their patronage to an even greater degree, virtually guaranteeing that we’ll be able to start making SOME offers on content beginning next month.
If you enjoy any of the Cirsova magazine stuff that comes out in 2026, be sure to thank these bros. It’s being made possible by them.
In this last week, they’ve ponied up enough through both advertising and pure patronage to acquire over 60K words of fiction. I seriously cannot thank these guys enough.
One way you can repay the favor is by checking out their substacks:
We would also like to thank all of our other past advertisers, especially John E Boyle who has been with us since practically the beginning; we would not be here without the support of everyone over the years!
We’ve also got some merch news coming up soon, but this needed to be a post on its own, celebrating the Living Urf Gaming Club and their tremendous support.
Misha Burnett gives a rundown of the several books that he has published over the years. Quite a few of the collections are ones published through Cirsova. If you’ve already gotten all of those, be sure to check out his other titles!
Also, to celebrate the expiration of its KDP Select Enrollment, An Atlas of Bad Roads is on sale for 99 cents this week!
One thing that I think Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars doesn’t get enough credit for is the political conflict it explores. The framework is pretty alien for most contemporary SFF works. Rather than presenting a typical right vs. left conflict, the world of the Wild Stars is Fascism vs. Patriarchy.
The Artomiques are an interesting case, because after their universe, in which they had state control of industry, collapses, they approach fascism backwards, industrial control of the state in order to rebuild their powerbase.
But their opposition is not enlightenment liberal space democracy*, but a monarchy ruled by a benevolent shepherd from beyond the stars, who has both groomed and culled his successor descendants to ensure just and proper governance of the Wild Stars.
Strazis leads mankind into the Wild Stars, acting as their protector and guide, a true father of the people. His sons, the princes of the Wild Stars, carry on and carry out his vision; those who do not, he regretfully casts out because it is his role to ensure harmony and justice, even within his family. But he is loving and forgiving, and, as we’ll see in the final volumes, and he seeks to bring in the disparate parts of his family back to the fold, those who are not beyond redemption.
The contrapoint to Strazis’s patriarchal rule of the Wild Stars is the God Father and his Purple Order [which we’re seeing more of in Wild Stars 9, being serialized now]. Strazis is the Just Patriarch, father to his people, while the God Father acts only to secure his own powers.
The other contrapoint to the masculine authoritarian sides in Wild Stars are the clandestine and conniving matriarchies (even the good ones):
The Phaedran Empire – Phaedra seems like a good ruler, but it’s clear that she’s authoritarian; her followers serve her out of love and respect, but there’s a certain fear, as well, since she’s a very powerful immortal.
The 5000-Fingered Hand – The Madam controls a vast spy network of telepaths who do her bidding and carry out her machinations throughout the stars.
Nefarimor’s takeover of the Artomiques – Because of the Artomique’s top-down power structure, it wasn’t hard for Nefarimor to step in and take charge with Achilles Hister the Elder out of the way and Whip under her thumb. Earth under Nefarimor’s rule is directed by her greed, passions, and ambitions as a daughter of the God Father.
whatever eugenic shenanigans Tempest are up to [these will come into focus more during the home stretch]
Anyway, Wild Stars 8 sees some of these major conflicts coming to a head on Earth, as 3 hostile alien races force Earth’s fascist Artomique government to play host to a summit of their leaders, one of whom is seeking the key to the multiverse! The Kickstarter will be launching next month!
*Even thought Bully Bravo was US/Earth President, the government and military complex [personified by Cinceno] were corrupt enough that it wasn’t hard for the Artomiques to take it over after he stepped down.
At the end of each year, the reviewers at Tangent Online compile a list of their favorites from the field of SFF short fiction, those that are worthy of critical acclaim and potential awards attention. Tangent has been reviewing Cirsova since our second issue in 2016, and we’ve had a number of stories featured in their lists over the years.
Paul Lucas, a regular contributor to Cirsova Magazine, compiled a list of all of the Cirsova stories that was were part of Tangent Online’s Recommending Reading Lists. And wow, there were a lot!
Everette Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter, has weighed in on the Sales/Use Tax collection discussion on twitter, trying to address concerns that some backers have. He more or less explains what I already have, that Kickstarter is now recognized as a Marketplace Facilitator and must therefore collect taxes on behalf of the creator. But he goes into a little more detail, so here it is from the horse’s mouth:
Sorry about your experience but just so you know, we now have to collect and remit taxes for legal reasons.
We as a company are now held responsible as the platform where these transactions happen, to collect and remit taxes to different governments.
Many creators have not done this properly for years and the governments want those funds. We are attempting to correct that, we are still working through the kinks.
Also legally, we are not supposed to charge taxes for something that doesn’t exist yet until it’s actually a thing. Frustrating I know, but crowdfunding exists in a weird gray area that these laws did not account for.
I’m fully committed to making sure these experiences get better. You have my word.
The issue is that crowdfunding platforms are being recognized as marketplace facilitators (i.e. Amazon) and must collect and remit taxes. The platforms that are not currently doing this is putting themselves and creators in jeopardy.
The issue is that we legally cannot collect taxes until a product/reward actually exists and is ready to ship, by that time – that data for address can actually change too.
As for shipping, the costs of shipping can change from initial pledge to when the product is ready to ship.
But I absolutely agree, we can do things better and we are hard at work at making things better. I promise it will get better.
Unlike IGG, which seems to have stalled if not gotten progressively worse over the years, Kickstarter has been making a lot of strides in recent years to be a more robust platform with better tools and services for creators. As annoying as this seems right now, this is actually a good thing, and I do believe that their implementation of it will improve with time.
Anyway, I’m happy to see that this is being addressed, and in public by the company’s CEO no less.
We’ve recently been teasing that for various reasons we are pulling our titles out of Amazon’s KDP Select program due to the exclusivity requirements.
We can now finally explain why!
Cirsova Publishing has partnered with EBSCO to distribute its ebook catalog worldwide to universities, libraries, and more!
EBSCO is a leading provider of research databases, e-journal and e-package subscription management, book collection development and acquisition management, and a major provider of library technology, e-books and clinical decision solutions for universities, colleges, hospitals, corporations, government, K12 schools and public libraries worldwide.
By October of this year, all Cirsova titles will have been withdrawn from the KDP Select program, with various sales and giveaways to celebrate the end of their enrollments. Our titles will all remain available on Amazon, both in print and in ebook.
Kickstarter recently unveiled their new Pledge Manager, which is primarily a means of capturing sales tax data and collecting remittances. I’m not happy with how it works, nor are some backers, but I feel the need to address this situation as a creator who has now inflicted this evil upon backers.
The way Kickstarter handles their pledge manager sucks, but now that they have included a mechanism for collection and remittance of sale tax, we can no longer simply ignore it under the premise that it is Kickstarter’s responsibility: they are meeting it, if poorly, and we are legally obligated to collect and remit taxes [or rather have Kickstarter as payment processor collect and remit them on our behalf as they should have been doing this whole time].
If you as a creator don’t use pledge manager, you are legally obligated to remit sales taxes to all states to which you have sold. This was unreasonable for most creators, which is why legally Kickstarter was the obligate party.
Kickstarter shirked this obligation for awhile, but I’m sure legal finally told them “look, you are a marketplace facilitator, there’s no getting around it, it’s on you as the payment collector and processor.”
In shirking this responsibility, every creator who did not remit sales tax had a legal defense: it was not their responsibility, nor was it their fault that the responsible party had abdicated their responsibility.
Now that Kickstarter has effectively admitted that they are responsible, everyone who is not using the pledge manager is now actively assuming responsibility for remittance of sales taxes.
While pre-pledge manager bygones may be allowed to remain bygones, I would not be surprised if more cash-strapped states decided to go after particularly successful creators who have not made arrangements to remit sales taxes on big projects.
If anything, what Kickstarter needs to do is collect address/location information on the front end so that it can calculate sales taxes to be collected and remitted before pledges are processed. That way, backers do not get double-dinged with a surprise charge, or a “gotcha” as some people are calling it. The amount itself is really no more of a “gotcha” than the sales tax that’s added at checkout on Amazon or, hell, even the grocery store. The difference is that Kickstarter is collecting after it collects the initial payment, which I can understand is frustrating.
Apologies to any backers for the inconvenience of having to pay sales tax on the back end now, but we no longer have the deniability of responsibility now that Kickstarter is fulfilling its legal obligations to collect and remit them on our behalf.
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