Lovers of beauty (sorely needed these days) and devotees of the wondrous: feast your eyes on Jenny Zemanek’s inspired cover to Robin Shortt’s Wellside that eloquently conveys the originality, verve and magic of the work!

Robin was born in Canberra and lives in Vancouver. His stories have previously appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild anthology Winds of Change. Wellside, his debut novel, is a tour de force of subgenre fusion that just cries out to become an immersive movie directed by someone with the visual flair of Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro. Below is the irresistible synopsis that Robin supplied for Wellside:

Ben is stuck. His parents’ divorce left him trapped in a backwater town, the locals all suck (except for his classmate Essa), and he’s just been caught breaking into a fairly big corporation’s servers and they’re probably going to try him as an adult.

Essa is also stuck. A vengeful ex-lover left her trapped in a backwater world, the locals all suck, and she has no way back home to the Well, the vast bottomless pit lined with doors to countless realities.

A lucky accident (not so lucky for Ben) frees Essa and now they’re both in the Well, with its invisible lizards, cities hung from cats’-cradles and Library made of sand.

Essa wants revenge. Ben wants a way home. The awakening of an ancient threat to the Well puts both their plans on hold. On the run, their only allies a clockwork spider and a girl made of iron, they’ll have to work together to save Ben’s world and all the others.

Candlemark will release this smashing fantasy in early June 2017. Mark your calendars, and prepare to open doors to many worlds!