Achten Tan: Land of Dust and Bone: 1 (Tales from the Year Between)

At the crossroads between Mievilles New Crobuzon and M.T. Andersons Viriconium on the border of Dhalgren and D&D just to the left of Terry Pratchetts Discworld and Mad Maxs Fury Road ... lies Achten TanTales from the Year Between is a biannual anthology that brings together some of the most talented writers from around the globe to invent an original world from scratch then explore that world through writing. After a week of intensive world-building each author sets out to expand their new fabulous universe through short-stories flash fiction poems songs and whatever other genres their boundless imaginations unleash ... In this inaugural volume the world in question is Achten Tan an at times brutal and at times humorous city located at the foot of the Godtree on the southern edge of the Bonewastes.Home to giant ants mysterious mirror fragments and the worlds greatest barbecue rib joint Achten Tan is bursting with stories of fantasy and wonder. One part Italo Calvino one part Frank Herbert with just a dash of George R.R. Martin and L. Frank BaumWarning. Achten Tan: Land of Dust & Bone is weird.Inside its pages are drama and humor; action and longing; violence death and love. Its strange and beautiful a living instance of the old aphorism regarding the whole being greater than the parts. Oh and there are also giant ants and a city obsessed with barbecued ribs.Achten Tan is a shared fantasy world a desert city built into the skeleton of an ancient leviathan and populated with elves and gnomes wizards and prophets ant-riders and restaurateurs. It is a world we created together that belongs to none of us and all of us.On May 27th Achten Tan was a nonsense phrase a series of syllables chosen at random so we would at least have a name to call the town we were about to create. By June 11th it was a real city filled with characters and locations. A past a present and a future. One month later those characters were real people imagined and fleshed out by 30 different writers scattered from Dubai to Alaska.Because there are so many contributors there is no one Achten Tan. There are as many iterations of the city and its inhabitants as there were creators involved in this project. Some of the stories overlap. Some contradict each other. All of them work together to create a fantastic world none of us could have created on our own.Inside these pages are poems and short stories one-act plays and flash fiction epistles and excerpts from academic texts erotic tales and even recipes. Its a wonderful fabulous bizarre and exciting mix of fiction that I am honored and humbled to have helped assemble. It is also but the first installment of a planned biannual series of such voyages to as of yet unknown worlds. But that is the future. In the meantime join us in the first installment in Tales from the Year Between! May the Ribs shade you from the sun may your ant be ever swift and may your feet stay free of tar. Welcome to Achten Tan(Contains contributions by the following authors: Gabrielle Awe Jesse Nolan Bailey Ian Barr Darius Bearguard Jonathan Beck Kyle Beers Dan Berison Benjamin Blattberg Elvira Canaveral Gregory Coley Darby Cupid Chris Terry Durston Diana C Gagliardi Erin Rae Hoffer Sarah Houck Debbie Iancu-Haddad Roger Kristian Jones Vincent LaBate Allison Moore Iseult Murphy Chapel Orahamm S.L.Parker Sarah Remy Rosalind Dando CD Storiz Imelda Taylor Chris Vandyke Kelly Washington and Paul Worthington. Maps by Aaron Hockett)Learn more about Achten Tan and Tales From the Year Between at YearBetween.com. You can sign up for our Mailchimp newsletter or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.