sci-fi

Preorders available now for my latest: HOW TO WELCOME AN ALIEN!

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I’m very excited to announce that my upcoming project with Kalaniot Books is now available for preorders! HOW TO WELCOME AN ALIEN will IY”H be published this fall, but preorders are available now on Amazon. It’s illustrated by Shirley Waisman and perfect for kids aged 4 – 7.

Shirley Waisman’s fabulous cover for my forthcoming book, HOW TO WELCOME AN ALIEN

This picture book would never have happened without my writing group friends: Ann Koffsky, Devorah Talia Gordon, Linda E. Marshall, Freddie Levin, Devorie Kreiman, Sarah Pachter, Shayna Horowitz, Jackie Jules, and Yehudis Litvak (that’s two sets of writing group pals!). HOW TO WELCOME AN ALIEN examines themes of hospitality, welcoming refugees, befriending lonely people, and chessed with a sci-fi twist. End matter connects the story to the tale of Abraham and Sarah welcoming three guests in the book of Genesis/Bereishis.

You can find out more about the book here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Welcome-Alien-Rebecca-Klempner/dp/B0BNVC2XHD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1QSNY556TKKJO&keywords=how+to+welcome+an+alien&qid=1675043451&s=books&sprefix=how+to+welcome+an+alien%2Cstripbooks%2C178&sr=1-1.

Double Dose of Good News!!!

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Announcement #1:

I will be publishing a new Jewish sci-fi picture book with Kalaniot Books in the not-too-distant future. I’m feeling very blessed and can’t wait till I can share more about this book and the story of how it came to be. I will tell you this much: it took over a year of submissions before closing this deal, and I feel like it’s a message that perseverance and faith will pay off, even if it’s on God’s timeline, not ours. As soon as we have an illustrator announced, I’ll let you know.

Me, very excited after signing the book contract.

Announcement #2:

Today, Tablet is running a fun little personal essay by moi about a misadventure I had shortly before Passover. It’s about losing things, finding them, Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess, and how sometimes it’s good to lose things. You can read it here.

Short story in Hamodia’s story supplement!

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While I’m still waiting for Glixman‘s arrival, I’ve got a nice surprise for my readers. The story supplement for Hamodia‘s English edition for Pesach – due out today, I think – contains a short story by me. Continue reading →

They loved it, they hated it: Feedback on my story from Binah’s Sukkos Supplement, “From the Furthest Reaches of the Heavens”

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I have emerged from the semi-hibernation of Sukkos (if you can call a holiday that involved cooking 10 fancy meals – many with with guests – hibernation) and am looking forward to a week chock full of work. I’ve got a personal essay to write for one of the sites I frequent, another to revise for a literary journal, and spent most of today editing. That’s on top of some work I want to do on one of my ongoing projects. And did I mention I still have to market the two books I recently self-published?

Earth on 1967-11-09, as seen from Apollo 4.

But I’d like to take a moment to look back on the story I published in Binah Magazine’s Vistas story supplement, “From the Furthest Reaches of the Heavens.”

SUMMARY

In case you haven’t read the story (and I’m assuming many of my blog readers haven’t), I’ll summarize it: Continue reading →

Oh, all right, I’ll spill the beans.

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So, yesterday’s post mentioned that I’ve been working on a few big projects. I can’t tell you about all of them, but I can tell you about two:

  1. I’ve compiled several of the stories I have published previously in international Jewish kids’ magazines into an anthology, selecting the ones that got the most fan mail, and which teachers have mentioned they’d like to use in their classrooms. I’m self-publishing it, IY”H. Target audience: readers age 10-16. We’re just waiting on the proofs – which I’ll have to proofread – before they will be up for sale.
  2. Also on the self-publishing front, many years ago, I had a number of stories starring two characters, Esti and Bluma, which ran in a local-to-L.A. Jewish magazine. Those stories got lots of fan mail here in L.A., so I started to shop around for a publisher. I had a couple near-misses, where a publisher said they were very interested, but then backed out pretty late in the game. After that, I added some more material, changed some things around to make it more like a middle-grade novel, as opposed to a short story collection, and tried yet another publisher. As they say in Yiddish: gornisht. My husband, though, really believed in the book, and my beta testers – kids from around the neighborhood – enjoyed it thoroughly. Doing Maker Camp over the summer really inspired me, as well as this post on Positive Writer, so after working on the anthology, I pulled out this older manuscript and started editing that one.

G-d willing, I’ll have news for you soon about these upcoming releases. I’m hoping to have them available online and at bookshops in L.A. Keep your eyes peeled for updates! (And prayers for the success of this project are welcome.)

Why I think speculative fiction is just SO Jewish (& you should, too)

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One of the things I most like to write (and find it hard to sell) is Jewish speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is a wide-ranging label that includes genres like fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. Basically, in speculative fiction, the author suggests a scenario that proposes the question: “What if_______?”

What if…

…you found out that you weren’t a friendless orphan but a powerful wizard with many supporters? (Harry Potter)

…you discovered the back of the wardrobe led into a magical realm where you became royalty? (Narnia)

…you discovered there was a way to communicate with aliens through your dental work? (Fat Men From Space)

…you accidentally returned to the time of the Holocaust during your Pesach Seder? (The Devil’s Arithmetic)

While Isaac Asimov, Jane Yolen, Harlan Ellison, Daniel Manus Pinkwater, and many other secular Jewish Americans (as well as the Orthodox writer, Michael Burstein and the Israeli writers Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv) have written speculative fiction to great acclaim–even Jewish speculative fiction–specifically Orthodox Jewish speculative fiction is much harder to find. As I have mentioned previously on my blog (and again, and again), there has been movement into this direction. But still, I get a lot of funny looks when I tell people what I most like to write.

But I don’t get it. I think speculative fiction is just SO Jewish, and so should you. Here’s why: Continue reading →