All For One - Anthologies

One of the more obvious challenges a writer faces is how to fill a book. Ask any novelist and they will likely tell you that the second half of a novel is easier to write because the characters and plot are already well established, and part two is often largely about resolving the consequences of part one.

For those who pen shorter material, although there are competitions and magazines out there eager for flash fiction or 2000 words on a theme, putting together a collection of stories for publication can seem onerous because short fiction can be a hard sell.

One solution is to create or contribute to an anthology, showcasing the work of several writers. Books can be themed or stand as a general celebration of the art of short fiction. (If you thought sculpture was difficult, try sculpting a 250-word piece.) Anthologies are also a blessing for those writers who are uncomfortable in the spotlight – there may be more of those than you think!

Other advantages of a multi-writer anthology

-       You have more chance of filling a book.

-       Individual writers can focus on a small number of contributions.

-       You automatically start off with a group of people keen to spread the word.

-       Those same people (unless they all live on the same street) are likely to have separate communities, increasing the potential for word-of-mouth recommendations.

-       Every author is likely to buy at least one copy* so that ought to get the ball rolling.

The challenges of a multi-writer anthology

-       There may be differences of opinion in the editing process, unless you have clear ground rules or an editor-in-chief.

-       Some contributors may not want or be able to get involved in the marketing of the book.

-       There has to be a running order, preferably one that’s carefully balanced.

-       Erm…the money.

Anthologies can be funded in several ways. Costs can be shared among the contributors (in which case it might be wise to agree a set word count for each story). Grants may be available, especially if it’s a thematic anthology or raises funds for a particular cause – the Arts Council is a good place to start in the UK. There’s still the faint possibility of anthologies being funded by publishers in what used to be called the traditional way with contributors receiving royalties from sales. There’s also the buy-out option where writers are paid a one-off fee to use their material in perpetuity.

If you’re funding the book yourself / yourselves, costs can be reduced by publishing as an ebook (if you have the time and the know-how, your only expense will be the cover design), or by producing a Print-on-Demand version.

I’ve been fortunate to contribute to four anthologies.

Beyond the Horizon is a general fiction anthology published by Bamboccioni Books. I contributed a sci-fi tale, in the spirit of Asimov, Rogue, about what it means to really live.

The Coffee Shop Chronicles Vol 1 (Oh the Places I Have Bean) is a themed anthology about coffee from A Word with You Press. It contains a mixture of anecdotes, poetry and fiction celebrating the much-loved** caffeine creation. I was one of four editors and my fiction contribution is Diner, a short tale about relationships, lies and self-deceit.

Kissing Frankenstein in a general fiction anthology published by Flash-Fiction South West. I contributed some really short pieces (some only six words long) and my main piece, Between the Lines, was a story about taking chances.

Miracles of Kindness is a themed anthology contains anecdotes about…well…kindness. My contribution, The Street Angel, is about the folly of first impressions when I found myself stranded in Chicago late one night.

My plan, later this year, is to put together an ebook anthology of my own work. Entitled Into the Void and sporting a stylish cover design supplied by www.goonwrite.com, it will feature a mixture of favourite pieces, new material and experimental work.

* Not always though. I know of an anthology where the contributors received a small buy-out fee and a significant proportion of writers never bought a copy.

** Although, ironically, not by me.

July 4th

Every item tells a story.

Well, of course I wasn't going to let US Independence Day pass without a blog post. 

After all, as someone once said, parodying a comment allegedly made about Billy Connolly and the shipyards, I spent one year living there and 25 years talking about it. (To which, I replied, "Don't forget about the short stories and the novel.")

July 4th is one of those occasions steeped in myth and history that has come to mean something fixed, even though some of the reasons behind the decisions, battles and, ultimately, the birth of an independent nation are still up to debate. If you're open to a good conspiracy, I recommend The Temple and the Lodge. On the other hand, whether you're British or an American and if you're capable of reflective humo(u)r, you might enjoy this glorious piece on revocation, which airs periodically and has been wrongly attributed to John Cleese over the years. You see, mythology again.

Our ability to attribute fixed meanings to events, or even to non-events, is probably connected to our  innate need to tell stories. As Mark Twain may have said: "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can't think of anything better."

Recently, Thorn Sully and I were chewing the fat over skype about A Word with You Press's inaugural anthology - Coffee Shop Chronicles, Vol 1, Oh the Places I Have Bean. It's a conversation we've had a few times since the book was released into the wild. Should we create a second book? Ought we to focus on an ebook rather than a more expensive paperback, and could we maybe reduce the size of it to slim down the unit price. We chat about the weather too, sometimes.

Anyhow, I happened to mention that it may be time to promote the book a little more deliberately by cranking up Twitter, Facebook and all the other toys. Out of interest and intrigue, I checked the book out on Amazon and discovered that we had zero reviews. That's not a terrible thing; we had sold in low figures after all, opting for a more organic (some might even say lesiurely) approach to marketing. But none? 

If I explain that there were 100 entries in the anthology, it might go some way to explaining my disbelief. And, since you ask, as I was on the editorial team (as well as being a contributor), it didn't seem right to me to wave the flag personally. We've since emailed all those involved with the book, to ask for their participation, and at least a couple of reviews have appeared.

There is a valuable lesson here, and it's no criticism of those non-reviewers. People are busy; people form and lose connections with equal speed and so we, as writers, need to work hard to maintain a relationship with readers and contributors. Simply creating a book is not enough to keep readers engaged. 

Maybe they didn't like it. Maybe they didn't even know it was out there. Maybe they're wondering why we haven't been in touch since the book launch (we actually have a website and online community at www.awordwithyoupress.com, but we have had some changes recently). 

Who knows?

What we do know is that it's up to us to make the relationship work with the reader (and the contributors). 

It's important to separate facts from conjecture and to not get lost in our own stories about what we consider to be the truth. So, stories on the page but not off it!

Happy Independence Day, people, wherever you are!

Story time

An early form of tablet, which wasn't very portable.

As the old joke* goes, "What's the difference between a short story and a novel?" Answer: The word count. Ask any creator of short fiction and they will tell you how much focus and effort and, well, creativity it takes to produce a work of short fiction that still manages to tick most the essentials off this list:

- Engage the reader and draw them into the story.
- Eliminate waste and distraction.
- Remove the author from the equation.
- Give the reader a satisfying ending that will still leave them wanting more.

In my novel, Scars & Stripes, Alex is walking down a street in the St Mark's district of Manhattan when he sees a sign on a window: What's Your Story? Led by curiosity, Alex winds up in an apartment where a bespectacled dude is hunched over a typewriter (it was the 1980s), working on a collection of other people's stories. For the sci-fi aficionados among you, this could almost be Alex's future or parallel self. It could, if it was that sort of novel.

Arguably, that scene is a metaphor for one of the novel's central premises - Alex is one of life's observers, but he also remembers small things that other people forget. The novel, and therefore Alex's story, is actually filled with the stories of other people he encounters. In the scene I mention above, Alex sells some of his real life stories (albeit fictionalised by bias and ego) to the writer who then creates something new out of them for a magazine. Ironically, Alex encounters one of those magazines, further down the line, and barely recognises his own history in there.

We're all enthralled and enchanted by stories from an early age. The structure of fairy tales and traditional bedtime stories has been pawed over by mythologists and experts to reveal common threads and forms. I've also mentioned, elsewhere on this blog, how researchers like Joseph Campbell identified commonalities found in the mythologies of different and unconnected cultures.

Like many other writers, I do read online reviews of other people's work and I'm struck how often the critics denounce the typos and grammar, or the two-dimsnional characterisation, and how rarely they turn their attention to the actual story itself. It seems to me that if the story engages the reader and captivates them, even if the writing was deemed below par, the author as on to something. 

I'd argue that stories are a rich and vital part of our psyche, individually and collectively. Stories makes us feel, consider, react and yearn. Whether it's in a theatre, at a cinema, watching the soaps or Jeremy Kyle, or even reading a book (remember those?), stories bring us to life.

If you'd like to read some of my own short stories, here are some handy links:

The Silent Hills - a 5000 word tale of suspense and revelation.
Coffee Shop Chronicles - an anthology containing my story, Diner. 
Beyond the Horizon - an anthology containing my sci-fi story, Rogue.
Kissing Frankenstein - an anthology containing several of my really short stories.  

Saturday Night - a little slice of Americana for free (partly inspired by Raymond Carver).



*It wasn't an old joke - I made it up. Feel free to quote me on it.

Evolution of an idea

It's not big and it is clever

Give me a writer who knows exactly where they're going and I'll give you - and them - a round of applause. Any writer I've ever met, be they published or yet-to-be-published, may have an inkling, or even an ambition, but that's about it.

In a sense, that's part of the joy of writing. You never know quite where it will lead, either on the page or off it.

So if you're sitting comfortably, I'd like to tell you the story of a story. Two stories, actually.

Once upon a time, David French and I created As Above So Below magazine - a satirical take on all things 'alternative', along with anything else that took our fancy. In Issue 13, I wrote a piece, The Daily Grind, about an imagined encounter with a new age luminary in a San Diego coffee house. It included new choices for a modern generation:

Crappuccino - with a laxative for colonic health.

Mocha Shocker - with a battery in it to jumpstart your day.

Americano - with oil dashes.

Bratte - with a mild sedative for children.

Depresso - with serontonin for that extra lift.

As you might have guessed, I'm not a coffee drinker. At all.

Wind forward some considerable time and a jaunt through Craigslist brought me to a competition to get a story / piece of writing in a coffee themed anthology. Naturally, having read the rules, I thought of modifying Daily Grind. And spookily, the indie publisher was based in San Diego. Fate, huh? Ish.

Good news: they liked the piece and said it was funny. Fortunately, the editor-in-chief had spent time in the UK and enjoyed British humour. 

Complicated news: the prizes were vouchers for coffee houses and they planned to sell the anthologies there. Consequently, my anti-coffee piece wasn't quite the ticket, but if I wanted to write something else they would consider it favourably. 

I took a different tack next time and wrote a short story with a serious motif, Diner, about domestic abuse. They accepted the story for print.

Wind forward a couple of months or so and I'm on the anthology editorial team, as well as helping out with administration and posting on the site. Pretty soon I am officially the go-to guy* for new projects in indie publishing house A Word with You Press.

Four of us edit the book in chunks. The paperback comes out and is well received by those who bought it. However, it did not sell well, partly because the price point was too high (the editor-in-chief wanted to include every writer who submitted something, to give them a start in print) and partly because our distribution chain wasn't up to the job. We were learning on the fly, and my, how we learned - often at the e-i-c's expense.

Wind forward a little more time and AWwYP has several books on the go, and one or two in the pipeline. Coffee Shop Chronicles Vol 1 will hopefully become a collector's item, as there are plans afoot to bring out a smaller version instead, containing just 50 entries (we like to think of it as the espresso version). It will give us the price point we need to make the book cost-effective.

My point though (because you've probably been wondering by now) is that the first stepping stone to CSC Vol 1, and my association with AWwYP, was writing a piece for a magazine that hardly anybody read. So few, in fact, that AASB magazine hasn't had an issue out for over two years. If there is a moral here, it's that a good idea is never wasted - not unless we forget it or refuse to act on it.

I'm proud of CSC Vol 1 for many reasons: the cover, my story being in it, the way that four editors worked so well in our respective cities, the fact that 100 writers were given a little floor space by Thorn Sully, and that it's a real, live paperback. And a little bit shiny.

AWwYP recently vacated its premises, and the e-i-c is going on a book tour and considering what the future of AWwYP will look like. It's an uncertain adventure (but all the best ones are) and I look forward to the next chapter. 

Get it while it's hot.

* Project Development Director - all writers love a good title!

A Lovable* Rogue at the Halfway Point

It's that time of the year when many writers see one of their seasonal offerings thrust out into the world. I'm talking of course about today, June 30th, being the halfway point in the calendar year.

It's a good opportunity to pause and reflect and, as every ex project manager knows, it pays to review your progress at regular stages and see where the hell you are in relation to where you'd planned to be.

The latest good news is that a classic sci-fi story of mine called Rogue is included in Beyond the Horizon, published by Alasdair Firth's Bamboccioni Books at the end of July. This brings my 'ISBN by association' tally to three this year (the others being The Wanderer and Coffee Shop Chronicles Vol 1). So far so good. I've also put together my first ebook - a drama resource of comedy sketches for non-profit use. A good friend of mine is, as we speak, combing through the collection of 30 or so sketches and probably weeding out the ones that relate to religion, sex and drugs. I haven't quite figured out where it will be sold, but I have heard good things about Smashwords so that's a possibility.

Longer term business clients have been crossing my path with e-silver, which is always gratifying. Meanwhile, my novels Covenant, Standpoint and Line of Sight continue to circulate through the letterboxes of agents and publishers, which I consider a bit of a no-score draw. As all writers know, submission is very much a waiting game with occasional pauses. But, in the spirit of the midpoint, I have chased up three contacts today to find out about my other submissions (you didn't think that was ALL I was working on, surely!).

There have been one or two casualties along the way. I achieved my goal of a magazine column then promptly lost it upon the altar of economics. It was fun while it lasted although fun and well paid would have made for a more enjoyable experience. Still, one can't have everything. And I've already mentioned the client who thought my working for two hours gratis would be an excellent way to demonstrate my ghostwriting skills. Gone but not forgotten.

My all-seeing spreadsheet tells me I have:

6 books collectively awaiting 11 responses

7 short stories collectively awaiting 11 responses

33 magazine submissions, pitches and queries awaiting a response

Anyway, I can't sit here yapping all day - I have a deadline to meet. Here's to the next six months!

* Spelling approved by my trusty copy of Guardian Style.