Big Anthology With Me In It Getting Reprinted

[takyris]

Dude, and it's on topic and everything!

I sold a story to an anthology a few years back, and the anthology turned out to have some pretty big names in it. I was really excited and only a teensy bit ashamed of the fact that I essentially wrote the story out of spite at a guy in my writing group who was acting like a poop-head.

This was nice news for me a few years ago, because I got paid, and I got a very nice anthology with my name near the names of really really big people. But it wasn't huge huge news, because the anthology had a run of only 1000 copies, and each copy ran $75, so it wasn't really something you'd ask your buddies to buy as a show of support. I think Cthulhu's Librarian read it, actually, because they had it in his university library, but I could be remembering that wrong...

(Okay, my father-in-law bought one. But he's just awesome.)

So, fast-forwarding to today, when the editor e-mailed me to ask if my address had changed, because the anthology was being reprinted in much larger quantities, and I was going to be getting more contributor copies.

The upshot is: the cute little story that appeared next to a lot of big name people's stories is back for sale, and this time, it's something people might actually be able to afford.

And thus, I pimp on ENWorld.

http://www.neilgaiman.net/single-item-detail.php?id=G1694

Shelf-Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores -- An anthology of science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, each with a bookstore at its core. Original stories by David Bischoff, P.D. Cacek, Ramsey Campbell, Marianne de Pierres, Rick Hautala, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Gerard Houarner, John J. Miller, A.R. Morlan, Lisa Morton, Melanie Tem, Patrick Weekes, Jack Williamson, and Gene Wolfe, plus older works by Harlan Ellison and Charles de Lint, and an introduction by Neil Gaiman. $25.00, purchasable at the link above.

Thank you for reading this pimping.

 

[Krug]

Cool! To be in an anthology with Campbell, Ellison, de Lint and Wolfe!

 

[KaosDevice]

Wow, that is super cool. I'll have to look for it.

 

[Wyn A'rienh]

Wow! Color me impressed!

 

[Chain Lightning]

Pimp away my friend, pimp away.

By the way, you gotta now tell us the story behind how the story got written. Something to spite some poop head guy? I'm curious now - please explain.

 

[takyris]

Thanks, guys! Yeah, if I'd known the names that were going to be in it, I wouldn't have bothered sending anything at all. So in this case, ignorance worked with me.

Chain Lightning: I will begin with the note that I am not proud of this... precisely...

Every writing group has one of these guys, the guy who combines flakiness with arrogance and only manages to show up when he has something he needs workshopped, or who gives slapdash crits of other people's stuff and then holds up the group for forty-five minutes after the expected length of time for his story by asking additional questions. So this time, he mails the group three days before the workshop with "I know that this is last-minute, and that other people have already submitted stuff and we don't really have room, but I need this critiqued this weekend, because I have to submit it to an anthology, and the deadline is the end of July."

Grudgingly, because we are nice people, we acquiesced -- and someone didn't get her story critiqued so that this guy could get his in.

And the story was... bad. The story was really really bad. The anthology related to bookstores, and his story was about a powerful evil guy who shows up at an old used bookstore to find an ancient book of power and take over the world. And it was told from the point of view of the cat that lived in the bookstore. The guy listened vaguely while we all politely tried to explain that a) the "used bookstore with the ancient book of power" had kind of been done a few times, b) the "narrated by a cat" had been done enough times to merit several of its own anthologies, and c) he didn't do anything new enough or well enough to transcend a) or b). We all felt sort of annoyed afterward, because, well, he'd pushed aside other people to get this thing in, but we put up with it because the anthology had a deadline.

Except that, as it turned out, it didn't. The deadline was the end of August, not the end of July, and this guy had no reason to shove his story in at the last minute except to be a jerk about it.

When I found this out (reading the anthology listing in a magazine), I did a slow burn for about five minutes, and then I said, "Well, I DID say that I could write one better than that. Why don't I just do that?" And after about five minutes of thought about what the editor in question was likely going to see a lot of (stories like the guy in my group's), I tried to write something that was just a bit different.

(I'm not giving too much away here -- this happens in the opening page.)

In my story, a powerful figure of nefarious intent intends to visit an old used bookstore, claim an ancient book of power from within, and rise to immortal godhood in order to crush the world in his vile and ever-rending grasp... but when he gets to the appointed place, the old used bookstore has been bought out and replaced by Borders. And the story is pretty much an evil figure of dark and sinister mien trying to navigate Borders. (Albeit with the name changed to Boundaries, because, well, lawsuits.)

There is one really cheap-shot line in there about telling a story from the point of view of a cat. I'm not proud of it... precisely, but it has consistently gotten a laugh every time I've watched someone read the story, so it's not JUST in there to be spiteful.

I wrote this one in about four hours total (two hours on two days), spellchecked it, and sent it in without another thought. And it sold. And now, apparently, it's being reprinted, and I'm getting royalties.

This is failing to teach me that writing out of spite is a bad thing.

It's also teaching me that even if an anthology has a lot of big names in it, there's still room for something short and goofy if I do it well enough. Which is good news for me.

 

[fett527]

VERY high coolness factor. Congratulations on both printings!

 

[JimAde]

This is failing to teach me that writing out of spite is a bad thing.

It's also teaching me that even if an anthology has a lot of big names in it, there's still room for something short and goofy if I do it well enough. Which is good news for me.

It's also failing to teach the rest of us that it's necessary to mercilessly edit your own writing before submitting it.

Congratulations.

 

[MonsterMash]

Well done, it often shows that boundaries help to stimulate creativity (after all time constraint + setting/theme constraint in there). colour me impressed.

 

[Chain Lightning]

Thanks Takyris for the story behind the story. That was cool to know too. I know the kind of guy you're talking about....ran into such types a few times too.