Just as Jules Verne’s Nautilus traveled all over the world, we’re throwing a world-wide party. It’s on Thursday August 6th, from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM EDT and it’s on Facebook.
We’re doing this to celebrate the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Published on the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s masterwork, this book contains new stories by 16 modern authors, all paying tribute to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, that classic proto-steampunk novel of undersea adventure.
At the party, you can meet the editors and the authors of the stories and ask all the questions you want. Best of all, you can win prizes!
You’re invited! Everyone is. Now, of course, you’re wondering how to attend. Just follow these steps:
Create a Facebook account if you don’t already have one.
If you don’t receive a party invitation within a day or two, send me a message to prompt me.
Once you get the invitation, accept it.
Share info about the party with your friends.
Log into Facebook at the right date and time and join the fun.
(If anyone knows a simpler way to invite the whole world to a Facebook event, let me know in the comments to this blogpost.)
You’ve waited 150 years for this sesquicentennial celebration. It would be a shame to miss it. After all, the bicentennial won’t be until June 2070, and that’s a long time from now.
See you at the party! You’ve been cordially invited by—
Fluent in French, English, German, Latin, and Bundeli
Adept in using Google to translate 107 languages
Electrical experience
Used electric rails to shock Papuan natives
Electrically shocked self during home repairs
Wealth
Immensely rich from salvaging treasure
Often imagined being rich
Royalty
Born a prince
Listened to music by Prince
I know, it’s eerie, right? It’s not like I set out to pattern my life after Captain Nemo. I doubt very much that I’m somehow related to him, or that I’m a reincarnation of him. However, I wouldn’t dismiss those possibilities out of hand, either.
At this point, I’d like to ease the fears of any mariners reading this post. Despite my many similarities to Captain Nemo, I have no immediate plans to voyage around the world’s oceans, ramming ships along the way. Sailors of all vessels at sea are safe from any attack by me.
I promise to use my Nemo-like powers only for good, like co-editing 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology recently launched by Pole to Pole Publishing.
The subject of this post might seem silly, even condescending. You already know how to read, or you wouldn’t have gotten this far into my post.
Perhaps I should have titled it ‘How to Get the Most Enjoyment Out of Reading an Anthology,’ but that’s too long and cumbersome.
I have some experience with anthologies. I’ve read many dozens of them, my stories have appeared in sixteen of them, and I’ve recently co-edited one. Allow me to share my recommended eight steps for thoroughly enjoying an anthology.
Read one of the stories. For most anthologies, the order doesn’t matter. The editors had reasons for organizing the stories as they did, but you can read them in any order.
Ponder the story you just read before going on to the next one. You might need this pondering time to ‘get’ what the author was saying, since it’s not always obvious right after reading.
Jot down some notes about the story, including its most memorable aspects and whether you liked it or not.
Repeat Steps 1 through 3 until you’ve finished the anthology.
Pick your favorite stories. Perhaps there are as many as five or as few as one, but I’m sure you’ll have favorites.
Write and post a review of the anthology online, perhaps at Goodreads or anobii or at the site of the bookseller where you got the book. In your review, don’t be afraid to mention your favorite stories by title and author name. Consider including brief comments about why you liked these stories. If you have comments about the anthology as a whole, include those too.
Look up, online, the authors of your favorite stories. See what else they’ve written that you might want to read next.
Contact those authors who are still alive and let them know how much you enjoyed their story, or ask any questions you may have. Most authors love hearing from fans.
I know this eight-step process seems much more difficult than simply reading the anthology and going on to the next book on your extensive ‘must read’ list. But the act of taking notes on the stories will help you remember them better. Writing reviews will, in time, make you a more discerning reader, able to extract more meaning and enjoyment from stories. Contacting favorite authors could result in good additions to your ‘must read’ list, books you’re sure to enjoy.
Now that you know how to read an anthology, may I recommend one? It’s 20,000 Leagues Remembered, co-edited by yours truly and just released by Pole to Pole Publishing. It’s a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s amazing undersea masterwork, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. You can purchase it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, or Kobo.
You have to admit, the process I described is a fine way to read an anthology. You might even call it The Anthology-Reading Method of—
Sometimes an author belatedly tries to force-fit two or more stories into the same world timeline, but it doesn’t work well. Just ask the creators of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writers of just about any long-running comic book series.
Jules Verne tried to tie three of his novels together, recognized the chronological errors, attempted to explain them away, and ended up confusing things even more.
In Verne’s novel In Search of the Castaways (also called Captain Grant’s Children), the main characters abandon the traitorous Tom Ayrton on a deserted island in March 1865.
In the subsequent novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, three main characters are taken aboard the Nautilus in November 1867.
So far, so good. However, in The Mysterious Island, the castaways find Ayrton in December 1866. Ayrton states he was abandoned 12 years earlier, in March 1855. (Not just less than 2 years, as simple subtraction would indicate.)
Verne and his publisher included this footnote in the text:
The events which have just been briefly related are taken from a work which some of our readers have no doubt read, and which is entitled, Captain Grant’s Children. They will remark on this occasion, as well as later, some discrepancy in the dates; but later again, they will understand why the real dates were not at first given.
Thank you very much, Jules. That helps a lot.
Later in The Mysterious Island, in October 1869, the castaways come across Captain Nemo. He states it has been 16 years since the three guests came aboard the Nautilus. (It had been just shy of 2 years, but maybe time moves slower on that island.)
Again, Verne and his publisher included a footnote:
The history of Captain Nemo has, in fact, been published under the title of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Here, therefore, will apply the observation already made as to the adventures of Ayrton with regard to the discrepancy of dates. Readers should therefore refer to the note already published on this point.
Sooo, Jules, I think you’re saying you know you goofed up, and want your readers to know that you know. However, with two enigmatic footnotes that reference each other, you’re hoping we’ll accept that there’s some logical reason for these hopeless temporal contradictions.
It’s a strange attempt at chronological hand-waving, but we see what happened. Verne’s proclivity for including precise dates in his novels got the best of him. After publishing Captain Grant’s Children, he wished he had set that novel ten years earlier. That way, Ayrton would have been living alone for 12 years rather than 2, and more believably reduced to an uncivilized state.
Similarly, Verne needed a much older Captain Nemo in The Mysterious Island, an aged and lone survivor of his crew in 1869. Only then did Verne wish he’d not already written about a younger and energetic Nemo, and full crew, set in the years 1867-8.
He could have set The Mysterious Island further in the future, but he wanted his castaways to escape from a prison during the American Civil War, so that fixed his start date no later than 1865. He could have left his castaways on Lincoln Island a lot longer, say, 20 years rather than 4, but that’s stretching credibility.
If you had been Jules Verne and faced with these problems, how would you have solved them?
While you’re thinking about that, I can recommend a good book to read. 20,000 Leagues Remembered is a just-released anthology of 16 stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by…well, you can guess.
Verne wrote so many fine novels, he certainly can be pardoned for some botched stitch-up jobs. At least he’s forgiven by—
In the summer of 1947, months before something fell to Earth near Roswell, New Mexico, the skies above the Pacific Northwest were alive with strange lights and unearthly phenomena. I know this because the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum told me so. In fact, according to Don Wildman and crew, less than a week passed between the infamous Maury Island Incident and the Kenneth Arnold sighting above Mt. Rainier which introduced the phrase “flying saucer” into the American zeitgeist.
That connection or coincidence was the spark that led to my novel, Project Notebook. The spark, but not the fuel. The origins of this story may go back to 1947, but they also reach farther back into my own history than a late-night binge-watch in early 2017.
Jason J. McCuiston
Like most kids who grew up on action, sci-fi/fantasy, and horror in the 1980s, I was instantly hooked on Chris Carter’s The X-Files when it debuted on Fox in 1993. Aside from having a twenty-year-old’s crush on Gillian Anderson, I loved the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy vibe of the show. And though I never became more than a casual interloper into the world of ufology, I’ve kept an open mind on the topic and have always found it fascinating.
A decade later, after watching the stunning HBO adaptation of Band of Brothers in 2001, I read not only Stephen E. Ambrose’s book, but also the excellent biography of Major Dick Winters, Biggest Brother by Larry Alexander. These volumes gave me an insight into the Greatest Generation, as well as a glimpse of what my own grandfather, the late Master Sergeant Darius E. McCuiston, U.S. Army, had faced in WWII. While writing Project Notebook, I soon realized that the main character, Captain El Summers is a synthesis of Winters and my Papaw.
In 2006, I found myself in a new life in Knoxville, Tennessee. Part of this new life was my weekly gaming group. We were playing the d20:Modern role-playing game at that time. Wizards of the Coast had just released the Dark Matter supplement for d20:Modern, a campaign setting that leaned heavily into the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy/darker sci-fi atmosphere of The X-Files. That’s when it occurred to me that the first people most likely to be tapped by the U.S. Government to investigate rumors and reports of UFO’s and aliens would be battle-hardened vets of The Big Two.
So I launched a campaign based on this premise.
Sadly, the game tanked after one session, but the premise hung around in the back of my mind for over a decade. And in the summer of 2017—after two years struggling to break in as a “pro” writer and several nights watching Mysteries at the Museum—I decided to throw that premise at the page and see if it stuck. After writing the first draft of what eventually became Chapter One of Project Notebook, I posted it to a Facebook writing group for feedback. Naturally, it drew a troll quicker than a goat on a bridge. After this individual lambasted my abilities and concepts, I thanked him for his opinion, and sat down to write this story. As much out of spite as anything else.
Writing is about passion, no matter where that passion comes from. Remember that.
I’m honestly glad that troll got under my skin. Being more interested in fantasy than sci-fi and in the eleventh century than the twentieth, I may have never written this story otherwise. I may have never learned so much about the era of my grandparents. I may have never delved so deeply into the lore of ufology. I may have never created these characters for whom I have developed an amazing fondness in the ensuing years of revisions and edits.
I can only hope that you will find El, Red, Olivia, and Bill as endearing should you decide to follow their adventures in Project Notebook.
Jason J. McCuiston
Thanks, Jason. I know my readers will seek you out on Facebook and Twitter. Then they’ll buy your book on Amazon.
