Category Archives: Anthologies

How Deep is a League?

We all know Professor Aronnax and his companions traveled 20,000 leagues under the sea in Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus. Just how deep is that? It turns out, that’s the wrong question.

Let’s set that aside a moment.

You can certainly sense the excitement building—on the web, in the bookstores, and in conversations with everyone you meet. Less than a week to go, now, until the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. On Saturday, June 20, you can celebrate the 150th anniversary of the marvelous Verne novel. Remembered is a brand-new collection of stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Pre-order it here.

Back to our question. What, exactly, is a league? Like most obsolete units of measurement, there is no precise answer. It dates from ancient Rome, when the leuga meant about 7500 pedes (Roman feet), or about 1.4 of our statue miles.

According to Wikipedia, the league has taken on a wide variety of lengths over the millennia. It ranged from the Roman length of 1.4 miles all the way to the Norwegian league of 11.3 miles.

That doesn’t help us much. Maybe the better question is, what did Jules Verne think a league was? Even in his time, the unit was falling out of favor. It had taken on a vague, almost poetic meaning. At one syllable, it rolled off the tongue much easier than ‘kilometer’ did.

According to the annotated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, Verne used a league of 2.16 nautical miles, or 2.49 statute miles.  

So, 20,000 of Verne’s leagues would be nearly 50,000 miles. The deepest known spot in any ocean is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, with a depth of 6.79 standard miles or 3.14 leagues.

Let’s say we stay in Verne’s fictional world. In the chapter titled “The Sargasso Sea,” the Nautilus reached a depth of 16,000 meters, which Verne translated as 4 vertical leagues.

Even if the ocean stretched all the way to Earth’s center, it could only be about 3,963 miles, or 1,592 leagues deep.

Clearly, Verne intended that the Nautilus travel 20,000 leagues horizontally in its path through the oceans. Verne later wrote a novel titled La Jangada – Huit Cents lieues sur l’Amazone, or Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. Nobody would expect anyone to travel 800 leagues downward in a river.

For a humorous treatment of the question, we can turn to the TV show Saturday Night Live. They ran a skit, and I believe it was in Season 19, Episode 17, which originally aired on April 9, 1994. It satirized the 1954 Disney movie (then 4 decades old), and had Kelsey Grammer as Captain Nemo, Phil Harman as Ned Land, Mike Myers as Professor Aronnax, and Rob Schneider as Conseil. Here’s the transcript, and here’s a partial video clip.

The next time someone asks you how deep a league is, you have a good answer. Or, you can simply refer them to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 14, 2020Permalink

Writing for Jules Verne

Here’s a thought experiment for you. It’s 1868, and your close friend, Jules Verne, is deathly ill. Since you’re an author too, he’s asked you to write a novel in his stead. All he’s got is a concept—a ship that travels underwater—and a title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. You cannot refuse your friend. What will your novel be like?

Remember, nobody has ever written a novel involving a submarine. Yours will be the first. You jot down some plot ideas:

  • A single nation is the first to build and use a working military submarine. Perhaps it’s your beloved France; or the mighty seapower, Great Britain; or the science-loving and adventurous United States.
  • Some wealthy and inventive person builds a submarine and uses it purely for exploration and the advancement of Science.
  • A wealthy and evil man builds a submarine and uses it for vengeance against those who have wronged him.
  • A man is convinced Atlantis exists, and builds a submarine to search for it.
  • A sailor lost someone close (a brother?) to a specific and recognizable giant squid, and builds a submarine to pursue and destroy the creature. (If Melville’s Moby-Dick was successful, this could be too.)
  • Perhaps combine the scientist and the vengeance-obsessed pirate, and tell the story from his (or her?) point of view.
  • A sailor falls in love with a woman he believes is a mermaid, but she dives underwater. He builds a submarine and travels 20,000 leagues in search of her.
  • A treasure-hunter builds a submarine and recovers gold and other valuables from sunken ships.
  • A nation announces a huge prize for whichever privately-built submarine wins a 20,000-league race.
  • A clever criminal builds a submarine and robs banks along various coasts, escaping underwater. A detective hero must track him down.

After an hour, you’ve written down these ideas and another 20 more. Now you must select the best one. Will your eventual novel be as good as the one Jules would have written, had he not become ill?

We’ll never know, of course. It’s just a thought experiment. In real life, Verne wrote his marvelous novel himself, without your help. For its first publication, it was serialized in the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The issue containing the final chapter came out on June 20, 1870.

That means June 20 of this year, just 13 days from now, is the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of that undersea classic. To commemorate this date, I’ve partnered with Kelly A. Harmon, Senior Editor at Pole to Pole Publishing, to edit an anthology of short stories inspired by Verne’s masterwork.

Titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, it will launch on June 20. We’ve chosen 16 wonderful stories for the volume, each taking a different approach, but all born from a love of Jules Verne’s fantastic adventure novel. Each one captures some aspect of the adventure, the wonder, and the drama of Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Perhaps Verne’s book is no longer new to you, but these 16 stories will be. Beginning on June 20, you’ll be able to buy the ebook version of our anthology at Pole to Pole Publishing’s website or at other online booksellers. Pole to Pole will put out a paperback print version as soon as possible after that.

Back to that thought experiment. I’m sure you thought of some possible story ideas yourself, in addition to the ones I listed. Feel free to add a comment to this blogpost, sharing one or more of your ideas with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 7, 2020Permalink

It’s Not Too Late

You still have time to submit a short story to the upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book will be a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s novel.

Cover Image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

I’m co-editing this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’re received and accepted a number of fine stories already.

However, we still have room for two or three more. For us to accept your submission, your story:

•           must pay tribute in some way to Jules Verne’s novel;

•           may be set in any time or place;

•           may use characters from Verne’s novel or you can make up your own;

•           need not be written in Verne’s style;

•           need not be ‘dark’ (as stories in other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies have been);

•           must capture, in your own way, the sense of wonder and adventure for which Jules Verne is famous;

•           demonstrate a significant and obvious connection with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; and

•           must not disparage either the novel or its author.

Come on. You’re sitting at home anyway. You might as well type up a story and send it here.

Your story might well be the next one accepted by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 6, 2020Permalink

Prompts for Your Next Story

Got some story ideas for you!

As you know, I’m co-editing an upcoming anthology called 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection intended to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the publication of Jules Verne’s classic submarine novel. My co-editor, Kelly A. Harmon, and I are are still accepting submissions. Click here for details. This image is what we intend to use for the cover.

We’ve received a good number of submissions, and have accepted several. There’s still room for more, though. I’ll be providing a list of prompts that might help you write a story for this anthology. Feel free to use one, or your own variation of it.

Before I do that, I’ll state the rules for the anthology. Your story:

  • must pay tribute in some way to Jules Verne’s novel;
  • may be set in any time or place;
  • may use characters from Verne’s novel or you can make up your own;
  • need not be written in Verne’s style;
  • need not be ‘dark’ (as stories in other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies have been);
  • must capture, in your own way, the sense of wonder and adventure for which Jules Verne is famous;
  • demonstrate a significant and obvious connection with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; and
  • must not disparage either the novel or its author.

Some of the prompts below may describe stories we’ve already accepted. That’s okay; write your story your way. Here are those promised prompts:

  • What if Captain Nemo had a time machine?
  • What was Captain Nemo’s (Prince Dakkar’s) origin story?
  • What adventures did Nemo have aboard the Nautilus before the events of Verne’s novel?
  • Did the Nautilus survive the volcanic eruption on Lincoln Island? What if it were salvaged today?
  • Did any of the Nautilus crewmen have an unusual talent, or a story worth telling?
  • What if a Nemo-like character were captain of an airship, a spaceship, a mole-machine?
  • What if a theme park (not starting with ‘D’) featured Twenty Thousand Leagues-inspired tour submarines, but one of the subs broke free of the designated ride?
  • What if Jules Verne rode a submarine before writing the novel?
  • What if a high-tech submarine manned by mysterious pirates began endangering sea travel today, how would the world’s navies react?
  • What’s the story of Captain Nemo’s wife? His children?
  • What if, in reaction to Nemo’s attacks, one or more of the world’s navies built a squadron of submarines designed to hunt down and destroy the Nautilus?
  • Did Captain Nemo have a pet? Tell its story.

Admit it. Some of those did get your creative fluids pumping around, didn’t they? Now all you have to do is write your story and submit it here. The hard part’s already been done for you by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 2, 2020Permalink

Cover Image Revealed

My co-editor, Kelly A. Harmon, and I have chosen the cover image for our upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. The book will pay tribute to Jules Verne’s classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on the June 2020 sesquicentennial of its publication.

Here is that image, with the Nautilus being menaced by a tentacled monster.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

Pole to Pole Publishing is still open for short story submissions to the anthology. Click here for details, and to submit your best work. Although the closing date is April 30, please note we are accepting stories as we go, so the anthology may well fill up before that date. Submit early!

We’ve received some wonderful stories so far. Still, there’s no one more anxious to read your story than—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 3, 2020Permalink

20,000 Mistranslations Under the Sea

If you’re a really good author, your book’s reputation can survive even a botched translation. As evidence, I offer the first English language translation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Before we get to that, I’ll remind you of an upcoming anthology I’m co-editing, along with the talented and creative Kelly A. Harmon. We both encourage you to contribute a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, our sesquicentennial tribute to Verne’s novel. You can find more information about that here.

The success of Verne’s undersea masterpiece in France prompted its translation into several other languages. As bad luck would have it, the first translation into English got rendered in 1872 by Lewis Page Mercier, a Protestant Reverend in London.

Among his many translation errors are the following:

  • Sea or Seas? Mercier should have translated the novel’s title as “…Under the Seas” (plural). Note how that one little ‘s’ could have spared countless mix-ups between vertical depth and horizontal distance. You can’t go 20,000 leagues (43,000 miles) deep into one sea, but a plural ‘seas’ clarifies the meaning.
  • Disagreeable Territory. Verne knew his geography and wrote about his character Pierre Arronax returning from the Badlands of Nebraska. In one of his worst howlers, Mercier rendered the Badlands as “the disagreeable territory of Nebraska.” In other words, the phrase survived the English-to-French translation, but couldn’t quite make it back the other way.
  • Lightweight Steel. Mercier translated some dialogue of Captain Nemo as “These two hulls are composed of steel plates, whose density is from .7 to .8 that of water.” If Nemo had discovered a type of steel that could float like wood, it would be worth more than that casual mention. Of course, Verne wrote “whose density is 7.8 times that of water.”
  • Cork Jackets. When the (Mercier-translated) Nemo asked Arronax if he’d like to don his cork jacket, he didn’t mean a garment woven in Cork, Ireland nor a coat made from tree bark. Verne’s words should have come out as ‘diving suit.’
  • From Where to Where? Mercier translated the title of Part II, Chapter XX as “From Latitude 47° 24′ to Longitude 17° 28′.” Wait…from a latitude to a longitude? For all its numerical precision, that title tells you nothing about the path of the Nautilus. A competent translator would have rendered it as “In Latitude…and Longitude…”

These are only a few of the atrocities Mercier committed against Verne’s text. For example, he left 20-25% of the novel untranslated. Perhaps these were the parts he considered the dullest.

Perpetuating Mercier’s many errors, subsequent English editions of the novel used his translation. Up until the 1970s, his was the most widely available. When I first read 20,000 Leagues, I read a Mercier.  

As pathetic a hatchet-job as Mercier’s translation was, the innate greatness of Verne still shone through. When a bad version is all you have, you pause only a second to wonder at the odd phrasings and logic flaws, then read on. I wish I knew French and could read the novel in its original tongue.

Fortunately, today’s English readers have several good translations from which to choose, including the following:

Translator: Anthony Bonner; Publisher: Bantam Press (1985)

Translator: Imanuel J. Mickel; Publisher: Indiana University Press (1992)

Translators: Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: Naval Institute Press (1993)

Translator: Ron Miller; Publisher: Penguin Books (1998)

Translator: Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: SeaWolf Press (2018)

Translator: William Butcher; Publisher: Oxford University Press (2019)

While writing your own story inspired by Verne’s classic and preparing it for submission to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, consider re-reading the original work. Avoid any version translated by Mercier, and read one of the newer ones recommended by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 13, 2019Permalink

Anthology Submission Call—Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered

On June 20, 1870, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published, giving the world a new type of vessel, and a new type of pirate.

The novel’s original cover

150 years later, on June 20, 2020, Pole to Pole Publishing will launch Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, a sesquicentennial tribute to Verne’s masterwork. The kind folks at Pole to Pole have asked me to co-edit this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon, and I’m honored to do so. Here’s the submission call.

But we’ll need stories, people! What’s your take on this novel? What story can you write?

You’ve got a few months until we open the antho to receive submissions, but Pole to Pole accepts stories as they go, and they’ve always filled their previous anthologies before the closing deadline.

Watch this space for more news about this upcoming anthology. For now, all the details are here.

In the meantime, let your imagination voyage as freely as Captain Nemo did within the Nautilus. Write your story. Eagerly waiting to read your submissions, I’m the co-editor—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

September 22, 2019Permalink

Tailoring Your Author Bio for Success

Among most writers’ least favorite tasks is marketing, and among the least favorite marketing tasks is crafting an author biography. There’s really no avoiding it, so you might as well craft a bio that serves your purposes.

There are various uses for your bio, and I’ll discuss four of them here. Unfortunately, they are different enough to require separate, tailored bios, but time spent crafting good ones can pay off for you.

For simplicity, let’s call the four types the Website bio, the Submission bio, the Anthology bio, and the Convention bio. That is the rough order in which you’ll encounter them as you develop. Let’s delve into each.

Website Bio

This is the bio you’ll use on your own website, and on your author page on various other sites like Amazon, Goodreads, or others. The purpose of this bio is to entice site visitors to buy your books.

Of all the bio types, this can be the longest, but don’t create one so long that nobody wants to read it. Break it up into bite-sized paragraphs. It can include your background, your education (if relevant), and (most important) information about the stories you write. The tone of the bio should match the tone of your stories.

As your writing credentials change, you’ll want to update this bio periodically on all the sites at which it appears.

Submission Bio

On occasion, you’ll be sending a story to a market where the submission guidelines state they need your bio along with your story. Sometimes the editor wants to use that bio in the anthology they’re editing (see Anthology Bio below), and sometimes it’s just so the editor can learn about you.

If it’s the latter, the purpose of this submission bio is to convey a professional and engaging persona to that editor, one that won’t detract from the story you’re sending. The only audience is that editor, and the only thing the editor cares about are your writing credentials. These can include a listing of the last three stories you’ve gotten published in the relevant genre, and any facts about your background that relate to the story you’re sending.

Brevity, along with correct grammar and spelling are keys in this bio. A poorly written bio might dissuade the editor from even looking at the story you submitted.

Anthology Bio

If your story appears in an antho, the book’s editor often includes bios of each author, sometimes just before or after each story, or sometimes collected in a listing at the end of the book.

The purpose here is to entice readers to read your story, and to buy your other books. Be succinct, interesting, fun, and different.

I try to tailor my bios to the theme of the anthology. For a Poe-related antho, I crafted a dark bio. For a wing-related antho, I worked in flight words like “soaring,” “uplifting,” and “gliding.” For a cat-related antho, my bio contained cat idioms.

Convention Bio

If you end up speaking at a con, the organizers will likely ask you to submit a bio. Yours will appear in a long list along with bios of other speakers. The purpose is to catch the eye of readers and stimulate them toward attending your panel, session, or signing, and toward buying your books.

Your goal, therefore, is to have the shortest, most impactful bio in the list. Make it irresistible and unique. If the con limits you to 100 words, use half that number, but use 50 enticing words.

Final Bio Thoughts

I know, all you want to do is write stories, not labor over all these bios. But you can simplify the chore by keeping a ‘bio file.’ That makes it easier to tailor an existing one to fit your current needs. Remember to add any new bio you write to your bio file. Also, peruse other author’s bios for inspiration, but don’t copy them.

This needn’t be difficult. You’re a creative writer. Think of a bio as a short, true story about yourself. Surely you can craft a better bio than those of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 8, 2019Permalink

To Fight the Unbeatable Foe

Pole to Pole Publishing just released a new anthology, Re-Terrify: Horrifying Stories of Monsters and More, and it contains a story of mine, “Moonset.” In that tale, my protagonist must “fight an unbeatable foe,” as in the song “The Impossible Dream (the Quest)” from the musical Man of La Mancha.

For Re-Terrify, the publisher wanted reprints, previously published stories that had appeared elsewhere. I’d written a horror story called “Blood in the River” that had appeared in Dead Bait, published by Severed Press.  As written, it was unsuitable for Re-Terrify, so I revised it.

In the story, detectives at an El Paso police department are questioning a murder suspect. The suspect claims to be about four hundred years old and to exist as a kind of vampire. At moonset, he turns into a vampirefish, a candiru. At moonrise, he turns back into a human male. In either state, he is invincible. Once it becomes clear he is telling the truth, the police are faced with the problem of defeating an invulnerable monster.

That much remains the same in both versions of the story. How did I revise it? Aside from changing the title, I changed the protagonist from male to female, fleshed out her role at the police department, heightened the tension, deleted a couple of scenes, and added a more dramatic final scene. 

The real-life candiru is scary enough. It wedges its barbed head into the gills of larger fish and sucks their blood until gorged. The antagonist of my story has that hideous capability in both his forms. In his human shape, he can spring blood-draining barbs from his fingers, and from a lower body part.

Neither bullets nor fist blows affect this villain. Nor do the traditional wards used against vampires. In both his forms, this shape-shifter is invulnerable to any attack.

What is my hero, Kendra Monroe, to do? How do you fight an unbeatable foe?

To find out, you’ll have to buy Re-Terrify and read “Moonset.” I look forward to reading the other stories in this anthology, too. In the meantime, that song from Man of La Mancha is now stuck in my head, and I have nobody to blame except—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 20, 2019Permalink

Re-Launch and Dark Stories

Pole to Pole Publishing has done it again. They’ve launched another new anthology, this one called Re-Launch. It’s chock full of science fiction stories about launches and new beginnings.

Here’s the blurb:

Beginnings are always messy. ~ John Galsworthy

Spacecrafts hurtling toward alien worlds. Second chances for civilizations. First contact. Rebirth. Non-humans looking for a new life. Opportunities for fresh starts and do-overs far from Earth. These stories and more explore the theme of Re-Launch.

Send your imagination into orbit with 18 science fiction tales from an international roster of authors.

Featuring fiction from Douglas Smith, James Dorr, Kris Austen Radcliffe, Eando Bender, Wendy Nikel, Stewart C. Baker, Meriah Crawford, Gregory L. Norris, Jennifer Rachel Baumer, Jonathan Shipley, Vonnie Winslow Crist, Lawrence Dagstine, CB Droege, Jude-Marie Green, Steven R. Southard, Calie Voorhis, Anthony Cardno, and Andrew Gudgel.

Re-Launch reminds readers that new beginnings rarely go as planned and danger waits for the unwary on all worlds.

Yes, that’s my name listed along with those great authors. My story “Target Practice” is in this anthology. In that tale, inmate number 806739 lives in an underwater prison of the future that forces convicts to operate unarmed mini-subs in cat-and-mouse chases against men in armed subs training for battle.

Re-Launch is the science fiction part of the Pole to Pole’s planned Re-Imagined series, along with Re-Quest (fantasy quests and searches), Re-Terrify (monsters) and Re-Enchant (magic and fae).

It’s available for purchase at Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, 24 Symbols, and Scribd.

Also, for those who haven’t yet bought some of Pole to Pole’s previous anthologies, like Hides the Dark Tower, In a Cat’s Eye, and Dark Luminous Wings, you can now purchase all three in a boxed set called Dark Stories. I’m fortunate to have a story in each one of those anthologies.

You’re going to enjoy Re-Launch and Dark Stories. That’s a promise from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 9, 2018Permalink