Tag Archives: Anthologies

How to Write for Anthologies

If you write short stories, consider writing for anthologies. I know a great how-to book to get you started.

Perhaps you’d like to write fiction, but don’t know where to start or what to write about. Or maybe you’ve been writing what you want and can’t sell it, and now you’re wondering what you could write and sell.

Anthologies might be your answer. That market puts out numerous and constant calls for submissions. Anthology editors beg for your short stories and give you a prompt—a subject to write about. No wonder so many authors get their start writing for anthologies. It worked for me.

But the antho market offers no guarantees. After writing and getting rejected, you might become discouraged.

That’s where this book comes in. How to Write for Anthologies And Make More Money With Your Writing by Kelly A. Harmon and Vonnie Winslow Crist (of Pole to Pole Publishing) offers practical and actionable advice about this sort of writing.

Kelly and Vonnie take you through all the steps including finding anthology markets, coming up with story ideas, submitting your story, dealing with rejections, understanding contracts, dealing with editors, and more. They also include appendices with helpful sample query letters and cover letters.

You may undergo an interesting transformation as you read the book. Bit by bit, you’ll find yourself thinking less like a part-time scribbler or writing hobbyist, and more like a professional author. That attitude shift will serve you well.

Even if you’re more experienced, with several stories already published in anthologies, this book will help you, too. It provides guidance on how to gather all your stories and publish them as collections. In addition, you’ll learn about opportunities to move beyond writing into editing the works of others.

I’m honored to have contributed the foreword for this book. It’s a valuable resource written by experts in every facet of anthologies. As I mentioned in the foreword, ‘This book does about everything except write and submit your story for you.’ But you’ll find those two tasks much easier after you’ve read How to Write for Anthologies.

If only the book had existed early in the story-writing career of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 16, 2023Permalink

Where to Get Your Best Story Prompts

What inspires you to write your stories? A picture, a song, an idea, a TV show, a movie, an article you read, an event in your life or someone else’s?

Perhaps you’ve drawn inspiration from varied sources. You may be wondering which of these sources resulted in your best stories. If you knew that answer, you could dip your mental bucket into that well more often. There’s a way to find out.

First, look over your collection of stories. Rate them in order from best to worst. Now list the source that inspired each story beside the appropriate title in your list. Does a single source dominate the top of your list? That should be your go-to source for inspiration.

I surveyed my 31 published short stories. Here is the breakdown of the inspiration sources: anthologies—10, historical research—10, critique group discussion—4, movies—2, book—1, TV show—1, song lyrics—1, family—1, and SF convention—1.

After rating my stories from best to worst using the pair-wise comparison method (a painful task, since I love them all), I found 6 of the top 10 owe their genesis to calls for submission to anthologies. That is, an anthology publisher put out a call for submission, the subject intrigued me, and I wrote a story. Of my 10 worst stories, no single prompt dominated that list.

I’d be tempted to conclude that anthologies spark my best stories, and, if so, I’d be advised to continue to look for those possibilities.

However, I’m trying to grow as a writer. Neither my current work in progress nor any of my recently written, unpublished stories found inspiration from anthologies.

If you try this exercise, perhaps the results will turn out differently for you and prove more useful to your writing. For me, I’ve decided to remain open to all sources of inspiration. When my muse nags me about an idea, I’ll listen to her and write that story, no matter what prompted it.

Who knows what source will inspire your next story? It could be anything. The world is full of ideas, plenty enough for you, and for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 15, 2022Permalink

Status of Two Anthos

You writers have been busy! In turn, your writing has been keeping me busy, as a co-editor for two different anthologies at the same time. Here’s a quick update on the two books I’ve been involved with, in good news/bad news format.

First, the bad news. Pole to Pole Publishing is cancelling its planned Re-Enlist anthology. I was co-editing this one along with a wonderful friend, author, and editor, Kelly A. Harmon. The book was to include futuristic/military/dark reprint stories. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive enough suitable stories to fill the anthology.

Many thanks to those who did submit stories. Among them were some great tales.

On the bright side, no one can keep Pole to Pole Publishing down for long. They plan to come up with new calls for submissions for future anthologies soon, and they’ll be announced here. It’s even possible that I’ll get to be involved as a co-editor again.

Now for the good news. The open submissions window for the anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne just closed, and we got a flood of submissions. By a flood, I mean 120, way above what I expected, and they included many wonderful stories. I’m part of the editing team for this book, and we’re busy choosing which stories to take.

I also thank all those who submitted to that anthology. So many good tales, and we’ll have to make some tough decisions. We can’t take them all.

This anthology is being sponsored by the North American Jules Verne Society, and the society’s leadership was pleased to learn of the huge response by writers who took the time to write and send their stories. It demonstrates the lasting impact Jules Verne’s novels continue to have on people today.

If all goes well, that anthology will be published later this year, and I’ll announce that event on this blog.

Although I continue to write my own fiction, I figured it was time to give you a status update from the editing desk of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 9, 2021Permalink

Win a Prize by Reviewing Books!

Talk about burying the lead. I announced a huge, new prize-winning opportunity for you, but I put it at the end of my last blogpost on August 9th. What was I thinking?

Here’s how the Pole to Pole Publishing Book Review Event works:

  1. Read 20,000 Leagues Remembered and other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies.
  2. Write reviews of the anthologies you read.
  3. Post the reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, your blog, and any other public online forum.
  4. Email links to your reviews to Pole to Pole Publishing at submissions[at]poletopolepublishing.com.
  5. Each posted review earns 1 point, but reviews of 20,000 Leagues Remembered earn 2 points each.
  6. The person earning the most points will win three (3) books of the winner’s choice from Pole to Pole Publishing, in either ebook or paperback format. The winner may choose any Pole to Pole Publishing books as prizes, not just the anthologies.

Fine print: to count toward the prize, reviews must be posted between June 20 and September 30, 2020. You must email Pole to Pole Publishing with your review links on or before October 3, 2020. Editors of 20,000 Leagues Remembered reserve the right to judge what constitutes a legitimate review (write a few sentences, please; a ‘stars-only’ review doesn’t count). Authors of stories appearing in P2P anthologies are eligible to participate. Anthologies to review are: Hides the Dark Tower, In a Cat’s Eye, Dark Luminous Wings, Not Far From Roswell, Re-Launch, Re-Quest, Re-Terrify, Re-Enchant, Re-Haunt, and 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Winners will be contacted via email.

Why are you still reading this blogpost? You have book reviews to do! You already know how this post ends, just like all posts by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 20, 2020Permalink

8 Editing Facts Every Writer Should Know

Until recently, I had been a writer like you, churning out stories and submitting them before Oz, the Great and Powerful…er, I mean editors.

I just co-edited a book myself for the first time and I learned a few things. Today, I’ll pull back the curtain and show you what I found out. Some editors might tell you to pay no attention to the mere mortal behind that curtain, but not me. Perhaps the following nuggets of wisdom will help you as you write and submit stories.

  1. Get away from your gender planet. I’ll try to put this delicately. In 2020, I assumed women weren’t from Venus anymore and men weren’t from Mars. That is, I assumed female writers had gotten beyond long descriptions of characters’ apparel and deep explorations of relationships with no real plotline. Likewise, male writers were well past stories filled with violence and action, peopled with stereotype characters who speak in monosyllables. I thought we’d transcended all that. Nope. Without looking at a writer’s name, I could generally tell the gender in the first couple of paragraphs. My advice—bend your writing toward the other gender’s planet.
  • Don’t expect your poorly written good idea to sell. Occasionally, we’d get a story with a wonderful premise, engaging plotline, and compelling characters, and we’d really want to accept it. Unfortunately, the work suffered from grammar mistakes, plot holes, anachronisms, and other problems. As editors, we’d have to weigh the time required for thorough editing, as well as the back-and-forth communication with the writer, against the idea of accepting a different story that was almost as good but had far fewer mistakes. Self-edit your story with care before submission.
  • Don’t throw junk at the wall. If the submission guidelines state the editors are looking for stories inspired by Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, send a story like that. We received more than one story way, way outside those bounds. As a new editor, I read every submission all the way through. For some, I kept hoping as I read that there’d be some connection, some reference, some link to Verne or submarines, but no. What a waste of the writer’s time, not to mention mine.
  • Learn to write a cover letter. Luckily, there’s not much to learn. If the submission guidelines tell you what the editor wants in your cover letter, follow those. If not, here are my guidelines: (a) No spelling or grammar mistakes. If you can’t get the cover letter right, the editor will have little hope for your story. (b) Just include relevant facts about yourself, things that connect to your story. If you’re sending fiction, don’t list your non-fiction and poetry credits. If you have no relevant credentials yet, don’t stretch what you have to fit. (c) Shorter is better, by far. If your cover letter bores an editor, there’s little hope for your story. If you can get away with no cover letter at all, do that. If all you say is “Please consider my story, ‘<title>’ for your anthology,” that’s fine too.
  • Follow submission guidelines. Sure, it stinks that every editor has her own filename structure, font rules, quote mark guidance, page formatting, etc. Yes, it would be easier if they all agreed on the same submission process. We don’t live in that world yet. Just read and follow each editor’s rules. Better that than to give the editor a good reason to reject your story.
  • Understand that rejections aren’t only hard on the writer. Boy, I hated having my stories rejected, until I learned to get over it and keep submitting. But it’s actually worse from the editorial side. Several stories were on the borderline, really close to getting accepted for our anthology. It broke my heart to reject them. Not much advice here, but just realize that you’ll never know how difficult it was for an editor to reject your submission. Even if they tell you, it won’t help much. Just pick yourself up and submit that story elsewhere.
  • Aim for a smooth author-editor relationship. After acceptance, be positive and professional in all your communication with the editor. If an editor recommends changes to your story, consider them dispassionately before exploding. You can push back against changes where you disagree, but explain your reasoning when you do. In the mission of making your story the best it can be, you and the editor are on the same team.
  • Help with marketing. If your story is accepted by a small press, understand that they won’t have a marketing team. They’ll appreciate any advertising help you can provide, including promoting the anthology on social media, interviewing the other authors on your blog or having them guest-post, and posting a review of the anthology.  

Now that I’ve given you a peek behind the curtain, you’ve got the brains, heart, and courage to find a good home for your story. All granted by that great and powerful wizard—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 16, 2020Permalink

Launch Day!

Today’s the day! It’s launch day for the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book was 150 years in the making.

Let me explain. The first publication of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was in serial form. It appeared in two-week intervals in a magazine, the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Starting on March 20, 1869, the magazine printed a chapter or two in each issue, concluding on June 20, 1870.

The first time the public could read the novel from beginning to end was on that Wednesday in June, the first day of summer, precisely 150 years ago today.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial, Pole to Pole Publishing presents 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology of works by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s literary masterpiece. Along with the Senior Editor, Kelly A. Harmon, I co-edited the book. It’s the first book I’ve ever edited.

What will you get when you buy this book? You’ll enjoy sixteen short stories, each paying homage to the Father of Science Fiction and his novelized underwater voyage. They span the spectrum from adventures set at a time contemporary with Verne’s tale, to more thoughtful historical pieces exploring various aspects of the novel, to stories set in our present day, to others that defy easy categorization.

Our table of contents includes:
“The Ghost of Captain Nemo” by J. Woolston Carr,
“Water Whispers” by Gregory L. Norris,
“At Strange Depths” by Jason J. McCuiston,
“The Maelstrom” by Maya Chhabra,
“The Game of Hare and Hounds” by Stephen R. Wilk,
“Recruiter” by Andrew Gudgel,
“Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly,
“The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson,
“Fools Rush In” by Allison Tebo,
“An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd,
“A Concurrent Process” by Corrie Garrett,
“Homework Help From No One” by Demetri Capetanopoulos,
“Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle,
“Last Year’s Water” by Nikoline Kaiser,
“Farragut’s Gambit” by M.W. Kelly, and
“Raise the Nautilus” by Eric Choi.

It’s not necessary to have read Verne’s book first. You can still enjoy these stories on their own. You might gain a deeper appreciation of them if you dive into the original first, though. For dedicated Verne scholars, be aware that some of our authors scattered ‘easter eggs’ in their stories for you—little references (some quite obscure) that will make you smile.

Where, you’re wondering, can you get your own copy of this book? I thought you’d never ask. It’s available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  

We’ll launch a paperback version as soon as we can, likely in a month or two. If you read my blogposts or follow me on social media, you won’t miss that announcement.

As Ned Land said, “Professor Aronnax…You talk about some future day… I’m talking about now.” Now, as in today. Launch day. After 150 years, the Nautilus sails again, thanks to Kelly A. Harmon and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2020Permalink

Why You Bound Out of Bed

The reason you scramble out of bed each day, wide-eyed and raring to go, is simple. You’ve got things to do. More specifically, you have goals to achieve. As Snuffy Smith always said, “time’s a’wastin’!”

What’s that? You don’t bound out of bed? You (shudder) don’t have any goals?

Hoo boy. We’ve got to talk.

There is enormous power in the practice of committing to goals. There are also numerous side benefits for you, incidental to achieving the goal itself.

I’ll offer two examples from my life. Many years ago, my younger sister called me; she was excited because she’d decided to train for, and run, a marathon. Prior to her call, I’d given no thought to running a marathon myself. After that brief phone call, I was committed.

I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C., at that time about nine months in the future. I bought a book about training for a marathon and followed its plan, including maintaining a running log. Often during that year, I thought I’d never be ready in time. However, I knew the Marines were unlikely to postpone their race just to accommodate me. Still, I ran and finished the race.

As a second example, I recognized, about a year ago, that June 20, 2020, will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I set a goal of launching, on that exact date, a sesquicentennial anthology honoring Verne’s novel. I’ve never co-edited an anthology before, but goals should push you outside your comfort zone, beyond your known limits. They should be big, audacious, and grand.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

So far, progress toward that goal has been good. Things are proceeding well. We’ve received wonderful stories and look forward to publishing the anthology on time.

Enough about me. What about your goals?

According to this article by Anya Kamenetz, there are mental and physical health benefits to setting and achieving goals. A University of Toronto study showed performance in school improved for all ethnic groups and genders of students who wrote down and worked toward goals.

When you decide to set a goal, I believe it’s important to write it down, not just memorize it. Performing that simple act:

  • Cements the goal and affirms your commitment to it;
  • Gives direction and meaning to your actions;
  • Paints a picture, a vision, of the future to which you aspire;
  • Creates an urge within you that prods you to achieve daily progress and nags you when you fall behind;
  • Helps you overcome setbacks, laziness, disenchantments, and obstacles;
  • Provides immense satisfaction when every milestone and the final goal are met;
  • Boosts confidence in your ability to achieve; and
  • Spurs you on to setting a new goal after each achieved one.

What’s that you say? You have a problem with the entire ‘goal’ concept? You say you don’t set goals anymore because you feel bad about yourself when you fall short?

Well, you may not achieve all your goals. I haven’t met all the goals I’ve set either. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up over failures. Missing a goal doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

Learn what you can from that failure and set another goal. Consider a smaller one, easier to achieve. Celebrate when you achieve it. You’ll build your confidence one win at a time.  

Pretty soon you’ll be bounding out of bed each day, just like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 17, 2020Permalink

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

2 Indispensable Sites for All Short Story Writers

Well, I’ve found these two sites to be a great help to me over the years.  It would have been a great deal more difficult to find markets for my first short stories without them.  I’m talking about Duotrope and Ralan.

Duotrope is a dynamic, online database of fiction and poetry markets.  You’ve written a story and need to find out who might be looking for stories of your type.  Go to Duotrope, enter search terms such as genre, subgenre, number of words, payscale (pro, semi-pro, token, or non-paying) and your choice of a few others to narrow your search, then click Search.  You’ll see a list of potential markets for your story.  Clicking on any of the markets takes you to a Duotrope page with details about the market, with links to the market’s website, any restrictions on submissions, and statistics such as response time and acceptance rate.  Those statistics come from regular writers submitting their experiences to Duotrope, not from the markets themselves.

Before Duotrope, writers would go to the library to look at a reference book called Writer’s Market, published annually.  I do recommend the book, but Duotrope is online and free.  If you find Duotrope helps you connect with a market, you should contribute some money to them to help sustain their operation.

Using Duotrope, you can come up with a prioritized list of where you’ll send your story.  That list is tailored to your story so you’re not wasting your time, or some editor’s, with sending a story not suited to that market.

One more thing.  Duotrope is not just for short story writers, like me.  It’s also for novelists and poets too.

The other site I recommend is Ralan.  It’s operated by an author writing under the name Ralan Conley.  The full name of the site is Ralan’s SpecFic and Humor Webstravaganza.  SpecFic is Speculative Fiction.

There are several interesting features of this website to explore, but the part I used most is Antho.  That section can keep you up to date on what short story anthologies are looking for submissions.  You’ll see each open anthology listed, a general description, any limitations on submissions, pay scale, and a link to the market’s website about the anthology.

I’ve blogged about writing for anthologies before, and now you know where to find the information to get you started.  It’s fun, every now and then, to check the Antho list at Ralan to see what the anthology markets are looking for.  Every so often, this exercise will spark an idea for a story.  So in that sense this site can help at both ends of the writing process, both before and after the story is written.

Duotrope and Ralan are crucial resources for a beginning writer in providing guidance about where to market your stories, and even getting a sense of market trends.  Have you used them and have an experience to share, or are there other sites you’ve found helpful?  Send comments to–

                                                                         Poseidon’s Scribe

 

January 22, 2012Permalink

Aiming for the Anthos

You’ve heard anthologies are a way to break into the writing business, but you’re not sure whether, or how, to submit?  Well, you’ve surfed to the right blog.  This is an area where Poseidon’s Scribe has some experience.  Seven of my stories are published in anthologies.

An anthology is a collection of stories, often sharing something in common and usually written by a variety of contributing writers.  Anthologies appeal to readers because they can sample the writing of unfamiliar authors and enjoy a smorgasbord of different styles.  Publishers like anthologies because readers like to pay for them, payment to authors tends to be low, and sometimes anthologies can sell very well.

Why do authors write for them?  For beginning writers, anthologies may just be the easiest way to get a story in print and to start establishing writing credentials.  Also, sometimes the theme is so compelling you just feel the urge to write that story!  An anthology can be the very thing you need to break out of a writing slump.

In a future blog post, I’ll discuss how to find out about upcoming anthologies.  For now, let’s assume you’ve just read a publisher’s call for stories to fill an anthology.  This one’s looking for tales that involve musk oxen, the theme of the anthology.  As you surf the publisher’s website you see they usually publish horror, and that’s not a genre that interests you.  So you ignore that call for stories and move on.

Then a day or two goes by and you find you can’t stop thinking about musk oxen.  Your brain keeps re-chewing the mental cud of numerous story lines.    Some of the ideas might even make good horror stories.  What’s going on?  Your muse is offering you a deal  If you can stampede away from your comfort zone, then your muse agrees to whisper a steady stream of musk oxen story ideas, scenes, plot lines, and characters.

So you sit down to write a story about a musk ox.  Of the various ideas roaming the fields of your mind, which one do you pick?  Here’s my view.  Don’t select the most obvious one, or two.  Other writers will have grazed those grasses already and that lessens the chance of the editor accepting your story.  I suggest aiming for the edge of the anthology’s theme.  Look for a different angle, a thematic twist that will make your story unique.  Ensure your story idea still fits within the anthology’s rules, but just within the border of those rules.  Also, consider if you could market your story elsewhere, should your story get rejected for this anthology.

You finish your story and now you’re checking the anthology’s rules one more time before submitting.  Here’s something you missed before.  “Payment for this anthology will be hardened, dried musk ox droppings (or monetary equivalent).”  What the–?  Payment for anthologies is often low.  Still, if you’re a beginning writer, payment is not the most important thing for you right now.  Exposure is; getting a story in print is; establishing a writing credential is.  Plus you never know when an anthology can really take off.

The scenario above happened to me.  When I saw the call for horror stories involving fish, I skipped right over it.  My muse didn’t.  She wouldn’t let go, even when I explained to her I don’t write horror stories and asked her who would buy such a book.  Are there really that many fishermen out there who enjoy horror stories?  Shows what I know about what appeals to the public!  Dead Bait by Severed Press, in which my story “Blood in the River” appears, remains the best-selling anthology of which I’m a part.  Who knew?

For you publishers, the idea of a musk ox anthology is free for the taking, and please don’t credit me with it!  For you writers, please understand I am not publishing an anthology. Do not send any musk ox stories to…

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 19, 2011Permalink