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

Year of the Cat’s Eye

Meow! Pole-to-Pole Publishing just launched a new anthology, In a Cat’s Eye. And one of my own stories is in it!

catseye_final-72dpiEditors Kelly A. Harmon and Vonnie Winslow Crist have done it again, following up on the success of their previous editorial collaboration, Hides the Dark Tower. This time the theme is cats, those mysterious and independent mammals who recognize no master, but who sometimes permit human contact.

I’m pleased and honored that my story will appear amid those of authors like Jody Lynn Nye, Gail Z. Martin, A.L. Sirois, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Doug C. Souza, Oliver Smith, Jeremy M. Gottwig, K.L. Borrowman, Gregory Norris, Christine Lucas, R.S. Pyne, Joanna Hoyt, Elektra Hammond, A.L. Kaplan, and Alex Shvartsman.

My story is called “The Cats of Nerio-3.” Space outpost Nerio-3 was abandoned fifty years ago after a cosmic ray storm killed all occupants, other than some cats and mice. Now the outpost’s owners have hired Lani Koamalu and PAIGE-8 to reclaim the station. Lani is human, and Paige is an artificially intelligent super-computer who far exceeds people in intelligence…and arrogance. When Paige sends her drones into the outpost and discovers what the mice and cats have been up to, it’s time to find out if humans are so inferior after all.

For back-stories on some of the other tales in this antho, check out this post by Gregory L. Norris.

You can get your copy of In a Cat’s Eye at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes&Noble, Scribd, and other outlets. Get your paws on one now!

This is truly the Year of the Cat. I think songwriter Al Stewart would have to agree with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 23, 2016Permalink

Remembrances of Hallowread 2015

Several authors whose stories appear in Hides the Dark Tower, participated in Hallowread this year.

Here’s yours truly, Hallowread 1Poseidon’s Scribe himself, signing a book for an adoring fan. Either that, or I’m defacing somebody’s copy of the book.

 

 

 

 

Fellow author Hallowread 4M. J. Ritchie spooks the attendees with a section of her story “Soul for Sale.”

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew Hallowread 3Gudgel reads from his story “The Long Road Home,” with Poe’s raven gauging the audience’s reaction.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s beret-topped JHallowread 5eremy M. Gottwig reading his tale “Who Abandon Themselves.”

 

 

 

 

 

Co-editor VHallowread 2onnie Winslow Crist, behind a row of some of her books, entices the audience with a short blurb about every story in Hides the Dark Tower. I don’t have a pic of co-editor Kelly A. Harmon, since she wielded the camera.

 

 

 

 

In the end, it turned out everyone really came for tHallowread 6his:

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s the tastiest book I ever ate,” proclaimed—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 1, 2015Permalink

Upcoming Anthology – Hides the Dark Tower

My short story, “Ancient Spin,” will appear in the anthology Hides the Dark Tower, scheduled to appear in October. It’s a new publisher, Pole-to-Pole Publishing, and I think this is their first anthology.

Hides the Dark Tower-Purchased_Artwork_72pxThe anthology’s editors, Kelly A. Harmon and Vonnie Winslow Crist, have been great to work with. They’ve selected a stunning piece of artwork for the cover, don’t you think?

The anthology features stories involving towers. There’s just something about towers. They represent man’s attempt to reach the heavens. Viewed from the ground, they’re mysterious and imposing. From the top, they provide a view that makes you feel commanding and godlike.

By now, you’re wondering where that title, Hides the Dark Tower, comes from. Glad you asked. It’s from the poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” by Robert Browning. Here are two of the 34 verses (italics are mine):

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guess’d what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

Browning, in turn, spun off his poem from Shakespeare’s King Lear, so maybe all literature just builds on other works, like bricks upon bricks. Like a tower.

As I mentioned, the anthology comes out this fall, and I’ll provide more details and reminders as the date nears. Looking down upon you all from the newly constructed, sky-scraping, world-record-holding tower here at Poseidon’s Scribe Enterprises, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe