Announcing Ghost Hunting Anthology HAUNTED

Haunted CoverI am thrilled to announce that a ghost hunting themed anthology entitled HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror will be debuting this week on DriveThruHorror.com and DriveThruRPG.com. Matt M McElroy, the publisher and editor-in-chief of FlamesRising.com, has released a press release about the HAUNTED anthology from FR Press.

As editor of this ghostly collection, I can’t say enough amazing things about this talented group of authors. They were a joy to work with and I love each one of these spooky tales mightily for different reasons.

Many of these writers have websites and I encourage you to visit them online and check out their works! I’ll post another announcement when the book is available to purchase. It will be offered in both digital and print formats. Jason L Blair did an amazing job laying out the book!

HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror

Table of Contents

Introduction by Jaeson K. Jrakman, Ghost Hunter

Editor’s Afterword by Monica Valentinelli

October 3, 2011
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Guest Blog Post: Brozek on Editing Anthologies

Readers, I asked Jennifer Brozek to offer a guest blog today. Jennifer is an editor, writer and a game designer who has recently done some work through Apex Books and Morrigan Books. This post is about her perspective on editing a fiction anthology. I know that many of you are looking for places to submit your short stories, and anthologies can be a great opportunity for you. Be sure to read Jennifer’s bio if you’re interested in learning more about her, too. Without further ado, I’ll turn this post over now to my esteemed guest…

Monica was curious about how editing an anthology is different than editing a story, a novel or something like marketing copy for Amazon that pays-the-bills for us full-time authors. In essence, editing an anthology is the same as any other editing with one big difference: all of the short stories need to blend with each other to make the overall theme of the anthology flow into a cohesive storyline.

I would liken it to putting together a string of freshwater pearls. Each pearl must be a beauty on its own – just like each story in the anthology must be perfect on its own. The technical writing has to be excellent, the story itself must be interesting and each story must adhere to the theme, genre and word count of the anthology in question.

Once you have all of the pearls for the necklace, you need to string them together in such a way that, when hanging together, all of the pearls become a necklace that is more than the sum of their parts. Just like an anthology becomes more than just the sum of the individual stories. No one pearl can stand out in a way that interrupts the flow of the string. It cannot be too big, the wrong shape or the wrong color. Just like all of the stories must have a sense of an overall cohesion. Each story is telling a part of a bigger story. There is no room for rogues in an anthology.

This is what makes editing an anthology so difficult. All of the stories must play nice together. None of them can introduce a plot point that will throw off any of the other stories. In the GRANTS PASS anthology (Morrigan Books, August 2009), we had to be very strict on how the world was destroyed by nature and where specific bioterrorists plagues were released.

One story could not mention volcanic eruptions in the Hawaiian Islands while the stories set in California neglected to mention ash haze. Neither could one story state that an earthquake split the Americas in half while other stories described people traversing the Americas on foot. All of the stories were in the same shared universe. The details matter.

In other anthologies, like monster anthologies about vampires, werewolves or zombies, there needs to be a cohesive and consistent story background on how the monster is defined. Are they non-brain eating Voodoo zombies, slow moving Romero zombies or fast moving Synder zombies? An anthology editor must consider the overall project and what it is they want from the anthology as a whole.

That is why reading and understanding the submission guidelines for anthologies is so important. You may turn in a beautiful story that would have been perfect if everyone else had the same vision you did. But if your story does not fit well into a collection you will be rejected every time.

About Jennifer Brozek

Jennifer Brozek, the creator and co-editor of the Grants Pass anthology (Aug 2009, Morrigan Books), is a freelance author for many RPG companies including Margaret Weis Productions, Rogue Games and Catalyst Game Labs. Her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Castlemourn, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun and Serenity. She has also co-authored three books including Dragonvarld Adventures with Margaret Weis. She is published in several anthologies, is the creator and editor of the semi-prozine, The Edge of Propinquity, and is a submissions editor for the Apex Book Company. When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. You can learn more about her by visiting her blog at http://jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com.

June 16, 2009
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Lessons in Personal Branding: Day Four

In today’s tips about nurturing your personal brand, I’d like to share with you some more tips that I hope you’ll find useful to your career as a writer.

16. Try Not to Hold a Grudge

Have you ever been in a situation where another writer said something nasty about you? What about a project that you’ve worked on for years but never got paid? It is extremely easy to get into situations where two people engage in grudge matches, especially when one (or the other) party ceases communication.

There is no magic bullet to avoiding a grudge with someone because sometimes, there is a legitimate reason why someone would feel the way they do. I try very hard to keep open lines of communication as much as possible and (while some people don’t) I do believe in resolving serious issues face-to-face or on the phone whenever possible. My philosophy is that life is way too short to be miserable. Grudges, unfortunately, affect more than just the two parties involved. Resolve your differences, even if you “agree to disagree” so you can remain a professional.

17. Engage in Friendly Competition

Writing can be very competitive, so why not turn that into a fun activity? Have a writing “word count” contest with your peers or generate some friendly “plot seed” competitions to spark your creativity. If you’re a very competitive person, sometimes the answer to satisfying your natural tendency is to look for healthy ways to compete with your peers in a friendly way rather than alienate them.

Unhealthy competition can be pretty dangerous because you can open yourself up to a lot of criticism — especially if you target other writers in your field. The thing to keep in mind about competition is that it’s natural to wonder if you’re “better” than another writer. That thought used to hit me when I was a lot younger, but I’ve since learned it’s pretty silly to think that way. There are PLENTY of writing opportunities to go around. Even if you wrote four books a year, think about how many are released through publishers every month!

18. Keep in Mind Editing is a Separate Skill

Did you know that there are as many forms of editing as there are writing styles? If you ask ten different people what editing is, they’ll probably tell you ten, different things. From content editing to proofreading, editing encompasses a broad range of skills that require a sharp eye.

I like to think about editing in this fashion: If a writer creates content, it’s an editor’s job to polish the content so it shines. It’s often very hard for a writer to edit his (or her) own work for that reason. Sometimes, you’re just too much in love with the words you’ve written to be able to see errors.

For more about editing, you can read these previous posts I had written:

19. Write What You Enjoy Writing

Have you ever gotten a gift that you absolutely hated? Were you enthusiastic about what you received? As any writer will tell you, sometimes it’s really hard to focus on assignments that are an absolute chore to complete. When you’re happy writing what you want to write, you’ll not only end up writing more than what you had originally intended, the quality will often be better as a result. That’s a product any writer can be proud of!

20. Read Blogs, Books by Other Writers

One of the ways that you can keep in touch with other writers is to support what they’re working on. From blogs to novels, I can’t stress enough how invaluable it is to read other publications. Staying on top of book trends or blogs can help foster discussion, provide you with a basis for better decision-making, help you brainstorm and more!

I find that reading books and blogs by other writers helps ensure that I have multiple perspectives on topics, which is essential to intelligent decision-making for anything I do in business. These multiple perspectives ensure that I’m optimistic and realistic about my writing and how I approach myself as a “brand.”

First Three Days in this Personal Branding Series for Writers

February 26, 2009
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Fiction Editing: the Do’s and Don’ts of Editing Professionally

Now that I have some time this week to post, I’m going to pick up where I left off when I was discussing editing. Recently, we’ve talked about what an editor does and what the difference is between content editing and copy editing. Now I’d like to talk specifically about fiction, because the fiction process is one that’s important to understand both on the writer’s side, but also on the editor’s.

DOs and DON’Ts of Being an Editor

    Don’t: Reject someone’s work because they have no experience.
    Do: Reject the work if the quality isn’t up to par.
    Read More…
August 5, 2008
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Editing 101: What Does an Editor Do?

Editing 101Congratulations! You’ve just finished your project or story. Now what?

Well, you’re probably going to want to read through it again, and make changes before you make your final submission.

The tendency for inexperienced authors is to either give their writing a “once-over” before they submit it or send a copy to their friend, parent, or boyfriend to look it over. These writers will often believe that they’ve taken on the role of an editor to polish their work, but have they?

Let’s look at this from a different aspect. You are writing an article for a newspaper and let’s say you have some experience doing so. You’re working within tight deadlines, and to make sure you’re fitting within the style guidelines for your article you revise some text. Is this editing?

Semantically, “revisions” and “editing” may seem the same, but they’re really not. When a writer re-reads his (or her) work to make changes: that may qualify as a “revision.” An editor’s role is often multi-layered and the professional ones often wear many hats–regardless of the industry the editor is working in.

An Editor’s Role

What does an editor do? Well, many editors look at the work from a 10,000 foot view once it’s submitted, to ensure that the content fits the goal of the publication. Let’s look at an example of how this might work. Say you’ve been hired by a non-profit agency to write a grant proposal. Once your work has been submitted, an editor will read it over to ensure that it meshes with the business’ expectations of what a proposal should look like, and whether or not it best represents their agency. In this way, a professional editor is required to understand the market not from an individual “project” perspective, but from an aggregate view of those projects.
Read More…

June 17, 2008
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