And, finally ... Stephen Thompson, Editor

I hope you’ve been enjoying the various guest posts that have been up over the last several days. I know I have! Nearly all the contributors to the anthology responded, and two ladies who write along the same lines. Thanks to everyone who has written on the Great Raven about their fiction; if you’ve enjoyed, why not follow it up by buying the book, if you haven’t already, either paper copy or ebook? I am still hoping for a couple of interviews - stand by - but tonight I am going to round off the celebration of Mythic Resonance with a post that tells you how it all came together and why.  Take it away, Stephen!

The Specusphere was originally set up with the intent of becoming a print magazine. However the economics of it were beyond our capacity. So, we’ve always had it in mind to do some hard copy publishing somewhere along the line.

When we finally decided to do an anthology, we needed to find a theme that all the editors were happy to be involved in. Our interests in the genre are diverse; some of us preferred high fantasy, another tended to romance and another embraced more supernatural elements. How were we to accommodate these tastes?

After a few rounds of email contact, it emerged that we all enjoyed reading myths and legends. Myths, legends, folk tales, urban myths, etc, are the basic building blocks of speculative fiction. It seemed a good idea to follow that path.

However, myths and legends and folk tales are, by their very nature, deeply entwined into popular culture. They exist because they deal with ancient archetypes. To write a new myth is probably an impossible task, because the story needs time to be absorbed into our culture. 

We thought along terms of re-writing myths, giving the myth a new, speculative slant. That could work! We went live. 

As stories rolled in, it became apparent that there were other problems associated with writing myths, not least being the appropriation of Indigenous myths. I took legal advice on this and was advised to reject such stories unless it was accompanied by a message from the appropriate elder of the tribe who ‘owned’ the myth. It’s a long story that one, but essentially it boils down to an Aboriginal sense of ownership, thus, in a sense, we’d be involved in plagiarism if we published Indigenous myths. 

The next problem we faced was, sad to say, writer intransigence. 

Our strategy called for us to tentatively accept stories that we thought were encouraging, with the intent of editing them into something we thought was publishable. On three occasions, we accepted stories but were faced with an author who refused to have their story edited – if we’d accepted it, surely it was already good enough, was one response. These stories were then rejected.

By the time the submission period ended we had about 20 stories that we thought had potential. With the anthology limited to 50,000 words, some stories had to miss out. The editors all chose their favorite, and then we nominated our best of the rest. We ended up with 13 stories, all of which I think have merit. It’s a reflection of editors’ tastes that the collection is somewhat eclectic, but I think that adds to the appeal of the anthology.

Would we do it again? Yes. Let me reveal here – omg a scoop! – that we have considered a second anthology with the theme of muses and mentors, again referencing our  penchant for mythology and Joseph Campbell’s work on the hero’s journey. Perhaps later anthologies will follow this journey and use themes about archetypes or crossing thresholds or returning with the elixir. We’ll wait and see.

All the editors at The Specusphere learnt a great deal from the process. It was an interesting journey, personally and as a team, and I’d encourage budding editors to get involved with an anthology, either at The Specusphere or elsewhere. It is great experience.

Stephen is a freelance editor, and has been involved in writing in many different forms for most of his adult life, in free-form prose, short fiction, novels, scriptwriting, government reports, essays. His first poem was published in 1978. He read poems at the inaugural Festival of Sydney and wrote songs for a blues band in the late 70s. His publication credits include short fiction in anthologies in Australia, England, US, and NZ; a self-published novel called Gilgamesh (see esstee media site for reviews and excerpts); two radio dramas; and a short film for SBS.

He has a diploma in editing and publishing. He formed esstee media in 2003. The website is at www.essteemedia.com

Getting hooked on small press

I've just come back from another con with another small press collection - this time, Ticonderoga Press's More Scary Kisses. I bought several small-press books at Swancon, others at Aussiecon 4 - locally published volumes of short stories by some terrific writers. I've been getting hooked on these anthologies. There's something wonderful about opening a crisp new collection of stories which are a mix of big-name writers and others I have either just discovered or have read only in other small-press books and magazines. I'm becoming a big fan of, among others, Thoraiya Dyer, whose beautiful stories have appeared in our own Andromeda Spaceways (one in the new issue, which I've just received) and Stephen Dedman, whose collection Never Seen By Waking Eyes has a lot of my favourite stories and some I missed when they first came out. I've delighted over the collection of New Ceres stories, New Ceres Nights, and Dirk Flinthart's New Ceres novella Angel Rising (Ninja! Nuns!) and those delightful Agog collections. I have a stack of them by my bed, waiting their turn to be opened and loved.

One of the stories in More Scary Kisses, "The Sword Of Darcy", was submitted to ASIM. I got it in slush and thought it was a hoot. It got as far as the slushpool, but alas, nobody took it before it dropped off the list. It's just not possible to take every delightful story in the pool - there are only so many we can publish and each issue has to have balance. So i was glad to see it had found a home and enjoyed the re-read as much as I did the first time around.

The big publishers don't do a lot of anthologies and, with some exceptions, the few they do tend to be either re-prints or stuff by big-name writers. It's possible to experiment more in small press and those people published in it can eventually put together a collection of their own and - who knows? - sell something book-length to a big publisher.

Meanwhile, we can all enjoy. I'm off to curl up with More Scary Kisses.

Writing, small press and technology

I seem to have gotten into such a nice discussion with Adelaide about technology, I thought it might be better to do a post than continue with the comments chatter.

Recently, I did a panel on small press at the Continuum 5 SF convention. On my way to the panel, I found a lot of tables in the dealers' room, all selling small press science fiction books. That, of course, included my own, the Andromeda table.

Small press has been around for a very long time,as I remember from my early days in SF fandom. In Australia we had several, over the years - Norstrilia, Aphelion, Corey and Collins to name just a few off the top of my head. And those are just the ones that did books.

They worked hard and got their stuff printed and they published writers and artists who went on to become famous. Sean Tan, who did art for Aurealis when he was very young, has become an award-winner with many books under his belt.

But since computers became available to everyone who wanted them and then the Internet arrived, it has become a lot easier to publish. There's do-it-yourself desktop publishing that lets you do something that looks good without worrying about hiring someone to do the layout, and publishing on-line and artists can submit their work overseas if they want, by email; we commission plenty of overseas artists to do work for Andromeda Spaceways, both covers and internals, and we don't have to wait days and days for it to arrive and worry about whether it might have been damaged on the way. I remember the wonderful Marilyn Pride telling me once that she couldn't send her work overseas because publishers had tight deadlines. Well, Andromeda is done entirely on-line, until the printer gets the hard-copy to us. We meet on-line, slush on-line, edit and receive the finished product on-line; I've never even met most of the Andromeda co-op members.

Technologically, it is a wonderful time for small press to flourish. And technology means I no longer have to re-type entire manuscripts. Mind you, I do copy and paste into a new file when I am going to edit, so any future university academic who wants to do a PhD on the works of Sue Bursztynski - if any - will have no problem accessing my original MSS.

My last few books have been done almost entirely on computer, the editing done by email. I do like to meet editors, but there are some I have never met at all. My second editor, Sarah Brenan, was just a voice on the phone to me till after I had handed in the full manuscript of Potions To Pulsars: Women Doing Science, although I must admit it was a little before the time of email for me; we exchanged letters.

Research has become easier for me since the Internet. I do still use plenty of books, but because I am a librarian I can understand the difference between a good site and one that isn't likely to be of use, and it's amazing what you can find on the web. My book Rolling Right Along, a history of the wheel, included a chapter on the Ferris wheel, with a description of what the builder's wife was wearing at the launch. "Are you sure?" asked my editor. I was fairly sure, because my Internet research had unearthed a newspaper article written at the time by someone who was there. The World Wide Web is, for me, a massive library on the other side of the screen, just waiting for good researchers to use it properly.

For my book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, I did research in books, web sites and newspapers. Many of those newspapers were on-line archives. Only a few years ago, I would have had to go to the State Library and spend the evening hunting through microfilm - and I would have had to know exactly what I was looking for and when it happened before starting. Now I just need some keywords - well, duh - librarian! Pity the newspapers are planning to start charging to view their sites.

Now I'm off to do something a bit less technological - I am spending the rest of the day researching guitars for a possible book on musical instruments, and reading photocopies and printouts somewhere quiet with coffee...