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dr_pretentiousI survived LunaCon, gave a good reading of "War of the Wheat Berry Year," and got drafted to join the speakers for a panel on anthologies. Apparently I sounded cogent and informative, despite having been zombified (about which more later).
The coolest thing about the anthology panel was that there were no writers, only readers, in the audience. Nobody had come there to find out how to sell stories. They all just loved short fiction and wanted to find more good stuff. This may sound as if it should be unremarkable, but consider how many people write/want to write/believe they might write if only they had the time, etc. About half of the people attending any given science fiction and/or fantasy convention harbor dreams of publication, and usually any panel that has an acquiring editor among its speakers will attract a roomful of the desperately unpublished and underpublished (that latter would be me).
This is what industry pros all have to say about anthologies: You'd think people would buy anthologies edited by authors they love, and that those authors could just collect whatever they think is the very best, but no, readers won't buy that. For some reason—nobody knows why—they'd rather have a theme anthology, even if it's edited by a total unknown. (This is one of the reasons I'm editing a theme anthology.)
Well, in a room full of readers who don't write, people who care enough about anthologies to spend their free time at a panel about them, I figured there might be an answer to the nobody-knows-why problem, which seemed overstated to me. So I put it to the audience, who had this to say: No matter what your favorite aspect of the genre is, you'll feel that it's hard to find, maybe even embattled in the marketplace. A theme anthology makes no pretense of quality, and is not about a cult-of-personality author displaying the breadth of his or her taste, but is rather about giving the reader a chance to push his or her own buttons, unapologetically, no matter what those buttons are. Sounds good to me.
I'm still not going to be buying any of the recent zombie anthologies, though, despite having become a zombie.
We're crib-training Conrad, and it's going well in the sense of getting him out of our bed. In the sense of anybody in my household getting any sleep? Not so well. I haven't slept as long as an hour without interruption in over a week. There's improvement. There'll be more improvement. Meanwhile...Brains! More Brains!
For the first time, I understand the recent popularity of zombie literature. It's our culture's response to epidemic sleep deprivation. Now, when the booksellers at Barnes & Noble are mopping up the cafe five minutes before closing and feel free to talk frankly among themselves because it's just them and three late-night regulars around, I'll have an answer to the frequent question, Why does anybody buy all these zombie books? There's even an especially baffling sub-genre of the sub-genre: zombie romances, in which one of the romantic leads is a zombie. I'm pretty sure this is a way of talking about what it's like to love someone who's been zombified by sleep deprivation. (Literature is all about me, right?)
Okay, now back to roughing out the intro to the Trafficking in Magic anthology.
The coolest thing about the anthology panel was that there were no writers, only readers, in the audience. Nobody had come there to find out how to sell stories. They all just loved short fiction and wanted to find more good stuff. This may sound as if it should be unremarkable, but consider how many people write/want to write/believe they might write if only they had the time, etc. About half of the people attending any given science fiction and/or fantasy convention harbor dreams of publication, and usually any panel that has an acquiring editor among its speakers will attract a roomful of the desperately unpublished and underpublished (that latter would be me).
This is what industry pros all have to say about anthologies: You'd think people would buy anthologies edited by authors they love, and that those authors could just collect whatever they think is the very best, but no, readers won't buy that. For some reason—nobody knows why—they'd rather have a theme anthology, even if it's edited by a total unknown. (This is one of the reasons I'm editing a theme anthology.)
Well, in a room full of readers who don't write, people who care enough about anthologies to spend their free time at a panel about them, I figured there might be an answer to the nobody-knows-why problem, which seemed overstated to me. So I put it to the audience, who had this to say: No matter what your favorite aspect of the genre is, you'll feel that it's hard to find, maybe even embattled in the marketplace. A theme anthology makes no pretense of quality, and is not about a cult-of-personality author displaying the breadth of his or her taste, but is rather about giving the reader a chance to push his or her own buttons, unapologetically, no matter what those buttons are. Sounds good to me.
I'm still not going to be buying any of the recent zombie anthologies, though, despite having become a zombie.
We're crib-training Conrad, and it's going well in the sense of getting him out of our bed. In the sense of anybody in my household getting any sleep? Not so well. I haven't slept as long as an hour without interruption in over a week. There's improvement. There'll be more improvement. Meanwhile...Brains! More Brains!
For the first time, I understand the recent popularity of zombie literature. It's our culture's response to epidemic sleep deprivation. Now, when the booksellers at Barnes & Noble are mopping up the cafe five minutes before closing and feel free to talk frankly among themselves because it's just them and three late-night regulars around, I'll have an answer to the frequent question, Why does anybody buy all these zombie books? There's even an especially baffling sub-genre of the sub-genre: zombie romances, in which one of the romantic leads is a zombie. I'm pretty sure this is a way of talking about what it's like to love someone who's been zombified by sleep deprivation. (Literature is all about me, right?)
Okay, now back to roughing out the intro to the Trafficking in Magic anthology.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:39 am (UTC)http://wezombie.com/la-zombie-gay-porn-zombie-flick-banned/
That link is safe for work.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:42 am (UTC)Maybe he should have eaten more brains.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 03:56 pm (UTC)* as opposed to decomposed
regarding crib training
Date: 2011-03-24 05:01 am (UTC)Gods, I hope you aren't too sleep deprived to make sense of that, it was a bit thick.
Here's the easier version, which I know you know: This too shall pass.
Also, it gets easier. A & D are at their grandmothers' for a spring break sleepover and we're loving the kid-free weeknight. We're only a few short years ahead of you guys on this ride. Can't wait to meet Mr. Conrad!! :-)
Re: regarding crib training
Date: 2011-03-26 04:44 am (UTC)Okay, I'll definitely be human again by FSG. Will you and your brood be there?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:05 pm (UTC)And yet, I have discovered that I can listen to zombiepodcast.com and get into the story, mainly because it isn't too gross and doesn't focus too much on the feeding, and I can't SEE them and there's very little description.
The IDEA of zombies is something I like in theory - they stand in for sleep deprivation, mindless materialism, the fear of being dragged down by hideous inchoate forces, of being swamped by the Stupid, the soul crushing power of conformity, the idea that something won't just die, that you could exist in a twilight state in which you have no real control... You can have a field day with zombie symbolism.
When I wasn't sleeping properly, and I was not able to function properly and kept dropping things and couldn't do much, T used to sing me a little song he called "I love my zombie girl", which had various different verses according to how incapable I was.
So, no kids, yet I feel your pzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 04:52 am (UTC)To our surprise, David Sklar and I have a couple of zombie stories in the anthology in progress. I won't tell you which they are, because in one of them it's a nice, subtle surprise. There were several stories that just blew our minds that, if they'd been described by sub-genre to us, we'd have said were just not our kind of thing. Neither of us is a big horror fan, but we got some stories that blurred the line between fantasy and horror that were just too good to turn down.
There's a zombiepodcast.com out there? Well, why not? Let a thousand asphodel flowers bloom.
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Date: 2011-03-26 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 07:46 pm (UTC)I think a part of what you added to the panel was that you were directly asking the audience questions that everyone on the panel wanted to know but hadn't thought to ask. After all, the more we know what readers want, the better able we will be to come up with books that sell. And you allowed the audience to get in on a discussion of a topic that is near and dear to any panel audience: themselves.
So not only did you speak well, but you also brought the panel onto a track that was interesting, unexpected, and potentially very useful for the editors on the panel.
As for why themed anthos sell better, I've been pondering that question since you asked it. I think the audience member who answered it did a good job--although your interpretation of what he said seems somewhat different from what I heard, which makes me wonder if the reason I think he answered it well is because he answered it in a way that let me hear what I wanted to hear. So I'm mulling over my own answer to the question, which you will hear eventually.
One angle on it that didn't come up is that a general anthology is directly competing with every magazine out there, while a more specific anthology can carve out its own niche. I think that's a part of the answer, but not the whole thing by a long shot.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 05:04 am (UTC)I think you're right about the antho v. magazine angle.
And then, with well-known editors like Datlow and Windling, or Gavin Grant, or whoever, the theme anthology still has extra appeal, because then not only do I get to see what Gavin Grant will do next, but I get to see what he'll do with that oddball idea, or what Jane Yolen will do with that lyrical thing that, in other hands, might just be twee. With prolific editors like those— I specifically don't include prolific book packagers like Martin Greenberg who are farming out the real hands-on curating to other people—a themed anthology can also be useful for remembering which anthology you saw a particular story in. Otherwise, you'd be thinking, "Wasn't that Delia Sherman story about fae on Montmartre in Datlow and Windling XXIII? Or was it XXIV?" rather than, "Wasn't it in Salon Fantastique?"
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 02:23 am (UTC)What I'm thinking is that short story anthologies are challenging.
In a novel, there is that start-up phase where you get to know the characters and the fictional universe. A good writer makes it less laborious to read, but it still takes some attention and work. But then you get to ride it out for the rest of the x-hundred pages.
In an anthology, you have to make that start-up effort over and over and over. And you know that in some of the cases it won't have been worth it. (Every anthology has stories that are more and less suited to one's taste.) Story anthologies are work.
At least if there is a theme, you know *something* about the next story; it will have zombies (fairies, cats, whatever). You can watch for the first zombie and say, aha! there it is! So you don't feel so much at sea for each new story.
Maybe this explains why people like series also - less start-up effort for a new book in a familiar universe.
(I don't mean this to be judgmental. I am the last person to attach special virtue to fiction that makes you work harder. Sometimes good writing is hard to read, and sometimes it is easy to read...)
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Date: 2011-03-25 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 05:08 am (UTC)Because otherwise, as David often quipped when we discussed a new Faustian submission, our anthology will have gone to hell.
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Date: 2011-03-26 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-09 08:40 pm (UTC)