BRIAN SAYS:
“Are we sure we want to do this?” I
asked.
Chris exhaled, slowly trying to blow doubt and insecurity out of his body. His eyes shimmered with the start of tears. “I think so?”
“Oh… oh, God… no…,” Christine muttered, realization crawling up her spine like ants.
“What are we talking about?” Jeff asked.
“Jeff, run. Run, run now, run fast, Jeff, just run,” Christine whispered.
Knowing Christine well enough, Jeff heeded her warning without question. He jumped from the couch, knocking the tray table over, and stepped on the cat’s tail as he sprinted for the door. Fingertips fractions of an inch from the doorknob, Chris and I thwarted his escape by yelling in unison, “We’re going to publish an anthology and you’re going to be the editor!!”
Jeff fell to the floor and writhed, screaming, “It burns! IT BURNS!”
“Are we sure we’re ready for this next step?” I asked.
“Well, we’ve published one anthology already, as well as three story collections, and dozens of magazines,” Chris answered. “It’s the next logical step.”
“IT BURNS!! BURNING BURNS!”
“So, what’s the anthology going to be?” Christine asked.
“IT STILL BURNS! IT BURRRRRRRNS!”
I shrugged my shoulders. “How about we call it ‘TV Gods’? We’ll ask the writers to take their favorite TV shows and their favorite mythologies and mash them together.”
“BURNING ME! IT BURRRRRR… wait… that’s not a bad idea,” Jeff replied as he sat up and grabbed his mead, the aloe rub for his soul. “I think I even have a story idea already.”
Thus, TV Gods was born. The reality of how it came to be was not all that far off from the
above anecdote. As we had mentioned in previous blogs, the “Drunken Comic Book
Monkeys” series was an experiment. We wanted to see what it took to publish a
book; a full, perfect bound, trade paperback sized book with stories and
illustrations. And we did it. It was not without its pains, but we did it and
it was fairly successful. People we didn’t know purchased it and liked it. It
ended up on the shelves of a few book stores. Everyone involved was very proud
of the finished product. So, after about ten years of being a publishing company,
we decided to take a more hands-on approach to publishing an anthology where
there would be more writers involved than just Chris and me. And through divine
intervention, we procured a wonderful editor almost immediately. We were all
but finished! Okay, maybe it wasn’t that
easy….
CHRIS SAYS:
Fortress Publishing Inc. events are
pretty simple, by and large. For instance, one of us states that a day off work
is approaching and asks if there is interest in going to the lunch buffet until
we are asked to leave. All hands raise in lieu of a more formal RSVP and we’re
done. That’s how stories get done. But an anthology? Well suddenly it goes from
“Dude, are you free on Friday?” to “Contact fifteen to twenty of your closest
work associates.” Now it’s more like a daunting task. Where to begin?
Fortunately, Brian and I are
quasi-likeable guys. More fortunately, we’ve been invited to participate in
anthologies as contributors. First step: pull out copies of those anthologies.
We learned a great deal by looking through those books, from formatting to
layout to estimated page counts.
We had so much fun working with
Danielle McPhail and her editorial team on the “Bad Ass Faeries” anthologies. Flipping through the pages of the actual book was a bit of a trip down memory
lane for us. Brian and I have our own series of editorial steps that we use
when we are working on a story, but we were able to add our experience of
having gone through the editorial process that they used for “Bad Ass Faeries.”
Big bonus.
More recently, Brian and I had also
been in the anthology, Coven, edited
by Andi O’Connor. Again, it was a completely different process, including a virtual chat room
that was set up for the day of the book release. Contributors could check into
the “room” and answer questions posed by potential readers. We had a great deal
of fun with that as well.
Now where to find contributors.
Well, we had a good beginning spot by looking through the table of contents for
“Bad Ass Faeries” and Coven as well
as other anthologies that we’ve been in. But, over the years, Brian and I have
done a fair number of public appearances and conventions. If we could bide our
time, we reasoned, we’d be seeing some likely candidates and decided that we
could corner a few of the less intimidating ones in the hallways or at a
convention table. There was also our most valuable resource: the bar! Brian and
I have been known to hang out there for extended periods of time in order to
change a non-committal answer into “Yes, if it will make you leave!”
But what to do with the more
intimidating folks? Hmmmm. We went to our usual thinking place. We did our
usual thinking tasks. We ate pizza rolls by the box. We drank beer by the
pitcher. And then it came to us like a power surge on an otherwise dreary day:
Jeff! We’d get Jeff to do it!!
