Digital Detective Inspector Chen

Nearly three years ago, on December 1, 2010, I published a blog post on the long-awaited publication of the fifth Detective Inspector Chen novel, The Iron Khan, by author Liz Williams. At that time, the novel was only available in various ebook formats. Morrigan Books, publisher of this fifth DI Chen novel, released the print edition in the first part of 2011.

I had edited all five of Williams's Chen novels for Night Shade Books, but due to circumstances (which the author explained on her Live Journal here and here), the fifth volume was dropped by Night Shade and picked up by Morrigan Books.

Now, finally, all five Detective Inspector Chen novels are available in a variety of ebook formats from Open Road Media -- the novels should be read in order, as the underlying story is revealed that leads up to the proposed sixth and final volume, Morning Star. Here are the five volumes, in order of publication -- and the order in which they should be read: [Note: Links below are to the Amazon Kindle format; other formats can be obtained via iTunes, Google, B&N, and Kobo.]

1. Snake Agent
2. The Demon and the City
3. Precious Dragon
4. The Shadow Pavilion
5. The Iron Khan

Paul Weimer, in his review of The Iron Khan on Goodreads, has summed up what is so special about this series of novels. Paul writes: "As is usual for the Chen books, the narrative not only focuses on Chen, Zhu Irzh and their friends and allies, but new characters, whose goals, desires and needs bloom like a flower quickly coming into full season. Both the titular antagonist, the Iron Khan, other antagonists, and those who oppose their efforts, such as the Japanese warrior Omi, have their narrative threads intersect with our main characters. They have pasts, presents and futures of their own, and never serve to act for the benefit of the main characters. If anything, these characters draw our main characters and their talents into their stories, for ill or will."

All five Detective Inspector Chen novels are also available in matching trade paperbacks from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Writing 101: Thog's Masterclass at BayCon

If you've attended any of my convention panels having to do with the craft of writing, then you have undoubtedly heard me refer to Thog's Masterclass.

Who is Thog? According to Thog.org, "Thog the Mighty, a not terribly bright barbarian hero, is the creation of John Grant (Paul Barnett) in his 'Lone Wolf' fantasy novels. Thog first appeared in The Claws of the Helgedad (1991)."

Thog's Masterclass is a regular feature of David Langford's zine Ansible, enshrining prose gems primarily from science fiction and fantasy publications: "It is to be assumed that the chosen selections are stuff which brutish Thog really likes." The site goes on to explain how the tradition began at the 1993 UK EasterCon, when David edited the con's daily newsletter with Paul Barnett's assistance. I'll leave you to further investigate Thog's history should you so desire.... (and more on Ansible¹ later in this blog post.)

Over Memorial Day Weekend I attended BayCon, an annual San Francisco Bay Area convention that is now in its twenty-ninth year. And this year I participated once again in the Iron Editors workshop: writers present the first 2 pages of a story or novel for review and critique by the panel of editors. The author's name need not be included on the pages, so while the writing may be anonymous, the critique is public. This allows other writers to learn from the critiques as well. In fact, writers may attend the workshop without having submitted anything for review.

Along with moderator Kent Brewster, this year's panel of editors also included Jeremy Lassen, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, the Kollin Brothers, and Dario Ciriello. The review process is quite hectic, to say the least. Kent likes to keep things moving so that a marked up submission is always on the display screen and open to discussion. Often I'll be working on one submission and have to stop what I'm doing to comment on my mark ups on the submission that is being presented. Consequently not all submissions are reviewed by every editor.

Usually a Thog's Masterclass-worthy sentence will arise from the heaps of paper, which will provide me with the opportunity to introduce the audience to Ansible and Thog. Due to the hectic nature of the workshop I didn't have an opportunity to write down the specific sentence, so this one will have to do (it is similar in content). This sentence is from a previously published story that was part of a collection that I acquired and published with Golden Gryphon Press. The author and story shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty.

...his face: a strong jaw, cheekbones ruddy with cold, softened by a well-proportioned nose, and eyes which skipped from aisle to counter to shelf like pebbles glancing over water.

The boldface is, of course, my addition to highlight the content that I know Thog would really like. When I brought this sentence, and Thog's Masterclass, to the author's attention, the author chose to rewrite the text before including the story in the collection. But this isn't always the case. In Liz Williams's Detective Inspector Chen series of novels, you'll find sentences like this one:

Sung's eyebrows crawled slowly up his broad forehead.

In the Chen novels, Liz wants that stylized, exaggerated content; a better word might be "campy." And as the editor for all five (so far) of her Detective Inspector Chen novels, I'm right there with Liz on this. So story content is dependent on your style, your goal, what you wish to create within the story. Just be aware that these types of sentences just may find themselves in some future entry of Thog's Masterclass.

March Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of March's Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. Hopefully, you will find some value in what follows; and if you are new to my blog, you may want to catch up on my previous month-end posts: just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column of this blog; there are 28 previous blog posts.

• I've blogged previously (here, here, and here) about Liz Williams's fifth, and most recent, Detective Inspector Chen novel, The Iron Khan. But this is the first time I've come upon a review of a Chen book in which the reviewer so succinctly sums up what is so special about these novels. The reviewer's name is "Paul," the review is on Goodreads.com, and this is merely one of Paul's 836 (as of this writing) reviewed books. Paul writes: "As is usual for the Chen books, the narrative not only focuses on Chen, Zhu Irzh and their friends and allies, but new characters, whose goals, desires and needs bloom like a flower quickly coming into full season. Both the titular antagonist, the Iron Khan, other antagonists, and those who oppose their efforts, such as the Japanese warrior Omi, have their narrative threads intersect with our main characters. They have pasts, presents and futures of their own, and never serve to act for the benefit of the main characters. If anything, these characters draw our main characters and their talents into their stories, for ill or will." [Note: I edited all 5 volumes, so far, of the Detective Inspector Chen series; the first 4 titles for Night Shade Books, the most recent title for Morrigan Books UK.]

• The Jacqueline Howett meltdown may have been the major controversy this past month, but there were no shortages of others. Mediabistro.com's @ebooknewser reported that publisher HarperCollins plans to limit the number of checkouts to 26 that their eBooks may have at the public library. This means that after 26 checkouts the library is required to purchase another copy of the eBook. The Pioneer Library System, Norman, Oklahoma, responded with a video showing various HarperCollins print books, their condition, and the number of times each has been checked out; had there been a limit on these print copies, hundreds of readers would never have read these books because the library simply cannot afford to replace a book unless it is both in demand and severely damaged. The HarperCollins decision has led to numerous libraries throughout the country boycotting HarperCollins eBooks. So if you cannot find a HarperCollins eBook at your library, don't blame the messenger (your public library), blame HC. In fact, feel free to send HC some feedback right now!

• Two Very Big Names in publishing were in the news this past month: Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking. NYT bestselling author Barry Eisler turned down a two-book, one-half-million-dollar deal with St. Martin's Press in order to self-publish his future books himself. On the other hand, bestselling self-published author Amanda Hocking has gone New York, signing a four-book, two-million-plus deal, after a very heated bidding war, with St. Martin's for her next series of books.
  
  Via The Daily Beast, Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) interviews Barry Eisler to find out just why the author decided to self-publish. In the interview Eisler explains the numbers and reasons behind his decision. Here's a taste: "What happens whenever I hit that point [the earn out point] is that I'll have 'beaten' the contract, and then I'll go on beating it for the rest of my life. If I don't earn out the legacy contract, the only money I'll ever see from it is $142,000 per year for three years. Even if I do earn out, I'll only see 14.9% of each digital sale thereafter. But once I beat the contract in digital, even if it takes longer than three years, I go on earning 70% of each digital sale forever thereafter. And, as my friend Joe Konrath likes to point out, forever is a long time."
  
  As to Amanda Hocking, the St. Martin's deal was announced in the New York Times, which stated that Ms. Hocking explained herself to her readers, via her blog, thusly: "I want to be a writer," she said. "I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation." (via mediabistro.com)

• Self-Publishing Review (@selfpubreview), whom I have linked to on numerous occasions, has a follow-up piece on Amanda Hocking, noting that though she has garnered all the attention recently as a self-published author -- and she may indeed be one of the wealthiest – she certainly isn’t a self-pub pioneer. But who are said pioneers you may ask? Boyd Morrison, Lisa Genova, Zoe Winters, and Dean Wesley Smith. You can read their stories on the Self-Pub Review link.

Liz Williams's The Iron Khan -- First Review

If you are a fan of the Detective Inspector Chen series by UK author Liz Williams, and you've been eagerly awaiting the publication of book 5 in the series, The Iron Khan (print edition), then your wait is -- Finally! -- over, thanks to the amazing efforts of the folks at Morrigan Books.

The Iron Khan trade paperback edition is currently in stock at Amazon.com via CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Morrigan also has plans for a limited hardcover edition to be available through Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. I have no additional information on the limited edition at this time, but I will post further details as soon as I have them.

The first review of The Iron Khan (at least the first review that I am aware of) has appeared. What's intriguing about this review can be summed up by a comment Liz Williams made in a recent post on her LiveJournal: "...reviewers often (as in this case) pick up on themes which were not intentional/subconscious, but which nonetheless seem to have emerged as dominant."

The review appears in Strange Horizons, and is penned by Kelly Jennings, who does double duty by reviewing the previous DI Chen title, The Shadow Pavilion, alongside The Iron Khan. Jennings writes:

In The Shadow Pavilion, Lord Lady Seijin, a dual-souled (one soul is male, the other female) immortal assassin, has been hired to assassinate Mhara, the new Emperor of Heaven. Having taken the throne, Mhara at once begins making changes. Some of Mhara's subjects welcome these changes. Others do not....

This theme -- both that change can be good, and that it will be resisted, often violently -- is the common thread running through both novels. With such a topic, the slide into cliché would be easy: simple villains opposing good, simple heroes charging the barricades. Williams resists that lure, writing situations to demonstrate that change in itself is neither good nor bad....

[In The Iron Khan] every plot movement from the opening pages turns on change. Indeed, we begin to see, reading this text, how throughout the series every relationship has turned on changes in social and spiritual attitudes, which have made possible bonds which were previously forbidden.... There is, further, the matter of Inari’s pregnancy -- her child, still unborn at the end of The Iron Khan...is the reincarnation of Lord Lady Seijin, who was the enemy of Heaven throughout the previous novel; the enemy, also, of Inari and Chen. Not only does this suggest a major change for Seijin -- that the villain can change -- but consider what it says about Chen and Inari: their enemy will be their child, whom they will raise up and love. Is this not the definition of true change?...

At the end of The Iron Khan, Inari’s child, forecast to bring some major change to Heaven and Earth and all the several Hells, is about to be born. Considering who the child was and what he/she has been up to, even before birth, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

I've you've not read the Detective Inspector Chen series, then hopefully this review will give you just a wee taste of what you've been missing -- a series that is in a class all by itself. Please do read the full review on Strange Horizons. And yes, I'm prejudiced about the DI Chen series: I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work (as editor) with Liz Williams on all five titles.

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DI Chen Finally Turns 5 Redux

In my December 1 blog post, "DI Chen Finally Turns 5," I presented Reece Notley's cover art for the ebook editions of novel The Iron Khan by Liz Williams, and published by Morrigan Books. If you've been anticipating the fifth Detective Inspector Chen novel, and ebooks are your media of preference, you can purchase the Kindle edition directly through Amazon.com, and all other ebook formats (epub, LRF, PDF, and mobi, too, as well as others) from Smashwords.

But if you prefer the smell of real paper, the feel of a real book in your hands (as opposed to cold metal, plastic, and glass), then your wait for the print editions of The Iron Khan will soon be over. So I'm taking this opportunity to showcase the new cover art (sans the typography) by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law for the print editions. On Ms. Law's website, you can click on the "Detail closeups" link, allowing you to take in all of the amazing details of this artwork. The art features one of the story's main characters, Raksha (recently reanimated!), flying atop her elegantly plumed blue crane, with the floating city of Agarta in the distance. If you are a fan of the DI Chen series and a collector of art as well -- or just a collector of art -- you can purchase an 8.5 x 11-inch print for only $15.00; or, if you just happen to have an extra $1,500.00 available, you can snag the original art itself, 12 x 17 inches, pen and ink. I'm simply amazed that the artist can work all this detail into only 204 square inches.

The Iron Khan print editions will be published in two states: a trade paperback edition and a limited hardcover edition. The trade edition will be available through Amazon; the limited hardcover edition will only be available (so I am told) through Mysterious Galaxy. I have purchased books from Mysterious Galaxy (probably the most recent was a first edition/first printing of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan); the store takes great pride in the quality of their books, as well as the quality of their packing and shipping. So should you purchase The Iron Khan from them you will have nothing to worry about.

And then we all get to anxiously await book six (the final volume?) in the DI Chen series: Morningstar, which should be available in late 2011. [Liz, if you're reading this, I hope you are furiously writing because I need to find out what impact Inari's child has on the world of Singapore Three.]

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Writing with Style (Sheets, That Is)

In my December 19 blog post I mentioned that I had completed my review and copyedit of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Five, edited by Jonathan Strahan, forthcoming from Night Shade Books in March 2011. One of the stories included in this volume is Theodora Goss's "Fair Ladies," which was originally published in the August 2010 issue of Apex Magazine.

As both a reader and an editor, I read a lot of genre fiction -- primarily short fiction -- but no matter how much I read (and, unfortunately, I read quite slowly), I still can't be expected to read everything. There are many authors whom I have not read at all; and of those I have read, there are seemingly an infinite number of worlds and realms that they have written about that I am not familiar with. Now, if I were editing a series of novels, it would be in the best interest of the author and the publisher to have me work on book one, and then continue through the entire series; I would thus be able to help ensure consistency with characters and characterization, place/environment, events, word usage, etc. throughout the series.¹ But short fiction is entirely different: even related stories are published in different venues -- various online and print magazines and anthologies. Since each of these are edited by someone different, none of the editors can be expected to be intimately familiar with every world/realm about which the authors write. Nor should they be. Each story needs to stand on its own because each story will be read by different people depending on the venue in which it is published. Each magazine has its own set of readers, though of course there may be some overlap. Some readers may read only free online 'zines. Others may not read magazines of any sort, but may focus on original anthologies from specific publishers, or by specific editors.

Nick Gevers and I accepted Jay Lake's story "Permanent Fatal Errors"² for our anthology Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books, June 2010). This story is part of Jay's Sunspin cycle of stories; in Jay's December 19 blog post, he lists the six stories (so far) that make up this cycle, five of which have been sold, to five different venues (though two of those venues are published by Subterranean Press). My co-editor Nick Gevers was more familiar with Jay's Sunspin cycle than I was, but the story still had to work for me -- and be unique and intriguing and, of course, well written -- without any knowledge of prior stories or the series itself.

Which brings me back to Theodora Goss's story "Fair Ladies," set in her fictional world of Sylvania. It's a wonderful story that stands on its own quite nicely; but no editor, or reader, is going to have the background knowledge -- environment, religion(s), history, culture, etc. -- of Sylvania that Dora has, since this is her world. As a copyeditor, I have to do the best job with the content that I have in front of me, following the rules of grammar, punctuation, etc. while trying not to affect story content or the author's intent, or even the story's rhythm.

In "Fair Ladies," Dora uses the monetary unit "kroner." The word only appears twice, in two separate sentences on consecutive pages. (Actually, the word appears three times, but the first doesn't count, because it's used as a proper name, the Café Kroner.):

"That's Friedrich, the painter," said Karl. "I've never seen him talk to anyone since I started coming here four years ago. I'll bet you four kroners that she's a film actress from Germany."

The party had lasted long past midnight. The Crown Prince himself had been there. The guest list had also included the Prime Minister; General Schrader; the countess of the feathered hat, this time in a tiara; the painter Friedrich; the French ambassador, Anita Dak, the principal dancer from the Ballet Russes, which was staging Copélia in Karelstad; a professor of mathematics in a shabby coat, invited because he had just been inducted into the National Academy; young men in the government who talked about the situation in Germany between dances; young men in finance who talked about whether the kroner was going up or down, seeming not to care which as long as they were buying or selling at the right times; mothers dragging girls who danced with the young men, awkwardly aware of their newly upswept hair and bare shoulders, then went back to giggling in corners of the ballroom.

In the first sentence, we have the plural form "four kroners," and in the second sentence the singular form "the kroner." I knew the word "kroner," but looked it up in a list of world currencies to confirm: I found the currency "krone" (Danish and Norwegian) on the list, as well as "krona" (Swedish) and "króna" (Icelandic). The plural form of "krone" is "kroner." So, by definition, "kroner" is plural and no ending "s" is necessary. I marked the ending "s" for deletion in the first example in Dora's story; I see now that I should have marked for deletion the ending "r" in "kroner" in the second example, for the singular form, but I didn't. This would have been consistent with world currency. Unfortunately, I don't recall what my thinking was three weeks ago in this one example. Regardless, I eventually completed the project and submitted my copyedits to Night Shade Books. All was well and good. That is, until the following status appeared on Dora's Facebook page on Friday, December 17:

Does fantasy writing create particular problems for a copyeditor? For example, I just corrected a copyeditor on a detail about imaginary currency...

Detective Inspector Chen Finally Turns 5

After too long a delay, and a great deal of anticipation, Liz Williams's The Iron Khan, the fifth Detective Inspector Chen novel, has been published -- in ebook formats only, so far -- by Morrigan Books.

The Iron Khan was originally to have been published by Night Shade Books, as they had published the previous four Detective Inspector Chen novels: Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, and The Shadow Pavilion. Liz delivered the manuscript for Khan to me on October 26, 2008. By mid-November I was emailing Liz with questions and suggestions, and this back and forth between us carried over into 2009. By the time I approved the final book layout of The Iron Khan on November 11, 2009, Liz and I had worked through nearly 75 emails, which is actually a low number of emails compared to some of the other books I have worked on.

I believe there was a delay (or two), but the book was scheduled for publication in March 2010. As fans and readers of Liz Williams's work know, that date came -- and went. In April, Liz expressed some frustration on her LiveJournal with the status of the Chen series, then some behind-the-scenes action took place, and the rights to the Detective Inspector Chen series were eventually returned to the author.

Fast forward to August 20, 2010: Morrigan Books posted the following announcement, which I have condensed a bit:

Morrigan Books can now announce that it is to continue the successful series of Detective Inspector Chen novels, written by Philip K. Dick Award nominee Liz Williams....

Iron Khan is due for release this December and Morningstar will be published in 2011. The covers for both books are to be designed by award-winning artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.

We are extremely excited by Liz Williams' choice to continue the series with Morrigan Books, and see this as a confirmation of the high standard we are setting in the independent press industry.

Though Stephanie Pui-Mun Law will be designing the covers for the print versions of each new book, the cover pictured above -- designed by Reece Notley -- is for the ebook editions only, which have just been released. The Kindle edition can now be purchased directly through Amazon.com; all other ebook editions (epub, LRF, PDF, and mobi, too, as well as other formats) are available from Smashwords.

Morrigan tells me that the print editions -- a trade edition as well as a limited hardcover edition -- of The Iron Khan will be announced soon. I also know that ebook editions of the first four Chen novels are also in process from Morrigan. And lastly, Liz is hard at work (don't tell her that I told you this!) on the next, the sixth, Chen novel, Morningstar.  After working with Liz on the first five Chen novels over the past five years, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to work with Liz on book six as well. Keeping fingers crossed. As I commented myself on Liz's LJ post back in April: "Working on these 5 Chen books, well, it's like Chen, Inari, Zhu Irzh, Jhai, Mhara, and Robin have become extended family!"

* * * * *

Update: December 27 blog post on the cover art for the print editions of The Iron Khan.

* * * * *

For those waiting for my monthly wrap-up, November's Links & Things, my apologies as there will be a bit of a delay yet. I'm under a hard deadline to complete my review and copyedit of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Five, edited by Jonathan Strahan, for Night Shade Books. And since this volume is nearly 250,000 words (oy!), I'll need some time to complete this project. Cheers.

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August Links & Things (Part Two)

Part Two of my "August Links & Things" blog post is of a more personal nature, primarily on authors with whom I have worked, books I have edited. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and occasional comments.

• RTBookReviews.com [Romantic Times] has "Kage Baker Remembered" -- heartfelt memories of the author as seen "through the eyes of her younger sister, Kathleen Bartholomew." I would like to add that in all the years I've known Kage -- and through lunches, dinners, bookstore readings, convention panels, hotel lobby chats, etc. -- she and Kathleen were inseparable. Reading about Kage through Kathleen's eyes is a pure joy. [Note: I have written my own remembrance of working with Kage Baker.]

Kage, age 6, with her first typewriter,
and her godfather, Irish actor Sean McClory

• And if you are a reader and/or fan of Kage's writings, then you'll want to be following Kathleen's blog: Kathleen, Kage and the Company, in which Kathleen is -- to use her word -- "channeling" Kage. In between her fiction writing, Kathleen tells many wonderful stories of growing up with Kage, the two of them living together in various locales, their travels, their hobbies, the food they loved, and more. Kathleen has tons of Kage's notes, and years and years of long discussions with Kage about her stories and characters -- and Kathleen plans to write the novels that Kage was unable to complete. She is currently working on the sequel to The Women of Nell Gwynne's.
  

12 Stories Do Not a Collection Make

The big announcement last month concerned my friend Alastair Reynolds, author of the superb space opera novels Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap, among others -- all part of his Inhibitors-Conjoiners (aka Revelation Space) universe. According to the announcement and mini-interview in the Guardian, Reynolds has signed an unprecedented contract with publisher Gollancz in the United Kingdom: the contract calls for ten books over a span of ten years for 1-million pounds sterling [that's $1,620,660.00 as of this writing]. Congratulations, Al!

Al and I have worked on a couple of projects together over the past few years: a limited edition chapbook novella (Turquoise Days, Golden Gryphon Press, 2002) and a short story collection (Zima Blue and Other Stories, Night Shade Books, 2006). [I'd love to link to additional information on Zima Blue but all NSB editions are out of print.] And hopefully there will be another project in the foreseeable future. If all the authors with whom I've worked, or will work, had the professionalism, moral integrity, care and respect for others that Al Reynolds displayed during these two projects, I would be in editorial hog heaven.

With this new multi-book deal, Al no longer has to worry about sample chapters and outlines and pitches for his next book contracts (at least for the next nine years), he can now devote that time to the craft of writing. And we, his readers, will continue to delight in the fruits of his labors. If you're not familiar with Alastair Reynolds's short fiction, check out his story "Spirey and the Queen" available online (included in Zima Blue); and if you're into audio, Al reads his new story "Scales," his first military SF story, as part of the original Guardian Books Podcast series.

So, you wonder, why am I spending so much time chatting about Alastair Reynolds? Because I'm going to use his collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories -- and specifically how this collection came together -- as my example in this essay on short story collections.

In recent years I have noticed a trend among "young" authors -- particularly those published by small presses, and to be even more specific, the print-on-demand (POD) small presses -- to publish a new short story collection as soon as they've accumulated (and that's the correct word I wish to use) a dozen or so stories. If the writer is sufficiently prodigious, that could easily work out to a collection (or two) a year. As a point of clarification, I use the term "young" loosely here. Author William Gibson was thirty-six years old when his first novel Neuromancer was published in 1984; Lucius Shepard was thirty-eight and Jay Lake was forty when each won the Campbell Award for best new writer. In response to an age question on his blog, John Scalzi has written an excellent essay on why new, young writers are typically in their 30s when they finally get published; he even lays out his own writing career as an example.

I realize authors need income, and if they are primarily a short story writer, then a collection of said stories is one of the few (if only) income-generating options open to them once the stories themselves have been initially published. I understand the need, and the rationale, but...

In my tenure as an editor, I have worked on twenty short story collections; not a large number in the overall scheme of things, but not too shabby either for the small press business. I am referring to the full package here: working with the author to develop the collection, selecting the stories, determining story order, editing and copyediting the stories, and whatever else was needed to create the book. Authors included Kage Baker, Michael Bishop, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Lucius Shepard, Jeff VanderMeer, and, of course, George Alec Effinger, plus a handful of others. And though I'm far from being an expert on story collections (every author and every book always has something new to teach me), I have had a wee bit of experience.

Often, an author and/or the author's agent would send me a manuscript consisting of a predetermined set of stories and word count. In every instance I worked with the author to change the contents list and increase the word count. This was necessary because the author and/or the agent included weak stories and insufficient word count. However, had those manuscripts been sent directly to a POD press, they undoubtedly would have been published as is; possibly with little, if any, copyediting (and certainly no editing), which, depending on the press of course, is typically the responsibility of the submitting author.

What happens is, the author floods his own market with his short fiction collections. Each collection, without doubt, contains excellent, maybe even great, stories; but each collection also contains one or more stories that should not have been included in that particular collection, or should simply not have been collected -- ever. Consequently the author (and publisher) ends up with a good collection -- but not a great collection. The collection garners a couple or so reviews if the author is lucky, but nothing memorable comes of the book, and it is all too quickly forgotten. All the author's hardcore fans will most likely purchase the book, but beyond that? Sound familiar? I'm sure if you are a reader of short fiction, and short fiction collections in particular, an author or two comes immediately to mind.

As an acquiring editor for Golden Gryphon Press, I first contacted Alastair Reynolds via email on April 16, 2001, regarding a short story collection. Al had already published about sixteen stories as well as his first novel, Revelation Space. (Second novel, Chasm City, would appear about three weeks later.) At this point in time, I had read quite a few of Al's short stories: "Digital to Analogue" (In Dreams, edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman, 1992), "Spirey and the Queen" (Interzone, June 1996), "Great Wall of Mars" (Spectrum SF #1, February 2000), "Merlin's Gun" (Interzone, May 2000), and "Hideaway" (Interzone, July 2000). There was no doubt in my mind that Alastair Reynolds was going to be one of the preeminent SF writers in the years to come, and I wanted to be the first to snag a collection of his stories. Unfortunately, I was too late...

Al responded the following day. In the email, he raved about Golden Gryphon Press books (he said that he had just obtained a copy of the Robert Reed collection, The Dragons of Spring Place). Unfortunately, Al also informed me that about a month earlier he had made a commitment to publisher Night Shade Books for a short story collection. But here's the caveat: Al told me that he suggested to Night Shade that they wait another year or two for the collection to ensure he had a "sufficiently good core of strong stories to justify a collection." So Al chose to delay his own collection by at least two years (waiting a minimum of one year and publishing the book the following year) -- even though two small presses were clamoring for a collection now -- because he wanted to ensure a quality collection. Shocking!

I've had authors turn down my solicitation for a short story collection for a variety of reasons: they had promised a collection to another publisher (others authors, in addition to Al); they planned to include a collection as part of their next contract negotiation with their NY publisher; they could make more money with another publisher; or they were just too busy now to even bother. I've had an author respond that they passed my inquiry on to their agent, who then completely ignored me -- even after follow-up emails; some professional courtesy would have been nice, even if their response was simply to tell me to just go away. But I've never had an author turn down a short story collection because they felt they didn't have enough quality fiction to be included in the book. You have to understand my surprise because the five Reynolds stories that I mentioned above totaled nearly 65,000 words. And he had another ten or so stories in addition to these. Certainly enough word count overall, and the quality of these five particular stories was not to be questioned.

My follow-up email to Al that same day was a hardcore sales pitch. I did all I could to place Golden Gryphon in the spotlight and even suggested two different collections to Al so that both publishers would be satisfied: one collection now -- for Golden Gryphon, of course -- and a second collection in a couple years for Night Shade. Al's response? He still insisted that he didn't have enough strong stories and that he wanted to wait for another year or two, but he did like the idea of two collections, broken out by his "future history" stories (a la Revelation Space) and his other stories. I expressed my enthusiasm for either collection -- though I had a definite preference at the time for the "future history" stories. [Remember this two-collection idea for later reference.]

Fortunately, Al and I continued our email dialogue. But I'm no fool, and I anticipated Al's increasing popularity in the field, so in a May 10, 2001 email, I posed the following scenario: In a year or two from now, when Al (and Al's agent) is negotiating a new contract, his UK publisher, Gollancz, asks for a short story collection. What does he do now that he has already committed (albeit only verbally, but one trusts Al on his word) to a Night Shade Books collection? And though I didn't bring this point up, I was also concerned that Al's contract with Gollancz included first refusal rights, which would mean they would have first dibs on any collection proposal. That collection might not interest them now, with Al having published only two novels as of 2001; but what about one or two years from now? Thus my concern for delaying said collection.

In Al's response the following day, he wrote: "The points you make are good, and I can appreciate your argument about moving sooner rather than later. From what I can gather, though, there's not much enthusiasm among the mainstream UK publishers for short fiction collections, so I suspect this won't be that big an issue. Gollancz have never once mooted the possibility, or showed any interest in my non-novel activities. I suspect they'll be happy just to deal with novels from me (and if the current book stiffs, they may not want to talk novels either...!)."

I, in turn, responded to Al that I think he underestimates himself, given his newness in the field (only two novels to date), and referred to UK authors Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan (actually Australian but published in the UK), both of whom have had highly touted short story collections published by "mainstream UK publishers." Regardless, Al and I agreed to postpone any further discussion on a collection until after he completed work on his third novel.