An Anthology Takes Shape

We at Intrigue Publishing are pulling together our first anthology. It is a collection of Young Adult stories aimed at a holiday release. For a title we settled on YOUNG ADVENTURERS: HEROES, EXPLORERS & SWASHBUCKLERS. The subtitle is, “Tales of teens saving the day in the past, the present, the future & on other worlds.”

When we put out the call for submissions I didn’t know what to expect. Similar calls for novels in the genres we publish have raised a lukewarm response. So my first surprise was the 55 submissions we received. Reading our way thru the stack gave us our second surprise, or two. I was frankly stunned at how dismal some of the stories were. Besides the bad writing, some authors totally ignored the submission guidelines. How could you read that title, and subtitle, and send a story with an all adult cast? Or a story in which the teen is endangered but saved by adults? Some writers also ignored the stipulated minimum and maximum lengths, that the stories needed to be in Word, and our chosen fonts.

BUT… I was also blown away with how good some of the stories were. Amazing prose, fabulous character development, strong plots with nice hooks, lots of suspense and satisfying conclusions. We had some tough choices to make and for the sake of length we had to say no thank you to some really good stuff.

Another big surprise was subject matter. I expected westerns and pirate stories. However, we got nothing set farther in the past than the Cold War era. As it turned out, that was fine.

Building an anthology is very different from writing a novel. An anthology has to be shaped. You can’t just throw the stories together randomly. They need to have a flow, a rhythm of sorts. Some stories are faster pace, some more deliberate. Some have male protagonists, some female and some both. Where should that humorous story pop up? Or the one that’s a little scary?

As it happens, the stories shook out nicely. We settled on 18 stories: six set in our familiar world, six science fiction tales, and six set in fantasy worlds. It was easy to group them that way. Our heroes and heroines face thugs, spies, monsters, zombies and a variety of aliens. Protagonists vary from stone serious to sweetly smart-ass. There’s a story that may move readers to tears and one that will make them laugh out loud. But in every case a brave and resourceful teenager saves the day.

There’s lots more work to do, but now that it has taken shape, I can’t wait to introduce this YA anthology to the world.   

The Author's Final Step

My next novel, Beyond Blue, has been written, re-written, edited, proofread, formatted and, as you can see, it has been fitted with a beautiful cover. As a publisher I have lots more to do but as an author, you would think my work was done. But no, I have one more crucial duty.  Now I must face the galley proof. 

In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders. They are created for proofreading purposes, but at Intrigue Publishing we also use them as the Advance Reader Copies we send to reviewers. 

They are called Galley proofs because in the days of hand-set letterpress printing, the printer would set the page into galleys, the metal trays into which type was laid and tightened into place. These would be used to print a limited number of copies for proofreading.

When we print them, one copy goes to the author.  His or her assignment is to go over that book with a fine toothed comb, read every word, looking for errors.  This is that writer’s one last chance to find anything wrong, be it a formatting error, spelling, grammar or that character’s name that changed halfway through without us noticing.  This is the writer’s final “I meant to say…” opportunity. It isn’t meant to be rewrite time, but if an author thinks a particular turn of phrase looks clunky in print and he is inspired by the perfect wording, we usually accept it.

So in addition to my other duties, I’m re-re-reading Beyond Blue. Not something I look forward to, but as editorial director I do need to practice what I preach. This being the first book of a new series, I’m not as familiar with the characters and setting as I am with Hannibal Jones or Stark & O’Brien so I have to look extra closely.

What’s the book about?  Well, I try to make this blog about my writing/publishing life rather than my writing itself.  However, if you’re good, maybe I’ll tell you a little about it next week.

The Human Element

In this blog I’ve discussed several facets of the publishing business – submissions, editing, marketing and more.  But one part of our business that I haven’t gotten into is more ephemeral and harder to define. For want of a better term, I’m calling this side of the business the human element.

It is true that writing is both a skill and an art, while publishing is a business. But a publisher is more than a venture capitalist, investing in the potential value of a product.  That is because a publisher doesn’t simply invest in a book.  He also invests in the author, and dealing with the artistic temperament of a creative fiction writer is often much more challenging than dealing with that writer’s work.

For example, editing is the process through which good manuscripts become great manuscripts. At Intrigue Publishing, like most small presses, that process is collaborative.  Professional editors know how to improve pace, strengthen characters, and fill plot holes. But only the author knows how to present his theme, establish the chosen atmosphere and preserve her own voice. We want to end up with the best book possible, but we never want to take the book away from the writer.  Better to let the book and the writer go than to have an unhappy or bitter author in our stable.

The same applies to cover design.  Our job is to create a book cover that will get a reader’s attention, express the book’s genre and tone, and prompt the reader to pick that book up. But authors feel, often very strongly, that what matters is that their cover represents their story accurately.  So for many writers it can’t be a great cover if it depicts a scene that doesn’t actually occur in the book, if characters are facing each other who don’t meet in their story, or if the heroine is wearing a gown she would never wear.  This type of thing may not matter much to the big six publishers (or are there only five now?) but we don’t want to have one of our authors out there promoting their book but hating the cover.

Every press is bound to make decision an author doesn’t favor (we’ve debated the font, page layout and even chapter heads with writers) but we consider every choice carefully and always stand ready to explain why a writer’s preference isn’t followed.  We must never forget that it takes a special person to create a novel others will want to read, and that the publishing industry really rests on that human element.

When You Say Edit…

As Editorial Director of Intrigue Publishing it’s my responsibility to make sure every manuscript we publish is as good as it can be.  Of course, I don’t do all the editing myself, but I don’t think most writers understand the challenges involved in just hiring an editor.  To acquire the right services, I have to be able to describe just what I want an editor to do.  I have to be able to explain what I mean when I say “edit” and I thought you might like to know too.   

Let’s start with the easy stuff.  Proofreading is not editing, although I expect our proofreader to do more than simply correct grammar and spelling errors.  She watches for capitalization, punctuation and proper word use (fowl language is what chickens speak.  The writer meant FOUL language.)

Copy editing is a step beyond proofreading. Copy editing actually addresses the mechanics of style, looking for inconsistencies. A good copy editor will notice dialog from a dropout that sounds like a college graduate, or vice versa.  Stylistic editing is more about clarifying the writing. This would include eliminating or explaining jargon and smoothing the language. It’s similar to copy editing – in nonfiction work it’s often called line editing.

Once we love a book enough to want to publish it I generally handle copy and stylistic editing myself.  Then I return the manuscripts to the author to rewrite based on my input.  The heavy lifting, the work I bring in higher-level experts for, involves structural and developmental editing. The manuscript has to already be in a good, readable form before I can ask a pro for these services.

Substantive structural editing involves further clarifying the storyline, often reorganizing the manuscript’s structure. This is where you get the pacing right, smooth the flow, refine the dialogue, and maybe punch up character development. At this stage, suggested changes bring me to negotiating with the author.  We don’t want to destroy a writer’s style or voice, but the writer needs to really understand their story so they can make me understand why our recommendations are not for the best.

Again the author makes the actual changes and after some back and forth we have a manuscript we can all agree on.  However, after the rewriting, the book gets a final thorough proofreading. 

So now you know what I mean when I say a book is in the editing process.  This is not necessarily the way it works at any other publishing house, but it’s the series of hoops a book has to jump through to wear the Intrigue Publishing logo.