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.   

How Hot Do We Want It?

At Intrigue Publishing we focus on specific genres of fiction. In our short business life we’ve published award-winning crime novels and young adult fiction, but our other two genres are moving more slowly. So right now our minds are on launching our sensual romance line. We are eager for submissions, but what we want to publish is very specific. Yes we want it to be steamy… but how hot is too hot?

Sensual romance is not erotica. We’re looking for hot, not burning. If you read Kensington's Brava line you’re enjoying books that are a bit too explicit for our intended audience. But also, hot is not “warm.” In a sensual romance you can’t leave EVERYTHING to the reader's imagination. We love Nora Roberts and Rebecca York, but we want to publish stories that are a little more explicit.

So how would we define sensuous romance? The novels we want may contain very explicit sensuality, and there is an expanded focus throughout the book on sexual feelings and desires. There will be at least two or three love scenes. The characters often think about their sexual feelings and desires, and making love is graphically depicted. HOWEVER, both the emotions of the hero and heroine and their physical feelings are important during love scenes.

We want our line to compete with, and share readers with, the Harlequin Temptations and Blaze lines. If you want to see exactly the kind of novel we’re most interested in, sample the novels written by J.D. Robb, Leanne Banks, Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, Karen Marie Moning, Linda Howard, Lisa Kleypas, Susan Andersen and Sherrilyn Kenyon.   

Of course, in one way good sensual romance is like pornography – it’s hard to define but we know it when we see it. And we WANT to see it, so send us your novel submission soon. Of course, start by reading our submission guidelines at http://intriguepublishing.com/?page_id=121 so you know it’s what we want in the form we want. Then send us something that will intrigue us and our readers.  

Panning for Gold

While I should be tackling the final rewrite of the next Hannibal Jones mystery I am instead focused on my publisher duties, reading through an avalanche of submissions, sifting the sand in search of 16 nuggets of gold worthy of publication.

Intrigue Publishing is taking submissions for a Young Adult anthology entitled Young Adventurers: Heroes, Explorers & Swashbucklers. We want stories of action, adventure and, yes, intrigue, featuring a teenage protagonist. We welcome spy thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, paranormal or fantasy stories. Dragons and magic are fine. Straight adventure stories are also welcome and they could be set in any time period. We’d love to see a good western or pirate story. The subtitle, “Tales of teens saving the day in the past, the present, the future & on other worlds” is an indication of the level of diversity we’re looking for. But I’ve already encountered a surprising amount of what we DON’T want.

For example, our submission guidelines clearly state that “The manuscript must be double-spaced, 12-point type, (Times New Roman or Arial.)” And yet, so far I have received stories in 11 point, one single spaced, another in a font called Calibri and one in a format called “.pages” which I can’t open with any software on my computer. If these people can’t get something as simple as font or format right how much detail do we think they pay to their prose? And if these simple instructions are too much for them, how will they respond to an editor’s input?  

The submission guidelines also included this direction: “The important requirements are that the protagonist be a courageous teenage boy or girl, that the story be gripping with a real sense of risk or danger, and that the protagonist survives or saves the day through his or her own intelligence, skill and ingenuity.”

And yet, I’ve read three stories so far in which the teen protagonist is little more than an observer or the person in jeopardy who gets rescued by an adult.

So what’s my point? It’s tedious enough reading weak and poorly written hunting for the ones the rare one worthy to be in an Intrigue Publishing anthology. If a writer doesn’t bother to adhere to our submission guidelines they are telling me that they don’t really care if we buy their story or not.  If you DO want someone to pay for your story, or novel, you dramatically increase your chances when you give them what they ask for.

And now, back to the search.