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.   

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.

Name That Genre

In conversations at the Philadelphia Writers Conference this weekend I learned of the common belief that “genre” only exist so booksellers will know where to shelve books.  However, I think that genre labels serve a purpose for readers, helping them to select their next book based on their own tastes.

When we established Intrigue Publishing we decided to narrow our focus more than most small presses.  We would publish only genre fiction, and only four specific genres at that.  However, over the last two years we have found it challenging to define the books we want to publish.  It’s even more challenging when you consider all the sub-genre books can fall into.

For example, one of our four genres is crime fiction.  That encompasses thrillers and mysteries.  But thrillers can be international, or political. They can be military or spy thrillers, action/adventure books, caper stories, or novels of suspense that can sometimes border on horror.  Similarly, mysteries can be noir, hard boiled, police procedurals, or cozy (excuse me, I mean traditional mysteries.)   We love them all.

We also publish Young Adult (YA) fiction.  I believe YA to be an audience rather than a genre, and those young readers enjoy EVERY kind of fiction.  We’ve published Y-As that could be classified as science fiction, fantasy or espionage thrillers, but a coming-of-age story would fit us too.

We’ve been looking for sensual romance books, but keep getting erotica.  Not the same thing, people.  Keep it romantic.  A lot of paranormal writers like Sherrilyn Kenyon hit the right spot.  So do Jude Devereaux and Amanda Quick.

And then there’s urban drama.  We’ve learned that when most people see “urban” they think “African American” which was not our intent.  No "street lit" please.  And contemporary drama tends to bring in chick-lit and we are NOT looking for Nicholas Sparks.  Our first example is 

B. Swangin Webster's upcoming "Let Me Just Say This."  

Maybe we need a new label for the books we want to publish.   So, help us out - not for bookstore shelving, but to help authors know what to submit to us. How shall we label the stories we’re looking for? We want fiction with strong characters facing real life challenges - things that happen every day in American cities. These are stories of personal struggle and triumph. Help us define this genre, because we know a lot of women who want to read these books.