An Update on The Humanity of Monsters and the QUILTBAG Anthologies

So I don’t believe I’ve actually written any (directly) anthology related updates since the announcement of the final lineup for The Humanity of Monsters back at the beginning of December. And it’s been longer still since I updated things around either of the QUILTBAG anthologies. Given that, today’s post is going to be about catching up on some news and some announcements, including the crowdfunding project I mentioned yesterday.

Since the news around The Humanity of Monsters is shorter, I’ll start with that, and then we’ll get into talking about what’s going on with the QUILTBAG anthologies (Start a Revolution and This Patchwork Flesh).

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The Humanity of Monsters

First things first, this book’s release month has moved up to September 2015. Which, actually, is kind of delightful because that was the original release month for the book before it got moved back to November. I’m decidedly pleased that we all get to have copies of the book out in the world sooner.

Anyway, The Humanity of Monsters is nearing going into layout, I’ve had some exceedingly generous early feedback on the anthology, and it’ll be going around for a few additional blurbs quite soon. Then we’ll see what the review venues think of it. Personally, I’m quite curious to hear what people make of what that book is doing.

Also, because I get asked occasionally: When there is a cover, I will share it. Yes, I am also very much looking forward to getting a look at that.

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Start a Revolution & This Patchwork Flesh

I’m putting the updates for these two anthologies together because what’s going on with them is paired. (It kind of was anyway because they’re companion books, but their fortunes have always been linked more directly as well.)

So, the reason I have been quiet around these two books so long is that on December 22nd I had cause to pull both books from Exile Editions. The full set of reasons for which I will not go into here. Suffice to say that I have gone to Writer Beware over it, it involved attempted contractual fraud among other things (this from a company that has committed two successful instances of contract fraud — that I know about — re other books), and I will not work again with Exile in any capacity. Nor, given their business practices (and other reasons I will, again, not go into here), would I recommend anyone else work with them. But to each their own.

Following pulling the books from Exile I went to several publishers with whom I would have liked to work with on the two QUILTBAG anthologies. Unfortunately all of them are either booked up on projects and/or don’t have the funds to do the books as intended with pro (or I suppose now just shy of pro after SFWA upped the rate) payment. After a fair amount of consideration around the end of last year and into January, and after some additional research and running of numbers, I’m going to crowdfund Start a Revolution on my own. And will discuss that momentarily below.

However, this means that I have to drop putting together This Patchwork Flesh in order to put together Start a Revolution. I simply don’t have the werewithal to plan for and execute both books right now. I may come back to This Patchwork Flesh somewhere down the line, but I am releasing all the stories that were on hold or in the slush pile for This Patchwork Flesh. I will still be sending notices in response to all submissions so that everyone has an update on their submission, and I thank you all for having been so patient around that, and I’m sorry I’ve had to make you all wait so long for responses.

Now, back to Start a Revolution:

After pulling the books I went back and opened up the Table of Contents for Start a Revolution, and ended up expanding the book closer to 100,000 words (from the prior ~80,000). The revised ToC looks like this:

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In the City of Kites and Crows – Megan Arkenberg
Mountaineering – Leah Bobet
And if the Body Were Not the Soul – A.C. Wise
The Hedge-Witch of Welland – Ada Hoffmann/Jacqueline Flay
Made Flesh – Charlene Challenger
And the Woods are Silent – Amber van Dyk
The Shrine – Kelly Rose Pflug-Back
The New New Revolution – E.L. Chen
The Book of How to Live – Rose Lemberg
Queen of the Flies – A.M. Dellamonica
To Follow the Waves – Amal El-Mohtar
Le Lundi de la Matraque (Nightstick Monday) – Claire Humphrey
Kenshō – Adam Shaftoe-Durrant
The Aneurytic – Andrew Wilmot
Two Year Man – Kelly Robson
Listening for the Drowned – E. Catherine Tobler
This Shall Serve as a Demarcation – Bogi Takács
Weep for Day – Indrapramit Das
Nothing Must Be Wasted – Arkady Martine

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That revised ToC bumps the reprint content up a bit and also gives the anthology some new stories. And by the time this anthology comes out some of the stories that were original will be reprints (I offered the contributors the option to sell their stories elsewhere and run them as reprints here when I eventually got the book off the ground again in case getting that done took a while).

The current plan for actually producing the book is this:

I’m going to run a crowdfunding campaign (still deciding between Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and gathering more advice on both platforms) to acquire the necessary funds for printing/shipping, professional editorial/layout/e-book conversion/cover art (that last already exists in mockup and I’ll share the final version once the fundraiser starts), and contributor payments. I will not be taking an editorial payment unless the fundraising campaign is far more successful than I expect.

Said crowdfunding campaign will run from April 15th – June 15th. I’m going to be using Mike Allen’s excellent fundraising model for Clockwork Phoenix 4, by which I secure a base payment for contributors and hope to use stretch goals to get to the desired contributor payments. That base goal is all or nothing, and would allow me to pay the contributors .03/word for original fiction and .01/word for reprint fiction, and through the stretch goals I hope to raise enough to pay the contributors .05/word for original fiction and .03/word for reprint fiction. There’s also discussion of trying for .06/word for original fiction and .04/word for reprint fiction, as well as other possible stretch goals, and there is also an ongoing discussion about the Rewards that will be on offer. A few things set up and I’m looking into more for that.

My aim is to produce the book for late October/early November (still figuring out the actual release date) so I can have copies with me when I head down to World Fantasy. I’m also carrying over the promotional work I started when the book was still with Exile, so there’s some promotion already underway, and the rest is in progress.

There should probably be more fanfare accompanying this announcement. But the whole thing’s really just getting underway. I’ll be moving some of the QUILTBAG related material around on the website in the coming days, and I’ve got a lot of e-mails to write, along with all the other ongoing work I need to get done, so I may be a bit scarce over the next few days.

Hey, there were three blog posts in three days. That’s a lot more activity than this blog normally sees, so it’ll probably be more like things going back to normal around here….

While I get things underway by all means feel free to spread the word about what’s going on with  Start a Revolution and the coming fundraiser, share the anthology’s revised ToC, or ask anything you like related to the project. I’ll answer when and as I can.