Ever since I pulled the Start a Revolution anthology from Exile just the end of last year, I’ve been looking for another way to produce the book. Been shopping it around to other publishers, and was at one point going to self-publish the anthology, crowdfund it, and go the whole nine yards with that. That before I ended up moving, which ate up time and resources.
It was a long trek pulling the book together, consolidating This Patchwork Flesh into it, and then looking for homes for that project(s). But at this point I’ve heard back from the last publisher I had contacted about the book this year, and though all the responses along the way have been lovely (which is I think more due to the excellence of the book’s contents than anything else) the timing’s never quite been right, or the book’s never quite been right for the publisher I was taking it to.
And as I’m really not up for, over the coming year, doing self-publication of the book and pulling together fundraising and everything that entails, I’m retiring the project. I’ve already let the contributors know — all of whom have been extraordinarily patient and very generous with their work.
All of their stories are exceptional, and I’m fairly certain the stories from the book that haven’t already sold elsewhere, or were not reprints, will be things you’ll be reading in published form over the next few years. And actually, if you want to get a taste of the anthology you can currently read multiple stories that were originally written for the book or that I was going to reprint therein:
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- A.C. Wise’s “And if the Body Were Not the Soul” is online at Clarkesworld
- Amal El-Mohtar’s “To Follow the Waves” is up in audio form on Podcastle
- Kelly Robson’s “Two Year Man” came out in the August 2015 issue of Asimov’s
- Bogi Takács’s “This Shall Serve as a Demarcation” is online at Scigentasy
- Indrapramit Das’s “Weep for Day” is online at Clarkesworld
- Arkady Martine’s “Nothing Must Be Wasted” is online at Ideomancer
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And I know at least one more story from the anthology has placed elsewhere, though I don’t think that sale has been announced yet, so I won’t be talking about that one until the author makes it public.
Even now that the project’s over, multiple components of the book are out in the world. They’re still having the conversations I drew them together to have. Because the stories are good enough to stand on their own.
The idea behind the book carries on.
And me? I’m heading on to other projects. There’s so much I want to get back to. Various things I want to finish or get off the ground. Some of which I’ve been doing here and there. Others I’ve had to neglect entirely over the last year. It’ll be nice to get back to those.
And in the meantime, hey, there’s an anthology called The Humanity of Monsters that just came out.
I hear that one’s pretty awesome too. ;)
Michael Matheson | A Dark and Terrible Beauty 