Thursday, September 4, 2014

Fire it Up!

The Forge's coals have been banked for too long. What with bowling and writing and Cons, I haven't spent much time with the metaphorical hammer and tongs. Time for that to change. Time for some new stuff. Let's start with some news and a new short story.



Knight of Flame won a Gold medal for Contemporary Fantasy in Dan Poynter's 2014 World Ebook Awards!  









 





My new short story, "The Last Dregs of Winter," is available in a great new anthology from WordFire Press, One Horn to Rule Them All: A Purple Unicorn Anthology



Can you believe it? An entire collection of short stories featuring purple unicorns. That's the kind of magic that happens at the Superstars Writing Seminar. Helmed by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, Superstars is the best seminar in the galaxy on the topics of being a professional writer. All proceeds from the sale of One Horn goes to the Superstars scholarship fund. And it all started as a silly example. 

One of the presentations given by Kevin and Rebecca is about how to act like a professional writer. One of their points is if you are invited to submit a story to an anthology, you had better write the best darn story you can because to someone, it will be his or her first exposure to your writing. It doesn't matter if you hate the topic. If you agree to write the story, don't "phone it in". Even if the anthology is about Purple Unicorns, and you hate Purple Unicorns, the readers who buy that book want to read about Purple Unicorns. Therefore, it is in your best interest to write the best Purple Unicorn story you can. Make sense? 

They used that example for a few years, an each year the class talks about really writing those stories. In 2014, Lisa Mangum, the Managing Editor for Shadow Mountain, attended as a guest speaker. Kevin and Rebecca gave their talk using the Purple Unicorn example. Lisa fell in love with the idea and offered to donate her editing time if Kevin would publish the finished book through WordFire Press. They invited top authors like Jody Lynn Nye, Todd McAffrey and Peter S. Beagle to submit, while opening most of the story slots up to Superstars' alumni. And the result? An amazing anthology filled with wildly different takes on the Purple Unicorn theme. 

Check it out this awesome new anthology.   One Horn to Rule Them All: A Purple Unicorn Anthology

That's it for now. I'll post a Con update soon. 

Have fun,
Scott