This anthology was conceived almost exactly one year ago, in a rented SUV on the way home from Mythic Faire in Hunt Valley, MD. Chris and I had made the decision that we were going to each edit a new anthology, and were discussing what theme we’d each choose. For Chris, it was a no-brainer–he couldn’t edit his first anthology and it not be werewolves!

We were already doing my go-to theme–Pagan–in Etched Offerings, which we were editing together. That meant I needed a new theme for my book. I kept looking around the landscape as we drove (or rode, technically; I think Chris’s wife was doing the actual driving), hoping that something I saw would spark an idea. We were on a freeway in rural Pennsylvania, though, and the only landscape there really was was trees.

Lots and lots of trees.

And then, it hit me: the forest! Why not do a whole anthology with no more specific a theme than “Set in the forest”? OK, I also wanted dark and preferably strange, because this is me we’re talking about, but dark and strange in the forest.

So, my decision was made. I actually remember asking Chris if he was sure he wanted to do just a general werewolf theme, and not something a bit more specific. I figured everybody who’d ever written a werewolf story (and what spec fic writer hasn’t written a werewolf story?) would pile them all on him and he’d be overwhelmed. Meanwhile, though, I actually worried that my odd little forest theme wouldn’t get enough submissions to even fill the book.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Chris managed to get enough subs to put together a great book (Children of the Moon), but he was by no means overloaded with them. I, on the other hand, received at least twice as many as he did, maybe more. And yes, a few of them came from people who’d obviously thought “well, this one has a tree in it, why not give it a try?” but the vast majority of them were right on target. It’s never fun to send rejections to authors, of course, but all the same it was such a great feeling to be able to reject every story that wasn’t right for whatever reason and still have enough to fill the book!

Once the final acceptances were sent, I actually had to put the whole project aside for several weeks while we finished up Etched Offerings and some other projects. Once I got back to Rustle, and went back through the stories to do the line edits, they were pretty fresh for me again, and I was amazed at how good they all were! The first time through, of course, I was reading these stories mixed in with the ones that didn’t make the cut. Reading just the accepted ones together, I was astonished at what a great book this was going to be!

Meanwhile, I received an email back from artist Edison Yan, replying to my query about his gorgeous painting I’d found on DeviantArt. He gave me permission to use the image for the book cover, and it’s just the perfect final touch to the whole project.

Oh, and speaking of final touches… This book was originally intended to come out in the fall of 2011.  I found out after starting the project that 2011 was “The Year of the Forest.” I’d planned on tying into that theme for the introduction, but once it became obvious that I wasn’t going to make it by the end of the year, I decided to step aside and let someone else write the introduction. I reached out to Cory Thomas Hutcheson, figuring who better than a folklorist and traditional witch to write the introduction for a book of magical forest stories! To my delight, he jumped at the offer, and gave me an excellent intro to go with these excellent stories. Thank you, Cory!!!

Oh, and one other bit of Rustle trivia, then I’ll let you get back to your lives. You’ll notice that the first story in the book, by Seth Drake, is actually titled “A Rustle of Dark Leaves.” You might be having a chicken/egg moment with this, so let me confirm. The book is not named for Seth’s story. Rather, he finished it and decided that the most fitting title for it was the same title I’d given the anthology. I remember the submission coming into the MP gmail during one of Chris’s and my weekly coffeeshop business meetings, and seeing the title on the story and rolling my eyes, saying ”Aw shit, we’ve got another yahoo!” or some such. But, just another of the many wonderful surprises this book has given me, Mr. Drake absolutely 100% backed up the ballsy move with the most perfect lead story I could have asked for!

OK, plugging and yammering complete. And to the three people still reading this far in: thank you for indulging me!

~Inanna

I’m not, however, going to yammer on and on about every little thing. You wouldn’t read all that anyway, and we both know it. Instead, this is going to be the beginning of a sort of sub-series, which I’ve chosen to title “Confessions of a Frustrated Editor.” To start us off, my inaugural topic is: Cover Letters.

“Why cover letters?” you may be asking me. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to start with the basics, like making sure you’ve proof read your manuscript and formatted it correctly?” Those are definitely the first things the author needs to do before submitting, sure, but think about it. The editor sees your cover letter before opening your attached story file. Your cover letter is your first impression. It’s important. Let me say that again: IT’S IMPORTANT.

Sadly, a large number of authors fail to realize this.

Let me start with the good, mainly because it’s easier and faster. Easier and faster because it’s not hard to write a good cover letter. At all.

First – write a cover letter. It’s amazing how many submissions I receive that are attached to a completely blank email. Or worse still, a blank email that has some ridiculous auto-signature at the bottom, like a humorous quote or sarcastic remark.

Second – It’s a cover letter, not your autobiography. Keep it polite, consise, and relevant. If you’ve got stories in thirty anthologies, and you’re proud of that (you should be!), then by all means tell me you have stories in thirty anthologies. Name the top three you’re most proud of. What you shouldn’t do, however, is list every single book, the title of your story, the publishing house that put it out, and the date. You think I’m kidding? I’ve seen it. More than once.

Third – Give me some quick-reference story information. In my own cover letters, I include the title of my story, my name, and the word count. As an editor, I like to have these things in the cover letter so that when I’m scanning through emails, deciding what stories will fit where, or which submission to read next when I have a specific amount of time to read it, I can tell at a glance how long each piece is.

Fourth – Don’t just give the info listed in number three. A while back, I updated the guidelines on the Title Goes Here: website listing the things above as the minimum info we want to see in a cover letter. As soon as I did, we started getting submissions with bullet lists of just those things. Not much better than blank, people. Say hello, and introduce yourself. It’s awkward to reply to an email when the person didn’t tell you their name.

That’s it. A basic greeting, like “hello” or “dear editor,” followed by “My name is…” and “attached is my story.” Then a short section giving the basic details, listed out for quick reference. Easy peasy. The only other thing I’d include is to READ THE GUIDELINES VERY, VERY CAREFULLY! What I’m listing here are my preferences. Other editors are different. Whatever they say to do, both to your cover letter, and your manuscript, do it. Even if it sounds ridiculous. They have their reasons. I’ve been asked to submit single-spaced manuscripts with no paragraph indents. I thought they were crazy, until I started doing eBook formatting and realized that’s the perfect starting-state for an eBook manuscript.

So, that’s the good. What’s the bad, other than the few “don’ts’ I peppered in above? Let’s see…

Don’t overshare. Unless the guidelines specifically request that you include your bio upfront with your submission, don’t share a lot of personal information in your cover letter unless it’s relevant. If you’re a mother of three, certainly feel free to share that you’re a mother of three. But don’t then go into how you finally got little Bobby potty trained last month unless your story is about potty training. Likewise, be careful with personal information, and with statements of opinion. I had one recently that told me about the author’s job, which was relevant to the story, then went on to share a couple of completely unrelated tidbits, one of which came across as quite racist. I don’t actually think it was meant that way, but it’s how it sounded, and I’ll admit it colored things for me when deciding whether or not to accept the story.

Don’t tell me I probably won’t like your story. Again, you think I’m kidding? I’ve seen “Most people probably won’t like this story, but…” I think most, if not all, authors have that story. The one that we know will probably never get published, either because it’s just not that great, or because it’s just such an off-the-wall topic that it doesn’t really fit anywhere. (My writer friends and I affectionately refer to my unpublishable story as my “goat fucker” story. Yeah. Exactly.) Tell your writer friends all about it. Blog about it. Tweet about it. Whatever you want. But don’t tell the editor you’re submitting it to that they’re not going to like it! As writers, we’re absolutely at the mercy of editorial taste and preference, but those editors in turn are at the mercy of our readers’ taste and preference. I might absolutely love your “few people will like this” story, but if I know none of my readers will, then I’m going to tell you how much I enjoyed it… and reject it.

Don’t leave out information the editor needs. This, again, goes back to reading the guidelines. Here’s a very specific example, again from my experience editing TGH:. We have both a Print Edition and a Web Edition. The print is quarterly, while the web is monthly. The web is not just a copy of the print edition put online; each have different stories. When we’re open to submissions to both editions, we ask authors to specify in their cover letter whether they have a preference. It clearly states that if they don’t tell us, their story will be considered for either edition. We still occasionally have authors we accept for the web edition refuse once they find out we’re not accepting them for print, even though they didn’t specify print only in their cover letter. It’s a right pain in the ass to spend time reading and considering a story, working out which issue it will work best in, and adding it to the projected word count total for that issue only to have the author pull it because they don’t feel that online publication “counts.” Oh yeah, we’ve been told more than once that “online isn’t a real publication credit.” That, however, is another rant for another day. The point here is, we ask you to specify  in your cover letter. Other publishers have their own specific, special things they need to know upfront. Don’t ignore these requests. I’ll go into a lot more detail about that another day, when I’m talking about following guidelines.

So, I think that’s /rantoff for now. I’m not sure right now how often I’ll be doing these “Frustrated Editor” posts, but I have a good, long list of topic ideas for them, so I doubt it’ll be that long ’til the next one

Thanks for reading!!

~Inanna

The anthology is available now at Amazon. Static Movement’s anthos are usually also available in the bookstore at Pill Hill Press, but I haven’t gotten an email notice on this one yet, so I can’t guarantee you’ll find it there. Probably, though

In other news, I’ll be doing a panel at Genericon in Troy, NY March 2-4. We plan to keep it pretty general, just talking about the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of writing speculative fiction. I’ll be joining Seth Drake, who’s moderating, and possibly a couple of others. If you’re in the area, why not swing by and see us?

That’s it for today. More soon, I’m sure!

~Inanna

For the final episode of the month, however, they decided to do something different. Cory, being an excellent fiction writer himself, decided to include stories by authors he actually knows personally (or as personally as online, at least), and I made the list!  Cory sent the authors the file early, so I’ve already listened, and can assure you I’m in excellent company!

Now, I do want to apologize to all of you, because he wanted the authors to read our own stories, so instead of Cory’s deep, resonating voice, you get me and my little Skype microphone.  Also, I’m the only one included who’s not a podcaster–yikes! Hopefully, I held my own OK I do want to thank Chris Orapello profusely for his assistance while I was fighting with recording programs!

The other authors included are Saturn Darkhope (from the podcast Pennies in the Well), Oraia Helene (formerly Oraia Sphinx, of the Media Astra ac Terra podcast), Ben Reeder (read by Peter Paddon of The Crooked Path podcast), Scarlet Page (of the Lakefront Pagan Voice podcast) and Cory Hutcheson himself, of (of New World Witchery, of course!) They’re all great authors–three of them are actually in Misanthrope Press’s soon-t0-be-released Pagan fiction anthology Etched Offerings, in fact, and one (so far) has also appearedin Title Goes Here:. I’ve published these people myself, so you know I’m not full of shit here!

And one last thing I want to go into before I shoo you off to go listen. As his theme for this episode, Cory directs us to the infant tradition of All Hallows Read. I hadn’t heard of this before, and it’s just simply brilliant! Begun last year by Neil Gaiman, All Hallows Read is the tradition of giving the gift of a scary book for Halloween. Cory goes into it a bit more in the episode, and there’s a lot more detail still on the official website www.allhallowsread.com, so go check it out. There’s even a “book drop sticker” you can download, so you can simply label a book (or a stack of ‘em!) and leave them around for lucky people to find and claim as their own! (and maybe drop again next All Hallows, if we’re all even luckier?)

OK, that’s it for me… go listen to the podcast!

Inanna

The Paranoia Conspiracy at Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers

Bernie and Gerard Take a Hike at The Fringe Magazine

J.M. also has stories in two our our writers’ group’s annual anthologies, so if you like her stuff, there is more to be had! The Creative Minds Collective vol. II includes “Beauty Becomes the Beast,” and the third volume, titled “Welcome to Havisham Corners” includes her story “Until Death Do Us Part.” She also edited the Havisham anthology, as well as came up with the whole premise of Havisham Corners itself.

And yes, those links to the CMC anthologies go shamelessly back to the Misanthrope Press bookstore. Sorry about that. They’re available in print only right now, but the eBooks should be available in the near future, if that’s more your style.

You can follow J.M. on Twitter, too, at @jmrv09 . And you should. She’s quite witty.

~Inanna

Well, it’s a new month, and as promised I’ve just put up another eBook single at Smashwords. This month it’s “The Seventeenth Sphere,” the first in my SphereCasters series. This story was originally published in the anthology “Darkest Secrets.” Its companion piece, “Where Are You?” is available at Midnight in Hell. (A note for the curious – you can read the two stories in either order, but “Where Are You” was written first.)

Since it’s a short, the book is priced (like all my others) at just 99 cents, but, as always, this one is free for the next month to my site visitors & Twitter followers. Just enter coupon code SH86C when you check out! Also, as always, anyone kind enough to post an honest review of the story, let me know where I can find it and I’ll send you a coupon code for another free story!

Thanks as always! Hopefully I’ll have another short to announce next month, and some news between now & then as well.

~Inanna

The book will be available at Amazon soon, as well as Smashwords in eBook form, but if you’re like me and are eager for some Pagan fiction NOW, it’s already up at CreateSpace. (And, speaking as a publisher who uses CreateSpace as well, I know that the publisher will make more money if you buy through the CreateSpace link, too!) Click here to link directly to the book at CreateSpace, or here to read more about it at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina website.

Meanwhile, we’re in the last stages getting Etched Offerings ready for publication. I’ve been working with Chris Orapello as he develops the cover concept (which is going to be freaking fabulous, let me tell you!) and we’ve finalized the Table of Contents order. I’m finishing up page layout, so once Chris is done with the art, and Sooj has the introduction for us, we’re good to go! We’re still hoping to have the book out by Mabon–fingers crossed!

Inanna

I have just posted a new eBook on Smashwords, “Violin Concerto No. 9 in A Minor.” The story was originally published in the Snuff Books anthology Raw: Brutality as Art in 2009, and is yet another installment in my Barrow City series.

Get it for FREE for the next week (through August 14th) by using coupon code XE84J on the Smashwords website. Reviews on the Smashwords site and elsewere are always very much appreciated! (Also, if you post a review and let me know where it’s posted, I’ll send you a coupon code for another free story!)

I’ll probably be posting another story next month, very possibly the first in a new series, SphereCasters. Stay tuned!

~Inanna

In other news, I’m still reading the last of the subs for the forest-themed anthology I’m editing for Misanthrope Press, as well as reading the stories for the other fiction anthology I’m writing the foreword for. All this, and a short story due for my writers’ group anthology by the end of the month–yikes!!

That’s it for today, short & sweet, just wanted to get the word out about the free stories. For now, I’m off to get back to reading!!

Inanna