Call for Backers, Fearful Symmetries, Edited by Ellen Datlow in Conjunction with ChiZine on Kickstarter: An Audio Mini-Interview
This is a very brief interview – I’ll be doing a longer one with Ellen in the next few months. I wanted to catch up with her, though, about her Kickstarter campaign for Fearful Symmetries, an unthemed horror anthology she will edit, published by Chizine. As of right now, the campaign is underway and not yet fully funded. I thought it worth calling people’s attention to it because:
1) Ellen edits amazing anthologies, mixing work by seasoned pros and promising newcomers (and no, she’s never bought anything from me, and likely won’t for this anthology either. She only takes the very best).
2) This campaign was one Ellen purposely undertook the hard way. She could have partnered with a publisher and raised only the amount of money needed for author’s advances, but decided this was a poor precedent to set.
To hear more about that, the anthology, and the very cool rewards being offered, including this beautiful piece of art pictured below, click the following link:
Ellen Datlow describes her Kickstarter Campaign.
The duration of this interview is nine minutes. And if you feel so inclined, here again is the link to her Kickstarter Campaign, so you can back it. At the very least, check out her pitch video. It’s fantastic!
~Emily
www.emilymah.com
I just finished the Datlow-edited “Year’s Best Horror, Volume 1”, and am in the middle of reading Volume 2. Those are, of course, in her follow-up series to the now-defunct “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” series that she co-edited.
I will check out her Kickstarter, and knowing me, probably help fund it. (I was one of the many contributors to the $1 million Kickstarter campaign of Amanda Palmer, and the resulting album turned out to be the best of the year, IMO, and one of the best of the last decade.)
Ellen’s one of the most discerning editors out there. I’ve got PILES of rejection letters from her 😉
Whoops, that should say, “Best Horror of the Year”, which I could have discovered by walking into the other room to look at Volume 2 sitting on my coffee table, but which I actually discovered at her Kickstarter writeup.
I’m sure you confused no one 😉
Well, I was right. I put in my pledge, in this case $250 for the complete ChiZine eBook package. That itself is an amazing deal, so I do indeed hope this gets successfully funded!
Yeah, probably didn’t confuse anyone, but I hate making errors. 😉
I think what I like about her Best of Horror anthologies is that they’re more what I would call dark fantasy, or perhaps literary horror, mixed in with a few more extreme, graphic stories–which my stomach can only take so much of (I used to watch E.R. every week, and had to squint my eyes closed during the surgery scenes).
Plus I’ve discovered some really amazing writers. In volume 2 alone, just finished Norman Prentiss’s “In the Porches of My Ears”, which was outstanding. And from reading her summation of the year, in the Collections section, saw her call Barbara Roden’s “Northwest Passages”, “One of the best collections of the year.” She also noted that one of the stories was in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror volume 19. I have them all on my bookshelf, but haven’t read most of them yet. I pulled that one out to read the Barbara Roden story, and it was beautifully written and very interesting. Already bought the eBook of the collection. 😉
Cool! Thanks (on behalf of Ellen) for backing the campaign, and yes Ellen discovers a lot of new talent. When someone asked her how she selected stories for Year’s Best, she explained that she reads every single pro published story that comes out each and every year, this is on top of slushpile reading she did at the time for SciFiction.
Just an update: The Kickstarter has been successfully funded. It now has a stretch goal of $28,000 (the original goal was $25,000), which if successfully reached before the end–currently 64 hours away–will mean a better word rate for the contributors of 7 cents per word versus 6 cents.
Yep! She did it! Thanks for contributing. Momentum really picked up this last week.
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