HALLO, BLACK GATE! Long time no blog!

I emerge from my Limited Internet Lifestyle to bring unto you news of EXCITEMENT and GLORY!

Rose Lemberg is editing a new anthology called An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassifiables. She describes it as “lyrical, surreal, magical, experimental pieces that straddle the border between poetry and prose.”

And since she does such a splendid job of describing things (because… POET!), I will continue to quote her as she describes the project and her crowd-funding efforts.

 

“Hi everyone. I am Rose Lemberg. You might know me as the editor of The Moment of Change (Aqueduct Press, 2012), and the founder and co-editor of Stone Telling Magazine. I also edited Here, We Cross, an anthology of queer and genderfluid poetry, which was published through my micropress, Stone Bird Press.

With your help, I am looking to put together an anthology called An Alphabet of Embers. I want to make the kind of book you’d pick up when you’re drowning for a gulp of beauty on a gray day. I will be looking for the short, the surreal, the weird. An Alphabet of Embers would live in that space between poetry and prose, between darkness and sound, between roads and breaths, its pages taut with starlight; between its covers, words would talk to each other, and have an occasional cup of tea.

I am looking to publish about 30 or so pieces of lyrical prose and unclassifiables in a mix of originals and reprints. If this Kickstarter funds, I will pay SFWA pro rates at 6c a word for originals, and 3c a word for reprints. I will read pieces between 500-1400 words long.

I am committed to diversity of voice and theme in all my editorial projects, and this one will be no exception. I will be looking for beauty and resonance from all quarters and in all forms. As always, I am invested in supporting creators that belong to marginalized groups.

Please help me make this beautiful thing happen!

WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO?

My budget for An Alphabet of Embers is $6000. This includes:

paying authors at SFWA professional rates
paying the Hugo award-winning artist Galen Dara for the beautiful cover art she created for the project
paying the brilliant Emily Jiang for the composing and singing of Embersong, the theme song of the Kickstarter
producing print and ebook versions of the book
producing print and ebook versions of the bonus chapbook, Spelling the Hours
producing and shipping contributor copies
shipping the physical rewards to backers
Kickstarter fees
taxes
SUBMISSIONS

There will be an open call for submissions posted as soon as the goal is reached. I am so excited about this anthology, and can’t wait to begin reading work!

(ETA: Submissions since posted.)

STRETCH GOALS

Stretch goal 1: if the funding reaches $6500, I will commission internal art (either illustrations or works inspired by the anthology).

Stretch goal 2: if we reach $7000, I will commission an additional piece of music from the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, and send it to all backers.

REWARDS DETAILS

Art By Galen Dara: cover art, postcard, and limited edition prints of the cover signed by the editor.

Galen Dara has illustrated for 47 North Publishing, Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Apex Publications, Lackington’s Magazine, and Edge Publishing. Recent Cover art includes Oz Reimagined, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne, the Women Destroy Science Fiction issue of Lightspeed Magazine, War Stories edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak, Glitter & Mayhem edited by John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas, and Heirs of Grace written by Tim Pratt. Her art was chosen for inclusion in Spectrum 20 and Spectrum 21. She is the winner of the 2011 Orycon33 Art Show Directors Choice award, the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist, and is a nominee for the 2013 Hugo Award for Professional Artist.

Voice of the Seastar: in addition to swag (see reward level), I will write a poem for you! You will choose an element, a stone, and a texture for me to work with. If you’d like something more specific, we can talk! Previous work I’ve written for various fundraisers includes Godfather Death (for JoSelle Vanderhooft), Between the Mountain and the Moon (for Izlinda Hani Jamaluddin), Plucked from the Horo (for Brittany Warman), and more. $100 will buy a poem of up to 100 lines; please pledge $200 if you want epic length. After the poem is delivered, I may opt to submit it for publication, in which case a dedication to you will be displayed!

Embersong: The theme song for the anthology! I have composed the words, and Emily is hard at work setting them to music. This is not my first collaboration with Emily – she has composed music using my poems “Walrus” and “Salamander Song” – the latter of the collaborations is scheduled to appear in Strange Horizons.

Emily Jiang delights in setting beautiful texts to music. Her compositions have been performed by the San Francisco Choral Artists, the Gunn High School Choir, and The Emily Jiang Singers. She’s currently working on an album that’s a musical companion to her book, Summoning the Phoenix: Poems & Prose about Chinese Musical Instruments.

STRETCH GOAL: A song composed, sung, and recorded as video by The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours. They are C. S. E. Cooney, Amal El-Mohtar, and Caitlyn Paxson – friends, writers, performers, and musicians who’ve banded together to share their work with the world. Scattered across the globe, they do not so much travel together as spontaneously occur. Whenever two or more are gathered, you can be sure of a well-dressed apocalypse.”

 

As you can probably tell, I personally am THE MOST EXCITED about the second stretch goal, being one of the AFOREMENTIONED Apocalypse Gals myself!

When Rose asked us if we might write a song for the Embers project, you could probably have heard each of us SQUEALING in HARMONY from Ottawa to Glasgow to Westerly, Rhode Island. We have written many songs for love and for each other (and a couple songs about body-snatching in the 1880s and mining disasters, just for fun). But this would be our FIRST COMMISSIONED SONG!!!

Here is a picture of us, VERY EXCITED to make BEAUTIFUL MUSIC for ROSE and for YOU and for the WORLD! Should we reach that particular stretch goal.

If you think this project looks MAGNIFICENT… Well, for one thing, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT! And for another thing, you could totally be one of the GREAT PATRONS of the ARTS, and also put a little something toward making An Alphabet of Embers happen.

Please visit An Alphabet of Embers Kickstarter page and help a new book out, wouldja?

THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING!!!