Oct 5, 2008

Killers Contributors and the Limited Edition

In February 2007, I invited about a dozen authors to contribute an original story each to an anthology I was putting together. The idea was to collate a collection of stories that would have elements of speculative fiction (be it SF, fantasy, horror or slipstream) but would primarily be mysteries, thrillers or crime stories.

Ten writers responded, and my publisher told me that she wanted a piece from me, so that was eleven original stories. With the tendency of horror and some crime stories to occupy adjacent fictional territories there was always a danger of overlap, but in fact there were three sci-fi stories submitted, two or three fantasies of varying shades of darkness (again, there is a tendency for dark fiction and outright horror to overlap), three or four outright horror stories, and two that refused to be pigeon-holed, so it seemed a good cross-section.
It seemed to me that this was such a fine body of writers, comprising as it did a Nebula, World Fantasy Award and Pushcart Prize-winning author (Bruce Holland Rogers), a Lambda Literary Award winner (Lee Thomas), A multiple Bram Stoker Award winner (Jonathan Maberry), a British Fantasy Award winner, a Children's award winner (Sarah Singleton) and two BFA nominees, that it was a worthy choice to arrange a limited edition.
What I'd forgotten was that the limited editions usually put together are intra-national, that is, the authors are all in one country. Little did I know what cans of worms my publisher's agreement would open up....