So You Want to Be in An Anthology: The Sequel – The Aftermath

**Update!**

Here is the link to submission information on the Villainous Press website. There is some new stuff in the guidelines there, so make sure you read and understand them. If you have any questions, please contact me.

and

Here is the link to submit your story via Submittable

**If you weren’t at the panel at MileHi Con on October 24th, you CANNOT submit.

Don’t bother. I have a list of the great people who were there and this information is for them! If you are not one of them (or one of the three people I spoke with at the con who couldn’t be there at exactly that time), please feel free to keep reading, but try not to feel too excluded.

I have been told in the past my webpage can be hard to read. If you have this problem, you can copy the text out and paste it into Word (or whatever you use) to read it. If this doesn’t work for you and you really need to read this, send me an e-mail and I will paste it into the body of the e-mail and send it back to you. Sam@samknight.com

First, thank you for coming to the panel, I hope you enjoyed and got something out of it! If you are looking for one of my co-panelists, I was joined by Dana Bell and Tonya DeMarco.  My thanks to both!

Second, Guy Anthony De Marco was unable to attend the panel, and he was missed greatly (especially by me, as I had to guess at a few things he will now have to live with!). His Villainous Press will be publishing the anthology. This is a charity anthology, and therefore we are donating our time and efforts to this. **I have not had the chance to finalize all of the details with Guy Anthony De Marco, but they will be important to you when you sign a contract if your story is accepted. I will update this page with information as I have it. At this time, I believe you will receive an e-copy of the book as payment. Why so little, you ask? Because, again, this is a charity anthology.

*Side note from your friend Sam Knight*  Make sure you read and understand ANY contract you get from ANYONE!  Get a disinterested third party to explain anything you do not understand. Make sure you are happy with what you understand before signing it!

Third, here are the guidelines we discussed:

**PG-13 rating. No sex. No erotica. No graphic violence. Cussing to be limited to hell and damn. If you’re fond of the F word, your story will be rejected. Not opposed to faith based stories, just as long as it’s important to the character or story line. If they’re preaching on any belief system, the piece will be rejected. (Thanks to Dana Bell for letting me swipe this from her guidelines!)

Formatting:

Times New Roman size 12. Double spaced with indents for paragraphs. DO NOT use Tabs to indent paragraphs! (That messes everything up. If you don’t know how to set formatting to auto indent on MS Word, follow this link. If you still can’t figure it out, send me an e-mail, and I’ll do what I can to help.) Single space after punctuation, please.

Please submit in .doc files or .rtf files only. No .docx files, no PDFs, no text documents. These will be sent back to you with a request to change the format.

You can go to the Guy Anthonly DeMarco’s website for downloadable templates to help with formatting. I would look this over even if you don’t think you will use it. Personally I have a couple of files labeled as Short Story Template  or Novel Template  that I open up and off I go writing and I don’t have to think about this stuff anymore.

There are a lot of webpages out there that will tell you how you should format your story. And they all start out the same and then get different. Which sucks. So here are the basics for what you need to do to submit for this:

On the first page of your story, please include: Name, address, phone number, email address, and approximate word count. This is very important! The editor has to contact writers and without this full info, your story will be dropped if you can’t be reached.

The first page should look a lot  like this:

Sam Knight                                                          Approx. 3,777 words
1234 N. First Main Street
Happyville, CO 90210
(555)-123-4567
sam@samknight.com

The Offspring
by
Sam Knight
Colorado 1895

“Looks to be a killin’ snow.” Joel commented as he looked out over the wet rocks and dripping pine trees dotting the hill around them. Fat, wet flakes slapped him on the cheek and stuck to his eyelashes. If they got wet and temperatures dropped below freezing, they would be in trouble. He gave his older brother a worried glance. The top of Harold’s hat was already soaked with white splotches impacting and melting, and his horse’s mane was matting with the damp.

If you use a pen name, you still need to give your REAL name for legal reasons. That should be done like this:

Jane Doe (writing as Sam Knight)                                        Approx. 3,777 words
1234 N. Main Street
Happyville, CO 90210
(555)-123-4567
sam@samknight.com

The Offspring
by
Sam Knight
Colorado 1895

“Looks to be a killin’ snow.” Joel commented as he looked out over the wet rocks and dripping pine trees dotting the hill around them. Fat, wet flakes slapped him on the cheek and stuck to his eyelashes. If they got wet and temperatures dropped below freezing, they would be in trouble. He gave his older brother a worried glance. The top of Harold’s hat was already soaked with white splotches impacting and melting, and his horse’s mane was matting with the damp.

Some places want page numbers and info on the top of each page. That usually goes on the top right hand corner in the format of   name/title/page#    and looks like this:

Knight/The Offspring/3

Fourth! I think. I’ve lost track.  What we decided to do! Not nearly as close of a vote as last year, so I’m hoping we hit a sweet spot.

Our theme: Adventures in Zoo keeping.

We had a few questions about this. Middle school classroom, prison, and the like. My answer was “you have to convince me it’s a zoo.”  In other words, don’t write the sequel to The Shawshank Redemption and think it’s okay to slip in the phrase “the prison was a zoo”.

Here is Google’s Definition:

What I want are stories that use the term zoo as stated in the first definition, not the second.

Also, please note, the theme is Adventures in Zookeeping, not Adventures in the Zoo. Please don’t send in an expanded version of Dick and Jane: At the Zoo.

This is open genre so you can write science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, and even romance if you so choose. The only limit here is no erotica. (Remember the guidelines! PG-13 rating. No sex. No erotica. No graphic violence.)

Story length: between 500 words (flash fiction) and 7,000 words

Try to keep in mind, the longer or shorter your story is, the better it has to be! The average stories are 2,000 to 6,000 words. If you want to write a flash fiction story, it will have to be able to stand up against stories that use more words. If you go long in your story, the story has to be good enough to justify the space in the book it may be stealing from someone else’s story.

Submissions will be accepted through January 31st 2016.

Submissions will not be accepted after January 31st unless you have contacted be beforehand and gotten permission for an extension. (You will need a really really really good reason. Really.)

I believe Villainous Press is working on setting submission up through Submittable, but I am not positive. I will update here when I know, or you can submit directly to me at sam@samknight.com.  **Warning** If I do not respond letting you know I got the story, then I did not get it.

Finally (I think), remember the editor’s job (my job in this case) is to make your story better. I mentioned my editing style in the panel, even if you get rejected, you will get some feedback. If you get accepted, you are likely to look at the red on your story and wonder what kind of dull knife I attempted to perform surgery with. Don’t take any of this personally. None of it is personal. When we talk at the conventions, we are being friendly and having fun. When we start writing and editing and accepting and rejecting … that’s business. It is separate. It has to be. Don’t take it personal.

Remember, I WILL NOT CONTACT YOU! I collected your contact information ONLY to verify that you were at the panel IF I receive a story from you. I will not abuse the information you gave me.  If you send me something, I will reply to confirm I received it. If you do not get a confirmation from me within 2 or three days, I didn’t get it. Follow up and make sure I do get it!

Currently, plans are to release the anthology at MileHi Con next year, just as we did with Sidekicks this year.

If you have any questions, please e-mail me. Chances are someone else has the same question. I will add any updates to this page. My apologies for anything I have forgotten to include here. If it gets pointed out, I will fix it!