Samhain Publishing Ltd. Weblog

Psychic Powers Anthology

I had many excellent novellas submitted to this anthology. I want to thank everyone who participated. Selecting the participants was not easy!

That said, I’m excited to announce there will be two anthologies:

Contemporary paranormal romance:
Empath by Bonnie Dee
Obey Me by Paige Cuccaro

Red-hot paranormal romance:
Future Found by Mima
Blood Ties by Cathryn Fox

Congratulations!

—
Anne Scott, Editor
Samhain Publishing

Psychic Powers Anthology

Open call for submissions—Samhain Publishing psychic powers anthology for Fall 2008

I’d like to announce an open call for submissions for a new anthology. This psychic powers anthology will consist of three to four novellas to be released individually as ebooks for release November 2008 and combined into one print title for release November 2009.

Real life vs fiction

Fiction and real life are not quite the same. I know, it’s an obvious statement. But I do find it fascinating when I realize that what makes good fiction is not necessarily “real life”. The best and most obvious example is dialogue. If you were to transcribe real dialogue, often it would be meandering, repetitive and boring to read. With lots of repeated words, ums and allusions to things which are obvious if you’re actually there, but not obvious when being read.

Dialogue has to be crafted to give a sense of real-life dialogue, but it’s fictional. If two people are very excited, you don’t actually want to puntuate every sentence with an exclamation mark. Strong writing—and an exclamation mark here and there–will convey the appropriate intensity.

Relationships are like this, too. In real life, they can be confusing and hard to make sense of. It’s not much fun reading about a relationship that is hard to make sense of. It needs to be crafted and, sometimes, simplified. Fiction is not as complex as real life, after all. That doesn’t mean fiction can’t be fascinating, insightful and multilayered.

Historical romances can be especially tricky. They need to be accurate, yes, but most importantly they need to convince—to simulate a different time and place—without portraying said time and place in a way that is known to be wrong. (Unless, we’re dealing with alternate history.) The language can’t sound too modern and yet, it’s unlikely to be exactly how they spoke in Middle Ages and it won’t be how they spoke in Rome!

So fiction does not equal real life, but it can provide a fascinating window on it.

Submissions

I’m going to talk about the submissions in my inbox. This is my process, not necessarily anyone else’s.

I like to read the introductory letter, get a little more information than just the name and title, although I don’t want a huge essay. Before going into the manuscript, I want to know the genre. I’ll glance at the synopsis* but I won’t really read it. Then I start from the beginning, be it Chapter One or the prologue.

If you don’t hook me in those first few pages, I’ll keep reading, but chances of a request go down fast. So yes, even those first paragraphs are all important. But then again, so is the rest of the book. I want to be pulled right through the story and I want to keep turning the pages (or scrolling down, as the case may be).