To celebrate the release of Podthology, Dragon Moon Press’s new anthology of podcast fiction, editor Timothy G. M. Reynolds chatted with me about the making of an anthology.
GH: You mentioned on the Blog Talk Radio interview that Gwen Gades from Dragon Moon Press approached you with the idea for the theme. How familiar were you with podcasting before that?
Tim Reynolds: I knew very little about podcasting at that time. What little I knew came from attending a Tee [Morris] & Evo [Terra] panel at Westercon and one or two conversations with Jen Rahn about what she’d been doing with it. Although I knew very little, I was keen to learn more. It all sounded very cool.
GH: How did you find the authors and stories for the anthology? Was it all by invitation or were there authors who approached you when word got around? Did people give you one story, or multiple stories to choose from?
TR: Gwen gave me the initial list of Scott Sigler, Tee Morris, Pip Ballantine and one or two others. I asked Jen to come on board because I knew and liked her writing and she recommended two or three more, I think. Jack Mangan was referred by Tee, and Pip made some recommendations. It really amounted to me putting out a couple feelers and then the podcasting community supporting itself by sending me names and recommendations. I got multiple submissions from most authors, usually in the form of “Here are the links of stories I would like you to consider,” and then I listened to the podcasts and made my short list from there.
GH: Was there anything in particular about the podcasts you listened to, as a whole, that surprised you?
TR: I was blown away by the production quality of most of the podcasts; from the multi-cast productions to the sound effects, original music… it was like listening to the old radio shows like The Shadow. These people took there audio story-telling VERY seriously. It was great.
GH: How did you decide what story you were going to submit? Did you write it for the anthology or was it already written?
TR: Hmmm… good question. I don’t have a lot of finished short fiction so the decision wasn’t hard as to which ones I would submit. The hardest part was rewriting them. The original stories were written a few years ago, before podcasting existed, but they were missing something. When the podthology project came along I rewrote both of them to include the podcasting elements and suddenly the missing pieces were found. My own editor was actually Jennifer Rahn, who read my new draft and then fired questions and suggestions at me to help clean the stories up and make the new elements blend with the originals.
The reason I chose these two stories for the anthology was two-fold: The other stories were all dark and scary and violent, so I wanted something light. No one submitted anything light with a feel that would fit. “Uncle Julius” fit. It was simple and homey and yet the rewrite brought up some of the moral issues of podcasting that I thought should at least be mentioned in what I think is a unique collection. “From Anna to Yousef” addresses the issue of ‘where do podcasts go and what are they limited by?’ It wasn’t as much the future of podcasting that I wanted to address, but the idea that a lot of stuff gets sent out on the digital currents of civilization but we don’t know where it goes. The idea is very similar to the movie Frequency with Dennis Quaid and Jim Cavaziel about a radio message from the past.
“From Anna to Yousef” was done as a news article in order to give a ‘maybe it’s possible’ spin on what’s essentially a supernatural tale. I used my previously unknown pen name to make the story seem more plausible. Using my own name would have simply made it a piece of fiction in a collection and I wanted to get past that to finish the collection.
GH: How did you decide how to order the stories in the finished book?
TR: The structure is actually VERY deliberate. I divided the stories into ‘from the podosphere’ and ‘ABOUT the podosphere’. Then I lumped all of the deal-with-the-devil stories together and put them in the middle of the ‘previously podcast’ group. Once that was, decided I started with hard and fast terror – Phil Rossi’s “Stranded.” I then went chronologically (in terms of setting), starting with a story about a timeless god, then a steampunk one about playing God, followed with a forever-spanning dark love story. Before getting into the stories about deals with the devil, I thought one about the price we all should pay for our sins would set the mood. The deal-with-the-devil stories start a bit silly, then dive as deep down as you can get before they start to climb back up, until the dark mood is broken by a terrific story about an angel.
The stories which follow are done in a rough chronological sense, but also with a sense of mood and balance in mind. Steampunk, Space Pirates on another world (far future or a galaxy a long time ago?), near future, not-as-near future, then far-future-or-present (“Asleep at the Wheel”) and finishing with a another distant-future or different-galaxy story that has a distinctly far-future feel to it. I finished off the ‘these stories have been podcast’ section with Scott Sigler’s “Hero” because although it’s about Empire destruction, it’s about three people. It’s a world we don’t live in, but the characters are so well-sculpted that for me it has a real human sadness, like Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (aka Bladerunner).
Now, with the stories about podcasting I aimed mostly for a chronology of setting: Present day, near-future & far-future dark, so they each build upon what came before them, even though the stories are totally unrelated. From Anna to Yousef was placed at the end not because it’s my own story (written under my pen name Alex T. Crisp), but because it’s meant to send readers away with questions, to keep them thinking after they’ve closed the cover and put the book back on the shelf (or loaned it to a friend).
GH: What was the hardest part of putting together an anthology?
TR: At first, the hard part was finding enough stories to fill 100,000 words, but once the word got out I had more than enough stories and then the tough part was saying good-bye to stories that no longer fit with the whole or were too similar to a stronger story.
GH: Did you do much line-editing on the stories? Was it easier that they’d mostly been podcast, so that they were “finished product”?
TR: The short answers: No, Yes. The longer answer: The stories which were previously podcast were all quite polished and needed almost no line editing. There were a couple spots where I thought I would express an idea differently that the writer but I left those alone because I wanted the individual voices to stand out and not start sounding like I’d had my editorial thumb in all the pies. That said, the stories about podcasting had not been podcast or previously published and so I spent more time working with a couple of those stories and doing the editor’s job of asking questions, making suggestions and coaxing the writers to take the stories to new heights.
GH: What’s the biggest lesson you learned from this experience that you can share with other people looking to put together anthologies?
TR: There are four lessons, none of which work without the others:
- Have a solid idea of what you want to create with your anthology. Maybe a theme or a style or a time-period or a commonality amongst the writers (all Canadian or all women or all ginger-haired SmartCar drivers with one lazy eye). This allows you to set expectations from the beginning and save yourself much time down the road when accepting or rejecting).
- Create a style sheet/submission format standard for the project and give it out before you accept any submissions (this will save time at the end when the finished manuscript is being assembled for the printer!)
- Allow a lot of time for the project to come together. Give specific deadlines, then stick to them rigorously. Then be prepared to be flexible.
- Communicate with your writers. Make them feel like they’re part of the process, which they are. Some may delete your emails and others will reply with questions. It’s their choice and it’s all good.
Podthology is available online from retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can order it through your local bookstore!
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