It is with great pleasure that I announce the table of contents for WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME, co-edited by me and Ed Greenwood.

The anthology will be available in AUGUST 2011 from Dragon Moon Press. More info as I have it!

A Place to Come Home To by Jay Lake and Shannon Page
An Evil Not Forgotten by Erik Buchanan
Full Circle by Steve Bornstein
Lessons Learned by Peadar Ó Guilín
Brine Magic by Tony Pi
The Legend of Gluck by Marie Bilodeau
One and Twenty Summers by Brian Cortijo
The Blue Corpse Corps by Jim C. Hines
Ashes of the Bonfire Queen by Rosemary Jones
Keeping Time by Gabrielle Harbowy
Scar Tissue by Chris A. Jackson
Coward by Todd McCaffrey
Nine Letters Found in a Muddied Case on the Road in Baden, Germany by Xander Briggs
The Once and Now-ish King by J.M. Frey
His Last Monster by J.P. Moore
Dark Helm Returns by Ed Greenwood
Mirror, Mirror by Phil Rossi
Knights and Beans by Julie Kagawa
Oathbreaker by Erik Scott de Bie

I was asked, in response to last week’s post, if I believe in the Oxford comma.

The Oxford comma, or serial comma, is the comma that sets off the “and” at the end of a list. It’s believed necessary for clarity by some, optional by others, and inefficient by yet others, and it’s one of the biggest debates you’ll see amongst writers, right after whether you should use one space or two after a period (answer: one) and whether self-publishing is a good idea.

The phrasing of the question is what particularly strikes me. Yes, I believe in the Oxford comma. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and have even used it. I know that it exists, and that it’s not just a myth invented to cover up for one of my parents dressing up in a comma suit and leaving punctuation under my pillow.

If the question was meant to be whether I use the Oxford comma, it depends. It’s the standard in fiction, which usually follows the Chicago Manual of Style. It’s discouraged in much non-fiction. So the answer is: sometimes. It depends on the style guide and needs of a particular publisher or project.

If the question was intended to ask whether I prefer the Oxford comma, the answer is yes. I prefer the disambiguation of it, and I just think it makes a sentence look more balanced and parallel if all items in a list, including the next-to-last, are treated the same way.

I’ll direct the interested reader to Wikipedia for more information. The examples listed there are clear, illustrative, and entertaining.

In a word: THIS.

@CherylMorgan tweeted (and posted) a heads-up about this and I thought I’d give it a signal boost. Apparently a publisher decided to “straighten” the deliberately-ambiguous gender pronouns in writer Mima Simić’s story, turning it unambiguously heterosexual. In Mima’s words, “As this gender/sex ambiguity is one of the thematic pillars of my story, this benevolent editorial intervention (which made the narrator a man and the relationship heterosexual!) completely changed my story, its aims and effects.”

It’s worth clicking above and reading her whole article. Her story was translated from Croatian for an English-language anthology, but it’s important to note that the author handled the translation herself, and had her translation checked over by a few trusted readers. This isn’t a translation mistake, then, it was a deliberate editorial choice.

The author is the author of the story. If this sounds tautological to you, then good. It should. It’s basic common sense, and it’s one of the fundamentals I keep in mind when I edit. My job is to make the author’s finished product the best that it can be. Not my finished product, but the author’s. And that means being the author’s partner and collaborator, keeping the story in the author’s voice, and keeping it true to the author’s vision. And that means querying the author when that vision isn’t coming across clearly, instead of proceeding on my own assumptions.

If I see a change that I think will strengthen a manuscript, it’s my job to tell the author, and also to explain my position. Authors are pretty clever people, and sometimes authors have reasons for what they do. I provide my reasoning so that the author can understand the benefit of following my suggestion, and also so that they can provide an intelligent opinion on the matter. Sometimes their position makes more sense than mine, and the original text stays. Sometimes my concerns point out a weakness that the author chooses to strengthen in a different direction. Either way, I’ve stated and explained my concern, we’ve discussed, and we’ve mutually agreed on the choice that will most benefit the story.

If I see something ambiguous in a manuscript, it’s my job to tell the author, “this sounds like it could mean this, or it could mean this. Please clarify in the narrative.” It is not my job to make my own judgment call, change the author’s story, and then print it my way. Even if an author and I don’t see eye to eye on a point (which has happened), it isn’t my place to print it my way behind the author’s back. It’s my obligation to present my reasoning, listen to theirs, and work to find agreement one way or another. Usually, the particular issue I have turns out to have nothing to do with the particular element of the original that the author wants to preserve, and we’re able to find a compromise that keeps their intent, satisfies my concerns, and is true to the story, all at the same time.

Horror stories are emerging, connected to Mima Simić’s case, about editors changing the intent of the story, changing characters to make them more socially acceptable, dumbing down sentences or changing tone and meaning. These sorts of things need to be clearly arranged and agreed upon by all parties — editor, publisher and author. Otherwise, it is not the author’s story. And if a publisher doesn’t want the author’s story, well…why would they choose to take it?

Sometimes, tiny changes are made without author involvement, especially in the end-stages and proofs. A contract may state that minor editing, such as spelling or grammar corrections, may be made without explicit permission.

There may be a few I’ve forgotten, but here are some things I consider minor, and will change without consulting the author:

* obvious unintentional typos/spelling errors (“They got thier coats.”)
* obvious formatting errors (One non-italic letter in a word in an italicized sentence, where clearly not a deliberate choice.)
* obvious punctuation errors and punctuation omissions
* capitalization to conform internally to a set precedent within the story, or to standard rules of style, in cases where context is clearly not special to the story
* use of commas, only in lists and in conjunction with dialogue where context is obvious and standard rules of style apply and hold precedence.

Commas elsewhere are so often a matter of style and preference that I send all other comma suggestions to the author to be vetted. There is rarely disagreement on comma placement, but a single comma can change the meaning of a sentence, and I don’t assume that I understand what a sentence is meant to mean; I develop a rapport with the author and story, and I can often guess what the intent of a passage is, but at the same time, the best I can do is guess, and sometimes I guess wrong.

That’s what margin comments — and author contact information — are for. And I’m not afraid to use them.

And that’s what contracts are for. Among other things, they set limits on other people’s rights to your story. Authors, know your rights and don’t be afraid to speak up for your own protection.

WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME, an anthology of fantasy and science fiction tales—co-edited by Bestselling author Ed Greenwood and Gabrielle Harbowy, Editor and Associate Publisher, Dragon Moon Press—will be released in August of 2011 by Dragon Moon Press.

When the epic battle, the mission, the quest are over, can the hero go home again? Is she too changed to resume where she left off… Is the life he left behind is no longer waiting for him?

In WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME, these questions are addressed in nineteen powerful stories by some of today’s top and up-and-coming fantasy and science fiction writers.

“We’ve been very pleased with the stories we’ve received. Strong storytelling featuring great characters, from both new voices and established writers. They’ve given us wildly different approaches to our theme—which is just what the title of the book says it is,” says Greenwood.

“It’s a thrill to be able to work with Ed and with so many other talented writers, and to have an opportunity to showcase some of Dragon Moon Press’s up and coming authors. Each story gives the theme its own fresh, fascinating spin. Whether you’re into swords and sorcery, science fiction, or urban fantasy, there are stories here that will grab you,” says Harbowy.

The anthology features new fiction by Jay Lake, Todd McCaffrey, Julie Kagawa, and an all-new Jig the Goblin story by Jim C. Hines.

Title: WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME
ISBN-13: 978-1-897492-25-3
Release Date: August, 2011
Publisher: Dragon Moon Press
Format: Trade Paperback, E-book
Distributor: Ingram

For preordering and promotional information contact: eic@dragonmoonpress.com

How many spaces should you put after a period?

In this electronic day and age, this editor’s preference is for one space, please.

Hitting the space bar twice after a period is something a lot of us (of a certain age) learned in school. It’s a hotly debated topic, mostly because it’s a practice that becomes so deeply ingrained that people bristle at the suggestion that they unlearn it.

Putting two spaces after a period is a vestigial practice from the days of monospace typewriter fonts. An extra space was needed to help the eye to differentiate the end of a sentence. The extra space was also used in manuscripts to give proofreaders more room to fit in symbols or remarks.

The proportional fonts and justified margins of modern publishing have made that second space obsolete. One space after a period is the industry standard now for an electronically-submitted manuscript.

(That is to say, if you submit your manuscript to me with two spaces, I won’t cry out in horror and reject it. But you can be sure that I’ll be going through and changing it all to one space, myself. Luckily, there are macros and shortcuts to automate the process.)

For the final word on the subject, I direct you to the hallowed Chicago Manual of Style‘s ruling:

[...] Introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability[...]; (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.

All important points!

Originally posted December 2008

(Occasionally, I repost entries that newer readers might have missed. Today’s post is originally from December 22, 2008)

1. Choose names for members of a culture that follow a cultural thread.

Names don’t have to be so similar that they’re indistinct, or rhyme, or all have the same vowel-consonant patterns. But in most successful science fiction or fantasy, names from a given culture have at least something in common.

Think about the ways you can tell a Spanish name from a Russian name from a Korean name, for instance.

Now think about how you can tell a Vulcan name from a Klingon name. You’d know just from the name what kind of creature you’d be expecting to meet, wouldn’t you?

2. Choose distinct names.

As a general rule of thumb, two characters in a book shouldn’t have the same first name unless there’s a specific plot-related reason for them to do so. The same goes for names that sound or look similar. Don’t create that confusion for your readers unless you have a reason to. You’ll be throwing a lot of names at your readers at once, most likely: characters, places, objects and concepts. They’ll be trying to integrate and remember all of these names while they’re trying to follow your story and get the context of the world you’ve created, all at the same time. Don’t confuse them by making them keep ‘Jazon’ and ‘Jaxom’ straight in their heads.

3. Don’t make your job more difficult than you have to.

The more complicated a name is (or the more apostrophes it has in it) the greater your chances are to screw it up. Be aware of complicated strings of vowels or consonants, doubled consonants, and the dreaded apostrophe. Names can and do drift and change over the course of writing a novel. The more complicated your naming scheme is, the more likely it is that you will slip. Apostrophes present complications all their own. Don’t even get me started on what a joy it is to go through and proof four hundred pages of inconsistent straight and curved-the-wrong-way apostrophes.

4. Don’t make your readers’ job more difficult than you have to.

If your readers can’t pronounce your characters’ names…they won’t. This will not only inhibit them from forming an emotional connection with your characters or keeping them distinct as they read, but it will inhibit them from talking about your book with others, too.

If your readers can’t spell your characters’ names, they won’t. If you’re lucky, they’ll find some abbreviation or nickname for the characters, and if you’re very lucky, they won’t be derogatory. If you’re not so lucky, they simply won’t write about them (or write reviews, or discuss them online and advertise your book through the grapevine) at all.

Be Gentle, It’s My First Time….

What to Expect From Your First Professional Edit
by guest blogger Philippa Ballantine

You’ve made it! You have your first professional contract under your belt. Full with your success, you are excited about your first professional edit.

Well, that was how I felt back in 2004 when I got the edits for my first print book, Chasing the Bard with Dragon Moon Press. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to expect or how to behave.

Firstly, let me give you a run through of the kind of emotions you may encounter. I opened the electronic document (yes, those were around in 2004!) and suddenly I felt as though I had my legs pulled out from under me.

What was this? Someone had run the virtual red pen over all my precious words! It was like a rollercoaster had thrown me over the hump, and down to the very bottom. Running my eye through the scarlet, I thought what a useless writer I must be!

I confess, I almost cried. Since that is not very productive… here’s what I recommend.

Approach your first edit with an open mind. Remember that the editor wants you to succeed—they are there to make your book better, not hack apart the fragile writer’s ego. You are in a partnership to make every word work, so don’t start off in a combative mood. How dare they suggest… isn’t going to work very well.

Any suggestions or corrections they make are not there to make you feel two inches tall. They are there for the sake of the book.

With that in the fore of your mind, begin to look over what they have suggested. The editor is not just there to pick up stray commas, or decimate passive voice, they are also there to spot holes in the logic, character behaviour that doesn’t fit, and most of all to ask the questions that readers will have: Why did the protagonist do that? Or Weren’t the heroine’s eyes blue at the start? Why are they brown now?

Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything that your editor suggests, but do think twice before biting their heads off. The question I always ask is, does this change improve an aspect of the book but retain the vision I have of the story?

If you still are concerned, then it is perfectly OK to disagree with your editor. (Honestly, they won’t bite!) But be sure to have a reason to back up why you don’t want that changed. At the end of the day it is your creation, but be sure of the reasons why you are rejecting the suggestions—and make sure they have nothing to do with author ego.

Knowing which battles are important is half the challenge of editing, but always try and maintain a good working relationship with your editor. They are there to make you look good, after all!

Philippa Ballantine is a fantasy writer hailing from Wellington, New Zealand. In the coming year she will have three books hitting the real and virtual shelves. The first of which is a supernatural fantasy, Geist, available in late October 2010—just in time for Halloween. Find out more at BooksOfTheOrder.com and PJBallantine.com.

A manuscript is not a linear creature. We go back and change things. We revise a sentence. A paragraph. A concept. We reorder chapters. New content integrates with old. Ideally, it does this seamlessly.

However, a manuscript is also not a body of water. The changes made to the pages don’t ripple naturally through the rest of the text. (If only they did!) They need to be caught, by careful eye and hand. The mind is a tricky thing, and it often sees what it expects to see. When your eyes are so familiar with the words that you’re not entirely reading the page anymore, gradual or minor changes are very easy to miss.

Keeping aware of the tendency toward these kinds of mistakes is the best defense against them. Since they tend to creep stealthily into a manuscript, I call them creeps. This post will introduce you to two types of creep and discuss how you can guard yourself against them.

1. Creeping names.

You know this one. Your town starts out as Sullyville and changes to Sulleyville at some point halfway through the book. Character names, place names, and any other invented words are equally susceptible to the mid-manuscript creep.

Simple words, complex words, words with odd uses of apostrophes or hyphens, are all vulnerable! With complexity, however, comes increased vulnerability. You’re more likely to reproduce your choices correctly if you leave little room for variation. This is an especially sticky trap for science fiction and fantasy writers, whose texts are almost certain to be sprinkled with many invented words and unusual character and place names—if not a sampling of an entire invented language!

My defense against the creeping name is two-fold, but simple: I drop any invented name I expect to be seeing frequently into my spellchecker’s dictionary. That way, I’ll have a built-in notifier if any of them decide to evolve and change. I also keep a paper list of character and place names, for quick reference. Sometimes a name will creep to a valid name or word, so the spellcheck method isn’t guaranteed, but it is a great first line of defense. If I’m unsure, I can always glance down at the list on my desk for confirmation. You can avoid creeping names in your writing by doing the same. Storing character and place names in a document is also an option, but you may not always take the time to toggle back and forth between manuscript and file in the midst of inspiration. A written list that you can check at a glance is a simple tool, but an effective one.

2. Creeping NPCs.

NPC stands for “Non-Player Character.” In gaming circles, it’s a term used to indicate those incidental characters who exist only to forward a plot or facilitate a goal. The merchant from whom your characters buy their adventuring supplies, for instance, is probably a walk-on role. Once your characters leave his shop, the reader will likely never see him again. The character’s unseen brother back home, former roommate, ex-girlfriend or old high school teacher, whom he speaks about a few times but who is never seen, also counts as an NPC for our purposes.

The rule for NPCs is an obvious one: Name them once. However, several chapters and several months may go by while you’re working on your manuscript. As you’re working on chapter twenty, you may forget that Jane Doe was mentioned by name in chapter two. Or, conversely, as you’re editing in a personal touch to chapter two, you may forget that you named her in chapter twenty.

Again, a separate list comes in handy. At whatever point in the story you give your character a name, jot it down. Add their title or relation to your primary characters, as appropriate. If you give them any notable characteristics, note those, too. You can even start written biographies of sorts, of your characters, and profiles of your towns, adding to them as you name or describe relevant family members or neighbors. Usually names and vital stats are enough, but the more detail you set down, the easier it is to keep your story straight (so to speak) going forward.

Many of us keep our characters’ backgrounds in little capsules in our heads, pulling out strands or facts as needed. Setting those facts down in an easily referenced way can help the writer, and even inspire ideas for character development or transitionary scenes, and it can help the editor as well. Forward your lists along with your manuscript! If your sister is Jane in chapter two and Susan in chapter twenty, it’ll save both of us a query later on if I already know which name she prefers to go by. Not that your sister is, you know… a creep.

(reprinted from July, 2008)

Should I bother hiring an editor to look over my short fiction, or is it a waste of time?

While it’s often dismissed as not being worth the effort, there are a lot of advantages to hiring an editor for short fiction.

1. It’s short! That means it’ll be considerably less expensive than hiring an editor on a novel. It’s a great chance to try out an editor, see how well you work together, and see what issues they can identify constructively in your writing.

2. The short fiction market is competitive. It’s every bit as competitive as the novel-length fiction market, if not moreso. Therefore, your story should be as polished and perfect as possible before you send it off to compete with other stories for attention.

3. In short fiction, every word counts! This is true in a novel, too, but in novels you have a bit more leeway. In short fiction you’re limited to just a few thousand words to draw the reader in and give them a setting, rounded characters, and a plot from beginning to end.

4. Writers often zip short fiction out more quickly, do fewer rewrites, and generally spend less time looking at it. That makes it even more important to have an extra set of eyes checking on all the details.

5. Short fiction will take an editor less time, so you’ll likely be able to get very quick turnaround. I’ve snuck in a short story edit for a writer during our lunch break at a convention, so that she could make the changes and show it to an interested market the next day. I can’t promise THAT kind of service, but it will certainly be a shorter time frame (less waiting, less time to foster your red-ink anxiety!) than for a novel.

6. All the tips, hints, and corrections you receive on your short story can also be applied to the rest of your writing. You may learn something about where your weaknesses are as a writer, which words you misspell or overuse, learn “rules” you never knew about a grammatical device or punctuation mark, or style conventions in published fiction. These and plenty other personalized observations that will make your writing — all your writing — stronger.

Interview: Gabrielle Harbowy, Renaissance Woman, courtesy of The Dead Robots’ Society Podcast

It was a pleasure to meet up with the wonderful crew of the Dead Robots’ Society Podcast this week for an interview. It was a particular honor because the DRS interview with editor Juliet Ulman had been so inspirational for me. Working in an isolated sort of environment like editors do, and doing work that should (if it’s done well) be invisible, doesn’t lend itself to having access to many role models. Hearing Juliet talk about editing and express eloquently so many of the things I believe, or aim to do in my work, or have observed in my own experience so far, helped to affirm for me that I was doing it right — both in terms of how I approach authors and their work, and how I approach my own career.

My interview was a long time coming. Various scheduling obstacles kept getting in the way, but I’m glad that the interest and determination held on both sides. It was a lot of fun, and it turned out to be completely unlike the other interviews I’ve done.

What’s changed? Well… I think… me.

Instead of focusing on how to format a submission, or how to edit, or when to edit, the interview focused on how I balance being an editor, an associate publisher, and a writer.

It was especially interesting because I don’t really think of myself as a writer. Not yet.

I’ve got one story, “Swimming Lessons” up in PG Holyfield’s “Tales of the Children” podcast anthology. That story is on the longlist for a Parsec Award(!).

I have another story — my first professional sale! — which will be appearing in an anthology this December. More news as the date nears, or you can listen to the interview for a couple more hints.

I have a story out on someone’s desk at a major market, and two more in the works.

But editing comes first for me. Though I think I’m constantly learning and improving in all aspects of the business and editing is no exception, it’s where I feel I really shine. And for me, editing blends naturally into publishing. I’m so used to being “hands on” with a novel, having held it from slush pile through editorial, that it seems natural to be the one to take it into typesetting and layout, to discuss promotional opportunities and offer to be the contact person for reviewers and award committees.

Would I be content “just editing”? Could I give those extra responsibilities up? Sure. But I like being busy, and I’m grateful for the opportunity and for the insight I’m gaining into the industry by being able to be more involved in different aspects of it.

I feel the same way about writing. I’m discovering that I enjoy it, and I’m also enjoying the “sensitivity training” that it lends to my editing. I have a different perspective on a lot of things now: I’m more aware of the agonizing wait for authors with work on somebody’s slush pile; I’m more aware of the uncertainty someone feels when they open up a file full of red ink. I feel that I can relate to my clients a little better, because I’m one of them. I understand their half of the experience.

All around, I’d say it’s all easy to balance. Each side of the triangle — writing, editing, publishing — gives me more insight on the other two. All together, it’s an invaluable, ongoing education. Even if I end up focusing more narrowly on one facet or the other down the road, I’ll still be able to bring to it a rounded perspective on the industry that will always inform my actions, no matter what I’m working on from day to day.

Thanks again to the guys at DRS for having me on and inviting me to share my thoughts!

You can follow the Dead Robots’ Society on the web at DeadRobotsSociety.com
on Twitter at @DRSPodcast
and on Facebook at Listeners of the Dead Robots’ Society.