In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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Since you edit both online and “print” (for whatever value print is these days), do you think there’s a certain type of story that’s better suited for an online magazine? Or is there a certain “look” for a story that’s better online (or print)? In other words, do you think the medium makes a difference to a story?

Not really, not if you’re talking about fairly typical, traditional narratives. Obviously we can all think of experimental type things that might be better suited to the web (hyperfiction, etc.), but that goes the other way too — text that requires a lot of formatting manipulation tends to work a little better in print, where the “display” is not fluid.

There are probably stories that will be MORE SUCCESSFUL if published online, due to the potential viral nature of having things freely available on the internet, as opposed to something that you’d have to find and buy in a store (or order). But that doesn’t really make the experience of the story any better (except for the author, if it goes viral, I guess).

P.S. Any advice on on living with a writer?

Here is my two-fold piece of advice:

1. Remind your writer of the things they’ve accomplished often, even if they were very recent as they tend to quickly forget such things.

2. Keep your writer well-stocked in wine/chocolate/coffee/vice-of-choice.

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From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

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In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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Which is more likely to succeed with you? A superbly written story on a well-worn subject, or a competently written story on a more original subject?

FALSE DICHOTOMY!

Um, that is, you know, either way, man.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

What turns you off as an editor or what do you see too much of? Especially as it relates to Nightmare submissions.

I don’t like to point to specifics like that because although I may GENERALLY dislike a particular trope or whatever, I might like the BEST EXAMPLE of that kind of thing. And I don’t want to say something in an interview, or on my guidelines page, that I don’t like X, and then have the writer who wrote the best example of X not submit it to me because they read that.

With Nightmare, I will admit that I’ve been close a couple of times to adding something to our guidelines about how we’re not interested in rape fantasies, because boy howdy do we see a lot of those.

Case in point, though: I also contemplated saying something about “torture porn.” But at least one person referred to a story I published called “Chop Shop” as torture porn, so if I had put in my guidelines that I’m not interested in torture porn, would I have missed out on that story? (I don’t happen to agree that it’s torture porn, but that’s beside the point.)

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Douglas Cohen: You’ve had a chance to co-edit anthologies with two different people, one being myself, on Oz Reimagined and the other being Daniel H. Wilson, on your forthcoming Robot Uprisings anthology. Obviously the content for these two projects could not be more different (except for that one Oz story with the cyborg, I guess), but in terms of working with another editor, did you find these two experiences to be completely different or more or less the same?

It was more or less the same. You and I worked together really well, and the same was true of Daniel and I. With Daniel, I wasn’t sure at first how involved he’d want to be as an editor; I figured that he would want to mostly just consult on author invitations and would want to weigh in on acceptances/rejections, etc. I figured his primary contribution, really, would be advising the authors on robot science since he’s a professional roboticist. But he ended up being a full partner on the project, and he basically did everything I did on the book. (I think the only thing he didn’t do that I did was sending out the contracts and payments, just because it was easier for one person to do that.) Also, Daniel and I agreed editorially about pretty much everything–I think we had one or two minor disagreements on the merits of stories–so it was a very smooth collaboration.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Since we have a few editor/writers here, what observations would you offer about the things new editors are doing right, doing wrong, or could do better?

It’s hard to generalize about that kind of thing, but the first thing that comes to mind that I’ve seen a number of times is just people treating writers poorly. This is mainly manifested in posting snarky things online–sometimes while reading slush, which of course makes every writer who has a story in your slush pile feel terrible and assume you’re talking about their story. So there’s that kind of thing. The thing is, if you do that kind of thing, writers aren’t going to want to work with you. And it’s also just mean, so there’s that.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

We just ran an internal contest on speculative history. Would you consider an Alternative History piece? Something in the vein of what Turtledove turns out?

Sure, I’m definitely open to Alternate History. I’m not likely to publish something that has a very subtle alternate aspect to it, but otherwise I’m definitely open to it in general.

And thanks for the question, because that actually reminded me of a story I should totally try to reprint because it’s one of my favorite alternate history stories, and I don’t think I’ve actually had any in Lightspeed as of yet.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Any ambitions to edit novel-length work at some point, or is short fiction where your heart is? 

Short fiction is definitely where my heart is. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever take a gig editing novels, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I have any ambitions in that direction. I’d be perfectly content with my editorial career if, when all is said and done, all I ever did was edit short fiction.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Do you ever read a story and think, “Yeah, this is great. Great story, well done, an important story even. But I don’t like it.”

Oh, sure. I don’t like plenty of “important” stories! I can think of any number of classics that seem universally loved yet I don’t connect with them at all, though at the same time I can appreciate why so many other people found them to be excellent.

One of the challenges as an editor is whether or not to publish such stories. Obviously if I *hated* a story I wouldn’t publish it even if it seemed like one of those “important” stories, but in the cases where it’s maybe not quite my cup of tea, but is obviously a good story…that’s where it’s tough. Because at least some readers are reading my magazines and anthologies at least in part because they specifically trust my taste, so if I ever deviate from my completely honest opinion (i.e., trying to guess what other people will like), that’s dangerous territory.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Have you ever rejected a story and then later wished you had bought it when you first had the chance?

I’ve had plenty of second thoughts about stories. In a couple of cases, I rejected the story, and then actually went back to the author and said “Hey, is that still available?” and then ended up publishing it after all. For these cases, it was usually because I couldn’t quite get the story out of my mind, and that, of course, is always a good sign.

On the other hand, I’ve rejected stories that later went on to some critical-acclaim, and I’ve gone back to revisit them and found that I still didn’t like them. I don’t often revisit stories I’ve previously rejected, though.

And on the other hand, I think I’ve actually reprinted a couple of stories that I initially rejected.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

When you edit your anthologies, how do you decide the order in which to present the stories? Are there certain “rules of thumb” you follow, such as “open strong, close long”? Is there value to opening or closing the anthology with a piece from a well-known author? Any other tips you’d be willing to share?

I actually just answered this in an interview recently, so I hope you don’t mind me copying and pasting that here:

That’s definitely more of an art than a science and, as a result, is kind of hard to explain the method to my madness. Essentially I do it by feel; I want there to be a certain flow to the anthology, and everything I do is an attempt to achieve that flow. I like to lead off and end the book with two of the strongest stories (with the final story also ideally providing a lot of emotional impact that will resonate with the reader long after they put down the book). I also tend to put one of the other strongest stories somewhere around the middle of the book–what I think of a ‘tentpole’ story. With those three in place, I then go about trying to achieve my desired flow. I think about each story and what it would be like to read that story and then to read the story after that, and so on. Another factor is story length; I find that it’s usually best for the flow of the anthology if you don’t clump too many long stories together, so in my spreadsheet where I have all the stories listed, I have all their word counts there so I can see that as I’m sorting the contents out, and I try to balance out longer stories by running shorter ones afterward. Speaking of my spreadsheet, that’s what I use to actually figure out the order. I just have a column for the table of contents order, and in that column I put a number for the ‘slot’ that story is slated for, that way I can sort the spreadsheet and have it thus put the stories in TOC order.

But yes, opening (and closing) strong is always a good idea. Closing with a bigger name is nice, but not required by any stretch; I think it’s more important to close with a very strong story that will have that emotional impact I mentioned. And in some cases, there are stories that just feel like an appropriate thematic capstone to all of what’s come before in the book.

Ultimately, I’m not really sure how many people actually read anthologies in order, so it kind of often feels like a lot of mental effort wasted. But, hell, they’ve got to go in SOME order, so might as well put them in the best order possible for that Ideal Reader out there who reads anthologies in order. :)

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From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More