So I got involved with a writer’s group — Wily Writers — a while back because the person who was promoting it — Angel Leigh McCoy — was a colleague of mine; we’d both had stories in Changing Breeds: Wild West Tales and I was familiar with some of her work from the gaming industry as well as some of her short fiction. There have been a number of fairly prominent writers involved with this group, and frankly it’s been good for me to see that other writers — even writers whose names I’d heard of and whose work I’ve admired — are struggling to get noticed, too.

Some months ago the idea was floated to produce a series of horror-themed anthologies to showcase the work of us Wily Writers. To that end, the first anthology, Tales of Dread, came out last month. This month is volume two in the series, Tales of Nightmares.

In Tales of Dread, I submitted one of my first professional sales, from Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Horror. Dread’s editor, Lisa Morton, had some great suggestions for tightening and updating the story. I’m glad I submitted, if only for her advice and coaching. The idea behind these anthologies is for us to get work out there with our names on it to raise awareness of ourselves, both individually and as a group. We were encouraged to submit previous work to minimize effort; being a less accomplished fiction author, I didn’t have many reprints to offer. It was made clear to me that I was not required to write whole new stories for each anthology; however, it feels weird not to, and I’m concerned that an editor whose anthology I skip might take it the wrong way and think I was snubbing them. Also, we want these anthologies to be chocked full of stories so readers get their money’s worth. Despite many reassurances, there is a little bit of pressure on me to write for all of these, even if most of that pressure is self-imposed. Though the sheer luck of alphabetical author listing, my name is first on the cover! If my luck holds, that’ll be true to all six of the proposed anthologies.

The second volume, Tales of Nightmares, includes a brand new story of mine. Loren Rhoads edited the second volume, and again, the advice and suggestions I got for improving the story were invaluable. I would gladly work with Loren and Lisa again on similar projects. I think we worked well together.

I’m looking forward to volume three premiering some time in August. I’ll be working with editors Angel Leigh McCoy and Alison J. McKenzie on that one. I submitted my other available reprint for volume three, and it’s a story I’m very pleased with, so it’ll be interesting to see what changes they’d like from me. Theoretically that’s three stories down and three more to go, but from here on out I have to crank out new stories, and that will be no small task. I’ll be co-editing volume five with E. S. Magill as well as writing a story for it, but I’m looking forward to having an editing challenge on my plate once again.

It’s looking like a busy summer!