Dear Writers,
Sea Lion Press have published quite a few anthologies of short stories. I've bought all of them, I love all of them. I think speculative fiction often works better in short stories because you just describe a situation and it's about the idea more than character progression. They're not big money spinners but they're a good way to get extra content out there, while you're working on your main projects, it takes a lot less time to write a short story than a full novel.
The last one that came out (Grapeshot and Guillotines) was edited by me and I enjoyed it a lot and I would love to do it again. So here's the pitch.
We recently released an anthology called 'Alternate Australias' and I love that as an idea. Just focus in on a country and see where authors can take that. I would love to see Alternate Scotlands, Alternate Haitis, Alternate Moroccos etc and if this goes well I might pitch those.
But the first one that came to mind for the wealth of material is 'Alternate Irelands'.
We have a lot of people in the writing community from Ireland or with Irish heritage. There's been a lot of stories written about Ireland in the vignette contests and it's just a country that could have gone so many ways. A United Ireland under the High Kings seeing off the Norman invasion of 1169, an Ireland still divided between the Norse Gaels and the Celts, an Ireland unified during the troubles, etc, etc.
I'd be happy to edit and proof read anything you have to offer and bounce off ideas with anyone.
- I'm aiming for around 10-12 stories with a total length of 60-70,000 words
- Average story length should be 3000-8000 words, but I'm flexible on that
- About either Ireland or Irish people, I'd want a relatively tight focus
- Doesn't have to be a brand new story, if something you've previously written fits, feel free to put it forward
- Feel free to advertise this to any interested friends too
- You'll get a full share of the royalties of course but that's unlikely to be significant (probably in the region of five to ten pounds)
- Ideally I'd like to have all the submissions in this year, so consider the 31st November as a loose deadline
- I'd like the concept pitched to me so I can give the green light to the idea first, just to avoid us getting 14 stories about Bono and none about anyone else. I also want an idea of how many stories are being produced, so I want to see this pitch by the 5th of September.
If you have anything suitable already written or are interested in writing something specially for this, please get in touch by emailing me at sealionpressblogeditor at gmail dot com.
Important Note: I probably won't take every story and that isn't a judge in quality so much as it is tone and variety, so there is no promise that any story will make the anthology.
And even if I do want your story, there's no guarantee this anthology would get approved by SLP. It depends on how many stories we get, the quality of those stories and if it's something that fits in the brand. What I would say, if you do write a story and ultimately either I decide not to go with it or sealionpress decides not to go with the collection, you still have a story you can pitch elsewhere or by itself. And I think we have a good chance of producing something worth publishing, I have faith in this group of authors!
Also worth noting it took about eleven months between this post and the book going out last time, so it's not a quick process, I wouldn't expect to see it out until Summer 2022.
I'm excited about this and looking forward to seeing what can be produced. if you're interested, just drop me a note at sealionpressblogeditor at gmail dot com.
Cheers,
Gary Oswald