Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience
– the editor
I’ve sent my first email to contributing authors in two months, and it includes a lot of updates. Here they are, for your consideration:
Hey everyone! SIX things (and two more things):
- We’re almost, nearly, totally close to being there on the interior of this book. One more story to finalize, and we’re good to go! I’ve got everything in Vellum, have written my acknowledgements, about the editor, editor’s note, etc. all completed.
- I’ve contracted JD & J to use one of their covers. They’ll produce GIFs and banners and 3D renderings for use in promotions. More info will come soon on this stuff.
- A request, an action item: I’d appreciate your help with content disclaimers / trigger warnings, which will appear in the very end of the book (with a warning of its own to scare away those who don’t want to see them).
Here’s the file for Trigger Warnings.Please add anything you think might be triggering for readers from/about your story. - If you’d be willing to be interviewed for an edited post on our YouTube channel, please let me know. We’ve got 23 of our 35 contributors covered. This option is not contractually required, of course, and your participation is up to you. It’ll just help with promotions now and in the future. My aim here is to help you and our book, but mostly you.
- I’m still planning to run a Kickstarter in January/February and would love your help promoting leading up to and at the time of launch. I’ll get a pre-launch page up in the coming months and will provide more details soon.
- Another action item: I plan to use your bios for contributing author intros on whisperhousepress.com—send a note if that raises wonders for you. Please respond to this email with a high-quality (but not massive file) image if you’d like me to include one on your bio on the website.
- The next you’ll hear from me on your text will be by September and will be with a digital proof for your review.
- I continue to update the world at large on progress with this anthology. Those updates can be found here and are more (believe it or not) detailed than this email.
Hope y’all are doing well. I’ve been traveling Europe with my son for the last four weeks and will be returning to Salt Lake this week. I’ve also gotten 30k down on my historical horror novel, and that feels lovely. I hope you’re having similarly excellent summers (or winters, for those of you in the southern latitudes).
Best Regards
Steve
PS – If anyone has had luck reaching Random House for rights-holding inquiries, please let me know. I’ve tried making an account to do this on their website, but I’m not receiving any emails back from them. I want to use “Hell is other people” in an epigraph, and I think it wise to secure permission from them.
Here’s what that struckthrough document looks like.
There’s an active and ongoing discussion online and in person about trigger warnings in horror, and I don’t personally love trigger warnings because I don’t want anything to be spoiled… but then again, I realize, I do use them sometimes (I always go to http://www.doesthedogdie.com before attending any film featuring a dog, and I don’t go to movies in which the dog dies). In any case, and wherever you land with this stuff, I figure it’s nice to be inclusive of folks who do wish to see trigger warnings, and though our book is far from being categorized as “extreme horror,” it’s got death and murder and dead things and crawling things and religiously motivated harassment, etc.—some triggering stuff, probably. So I’m putting a trigger warning section in the back of the book and mentioning it in the frontmatter. Those looking for it will find it, and those who are triggered by trigger warnings can safely avoid it.
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