Whisper House Press

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 can’t sit still, I admit it.

I finished with final edits on the galley proofs for Costs of Living a week or two ago, and as I was making the really actually truly final tweaks this week (before sending it out for a test printing which I’m sure will turn up another change or three), I decided I need to do another one of these anthologies sooner rather than later.

Here’s why.

Doing this work has been easy in the best possible ways.

Believe me, I know how this sounds. Pompous. Egotistical? Aggrandizing. Overconfident. Boastful.

I get it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that putting together an anthology—and doing what I hope is a standout, phenomenal job at it—is the easiest work I’ve done in many years, if not ever. The work was “easy” in the sense that it was demanding but satisfying, complex and rewarding, etc. etc. etc. It has been a lot of work, but gosh, I’m happy to put forth the effort if the final product (that I can look at now) is as good as Costs of Living seems to be turning out.

So I put out another call, you may have noticed.

I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting `til next April/May, as was my original plan, before starting another book. In fact, on the flight out to Denver (I’m visiting for some Phish concerts), I wrote out a publishing schedule that has ten anthologies scheduled between now and 2030. Getting ahead of myself much? Yes. Yes, I am. I cannot sit still, though.

And while I am going to be running a kickstarter campaign for Costs of Living (and I’ve built most of the back end of that campaign and will go live with the landing page soon), I’m also continuing to work on my own stuff during breaks, long weekends, as well as random Saturdays and weeknights. And throughout the summer, I get long periods of intense focus. Meanwhile, I’ve found it fairly easy to work through submissions and edits during the school year (I’m still a full-time teacher). So here we go: Dread Mondays. If I ever leave the classroom, it’ll be to make more anthologies and eventually put out some novels and novellas under the Whisper House Press banner (once we really nail down this weirdo niche we’re developing).

Let’s keep those plates spinning!

I’m hoping these posts are informative and helpful to potential submitters as well as to potentially new publishers. You can learn from whatever mistakes I make and publicize here. Happy to do so, in fact. We all learn by messing up, and maybe you can learn from my errors.