They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with author and publisher Joshua Palmatier, who is currently Kickstarting not just one, not just two, but THREE different anthologies!
What does Joshua love when he’s not working on his own fiction? Spoiler alert: actually, he talks about how he turned his most favorite thing into an actual job, and what his favorite things are about said job! Curious? Read on to learn more!
As the founder of the small press Zombies Need Brains, which produces SF&F themed anthologies, you can probably guess one of my favorite things…ZOMBIES! No, no, I jest. (We haven’t actually published a zombie story yet.) The correct answer is ANTHOLOGIES! This was completely unexpected on my part. Basically, I accidentally ended up editing anthologies. A group of writers were doing a group signing at a Barnes & Noble, jokingly mentioned joining together to do an anthology about a time-traveling bar while at the bar afterwards, and I sort of pitched the idea at the next convention I was at, and lo and behold DAW wanted to publish it. After Hours: Tales From the Ur-Bar became the first anthology edited by Patricia Bray and I, followed up the next year by The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity.
By then I was hooked. I hadn’t realized I liked wrangling writers, editing stories, and putting anthologies together. Unfortunately, DAW (and pretty much every other major traditional publisher) cut back their anthology lines due to a shake-up in the publishing industry at the time, so the regular supplier for my anthology fix dried up. I waited a few years, suffering through withdrawal, and finally decided that if I wanted to edit more anthologies, I’d have to do it myself by creating a small press. I called it Zombies Need Brains (it screams SF&F and fun) and launched a Kickstarter to help fund that first anthology, now out-of-print, called Clockwork Universe: Steampunk Vs Aliens.
So that’s how I got into this gig. Now, what are my favorite parts of running the small press?
Well, the first is working with the authors. Each anthology has a theme and is funded by a Kickstarter, so I start collaborating with the authors early on in order to make the Kickstarter’s successful. I can’t run the crowdfunding alone; it takes a team of what I call “anchor authors” to get enough backers. Most of these authors I’ve met at conventions and already know as friends. Everyone is great about helping to promote the Kickstarter and get the backing we need to produce the anthologies.
But of course the work doesn’t end there. After the Kickstarter is successful, I get to work with the authors on their stories, to make them the best stories possible. This means I get to READ THE STORIES FIRST! Ha, ha! After that, I get to work with the author on revising the story and editing it down to what we all agree, in the end, is the best story it can possible be. This isn’t always fun — it’s hard work and sometimes editors and authors don’t agree on what needs to be done — but the satisfaction of achieving that final version of the story can’t be beat. And I’m not talking about just the anchor authors. Because Zombies Need Brains does an open call for submissions, which means anyone can submit a story that fits the theme and everyone has a chance of making it into one of our anthologies if they write a compelling story. Which brings us to the second thing about running the small press that I love:
Reading the slush pile. What’s that, you say? Reading hundreds and hundreds of stories is one of your “favorite” things about running a small press? Well, yes. Again, it comes down to the feeling of finding that gem of a story that fits the theme, the one you start and then get sucked into because it’s so good that you end up forgetting that you’re working. When that feeling hits and you realize you’ve found a keeper — even if it does perhaps need some tweaking — that makes all of the reading worth it. So yes, reading the slush pile IS one of my favorite things. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be doing an open call for submissions in the first place.
And the last “favorite thing” about running a small press, for me, is seeing the finished anthologies, with all of those stories I’ve grown to love, being released into the wild. All of the hard work — running the Kickstarter, the revising, the editing, the interior design, the cover design, the page proofs — all of that has finally reached its end and readers will be able to enjoy what we’ve crafted. Seeing the finished product on the shelf at conventions or for sale in bookstores and having readers approach and tell me how much they enjoyed them…that’s what all of this is about. I love bringing authors’ visions to the readers. It’s why I started the small press in the first place.
Joshua Palmatier is a fantasy author with a PhD in mathematics. He currently teaches at SUNY Oneonta in upstate New York, while writing in his “spare” time, editing anthologies, and running the anthology-producing small press Zombies Need Brains LLC. His most recent fantasy novel, Reaping the Aurora, concludes the fantasy series begun in Shattering the Ley and Threading the Needle, although you can also find his “Throne of Amenkor” series and the “Well of Sorrows” series still on the shelves. He is currently hard at work writing his next novel and running the Kickstarter for the next Zombies Need Brains anthology projects. You can find out more at www.joshuapalmatier.com or at the small press’ site www.zombiesneedbrains.com. Or follow him on Twitter as @bentateauthor or @ZNBLLC.
The current Kickstarter by Zombies Need Brains is now live here and is attempting to fund three new SF&F themed anthologies called Apocalyptic, Galactic Stew, and My Battery is Low and It is Getting Dark. Check it out and become a backer! Help bring these three new anthologies to life!
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