Well, actually, this isn’t a brand-new story, since I wrote it last winter, and the sale has been more-or-less official for several months. But I’m finally free and clear to announce it to the world!
So. I’m downright delighted to announce that I’ll have a story appearing in After Hours: Tales From the Ur-Bar, an anthology edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, and to be published by DAW in March 1, 2011. (Hey, that’s just a month after the scheduled release date for Milkweed #2, The Coldest War. [Edit: Coldest War is now scheduled for October, 2011.])
To celebrate, Patricia is running Ur-Bar Bingo on her blog. Match the authors to their story synopses to win fame and fortune! (If you want a hint, Josh has posted the table of contents here. The story titles might help.) Though, people familiar with some of my other projects will find it easy to figure out which description applies to my own particular contribution.
Patricia and Josh wanted a mix of stories from a variety of historical periods. So I looked around my office and happened to notice a bookshelf full of World War II reference materials. And I figured, hey, why let those things go to waste? My Ur-Bar story does not take place in the Milkweed universe, however. Because sometimes it’s fun to write about stuff other than Nazis, superpowers, and black magic.
I received the anthology invite back in November, right before Thanksgiving, and wrote the first draft of my Ur-Bar story at the same time I was writing Dr. Gottlieb. (February was a great month for short stories. Not so much for forward progress on Necessary Evil.) I have to admit I enjoyed the brief vacation from the world of Milkweed. My Ur-Bar story is only the second non-Milkweed, non-Wild Cards thing I’ve written since I started work on Bitter Seeds a few years ago.
I’m very pleased about this. AFTER HOURS is my first anthology invitation. (Unless you count those three [and counting, I hope] Wild Cards novels as anthologies. I don’t, because writing for a Wild Cards novel—even the supposedly non-mosaic WC novels—is so much more complicated than writing a simple standalone story for an anthology. There is no such thing as “standalone” in the WC universe. The WC novels are really mosaic novels, even the “simple” ones. A mosaic is a completely different beast from an anthology. A slavering, time-consuming, multiheaded beast.)
I hope that my contribution stands up to the high standard set by our visionary editors and the other writers in the anthology. (Not likely, I know—just look at that table of contents! Bray and Palmatier sure know how to pick ’em.)
What an interesting concept for an anthology. I love when editors think outside the traditional “gather anyone of note who’s willing to throw a story this way” and go for something a little different.
Yeah, I thought it was a neat idea,too. Josh had told me about their idea at a convention a year previously, and it certainly stuck with me.
I have to say, the backstory-and-rules document that he and Patricia put together for contributors was a pretty entertaining read.