Giftmas Blog Tour Guest Post: On This Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me . . . by Eileen Wiedbrauk

Operation Awesome is participating in Rhonda Parrish's 2015 Giftmas Blog Tour. All the guest bloggers are welcome to write about anything they’d like so long as their post touched on a December holiday in some way, no matter how tangentially. The blog tour extends across many blogs as well, and you can find more on social media using the hashtag #GiftmasTour.

But wait! There’s more!

We’re also giving away a whole whack of prizes (check out the list here) which you can enter to win using the Rafflecoper code below. Whatever December holiday you celebrate (or don’t) winning a stack of books will make it better!

On This Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me . . .

by Eileen Wiedbrauk

The first holiday romance anthology I ever read was The Christmas Cat. I was probably 13ish because I remember reading these on the bus coming home from middle school. My mother had been in the habit of buying me all sorts of animal stories like All Creatures Great and Small and Cat Stories by James Harriet. This was no James Harriet. Inside were indeed stories of cats. Cats who used their nine lives to bring together couples, either through traveling through time or reuniting lovers who shouldn’t have separated to begin with.

Cats and sex as it turned out. Holy hot Lord of Misrule!

I was hooked on holiday romances from then on. And not just the sexy ones either. But just about every made for TV Christmas movie. Have you heard the episode of Ask MeAnother where they give two contestants Christmas movie scenarios and try to get them to guess which are real and which are made up? The contestants failed miserably. Meanwhile, I was shouting at my radio, No, no, that one’s real! I’ve seen it! Twice!

So of course, as Editor-in-Chief of WorldWeaver Press, I wanted to put together an anthology of fantasy and paranormal winter romances!

In 2013 we came out with A Winter’sEnchantment, a three-novella anthology of winter magic and loves lost and regained. They included The Devil inMidwinter by Elise Forier Edie, a melding of Mexican and Central American folk and fairy tales with a modern Mexican American girl who’s being pursued by a demon and a boy who burns and burns. Both would have her for his own, but figuring out which, if either, would help save her will be her real challenge. It also featured a novella in the Fate of the Gods series by Amalia Dillin, which follows the many, many lives of Eve reincarnated. This one in Taming Fate takes plase in France in the Middle Ages, where Eve is facing down the plague while facing a new marriage that isn’t . . . well, just isn’t. And the third novella, Opal by Kristina Wojtaszek, is a gorgeous, lyrical melding of many fairy tales into a bright new story following the intersecting lives of a magical girl born as an owl and a boy trapped in a tower.

Then when we launched Red Moon Romance, our first imprint, focused on—you guessed it—romance, we of course had to come out with a sexier holiday anthology.

The Naughty List, edited by Cori Vidae and featuring Tiffany Reisz, Alexa Piper, Pumpkin Spice, Elizabeth Black, Doug Blakesee, and Wendy Sparrow, came out just last month. It’s a blast. The ghosts of Christmas past, Krampus, cowboys and bourbon desserts, a little holiday BDSM, and the son of Father Time put to the test on New Year’s Eve. The stories range from sexy to sweet and prove love is better on the Naughty List.

If you’re a writer looking to submit to a holiday anthology, there’s always a publisher out there looking to put together another bundle of holiday romances—I’m not the only reader who’s hooked!

The most important thing to keep in mind when submitting to a holiday anthology is timing. Many publishers put out a call for submissions in the early months of the year for holiday stories with a deadline as early as March, if they’re anthologies, or August, if they’re magazines. When editing A Winter’s Enchantment, I couldn’t stomach the thought of reading Christmas stories in the middle of a sweltering summer, so I purposefully set our reading period as December and January to create extra time before bringing out the anthology the following winter. It’s best to keep your eyes peeled as these calls pop up throughout the year and are usually only open for short windows since the publishers have much less date-of-publication flexibility as compared to other projects.

Another thing to keep in mind is that holiday romance anthologies are often filled by invitation. This means that writers whom the editor knows are solicited by the editor to send her a story. The best way to have a story solicited is to have worked with that editor before or to have enough work out that you become known to her. In both A Winter’s Enchantment and The Naughty List, the final table of contents was a mix of stories sent to us through regular submissions and stories from writers whom we specifically asked for work.

Why write a holiday novella or short story? If you usually write novels, a holiday story can be a great tie-in, a chance to expand on already established characters by showing them briefly in a short story. Jumping into an anthology or bundle can also be a means of gaining the attention of new readers who come to the anthology with the intent of reading another author in the anthology and then discover your work. It can also be a great chance to explore and showcase cultures, modern or historical seasonal traditions, and holidays that aren’t as well known. The holidays have the tendency to bring out the best and worst in people, and tension like that should not be overlooked in story writing.

Eileen Wiedbrauk (eileenwiedbrauk.com) is Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press and Red Moon Romance as well as a writer, blogger, coffee addict, cat herder, MFA graduate, fantasist-turned-fabalist-turned-urban-fantasy-junkie, Odyssey Workshop alumna, designer, tech geek, entrepreneur, kdrama devotee, avid reader, and a somewhat decent cook. She wears many hats, as the saying goes. Which is an odd saying in this case, as she rarely looks good in hats. She writes creepy fairy tales like this one and can be found on Twitter @eileenwiedbrauk.

Guest Post: The Attraction of Dark Forests by Alexa Piper

Update 10/23: Alexa Piper is not a pseudonym of A. E. Decker. See Alexa's updated bio at the end. Apologies for the confusion.

Today we have with us Alexa Piper. She is author of Luminous Dreams, a short story collection of paranormal erotic romance, published by World Weaver Press:

Dear Reader, allow me to begin this little post by explaining to you one of the (many) idiosyncrasies of the common writer. Sometimes we write stuff. We finish writing stuff and then we write more stuff. This process may repeat a couple more times depending on the individual writer's aptitude in procrastination, but eventually, we will come back to read what we wrote, and sometimes we notice that there is an overarching theme there, something that connects the thing we wrote three months ago to the piece we just finished the other day.

For me, I found that one of these themes was the attraction of forests dark and brooding, so it seems only fitting to collect my thoughts on the matter in a post.

First, let us ask what it is about the woods that makes you want to go there and get lost? Personally, I think that there are two aspects to this attraction.

One, and probably most obviously, is the need to get away from everything, escapism pure and simple. This is the very beast on whose back you rode to Middle Earth and Hogwarts, it's the trickster that seduced you into daydreams and comforted you more times than you can count. I explore this (among other things) in my short story The Acorn Princess (from my collection Luminous Dreams). The main character of the story, Alice, drives out to the woods because she has to get away from all the rest of the world. And of course she does, more so than she ever dared hope.

The other aspect that I think drives our longing for the woods is that--while we might get lost--we also hope to bring something back from among the loneliness of the trees. There are aspects of the quest in this for sure, but the woods are older, wilder, they follow their own ancient rules. It is perhaps not an accident that a story that plays with this aspect can also be found in Luminous Dreams. Candy and the Witch introduces Gretel, a rather competent witch. She heads for the woods, already searching for something. What--or rather who--she finds is not what she was looking for...or is it?

Is the enthralling power of the woods strong enough to make us misremember why we came there to begin with? If so, then what about the things and people we do find and take back home with us?

In romance (and it is something I love about the genre) the writer can take you right along for the ride of figuring that last part out, and it's a lot of fun, hopeful also for you, dear Reader.

Basically, if a reader has their her story-sized bite of escapism combined with the joy of discovering something she didn't know she wanted before, then all's well, as Shakespeare says. And of course it always ends well too; in your dreams, dear Reader, you can always go back to the woods after all, the place the writer introduced you to, but ultimately a place you created in your own mind, a place you own. And whenever you choose to re-read a tale, a story, these woods will always feel like your own place of discovery, something to hold very dear indeed, something to take home with you.

Alexa Piper enjoys writing, romance, and the paranormal. This said, becoming a paranormal romance writer seemed perfectly reasonable, but for Alexa, it is more than that; it's fun. Alexa’s work has appeared in the Red Moon Romance anthology Demons, Imps, and Incubi and The Naughty List. Luminous Dreams is Alexa's first collection, and she hopes her readers will have as much fun reading it as she had writing it. Check out Alexa’s online home (alexapiper.com) for all things related to her writing and be sure to follow her on Twitter @prowlingpiper.

Editor Interview: Rhonda Parrish

Good morning, everyone! This is Samantha, and I'm so excited that today I get to share my interview with editor and writer extraordinaire Rhonda Parrish:

I first became acquainted with Rhonda's work when I read the anthology Fae, which she edited as the first book in her Magical Menageries series for World Weaver Press. (Just as an aside, "edited" crams tons of blood, sweat, and tears, into a demure, little word. You can read more about what an anthology editor does on her post here.) I loved Fae so much I found myself hugging my phone whilst reading. (I read on the Kindle app, so that makes more sense, right?) Then--THEN--she followed it up with two more awesome anthologies, Corvidae and Scarecrow. And now? NOW! She's accepting submissions for a fourth, Sirens. More details below.

Hi, Rhonda! Thanks for joining us today. You were the editor of Niteblade Magazine for eight years, and you’ve edited six anthologies. Obviously you love short stories! Why is that?

I love stories in any format--poems, short stories, novels, RPGs, video games, movies, television--but one of the best things about short stories is that they are short. That means I can read more of them in the same amount of time it takes me to get through a book.

I totally agree, and for even more reasons why our readers should be writing short fiction, check out Terra Luft's guest post from last week.

You’re currently accepting submissions for the upcoming Sirens anthology (which everybody should write something for, so says Samantha). What else can you say about what you’re looking for that you haven’t already?

Nothing really. I haven’t read a high enough proportion of the submissions I’ve received so far to really see what shape this anthology is taking (and thus what kind of stories I’m seeing too much or too little of). I’m hoping to be able to do an update around the beginning of October though.

We’re about halfway to the deadline of November 15. You’ve said you want an equal balance of sea and sky sirens, so are you getting that? How many submissions have you received so far? Have you started reading? Any tidbits you want to share about the slush?

So far I’ve received about 65 story submissions, and yes, I have begun reading them.

I’m excited. The overall quality of submissions seems to be quite high, which is not always the case right at the beginning where every author with a shelved story they think might possibly, almost, may be a fit for the anthology sends it your way. I’m not seeing that with this anthology, which is pretty exciting. I am seeing about twice as many sea-based sirens as sky-based sirens, but I expected that.

How do you feel about adherence to word count limits? What if I send you a story that’s exactly 7,500 words? What if I send you one that’s 7,549, but I call it 7,500? What if I send you one that’s 20,000 (but every single one is important, I swear)?

I don’t usually read cover letters before I read submissions (because I want the story to speak for itself), and the way most manuscripts are formatted the word count is way up in the right-hand corner, so I’m unlikely to notice the word count before I start reading. If I notice it while I’m reading, it’s because I’ve thought, “This story feels long… how long is it?” which is usually a symptom of a problem with pacing/tension/conflict/something within the story rather than “ZOMG, there are 49 extra words in here! Where’s my big red REJECTION stamp?!”

That being said, if you’re going to send something significantly over my word limit, email me first. I’m not an ogre, I’ll probably agree to take a look at it, but it’s about respect. If I say nothing over 7,500 words and you send me 20,000 words, I’ll be miffed because either a) you didn’t bother to read my guidelines, or b) you read them but decided that obviously they don’t apply to you. [Samantha's note: Why do writers do this? Don't let this be you.] Either one of those things, depending on my mood before I start reading, might have me reaching for my big red stamp…

Do you have any pet peeves about stories or submissions?

As you may have guessed from my answer above, people not following the submission guidelines drives me up the wall.

Niteblade used to have a ‘No Indents’ rule. It began as a practical thing to speed up formatting, but it very quickly became our BrownM&Ms Rule… sort of. In our case it wasn’t about safety, it was about who reads and follows directions because I don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t.

We turned away a lot of great stories because they were indented.

And I really wasn’t an ogre about it. It’s not like I wrote ‘no indents’ in tiny text at the bottom of the guidelines in the same colour as the background so you had to highlight it to see it. Nope. The very top of the page said, ‘NOT indented,’ and then a little further down it said, “When submitting prose, please single space your work, insert a blank line between paragraphs, and do not indent them.” AND there was a .jpgexample of what we meant. And yet…

To be clear, Sirens stories don’t have to be formatted in any special way. My point is just read and follow the guidelines. LOL.

Yep. Do it. It's hard work being a writer. Give yourself as many advantages as possible--and that one is easy.

As writers, we always want to know about the magic an editor brews to pull stories out of the slush. Once submissions close and you’ve made a first pass, about how many stories do you usually have on your shortlist before you start paring down?

I don’t think there is a ‘usual’ number. The shortlist has fewer stories than the total number of submissions and more than the final table of contents. That sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m really not.

Fae had 191 submissions in total; 39 of them made it on the short list and 17 onto the table of contents. I recently edited an anthology using my pen name, and every story on the shortlist made it onto the table of contents. You just never know.

Can you tell us more about the step between shortlisting and deciding on your table of contents? Besides lots of coffee, wine, and/or painkillers, how do you decide what goes in and what goes out?

None of the stories on my shortlist are bad, which makes this stage the most difficult stage in regard to decision-making. It’s easy to pick between a strong story and a less-strong story. It’s a different thing entirely to pick between two strong pieces. Unfortunately I have to.

Once I re-read my shortlist, there are usually a handful of stories that I love so much they are guaranteed a spot. After I’ve established those, it becomes a matter of figuring out what else to keep. What goes with them? How do I get the most diversity, the most variety?

If I have two stories about a polka-dotted panda bear saving the world from evil using the power of dance, I can only keep one. In that case the stories go head-to-head, but usually by this point I’m trying to figure out which stories work best together.

For WWP anthologies once I have my short-short list done, I pass it up to my publisher, Eileen Wiedbrauk. She reads the stories and sends me her notes. They are short things (“It’s good but that ending…” or “I LOVE this one.”) but definitely help me with the final decisions.

Agents and publishers talk about an author’s behavior on social media as a decision-making factor in working with them. Do you consider that for anthologies?

I haven’t yet, though anything is possible.

I mean, I’ve accepted work by people I don’t like or wouldn’t want to hang out with, because the work was good*. BUT it’s different when you’re putting together an anthology because that person is just one of 17 or one of 26 or whatever rather than being THE ONE as in the case of a novel.

And… after giving this question a lot of thought… once you get down to the short-shortlist, if I’m deciding between two stories and the author of one is an ass on social media… well, that might be enough to tip the balance in the other direction.

You just never know, really, so we should all follow Wheaton’s Law. I mean, just in general, not only because you don’t want to alienate editors, agents, or publishers.

*For the next week my inbox is going to be full of “Do you mean me?” emails, so let me just say, if you have my email address the answer is probably no. :-p

Once you’ve decided on your table of contents and the author has been signed onto the project, you send back a list of substantive edits. How much say does the author have in which updates to accept and reject? Have you ever worked on a story where you and the author had to walk away because you couldn’t agree?

Authors always get the final say in which updates to accept and reject. Always. I do ask everyone I work with to look at my suggestions with an open mind, and often there’s a bit of back and forth which goes on between drafts, but it’s not adversarial or dictatorial, it’s a conversation.

I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I can only remember two times when the author and I couldn’t find a middle ground. One of those times was because the author really, really didn’t want to change a single word, and the other time was because the author and I had totally different visions for the story. Thankfully in both cases, the break was amicable, and I would happily work with either of those authors again.

You’ve said that you have to pitch each individual idea for Magical Menageries and I wouldn’t want to spoiler any announcements, but I’m terribly curious: Are you able to share any future anthology ideas? Are there any for this series that you pitched and had rejected?

I’ve been very lucky with the Magical Menageries in that so far each idea I’ve pitched has been accepted, but I’ve gathered plenty of rejection letters for other anthologies (with several publishers). It happens.

As for what’s coming next… I have some ideas, but nothing I’m ready to share yet. I will say I’m at the short shortlist stage, but I haven’t pitched anything to follow Sirens yet, and, really, I don’t want to jinx myself. LOL.

That's all right... if a bit mysterious. *eyebrow wiggle* How many more Magical Menageries anthologies will there be? Are you working on anything outside that series right now?

Yes. So many things.

I assume you mean specifically in regard to editing and anthologies? I’m in the midst of line edits on the third of my AlphabetAnthologies (C is for Chimera). I’ve also got a couple collaborative anthology projects looking for a home. I can’t talk about them much just yet, but they are pretty exciting.

I’ve also got an idea for a trilogy of anthologies I’d like to develop and find a home for--and I will, just as soon as I find where I left my time turner. ;)

As for how many more Magical Menageries anthologies there will be… that’s tough to say. I have lots of ideas (as I mentioned), and I enjoy working with World Weaver Press, but right now we don’t have anything planned beyond Sirens.

What are your long-term plans now that Niteblade is closing?

I intend to continue editing anthologies and such, but mostly I’m looking forward to having more time to write. LOL. Isn’t that what we all say?

Yep. "What would you if you had a million dol--" "WRITE." "OK, then..."

That’s all the questions we have for you. Thank you very much for your time!

Thank you very much for inviting me and for this interview. I appreciate it. J

Rhonda Parrish is driven by a desire to do All The Things. She was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Niteblade Magazine for eight years (which is like forever in internet time) and is the editor of several anthologies including, most recently, Scarecrow and B is for Broken.

In addition, Rhonda is a writer whose work has been in publications such as Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast, Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 & 2015), and Mythic Delirium.

Her website, updated weekly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com, and you can find her on: 

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Goodreads

Check out all the details about submitting to her Sirens anthology here:

That's it! Don't forget next Friday is Operation Awesome's second flash fiction contest. I've been considering the feedback after the last one, and I'll have some details about minor changes in quick post on Sunday. Stay tuned for that!