Mike Jansen's Blog: The Chronicler - Posts Tagged "anthology"

I've postponed writing this piece for some time. Why? For all the reasons mentioned below:

There's more to writing than just putting words on paper (or in your text-editor). Any author will tell you that. There's editing, cover design, all the little administrative details, social media, participation in forums and groups as well as literary contests. It requires life-balance, it requires a plan. You need to know what your goals are and what investments and/or sacrifices you need to make to achieve your goals.

During 2012 I noticed that I was changing some of my writing goals (yes, sometimes you have to become aware of internal thought processes and motivations.) Where I started out writing most of my stuff in Dutch and perhaps later translating them to English, I started to write stuff up in English immediately. There were several reasons for that. Some stories just work better in English. The market is much, much bigger and yes, the competition is fierce, much fiercer than in The Netherlands. And because of the variety in markets and the various levels of challenge, I can pick and choose where to send my work, for either slow or fast feedback on my writing. Frankly, that appeals to me, a lot. I did participate in a Dutch competition that worked with multiple feedback rounds, allowing you to enhance and update your manuscript in between rounds. For me a novel experience, but one that I intend to repeat.

So where does that leave me now? Most of my stories are now original English. Whenever I need something for a Dutch contest and if within the scope of the contest rules, I translate one of those stories and submit them. Same for magazines or anthologies. Does it make my Dutch work better? Yes, it does. Because the stories I've written in English have gone through one or more editing and feedback rounds, allowing me to polish my work to a bigger extent than previously.

Of course that is all subject to the amount of time I have available for my writing endeavors. Family has been and still is rather time intensive and work is picking up something fierce as well. It means my writing has to be terse, compact and to the point, no time for lengthy descriptions or deep digging philosophies. It forces me to experiment with symbolism and memes and their subconscious influences on our reading and understanding of texts. My first real attempt at that was my story 'Master Pricklylegs' (published in "Songs for the Raven" by JWK Fiction and soon in Dutch in an issue of "Wonderwaan"), after having experimented with bits and pieces in various other stories in different recent anthologies. The effect is a short story, typically between 2000 and 5000 words that I can write fairly fast, yet reads like it contains much, much more because of cultural references, mythologies and the various twists I weave into the storyline.

But I've also been looking back at the material I've been producing, both in English and Dutch, trying to decide what to translate and what not. For some reason there's been quite a few Dutch magazines and anthology publications recently, in which I obviously wanted to be present, so more translation work than actual writing going on there. And Smashwords needed some updating as well. And I've been asked to create an English anthology of a lot of my stories, which means I need to translate some material from Dutch to English.

Like I said in the beginning of this piece, I need to find a balance between writing new material, translations, online book presence and all the rest and sometimes rebalances are in order. That may hinder some endeavors, it may improve some, but in the end it makes me more efficient and all-round as an author. I think that's a good thing.

And now you also know why this piece is in English, not in Dutch, as were the previous pieces.

My first English book would be a novel, or so I thought. However, the translation of 'The Failing God' took quite a bit more time than expected. And then my publisher asked me about all the short stories I had written for his and various other anthologies and magazines and could he publish an anthology with some of my work in it. Odd how these things come together. I discussed it with my Dutch publisher, Roelof Goudriaan of Verschijnsel, who thought it was a magnificent idea. He liked it so much, in fact, that he wanted to publish the same anthology in Dutch. Go figure. All of a sudden it's a Dutch and an English anthology.



In the past weeks I have prepared the anthology and decided on a title. Here's how funny coming up with a title for an anthology can be: We were discussing some of the work in the book and the weird ideas I've come up with over the years and James (Ward Kirk) was shooting down most of my title ideas. Which was difficult enough typing out with one hand on my phone in the Facebook app, as I had my sleeping daughter in my arms. It was enough to drive me crazy and at some point I remember thinking "this must be how Ophelia felt." Now, Ophelia I was reminded of because I was looking at the various Tais Teng covers on his deviantart site, that were available to me. And I really liked the "Young Ophelia" cover he did. So then it hit me. I typed "Ophelia In My Arms" in the app and got an instant "Like" back from James. That's how we decided on that title.

So, "Ophelia In My Arms", a collection of some older and lots of recent work, roughly one third of all my stories. But that's OK. James wants to publish the rest as well, so expect more weird titles in the future.

As a "thank you" to my daughter, I dedicated the book to her.

By the way, it's available in print, kindle and smashwords ebooks, so get your copy today! I hope you will enjoy my many dark musings.

On December 1st I received an early Christmas present. Samovar (Strange Horizons) reached out to me to inform me that they wanted to publish my story "Fluxless" on their website, do an interview, plus arrange a podcast of the story in Dutch and English.

Here's the link by the way, see for yourself: http://samovar.strangehorizons.com/20...

A step forward? Why, yes, definitely. Like many authors I have a bucket list of magazines that I really want to be published in. Strange Horizons is one of them, so with Samovar being part of Strange Horizons, that's one goal achieved. Of course I have other magazines and publications on that bucket list, the usual suspects like Asimov's, Clarkesworld, Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and several others.

Getting selected for a pro-publication is rare enough, it's very hard, very competitive; it's also a learning experience. As a writer you try many things to gain traction in the best markets available for your stories, but you need to find that format/voice/spark, what-have-you that makes your story stand out. With "Fluxless" I feel I have reached that level. Another story that I feel reaches this level is "In the dance of light years..." which was picked up by Robert N. Stephenson for his annual "Worlds of Sciencefiction, fantasy and horror, vol IV", to arrive around the new year.

The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Volume III

So, exciting stuff happening, steps being made and developing as a writer. Onward to 2019, let's make it a smashing year.