Worldsmyths Contract Signed; LOLcraft Editing Schedule Announced
Two “writing life” reports, the first really a quick continuation of yesterday’s entry. As promised I got to the library this early afternoon and, after dealing with the first flurry of email, I got to Worldsmyths Publishing’s somewhat elaborate questionnaire and contract, the latter seemingly already filled in by another writer. Say what? But not to worry — perhaps that was just meant to be an example — I dutifully edited out the other guy’s stuff, substituting my own name and title, etc. Then, not being able to get the electronic signature feature to work, I printed it out, signed it “live,” then scanned the sucker into an email to me in attachable form to send on to Worldsmyths.
Thus, the ball in their court, on to an email from late yesterday from Michael Cieslak of Dragon’s Roost Press: LOLcraft has a defined place in our publishing queue. While there are a few books ahead of it, that does not mean that we are not still actively working on it. The other titles are in much later stages of production, final edits, awaiting artwork, etc. We do not see any of them causing any delays in the work on this title as the labor intensives phase has been completed for those.
We are currently working on the initial edits for each of the 34 stories which will appear in this collection. In order to not have anything lost in the shuffle, we plan on sending all of the edits out to the authors on the same day, rather than some here and some there. Look for this to happen within the next few weeks.
The book in question is LOLCRAFT: A COMPENDIUM OF ELDRITCH HUMOR , conceived in the spirit of such movies as BEETLEJUICE and CABIN IN THE WOODS, but in an H.P. Lovecraftian vein. We want the laughter but we also want that sense of helplessness and dread that comes with a good Lovecraftian tale. And my plum in the pastry, a tale called “The Reading” (cf. April 27, et al.) originally published in UNIVERSE HORRIBILIS (Third Flatiron Publishing, Spring 2013), of a poet who writes horror, a fear of public performance, and . . . Cthulhu.
