Geek Love - running order

And that, Oh Best Beloveds, is how I went about the process of sorting the accepted stories for Geek Love into a final running order: torn-up post-its stuck to a board. Very high-tech, hey? I swear I tried doing it in a desktop document first . . . but for some reason I just couldn't wrap my head around things that way.

The main thing with running order is variation. Anyone reading through from front to back should be presented with a kaleidoscopic cavalcade from across the range of themes and styles.

The stories divided roughly into two groups: the "realistic" and the "speculative fiction" (sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, superheroes). So I started by alternating those. Then I had to take account of settings: the several stories with office settings for example, and several about gamers, needed to be spread out. The cluster of f/f stories had to be separated  of course (to stop it turning into one giant lesbian orgy, ahem), so I also alternated hetero stories with ones themed around alternate sexualities (And it gets pretty damn alternative in places. I'm talking insects . . . no, not incest! Insects.). And then there are special rules for the beginning and end of the book . . .

I'm amazed it worked out, but somehow it did. Pretty much perfectly, I think.

So this is it:

1.     Black Gold   - Kristina Lloyd
2.     Goodness, Her Tail   - Camille Alexa
3.     The Journal of Mary Freder - Peter Smalley
4.     Raid Night - James Sutter
5.     The Hope of Cinnamon -  M. Christian
6.     Electric - Wendy Wagner
7.     The Secret Life of Ramona Lee - Michael M. Jones
8.     The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is Extinct - Bill Noble
9.     Saving the World - Shanna Germain
10.   Downtime - Tanya Korval
11.   The Pornographer’s Assistant - A.C. Wise
12.   Opening Juicy Lucy - Craig Sorensen
13.   A Great Old Time - A. L. Auerbach
14.   Binary - Preston Avery
15.   Morphosis - Jak Koke
16.   Who Am I This Time? - Andrea Trask
17.   Voyeuristic Beauty - Elise Hepner
18.   Fuck the World - J. A. Shirley
19.   At the Faire - Andrea Dale
20.   Grinding - Janine Ashbless
21.   Command Prompt - Ed Grabianowski
22.   Pages and Play Things - Harry Markov
23.   Player Characters - Lucia Starkley
24.   The Purpose of Tongues - Kirsty Logan
25.   Ho Pais Kalos - Molly Tanzer
26.   RJ-45 - Alison Winchester
27.   F-RPG - Vivienne Ashe
28.   Porn Enough at Last - Jesse Bullington
29.   Magdelene - Sommer Marsden

And in my not-so-unbiased opinion, they're bloody brilliant.