Today is a special day for me. Today, we (me, along with several writers including and ) are releasing the anthology, a collection of short stories written by a group of friends who support one another in their writing, and life, endeavors. Frostfangs, my contribution to this anthology, is my first piece of published fiction, and I couldn’t be more proud to see my efforts finally come to fruition alongside the fabulous stories of my friends and colleagues.
I wanted to do a special post to promote Forgotten Lore, to celebrate this huge achievement, and quickly realized that this release dovetailed nicely with an idea that’s been percolating in the back of my mind for some time. Rhonda Parrish is the mastermind behind Forgotten Lore (she’ll tell you she isn’t, but she is!) setting deadlines, pulling the stories together, and ultimately publishing the anthology for the group. Rhonda is also the editor of 38 speculative fiction anthologies, and, as written in the Ottawa Review of Books, “is perhaps Canada’s best-known and most prolific speculative fiction anthologist.� I’ve wanted to interview her for some time now to ask the question—why anthologies?
So, to promote the release of Forgotten Lore, I finally sat down with Rhonda, and we talked about her passion for anthologies and what all goes into curating, editing, and publishing them. You can find complete lists of Rhonda’s anthologies and anthology series on and on .
Because this was purely a labor of love for every author involved, Forgotten Lore can be downloaded for free on all major digital platforms (, , , and ) except for Amazon. On Amazon, there is a charge for both the and versions, but all proceeds will be donated to , a chimpanzee rescue and sanctuary in Quebec, Canada.
In addition, I will be giving away three print copies of Forgotten Lore to the first three commenters requesting a copy on this post.
I hope you all enjoy Forgotten Lore as much as I enjoyed being a part of creating it. I also hope you enjoy this interview about anthologies—Rhonda is a powerhouse in the speculative fiction world, and her experiences with publishing anthologies were fascinating to learn about and her passion inspiring. Enjoy!
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Kat: Hi, Rhonda.
Rhonda: Hello.
Kat: So, today we are going to talk about anthologies. One of the first things that I wanted to ask you, because I think it's quite staggering is, how many anthologies have you published?
Rhonda: That's a trick question, and I did homework this morning so that I would be able to answer it, but I still can't give you a nice concrete answer. So, depending on how you count them, the number changes. The number I would go with after doing a lot of math and thinking is 38.
Kat: Wow.
Rhonda: Actually, probably say 35, because three of those are un-curated anthologies.
Kat: Got it. So, if you don't count those, it's 35. And if you do count those, it's 38.
Rhonda: Yes.
Kat: And how many anthologies series have you done?
Rhonda: I'm looking at my cheat sheet here. I would say six.
Kat: Six series. 38 anthologies. Over how many years would you say?
Rhonda: I think the first Niteblade anthology may have come out in 2010, so that would be twelve years ago.
Kat: Wow. That’s a little over three anthologies a year for twelve years. That's pretty impressive!
Rhonda: Yeah. They do stagger well with each other, anthologies. So, if I have one that is open, I could have one that I'm pitching, one that is open to submissions, one that I'm actively editing, and one that I am marketing.
Kat: I see what you're saying. So, the process of writing an anthology has kind of these different phases and you can stagger them such that you're doing different activities on a particular anthology at a given time.
Rhonda: Yeah. And like with any book, there's a window between when you turn it into the publisher and when it becomes a book and is ready to go out into the world. And so, you can use those windows to fill things.
Kat: So, 2010. What was that first anthology and what prompted you to wanting to put together that anthology?
Rhonda: Now we get into some like weird semantics because the first one was a Niteblade anthology. I founded and ran Niteblade Magazine for seven years. As part of that I wanted to have a physical product so, we did the Niteblade anthology. I did open submissions for it as well as putting in some of my favorites from the previous year. But even though it is an anthology, and I call it an anthology, it is so strongly connected to the magazine for me, it doesn't feel like an anthology.
Kat: So, was this kind of like the entry into doing anthologies? Like, you had this magazine and it kind of led you in the direction of anthologies?
Rhonda: You would think that, wouldn't you?
Kat: Laughs. Okay, so, what would you consider then the first anthology?
Rhonda: Probably Metastasis, which I started working on in 2012.
My mom died of lung cancer, and I needed to do something, and I needed to focus that grief and that energy into something positive. So, I came up with an idea of doing a speculative fiction anthology that had cancer as one of its primary themes. You could use things as a metaphor for cancer or the main character could have cancer or cancer could be the enemy–there were all sorts of different, obvious, and less obvious ways to approach it. I did that one in 2012 and we donated the proceeds to the American Cancer Society, because the publisher was American.
Kat: That's amazing.
Rhonda: That was incredibly cathartic.
Kat: I bet.
Rhonda: And it was also a pretty good book.
Kat: That's interesting because it kind of flows into another question I wanted to ask. So, obviously, the inspiration for Metastasis was the grief and loss and coming to terms with your loss. That particular anthology has a very clear inspiration. But in general, how do you come up with themes? How do you pick a theme or topic?
Rhonda: I mean, the same as with a story, right? It comes from all over the place and each one is different. It also depends on what I can get a publisher to want to do or what I feel like publishing myself. The Alphabet anthology series… There was an alphabet-themed movie, and I can't remember what it was called now, but it had a like 26 different short movies in it, one for each letter of the alphabet. And I was like, I could do that as a book. No, I could do that as a series of books.
For the Menagerie series I wanted to do a—okay, funny story… I’d just finished Metastasis, and I totally wanted to do another anthology. I wanted to do something light and cheery for like the opposite of Metastasis. As a palate cleanser. So, I looked over what World Weaver Press's Library had and what they did, and I just sort of like looked through all of my mental Rolodex as well as the million Post-It notes that are all over my house. And I decided ‘I like fairies, and fairies are totally in the bailiwick for World Weaver Press and mine as well. It's a nice little place where we met up.’ Totally forgetting that fairies are not actually light sweet creatures. Laughs.
Kat: Not at all. Not at all.
Rhonda: But then I had established that relationship with World Weaver Press, and Fae did very well for both of us. So, it just opened the door to doing more and just connecting them under the same series umbrella.
Kat: Of all these various anthologies that you've put together, do you have a favorite?
Rhonda: Yes and no. More like favorite with conditions.
Kat: Laughs. Fair.
Rhonda: Metastasis was the first anthology I did that was unconnected to Niteblade. So, that’s special. Fae kind of opened the door and is the one that made it so that people occasionally knew who I was. And it sort of is the one that mostly introduced me to anthology readers as well. Grimm, Grit and Gasoline got me my first starred review on Publisher’s Weekly. So, that's pretty awesome.
Kat: That is very awesome.
Rhonda: Water won a prize. Swashbuckling Cats is just… it like came from the most bizarre of circumstances and, you know, one of the stories in it won an Aurora and it got me on the Aurora ballot for the first time, and that had been a big, big goal.
Kat: Absolutely. That's a huge honor.
Rhonda: So, there's a whole series of favorites.
Kat: What is it about anthologies that makes you keep putting them out? You put a lot of energy and work into these, and you keep kind of coming back for more, right? What is it about anthologies that that pulls you in?
Rhonda: There are so many things. When you ask that question, I imagined like a multi-pronged fishhook. Laughs. And me just lining up to swallow it. First of all, I really love short stories and there aren't enough markets for short stories and there's not enough love for short stories. I think that people who love them really love them. And I also feel like while they are not for everyone, I do think that they deserve a little bit more love than they get, I guess.
I have a younger brother and a younger sister, and I was the person who would, on the last day of school, bring all of my school stuff home and bully my siblings into playing school so that I could give them assignments about things that they had to write.
Kat: Amazing.
Rhonda: Write a report about wolves! Laughs. This has a little bit of that, right? I get to pick the things I want to read more about and put it out into the universe and say, please create this thing that I really want to read. And people do.
It also creates room in my life and my career for me to do other things. I can still write novels. I can still write poetry. I can still write my own short stories. It allows me that flexibility to do all the things. And since I have the attention span of a magpie...
Kat: Laughs. No, that makes a lot of sense to me. Absolutely. So, you said something that kind of begs a follow-on question… You find a topic that is interesting to you and then… How do you go about getting these stories? Like how do you put that out in the universe?
Rhonda: I usually do open submissions because I want to read from as widely as possible, as many different ideas as possible from as many different people, from as many different communities as possible. Unfortunately, I can only reach as far as I can reach. So, I advertise on the usual suspects, like the Submission Grinder. I advertise on my website. I advertise to my newsletter. I advertise on social media. If I'm working with a publisher for a project, they usually signal boost that.
Kat: And how many submissions do you generally get for an anthology? Does it vary or is, is there kind of like a, like an average?
Rhonda: Oh, there is huge variability. For Women and the Sea, which just closed, I think the final number ended up being 301.
Kat: Holy cow. How do you decide how many stories go into an anthology? Is it based on like page count or is it based on number of stories? Or does it change based on the topic?
Rhonda: It is usually a combination. When I pitch an anthology, I usually include a range of the number of stories I would like, which is often 12 to 16 stories, and the word count.
Some publishers have different word counts that they prefer that you stay under. Tyche prefers under 90,000 words. So, in that case, if I'm doing an anthology for Tyche Books, I'm looking for 12 to 18 stories that, combined, is fewer than 90,000 words.
It becomes a process of paring down and then paring down more, and then trying to figure out the ones that work the best together.
So, I get 300 stories submitted to me, and then I do a first read through on them and short list some and pass on others. At that stage I ask myself things like, is this actually on the topic of the anthology that I'm looking for? And does it completely engage me as a reader? But even on the first read through, I've got the other stories on the short list, and I’m thinking are these going to work with those? Or if not, they'd have to be better than those to replace them. I'm not consciously doing that too much until I get toward the end of my reading, but it's still there.
And then the second read through is like, okay, these are the ones that I think would work best together. And then passing on some more, and then you have to do another read to try and do the math to try and fit everything together. And then that's when the spreadsheet comes out for real.
Kat: Laughs. Oh, man. I bet that final step is hard, right? Because I bet you get to that point and there's a set where you just want to include them all and then you start having to make some tough decisions. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like for you?
Rhonda: Oh, that's so hard. I end up with multiple theoretical tables of contents. If I accept this story, I can't accept these two because this story is 7,500 words, and these two combined are 6,600 words. I literally do use a spreadsheet.
I frequently thank authors for making my job difficult. It sounds a little bit facetious if you don't know me, but it is completely sincere. It's really hard for that last step. I can usually get that done in a couple of days of hair pulling in hand wringing. But it's really hard. But in the best possible way. It's wonderful to have too many good things to choose from.
Kat: Sure. Sure. It is certainly a better problem to have than the other direction.
Rhonda: Exactly.
Kat: Once you have the stories that you know you're going put in an anthology, how do you decide on the order?
Rhonda: I worked hard at learning how to order anthologies. For example, I once went to a kaffeeklatsch with Ellen Datlow. And while everybody else who was there was asking her about how to get in her anthologies or the celebrities that she worked with, the people she'd edited, I was there like, “yeah, but how do you order them?�
So, these days I use a sort of a circus tent analogy. You need the poles on the outside—the start and the end. They need to be strong to hold the tent up. You also need a strong center. You're going to need a strong pole in the middle. And depending on how big the tent is and how many stories are under it, you’re going to need other support poles in between those three primary ones.
Kat: I love this because I can visualize that. I can see exactly what you're talking about in my head.
Rhonda: Yeah. Some stories are going to be stronger than others. So, you're going to want to prop up the ones that aren't quite as strong as the others by sticking a strong one by them so they can help support the weight of the tent.
I like to start with a story that's not too long because you want to pull the reader in and engage them with something that has a relatively quick arc so that they're hungry to go on to the next one. So, not only do I have to pick a really strong story to start with, it has to be reasonably short. Like I can't put a novella there. And it has to be accessible. If I've got something that is a little bit more experimental or difficult to understand, I probably don't want to lead with that. I want to bring the reader in first. I also want the first story to strongly represent the theme of the anthology.
And for the last one… This is the last story that people are reading before they review the book. So, I want to not just leave them with a good impression, but I want the very last line to be powerful, ideally. If it can't be powerful, hopefully it won't just be like completely depressing.
Somebody, I can't remember who, but they were much smarter than me, said that the first story sells the book, and the last story sells the next one.
Kat: Makes sense. Switching gears again… Do you, as a reader, have someone else's anthology that's your favorite?
Rhonda: Shadow Show by Sam Weller. It's stories in celebration of Ray Bradbury. That one sticks in my head. I also really loved Glitter and Mayhem. It was edited by John Klima. I love that one. It was a little bit like Swashbuckling Cats in that it's a theme that is not obvious at all. Maybe that's what made it extra magical for me.
Kat: I mean, this sounds fantastic. From Goodreads: “Step behind the velvet rope of these fabulous science fiction fantasy and horror tales of roller rinks, nightclubs, glam aliens, party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, and debauchery.� That sounds so fun.
Rhonda: It was so fun. It was totally fabulous. There's retold fairy tales and a science fiction roller derby.
Kat: That's amazing.
Rhonda: Right? Yeah, it was pretty awesome.
Kat: Any closing thoughts?
Rhonda: As somebody who loves short stories and loves anthologies and who has worked on both sides of the production desk for anthology, in my experience, they are more expensive to make than a book. And they are potentially trickier to sell. So, the people who create them at any stage of the production, publishers, editors, authors do it from a place of love, if not for the medium itself, at least for short stories.
And I think that that love tends to come through. So, I have nothing but appreciation for the people who read them, especially those who review them—they get extra points—and the people who submit to them and every publisher who publishes them because they aren't doing it to get rich. And I think that it does enrich the publishing world to have them.
