Editing an anthology is kind of like building a jigsaw puzzle. You want the puzzle to be fun, challenging, and balanced. That means making each piece unique while fitting into the whole.

Status of Gods and Monsters [the deadline for submissions is 12/31, but that is only 15 days or so.]

85 people have submitted stories.

5 of that 85 are new submissions to review.

20 of that 85 are stories that have passed the first review and are on the maybe list. And there’s no shame being in this group. It means that the story is good and we’re trying to see if we can build an anthology around it. I don’t know how many of these stories we will accept for the final version.

4 of that 85 are stories that have been accepted. These were the breakaway stories that touched my soul and I had to have.

The rest were rejections.

25 were rejected because they need major editing and revisions.

10 were rejected because they didn’t read the submission guidelines and didn’t fit in with theme of the anthology.

1 was about a poop monster. I just couldn’t bring myself to accept a story with a poop monster, but the writer did say I could mark that in my survey. I’m hoping he resubmits something else before the deadline.

The rest just didn’t touch me. They were decent stories with good writing, but just didn’t connect with me.

Nothing too revealing, but kind of neat to look into the process.