This is the book that I mentioned reading a couple posts back. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’d be interesting if someone were to post the story “The Witch’s Headstone” online so you could get a taste for it. Or, you could read it in Jack and Gardner’s Wizards or my own year’s best, which is just out.  I like the book a lot, and can’t wait to see McKean’s illustrations.

I know I haven’t handled an open submission reading period for some time, but this surprised me. Turns out there are a lot of people out there who are confused by writer’s guidelines. Seems terms like ‘deadline’ and ‘word limit’ just throw them into a tizzy.

As you all know, the ‘deadline’ for Eclipse Two and Three was midnight on 29 February, 2008. What this means is that I wouldn’t look at anything sent to me after that date and time. Now, some folk were reasonably and legitimately thrown by the fact that I live in Australia and that, as a result, the deadline was Australian time. I understand that, and this is not directed at them. But a whole bunch, over forty people, sent stories in up to a week after that, or sent queries asking if I’d make an exception for them because they were, for some reason, special. This just took me aback. I’m all up with the specialness thing, but when you’ve sent back stories unopened by 40-odd people you can’t make exceptions – it’s not fair. And it’s not professional to ask. Similarly, if the upper limit for a book is 10,000 words, then don’t send in 15,000 word stories and be surprised when they’re bounced unread. It’s just not okay.

Now, you might say, how are new writers to know this, and what can they do about it? Well, first thing: read the guidelines and assume, just for a minute, that the editor or publisher means them. Generally there’s a good reason for the guidelines. Sometimes not, but it’s not your call. In the case of Eclipse, I capped the word limit at 10k because the publisher wants me to keep the book at about 100,000 words, and I want at least a dozen stories in there, so that means long stories eating up a big chunk of the book are, for the most part, out. It’s possible I might make an exception for a solicited story, but even that’s unlikely. Second, the deadline. The deadline is there because it runs on into other things. I have to deliver Eclipse Two in the first week of June. If I don’t, the publisher will, rightly, smack me hard. But I need time to read the 450 unsolicited submissions, write all of the letters that go with them, and then edit the stories. I also need to time to read the solicited submissions and deal with them, all before writing the volume intro and the story notes and assembling the manuscript. This stuff takes time. I also happen to have other book projects, a day job, and a young family. Hence deadlines.

So, what if you have to, have to, have to be late or long or something else? Well, try asking long before the deadline hits and you might get lucky. I opened Eclipse on 1 February, and announced it a few days before that. I might have discussed deadline and length then, but not after the deadline.