Hello, people of the gardens. It’s our pleasure to announce that the long-awaited third book in the Biblical Legends Anthology Series, Deluge: Stories of Survival & Tragedy in the Great Flood, has finally been released. It is now available in the following versions and at these fine book stores in cyberspace:
Soon to be published in print, so be on your toes!
There is always a price to pay for any delay, and there certainly is no exception with the case of Deluge: Stories of Survival & Tragedy in the Great Flood. But it has had its rewards, as well. For starters, we had many more submissions from writers who were not published in previous BLAS anthologies, which made the selection process somewhat tedious. In the end, we had to make some very hard decisions. But they had nothing to do with the production timeline.
This was a difficult year for editing for two reasons:
That last point may sound harsher than we intend, but we’ll explain ourselves in just a bit. First, we want to cover the first point before moving on.
All writers know that sometimes life can toss us a horseshoe and blacken the eye. Two things happened this year that became somewhat of a distraction. The first of those actually happened two years ago, but my wife and I are still involved in a legal matter in family court. My mother-in-law decided (and this was two years ago) to seek custody of her great-grandchildren (my grandchildren), but she couldn’t do so under Pennsylvania law without my wife’s help. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that my wife and I met the legal standing requirements and my mother-in-law did not. We came out with joint physical custody.
Due to the children being in school, we arranged for my wife and I to have the children every other weekend and on certain holidays. My mother-in-law would have them the rest of the time. But, and this is where the needle pricks the skin, my mother-in-law somehow believes that there is justification for limiting our time with our grandchildren even more than we already have and has spent much of the last two years trying to do just that. So we’ve spent a good deal of time in court or arguing over petty differences. It’s been a huge distraction and her designs have gotten her nowhere.
On top of that, earlier this year (early summer, I’d say), 10 years of staring at a computer screen all day for nearly every day of the period finally took its toll and I developed eye strain. That caused me to spend a little less time focused on my laptop screen. Sorry, but Garden Gnome Publications readers and authors had to suffer for it.
That happened right about the time I was knee deep in the second round of the submissions process. Regular readers will know that our BLAS anthologies typically have two or three rounds of submissions before we finally go to press. Because I was reading less and I decided to get initial acceptances under a 6-month contract or risk losing them to another publisher (when I signed those contracts, I had not developed eye strain or the contractual period would have been longer), I had to go back to original authors and get new contracts. Some of them pulled their manuscripts. I can’t say that I blamed them.
Then, of course, we had the usual submissions challenges–writers not reading guidelines or submitting work that was well-written but didn’t conform to the flavor of weird spec-fic that we were looking for (for some reason, many authors wanted to write about Noah despite clear guidelines to avoid it).
We’d like to point out that these types of submission challenges occur for only one reason: Writers aren’t familiar with our products. There can be no explanation. And that’s why we encourage writers to buy a copy (or steal one if you have to) of previous anthologies to see what we’ve accepted in the past. Surely, you can spring 99 cents for Garden of Eden and $2.99 for Sulfurings: Tales From Sodom & Gomorrah? Both of these anthologies are available at all the same previously mentioned book stores. For those interested, here are the links:
We hope you’ll check out all three anthologies and leave us a review wherever you decide to purchase them.
Garden Gnome Publications still has plans for future anthologies, so don’t give up on us. We’re still trying to work out the best and most efficient submissions process, but this is a part-time endeavor for us, so we’re asking for your patience. Nevertheless, you can expect the following announcements in the near future:
We also plan to revamp the website soon. We’re not real sure what happened to our theme, but something got out of whack and we had no recourse but to revert to a temporary solution. Look for that to change at some point.
On behalf of Fenrir and all the other garden gnomes, I’d like to say thanks for reading, and enjoy the Biblical Legends Anthology Series.
Allen Taylor
Editor & Publisher