Hello everyone,

So, I know we are massively behind schedule, but, we’ve finally done it… We’ve knocked our list of 1700 entrants down to the 6 winners we needed to fill the anthology.

Apology

Firstly, we owe you guys an apology. The last few months we’ve been drowned by the sheer volume of work involved in reading the stories, contacting the authors, working out the process of actually making the anthology, and maintaining Fantasy-Faction as one of the World’s leading Fantasy Blog sites (also worth noting is that we have private lives too). Regardless, we should have kept you guys more in the loop and been more ‘on the ball’ in regards to keeping this website up to date. I hope you can appreciate the work involved and forgive us for our failings there.

Anyway, we hope to repay your patience with an anthology that you will think was worth the wait. In order to do this, to get the anthology ‘perfect’, we are going to delay it until March 2013 *pauses for the collective sigh*. I know… I know… However, we have decided to do this because we don’t want to put out a sub-par product… and I hope you can understand our reasons for that. We owe it to all the authors and fans involved to nail this. Sorry to those who were looking forward to reading it over new years – again, we hope you understand. Entry-Plus have begun to be sent back, we expect they’ll take 2-3 months to complete (we had huge demand!).

Winners

Before we reveal these winners , I want to once again thank everybody who entered the competition. 1700 entrants is just unbelievable and it was truly a privilege to read so many fantastic stories. I can’t think of a better way to spend a year than reading through stories that people have taken the time and effort to write ‘for us’ and ‘for themselves’. It’s truly a wonderful feeling. Something else I’d like to say is that we could have quite literally made 20 superb anthologies with the quality of entries we received. It was a real eye-opener as to the talent that lays out there currently undiscovered.

Anyway, without further ado, the winners, in no particular order, are:

The Unsung by Jessalyn Heaton
Misericordia by Rene Sears
Sharag’s Shank by Daniel Beazley
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Overdue by John Yeo Jr
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

We shall be contacting all the winners shortly and talking them through the ‘what happens next’.

Message from Marc

Finally, something I’d like to share and once again thank you guys for is the fact that Fantasy-Faction has been running for exactly 2 years (as of 3rd December 2012). In that time we’ve grown to be seen as one of the largest fantasy communities on the web. On an average day we get around 2000 visitors and in the 2 years we’ve been running we’ve had over 2,000,000 page views to the website alone.

I started this website as a way to meet people and be more involved in what I love: fantasy literature. I could NEVER have imagined that 2 years down the line I’d be working on an anthology, hosting events with some of the genre’s most well-known authors, and owning one of the genres most popular websites. None of that is even the ‘best’ of it though. The best of it is the hundreds of friends I’ve made in my 2 years working on the site. The hundreds of people I’ve met and wouldn’t have met if launching Fantasy-Faction had never happened. To each and every website visitor, forum member, Twitter follower, publisher, author: thank you for allowing me to do what I love to do. You all rule.

Marc Aplin

Okay, so here we are ladies and gents, the very last part of our longlist. I know that we’ve kept you all in a tortuous suspense this last week but I really cannot begin to explain to you how hard this has been for us too. We have whittled down 1700 stories to 30 – that’s less than 2% of the total entries. We have fought hard between ourselves (resulting in some pretty epic arguments) all because there were easily 200 stories here that could have ended up in the book and we needed 30.

And after today we need to squeeze that number down to six…

The calibre has been so high and it was clear from the outset that almost every entry we received was the result of hours, days, weeks of planning, scribbling, tapping on keyboards and then editing with that red pen of doom. For your hard work and the support everyone in the writing community has shown each other, for all the re-tweets, the Facebook likes, the personal blogs detailing what’s been going on, for everything, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being part of this anthology process and helping to make it a success.

This anthology started out as an experiment – can we create a truly fantastic fantasy collection while also giving unpublished writers the chance to be published alongside some of the finest authors in the business? All I can say is, we’ve done it. I’ve seen all the stories and articles that we’re going to be bringing you and you are going to be wowed.
Ga-Run-Teed.

Our complete Longlist

The Unsung by Jessalyn Heaton
Take A Chance by Caleb Palfreyman
The Wolf And The Wanderer by Francis Buck
Ravenous Mermaids by Dawn Sperber
The Clock Club by Steve K. Cole

This is in addition to the 25 already announced:

Two Stones by Evan Davies
Grey Chains by Luke Elliott
Pestilence Revived by Jennifer Gunnerson
A Study in Graydon by Kimberly Morishige
Unmasking The Masker by David J. Fortier
Bigg Night Out by Daniel Brown
Vasli and the Warlock by Erik Johnson
The Docks by Kyle L. Shields
Spiders by December Cuccaro
Desert Locks by Katherine Stokke
Misericordia by Rene Sears
Sharag’s Shank by Daniel Beazley
Ice Worlds by Sarah Bird
An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel M. Riegel
The Tea Biscuits Of Nordella Thrimb by Artie Sievers
The Ghost Bounty Hunter by Warren Fitzpatrick
The Time Thief by Sarah Tytler
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Sword, Shadow and Coin by Douglas Smith
Overdue by John Yeo Jr
You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou
Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor
Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal
Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

So, there we are guys and gals, the suspense is over and the 30 stories of our longlist are out. Well, I say the suspense is over but I lie because it’s not until next week that we pull the curtain away and reveal to the world exactly which six stories from our longlist have made it in to the Anthology. So don’t change that channel because we’ll be back.

And now to the other big question, what about Entry Plus?
Everyone shall receive their Entry Plus feedback shortly before the release of the Anthology. This ensures that both of us have been able to re-read all 800 Entry Plus submissions and had the opportunity to discuss and write the critiques together. We figured that this was the fairest way to ensure that everyone got the same standard of critique.

As for us, now that we’ve shown you the cover art we’re going to be working on wrapping that around all the text and creating this book which will involve type setting and paper densities and all manner of cool, new things that we’re currently learning a lot about.

Catch you all next week.

Sorry for the delay with this Long List!

We’ve been out performing Fantasy-Faction duties (interviewing Brent Weeks and Iain Banks – so look out for those interviews soon!) and reading a couple of books for review purposes (The Blinding Knife and Hydrogen Sonata – also look out for those!). I guess that meant we’ve left you in suspence – so, sorry about that, forgive us: please?

For those who have asked: we are hoping to announce the winners between the middle and end of October. It should be sooner, but you’ve made it incredibly hard for us!!!

Long list 5/6

Two Stones by Evan Davies
Grey Chains by Luke Elliott
Pestilence Revived by Jennifer Gunnerson
A Study in Graydon by Kimberly Morishige
Unmasking The Masker by David J. Fortier

This is in addition to the 20 already announced:

Bigg Night Out by Daniel Brown
Vasli and the Warlock by Erik Johnson
The Docks by Kyle L. Shields
Spiders by December Cuccaro
Desert Locks by Katherine Stokke
Misericordia by Rene Sears
Sharag’s Shank by Daniel Beazley
Ice Worlds by Sarah Bird
An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel M. Riegel
The Tea Biscuits Of Nordella Thrimb by Artie Sievers
The Ghost Bounty Hunter by Warren Fitzpatrick
The Time Thief by Sarah Tytler
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Sword, Shadow and Coin by Douglas Smith
Overdue by John Yeo Jr
You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou
Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor
Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal
Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

I hope you all enjoyed the cover reveal on Wednesday. It seemed to go down as well as we had hoped – and then some! So thank you for all the kind words

The next 5 names that you’ve all been waiting for will follow!

Long list 4/6

Bigg Night Out by Daniel Brown

Vasli and the Warlock by Erik Johnson

The Docks by Kyle L. Shields

Spiders by December Cuccaro

Desert Locks by Katherine Stokke

This is in addition to the 15 already announced:

Misericordia by Rene Sears
Sharag’s Shank by Daniel Beazley
Ice Worlds by Sarah Bird
An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel M. Riegel
The Tea Biscuits Of Nordella Thrimb by Artie Sievers
The Ghost Bounty Hunter by Warren Fitzpatrick
The Time Thief by Sarah Tytler
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Sword, Shadow and Coin by Douglas Smith
Overdue by John Yeo Jr
You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou
Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor
Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal
Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

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For those of you wonderful people interested in pre-ordering our anthology, you can: visit this page.

Never judge a book by its cover, right? That’s what they all say. Yet, as good as we know this advice is, we completely bloody ignore it!

In genre fiction, more so than in any other genre, covers tend to sell books. If you look at the truly, truly fantastically drawn/painted/digitally made covers over the last few years: they’ve done well. Prince of Thorns, The Painted Man, Way of The Shadows, Name of The Wind, Lies of Locke Lamora, and so on.

Now, I should quickly add that I’m NOT saying that a terrible book can sell loads of copies if it has a good cover, all I’m saying is that a good cover seems to go hand in hand with a good book. My own thoughts? Well, I think that if a publisher truly believes in a book, they are going to do their damnedest to make sure the cover art compliments the words inside.

Certainly, for me and Paul, when we were coming up with ideas and trying to decide what kind of cover to go for, this was our philosophy. We decided that we wanted to thank the authors who submitted us their articles and stories, in addition to the competition winners, by ensuring that when they receive a copy of the book they feel proud that their work is within. The same goes for readers. We wanted their faces to light up upon receiving their copy and then have them take pride to display it on their shelves.

Personally, I think we nailed it. We approached the cover artist, Vincent Sammy, with a brief. We told him what we wanted in great detail, and yet gave him enough artistic freedom that he didn’t feel too restricted, and he created something that made my jaw drop.

Our brief was: a Western style man in a post-apocalyptic setting with a Dragon behind him. Now, this may seem a little odd to you guys at first: ‘What the heck!? Guns!? That’s damned Sci-Fi that is!?!?’ Well, not really and, indeed, we have a story featuring guns and dragons, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror crossover story by Myke Cole and an article by Richard K. Morgan arguing that we shouldn’t get too tied up in what Fantasy/Sci-Fi is that compliments the cover well. Also, as many stories that were traditional pushed boundaries and we thought the juxtaposition of the old and the new worked pretty well to depict to readers the fact that we are trying something new here.

How many anthologies have given readers the chance to experience completely new voices alongside World renowned authors? How many have merged both articles and stories in a collective manner that means one compliments the other? How many anthologies have allowed readers to be as involved in the build up to an anthology as this one? We hop the answer to these questions is: none, at least when the three elements are combined.

I guess I’ve rambled on long enough. I do hope that once you’ve check out the cover you’ll drop by our forums and let us know what you think.

Early Draft:

Later Draft:

Completed Cover Art:

Of course, there is still the small matter of the anthology’s title, the authors names and quotes to add. But that’ll be closer to the time Baby steps – right?

Ah, and if you want to pre-order, you can do so by clicking here

So, welcome to the third say (sorry it is a little late) of our Long List announcements

I’m sure, for those who entered the competition, this is excruciatingly nerve-wrecking and I’m sorry that we are putting you through this! However, I guess it is also kind of fun and exciting and helping build a little anticipation?

Well, we’ll be taking a little break later on today / tomorrow in order to give you a preview of our cover art. I’m really excited to see what you guys think and I hope you’ll stop by the forums to do that. Actually, why not stop by now anyway? There is a lot of fantasy book and anthology discussion going on

Once again, you can pre-order the anthology by just visiting this page.

Anyway, without further ado, The next 5 stories to be added to the long list will follow.

Long list 3/6

Misericordia by Rene Sears

Sharag’s Shank by Daniel Beazley

Ice Worlds by Sarah Bird

An Unlikely Alliance by Rachel M. Riegel

The Tea Biscuits Of Nordella Thrimb by Artie Sievers

This is in addition to the 10 already announced:

The Ghost Bounty Hunter by Warren Fitzpatrick
The Time Thief  by Sarah Tytler
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Sword, Shadow and Coin by Douglas Smith
Overdue by John Yeo Jr
You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou
Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor
Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal
Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

Hopefully you read our announcement yesterday! We’ve decided to publish 5 winners a day over the course of a week, which a gap in-between to show you the mind-blowingly-awesome cover that we’ve had designed for the anthology.

We had a few e-mails yesterday evening asking when you can pre-order the anthology… you can do it already! In fact, you’ve been able to do it for months! Just visit this page.

Anyway, without further ado, The next 5 stories to be added to the long list will follow.

Long list 2/6

The Ghost Bounty Hunter by Warren Fitzpatrick
The Time Thief  by Sarah Tytler
Oasis by Mark Dimig-Mathis
Sword, Shadow and Coin by Douglas Smith
Overdue by John Yeo Jr

This is in addition to the 5 announced yesterday:

You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou
Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor
Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal
Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder
The Dealer by Miah Saunders

So, once all was said and done, we had around 1700 entries for the Fantasy Writing Contest… Far, far more than any of us could ever have imagined we’d receive. In fact, I remember talking with Paul Wiseall (the other Editor of the anthology) and saying: “Imagine if we got like 500 entries? How the heck would we read them all!”

Well, the good news is that we did read them all. How? Well… just reading and reading and reading. If we were on a train: we were reading. If we were on lunch: we were reading. Whilst our friends were at the pub: reading. Partners in bed: still reading. There really wasn’t an alternative if we wanted to get it done.

To give you an idea of how many words we did in fact read, I’d say that on average each story we received was about 6,000 words. So, let us multiply that by 1,700 and we find that, between the three of us, we’ve read: 10,200,000 words. That is the equivalent of reading all five of the A Song of Ice & Fire books about six times, the entire Lord of The Rings series twenty-two times over, every Wheel of Time book twice and then still enough words left to read the first five or six all over again. Suffice to say – it’s was a huge amount of reading and a true challenge.

That being said, I don’t want people to think that we didn’t enjoy every minute of it. One of the most common questions we get asked is: “I bet you have loads of terrible ones?” and yes, we do. However, as I read a story that I know we cannot publish, I still feel happy and proud that somebody, somewhere in the World, has taken the time to write something for me and, more importantly, for themselves. Not everyone is destined to be published, but I do think that everyone who wants to tell a story should be encouraged to do so. It may never be published, but you created it and it is yours.

Want the really good news? We found some damned incredible stories. Literally, because of the number we were sent, we had so much to choose from that we can’t fail in making this anthology incredible. We’ve seen everything from steam-punk to epic to urban to new weird and everything in-between, we’ve heard stories from just about every kind of voice you can imagine and told from the perspective of not just people, but: giants, goblins, houses, rocks and even apples! Then there are the variety of stories. Some have been huge in scale, others minuscule. It has been truly incredible and I feel I’m a better read ‘reader’ thanks to each and every one of you.

Once we had read all the stories we were sent, we set ourselves the task of narrowing down the 1,700 stories to just 30. It was much harder than I initially thought, because the list of stories scoring enough out of 10, in our rating system, to make it through was well over 100.

We did it though and I’d like to announce that as of today (30/09/2012) we’re going to publish the long lists in 6 blog posts over the next 7 days. The first can be found at the bottom of this blog post, the next five will be posted over the next week – with a preview of the anthology’s cover coming at the mid-way point).

There was a lot of debate about whether we should publish these lists or not, because we weren’t sure whether it would be fair to do so. For me, posting a long list shows people how close they were and, should they not make it, perhaps offering them a cruel form of hope. However, another judge felt differently, believing you guys would like to know. Also, as we are still fighting it out to decide who the 6 winners, I thought it was time we updated you all and let you know whether you were still in the running.

If you made it through: congratulations! If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. Again, we had: 1,700 entries and, therefore, less than 2% made it through. The standard was very high, much higher than expected, and at the very least you’ve practiced your craft and had a chance to play God (by creating a story).

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to enter and thank you once again for giving me and my friends (the other two judges) the opportunity to read your work. I hope you all enter again next year, keep in touch with us during the anthology making process and pick up a copy once it is released in January

Long List 1/6:

You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou

Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor

Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal

Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder

The Dealer by Miah Saunders

A Faction-Tale? What is that?

Fantasy is all about an individual coming up with a unique idea and sharing it with the world, right? As readers, it is their vision of a world, unlike our own, and characters that couldn’t possibly exist in our reality that attract us to this incredible genre.

But, what would happen if a fantasy story was written with input from 10 different people? 25 people? 50 people? 100 people? Would a group that large be able to work cohesively to build characters and rapidly move along an interesting plot? How would that many ideas together? The Faction-Tale wishes to explore just this.

The Faction Tale aims to give all Fantasy-Faction users the opportunity to say that they have worked on and had a story published in the forthcoming Fantasy-Faction Anthology. That’s right! You, me, that lady over there, we’re all going to work together to co-write a story of around 5,000 words and in doing so, we’ll show the world what it means to be part of the Faction.

To our knowledge there has never been a fantasy story attempted by so many people with a view to be published. Exciting stuff. 

So, how is this going to work?

Well, we hope that through a forum thread we can all work together to build a communal story of which we can all be proud. Line by line and piece by piece we are going to create something magnificent.
Note: This means that you’ll need to join our forums should you wish to be involved.

We’re guessing that with so many contributors, it’s not always going to stay on track and remain linear.
Chances are that while you’re writing the greatest paragraph ever conceived which will follow on perfectly from a previous forum post, someone else will nip in and give their own take on things. This is fine. Still chuck your idea in too, we want this! The more ideas the better.

Two stories will be running synonymously with each other – one is a more traditional fantasy story and one is a new weird type fantasy story. The idea is that at least one of these stories WILL be publishable… However, to be clear, at the moment this is only an experimental idea. If it doesn’t work then we won’t be able to publish it. That being said, knowing our community, we’re fairly confident that it will work and actually, it’s going to be pretty bloody brilliant.

Rules

YOU MUST keep your post under 100 words.

You can post only three times.

Will I get my name in the anthology?

Yes. If you contribute to a story and we publish it – your name will be inside the printed anthology

WARNINGS

If you try and take the story in a ridiculous direction – you will be banned from submitting again. Humour is fine, we like humour. Unexpected occurrences are an important part of a story too. But, try and ruin it for people and your post will be deleted and you will lose your right to submit again.

To try and keep some sanity in the madness, every few days, one of us will try to consolidate all the ideas in to something a bit more digestible with which we can the move the story on further.

The DEADLINE for the Faction Tale is 30 June 2012. It must be done and dusted by then. From here, Marc and I will then edit it together into something coherent and wonderful.

We’re excited, scared and cannot wait to get cracking with this and see what the entire community comes up with.

So, let’s get started shall we?

Tale One – Traditional Fantasy

The moon hid behind the clouds; making the jet-black cloaks of the four visitors invisible as they rippled in the wind. Standing there, overlooking the city from the mountain’s peak, mixed feelings of anticipation and trepidation plagued the group. Yet, however things went, there was comfort in their knowledge that within 24 hours things would be finished. Tomorrow would either make or break them. Pull this off and they’d be rich, remembered for all eternity. Fail, and well, they’d not have to worry about anything, ever again.

Click here to contribute your 100 words!

—

Tale Two – Modern Fantasy / New Weird Direction

As a child, Sophie had never been afraid of monsters. She had been scared of heights and of getting stuck in nightmares and all the other things children are often afraid of, but never monsters.

Click here to contribute your 100 words!

—

Overall, this is meant to a way for our entire community to get involved with our anthology and enjoy themselves. We hope you join in and participate in this experiment – it’s your chance to be a part something wonderful.

I can’t believe that it was just two weeks ago we launched the Fantasy Writing Contest. Considering we only announced the project on January 1st 2012 and opened the competition on February 1st 2012 the interest and number of entries has been nothing short of phenomenal.

People seem to be agree with the Fantasy-Faction team that there is not currently a ‘must-pick-up’ anthology out there right now within the fantasy genre. What we want to do with this anthology is provide one that each and every year, you guys (fantasy fans) look forward to and anticipate falling through your mailbox / arriving on your e-reading device. Certainly, with the quality of stories that have been pouring into our mailbox this looks increasingly likely to be the case.

So, what exactly is going to be in the anthology? Well, allow us to refresh your memory:

• Introduction by Editors of the Anthology.
• 7 Short Stories by Fantasy Authors (2 still TBA!).
• 6 Short Stories by winners of Fantasy Writing Contest (Still Open!).
• A Community Short Story (Launches March 1st!)
• 10 Articles by Fantasy Authors and Industry Experts.

So far we have had Michael J. Sullivan, Myke Cole, Mark Lawrence, Jon Sprunk and Adrian Tchaikovsky send stories across for our approval and I have to say that we have thoroughly enjoyed them. The interesting thing for me has been how different the stories have been from what we expected. It seems that the authors have taken this opportunity to write something that really interests them and because they haven’t had to consider the demands of a publisher or the market – we’ve had some really intriguing and even unique stories. Anyone expecting an anthology packed exclusively with Knights and Dragons is surely going to be surprised! Back to the editing process though, it’s quite a surreal experience, receiving work from authors you have admired for years and knowing that it is now your responsibility to edit their work ready for your anthology. We are  still waiting for two more stories by another two successful authors that we haven’t even announced yet and ten articles by ten authors/industry experts that we also haven’t announced yet – so yes, it is a really, really exciting time for us right now.

In addition to working on the anthology and our usual roles at Fantasy-Faction, we were lucky enough to meet up with a few authors who will be featuring within the anthology at the SFX Weekender, a British Fantasy/Sci-Fi Convention.

A lot of people are asking when we will begin announcing the remainder of names for the anthology and I guess I should tell you… no… not the names yet, but the dates at least, is that fair? Well, either way, the answer is; the 1st of each month. So, from now on we will release either one or two names of authors that will appear in the anthology on the first day of each month . Therefore, you will need to return to either this blog or sign up to the newsletter to find out who they are… Feels almost like blackmail, but I like it!

Ah, another thing people are asking is how many entries we’ve had. Simple answer; lots! Paul Wiseall and I are relentlessly reading through all these stories, but every time I finish say ten, I check the email inbox and find another twenty waiting to be read – it’s an exciting and slightly scary feeling too! I’ve already read a number of stories that I have placed on the short list – some traditional fantasy, some urban fantasy and we’ve even had a bit of new weird that has been quite interesting. Certainly, we really have our work cut out when it comes to choosing a winner because of the quality of entries coming in. Just to confirm things for you too, the contest is now open for submissions until June 30th 2012 and you will be able to send your short stories through to us any-time until then.

And finally, I want to say a huge thank you to those who have supported The Anthology and Fantasy-Faction by pre-ordering the anthology. For those who don’t know, the anthology is a not for profit project. The reason for this anthology is to promote new and upcoming authors as well as pay the Fantasy-Faction server fees (which sadly are rather expensive!). If you would like to pre-order the anthology you can do so by visiting: http://fantasywritingcontest.com/pre-order/
It is in GBP(£) but Paypal will convert that into your currency for you during the checkout.

So yes, thank you ever so much whether you are supporting us by submitting an entry to our contest, buying a copy of the anthology or even just telling your friends about our existence… it is only because of you and our wonderful community that we are able to do these things we love so much.

Marc Aplin
Fantasy-Faction / Fantasy Writing Contest