Misty Massey and the Weird West Anthology

I'm very pleased to welcome a guest post from Misty Massey. You might recall, I interviewed Massey a few years ago to talk about her pirate fantasy novel, Mad Kestrel. She's stopped by today to talk about her newest project—this time in the role of editor.

-GC

Hey y'all! I'm delighted to be Garrett's guest today! My name is Misty Massey, and until last summer, I was a mere writer of fantastic fiction and author of Mad Kestrel (pirates and magic and adventure...oh my!). I say 'until last summer' because that was when things became slightly more crazy and exciting in my world and I agreed to be an editor. I was a guest at Congregate, and I had just finished a rousing session of Live Action Slush. I was in the hallway chatting with my co-conspirators Emily Leverett and Margaret McGraw when the subject of publishing an anthology of weird western stories came up. We all thought it sounded like great fun, so we started approaching authors we believed would add to the thrill of such a project. Nearly all of them said "Yes!" (okay, a couple were squealing with excitement, but I'm not going to try to spell that sound for you!), so we started querying publishers. Danielle Ackley-McPhail of eSpec Books snapped us up, and before we knew it, we were running a Kickstarter to fund the project.

What is weird west? It's fantasy or science fiction set in the world (or the aesthetic) of the American western frontier. Movies like

For Your Consideration: Mettlefetchers

As I wrote a while back in an article at Waistcoat & Watch, one of the keys to having a successful career as a writer is creating a large body of work. If you want to make a living as a novelist, you need to have a bunch of books out there for fans to buy and read. I take the idea a step further and really try to diversify my writing, publishing everything from novels and short stories to magazine articles and essays, not to mention writing screenplays to submit to festivals on the long shot some producer will actually want to produce one and write me a fat check (yeah, I know, fat chance). In any case, this usually means I’m juggling multiple projects at any given time, and right now is no exception. In fact, my good friend and frequent collaborator, Ahimsa Kerp, and I have just a launched a new project we’d like to submit for your consideration: Mettlefetchers.