Jaym Gates is joining us today with her anthology Upside Down. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling is an anthology of short stories, poetry, and essays edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates. Over two dozen authors, ranging from NYT-bestsellers and award winners to debut writers, chose a tired trope or cliche to challenge and surprise readers through their work.
Read stories inspired by tropes such as the Chainmaille Bikini, Love at First Sight, Damsels in Distress, Yellow Peril, The Black Man Dies First, The Villain Had a Crappy Childhood, The Singularity Will Cause the Apocalypse, and many more…then discover what these tropes mean to each author to find out what inspired them.
Join Maurice Broaddus, Adam Troy-Castro, Delilah S. Dawson, Shanna Germain, Sara M. Harvey, John Hornor Jacobs, Rahul Kanakia, Alethea Kontis, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Haralmbi Markov, Sunil Patel, Kat Richardson, Nisi Shawl, Ferrett Steinmetz, Anton Strout, Michael Underwood, Alyssa Wong and many other authors as they take well-worn tropes and cliches and flip them upside down.
What’s Jaym’s favorite bit?
JAYM GATES
Anthologies, and more specifically the editing of anthologies, are my catnip. I got my start completely by accident, and found myself addicted after that first one. They’ve treated me well in turn, for the most part, but every now and again I wonder why anthologies, and why do I keep coming back? It’s certainly not for the money or the fame!
Instead, I think my favorite bit is the thrill of discovery. I’ve done anthologies where everything was from the slush pile, and anthologies where everyone was invited, and everything in between. I love my invited authors, and the slush pile certainly has its horrors, but there’s nothing like the feeling of opening up a submission and realizing that you’ve hit pay dirt.
Some of my all-time favorite stories have come from the slush pile. Many were from first-time authors who were afraid to submit because they didn’t think they were ready yet. Others were from authors I hadn’t encountered before, and some I didn’t think would be interested in that particular genre but who’d had a great idea. Some of the stories required heavy editing, others, almost no editing at all.
Slush piles are intimidating. For a recent anthology, Genius Loci, I had over 900,000 words of submissions. War Stories was at about 700,000 words of submissions. Sometimes, in the depths of the slush pile, reading through something that is the complete opposite of all my project guidelines, I think maybe I should just do invite-only from here on out. But those stories that jump out of the slush and latch on keep me excited. We could only take 90,000-110,000 for those books, and we invariably ended up putting two to three times that number on the “But I Really Want This” list. That’s a pretty good ratio. There’s a lot of amazing talent out there.
It’s validating, too. Sometimes being an editor feels futile. All I’m doing is putting together stories that other people have written. It can feel invisible, and sometimes frustrating, because I’ll never do an anthology that pleases everyone. When I find a story in the slush that’s made the rounds elsewhere, or that’s special to the author in some way, it helps me reconnect to my own passion for the task and the project.
It’s even more fun when we start editing a story that’s aaaaaalmost there, but not quite. I love figuring out what the author’s ideal version of a story is, and helping them polish the story until it reaches that ideal. It helps me with my own writing, too, because I have to be able to put away the rose-colored glasses and cut away everything that isn’t essential to this particular story.
Okay, maybe I have more than one favorite bit, and maybe neither of those things is really small enough to be called a ‘bit’…but I think that’s forgivable. But seriously, be a slush reader for a while, if you have the time. I think you’ll see what I’m talking about the first time you see a story you found in slush go out into the wide world.
LINKS:
BIO:
Jaym Gates got her start in editing by making a joke on Twitter six years ago. At the time of writing this bio, she’s working on her 15th anthology. The titles include RIGOR AMORTIS, BROKEN TIME BLUES, WAR STORIES, GEEK LOVE, GENIUS LOCI, STRANGE CALIFORNIA, UPSIDE DOWN, INVISIBLE WOMEN, LEGENDS OF STRATEGY: HOW STAR WARS EXPLAINS FUTURE STRATEGY, ECLIPSE PHASE: AFTER THE FALL, EXALTED: TALES FROM THE AGE OF SORROWS, and VAMPIRE: ENDLESS AGES. She is also a developmental editor for Falstaff Books, and lead editor for the BROKEN CITIES shared-world setting.
In her spare time, Jaym trains and rides horses, collects tea, practices a martial art called Systema, and writes. You can find her on Twitter at @JaymGates. Her website is www.jaymgates.com
