The AE Anthology - Karen Bush



I love short stories - bite-size confections, entire books distilled down into tiny, perfectly formed delicious delights ... looking along my shelves I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised to see just how many collections of short stories I have acquired over the years.


Plenty of them are anthologies with multiple authors. I first came across this sort of collection while at school, where excerpts and short stories were gathered into text books which were read aloud during a lesson and then discussed. I couldn't bear listening to the stumbling, monotone reading of my classmates so used to stuff my fingers in my ears and race through several more stories while the current one was being murdered. They were good stories too, and I took note of the writers, and looked them up afterwards in the library - and in this way I was introduced to Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Saki and many other authors whose work I love, but might never otherwise have stumbled across if it hadn't been for those anthologies.

I still love anthologies, not just for the stories themselves, but because they are such a great way of broadening your reading, of sampling and discovering new authors - the wordy equivalent of a tasting menu if you like. So I'm very excited to be a part of one myself; the Authors Electric anthology - the first we have done, and with another to follow next year. I've had a sneak preview of it, and think I can safely say that you won't be disappointed. We're a pretty diverse bunch and this collection reflects that: it's a real smorgasbord and if you aren't familiar with some of our authors, its a great way of getting acquainted.  This is us. It's what we do when we aren't blogging here (just in case you wondered). It's published this month, on 21st June and is also available for pre-order HERE (UK) and HERE (US)    




We will be celebrating its publication (which coincides with our fourth anniversary of blogging) - with an online launch party on Midsummer's Day on our FB page - get your invite HERE - or if you forget simply stumble over to our FB page on the day - but do come and join us! Virtual nibbles and champagne will be supplied, but feel free to bring along your own - bring your pets, bring your friends or bring a druid: standing stones optional!











Comments

Susan Price said…
Karen, your sketch of yourself at school, tortured by the rest of the class 'murdering' a story, and racing ahead through the book, fingers in ears... And later going to the library to look up writers and books that had interested you... Well, it could have been a description of me, word for word. And, I daresay, of many here, bloggers and readers.

Thank you for all the brain-curdling work you've put into the Anthology - and as someone whose brain is curdling as I try to cope with it on CreateSpace, I can second your opinion that it is an excellent anthology. It's been a pleaasure to read it. The formatting, not so much...
Mari Biella said…
Yes, your school experiences sound rather like mine as well, Karen. And a big 'thanks' for putting the anthology together (and to Susan for dealing with the CreateSpace version).
madwippitt said…
Apologies to early readers of the blog ... managed to put up the wrong cover ... THIS is the final one to look out for on Amazon! :-)
glitter noir said…
Thanks, Karen, for the delightful introduction...and for the work you put into gethering the bonbons into the beautifully covered box.
I felt the same way about those old anthologies. Saki, London, Bradbury, yes...O.Henry...Somerset Maugham...anyone could pop up in some of the old big hardback anthologies that you can still find in 2nd hand shops...Chekhov...Conrad...alongside Bram Stoker, Poe...Mansfield...Woolf...

I used to like to look at the "Contents" section first, the titles of the stories, the authors' names...the variety...

Thanks for all your hard work getting our own AE anthology ready, Karen!
madwippitt said…
I'd love to say 'no sweat, guys' ... but it was. But in a pleasurable sort of way! And I had enormous fun writing my own short story for it - as I hope you all did too. It's the first time in a long, long while that I've written anything outside of my usual genre, and it was hugely satisfying. Whether anyone else will like it is another matter, of course - but if they don't, there are plenty of other stories in there to enjoy instead!
Lydia Bennet said…
Yes a bit of a departure for me, I enjoyed writing my comedy story and thank you and Sue for your work on the formatting. I love Saki! I used to read them to my children and I even used them for school assemblies, an improper use I'm sure Saki would have approved of. 'Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar...'

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