Jeri Smith-Ready

Anthology announcment

I was meaning to blog about this development this week, anyway, but, being scalp-deep in revisions for Shift (which hey, is now available for Amazon pre-order, by the way, which is incredibly scary because it's still lying broken and busted in thirty-four pieces on my hard drive, waiting for me to reassemble it into something resembling a book), I wasn't sure I'd have time.

But then LeBron James went all diva and decided to make his announcement about where he's playing next year (and presumably for many years to come) on a special hour-long ESPN show tonight at 9pm called "The Decision" (brought to you by bing and the University of Phoenix).

It was just too pretentious not to imitate.

So without further ado, brought to you by orange Tic-Tacs and Tetley British Blend decaffeinated tea, I'd like to announce that I just signed a multimillion dollar contract to write a YA vampire short story for the upcoming PC Cast-edited anthology, Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite, coming to you this December (the Amazon listing of October 26 is incorrect) from BenBella Books.

Like LeBron's lust for an NBA Championship, I've always wanted to be in an anthology. I've stood by season after season watching Kobe Bryant my fellow urban fantasy authors publish many stories, often before they'd even published their first novel. It's a great way for a new or newish author to find new readers.

I'd had a couple of anthology invitations that I had to turn down due to book deadlines (and the fact that I stand firmly in demand of NBA minimum salary SFWA-level minimum pay rates of $473,604 per year five cents per word). Now I have on my plate not only this story, but one for the Smart Chicks Kick It tour anthology, titled, Highway to Hell, coming September 2011 from HarperCollins. I'm absolutely silly psyched about these opportunities to flesh out the universes I've created in my novels.

Because I can't come up with two kinds of vampires with only one brain, my story for Eternal will be loosely tied to the WVMP Radio series. The vampires will have the same rules (stuck in time in the era they were turned, no sunlight whatsoever, the need for human blood, and yes, obsessive-compulsive), but the setting and characters will be completely different.

Sort of.

The main character is Ciara Griffin's first cousin once removed, Mary Cassidy O'Riley ("Cassie" for short) a sixteen-year-old member of one of the South Carolina Irish Traveler groups. Ciara's Traveler relatives figure prominently in Book Four, Let it Bleed, which will be out next August.

Cassie will also appear in that book, because I'm completely incapable of creating a character without needing to explore their lives in-depth. (This is another reason why I rarely do short stories--I fall in love way too easily.) But the story is by no means required for reading the series, and vice versa.

The first Love Stories With Bite collection, Immortal, is already out and includes such phenomenal authors as Rachel Caine, Rachel Vincent, and Richelle Mead. I can't say which authors have been confirmed for Eternal, because it's not really official until all stories are turned in and accepted for publication.

So I suppose there's an outside chance LeBron could end up playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves my short story could still be rejected on the grounds of absolute suckage. That would be really awkward, after this big press conference blog post.

And with THAT, I better get back to Shift so that I can have plenty of time to polish up the aforementioned short story, which is due next Thursday.

Have a great weekend!

Labels: short stories, sports, vampire series

• posted by Jeri @ 9:00 PM
• 19 comments