And For My Next Trick!
("Mom, is the magician drunk?"
"No dear, just don't go near his assistant.")

At some point, when a story is good enough, it exceeds the boundaries of a genre. 

The public has a notion of what fantasy fiction is, and its limitations.  I don't buy it.  But what holds us back are the cliches we use and the expectations we have of our readers.  

For instance, when I wrote my Wizards story I could count on the target audience knowing what a D&D style dwarf is like.  If I'm only working with 5000 words I don't want to spend a hell of a lot of time explaining what the reader already knows; it is sort of mental short hand, but it limits the ultimate effectiveness of the story.

To make a fine fantasy story, we need to take the stories and believe, really believe, that we are seeing the fantastic for the first time.  Does this make sense?  I'll try to explain more, in later postings. 

All right, so watcha gonna do about it, Grims? 

Ask for your stories, of course.

The theme for the next anthology: The Magical Experience.

That's it.  Magic.  It can be your own world, it can be the "real" world.   Set in any time and any place.  The trick is, it has to be real.  Don't assume the reader knows what an elf is.  Halflings?  What the hell is a halfling?

This is an open call, so we'll consider stories from everyone, reject the ones that clearly aren't right, and work with the ones that show promise.  If you have concerns about whether a story is appropriate, feel free to send in a synopsis.

Deadline for 1st Draft: November 1.       
Word Count: A short as you like.  As long as 10,000 words.
Payment: A small advance + shares, again, for first printing rights.  Ew.

Oh yeah...and I promise I won't screw this one up. ;)