Once again thanks to all of you who submitted work to the Monsters & Mormons anthology. Theric and I are very pleased by the response. We’re knee-deep in reading, but I thought I’d share a quick update with a few numbers.
We received about 70 submissions. The vast majority of those are short stories, but there are also some novelettes, poems and graphic novels in the mix.
Give or take several thousand words, those submissions add up to 354,339 words.
Just under half of the submissions came in during the week of Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, with 23 on the last day.
Finally, don’t take this as a sign of imminent decisions, but Th. has read about 60% of the submissions and I have read two less than half of them.
A Motley Vision 
I’m now at 50% plus one.
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That’s 60% of submissions. Not 60% of words. I’m doubt I’m near half in words.
Will you be doing this again next year?
The anthology comes out next year on Oct. 1. After that we will be taking a break. After that, well, we’ll see.
Let us know if there is ever a second volume… I wanted to submit, but didn’t have the time to get to it.
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Let’s see how many hundreds of thousands of copies we sell, shall we?
Can I just say how geeked out I am about all of this? I ended up with a story that I felt was pretty strong, so I’m swallowing my writer’s self-loathing and actually hoping to make the final cut. But even if I don’t, it will have still been worth the effort and I’ll be excited to read those contributions which eventually do make it.
I guess what I’m saying is… look, I’ve been a part of thousands of conversations wherein someone uttered the phrase, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if,” and we all laughed or oohed and aahed or maybe even schemed but nothing ever came of it. But Wm and Th have been making good on their “wouldn’t it be cool if” and whether as writers or readers, we all get to benefit. A lot of the people coming to this site, being artists, know the difficulty of turning “wouldn’t it be cool if” into “wasn’t it cool that.”
So, big ups to you guys, Wm and Th. You may not be reinventing the wheel, but you’re sure as sugar blazing a new trail for it.
Thanks. We’re pretty geeked out about this too.
50% plus 5.
Man, when I first heard about this, I about lost my marbles I was so excited. I never thought I’d write anything for the LDS market, but then you guys invented this anthology and I knew I’d found a reason to write something hardline LDS that I could be proud of.
Out of curiosity, what’s your publishing method on this one? I’m thinking about writing an LDS paranormal but I’m having trouble deciding where to submit.
By publishing method, do you mean who is going to publish it? If so, the answer is Theric Jepson’s Peculiar Pages which is an imprint of the indie press B10 Mediaworx.
Peculiar Pages has two previous anthologies under its belt. That’s why when I brought up the idea and Theric said that he would publish it, I felt confident that we could actually make it happen.
A friend of my husbands mentioned this to me at the last work party. I’m sad I missed the boat! But excited to read some of the submissions.
Any updates for us? Even a new guess would work. 🙂
There will be an update later this week. 🙂
Also: I’m at 100% submissions read (which doesn’t mean that I’ve made a bunch of decisions — there will be some rereading involved) and Th is getting close to completing his initial read-through of the pile.