| Author | Message | ||
     Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Does anyone have any ideas for new anthologies. I do mean serious ideas, but I also mean daft ideas, if necessary. For instance, I have long wanted to see an anthology of toothache stories. Believe it or not, there are some tremendous toothache stories out there! Another anthology I would love to see happen is: THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PREHISTORIC ELEPHANTS Yes, that's a (crap) joke -- but it could also be a real anthology -- of super-duper caveman stories! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Some day I want to edit an anthology of all-new Miserablist fiction - or maybe also featuring reprints of classic Miserablist stories. It'll be called MISERABLIST BASTARDS. I've wnated to do this for a few years now. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
I want to do an anthology of stories set in Brentwood, Essex. It would be called AN ANTHOLOGY OF STORIES SET IN BRENTWOOD, ESSEX. I'd probably try and sell some copies to shops in Brentwood. I think it would be pretty good. Obviously if you live in Brentwood, you'd probably get more from it. But that shouldn't preclude enjoyment for any non-Brentwoodian readers. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
If it goes well, I might do a sequel set in Didcot. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
An anthology of hypocritical stories. I'm not being flippant. This is a project I have secretly cherished for a long time. Each story would promote a theme that the author doesn't really believe in. So an atheist would write a Catholic story; a person who supports military intervention would contribute a pacifist piece; an elitist would write an egalitarian story, etc. Title of anthology: POT AND KETTLE. I wish to stress again that this is a serious proposal. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
If it was successful, the sequel could be called: CAULDRON AND SAMOVAR. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
I'd buy that. (I wouldn't really.) | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Yeah, you'd just borrow it for free from the library. But what if Germaine Greer was persuaded to contribute a woman-in-her-place story? Or if Salman Rushdie offered a pro-fundamentalism tale? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Rhys, if you do that anthology, could I write a story about someone with no talent, who is hideously ugly and has a microscopic penis? | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I'd like to see a global version of your Where the Heart Is, Gary - with stories set in different countries. Not necessarily countries the authors are from, either. Just places that have inspired horror. I'd also love to see anthos with music and food as central themes. That's two separate anthos, obviously. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Heh heh! :-) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
I'll take that as a yes. So . . . the tale about the cock gets a slot. Kate, I may well do that one! | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Kate: I agree with both your proposals. My laughter was for Gary's earlier comment! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Kate, has Lord P not got a copy of The Elastic Book of Music? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I think such an anthology would foreground what many authors do as part of writing fiction - adopting the viewpoint of someone quite unlike themselves - in my case John Horridge, for instance, or Dudley Smith. (At least, I hope they aren't like me...) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
My penis has that effect on most people. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
>>>I think such an anthology would foreground what many authors do as part of writing fiction - adopting the viewpoint of someone quite unlike themselves - in my case John Horridge, for instance, or Dudley Smith. (At least, I hope they aren't like me...) Just as a (tangential to the thread) matter of interest, Ramsey: which of your characters do you consider to be the closest to you in an biographical sense? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.234.38 |
There's a Dudley Smith in LA Confidential. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Don't tell everyone! | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I do love your idea, Rhys. It would be a fascinating venture! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Lord, Gary! Still, all must be revealed... Characters like me include Peter in The Face That Must Die and Peter (again!) in "Napier Court". Not so much autobiography lately that I'm aware of, or more correctly it's in the themes more than the characters. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Interesting . . . Thanks. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.234.38 |
Not even a trace of autobiography in Needing Ghosts, Ramsey? I ask because this, to me, is one of your most interesting stories ever . . . | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I think you're right to spot me in Needing Ghosts, Hubert! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Call me sick if you want (tee-hee!), but I'd like to see an anthology with illness and disability as a theme. It would be best, of course, if it was done in a way to raise awareness of issues faced by the sick and disabled. I guess doing it as a charity book would be the best course of action? Ramsey - when I read "Needing Ghosts" you were the one I pictured in my mind as I read it.  | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
I was talking to Dave Riley maybe about a year ago with a couple of ideas for an antho 1: Re-writing your first ever published short story with the same themes, ideas et al, and see where it endeded up. Could it be done? WOuld the story come to the original conclusion? 2: Get a pool of authors together and if they were up for it, get them to re-imagine either classic stories or even each others short stories. They may or may not work, but I think the ideas are interesting... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Number 2, the latter suggestion, might be fun. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Yes, if I'd written, say, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, how would it work out? I like this idea. Can I nab it? | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.39.177.173 |
Could be a very interesting idea, especially if it's a writer who hadn't read much of the original author's body of work. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Can I rewrite Wuthering Heights as a gay pantomime? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I thought it already was... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.142.59 |
'Can I rewrite Wuthering Heights as a gay pantomime?' Oi! Leave your favourite novel alone. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
I often leave that novel alone, Ally. Usually on the wife's shelf where it can do me no harm. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
"Quivering Shites", as I like to call it. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>.. re-imagine either classic stories ..<< Angela Carter was pretty good at re-imagining fairy tales in that way. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.142.59 |
Angela Carter...wonderful writer and not mentioned enough, Caroline. Anyone else like her? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.109.71 |
A book of stories charting the 'history' of horror. Not the classic literary kind, more the 'man eating animal' varieties of Herbert and Smith, the weird Victorian flashbacks of the sixties and early seventies, the wimsy of Gaiman and the like. Even the tweeny horror of now. Each story would slightly send up the scource material, or rather riff on it, address it. Maybe even improve. It would reflect cinema and comics, too, so we'd have slasher stories and Exorcist stuff, EC/Creepy/EERIE stylees. Wish I could put this sort of stuff together. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.109.71 |
Sequels to your favourite stories, however loose. | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
Gary, it's yours if you want it - I was going to do it as a Noose and Gibbet antho. I would however like to try and write a story for it, if you went ahead! | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
Tony - I've already written a sequel to Bram Stokers 'The Judges House' which is being published in the 'Obverse Book of Ghost Stories' this October. Had a LOT of fun with that one! | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
Oh and Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber and other Stories' is a work of breathtaking splendour. If you haven't read it - do so. Seminal and quite genius. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Ooh, you do realise that the word 'seminal' is anathema to Carter's broadly feminist approach, don't you? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
As for the antho, I'll mull it over a while and get back to yez. | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
= Ooh, you do realise that the word 'seminal' is anathema to Carter's broadly feminist approach, don't you? = Oh well, thems the breaks.  | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.199 |
I've been an admirer of Angela Carter since I picked up a copy of The Magic Toyshop back in my uni days. The Bloody Chamber is terrific (I was lucky enough to get a signed copy), but her other collections are great as well - Fireworks and Black Venus, for example. There's a big omnibus of her collected stories called Burning Your Boats, but for some reason I really love the Penguin trade paperback editions of her books from the '90s. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Yeah, she's a real prose monster. Great stuff. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.199 |
Some of her stuff can seem sort of overly lush and dense and 'overwritten' (the opening of 'The Lady of the House of Love' comes to mind), but I think she pulled it off because she was such a natural writer. Her non-fiction is worth reading too. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.15.37 |
Oh, I love all that heady prose. Her, Amis, Barnes - fantastic. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.199 |
I love it too, Gary, but I know some people hate it! I find it intoxicating. | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.171.253.12 |
I got into Carter through "The Company Of Wolves" film in the 80s - cracking stuff. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.142.59 |
'Angela Carter was pretty good at re-imagining fairy tales in that way.' There you go...time for it all to come around again :>). Between us all there are loads of good ideas for anthologies. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
Not a new idea for an anthology, but one I really liked, was From the Notebook: the Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, part of McSweeney's 22. Each writer chose a fragment from Fitzgerald's notebook - e.g. "Girl and giraffe" and "Fairy who fell for a wax dummy" - and wrote a story based on it. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Well-known stories told by a different POV character - ideally the "villain" (inverted commas for Lord P's benefit).  And Angela Carter - ah yes, sublime! "His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat." | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
I'd like to see an anthology where all of the horror stories by that great mysterious ANON are collected together. I'm sure there are a few, and just go for the ones you are sure the identity hasn't been figured out for, and you get the stories for free! :D | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
I'd like to see an antho based on what happened AFTER various tv series folded. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
In fact I have this old Good Life last episode story going, one from years back. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.14.129 |
'I'd like to see an antho based on what happened AFTER various tv series folded.' Tony: try to find a copy of the story 'Distant Signals' by Andrew Weiner, which appeared in TWILIGHT ZONE magazine in the early 1980s and was adapted for TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE in 1985, starring Darren McGavin. The whole episode is, I think, up on YouTube. It's about what happens when a 1960s TV show is cancelled before the writer has a chance to complete the story arc and tie the threads together, and what happens years later when a fan of the show decides he wants to see it finished. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
I seem to remember a great response from Angela Carter to a critic who said her prose was too purple: 'Fuck off.' | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
Idea for a new anthology: Stories No-One Would Publish. Of course, this would be an on-going open submissions anthology, and any accepted pieces would immediately be disqualified from appearing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Mark, got your email - will reply asap. But Wednesday lunch in Leeds is good for me. You? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.231.151 |
How about Stories by Writers Who Can't Write? | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Hubert: that has already been done, many times... There was a horror anthology back in the 1990s called Cold Cuts that did that, for example. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Rhys, do you mean the whole series or just the first book? I liked the series more and more as it went on. Steve Bishop and I had an 'alternative rejection slip' for the Birmingham Noir anthology: Thanks for your submission. However, we regret to inform you that Birmingham Noir is a crime fiction anthology and not a sperm bank. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.68 |
Gary - Yes, I think Wednesday's good. | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
An anthology based on characters who survive in classic horror stories? DO they see their shrink? Kill themselves? Eat tofu and read Proust? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Good stuff, Mark. I'll email you on Saturday. Just finished work and more of the same tomorrow!  | ||
| Degsy (Degsy) Username: Degsy Registered: 08-2010 Posted From: 86.134.93.9 |
I realise that someone surely must have done this before - but I'd love to see an anthology of attempts to complete famous 'unwritten' tales. The classic example of course, would be 'The Giant Rat of Sumatra': the tale 'for which the world is not yet prepared' from the Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. Then there are the synopses from 'Stories I have tried to write' by MR James. I'd love to have a go at the one about the two Cambridge undergraduates' visit to the Witch of Fenstanton. My personal favourites are from the 'Calliope' segment of Gaiman's 'Sandman' where the main character gets cursed with constant inspiration and spouts out a story idea every second. (Amongst others.) "A man who inherits a library card to the Library of Alexandria." "An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar." "A biography of Keats from the Lamia's viewpoint." "Two old women taking a weasel on holiday." (I particularly like the last idea.) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.27.152 |
>>>An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar I know him. Despite being billions of years old, he's surprisingly well preserved. |