The Neighborhood is Perfectly Fine

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, everybody!

In case you've been wondering (you haven't) why I've been drunker and surlier than usual lately, it's because I've been pounding away at THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGHBORHOOD, the first anthology I've ever edited, alongside my regular collaborator Wile E. Young and our very own Kayleigh Dobbs.  If it seems like I've been working on this anthology for the past year...well, it's because I've actually been working on it for three.  Fucking icebergs, you know.

THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE, the reverse haunted house story that I wrote with Wile E., came out on March 16, 2020.  Which, if you'll recall, was also the day that a global pandemic was declared so, um, yeah, people had other shit on their minds than our little ghost story for a while.  

We were a bit disappointed by sales and later that year, when we were tossing around ideas to get more exposure for our book, we naturally discussed the idea of a sequel.  But how to write a sequel to a book with such a...let's say...definitive ending?  Well, why not open the world up to other contributors with different perspectives?  Get a feel for what else was going on in our universe during, before, and even after our novel?

What was going on in Australia?  The UK?

What was going on with the young people?  Or the ghosts who had been around for ages?

Lawyers?  Sadists?  Hit men?

Wile E. and I went off to begin writing our own shorts immediately, we were so excited.  Then we spent the next two years trying to secure funding from various publishers.  (Trust me, publishing an anthology, and paying your authors fairly, is an extremely expensive proposition.)  I ended up looking at my half-finished story after nearly three years, and completely forgot how I had intended to end it.  Sometimes that happens with stuff you set aside for too long, no matter how excited you were about it.

Finally, thanks to over thirty Kickstarter backers and handshake promises from several prominent authors as incentives, we secured funding, and the stories started rolling in for our open call.

After six month of submissions, we managed to find fifteen diamonds among the...not diamonds, and it was off to the races.  And by "races," I mean, learn all of the moving pieces involved with arranging a table of contents, formatting an anthology, paying fifteen people, sending rewards to thirty people...and on and on it went.

And now, bafflingly, it's over.  This morning I shipped out the last of the backer rewards.  I mean, the real task, marketing, is about to start, but it's very strange to not have this albatross around my neck for the first time in almost a year.  

So, here it is and here's to you.  I hope you'll all grab a copy of this Taj Mahal, this massive opus and undertaking, and tell all of your friends.  Maybe it'll make a huge splash.  Maybe it'll be the greatest anthology of time.  A guy can dream, can't he?