Elena, Mel, and Cerid are back with updates. Elena asks Mel how it feels now that River and Stone is out in the world, Cerid discusses the fun challenge of arranging the order of pieces in her anthology Artificial Sweetener, and the trio discuss the thought and care that goes into book design and illustration.
Referenced in this Episode:
River and Stone Anthology, edited by Mel Reynolds, is available to purchase!
- Buy River and Stone in print or Ebook on Amazon
- Buy River and Stone in print from Barnes & Noble
- Buy River and Stone Ebook from Barnes & Noble
Cerid’s project — Speculative Fiction New Zealand’s anthology, Artificial Sweetener — will be out later this year!
Episode Transcript:
Elena L. Perez (00:03):
Hello everyone. My name is Elena Perez. I’m the editor-in-chief of The Metaworker.
Melissa Reynolds (00:09):
And I’m Melissa Reynolds, also an editor at The Metaworker.
Cerid Jones (00:15):
And I’m Cerid Jones, the international editor at The Metaworker.
Elena L. Perez (00:21):
(laughs) And we’re here again for part three of our anthology podcast. So, we originally said we were only gonna do two, but we wanted to follow up with how Mel and Cerid’s projects have gone. Mel has published her anthology. Congrats, Mel.
Melissa Reynolds (00:39):
Thank you very much.
Cerid Jones (00:41):
Yaaaaay!
All (00:41):
(laugh and cheer)
Elena L. Perez (00:44):
So, we’ll dive a little bit into how that went and then we’ll also talk with Cerid. Cerid, your anthology is gonna be out soon. In November?
Cerid Jones (00:54):
That’s the estimate. Yes. (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (00:57):
Great. So, we’ll talk a little bit with Cerid, too, about how her process is going. To start things off, Mel, congratulations again. We’re all so happy for you.
Melissa Reynolds (01:06):
Thank you.
Elena L. Perez (01:07):
And your release date was on October 1st. So, tell us what was the release day like? How does it feel to hold that physical book in your hands?
Melissa Reynolds (01:17):
Well, the first time we got a ‘proof’ copy, ’cause we designed our own cover, so we wanted to make sure that the picture looked right and the title was right and all that good stuff. So, when I got my first official copy, it was kind of the same feeling as, ‘okay, I need to make sure everything’s okay and that we’re good to start ordering in bulk’. So it wasn’t that “moment” with my first one.
Patty is kind of like the scheduler. She’s been through the process before, so she said, “I want to release as early October as possible so that we can maybe get in on the Christmas sale marketing”, I guess. So, she was very much on top of me saying, “Hey, ahem, are those edits done yet?” Or, “Ahem, next week we need to get out the final version to the authors so they can make any last second changes.” And they only get a week. (laughs) Which is very good because I had NYC Midnight judging stuff going on at the same time, so it was easy for me to get behind on one or the other. Having her backup and reminders was super helpful.
For the ‘how it actually feels’, um, I recently got my free copy and that one was when it hit, was like…
Elena L. Perez (02:39):
Nice.
Melissa Reynolds (02:39):
…it’s done. Now alls I gotta do is try to sell this thing. It looks good and I’m super proud of it. So, lots of excitement ripping open that package for the first time. Big grin on my face. It was awesome. (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (02:56):
Amazing.
Melissa Reynolds (02:57):
Yeah.
Elena L. Perez (02:58):
That is—yeah, that is so exciting to be able to hold the…
Melissa Reynolds (03:02):
Mm-hmm.
Elena L. Perez (03:03):
…finished book in your hand. You made that project, you put your heart and soul into that. And so to be able to see that in the physical world (laughs) instead of just the digital world…it’s really cool.
Melissa Reynolds (03:15):
Yeah, I honestly had my doubts when we first started this project, if it would actually ever happen, so it’s extra cool to be able to see it. And one of the first things I did—my friends come to my house for game nights pretty often—so my first copy, I’m like, okay, ‘Matt, you need to sign it. Eric, you’re next’. So, I’m gathering signatures now.
Elena L. Perez (03:39):
Oh, that’s great.
Melissa Reynolds (03:40):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s really cool. (laughs)
Cerid Jones (03:42):
Yeah, that’s super sweet.
Elena L. Perez (03:44):
That is. It’s like your own mini launch party. (laughs)
Melissa Reynolds (03:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
Elena L. Perez (03:49):
Which leads into my next question. How did marketing go or what is the plan now that the book is in the world? Are you having a launch party? What is that process like?
Melissa Reynolds (03:59):
There was a little bit of a holdup with shipping from Amazon, so we were a little bit worried about Patty getting the first…I think she ordered sixty-some books the first time around. So, we were a little bit worried it would be late, but she has them, and tomorrow evening we’re gonna be giving out the author copies. Me and her are gonna go to the library and hang out, and then people can come in and pick up their books. That’s kind of our first writers group official thing. But then after that we’re gonna do the library’s local author fair. We have a Barnes and Noble reading set up.
Elena L. Perez (04:38):
Mm, fancy.
Melissa Reynolds (04:40):
Yeah. And then a second reading at…a lot of our writers come from at least an hour away for our group. Just within Morgantown.
Elena L. Perez (04:50):
Oh, wow.
Melissa Reynolds (04:50):
We’ve got Cerid, who is obviously days away, but for our authors who are more local, some of ’em drive an hour just to be at the meeting. So, this time we’re gonna go to a library that’s a bit closer to them and host a reading or a signing. And I think there’s one other thing that we’re doing that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it’s mainly… So far has been this podcast—thank you guys so much—and also our website and word of mouth, social media, stuff like that.
Elena L. Perez (05:25):
That’s awesome. Oh, that’s cool. I love that you’re kind of bringing the party (laughs) in a way to the different locations of the different authors. That’s so cool. And both you and Cerid have pieces in this anthology in addition to the rest of the authors. How does that feel, to have your own pieces in this?
Melissa Reynolds (05:44):
Well, personally, it feels a little bit weird because—I believe we talked about this pretty much in depth last time about how I’m in a strange position being the editor and kind of semi-publisher. So it feels…I almost felt like I shouldn’t have pieces in there at all. But at the same time, George was insistent that ‘yes, you’re putting these in’, so I had to stay true to that. I can’t speak for Cerid, but I can say I’m super happy that she has a piece in the anthology, too.
Cerid Jones (06:18):
Aww…Bless your (unintelligible) self, Mel. I’m beyond stoked. I really actually can’t put into words the honor it feels…especially—I mean, Mel mentioned I’m days away, I’m oceans away, you know—to be able to participate and be involved in Morgantown Writers Group, to be invited to put a piece in for this anthology, because it’s a memorial to George, who I only really met via distance for a very short amount of time. He came into The Metaworker writing sprints, and that’s how I sort of met him and had interactions. I really adored the man. He was incredible. So, to be able to put a piece in, in honor of him, is glorious on one side. It’s very humbling. And then, of course, to be all the way in New Zealand and be in a publication in West Virginia in Morgantown, you know, in the USA, that is…that just blows my mind.
I’m still waiting for my copies to arrive. So, for me, I haven’t yet had Mel’s reality check of holding it and being like, ‘oh my God, I’m in print’. The print on demand, which is amazing and it makes life so much easier to publish things, but it means that you end up in this kind of semi-liminal state because you haven’t seen the physical reality. It’s still all kind of digital at this point. You know it’s real and you know it’s there, but it’s not that thing on the bookshelf that’s ‘concreted’ in the reality and you know that this fully exists and no one can argue with you about whether it exists or not at this point, you know? (laughs) It’s been awesome to be able to share and talk about it. And it is actually officially my first in print publication.
Elena L. Perez (08:08):
Yay. Congrats.
Cerid Jones (08:10):
It’s just phenomenal. I don’t feel like an imposter writer (laughs) anymore. And I wanna thank Mel so much because Mel has been the most incredible person to be able to work with as a writer, with an editor. Our friendship aside, she’s really good at what she does and it’s been really humbling. And to know that that piece that gets put through, because it’s gone through Mel’s eyes and it’s gone through all these other people’s eyes, it’s good. (laughs).
Melissa Reynolds (08:45):
Aww.
Cerid Jones (08:46):
And that’s a really, really, really amazing feeling to have. And I’m sitting alongside, you know, thirty-odd other incredible writers and I can’t wait to read. I’m so looking forward to sitting down and having that experience. Beyond incredible. I’m so humbled. Mel, and everyone in the writers group, thank you so much for allowing me to be involved. I don’t have words beyond that, but thank you. (laughs)
Melissa Reynolds (09:16):
Oh, well those words already brought tears to my eyes, so— (laughs) My goodness.
Elena L. Perez (09:22):
Aww. Hugs all around.
Melissa Reynolds (09:24):
Yeah, absolutely. And I have to take a moment to—I think I told Cerid and Elena about this. I was doing a press release to WVU seeing as how there’s many of our writers who are alumni from there, so I’m, like, maybe they’ll put us in their magazine or who knows. I was preparing the email and I’m like, ‘okay, so to make it easy for you guys, here’s the list of the alumni’. And there was, like, seven. And, like, ‘here’s current students and staff’. And there was four or five of those. And then, like, ‘and other people of note, we have Jeff Fuller, who is a New York Times bestseller who did “(The) WVU Co-ed (Murders)”. And I’m realizing that I’ve been so close to these writers that I’ve just kind of assumed that they’re awesome and didn’t really see the context of the bigger world of how, yes, they’re all really awesome. And, I too am honored to have work alongside theirs. It’s awesome.
Elena L. Perez (10:27):
Well, you’re awesome for putting all of this together. I mean, putting together an anthology—you know, we’ve had two whole podcasts before this (laughs) discussing that—it’s no easy feat. So, you deserve to be in there alongside everyone else, just the same. It’s an exciting time and you did a great job with it. (laughs)
Melissa Reynolds (10:45):
Thank you.
Elena L. Perez (10:46):
Let’s jump to Cerid to talk a little bit about how your anthology is going. Let’s start with your marketing plan. How is that going so far?
Cerid Jones (10:58):
That will the next stage for us. We’ve just started going into the proofreading phase and we’re just starting to look at the formatting. Once we’re done with all the proofreading, then we’ll actually get to have a bit more of a conversation about what’s gonna happen with the marketing. One of the differences between Mel and my project is that, because our members are spread out all across New Zealand—I don’t even know where everyone is located—so when it comes to being able to do anything kind of physical, I’m not really sure what kind of launches we are going to be able to do. I did wanna investigate and find out if we have a core group of authors who are based near or close to a certain town and whether we could organize something in and around that. But we’ve left ourselves such a short time span for this anthology, which in previous years hasn’t been a problem because the model has been really different.
I brought in traditional publishing styles and systems which take a lot longer, so I kind of really threw a spanner in the works for that in lots of ways, shapes, and forms, which means we haven’t left ourselves as much time as I would have liked to really get a very solid marketing plan put together. But we do have the benefit of the fact that this is the third anthology that Specfic NZ have released, so people who have bought the previous anthologies will already sort of be somewhat aware of what we do. And all of nineteen-odd authors, uh, nineteen, eighteen? I’m terrible with numbers. I did this last podcast too. Like, how many pieces have we got in?
All (12:50):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (12:50):
Yeah. Around that number. So, you know, they’ll have all their own channels and connections of people, too. Because we’ve got, similar to Mel, we have people who are across the full spectrum of different points in their career. We may have some people and this might be their first time in print, but other people that have got a really good back record of publications or already got a good fandom base and a good name for themselves. So, you know, we’re lucky in that we can, to a degree, rely on some of that to help push the anthology out there.
Elena L. Perez (13:30):
Awesome.
Cerid Jones (13:31):
I definitely have plans to do things in my local area. The local newspaper and local radio stations. I used to do some stuff for radio stations a long time ago. I mean, New Zealand’s small. I live in a small town, so we are not talking a huge audience, but it is the local connection that I have and I will be trying to do that. It’s really nice that I have a connection and involvement in “River and Stone” anthology because I’ll be able to talk about that, as well. I’m kind of hoping to be able to hit both anthologies (laughs) at the same time to a degree.
Melissa Reynolds (14:09):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (14:09):
So, yeah, ‘marketing plan’. It’s really just me brainstorming at the minute and kind of going, ‘okay, well this is what I think, this is what I’d like to do’. We haven’t even talked about whether we are going to do an official launch. I know that we will be getting some print order copies for Specfic to be able to do something with. Then next year, which is the year that we take off from actually producing an anthology, I’d like to spend my volunteer time with the Specfic core doing promotion and support for the anthology. I’ll stagger it out over the year.
I know that we are going to do a social media campaign to highlight the authors that have contributed. So, there’s a few things that are, you know, kind of the standard easy access that we’ve got in the works, ready to go. Definitely not really up to that point as a team just yet. Like I say, we’ve just finished the editing, we’ve just finished getting everything into order. And may I say, Miss Mel, I have to thank you so much for your discussion from our last podcast and the tips and tricks that you gave about ordering. That really helped. I really rolled with your advice and went, ‘cool, let’s break this down into sections’. That had already sort of been my plan, but it really solidified that. And just how important that is.
Melissa Reynolds (15:36):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (15:36):
And the amount of hours that took—.
Melissa Reynolds (15:39):
Yes.
All (15:39):
(laugh)
Cerid Jones (15:39):
Oh my goodness me. I did not expect to be sitting at my computer screen for hours going back and forth with these pieces. Interesting that when you break down looking at, ‘okay, so what’s the themes of all of these pieces? What are motifs that exist in them’? And there was so much crossover, you know? I kept re-looking at the list and sort of going, ‘well, this piece could fit in any three sections’. I’m, like, ‘what do I do if it can fit anywhere? Where does it go? Where’s it supposed to go’? Going back and forth and then putting them all in order, reading through, and then realizing, ‘no, those two just—that’s so jarring. That can’t go there, it has to go somewhere else’. And then my co-editor, Gary, didn’t like one of the section titles and choices that I’d made, which is absolutely fine, (but) I ended up having to get rid of a whole section.
Melissa Reynolds (16:34):
Of course. (laughs)
Cerid Jones (16:34):
Work out where else to put those pieces. I mean, that was just such a process in itself and I’ve never had to do that before, so that was really interesting and hair pulling and—(laughs).
All (16:51):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (16:51):
But, yeah, I really owe a huge debt of thanks for our last podcast and having that discussion.
Elena L. Perez (16:56):
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Reynolds (16:57):
I found when I was trying—cause I have, I think, five sections, so I have more, but I also have lots of pieces. But I found that part of it, when it came down to, like what you were saying, ‘oh, this piece could fit here, here, and here’, it became, ‘okay, since this can pretty much fit in any of those places without too much trouble, I’m going to do the one that has a smaller number and flesh that section out a little bit more’. Sometimes it just really does come down to, ‘well, this one only has four pieces. I’m gonna put it here just because it can fit and also this section needs more’. I wonder if that happened to you at all?
Cerid Jones (17:41):
Yeah, kind of. The final section I put together and, well, because our anthology is called “Artificial Sweetener”, I really wanted to keep it on theme much like you did with your “River and Stone”. So, whatever my section titles were going to be, I wanted them to fit into that bracket. There were maybe three or four pieces that didn’t really connect other than the fact that they all had a nature element involved in them, which I thought was really interesting. We are dealing with AI and we still ended up with stories that have kind of a nature connection. So, I put them into a category all of their own, which I just called “Honeycomb” (laughs) and just shoved them in there because I didn’t know where else those pieces fitted. Gary sort of said to me, ‘I’m not sold on “Honeycomb”. I don’t really feel like this fits in an AI…’. And he’s not wrong. It is a bit of a stretch, but, you know, I push boundaries now and again.
Especially because, like I mentioned, I think we’ve only got one poem in the whole collection and it feels really weird trying to make that fit and gravitate things in and around it. We ended up with a lot of pieces that have artificial intelligence that’s built inside a living—like a house or an apartment or something like that. They kind of all gravitated together (in) “Home Sweet Home”, which is really what we’re opening our entire collection with, that section. And they’re all not AI perceptions. Then beautifully enough, we happened to have a story that was an AI perception of a house…
Elena L. Perez (19:27):
Oh, interesting.
Cerid Jones (19:27):
…so it made a really nice bridge from “Home sweet Home” into the “Sugar Cube Squared” because we’ve got this setting up of home and living and people interacting with their AI home base world. And then we have “Flipping it on its Head” this beautiful story from the perception of an AI who is a house. That’s a quite crude way of putting it, but it is the clearest and easiest without going into too much detail. Then our final section is “Sweet Tooth”, AI stories that are a little bit more edgy. You know, a tooth, if it’s a sweet tooth, can kind of go rotten, so these stories all have just a little bit of edge to them. We finished on a piece that echoes somewhat the first piece in the collection. This one also deals with—older generation, but from a very different perspective. So, it ended up kind of working to loop all together, which is miraculous. To be able to find an actual arc like this out of the stories that we collected, even though it took a lot of work, I’m really excited about.
Melissa Reynolds (20:49):
I am so happy to hear that you were able to find that…organizational theme, I guess is the easiest way to put it. That’s awesome. I’m hoping that this anthology will be available for purchase because I would like to get a copy.
Elena L. Perez (21:05):
Oh, definitely.
Melissa Reynolds (21:06):
Is that—yeah. Is that gonna be a thing that’s available for us…
Cerid Jones (21:11):
Yes, absolutely.
Melissa Reynolds (21:13):
…other side of the world people? (laughs).
Cerid Jones (21:14):
Yep. So again, I mean, it’s that POD, the amazingness of that. Yes, it will have global territory rights. We are doing it in an ebook edition and in a print edition, and the print edition is available from POD Amazon. The nearest POD department to you will be able to ship it. And of course it will also be available as an ebook. And considering our title, (that) feels quite fitting.
Elena L. Perez (21:43):
Very fitting.
Cerid Jones (21:44):
Yeah.
Melissa Reynolds (21:45):
Yeah, you kind of have to with that title. I mean, it’s almost like a requirement.
All (21:48):
(laugh)
Elena L. Perez (21:51):
And, speaking of publishing, Cerid, what is your plan for releasing your anthology?
Cerid Jones (21:56):
So our timescale has been tight and we have got slightly more delayed. Originally we wanted it to be early November and now it’s looking like late November. If there’s any more hitches then it could be the first week of December, but we’ve pretty much firmly said we really can’t push it back any further than that. Like Mel was saying before, you know, we want to get this piece out before the Christmas rush.
Elena L. Perez (22:21):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (22:22):
We also don’t want it to be dragging into next year. And, I mean, honestly, I want a break from this. (laughs).
All (22:29):
(laugh)
Cerid Jones (22:30):
Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but—whew, man, it’s a lot of work.
Melissa Reynolds (22:36):
It is.
Elena L. Perez (22:38):
It’s all a learning experience, right?
Cerid Jones (22:40):
Hundred percent.
Elena L. Perez (22:41):
You get really excited about putting all your effort into it, and you wanna make the best book you can, like we were discussing in the last two podcasts. You just get involved in all the little details and making sure that everybody’s taken care of and everybody’s work is presented the best way that it can be. And, like you said, it takes time to put all that care and love into it. So, I mean, it is just a sign that you really are passionate about what you do, Cerid. I’m excited to see it when it comes out because I know how hard you’ve been working on it. Like you said, to finally have that finished product will be amazing. You spent hours of time putting together the organization of how it’s going to be broken into sections, but have you actually started formatting it into whatever program you’re using for the print or ebooks?
Cerid Jones (23:35):
Gary is working on the formatting now. He’s using a program called Scrivener, I believe. I’ve never used that for formatting, but Gary has. He’s quite a wizard at it, I believe, so I feel very comfortable with him just going off and getting that done. We do have a draft manuscript up and running, which is ready for a forward writer. There’s a few little stages we still have to polish before Gary can do the full formatting. I admit I’m the one kind of holding that up a little bit. There’s just a couple of small tweaks I really want to make.
And we have a team of proofreaders. We’ve got two, one who was already an editor for all the other stages. For any of the edits that we’ve done, we really wanted, or I really wanted, to make sure that we always had fresh eyes on every story so that we would catch all the possible mistakes. So, the proofreader that we’ve got, she will only be proofreading the story she hasn’t already worked on for structural. And then we have a second one. And Gary has also done a wave of proofreading already. I have no skills in the proofreading department. But we are on a pretty tight ship. Proofreaders will have about a week to do all of their proofreading, which is the final stage of our editing, and then Gary can go ahead and get that ready to go. So, there’s a lot of steps.
Elena L. Perez (25:07):
That’s what I mean about putting all this care. You’ve got a lot of of layers going on. You have a lot of proofreaders, a lot of different people working on this, so all that takes time. So, it’s no wonder that your timeline was a little, uh, not as expected. But, you know, like I said, it’s a learning experience because when you’re dealing with a lot of different people doing a lot of different passes, you have to accommodate that into the schedule.
Melissa Reynolds (25:38):
Mm-hmm
Cerid Jones (25:38):
Yeah, it’s a ‘thing’, for sure. I mean, I definitely think that I might’ve been a little bit ambitious. (laughs).
Elena L. Perez (25:46):
Who, Cerid, you? (laughs).
All (25:48):
(laugh)
Cerid Jones (25:50):
I mean—.
Elena L. Perez (25:50):
Not at all surprised.
Cerid Jones (25:53):
Look, I’ve done quite a bit of co-editing stuff with you guys.
Elena L. Perez (25:57):
Yes.
Cerid Jones (25:57):
Yeah, and I’ve done co-editing with some other people, but not on the scale of this project. I know what the baseline sort of structure and system is of a semi-traditional model. One of the biggest reflections I think I have about the editing process and some of the changes that I implemented and brought into this project is I do think I may have inadvertently set us up to have a little bit of a ‘too many chefs in the kitchen’. One of the key takeaway learnings that I’ve got is that, we’ve talked quite a lot about biases, we’ve talked quite a lot about different experiences…
Elena L. Perez (26:40):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (26:40):
…and different personal tastes, and how much of a kind of melting pot that is, you know? We all have quite unique ideas about a lot of things, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I do think that’s become even more apparent to me. Some of the different stylistic choices that I myself have as an editor and the stylistic choices that some of our volunteer editors have, you know? I mean, even Gary’s choices are a little bit different from what mine are, so trying to find that middle ground between all of these different styles and different people, and with the author on top of that, that’s actually been quite a minefield.
Now that I’m sort of at the end of this process and looking back on it, I don’t know whether any of the authors feel that way, but from looking at the project as a whole, I kind of feel a little bit that way. I think that did mean that there were more rounds than perhaps might ordinarily have been necessary if there was just two editors working with the authors. They’ve got quite similar tastes and similar styles. I think that the process would have been faster and less back and forth with the authors and maybe a little bit more consistent.
Don’t get me wrong, I think having the melting pot of people that we’ve had involved, and I’m so grateful—Linda has been fantastic, Melissa has been fantastic. You know, it’s been a huge help. Do not get me wrong. I’m not trying to be critical of them in any way, shape, or form. It’s hugely appreciated. But it did highlight to me some of the differences that we all have in our tastes and our styles and what we are doing. And it does mean that we’ve been super thorough, but I don’t know if that is always necessary to the project. So, that’s been really interesting.
Elena L. Perez (28:41):
It’s a little bit of a balancing act, right? It really does help to have that very clear kind of hierarchy, you know?Saying, ‘okay, this person has the final word, and that’s just how it is’.
Melissa Reynolds (28:55):
Mm-hmm.
Elena L. Perez (28:55):
But at the same time, you do wanna do what you’ve been doing and make sure that the authors and the editors have their writing taken care of, you know? So, that’s a tough balance to have. I mean, that does take practice, because on the one hand, if you just say, ‘okay, this one person or two people are gonna be making these decisions’, then you run the risk of having the authors feel like their pieces are not being taken care of. But on the other end, like you’re saying, maybe sometimes there’s too many cooks and it can get a little chaotic, but everybody’s happy because they feel like they’ve been taken care of. At the same time, it’s chaotic for the people putting out the work. So, it’s a balance and it’s a learning experience to figure out how you want to run your project.
Melissa Reynolds (29:51):
Mm-hmm.
Elena L. Perez (29:52):
And you know, what is important to you. It’s a personal preference.
Melissa Reynolds (29:56):
Something that came to mind when you were talking about that, Cerid, highlights that having a working relationship—like from the writer’s side, to remember that all editors have different styles and different things that they maybe harp on a bit more than others. It’s okay if you meet with an editor and you’re, like, ‘this person doesn’t get it, and they’re not right for me and my work’.
Elena L. Perez (30:25):
True.
Melissa Reynolds (30:25):
It’s 100% okay to be like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, this isn’t working’, and go look for someone else. At least on the editor side, yeah, that kind of sucks, as in, ‘oh man, there goes my potential paycheck’. But at the same time, there’s not an, ‘oh, I hate this writer, they’re terrible’. It’s more of like, ‘oh, okay. It just didn’t work’. I think that’s important to bring up.
Elena L. Perez (30:49):
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Reynolds (30:49):
Because it is a working relationship that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
Cerid Jones (30:55):
Absolutely.
Elena L. Perez (30:56):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (30:56):
I mean, that’s one of the kind of differences that’s really interesting. Again, I’m on the community project, we’re all volunteers coming together to do this. I’ve been seeing the emails that come back and forth and, like, no author has seemed to have had any issue. Our editors have all been really sensitive to the authors. So, there’s not been a problem. I don’t think there’s any authors that are unhappy. I just wanna make that really clear. We did have one author who was on our conditional list, and we sent through a thing to say, ‘okay, we’d really love to publish this piece, but our submissions team wanted to develop the work and these were some areas that we felt needed more attention’. Everyone initially agreed. I think we talked about this the last podcast. And then I started developmental editing with this list of, I think there was about six authors, and one in particular, we did not gel. We just didn’t gel very well. I still love the story. We just were not a good match to do these developments.
Elena L. Perez (32:03):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (32:03):
And the author sort of decided that actually they didn’t really wanna change those things that we’d asked for. That’s partly probably to do with the relationship that we had. There was nothing wrong with what either of us were doing, it—like you say, Mel, sometimes it’s not a good fit and it wasn’t a good fit.
Melissa Reynolds (32:21):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (32:22):
And so they ended up saying, ‘hey, thank you for the opportunity, but I’m not prepared to make those changes, therefore I don’t want to, you know, I can’t participate in the anthology’. Kudos to that author…
Melissa Reynolds (32:33):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (32:34):
…for saying, ‘you know what? I know what I want. I don’t wanna do those things. That’s not for me’. And stepping back. Power to them, and I really hope that they find somewhere for that story to belong because there are really great merits on that piece. I really fought for putting that piece in the list ’cause there’s so many things I really like. And that’s just kind of one of those things. All our writers have that opportunity to do that. But, you know, I mean, they’re the only one that has taken that opportunity out of the nineteen or so contributors that we’ve got.
But we are also dealing with, rather than being able to match an author to an editor that just will naturally align and vibe, the editors are just receiving a random piece, more or less, from the collection. I asked all our editors what their favorite genres were, some of the things that they like to read, to try and match them as best as we could, but there weren’t any perfect matches. Every edit round has gone through three people, and this is on the structural rather than mechanical. So, you know, we’ve gone through three people, so you’ve got three different styles contributing to the same story, working with an author.
I kind of hope the authors get that reflection, Mel, that they, you know, that there are certain editor styles that will work better for them and will not work better for them. Because I don’t think enough authors realize how diverse editing is. And I don’t also think a lot of editors realize how biased we can be. Although we could probably edit anything, if you’re going to give that story the best you can possibly give it, it should align with something that excites you so that you can, especially in the developmental area, so you can be inside the mind of that author and really work on the same side as them.
Elena L. Perez (34:29):
Yes and no to that. Because sometimes when you’re working on a piece that you really, really love, sometimes that can also blind you.
Melissa Reynolds (34:35):
Yeah.
Elena L. Perez (34:36):
And you can overlook things.
Melissa Reynolds (34:38):
That’s true.
Elena L. Perez (34:38):
So, I don’t know. Yes and no on that. Cerid, I did wanna ask you about paying your authors. You said that that was really important to you, so I just wanna pick your brain about how you made that happen and how it’s going.
Cerid Jones (34:54):
That’s a component of one of the Specfic principles in and around doing the anthology is that they want to be able to offer good industry standard payments for works. So, our works get paid out at four cents a word and that’s something that the anthology had already had set up, so I had nothing to do with making those decisions.
Elena L. Perez (35:19):
It’s really important, though, because a lot of places don’t pay. So—yeah, just to have that extra recognition that, you know, your work is important.
Cerid Jones (35:26):
Absolutely.
Elena L. Perez (35:26):
You’re a valuable storyteller and artist to be paid. So, yeah.
Cerid Jones (35:33):
Yeah. And that’s one of the things that kind of gets a little bit hairy with some of the changes that I’ve been kind of implementing because of the whole developmental and structural edit changes that some of these pieces have gone through. Because the piece that they submit at the beginning, you know, could be 4,000 words, and then by the time we’ve gone through the editing stages, it could be closer to five or it could be closer to two. I don’t wanna disappoint authors by saying, ‘oh, well, right now the word count’s, you know, sitting at just under 5,000. But after this last little stretch of edits that we are doing on that work, that could drop down by a hundred or 200 words’, and that’s a couple of dollars, you know? I know it’s small, but it’s a really interesting one for me to navigate the paying by word count. Yeah. It’s great that we’re doing it, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it. But it does prove some interesting backend challenges that you don’t expect on the onset.
Melissa Reynolds (36:32):
Right.
Elena L. Perez (36:33):
Yeah, that’s interesting to think about. I mean, unfortunately here at The Metaworker, we don’t pay our authors. We would like to. Working towards that, though, will be (an) interesting challenge to figure out how we’ll do that eventually. Hopefully. I’d be interested to know if there’s a word count that they agreed to before the finalized piece that they get paid for.
Cerid Jones (36:57):
We’ve been tracking the word count, so we know what the word count is on the submission, when they submit. So, we have had a sort of estimated count of the words all the way through.
Elena L. Perez (37:08):
Oh, got it.
Cerid Jones (37:09):
So, none of our authors—we’ve gone through this whole editing process—no one’s signed a contract as of yet because the contract system that Specfic has set up is on a word count because of that payment basis.
Elena L. Perez (37:22):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (37:22):
So, that’s something I hadn’t anticipated before. The changes that I’d implemented in the structure that we are doing has also affected the contractual end of things because of the system.
Elena L. Perez (37:34):
Oh, interesting.
Cerid Jones (37:34):
I also only just found out that it’s inside the contract that we get the bios for the authors, which is another reason why I don’t even know where all the authors are based or anything about them. Like Mel was saying, you know, she’s published the work now and read through and we’ve got a New York Times bestseller. I still don’t really know anything about the credentials or the standings of the authors that I’ve been working with for the last couple of months.
Elena L. Perez (37:58):
So it’ll be a nice surprise to you.
Cerid Jones (38:00):
Exactly. It really will be. It’s interesting, and I know that Mel spoke last time about finding it difficult to chase up authors to get a bio. (laughs) So, I’ve really got my fingers crossed that because it’s inside the contract and because that’s part of how they’ll get their payment, that it’s quite a quick process. Because that’s gonna be finicky putting that part in the formatting of the book because I wanna change where we put the bios and that might be a little bit finicky, and I’m sure Gary will pull his hair out with me, but I’m sure we’ll get there. I have faith (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (38:38):
(laughs) Wow. You’re just really shaking things up over there. All kinds of changes.
Cerid Jones (38:44):
I know. Aren’t I terrible?
Elena L. Perez (38:47):
Well, I mean, now you know going forward and your team knows, too. You can take things from this year that you like and take away things that you didn’t like about this year. You know, it’s a learning process. It’s always changing. (laughs).
Cerid Jones (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Elena L. Perez (39:02):
Well, I do wanna wrap up here. I have one last—I hope—fun question. (laughs) Let’s talk about cover art. How did you both come up with your design concepts? Did you hire designers?
Melissa Reynolds (39:17):
That one’s a fun one for me because I took the photo myself.
Elena L. Perez (39:24):
Oh, wow.
Melissa Reynolds (39:24):
Before Covid, we did writing retreats where we would rent an Airbnb out in—I always get the name wrong—but near Canaan Valley. We would spend the weekend together writing and having campfires and maybe going on walks, stuff like that. And we were near Blackwater Falls, so I took a bunch of pictures and the process of going back and forth with George trying to find what would work, I’m like, ‘this photo, I like this one’. After much harassment on my part, he finally accepted. So, I used Canva and I designed everything, and I actually had to upgrade to a subscription because in Canva you can’t adjust the margins on the spine without the ‘pro’. So, that was a learning process of figuring out how to measure a spine and how to put that into your design to make sure it doesn’t overlap. It does overlap a little, but it works okay with my design that I have. But the main thing is that you don’t want it too small, a little bit going over—fine, but too small, and that’s trouble.
So, we did all that and then I did the same picture, but for ebook. So, I designed two different covers using the same photo. But then my daughter is—my twins—are in honors art, so I harassed them. (laughs) I had them help me, actually. I would get it to the point where I’m like, ‘okay, I like this’. And then I’d say, “Iva, what do you think?” And she’d say, “Mm, no, the r needs to be over, farther this way”, or “No, it’s too high up, too…” She made the fine tuning with her artist’s eye. It was really fun to be able to give her credit in the acknowledgement section. My plan is to send her with a free copy to give to her art teacher, so she can brag a little. (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (41:41):
Aww, that’s so sweet. I love that.
Cerid Jones (41:43):
Aww.
Melissa Reynolds (41:44):
Yeah. It was really…I love that the picture has a connection to the writers group and to one of our weekend getaways, because it was a really good trip that time. A lot of people ended up going and we hiked and had a cookout and fires and probably didn’t do as much writing as we would’ve if we were alone. But, you know, it was a really good time. So, it’s got this nice memory behind the photo, but then it works perfectly because it’s Blackwater River with boulders in it. Yeah, it’s one of my favorite parts. I don’t know if I could recreate cover design because it’s actually a lot more difficult than what you might think.
Elena L. Perez (42:33):
(laughs) Well, I think the cover is stunning. I really love that photo. It’s a beautiful photo and it’s so relaxing. I just love looking at it.
Cerid Jones (42:42):
Yeah, t’s real dynamic. I think it’s such a fitting cover piece for the story or for the collection, you know?
Elena L. Perez (42:51):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (42:51):
It’s gorgeous work and it’s so amazing that it’s your photograph too, Mel. Just the happenstance of all of that is beautiful.
Melissa Reynolds (42:58):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (42:58):
It adds to the background story, which gives that extra feel, that extra emotive response. It’s such a moody cover, and I don’t mean like ‘down moody’, there’s just so many elements to it, and I really appreciate that. I think it’s super eye catching.
Melissa Reynolds (43:14):
Well, thank you.
Elena L. Perez (43:16):
How about yours, Cerid. Do you have a cover yet?
Cerid Jones (43:18):
Yeah, we do. So, part of our submission process for Specfic is we do a story submission category and an art submission category. We open it up to our members to submit a cover and shout-out to Melissa Gunn because Melissa Gunn was the art creator for the cover. She also was successful in having a piece accepted into this submission. And she’s been on the editing team, so she is just an all around wee talent. It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with her. For the cover, she also used Canva and now what we’ve done is redesigning some small elements of the cover for formatting purposes so that it blends and all sits really nicely. Just little things like, obviously because it’s a blind submission, we don’t really know what the overall vibe of the whole collection is gonna be, and the artwork is stunning, but the text, the font needs changing and adjusting a little bit.
As Mel was saying, you know, that spine, getting that spine margin is—whew, a little bit of a challenge. And the image that Melissa put through is absolutely beautiful, goes from front to back. It’s a full picture. I didn’t wanna have a plain spine. I wanted to ensure that this beautiful image that we’ve got in the background would wrap around really nicely, so I’ve had to make a few minor adjustments to that so it will look pretty as a spine, as well. Obviously we’re still waiting on our final word count, so we don’t know exactly how big our spine will be. And these are some of the details, like Mel was saying, these are things you do not think about ordinarily when you purchase a book. You know, like that you have to be so specific about these margins.
Elena L. Perez (45:08):
Yeah.
Melissa Reynolds (45:08):
I took it down to the fourth of an inch, and that was the most nerve wracking part when I was getting the proof. That’s what Patty and I worried about most. We were like, ‘okay, the title, it needs to be moved, it’s in the wrong spot. That’s not a huge deal’. But that spine, we were so scared that we had messed it up. Luckily it came out okay.
Elena L. Perez (45:30):
I remember the same thing with my anthology. For one of ’em, the spine was kind of thin, and so the font was like super tiny and you could barely read it. We did two print books, one for each semester, so the second semester, the spine was thicker, so it was a little bit easier than the first one. But yeah, exactly. You never realize how much care goes into stuff as small as the spine or the white space in the margins. You don’t think about that, but it’s—that’s good that you don’t think about it because if you’re thinking about it, then…
Melissa Reynolds (46:05):
Something’s wrong.
Elena L. Perez (46:05):
…something went wrong. Yeah.
All (46:07):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (46:09):
Yeah, absolutely. And things like—’cause the way we did it, Melissa just somehow managed to kind of pick up on what the vibe of this collection might sort of be.
Elena L. Perez (46:21):
That’s awesome.
Cerid Jones (46:21):
And put so many appropriate elements in there. But of course, we didn’t even have a blurb or know how big our blurb was going to be, so we’ve had to sort of readjust to some of the sizing so that we can fit in the blurb at the back. Those kind of little, little…it’s all measurements. It’s like the mathematics, you know, it’s the design elements rather than the creative elements that have had to just sort of be a little bit adjusted.
Elena L. Perez (46:49):
Creative in a different way.
Melissa Reynolds (46:50):
Yeah,.
Cerid Jones (46:50):
Yeah, yeah. Mechanically creative. Yeah.
All (46:53):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (46:53):
Again, I love having the structural, mechanical (laughs) definition for things. It’s really helpful.
Elena L. Perez (47:00):
Different parts of the brain.
Cerid Jones (47:01):
Yeah.
Elena L. Perez (47:02):
But it’s still problem solving.
Cerid Jones (47:04):
Yeah.
Elena L. Perez (47:04):
And, yeah, it’s fun.
Melissa Reynolds (47:07):
Oh man, I didn’t even think about the barcode on the back.
Cerid Jones (47:12):
Oh, yeah.
Elena L. Perez (47:12):
Oh.
Melissa Reynolds (47:12):
So, I had to move…thank goodness for proofs because—whew. So, I had to move everything over a little bit and make sure it was…talk of the anthology blurbs and then something about the writers group. I had to make sure that it was up high enough to not run into the barcode. And I’m just like, ‘Ugh, why? Why does there have to be so much’? (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (47:37):
(laughs) It’s really interesting if you look at book covers without all the titles and everything. Or even comic book covers or comic book art, you know, where they have titles and things, and it’s really interesting to see them without all of the text and, yeah, barcodes, because you see the empty spaces where the artist had to account for all those different elements. It’s really interesting the way that it has to be formatted and drawn. I guess, you know, when you’re that kind of an artist, you kind of learn how to draw in such a way that your beautiful art doesn’t get covered by the text or the barcodes and goes along the spine nicely, or—.
Melissa Reynolds (48:17):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (48:18):
Also why you often have cover artists and then designers.
Elena L. Perez (48:23):
Right.
Cerid Jones (48:23):
Exactly that reason. And I think a lot of people don’t think about this, you know? Some people are just absolutely blessed to be able to be a designer and an artist at the same time. But you see a lot of those—especially, I mean, I read a lot of folk tale and fantasy inspired books, and they’ll have these traditional artworks for the covers, but you will see, if you read the fine print, you’ve got an artist and then you’ve got a designer. And it always fascinates me, just like you’re saying, Elena, to look at the original artwork in those cases and seeing how a designer has had to adapt that artwork…
Elena L. Perez (49:01):
Mm-hmm.
Cerid Jones (49:02):
…to be able to fit the format of a book. That’s such a special, underrated skill. I think that’s kind of what we are saying in this whole discussion here.
Elena L. Perez (49:12):
Yes.
Cerid Jones (49:12):
You know, there’s a lot to it.
Melissa Reynolds (49:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
Elena L. Perez (49:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I have so much admiration for people who can do that. I understand how much work it must take and I enjoy looking at it. I’m in awe of people who can do that.
Cerid Jones (49:25):
And I mean, thanks to things like Canva, which is is also like an AI kind of program.
Elena L. Perez (49:29):
Right.
Melissa Reynolds (49:29):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (49:30):
It’s made it so much more accessible for more people. I mean, I have a love-hate relationship with Canva because it makes so many things so much easier. I remember all those years I spent—I mean, I did my art degree years ago and I specialized in doing design and learning a very early version of Photoshop. All of that is pretty much gone to waste now because we’ve got AI tools…
Elena L. Perez (49:54):
Right.
Cerid Jones (49:55):
…like Canva that just automatically do these bits and pieces. I mean, I use Canva in conjunction with a program like Photoshop. I don’t currently have Photoshop but I’m using Gimp for certain bits and pieces. And then there’s another program that I’ve got. I’ve got four different programs that I’m trying to collate together to get there. But you can do so much in Canva and literally at a click of a button. The book format is already there for you to be able to use, so you don’t have to worry about using InDesign to shape everything. There’s a template ready to go that you can just adjust as long as you’re paying the ‘pro’, of course.
Elena L. Perez (50:31):
Somebody did have to create that template who had to have a design art degree.
Cerid Jones (50:36):
Yes.
Melissa Reynolds (50:36):
Mm-hmm.
Elena L. Perez (50:36):
So, I mean, it’s not like no work has gone into the template. It’s there. It’s just hidden (laughs).
Cerid Jones (50:43):
Yeah, yeah. It’s just, we don’t have to think about it.
Melissa Reynolds (50:45):
Saved my butt.
Cerid Jones (50:46):
(laughs) Yeah.
All (50:47):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (50:47):
Exactly.
Melissa Reynolds (50:48):
Yeah.
Elena L. Perez (50:50):
We can all pretend we’re designers and have fun. (laughs)
Cerid Jones (50:53):
Yeah. And we should. I mean, that’s kind of the point.
Elena L. Perez (50:56):
Right.
Cerid Jones (50:56):
If you are out there and you are listening to this, you know, and you’re interested about putting things together, Canva Pro is a coffee and a scone a month, you know what I mean? It is not an expense, you know? I mean, it is, but it’s not a huge one. Paying for Canva Pro for a month or two to do some designs and play around, it will give you an understanding of what can be done, what you can do yourself, understand more about what goes into the process. And it might also give more of an appreciation to why designers charge what they charge, because it’s not as easy as it looks, you know? I think it does cover a lot of bases and anyone in the industry should have a go playing around ’cause it’s such a valuable learning skill and perception changer.
Melissa Reynolds (51:48):
Tied into that, same idea with formatting. I used Atticus and—Cerid, with your story. (laughs) I’m teasing because she had a more complex type of formatting that I didn’t think I’d be able to do. But, you know, once you learn the program, it definitely was possible. Hopefully, you’re quite pleased with how it turned out. It is something that, you know, you don’t have to worry about the margins and the bleed and all this stuff because it’s built into Atticus.
Elena L. Perez (52:25):
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Reynolds (52:25):
Makes it something that you don’t have to know all of the things to be able to do it. You just need to learn how to use the program itself. Quick blurb on them—they also will promote their writers and the people who use their program.
Elena L. Perez (52:41):
Oh.
Melissa Reynolds (52:41):
I actually connected with a cover design artist and several authors because Atticus, if you put their tags in, let them know that you have published using their work, (and) they’ll promote you.
Elena L. Perez (52:54):
Wow.
Melissa Reynolds (52:55):
A bunch of authors who have done the same thing hop into your Instagram post and give you a boost and comment and I return the favor. So, now I know several new authors because of this program.
Elena L. Perez (53:07):
Yeah, that’s amazing.
Cerid Jones (53:09):
That is so cool.
Melissa Reynolds (53:09):
I don’t know if Scrivener does that.
Cerid Jones (53:10):
(laughs) I have no idea.
Melissa Reynolds (53:13):
But that might be worth looking into. They might have a community that could help you promote your anthology, as well, you know?
Elena L. Perez (53:23):
Yeah.
Cerid Jones (53:23):
Sure. That’s definitely worth looking into. And Mel did do a fantastic job with the formatting. I tend to…a lot of my works are hybrid and experimental, and Mel’s had to deal with a few of my pieces. (laughs) Just as a co-writer, co-eye, over some of the crazy things that I like to try and play with and she did an absolutely amazing job of finding ways to make it work with the limitations of parameters that you have from these kind of programs. Gary and I are about to embark on some similar kind of things and me being me, as we know, there’s some really creative, really fun stuff that I wanna do. Gary is already going, ‘look, we are limited by the program’.
All (54:09):
(laugh)
Cerid Jones (54:10):
‘You’re aware of this’. (laughs) But, but, surely, surely. So, I’m sure Gary’s gonna have some more hair pulling out while I will try and navigate what we can do with some of the pieces that we’ve got that require just a little bit of extra formatting, fiddling around. I will definitely have to learn formatting so that I can come back to Mel and to Gary and be like, ‘I’m so sorry. I was so difficult with all these things’.
Elena L. Perez (54:35):
(laughs).
Cerid Jones (54:35):
Because I know it’s gonna happen. (laughs)
Melissa Reynolds (54:39):
And, you know, I’ve learned through Atticus, they’re saying, ‘Hey, you can do these things. It’s okay, but if you make your own template, we can’t guarantee that it’s up to publishing standards for Amazon and all the other platforms’. So, I made it sound like it’s super limited, but it’s not quite as limited as what I first thought. Like I said, it’s definitely a matter of just getting in there and getting your hands dirty and figuring out the limits and how to push them. You know?
Cerid Jones (55:15):
I absolutely agree, Mel, I think most of these programs have backends that you can bend the rules, you can push just a little bit. You’re not as constrained as you think. It just might take a bit more hair pulling. Which I seem to have a trend of doing. (laughs)
Elena L. Perez (55:30):
You have to be determined and, Cerid, you’re definitely determined.
Cerid Jones (55:35):
It’s a polite way of putting it. (laughs)
All (55:39):
(laugh).
Cerid Jones (55:39):
I’m just very passionate, okay? I’m just very passionate.
Elena L. Perez (55:41):
You are, you are.
Cerid Jones (55:42):
And idiosyncratic. You know?
Melissa Reynolds (55:44):
Nothing wrong with that.
Elena L. Perez (55:47):
Definitely not.
Cerid Jones (55:48):
(laughs)
Elena L. Perez (55:50):
Well, we’ll leave it there. So, Mel, your anthology, “River and Stone”, is already out on Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and…am I missing any?
Melissa Reynolds (56:01):
Uh, many platforms. Draft2digital puts it on the European market. Cerid actually had a moment of, ‘I think someone stole your work ’cause it’s in French’. I’m, like, ‘Nope, nope, that’s Draft2Digital’.
Elena L. Perez (56:13):
Oh, nice.
Melissa Reynolds (56:14):
So, it’s widely available on a lot of different platforms. It’s really cool.
Elena L. Perez (56:19):
Amazing. Okay, great. Well, we’ll put links to that in our description so our listeners can check it out. And, Cerid, you said your anthology is due to be published hopefully end of November?
Cerid Jones (56:33):
Yeah, yeah.
Elena L. Perez (56:34):
Fingers crossed.
Cerid Jones (56:35):
Fingers crossed. So, yes, November is when it will be out. End of November. And I can’t wait to do a Metaworker project.
Elena L. Perez (56:44):
Hundred percent.
Melissa Reynolds (56:45):
Yes.
Cerid Jones (56:45):
You know, like something similar with The Metaworker, the three of us—ooh, we’d be a powerhouse.
Elena L. Perez (56:49):
Yep.
Melissa Reynolds (56:51):
I agree. 100%.
Elena L. Perez (56:54):
Well, we’ll leave our audience on a cliffhanger there and we’ll catch up with all of our listeners next time. Thank you for listening.
Melissa Reynolds (57:04):
Bye. Thank you.
Cerid Jones (57:05):
Thanks so much.
