Manifesto: UF Guest Post by Editor Tim Marquitz

Hi everyone!

Remember Manifesto, the urban fantasy anthology I reviewed just the other day? I liked it so much that I invited editor Tim Marquitz, a wonderful author and a very good friend of The Nocturnal Library, to share a few words about putting together such a well-rounded anthology. Here's what he wrote:

When Maja asked me to do a guest blog regarding Manifesto: UF, I was all, “Yay, I get to be at the Nocturnal Library again.” The warm fuzzies lasted a few minutes, but when I realized I had to come up with something witty and amusing, all those good feelings trickled down my pant leg.

I don’t do well under pressure. Anyway, I’m here, so I might as well pretend I have some clue as to what I’m doing, right?

When I set out to do my second anthology for Angelic Knight Press, I wanted to do something a little different. Being a big urban fantasy guy, I thought that would be the perfect fit, but again, I didn’t want to toe the line of established UF. If you’ve read my series, the Demon Squad, you know I don’t do traditional very well.

With that in mind, I approached Jeff Salyards, the author of Scourge of the Betrayer. That book is so not urban fantasy, but I knew Jeff could pull it off. He signed on without resistance, which was awesome, and things just stormed on from there. William Meikle was next, and I knew I was on to something fantastic. Willie brings it with every story. From there, I grabbed Tyson Mauermann as my co-editor because I knew I was digging a hole too deep for me to climb out of—given all my other commitments at the time—and the project exploded.

With Jeff and Willie on board, we were able to convince a number of other authors to join our cause, several of them—like Zachary Jernigan, Betsy Dornbusch, JM Martin, and Kenny Soward—jumped on the wagon entirely on their own, which was awesome. That only doubled our momentum, more authors agreeing, such as Lucy A. Snyder and Teresa Frohock. And then the submissions started rolling in.

Wow.

I didn’t know what to expect, but both Ty and I were blown away by the quality and diversity of the submissions. We picked up a ton of stories from celebrated bloggers and book reviewers as well as established authors and even some new ones. We had an influx of writers who had taken part in my previous anthology, Fading Light, who impressed us again, so while I’d been a little concerned about how things would turn out early on, the influx of stories coming in derailed that train of thought. We were bombarded with quality. In fact, it made it hard to choose some of the stories. We ended up rejecting people whose stories were fantastic, which was the worst part of the process. It always sucks to have to tell a talented author no.

That aside, both Ty and I were very happy to tell a whole bunch of authors yes. We even increased our story count to accommodate a number of folks we wouldn’t have been able to at my original story cap. And as always, the wonderful women at Angelic Knight Press helped us hone our book into something even better, allowing me to feel confident about my boast on the cover:

“The time has come to make a statement, to define a genre. This is our manifesto.”

I can only hope you agree.

ABOUT TIM:
Tim Marquitz is the author of the Demon Squad series, the Blood War Trilogy, as well as several standalone books, and numerous anthology appearances including Triumph Over Tragedy, Corrupts Absolutely?, Demonic Dolls, and the upcoming Neverland’s Library, and No Place Like Home.

The Editor in Chief of Ragnarok Publications, Tim most recently compiled and edited the Angelic Knight Press anthologies, Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous and Manifesto: UF. He has worked with such authors as Edward M. Erdelac, Lincoln Crisler, Naomi Clark, Noel Hynd (though uncredited), Alan Spencer, Nick Cato, and many others.

That's all for today, folks! Make sure to grab a copy of Manifesto when you get a chance, it really does define the genre. And check out Tim's  other books too, he has a gift for writing charming bastards who get right under your skin.

Thanks for stopping by!