Sea Shanties

Sea Shanties (2018) Post 385

Sea Shanties is an anthology, and I didn't write all of the text or even most of it. However, I did conceive it, orchestrate it and ringmaster it, and I, or various of my alter egos, did write some pieces as well as the links.
In some ways, Sea Shanties is related to one of our other efforts, Ssstories. After choosing the S-words for that one, I belatedly thought of all the ones that could have been in... sea, shells, songs, sand, stones, salt, sky, sunshine, summer... and a disproportionate number of these suggested sea. Rather than do Ssstories 2, we decided to do a sea-themed anthology, and here it is. The beauty of the sea as a theme is that it offers realism, myth, fantasy, sf, family, coming of age, humour, tragedy, the past, the future and a whole lot more. The sea touches every continent and island, and influences a great many cultures. 
All the anthologies to date have been fun to work on, but in some ways this has been the easiest, because it inspired so many diverse themes, characters and plots. And, although as I said, I don't write all or even most or much of the material, I do spend a lot of time working out the sequence and finding the correct balance of pieces. Obviously, I couldn't do this without the band of writers who share my fascination for the anthology form, so I'm lucky so many do!
Information on the how, why and wherefore of these enterprises is at http://www.printscharmingbooks.com

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. 2017 is now behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books, so the blog will continue for at least the next month or so.