Guest post by Edward Willett
Edward Willett is the award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, and host of the podcast The Worldshapers. His most recent novel is The Moonlit World, Book 3 of his Worldshapers series from DAW Books. He’s currently working on a sprawling space opera entitled The Tangled Stars for DAW. Other recent work includes the stand-alone science fiction novel The Cityborn (DAW) and the five-book young-adult fantasy series The Shards of Excalibur (Coteau Books). He’s also written for DAW as E.C. Blake (the Masks of Aygrima trilogy) and Lee Arthur Chane (Magebane). Ed, who is also a professional stage actor and singer, lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, with his wife, his daughter, and their black Siberian cat, Shadowpaw. Find Ed online at his website and on his Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Like most writers of science fiction and fantasy, I started as a reader. In our public library in Weyburn, Saskatchewan (pop. 10,000, according to the sign on the edge of town, but they were rounding up considerably) very science fiction and fantasy book bore a bright-yellow sticker on the spine, featuring a stylized atom with a rocketship nucleus. I methodically worked my way along the shelves until I’d read most of the books thus marked, from, roughly, Asimov to Zelazny.
Inspired (or possibly corrupted) by my reading, I wrote my first complete short story at the age of 11: “Kastra Glazz, Hypership Test Pilot.” My course was clearly set, and I’ve never wavered from it.
But while I could (and did) imagine myself as a writer, it never occurred to me I might one day be editing and publishing a short-story anthology like those I had often checked out from the library. And even had that thought crossed my mind, I would never have dreamed that within such an anthology, I might have stories by authors of the caliber of (deep breath) Seanan McGuire, Tanya Huff, David Weber, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., D.J. Butler, Christopher Ruocchio, John C. Wright, Shelley Adina, John Scalzi, David Brin, Julie E. Czerneda, Fonda Lee, Dr. Charles E. Gannon, Gareth L. Powell, Derek Kunsken, Thoriaya Dyer, and Joe Haldeman.
And yet, with the recent ebook publication by Shadowpaw Press of the anthology Shapers of Worlds (with a print edition coming in November), that’s exactly what’s happened.
I mean, Joe Haldeman? Had you told me when I was reading Forever War as a teenager that someday I would not only meet and interview Joe Haldeman, but I’d be republishing a Hugo Award-winning story of his (“Tricentennial”), I wouldn’t have believed it. Joe Haldeman and the other authors I read then seemed Olympians to me, forever out of my reach.
But years went by, as they tend to do. (Some much more slowly than others. Looking at you, 2020.) I started selling short stories and, eventually, novels. I even made it to a few science fiction conventions, something else that had seemed out of reach as a small-town prairie boy. I met some of the Olympians. Sometimes, I was on panels with them, or I’d go out to dinner with them, or we’d have drinks in the bar. I realized they were not, in fact, unapproachable.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2018, when, concurrent with the publication of Worldshaper, Book 1 in my portal-fantasy series Worldshapers from DAW Books (Book 3, The Moonlit World, just came out), I decided to leverage my experience as an erstwhile newspaper reporter and radio and TV host, and the contacts I had made in the genre, to launch a new podcast in which I talk to other science fiction and fantasy authors about the creative process.
I was thrilled by how many fabulous authors said, “Sure, I’ll talk to you.” The Worldshapers podcast took off with a bang—and continues.
Fast-forward again. In April 2019, at the annual meeting of SaskBooks, the association of Saskatchewan publishers of which I’m a member by virtue of owning Shadowpaw Press, a guest speaker talked about her success at Kickstarting anthologies.
Hey, I thought. I know some authors . . .
And thus was Shapers of Worlds conceived. I spun my wheels a bit at first—I’d never tried a Kickstarter and had to climb a learning curve. But in the end, I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, rolled up my metaphorical shirtsleeves, and set to it.
I asked my first-year guests if they’d be interested in contributing either an original story or a reprint, and all of the authors listed above contributed either an original story or a reprint (it’s about half and half). Many were also very generous in providing backers’ rewards. I built the campaign. It ran over the month of March 2020.
Wait. Something else happened in March 2020. I can’t quite put my finger on it . . . it’ll come to me . . .
Yes, I managed to launch my first-ever Kickstarter campaign just as the worldwide pandemic began its still-ongoing North American tour. But despite the uncertainty everyone felt, it funded! I’d aimed for $13,500 Canadian and ended up at $15,700. The book was a go.
Like potters shaping bowls from clay, authors shape their stories using a myriad of malleable elements: their own experiences, their hopes and fears and loves and hates, and their knowledge of history and science and human nature, all richly glazed with imagination and fired in the kiln of literary talent.
Shapers of Worlds is a showcase of the results. I’m thrilled to have been able to make it a reality and humbled by how generous all the contributing authors have been.
For all it can be fractious, the community of those who labor in the vineyards of science fiction and fantasy is united by the one thing all its members share: a love of telling stories set in the wide-open imaginative spaces their genre offers.
But I do have one regret about Shapers of Worlds. I can’t believe I just now thought of it: I totally could have designed the cover with a little yellow sticker on the back, featuring a stylized atom with a rocketship nucleus.
Drat!
