Today I'm happy to present the seventh featured author in my Tuesday Heroes series: Eugie Foster, aka eugie, who wrote the story "Honor is a Game Mortals Play" for Heroes in Training. You can read about my other writers at http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/heroes+in+training.

Eugie Foster calls home a mildly haunted, fey-infested house in Metro Atlanta that she shares with her husband, Matthew, and her pet skunk, Hobkin. (And you should absolutely check out her pics of Hobkin -- he's a cute little skunk!) Her fiction has been translated into Greek, Hungarian, Polish, and French, received the Phobos Award, and been nominated for the British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Pushcart awards. Her publication credits include stories in Realms of Fantasy, The 3rd Alternative, Paradox, Cricket, Fantasy Magazine, Cicada, and anthologies Best New Fantasy (Wildside Press), Magic in the Mirrorstone (Mirrorstone Books), So Fey (Haworth Press), and Best New Romantic Fantasy 2 (Juno Books). She also pens a monthly column, Writing for Young Readers, and is the managing editor of Tangent.

I asked Eugie to tell us a bit about "Honor is a Game Mortals Play."

I've had a lifelong love affair with folklore and mythology, particularly that of the Far East, which shows up in much of my fiction. But a lot of traditional heroes, as viewed through the lens of contemporary criteria, come off as overly saccharine, two-dimensional, or milquetoast—characters to satirize rather than admire. So I was delighted when Jim invited me to contribute a story for this anthology. Thematically, Heroes in Training is positively rife with the makings of great storytelling, overflowing with opportunities for tragedy, comedy, and drama. Origin stories, in examining the before, provide us with the seminal obstacles and events that shape the valiant warriors and skillful magicians of legend before they became the superstars the bards sing about. It makes these heroes appealing again because we get to see them at a time when they're still filled with insecurity, fear, and doubt.

Writing "Honor is a Game Mortals Play" allowed me to indulge my predilection for Far Eastern fantasy as I took on the Japanese demon queller as my hero archetype. But Ayame, my demon queller in training, is a far cry from the depictions of legendary Shoki. And, of course, what's a demon queller without an oni?

Sadly, this will probably be the last Tuesday Heroes feature. But that's because a week from today, the anthology should start showing up in your local bookstores. So I hope you've enjoyed meeting some of my wonderful authors. For myself, I've had a great time, and I'm very much looking forward to getting my hands on the finished book!

Welcome to another edition of Tuesday Heroes. You can read about the other featured authors from Heroes in Training by clicking http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/heroes+in+training.

Today we have Esther Friesner, whose story "Roomies" opens the anthology.  (And which you'll be able to read for yourself in exactly three weeks!)

Most of you are probably familiar with Ms. Friesner and her work. She has written thirty-one novels and over one hundred fifty short stories, in addition to being the editor of seven popular anthologies. (Including Turn the Other Chick, which happens to have a story by yours truly!)

Ahem.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yes.  Friesner's work has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, Poland and Italy. She is also a published poet, a produced playwright, and once wrote an advice column, “Ask Auntie Esther.” Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in Writer’s Market and Writer’s Digest Books. Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story, she was a Nebula finalist three times and a Hugo finalist once. Her latest publications include Temping Fate from Dutton/Penguin; a short story collection, Death and the Librarian and Other Stories, from Thorndyke Press; and Turn the Other Chick from Baen Books, fifth in the popular “Chicks in Chainmail” series that she created and edits. She is currently working on two YA novels for Random House about young Helen of Troy, Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize. Educated at Vassar College, she went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University, where she taught for a number of years. She is married, the mother of two, harbors cats, and lives in Connecticut.

Given that workload, it's no wonder she was a bit too swamped to write up her thoughts on "Roomies." So instead, I'll give you this snippet from my introductory essay, where I'm discussing why Heroes in Training is such an attractive theme to me.

"It can sometimes be difficult to relate to the full-grown hero. But the hero in training, the man or woman who starts out as ordinary as you or me, these are characters we can identify with. Take the new student in Esther Friesner’s 'Roomies,' arriving for her first day at the Royal Academy of Damsels’ Arts. We’ve all been there."

Of course, the problems faced by Friesner's heroine run a bit deeper than worrying about showing up unprepared for a test....

It's a fun story, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's familiar with her work.  And if you're not familiar with her work, you're missing out.

Photo by Lazette Gifford

Many of you are probably already familiar with the work of Julie E. Czerneda. She's both an excellent author and a truly wonderful human being, my favorite combination. So I was delighted to receive her story, "A Touch of Blue: A Web Shifters Story" for Heroes in Training.

2007 marks ten years since Julie E. Czerneda’s first novel, A Thousand Words for Stranger, was published by DAW Books and there’ll be a special anniversary edition in August. As for now? Ten novels, twelve anthologies, and numerous short stories later, Julie’s just getting started. She’s having far too much fun to slow down. Watch for the special edition of Doranna Durgin’s Dun Lady’s Jess, the acclaimed fantasy novel which Julie has had the privilege of reprinting. Also, look for these titles this year: Under Cover of Darkness, co-edited with Jana Paniccia, Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science, and Julie’s new novel, Stratification #1: Reap the Wild Wind, prequel to her Trade Pact series, in stores this September.

I asked her to share a few words about her Heroes tale:

The moment I read the title and theme of Heroes in Training, I thought of my webshifter character Esen. She's the ultimate student, of biology and culture, and manages to get herself into trouble with each lesson. When I asked Jim about doing such a story, he was reassuringly interested. As for the story itself? I had a blast revealing more about the Web of Ersh and Esen's unlikely siblings. Not to mention poke some fun at interspecies' art appreciation. Thanks, Jim, for the opportunity. I hope your readers enjoy the result as much as I did the writing!

If you want a head start on this one, I would start with Beholder's Eye, which first introduced the world to Esen. And don't forget to check http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/heroes+in+training to meet some of the other authors from Heroes in Training.

As you know Bob, I've been introducing some of my authors from Heroes in Training, asking them to chat a bit about their stories. You can read up on previous authors Catherine Shaffer, Mike Jasper, and Vera Nazarian by clicking http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/heroes+in+training.

This week, we have Michael A. Burstein, aka mabfan, author of "The Wizard's Legacy." Michael is the winner of the 1997 Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and has earned ten Hugo nominations and three Nebula nominations for his short fiction, which appears mostly in Analog. He lives with his wife Nomi in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is an elected Town Meeting Member and Library Trustee. When not writing, he edits middle and high school Science textbooks. He has two degrees in Physics and attended the Clarion Workshop.

I asked Michael to share a little about "The Wizard's Legacy," and this is what he wrote:

When Jim asked me to write a story for Heroes in Training, I decided that this would be a good opportunity to attempt a traditional fantasy story. Most of my work is science fiction, and I haven't tried to write a straight fantasy story for quite a few years. In fact, the last time I can remember doing so was at Clarion, and one of my instructors told me that the story read like someone whose main knowledge of fantasy came from playing Dungeons & Dragons. (I complimented her on her insight.)

The premise of the book is to focus on heroes in training, of course, so I knew that my protagonist would have to be someone just starting out. Since my background is in hard science, I decided to write about magic, thus making my protagonist a wizard's apprentice. That gave me two characters to write about, and I figured I could write a story about the Wizard training his apprentice to take over defense of the kingdom. The only problem was that it didn't allow for any conflict other than the obvious.

But then I got to thinking: why does a wizard always have only one apprentice? Perhaps the magic of my world worked that way. When the time was right, the Wizard would see a vision of his one and only apprentice, and he would then summon the new apprentice to the capital city to be trained. But what if a building threat to the kingdom leads the magic to select two apprentices for the Wizard to train, not just one? And what if the two apprentices don't get along, and perhaps there's some secret underlying the magic's choice...

I hope folks will enjoy reading "The Wizard's Legacy" as much as I enjoyed creating it.

It's that time again -- time to meet your third author from Heroes in Training.

So far, I've introduced Mike Jasper and Vera Nazarian. Today I'm presenting Catherine Shaffer, aka ellameena, who wrote the story "The Apprentice."

I asked her to share a few words about herself, and she wrote back to say, "Ack. You people are always making me write my own bio. When can I get an official biographer?" But after a bit of persuasion, we achieved author bio.

Catherine Shaffer is a writer of science and fiction residing in Southeastern Michigan with a small band of humans, cats, and canines. She has published fiction in Analog, Oceans of the Mind, Turn the Other Chick, Heroes in Training, and Nature. Her nonfiction has appeared in many magazines including Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, Nature Biotechnology, Drug Discovery and Development, and Wired. When not writing, Catherine's hobbies include sleeping, eating, petting cats, doing laundry, chauffeuring children around, building tree forts, and picking blueberries.

I also happen to know through my nefarious sources that Catherine has a Tor editor expressing great interest in one of her novels. Having been fortunate enough to read said novel, I'm looking forward to the day they go ahead and buy it, just so I can promote it to all of my LJ buddies.

In the meantime though, you can read "The Apprentice" in September.

[This story] is a sequel to my acclaimed but little known story, "Improving Slay Times in the Common Dragon," which is funnier than Shrek 3 and also wickedly insightful (and can be read online for free at my web site). It continues the thrilling tale of ambitious grad student turned slacker Ivan Quickblade, and slacker princess turned ambitious career girl Sarinalova Royalanishka, who never expected to meet each other again after that fateful night on a moonlit hilltop. It additionally introduces a new character who may seem a bit familiar to those who follow reality television and also enjoy tabloid newspapers.

In closing, I'm going to continue the tradition Mike Jasper began, of snaring your interest by shamelessly exploiting pictures of my authors with their adorable kids. Here's Catherine and her son at the Science Fiction museum in Seattle.

Last week I introduced Mike Jasper, who wrote the story "Drinker" for Heroes in Training.

This week's author is Vera Nazarian. I had read maybe a quarter of Vera's book Dreams of the Compass Rose when I set the book down and hopped on the computer to ask if she would write me a story for Heroes in Training. She contributed "Three Names of the Hidden God", making me a very happy editor.

Vera immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, has seen her work on Preliminary Nebula Awards Ballots, honorably mentioned in Year's Best volumes, and translated into eight languages. She is the woman behind Norilana Books, publisher of the latest Sword & Sorceress anthology, as well as books by Sherwood Smith and Modean Moon. And she's also on LiveJournal as norilana.

I'll let Vera tell you a bit more about her story:

I am excited to say that "Three Names of the Hidden God" is a story that will eventually be the opening chapter for my new Compass Rose milieu "collage" novel GODS OF THE COMPASS ROSE.

In GODS -- composed in a similar structure of inter-connected stories with recurring and visiting characters as DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE -- the focus is on deities of various archetypes of human emotion and psyche. Real-life elements such as love, fear, compassion, loyalty, steadfastness, wonder, curiosity, despair, hope, confusion, etc., are personified, imbued with supernatural powers, and deified in each story-chapter. It's a somewhat pagan or maybe just very eldritch tradition of associating elements of power with individuals -- avatars, spirits, gods.

I've always wanted to explore deities of seemingly little and even insignificant things, somewhat in the tradition of Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS. But my take on this is steeped in antiquity, and I am not interested in bringing them forward in time to our own day and age. Instead, what I want to do is sweep the reader in a whirlwind time-stream, backwards, deep into the hoary mists of ancient history, the birthplace of the Compass Rose....

In this opening story, the Hidden God is a bit of a mystery. To say much more about the nature of this deity will result in a spoiler, but here's just a hint --- this particular god is very, very important.

You can find more of Vera's work in her collection Salt of the Air.

Normally, Monday would be LOLbook day, but since I was away from the computer for the past 9 days, I don't have anything ready for today. Sorry about that. However, I'm going to go ahead and start a new feature, one which introduces some of my wonderfully talented writers from Heroes in Training. I'll probably move this to Tuesdays or Wednesdays once I get back on the LOL train.

Anyway, without further ado, allow me to introduce Michael Jasper, author of "Drinker" in Heroes in Training.

Michael gets by on not enough sleep and too much caffeine in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he lives with his lovely wife Elizabeth and their amazing young son Drew. Michael's fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Fantasy Gone Wrong, Aeon, and Polyphony. His story collection Gunning for the Buddha came out in 2005 from Prime Books, his paranormal romance Heart's Revenge (writing as Julia C. Porter) came out in 2006 from Five Star, and his novel The Wannoshay Cycle is due out from Five Star in January of 2008.

"Drinker" gives some background on the Wannoshay. I asked him for a few thoughts on the story, and here's what he had to say:

I've always liked origin stories. For a while there, I couldn't get enough Batman Year One, Year Two, Year Twenty-One stories in the comic shops. There's something about the rough edges of someone who's just starting out in the heroing business, or reading about someone like my alien protagonist in my story "Drinker" who becomes a hero without really trying to. Those are the really interesting stories to me -- the hero who realizes he has to step up and take a chance, for the good of all. No matter what the cost. No matter what it does to him in the long run.

Because if being a hero was easy, everyone would be doing it.

You can read more of Mike's work in his collection Gunning for the Buddha (which includes four more Wannoshay tales). His novel The Wannoshay Cycle will also be coming out from Five Star, but that one doesn't have an ISBN or an Amazon link yet. I'll post an update when it does.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this wonderful shot of Mike and his son Drew. (Mike is the one with the glasses.)

The wonderful eugie just e-mailed me a copy of the cover art for HEROES IN TRAINING.

( Behold! )

Yup, that's my name on the front, right beneath Martin H. Greenberg :-)

Today's exciting news: Heroes in Training, the anthology I edited with Martin Greenberg, is available for pre-order at Amazon.com! I've listed the table of contents in the discussion forum at Amazon, and I also wrote a second post about the authors who wrote stories for their preexisting worlds/characters. (Peter David, Julie Czerneda, Vera Nazarian, and Michael Jasper.) The book comes out in September, but it's never too early to pre-order :-)

I've also noticed that the Amazon ranking for Goblin Quest has been in the teens all day. Anyone have any guesses what's going on there? Usually a jump like that means a review has gone live somewhere, or I've posted something silly about Jig and strippers, or something like that. But this time I'm clueless. Pleased, but clueless.

I'm working through the big battle at the end of Goblin War. I'm a little worried about it, actually. I have Jig doing something heroic, and it bugs me. These are extraordinary circumstances, but it still feels out of character for him. I don't want to wrap up the trilogy by turning Jig into a hero. I want him to be Jig. I want him to grow and to learn and to be more than he was at the beginning, but I still want him to be Jig.

The DAW anthology Heroes in Training, edited by Martin Greenberg and yours truly, is tentatively set for a September, 2007 release. Mark your calendars now so you can budget the $7 or $8 to get your very own copy!

The final manuscript for Heroes in Training has been turned in to DAW. The copyrights page indicates that we're set for a 2007 release, but I have nothing more specific yet.

But who cares? Here's the exciting part. Unless DAW overrules me on something, the final Table of Contents will be...

( LJ Cut to increase the suspense )

The Table of Contents for Heroes in Training is mostly finalized. (I'll make an official announcement once everything has cleared with my co-editor.) In the meantime, I'm almost done assembling the final manuscript.

What does this entail? Well, every author has a slightly different version of "Standard Manuscript Format." Some use smart quotes, others don't. Some use Courier, others Times New Roman. Some use Word's auto-format feature to replace three periods with a single ellipsis character. And of course, formatting sometimes changes invisibly within the document. Some paragraphs are tabbed, while others are auto-indented. This is fine on your computer, but when I standardize the margins to 1" all around, suddenly half of the paragraphs are indented 0.5" while the other half are indented 0.25". All underlining has been replaced by italics.

The most fun I had was with one writer who included footnotes in his story. I also used five (very funny, of course!) footnotes in my introduction. So Word remembered this and began numbering his with #6 until I inserted a section break at his story. I hope that doesn't cause problems with whatever software DAW uses.

I also replaced all double spaces bewteen sentences with single spaces, and searched to eliminate any triple-spaces as well.

em-dashes have been standardized.

Smart quotes have been corrected when they pointed the wrong way.

The whole thing has been spellchecked, so those authors who had a character's or country's name spelled differently on a page shouldn't have to worry.

Author bios have been converted to a standard format (names in bold, magazines and books in italics).

All headers and footers have been stripped out. (And left out, because I assume DAW will want to customize this themselves.)

All address and word count information has also been removed.

Things I have learned:

• Word can automatically find underlined text and replace the formatting with italics. Yay!!!


• Word's smart quote feature is a bit of a misnomer


• So is Standard Manuscript Format


• Even Big Name Authors can make the silly little mechanical errors


• No matter how many times you review the manuscript, you'll miss something


• Caring about a project means you burn out your eyeballs trying to catch everything ... even though there are many other people who will review the manuscript before it gets published.

I'll probably give the whole thing one more read this week before I turn it in. And then I'm done, at least for now...

Received my last Heroes in Training submission last night, and read it this morning. Woo hoo! Hopefully I'll have the manuscript put together and turned in by the end of the week. I really like the stories, and I've enjoyed working on this, but I'm ready to be done and getting back to The Stepsister Scheme, and from there to start working on Goblin War.

Of course, every time I try to think about the goblin book, bits for a second princesses novel keep popping into my head. I'm sure that will change once I get my brain back into goblin gear, but it's very annoying in the meantime.

Hm ... maybe I'll rewrite an old goblin short story to help make the transition. There's one sitting in my unsold pile that could use a little polish, and I can think of a few potential markets that pay pretty well.

I'm still waiting on a few rewrites and two stories, but both of the latter authors have been in touch, so I know what they're writing. So last night I sat down and began playing with the Table of Contents...

Ugh. Right now, I'm trying to spread things out so we don't have two very similar stories one after the other. The theme drew a lot of sword & sorcery, so that's a bit of a trick right there.

Then I have to figure out which story to lead with, and which should wrap things up. Not as easy or straightforward as I had hoped. I have one story I absolutely love, but the politics might turn people off, so I'm hesitant to open with that one. Some of my relatively new authors have written some great stories, but I suspect I'd be better off opening with a big name. I'm expecting to receive a kick-ass SF story in the next day or two, but if I put that at the beginning, I lose one of the few SF stories I can use to break up the fantasy.

And then there's the part of me that wonders if I'm worrying too much about varying things as I go. Would it really hurt anything if I put two funny S&S stories next to one another? Who knows, maybe people prefer their SF all in one dose :-) There aren't really any common themes (aside from the overriding anthology theme) I could use to group stories together...

I eventually came up with a rough order which I think will work. (And yes, I'll post it once things are finalized.) My next step is to start formatting the master manuscript, collecting the stories and getting them a bit more print-ready. This is something Tekno said they could do, but I wanted to give it a shot myself, for the experience. I've already started reformatting a few of the stories ... ouch. It's amazing how many different forms of "Standard Manuscript Format" you'll receive, even from established professionals. And then Word has it's own quirkiness when you reformat. I think I got through three of the stories before my eyes started to hurt.

But it's all good. Well, maybe not all good, but all educational.

Today I gritted my teeth and sat down to write the introduction for Heroes in Training. And I thought writing bios was rough. Trying to write a short, intelligent essay about your theme, while trying to develop the reader's interest and excitement and also plugging some of the wonderful stories I've received...it ain't as easy as it sounds, folks. To give you an idea, I usually write about 1000 or so words during my lunch break. Today I managed a little over 400.

I did get most of the way through a very rough draft. I may adjust it a bit as the last few stories trickle in, but at least now I have something to work with. I only hope I can write something that measures up to the wonderful stories I've received.

---

On a different note, I know there are at least a few anthology editors among my readers. I'd love to hear your thoughts as I'm slogging (and blogging!) my way through this process.

I mentioned yesterday that I've asked for edits on every story I've bought so far. (So to the HiT authors reading this, it's not just you :-) In some cases, it's a line that didn't flow right, or a paragraph where I couldn't keep track of who was speaking ... basically any time I feel myself get bumped out of the story, I look at that spot more closely.

Sometimes it's me being a bonehead. But if it's not, then isn't it my job to let the author know so s/he can make the story as strong as possible?

In some ways, it almost feels like I'm workshopping, but without the safety net of a group who can either agree or disagree with what I'm saying. And it's not my job to workshop the story. But it is my job to put together a kick-ass anthology. So what's the difference between workshopping and editing?

So far, everyone has been very calm and professional about it. A number of people have agreed and thanked me for helping them improve the story. A couple came back with something like, "Yeah, I wondered about that part too." One or two authors have disagreed about a few points. We talked about it, and that was that. No firebombings yet :-) But it's still a little intimidating to send out suggestions or rewrite requests to people whose publishing credits could bury mine so deeply they'd never be heard from again.

I chalk my whole editing kick up to one of two things. It could be because this is invite-only as opposed to an open submission anthology. If I was reading a few hundred stories, I have to believe my eyes would be a bit glassy, and the good stories would shine like they were printed on gold lame. But I'm getting about 15 stories, all of which are from good, established authors. So does that mean I read more closely, and I hone in on smaller trouble spots I might have otherwise missed? Could be...

My second theory is that I'm a control freak, and I'm simply incapable of letting anything go by without poking my finger in and stirring things up. Personally, I'm going with a blend of both theories.

Of course, it's also possible the next story will be absolutely perfect, and I'll have to come and rethink this whole entry.

Lessons learned so far from editing an invite-only anthology for DAW....

-Approximately one half of the writers will turn in a story by the deadline.

-One quarter will ask for extensions.

(The astute reader will note that this leaves 25% unaccounted for. I have noticed the same thing, which explains my current twitchiness.)

-Read the entire story before you panic about it being too similar to another writer's story.

-Professional authors are generally open to editorial feedback, even from a newbie editor, and will usually refrain from firebombing said newbie if he asks for revisions.

-The kind of story you're expecting an author to write, based on their work, may be very different indeed from what they turn in.

---

I've actually asked for revisions on every story I've read so far. Maybe the power is going to my head, I don't know. There have been a few points where the authors disagreed, but those were exceptions. As I work on this anthology, I'm still sorting out my job as editor. A part of that job, to me, is to help make these stories as good as possible, and that means pointing out areas where I think the story could be stronger, then letting the writer decide what to do with it.

I'm now reading through the four "on spec" stories I've received, the ones where I couldn't give a full and official invite, but asked authors to submit a story and I'd see whether or not I could use it. In some ways, these authors have to write even better stories than the folks on the official* list. If the latter give me a story with a few problems, I'll write back and talk about what we can do to fix them. If an on spec author gives me a flawed story, it would be just as easy for me to pick one of the others... That's not fair, I know. And I had hoped to read these four much earlier so I could offer thoughts and feedback. But the past few months have been more than a little nuts.

I won't be able to make final decisions on the on spec stories until I get all of the official ones in, which will probably be mid-April. Overall, I'm still excited and having fun with this project, but it's starting to feel a little more like work now that we're at deadline. I have a lot more reading to do, then it's time to put the whole manuscript together, write my introduction, and get the whole mess bundled off to Tekno.

After that, I can go back to having fun, wondering what the cover art will look like and gloating about my wonderful authors and their wonderful stories :-)



*I don't like the term "official" for this, but I'm at a loss for a better word.

I received my first story submission for Heroes in Training. Woo hoo!

I also received an e-mail from one of my authors, saying she would have to decline due to health issues. Damn! This is one of my favorite folks of all time, and I was really hoping she'd be able to contribute something.

Sigh. I'll get her next time. For now, that first sub has me itching to read the rest. ::Drums fingers on the desk::