If you don’t ask, you don’t get

I’m new to the world of science fiction publishing, although I do have experience in the martial arts journalism side of things – check out my bio – and I seem to have used that to my advantage.

As many of you will know, I’m the editor for Raus! Untoten! Recently I was at the Sci-Fi Weekender 4 which was full of authors such as Jonathan Green, Robert Rankin, Graham McNeil, Gav Thorpe, Amy McCulloch, Stacia Kane, Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Paul Cornell, Steve Lockley, Lee Harris, a whole of others, and me (of course).

As you all know, there’s no point being an editor if you don’t have any stories to edit. Now, if you read this blog regularly (please say you do), you’ll know that I wrote an article about social media and how I became an editor. It was basically down to me being naive and just asking.

So, I’m an editor of something that I believe is unbelievably cool, I mean, Undead and Nazis. I also need authors. And I’m at an event with award-winning, New York Times Bestselling authors. Pimm’s O’Clock! Seriously, what could go wrong.

Most people don’t realise that actors, authors, Grand Masters, and the Queen are all people. Just like them. Granted, some lead incredibly exciting and luxurious lives, but they’re all human and they all need to take a poo and wipe their own arses.

Being people, they like praise, they like to be treated like a person, and they like the opportunity to do what they enjoy doing, be that acting, writing or ruling the country (although I bet she wishes she had a lot more power than she really does).

Which means, if an someone walks up, talks to them like they’re just anybody else and then says ‘I’m editing this, do you want to play?’ that they’re as likely as anyone else to say ‘that sounds interesting, sure, send me the details.’

Or, in the case of Robert Rankin, they say, ‘I have just the thing, please free to choose from these titles.’ I must admit, I had a complete and total geek out and squee at that! Robert Rankin is interested in what I’m doing and is happy to give me carte blanche in picking out a story for the anthology.

Buoyed by this success, I subsequently approached a number of the authors mentioned above. All of them were interested, and some of them have started working on their submission. This is, quite simply, going to be an amazing anthology. Depending on how many people are accepted, it may well be a whole series of anthologies.

Hi, my name’s Matthew Sylvester and I’m an editor, with New York Times Bestselling authors writing for me.