August 6th Update!
Both the US and UK edition proofs have arrived! Getting closer now everyone!
Those of you who have been with us for a while will already know a bit about this, but back in 2012 we ran our first international writing contest. People were asked to write an 8,000 word or less fantasy story. Six winners would be chosen out of the entries. This would give budding writers somewhere to publish their work and hopefully encourage fantasy readers who had perhaps always felt a desire to write something, but needed an extra push to “just do it”, somewhere familiar to send something in. To support this idea a few of our favorite authors were gracious enough to donate their work to our cause! This meant the six winners would be published along with a select group of professional fantasy authors giving our anthology a great mix of new talent and seasoned professionals.
The response was incredible! Over 1,700 people sent in stories, which took us a tad longer to go through than we originally anticipated. But now the wait is almost over!
I have it on good authority (Marc’s and my own) that the first Fantasy-Faction Anthology will be printed and ready to go sometime this very month! Here’s a bit of teaser for you until then. 😉
From award winning website, Fantasy-Faction, comes an anthology of short stories and articles celebrating the fantasy genre’s diversity. Dragons, magic, clones, portals and swords are just some of what awaits you on the quests and investigations within. Written by a combination of genre giants and previously unpublished authors, this is Fantasy-Faction in a book.
Which authors will be included in this impressive tome? Well aside from our six lucky winners, the anthology will include stories donated by Mark Lawrence, Jon Sprunk, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Myke Cole, Richard Ford, and Michael J. Sullivan, plus five articles by previous unannounced authors!
As you can tell I’m just a tiny bit excited about this. 😉 Marc and I are so happy to be able to give back even more to our amazing community. Not only will we be sharing these fantastic stories with you, but we will be using the profits to cover our server costs, keep Fantasy-Faction up and running, and fund future contests. Triple win!
Watch this space for more announcements in the coming weeks! And thank you all for making not only this anthology but also this site possible. You’re the best!
Richard Marpole
I am so glad that we are finally approaching the stage we can share it with everyone.
On that note, I’d also like to say thank you so much to those of you who first heard about this project in 2012 and have been patient with us whilst we worked on perfecting it. This is our first attempt at anything like this and it means so much to us that so many of you got involved and wished us well.
I really hope that when you get hold of the finished anthology you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We truly love every story and article that made it into this collection and we really believe it is worthy of being put out there as ‘Fantasy-Faction in a book’.
Huzzah! It’s finally here!!!!
It’s exciting and sounds awesome 🙂 And some damn good authors have contributed to it, to boot!
I’m wondering though, which of those user-created stories (if any) are being used? Is that still happening? I’m vaguely aware of a really fantastic, but really messy, post-by-post story being made by the users just after the anthology was announced. Whether the stories get used or not doesn’t matter, it was fun to participate 🙂
Congrats, guys! Great to see this site taking bold new steps 🙂
Regards,
Stew
Unfortunately I could not work the Faction Tale into the anthology. It’s need for editing was a bit over my expertise level. 🙂
Is that dragon eye a peek at a new cover? oooh. Can’t wait to read the new authors stories and see how mine that I didn’t finish in time to enter it in the comp compares to them.
It is! I can’t wait to show you all the full cover! 😀
This is great!! Congrats Marc and team!