In keeping with a deadline I sent for my self when the year began, my short stories anthology is ready for publication. It has a tentative name, coined by my editor Mim Harrison. She also recommended a line-up of stories with what she considered stronger ones in the lead and finale. The title story, Appassionata, the strongest one, will be in the center.
The lead stories were On The Night Bus To Fethiye, Nightmare and Jarvis in Plastics. The latter began as Circus Plasticus but when I extended my Jarvis stories to a trilogy we changed the name to link all three (the others are Jarvis, In Deep and Jarvis, in Paradise.) I was pleasantly surprised that Nightmare, a surreal, Kafkaesque story – not exactly my style – was well received.
The anthology ends the with last Jarvis story and Nash, a sentimental, nostalgic story that brings the streets of old Istanbul to life, with its old American shared taxis. It is a story that I hope will evoke special emotions among my Turkish readers.
Overall there are seventeen stories with a word count of around 115,000.
Mim asked for photos to go with the stories. After much thought, I decided to hire an artist to draw black & white sketches to go with each. Rick Sparkes of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is on board for this task, currently discussing concepts with me by e mail. The commissioned artwork, my first ever, will get around copyright issues were I to have published photos instead.
In the meanwhile Createspace, Amazon.com’s publishing arm is also in the frey, ready to work on preliminary projects related to publication, cover art foremost among them/. We will proceed with these soon, while we await Rick’s drawings.
Pre-publication is a busy time, with lots of e mails going back and forth, numerous considerations of detail, and endless proofing. It is an exciting time, but one full of grunge work, all creativity and new writing on hold. I anticipate it will take around two months to get to publication.
