Toward Choosing a New Anthology

I said I would use ten obliques without knowing how to choose the ten, so I decided to use every fifth one in the list. Therefore, my considerations are these:

• What does it look like from above or below?
• Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is?
• What is the very first thing to do on it? The seventh?
• Which season of the year suits it?
• Who is the villain in the mystery?
• What do I actively not want to do? Why?
• Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so?
• What can I do in the next minute to advance this project?
• Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?
• What has convinced Henny Penny the sky is falling?

And the issue to be resolved using these questions? The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology. By definition, the anthology will be a collection of memoir and nostalgia in the form of prose and poetry from a wide variety or authors all over the world. By tradition we will have four editors for the book, and some of those have been from outside for the last three anthologies. Those already published are described in the previous post.

1. What does it look like from above or below? It’s obvious utilizing arbitrary obliques in a somewhat boxed in context can get interesting. Above? I think of Flashlight Memories where the idea is a child hiding under the covers reading after bedtime. What’s above that? Certainly The Harsh and The Heart – Celebrating the Military with the jets flying in formation on the cover. Ideas coming from those could be other childhood activities that affected adult lives and other honored professions such as teaching and first responders.
   
2. Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is? Could the anthology be about items not in normal use in the 21st century but central to our past? Breadboxes perhaps, but record players, typewriters, Green Stamps, the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, flashbulbs, slide rules, milk bottles on the porch…
3. What is the first thing to do on it? The seventh?  Find a subject? Find editors? Structure a call for submissions? Actually this is the first thing, looking for a subject. The seventh? Without actually counting, I’ll say a call for submissions. This oblique seems to miss the mark on this issue. On to the next.
4. Which season of the year suits it? We’ve done an anthology on holidays throughout the year in A Quilt of Holidays. Would one on seasons work? One on months? Weather? Weather-related activities?
5. Who is the villain in the mystery? Hum. An anthology of real-life mysteries? The grouchiest person I ever knew? Evil people? (Do I get veto power now or must this stay chain of consciousness?) So, good people I didn’t get at first, the good in people I didn’t like?
6. What do I actively not want to do? Why? Well, if we were to do an anthology around songs that meant a lot to us, there would be a terrible copyright issue to address, and I’d avoid that at all costs because of that cost in time and – perhaps – cash. But we could do one on quotations that touched our lives.
7. Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so? Well, Cup of Comfort bit the dust but Chicken Soup is going strong – 250+ titles. SBB author Madonna Dries Christensen has a call for submissions for a Serendipity anthology, and NYMB (Not Your Mother’s Book) with SBB author Linda O’Connell has ten titles at his point. Silver Boomer Books is in great company and has a role to play in the genre. Again, no real meat to answer the query.
8. What can I do in the next minutes to advance this project? I could keep on writing here if I didn’t have to take the dog to the groomers in 22 minutes. Okay, I can finish this post. I can continue with the give-away of SBB books this month. But I need to – and shy away from – reach out to others who can expand the reach of this blog and therefore of Silver Boomer Books.
9. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?  Writing the oblique I didn’t think of calling on the dead, but the first I think of is my grandfather, Rhapherd T. Breedlove. I’ve got some of his writings posted on my genealogy pages. What could I learn from Pop? One thing would be to solicit verbal stories from some people perhaps. Pop wrote some great family history but when he sat down to write for publication, it lost the heart and soul of his just telling the story, orally or in letters or sermons. A collection of letters is a possibility. Or sermons. Nope. Don’t want to read the ones I wouldn’t want to publish. Spontaneity is what comes to mind: Pop telling the stories from the pulpit and Grandmom, from the choir loft, correcting him for what she believed to be factual errors.
10. What convinced Henny Penny the sky was falling? I’m laughing. I wrote the question but I just now researched the stories and in the nineteenth centuries they had endings totally politically incorrect today. Maybe my answer is stated in #7: “Cup of Comfort bit the dust.” What this is telling me is that the fate of a small publishing company and it’s products in the 21st century may well be an endangered species: i.e., the sky may really be falling. But then again, it will if I quit, and I don’t intend to quit and can’t control the future, so we’ll move on to the next books to be published by Silver Boomer Books and its imprints, ignoring the possibility of annihilation.

The results of the quest: The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology might be…

• childhood activities having lifelong affect
• teachers
• first responders
• items of nostalgia
• seasons
• months
• weather
• weather-related activities
• real life mysteries
• grouchy people
• evil people
• good people I didn’t like
• quotations that touched our lives
• answers yet to come from readers of this blog post and the prior one
• oral history passed down or recorded