Update on Submissions and New Books

September 7, 2010 — Hello Friends! It’s been almost a year since I started Dream of Things, and I’ve learned a lot in that time. One thing I learned is not to take on too much at one time. I was probably a little overzealous in posting calls for submissions for 15 anthologies all at once. And overzealous to publish three books in my first year. But I’ve read lots of great submissions, and the books are all going to be great reads.

The three books are Everything I Never Wanted to Be by Dina Kucera (release date: 10/1/10); Saying Goodbye, the first Dream of Things Anthology (release date: 10/11/10); and MFA in a Box by John Rember (release date: 1/1/11).

Pre-release copies of Everything I Never Wanted to Be are available from Dream of Things now. Saying Goodbye and MFA in a Box will be available in October. Reserve your copy now on Dream of Things.

The only drawback to being overzealous (aside from only getting four to five hours of sleep a night) is that it’s been a challenge to keep up with submissions. So thank you to writers everywhere for your patience. Here’s a quick update on submissions:

• Saying Goodbye: We have contacted all finalists and they have all agreed to be included in Saying Goodbye. If you have not yet been contacted, don’t despair. We had so many good submissions for Saying Goodbye that we are planning a second volume to be published in 2011. We will notify authors this week about the status of all submissions for Saying Goodbye. We’ll be asking several authors to let us consider their stories for the next volume, and all authors will have a chance to submit new stories when we reopen submissions for volume two later this fall.
• Holiday Stories: We’ll also be contacting all authors who submitted holiday stories. We had many great stories, but unfortunately, not enough to make a complete book. In retrospect, I should have kept submissions open longer. But if we were going to publish a collection of holiday stories this year (which was my hope), we had to close submissions when we did. As it is, we will reopen submissions and publish the anthology next year. We’ll be contacting all authors shortly on the status of submissions, and asking finalists for permission to keep their stories under consideration. We will understand if any finalists have an opportunity to publish elsewhere and want to withdraw a story.
• Other Anthologies: Now that I am caught up on the submissions for the Saying Goodbye and Holiday Stories anthologies, I promise to get caught up on all other anthologies. Over the next few weeks, I think I can get back to everybody who submitted a story prior to June 30…maybe I can even get caught up through the end of July. I’ll do my best!

Tagged as: anthology, Dina Kucera, Dream of Things, essays, Everything I Never Wanted to Be, holiday stories, John Rember, MFA in a Box, Mike O'Mary, Saying Goodbye, submissions