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In the fall of 2021, I was privileged to be a part of the Gilded Glass editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press. It was quite an experience really, to read through over six hundred short fiction submissions. We were looking for stories that fit our theme and criteria, were well crafted and thought provoking, and near ready for publication, requiring only minimal editing. When you have only two semesters to run through the entire publication process for an anthology, you don’t have the time for extensive editing on twenty to twenty-five stories. But as the months of the fall semester dwindled down, we ran a couple of elimination rounds and eventually, in one two and a half hour long Zoom call, selected twenty-two stories to be included in the anthology, including stories from five big name authors, which was very cool.
But it wasn’t easy. There were so many stories which were really good, which had to be rejected, because they didn’t quite fit the criteria, or just because there were others that were better, and there just wasn’t room within our budget to include more. However, as a small independent publisher myself, I just couldn’t bear to let some of these excellent tales be tossed to the side, when they really were good enough to find publication. There were many stories which I couldn’t bring myself to let go of.
Instead, I downloaded those stories and the authors’ contact information, and I extended invitations to have these story gems published in a different anthology, after the final decisions had been made for Gilded Glass and all rejection and acceptance letters had been sent out, of course. Some of the stories I saved fit the fairy tale theme well, while others may have had interesting incorporation of the mirror element and not so much emphasis on the folkloric aspects, and there were some stories which really didn’t fit either. Because of this, it was difficult to think of about a theme, although they did have certain things in common. What I came up with was enough stories to do three separately themed anthologies.
Fairy tales and folklore are a special kind of fantasy; the kind that takes you to magical lands, where anything is possible, and even evil curses can be overcome. They are filled with beautiful princesses and handsome princes, old hags and cagey witches, castles to be conquered, damsels to be rescued, and spells to be broken. I mean, what’s not to like?
Once Upon an Ever After is a collection of fairy tales, or fairy tale-like stories, salvaged from the slush pile, because I thought they were too good to be discarded. It’s a lovely and diverse collection of modern fairy tales and folklore. I do hope you’ll enjoy them. And now....
Be prepared to be enchanted...