Interview with Award-Winning Anthology Editor Deborah Sheldon

 

Deborah Sheldon is well known for anthologies, and her latest offering, Spawn 2: More Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, promises to be exciting. Its predecessor won two awards! Spawn 2 certainly has big shoes to fill, but if Deborah’s past successes are anything to go by, then I have no doubt it will measure up. Maybe I’m biased because, I’m happy to say, one of my own stories was accepted for inclusion. I recently met with Deborah to talk about all things Spawn 2, covering the process of preparing the anthology from conception to publication.

The first Spawn anthology was a great success. Is that why Spawn 2 came into being?

When I first pitched my idea to IFWG back in 2020, it was always my intention that Spawn would be a trilogy of anthologies, despite the vagaries of publishing. The managing director of IFWG, Gerry Huntman, happily accepted the initial anthology, but decided to wait on its reception before giving any serious thought to sequels.

The first Spawn, which featured work by Australian writers, was critically acclaimed. Shortlisted for six awards, it won two of them: the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award for myself, and ‘Best Short Story’ for contributor Matt Tighe. In 2023, after signing again with IFWG, I opened Spawn 2 to writers from Australasia; the call-out was for citizens, residents and ex-pats.

The range and breadth of stories that poured in amazed me. While my submission guidelines had nominated ‘body horror’ as the base genre, I’d deliberately left the subgenre open to interpretation, as in, write whatever rings your bell. And Spawn 2 boasts a vast range of subgenres while still touching upon the ‘body horror’ theme of pregnancy, birth and babies. I’m very proud of this anthology.

 

Did the wide variety of subgenres pose any problems for you in terms of selection?

Since I read and write across all sorts of horror subgenres, this means – as an anthology editor – I’m open to whichever way writers might compose their stories. In my anthology callouts, I stipulate ‘body horror’ as the baseline, but I’ve never stipulated the subgenre. I love variety! Give me historical, futuristic, gothic, psychological, supernatural, paranormal, experimental, splatter, bizarro, whatever the hell you want. As long as your story addresses the central theme and ticks the ‘body horror’ box.

Just write it well. Don’t make me overuse my mental red pen.

 

Why was ‘body horror’ the baseline?

I guess I’m fixated on ‘body horror’ because that is our shared and lived experience; we can only encounter the world through our physical senses. To me, horror is deeply rooted inside the body with our fears and experiences of pain, deformity, illness and death.

By the way, I’ve noticed that some people mistake ‘splatter horror’ for ‘body horror’, but the former is all about extreme violence and attempts to nauseate the reader. I consider ‘splatter’ as a subgenre of ‘body horror’, not its synonym.

 

When you’re selecting stories for an anthology, how do you decide what’s in and what’s out?

This is the fourth anthology I’ve edited, so I have a system that works well for me. I read every submission more than once. Then, using a spreadsheet, I input information like word count, subgenre, logline, my initial thoughts, and whether my first editorial instinct is YES, NO, or MAYBE. Towards the end of the submission period, the MAYBE column becomes important. Which MAYBE stories might fill crucial gaps in the Table of Contents, and best hang together with the YES stories to create a more cohesive, satisfying whole? Figuring that out is, to me, one of the most important decisions an anthology editor can make.

For Spawn 2, I picked three MAYBE stories to round out the reader’s experience. (And I’ll never tell which stories they were!)

 

Can you tell us a bit more about what you’re looking for when you make the final selection from the shortlist?

Let’s assume that the story fits the thematic brief and is within the word count range.

Firstly, I’m a stickler for grammar. Without it, your story has a steep mountain to climb.

Secondly, I need the plot to make sense. Even if the story is set in another dimension, galaxy or reality, the rules of that setting need to be consistent.

Thirdly, the characters’ actions must also make sense. I consider plot and character to be essentially the same thing – as in, the characters’ actions and reactions decide what happens in the story – therefore, the plot can’t be at odds with character motivations.

Fourthly, I need dialogue that sounds natural.

Fifthly, be descriptive enough to show me the world I’m supposed to be seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and tasting.

Lastly, the story must stick the landing. We’ve been waiting all this time for the ending, so the wait must be worth it, even if it’s ambiguous. Leave the reader with a mood or impression.

If any one of these things don’t eventuate, I might not select your story for my anthology.

 

If you think a story isn’t quite up to scratch, do you automatically relegate it to the ‘no’ pile or do you give the writer the opportunity to rework it?

I’ve been a professional writer across a range of media for 38 years, so I feel like I know what I’m doing. If I think a story is good and has greater potential, I’m more than happy to work back and forth with a writer. I make suggestions, the writer rewrites, I offer feedback, and so on. The process continues until we’re both satisfied. As editor, I’m relieved to say my contributors have been pleased with our end results. So far, I’ve never had a writer withdraw a story. Fingers crossed, that won’t ever happen.

But it’s nerve-wracking to edit another writer’s work. Once I send the email with my edit suggestions, I’m restless and uncomfortable until I hear back. I can’t help but worry. Have I upset them? Pissed them off? Insulted them? It’s such a relief to get an enthusiastic response, and the vast majority of responses are exactly that.

 

Once you’ve finalised the story selection, how do you decide which stories go where in the contents line-up?

When ordering stories in an anthology, I try to create a sense of emotional flow and get a rhythm going, like the tide rolling upon a beach. Generally, I leave decisions on story order to my gut. After reading the stories so many times, I figure my gut knows best. My central question is always: What feels right?

For Spawn 2, like the other anthologies I’ve edited, I picked three stories as my scaffolding. One to open, one in the middle, one to finish. Every other story gets arranged around this skeleton, and for me, it’s a strategy that works well.

 

Obviously, you’ve had to reject some stories. Do you have any advice for writers on how to deal with rejections?

It’s easy to say, but writers shouldn’t feel upset by rejection. If your work is grammatically on point and of a publishable standard, then the rejection might be because your work missed the anthology’s theme, failed to fit within the already-accepted TOC, was too similar to an already-accepted story, or didn’t gel with the editor’s penchants. Don’t give up. I’ve had plenty of rejection letters over the course of my fiction-writing career, but I always resubmitted to other markets and subsequently achieved publication. Some projects find their home first-shot; others take the long way round. I’ve had a couple of stories that took years to find their home, but eventually they did.

Rejection comes with the territory. Don’t take it personally.

That said, for all my advice, I can still be dashed by a rejection letter, depending on how much I was pinning my hopes on acceptance. In my experience, the best way to minimise the sting of rejection is to have a range of projects doing the rounds at any one time. That way, if you get a rejection, you can brush it off by thinking, oh well, there are still the other projects that might do better. And then immediately find a new market for the rejected work.

 

So, after four anthologies, do you need a break or are you already contemplating the next one?

Producing an anthology is a lot of work. Reading the submissions, deciding on the final shape of the TOC, sending out acceptance and rejection emails, copy-editing each story and collaborating with the contributors on final versions, writing the introduction, preparing the publishable draft of the manuscript, proofreading the internal block, imagining the cover concept and liaising with the artist, organising the publicity, writing the promotional materials, wrangling 20+ contributors throughout the entire process… Oh, it’s a lot!

But it’s absorbing, challenging, fun and deeply rewarding. Editing an anthology can be as much work as writing a novel, yes, but it hammers at a different part of the brain. I hope to edit more anthologies. Once you get a taste, you can’t resist. I’m a senior editor at IFWG Publishing, specialising in dark/horror anthologies, so I guess I’d better keep brainstorming! Hopefully, Spawn 3 will come out some time in the next few years.

 

When it comes to reading for pleasure, do you only choose books from the genres you write in or are your tastes broader than that?

I read widely. From early 18th-century all the way to the current day; from noir to crime to sci-fi to horror; fiction to non-fiction; prose to poetry; and so on. I constantly want to read the best of the best from every era. Perhaps that’s why I like the stories in my anthologies to range across subgenres. Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes, and I happen to believe that.

 

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Spawn 2: More Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies

 

Back-Cover Blurb

A selection of the darkest Australasian fiction.

 

Curated by Deborah Sheldon, this second volume follows the multi-award-winning and multi-award-nominated anthology of Australian dread, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies.

 

Spawn 2 interprets and reinterprets pregnancy, birth and babies in a myriad of unexpected ways that will frighten, shock, disgust, horrify, surprise, and move you.

 

Penned by established authors and fresh new voices, these stories range from the folkloric and phantasmagorical, through sci-fi and cybernetics, to historical and the occult.

 

Prepare for an intimate, anxious, eviscerating read.

 

Featuring work by:

Dmitri Akers— Emma Rose Darcy—Matthew R. Davis—Rachel Denham-White—Jason Franks—Rowan Hill—Samuel M. Johnston—Carole Kelly—Ben Matthews—Lily Mulholland—Anthony O’Connor—Robyn O’Sullivan—Leanbh Pearson—Kat Pekin—Deryn Pittar—Dani Ringrose—Carol Ryles—Deborah Sheldon—Em Starr—H.K. Stubbs—Matt Tighe—Pauline Yates

 

https://www.amazon.com/Spawn-Weird-Horror-Pregnancy-Babies-ebook/dp/B0DD1F2JSQ

 

Editor Bio

DEBORAH SHELDON is a multi-award-winning author and anthology editor from Melbourne, Australia. She writes poems, short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. Her award-nominated titles include the novels Cretaceous Canyon, Body Farm Z, Contrition, and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and collections Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories, and Liminal Spaces: Horror Stories. Her latest title is the crime-horror novel Bodily Harm.

Deb’s collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Collected Work’ Award, was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award, and long-listed for a Bram Stoker. Her short fiction has been widely published, shortlisted for numerous Australian Shadows and Aurealis Awards, translated, and included in various ‘best of’ anthologies.

Deb has won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award three times: for Midnight Echo 14; and for the two anthologies she conceived and edited, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, and Killer Creatures Down Under: Horror Stories with Bite. As senior editor at IFWG Publishing, she specialises in horror anthologies of her own design.

Other credits include feature articles, non-fiction books (Reed Books, Random House), TV scripts such as NEIGHBOURS, stage plays, award-nominated poetry, and award-winning script editing and medical writing. Visit Deb at http://deborahsheldon.wordpress.com