Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Grimm Tales--Untreed Read Freed!

We interrupt our irregularly unscheduled programming here at Confessions of Ignorance to make an important announcement. Well,important to me, anyway. Normally I have a bit of reluctance to turn my blogging world into a platform for self-promotion or even other promotion, but this time, I have no scruples. Riding on the coattails of my betters, I've got a story in a really terrific new anthology. Grimm Tales, edited by John Kenyon and with an introduction by the Galway master of crime writing himself, Ken Bruen, features a whole host of up and coming crime writers, all working out their own variation on the premise of taking a well known fairy tale and ringing some changes on it in a piece of contemporary crime fiction.      

John posted this challenge sometime toward the end of last year on his blog, Things I'd Rather Be Doing (I believe I actually learned about it through the  crime community connecting blog of Sean Patrick Reardon, Mindjacker), and about seventeen of us took the challenge and came up with something that looked pretty much like a crime story. There was a contest, and there were first, second and third place winners, but basically everyone just did this in the spirit of fun. That would have seemed to be the end of it, but one way and another John thought maybe a book could be made of it, and Untreed Reads gave him the greenlight for an ebook. I believe we all quite enthusiastically agreed to be part of the project. I mean, how hard is it to say yes, when the story has already been written?)

John has been faithfully shepherding the project through to publication and keeping us all posted on the book's progress. I don't know why it came as such a surprise to me when a couple of nights ago, he emailed us all that Grimm Tales was live. But it was a pretty exciting one.  

I like--really like--to read mysteries and crime fiction, but I'm not a crime fiction writer, so I have have a bit of a sheepish feeling about my own part in this. If you happen to read my story, you will quickly see that it is not really noir. It doesn't even totally qualify as crime fiction. So I was happy to get a little and quite unexpected nod from Ken Bruen in his introduction, making me feel that at least it was okay for my story to be included.

Anyway, enough about me. Rather than focussing on highlights, I'll just mention that a variety of familiar tales (and some not so familiar) and a smaller showing of nursery rhymes inspired the very various stories to be found here. For some reason, "Hansel and Gretel" had an outsize number of takers, but as you will see the outcomes are very, very different.

As you might suspect, Untreed Reads is all about ebooks, but if you don't have an ereader, don't despair. There is certain to be a format that you can download on to your computer if that's your option.        

You can check the link out HERE

(I know I put my story up on my Story Dump blog and linked to it from here, so a few regular readers may have already read mine. I'd buy it for the other storytellers anyway.) 

15 comments:

  1. Hey!!!!

    Congratulations. It looks great. I shall be getting myself a copy pronto!

    Nice work Ms Graham.

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  2. Cool. It's pretty fun. As you said recently, what matters is marketing, luck, and then talent. Maybe riding the coattails of the people with talent should be considered a fourth factor.

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  3. Hey, this is worth a bit of self-promotion!

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  4. Runnin' right along side you, oh sensation the Seanna ... with my contribution ~ 'YOU DIRTY RATS'. But the wonders of the way you tell the story of the genesis of our stories so seemingly long, long ago -- why that's prose in motion too.

    I'd buy the book if there were 17 youse. OH ~ I DID BUY THE BOOK ... Santa, I've been good this year, but this book rocks so hard it's a clever crime!

    And there's a grin in it a minute! Thanks John Kenyon. Thanks Untreed, Thanks Seana, Thanks Santa ~ No dash away, dash away, dash away all. Hook GRIMM TALES up to your e-reader's beckon-call.

    ~ Absolutely*Kate,
    Believing in Believers
    and the quantum-cool of great authors


    PS ~ "Bah Humbug" to the great Graham's humility. Her 'GATO' is simply purrrrfect.

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  5. Peter, I think for many people it's very hard to promote your own work, as you really have no idea of it's worth. So being able to promote a book regardless of that is a kind of win/win situation.

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  6. Kate, it is so nice to be in touch with you again and getting to know you and some of the other writers in the anthology has made the whole project worthwhile, regardless of outcome.

    For the random passerby, Kate is going to be putting up some posts around this book over at her wonderful and highly supportive blog At the Bijou.

    I think we all gonna be having some fun over there, which is something to look forward to in January...

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  7. SOunds good - going to look now.

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  8. Thanks for checking it out, Blackwatertown. I noticed you were over on Sean Patrick Reardon's blog just now too, and I'm sure that you will be happy to know that he has one of his live wire stories in the collection as well.

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  9. Congrats Seana, that's awesome!

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  10. Thank you, PQ. I have to say that it's been a fun project and I very much like the crowd associated with it too.

    It's a very odd thing about crime writers, that they tend to be so likeable. Which is not what I would say about every type of writer at all.

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  11. Oh, and I should say that our Finn group has been a bit on hiatus over the holidays, but I'm planning on getting back into gear shortly.

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  12. I can't wait to read this! What a brilliant idea - fairy tales as crime writing! hugs, Ann

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  13. Since it wasn't my idea, I can fully concur, Ann!

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