Introducing David J. Williams

The first issue from Third Flatiron Anthologies is out, and we've already sold a few copies. I took out an ad on the current issue of Musa's Penumbra ezine, so I hope their readers will swing by to check us out.

I was a bit surprised when I put the issue out on Smashwords that it took so long to migrate over to their distribution sites (more than three weeks). The test I had done earlier seemed to indicate they worked much faster than that. Another unpleasant surprise was finding that they don't distribute to Amazon. They claimed they are "making progress" toward that.

So, I ended up creating my own .mobi-formatted version of "Over the Brink: Tales of Environmental Disaster," joining Amazon's Kindle publishing group, and putting it out there myself. On the plus side, I now have experience in converting to multiple e-formats, including epub and mobi, so that will free me to use whatever distributor I like in the future. I've noticed some other competitors to Smashwords on the rise.

Meanwhile, I have now begun reading the submissions for the upcoming 'War" issue, with the working title, "A High Shrill Thump."

At first, submissions dribbled in slowly, but toward the June 30 deadline, a lot more stories arrived, so I think readers will receive a good selection. (Why would writers procrastinate like that, do you suppose?) It has also helped to join a few forums, such as SFreader.com, where I am meeting some authors who I hope will appear in our anthologies. They have even kindly set up an area under their forum on Book, Magazine, and eZine Publishers to showcase Third Flatiron.

I am holding a spot in the war issue for a special writer. His name was David J. Williams, and he was my brother. The J. stood for Joseph. Joe always wanted to write science fiction and left behind some drafts of his stories. One, called "I Think I Won," is an excellent story on the horrors of war. It  also holds up surprisingly well to the test of time, considering that it was written in the early 1970s. I can divine hints of Ellison and Stephen King peeking out through the prose. Joe had a big vocabulary and a satirical descriptive technique, and he applied them skillfully in this story set at Cheyenne Mountain, the NORAD center near Colorado Springs.

Joe never managed to get published, but I feel honored that one of his stories will at last appear in a professional publication. The yellowing pages are now preserved in the digital universe.
Buy "A High Shrill Thump: War Stories" on Amazon.