Halloween and Christmas

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The latest Halloween anthology is now available in print and eBook formats. This is Underdog Anthology 15, ‘The Darkness at the End of October‘, and as with all these anthologies, is set at a bargain price.

The Christmas anthology is now open for submissions, but there’s no hurry. Due to a backlog of work we won’t begin editing until the beginning of November. Submissions are open until November 25th – this one needs to be ready to order in time for Christmas, and this year, it does look like there will be delivery delays. So it will need to be published fast, at least in the first week of December.

As always, the theme for this next anthology is Christmas but you can do with that what you will. A jolly tale, a hopeful tale, a tale with a smile, or a tale of destruction and despair. Any genre as long as it happens at Christmas.

Before that, of course, we have Halloween and our most recent anthology, with some carefully crafted tales for the darkening evenings.

Christmas anthology

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The Halloween anthology is now closed to submissions, although there are two promised stories that could still appear in time. Not much time because the Christmas anthology opens for submissions on October 15th, until November 30th. The rule is the same as always: it doesn’t matter what genre, it just has to be Christmas themed.

Editing on the Halloween stories is under way and already well advanced, contracts and then payments will go out shortly. It just needs a title…

Halloween, and expansion

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We are still in the throes of Covid, but life must go on and so must we.

The Halloween anthology is now open for submissions until midnight (UK time) on September 30th. Sorry it’s a bit tight but the Christmas anthology will follow this one very closely so it has to be fast.

As always, the stories don’t need to be horrifying, they just need Halloween as a central theme. Looking for around 2000 words per story, longer is welcome, shorter is okay, very short and we’ll come to some arrangement on payment.

In other news, one author has pointed out that some of his friends and family can’t access the print books on Amazon. We have avoided using Lulu.com so far, they have pretty steep postage charges and their book trim sizes are slightly different so the books and covers will need to be reformatted. However, there is some resistance to Amazon from increasing numbers of people, therefore we will need another outlet in addition to that one.

The eBooks already appear on smashwords.com and most make it through their distribution rules and appear on Barnes and Noble, Kobo etc, but so far the print books have only been on Amazon. Leg Iron Books will begin adding them to Lulu.com. It won’t be fast, there are still books in the editing queue, but it will happen. Single author books will be first and the anthologies will likely go in as three-book compilations. That will be faster than putting them all in individually.

Links will appear on the appropriate book pages as the books go live.

Meanwhile, Halloween is coming. If you have a good story, we’ll buy* it.

  • Note that Leg Iron Books only buys the right to use the story in the anthology. Copyright always remains with the author and the author can re-use the story in any way they please once the anthology goes live.

Next from Leg Iron Books

Leg Iron Books Posted on by

There have been some issues that have delayed and distracted from the business – none of them covid related but serious nonetheless. However, we are gradually getting back into the swing of things.

The next book should have been Wandra Nomad’s novel but there was a request from an author who is seriously ill, and it was a request that could be answered quickly. He wanted a very short collection of his Christmas stories in print so he could give them to his family, just in case…

The stories in question were all in previous Underdog Anthologies so were already edited, it was simply a matter of formatting and working on a cover. That collection is currently loading on Amazon and is already available as an eBook on Smashwords. It’s short, and the price reflects that.

It will be added to the site when all versions are available.

Updates

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The next Underdog Anthology closes for short story submissions on 1st April, although this one is no longer tied to any calendar event so we can be a little bit flexible on that – but only by a few days. This one is any genre, any (legal) subject. Stories should be somewhere around the 2000 words mark but we’re always flexible on that one. If your stories are very short we can come to an agreement on payment.

In other news, Mark Ellott’s book ‘Ransom‘ has a new and massively improved cover and there are two more books in editing.

It has been a dreadful year and it looks set to continue for some time yet. Books are a good way to escape this mad world for a while, and we have quite a varied range now. Take a look around.

Reiver – Mark Ellott

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The latest novel from Mark Ellott is now loading on Amazon and is already available on Smashwords. It will shortly appear in Kindle and print formats on Amazon.

It seems that if you attempt to add a direct link to an entirely non-controversial historical fiction book on Smashwords, Farcebok will tag it as ‘403-Forbidden’ so let’s try an indirect link and see if that gets through. If we get banned from Farcebok, no biggie, its increasingly bizarre and random censorship is rapidly rendering it useless anyway.

Twitter is losing out to Gab and Parler, it won’t be long before Farcebok goes the same way as Compuserve. Times change and if you don’t, then time leaves you behind.

So, Leg Iron Books is on the lookout for the inevitable replacement for Farcebok. We’ll see you there.

Back to work

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The backlog of novels still exists but is reducing. Mark Ellot’s next book, ‘Reiver’, will soon be available and the Spring anthology will open for short story submissions between March 1st and April 2nd. This one is a free-for-all, any genre, and it’s a paying gig. £12 per story, unless it’s really short then we’ll negotiate something.

Christmas is coming

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The Christmas anthology nears completion. It does have some cheery tales but given the current state of the world it should come as no surprise that it also has some pretty bleak ones. It has not been a good year and it looks like it’s going to be a grim Christmas for most of us.

The cover is ready to go, author contracts are going out and this book should be available in under a week. It includes many old favourites and a couple of new authors.

Christmas is coming

Leg Iron Books Posted on by

It doesn’t look like it’s going to be much fun this year, in the UK at least. There will however be an Underdog Anthology as usual.

Number 13 has a good crop of stories. Submission has now closed and editing is beginning. We hope to have this out in the first week of December since this year there is likely to be even harder pressure on deliveries than usual.

Quarterly author payments on novels and collections will go out on November 30th too.

There are more books to deal with, we have a backlog here, so Leg Iron Books will close to new submissions now until early January.

This was something we never expected to do, this started as almost a hobby press and we never expected it to reach a volume of work where we’d have to say ‘whoah’, but here we are.

If you have something ready to send, you have at least six weeks to double and triple check it before we’re ready to look at it in January.

Take a day off for Christmas though. You’ve earned it.