There have been many delays and problems in the background this year, some of them very serious indeed. We have lost another author – David Davis, whose book we were in the process of editing, has sadly passed away. That book remains in limbo until we can determine whether the family want us to proceed. It feels too early to intrude upon their grief.

In the last few years we have also lost Cade F.O.N Appolyon, Marsha Webb, and Dirk Vleugels/Justin Sanebridge to the Grim Reaper. Several others have become very quiet, we can only hope the list isn’t going to grow further.

Still, we must soldier on, and so the 21st Anthology, Halloween 2023, will open for submissions from August 24th to September 30th. It will be pretty tight to get it available for Halloween but there are further delays to come in August and Spetember that have to be taken into consideeration.

The stories should be in the 2000 word range. Longer stories are welcome, Very short ones (under 500 words) might not attract the full payment of £12 (UK money) but we are willing to negotiate on that. Many UK authors have opted to be paid in copies of the books, which is no problem. Overseas authors are better off taking the cash and buying copies locally, or just banking it, since postage charges will reduce the number of books they’d get if they are posted here.

The theme for this anthology is Halloween. It doesn’t have to be scary, but Halloween has to be an important component of the story. Basically, the story is happening at Halloween and there is a Halloween component that affects the story.

Well, when the first Underdog Anthology was published it seemed overly optimistic to call it Volume One. There might not have been a second. There are now twenty volumes out there and, fingers crossed, we’re still going.

All these disasters and delays can slow us down but they have so far failed to stop us.