Howdy
My name is Rob Howell, and I have the honor to be one of the founders of the Eldros Legacy project. I also have the honor to be the publisher of New Mythology Press, the fantasy imprint of Chris Kennedy Publishing that will be putting out all of the Eldros Legacy books.
I will be doing a periodic series of posts here entitled the Publisher Corner. As you can probably guess, this will be me writing about things while wearing the publisher hat.
I thought I’d start by explaining one of my primary goals with this series. Obviously, we all hope, writer, publisher, editor, artist, and team member alike, that the Eldros Legacy provides readers with a world they can count on for quality stories and characters you love. This, of course, is the main goal of the Eldros Legacy project. Cool stuff coming out consistently.
As publisher, though, I have other reasons for helping this project along. It starts, for me, with the Four Horsemen Universe founded by Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy. I am quite proud of what I’ve done with my other fiction, but it is the case that the 4HU gave me increased opportunities to reach new fans, hone my craft, and level up in this business.
This was no accident on their part, especially from Chris Kennedy.
The 4HU provided Chris with a way of fostering and bringing in new talent. Yes, the 4HU has been a wildly successful universe that has spawned its own fan club with branches around the world, but it has also been a breeding ground for writers.
I’m one of those. The Queen Elizabeth’s Own Foresters started as a short story I wasn’t sure would be accepted. Then, I got asked to do another short story. Then they let me do a novel, another short story, and another novel. Now, I have people wearing Foresters patches in the DragonCon parade and readers asking me when the next Foresters novel is coming out. How cool is that?
My experience in the 4HU convinced me of the awesomeness of shared world settings. Obviously, they’re awesome for readers. Many of our readers want new content coming out in a setting regularly. In fact, most of our readers want content faster than any one single writer, or even five of us, can provide, at least and retain the quality we expect of ourselves and you should require of us. So, the easy answer is to divide the load.
But there are other goals. We at Chris Kennedy Publishing and New Mythology Press want to encourage new writers. We’re going to give consistent opportunities to submit to open anthology calls, both in the Eldros Legacy and in other anthologies. In fact, we have an open call going right now. The details are here: https://chriskennedypublishing.com/2021/05/31/fantasci-2022-writing-contest/. This anthology is not an Eldros Legacy anthology per se, though there will be Eldros Legacy stories within it.
The point here is that if you’re a newer writer looking for opportunities, we want to provide some. Four stories in that anthology above will come from authors who are just getting started, along with some rock stars and some of our regulars. This is my standard arrangement for anthologies.
Down the road, as we get more established, there will be similar opportunities in the Eldros Legacy. It’s going to be a bit before we have open calls in the Eldros Legacy because we have a ton in the works right now. However, they’re going to happen, along with more general open calls such as the FantaSci 2022 call I linked above. If you are looking for such opportunities, subscribe either to my mailing list or the Eldros Legacy mailing list (preferably both) where I’ll announce all our open calls.
Starting on 2 November, our readers will have new Eldros Legacy content coming out each month. In the long term, we hope that some of you won’t just be readers and fans, but will also contribute to what is going to be an amazing project.
Here there be Giants, and someday, you could be one of them.