Zooming Pilgrims!

After two years of fumbling, the Ceaseless Way collaborative anthology looks like it’s finally happening.

We started back a couple of years ago when my friend (and former Durham Writing Group member) Kat Traylor proposed a collaborative project, loosely built around a theme of questing and pilgrimage. I submitted Impossible Things Before Breakfast, editing it slightly to give it more of a quest slant. Later, as we were a little short, I added Fiddler’s Black, which involves a quest for redemption.My friends Allegra Gullino and Ada Milenkovic Brown contributed stories, as did some of Kat’s friends I hadn’t met (e.g. Secily Luker). As usual we were slowed by assorted challenges, one person getting married, another getting pregnant; I’d have taken a lot longer if I hadn’t had two stories that fit the theme ready to go.A bigger problem was that trying to do things collaboratively — Kat did not want to be The Publisher — is always a challenge, particularly when communications are over Discus. Another problem is that we spent a lot of time trying to come up with a legal structure that would let us do multiple books. A partnership was the obvious option but some of the contributors wanted to stick with just contributing stories. And drafting a partnership agreement when we couldn’t guarantee having the same partners on future anthologies was difficult. Finally we speeded things up (Ada gets primary credit for this) by focusing on the one project we had right now. We drew up a collaborative contract and signed it.Another big step, starting in March, was doing monthly zoom meetings. As we’re scattered from Durham to Europe to Japan, it’s tricky to schedule but we’ve made it works. And talking to each other at the same time makes a huge difference in organizing, delegating tasks, etc.

I’m optimistic we’ll pull off our fall publication date after all.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jerry Grandenetti (t) and Rick Hoberg (b). All rights to images remain with current holders.