[Update: We are extending the deadline, so if you haven’t submitted your story yet, we’ll still consider it. The hard-and-fast deadline is December 1st.]
We’re so glad you’ve enjoyed our previous anthologies, Strongly Worded Women, Shout, and Denial Kills. For our next anthology, we want to do something a bit more novel (see what we did there?). This time, the stories will be nested, one within the other, like Russian nesting dolls. So here’s what you need to do: Write a story, 3k words or less, in which, at roughly the two-thirds mark, a character tells another character a story to illustrate a point. Only don’t write that story-within-a-story. Someone else’s story will be plugged in there! And someone else’s will be plugged into theirs. And so on. Then, the last third of your story will continue when the character responds to/ignores/fails to understand the story-within-the-story which you haven’t even read. And the end of your story will be the story another character responds to/ignores/fails to understand in someone else’s story! Write in any genre; it’s fine if a character in a sci-fi tells a fantasy story which includes a character who tells a Western which includes a character who tells a murder mystery which includes a character who tells a story that’s historical fiction! You won’t know which story will be set within yours and which story will envelope yours, so we hope this will be just as much fun for you as it will be for every other reader! It will be the ultimate celebration of storytelling. Send your story to NotAPipePublishing with the subject line: Nesting Doll Anthology. (We’ll choose a more fitting title for the anthology once we decide on the structure of the overarching narrative of all the stories.)
As always, our authors retain the rights to their work, and anthology contributors receive equal shares of the royalties from sales.
A little tip for being included: Make sure your characters, the setting, and the plot in the first two thirds is memorable enough that a reader will recognize them even with a bunch of stories shoehorned into the middle of yours. Admit it! You’re excited about this writing challenge, aren’t you? And we bet you know another writer who you’d like to see included inside or outside of your story, so share this announcement with them, too. Also, a web presence isn’t required for inclusion, but consider: We want to be able to promote you, and we want you to be able to promote the anthology. Read this.
Our anthologies have been packed with phenomenal, high-quality work, and the themes have been pretty heavy. We fought to make sure more women’s voices were being read. We shouted against the rising tide of fascism. We screamed about the danger of denial. Now let’s celebrate the way narratives are such an essential part of the human experience that our lives are stories within stories within stories within stories within stories…