I’m delighted to welcome Jean Gill, the award-winning Welsh author and photographer now living in the south of France. Her claim to fame is that she was the first woman to be a secondary school headteacher in the Welsh county of Dyfed.
Best known for her adult medieval adventure fiction, her 27 books include Young Adult dystopian fantasy, WW2 military history, a cheese cookbook and a dog book. Her latest series The Midwinter Dragon is set in 12th century Viking Orkney.
With Scottish parents, an English birthplace and French residence, she can usually support the winning team on most sporting occasions.
Jean is one of my fellow authors selected to write for a new collection of short stories ‘FATE’, commissioned by the Taw River Press.
Over to Jean!
When a fellow-author invites you to contribute to a multi-author anthology, it is a big compliment so whether or not I say yes, I always say thank you. I remember the days when such an invitation would have been a dream come true. I have never regretted saying yes because the collaboration has always been an enjoyable way of reaching new readers and meeting new writers but I have sometimes said no. I know what the pitfalls can be and thought I’d share with you some questions I ask myself before committing to such a project.
Is the organiser someone whose writing you respect and who can also herd us cats in order to publish a multi-author book?
‘You can judge people by the company they keep’ is a useful old saying. This is exactly what your readers will do.
Which other authors will be featured? Will you be happy to see your work published alongside such company? If not, you won’t want to promote the book, which will damage your reputation with your fellow-authors. And if you do recommend it, your readers will be equally disappointed. It is too late to pull out once you’ve read the whole book so check out the other contributors if you don’t know them. Ideally, ‘good company’ means that their readers might enjoy your books.
Chorus line working together! Photo © Jean Gill
What is the organiser’s aim and does this meet yours?
If the aim is high sales and a place on a bestsellers’ list, with large advertising contributions expected from all authors, that would not suit me. If it’s to enjoy collaborating and to reach new readers, that does suit me. One multi-genre anthology I took part in was organised by bestselling author L. J. Ross and her publicity team. We raised over £25,000 for the UK charity Shelter with the book Kindness. Wonderful! But all credit goes to L. J. Ross. Nothing more was expected of me than my story on the theme of kindness, and that I would share the book details with my readers. That was the unicorn anthology. Usually you can expect a few new readers, some new writer-friends to add to your network, and a boost to your writing output.
This is a publishing contract so treat it like one.
I don’t need legalese but I do want to know that the book will be professionally presented in editing, formatting and cover.
Will there be any royalty share or will the organiser invest any royalties after publishing costs in marketing or are proceeds going to a charity? (The three usual models).
If this is new work, exclusive to the anthology, for how long is this the case? Usually you will get the rights back after two or three years but before that time you must not publish your work elsewhere. Giving your story free to Patreon subscribers breaks an exclusivity agreement.
Honour your agreement and if you’re not sure whether you can e.g. enter a short story award, ask the organiser!
And – probably your first thought! – what are you going to write if, as is usually the case, it must be new work?
Do you want to write to the constraints given e.g. genre, theme and/or word count? What is the deadline and can you meet it?
The last time I received an invitation, I was in the middle of writing the third book in my Midwinter Dragon series so I should have said no. Also, I had no idea what I would write. Despite that, some instinct said, ‘Take a break. Have fun.’ I trusted the organiser and knew I would be in good company, some known writers, some new to me, all writing on historical themes, however different in style and period. I could pause work on my novel at the end of one of the dual narratives, as I write one at a time, then weave them together when I’ve completed both. So I said yes.
Some writers use out-takes from their series, or short stories developing minor characters, which are good ways to attract readers to your books. Nothing so sensible for me. My subconscious knows what is required and I wait. This story was so insistent that I wrote the first draft of 7,000 words in two airports, Lyon and Copenhagen, during two very long waits between connections. I was so immersed in my other world that I’m lucky I didn’t miss the gate announcement and I can’t wait to hear what readers think of the result, Six Pomegranate Seeds in the anthology Fate.
Perhaps an invitation to contribute to an anthology is on its way to you at this very moment. If you know your answers to my questions and still want to say YES! let the adventure begin!
Thank you, Jean. after I read your story in FATE, I have to say that I will not look at pomegranate seeds in the same way from now on. But I do love the return of spring…
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Find out more about Jean
Website: www.jeangill.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writerjeangill
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/writerjeangill.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writerjeangill/
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Jean’s latest series – The Midwinter Dragon is set in 12th century Viking Orkney.
Book 1 The Ring Breaker: 1150 Orkneyjar
Loyalty has a price the children pay
In the twilight of the old gods, when the last Vikings rule the seas, two cursed orphans meet on an Orkney beach and their fates collide.
Stripped of honour, facing bleak loneliness ahead, Skarfr and Hlif forge an unbreakable bond as they come of age in the savage Viking culture of blood debts and vengeance. To be accepted as adults, Skarfr must prove himself a warrior and Hlif must learn to use women’s weapons. Can they clear their names and choose their destiny? Or are they doomed by their fathers’ acts?
The award-winning author of The Troubadours Quartet returns to the 12th century, with skalds instead of troubadours and Viking warriors instead of crusaders. Get ready for authentic medieval adventures steeped in poetry, politics and passion. Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell Matthew Harffy and Madeline Miller.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ”So good I read it twice,” Lesley Walters, Goodreads
Historical Fiction Book of the Year 2023 – Bjørn Larssen, blogger at Queen’s Book Asylum
Shortlisted for the 2022 Selfies Award and the 2022 Chaucer Award; Quarter-Finalist in The Booklife Prize.
Buy the Ringbreaker here: https://books2read.com/Orkneyjar
And FATE? 
If you had a crystal ball to predict what lay ahead, would you be tempted to use it? Or would you leave the future to the turn of Fate?
Tales of history, mystery and magic – some comprising just one of these popular fiction genres, others, a mild mixture of all three.
Our aim, as well-known popular authors, is to entertain you – the reader – but also to share a smorgasbord of short stories that delve into different eras and different locations via different characters and events.
The common theme? Fate! And we should never try to out-do Fate, whatever her form…
Check out and buy the book HERE! https://mybook.to/FateAnthology
Stories by Annie Whitehead, Jean Gill, Marian L Thorpe Helen Hollick, Alison Morton, Elizabeth St. John, R. Marsden, Anna Belfrage, J.P. Reedman and Debbie Young
Watch the (rather fabulous) book trailer: https://youtu.be/M9pSrDX8PTQ
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
A great article Jean – and a good reminder that ‘not this time, but thanks so much for asking’ is an option, rather than taking on too much. I for one am very glad you said ‘yes’ to this one though, because I love your story!
Thank you so much, Annie! That is a big compliment coming from you and I’m glad you found my post useful.
Thank you for inviting me onto your blog, Alison. The topic really made me think about my experiences and I hope your readers find the post useful. I wish we did all look like the cowgirls line dancing 🙂 That was taken on a shoot I did in Barcelona. Four friends have fun outside their work, with home and children, by modelling in costumes. They really wanted to be cowgirls so four of us photographers got together in a studio and we all had fun. I guess that’s a different kind of multi-author anthology!
Fun is an essential part of the process!
It’s so helpful having this realistic take on working together. Most of the time writers are fairly solitary birds focusing on a single piece and it’s good for us to work on a joint project. But most importantly, it’s a chance to bring other people’s work to our readers’ notice.
That’s so true re us being solitary most of the time. I didn’t talk about ‘death by committee’ either – I do like there to be one organiser!
Absolutely!
Great post, Jean – and I love the line-up photo! As one of your fellow cowgirls – I mean, authors in this anthology (and indeed the “Everyday Kindness” one), I’d add another top tip: make sure you know the copyright status before agreeing.
For example, with “Everyday Kindness”, the publisher had exclusive audio rights, but I was allowed to reproduce the story in a later collection of my own short stories, “Christmas with Sophie Sayers”. That was fine by me, as I had no plans to turn it into audio (and besides, Celia Imrie’s reading would have been a hard act to follow!)
When I contributed a story to “The Little Shop of Murders”, the rights reverted to me only after that book was taken off the market, but as that anthology was only to be available for a year, that was fine by me. Worth knowing before the outset, so you don’t inadvertently scupper other plans for your story!
Conversely, there’s a time constraint for stories in “Fate”, so this will be the ONLY place readers can enjoy these stories for the foreseeable future, so buy your copies now, folks, and enjoy!
LOL Yes, the cowgirls are so us 🙂 Good point re rights and I’d forgotten audio etc. Thanks for the correct title re ‘Everyday Kindness’ too – I’m not multi-tasking well at the moment!
Thank you, Jean and Alison … for the FATE©, all the stories remain belonging to the authors – what you do with them is up to you – BUT I do ask that they’re not reprinted_ (in their original form) in order to keep the story exclusive – for marketing reasons.
However, if an author (Elizabeth St.John or Annie Whitehead for instance) decide to use their Fate story as a basis for a full, follow-up novel that might be a different matter… (Alison Morton used her story in EXILE as a background idea in her Roma Nova novel, Exsilium) You never know, I might turn my cavalier story into a novel one day…
But if anyone wants to produce Fate as an audio book – go ahead! 🙂
You’ve always been very clear, Helen. Thank you.
An excellent post, Jean. I enjoy the challenge to write outside my usual historical fantasy genre, too – anthologies test and stretch my skills.