On January 14, my first-ever short-story editing gig goes out into the world. While I have 18+ years of editing/publishing experience to my name AND a solid 7 years of professional-level writing experience as well, I had wanted to wait before bringing those two so-called areas of my expertise together. As the cliché goes, I was waiting for the right project.
That project was And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel. Coming in hardcover, paperback, and ebook, this anthology is one that I had conceived of years ago and last year finally found myself in a place where I could bring it to life.
These efforts were aided by the project’s originally intended publisher—the now defunct Hungry Shadow Press—whose guidance and funding have allowed me to add “publisher” to my list of titles.
Spotlighting the bizarrely beautiful and beautifully bizarre music and lyrics of indie folk rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, And One Day We Will Die features 22 short stories from the realms of weird, phantasmagoric, and speculative fiction, all inspired by the cult classic songs written and performed by Jeff Mangum and company. From alternate histories where happy endings are allowed and mythological re-imaginings that center love over destruction to awe-inspiring contemplations of the potential in the present and dark and unfathomable future visions, all featured authors selected one song from the beloved Neutral Milk Hotel songbook to use as a springboard for their tales.
I assembled a diverse array of authors and tales, with the love of Neutral Milk Hotel acting as connective tissue, solidifying into an all-star album’s worth of writing talent. Drawing from On Avery Island, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Ferris Wheel on Fire, and even some of the band’s bootleg recordings, these stories speak to the spark struck by Mangum’s haunting, inspiring, and perplexing creative output that burns with a passionate intensity through the prose offerings within.
Featuring fiction by:
Lillah Lawson
Helen Victoria Murray
M. Lopes da Silva
Camila Hamel
Briar Ripley Page
Joe Koch
Tiffany Morris
D. Matthew Urban
Christi Nogle
Tim Major
Dan Coxon
Matthew Kressel
Lindz McLeod
Erin Brown
Brian Evenson
Edward Barnfield
Dale Light
Corey Farrenkopf
Ai Jiang
Michael Horita
Richard Thomas
John Langan
And a Foreword by
Adam Clair (author of Endless Endless: A Lo-Fi History of the Elephant 6 Mystery)
Links to preorder the anthology can be found here.
For more on editing/curating themed collections and anthologies, check out the interview I did with Jennia D’Lima on her Writing and Editing podcast here.