Kerrie L. Hughes talks about “Gamer Fantastic” for “The Whole Is Greater”

The Whole is Greater is a semi-regular feature on the blog where I ask the editors of anthologies to tell us about their experience working on an anthology.  Today’s features Kerrie Hughes,whom I originally met at GenCon.  She’s been editing anthologies since 2005, and as damn near as many professional “hats” as I do.  Full disclosure: Kerrie bought my story “Coyote, Spider, Bat” for the anthology Westward Weird, but today she wanted to talk about her experiences editing another anthology.

Gamer Fantastic comes to mind because Gen Con has been my favorite convention and I was able to get an all star line up of gamers/writers from the people that have become my friends via the convention.

The stories are good of course because I only invite the best of the best, but this collection became a bittersweet effort because Gary Gygax passed away before he could get me a story.

Strangely, I had a hard time finding someone who wasn’t feuding with Gary to write an eulogy for him until Ed Greenwood stepped up and said he would be glad to. I dedicated the anthology to Gygax’s memory.

Brain Thomsen also passed away by the time the book came out which is sad. He wrote a fiction based on a true story about the power struggle for intellectual property that a major GC presence went through; deliciously scandalous.

Speaking of scandalous, Ed also wrote a story for the book that speaks to the trope of saving an Elf Princess.

Margaret Weis did an introduction for me and I got Don Bingle, one of the top ranked D&D players in the world to do one as well.

I also have stories from Chris Pierson (Dragonlance,) Jody Lynn Nye (SF&F legend,) Richard Lee Byers (The Sundering,) Bill Fawcett (Dragon Con,), SL Farrell (The Cloudmages,) Steven Schend (Forgotten Realms,) and Kris Kathryn Rusch (Legend in every area of writing,).

My favorite success story from this anthology is one that I suggested to Jim Hines. I wanted him to write a creature story featuring his fire spider from Goblin Quest for Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies. But it fit better in Gamer and I had fun telling him I was rejecting it for ZRKB then telling him it would be a main story in GF.
He liked the character from that short story so much that it became Libromancer and he thanked me in the book. Which is editor glee gold! The book has gone to multiple hardback printings and I believe he is on book 2 with the series.

I like all the anthologies I’ve done but this one is in my top five.

Good Fun! Game On!

Kerrie L. Hughes