RIP Fred Patten (1940-2018)

Early this morning, I received news that Fred Patten passed away at the age of 77 on Monday, November 12th. My relationship with Fred Patten was only through email correspondence, but if ever I had a personal, professional editor, it was Fred. 

I first became acquainted with Fred when I asked him if he would review Opal Wine for me and I was delighted when he said yes. The result was a wonderful review and one I am both grateful for and proud of and you can read it here.

Sometime later, he asked me to consider contributing to an anthology he was collecting and unfortunately life events prohibited any work toward his vision. However, in the ensuing anthologies, I worked with Fred on contributing three titles:

• To The Reader..., published in the anthology Gods With Fur (2016)
• The Shrine War, published in the anthology Dogs of War (2017)
• In Search of the Creators, published in the anthology Exploring New Places (2018)

It was The Shrine War that served as the biggest challenge to my career and Fred and I corresponded frequently over its creation. Throughout all the dialogues I had with him, Fred always remained professional, friendly, and polite and his recommendations for edits were always correct.

It was a delight working with Fred. He taught me a lot and I am very grateful that he was the one who inspired me to write The Shrine War. Up until now, Coventry House that was published in my Opal Wine collection has always been my best-known work. I believe that if my extended version of The Shrine War is ever published, that is the novel that will make my career and it will be dedicated to Fred Patten's memory.

In closing, a jaw-dropping list of his accomplishments is found here. 

A Small Change of Plans

Though I have already started working on Incident at a Japanese Inn, I was approached by anthologist and editor Fred Patten to consider submitting to his upcoming anthology.

The official release for submissions follows:

FurPlanet Productions is announcing its next original short story anthology: 

Exploring New Places; an anthology of furry stories about going someplace new. That journey can be anything, from a comedy about someone going on a packaged vacation to an exotic resort where everything goes wrong, or a romance where they find Mr. or Ms. Right, to a horror story about an expedition to explore a new planet, or a historic drama about a sailing ship blown off course in a hurricane to an unknown continent. 

Length: 4,000 to 20,000 words. Lesser will be accepted. Longer … let’s discuss it. 

Opening: March 1 st , 2018. Deadline: May 31 st , 2018. To be published at Anthrocon 2018. 

Rating: G to PG. Keep it for all ages, for a family audience. 

No explicit erotica, but tasteful romance of any orientation is okay. Authors who want to contribute are urged to check with me (Fred Patten) first to make sure that their story ideas are not too close to others which are being submitted. Multiple submissions by an author will be considered, but simultaneous submission of a story to different anthologies will not be. 

Payment:  ½¢ per word upon publication and a contributor’s copy of Exploring New Places, a $19.95 anthology.  Contributors may buy additional copies at a 30% discount. 

Send submissions to fredpatten AT earthlink.net.

Now let me make it very clear. If Fred Patten asks me for a story, I'm going to do my best to make sure he's going to get a story.

I'm working on a short story I've entitled, In Search of the Creators and will reveal more about it in a future blog post.

Graphic courtesy of Max Pixel

Note: My completing the story does NOT imply automatic acceptance into the anthology. The divine right of editors outweighs the divine right of kings. If not accepted, the story will be released on my Wattpad site (and you should visit that link for some free stories from yours truly anyway).

Shrine War Has Been Accepted For Publication!

This morning I received some of the best news an author could receive:

Dear Alan;

Congratulations! Your story, "The Shrine War," has been chosen for publication in FurPlanet Productions' The Dogs of War.

Actually, FurPlanet's goal was 120,000 to 150,000 words. We got almost 40 stories and 300,000 words. So FurPlanet has decided to accept all the stories and to publish two anthologies, one in January and one later in the year. Your story will be published now.

Best wishes;
Fred Patten

The Shrine War took 116 days to research, write and revise and it was a labor of love. I'm delighted beyond words that Fred accepted my work and that it will be shared with the world. Thanks to everybody who walked this path of creation with me on this blog.

I especially want to thank Emily Parke Chase, Kathy McQuaig, John Walker, and Eric Hinkle for their editing help.

Anthology Editor Fred Patten Accepts My Story "To the Reader ..."

Anthology editor, Fred Patten emailed me Monday, May 2nd with the following good news:

Congratulations! (The anthology) Gods With Fur has closed (to submissions), and your "To the Reader ..." has been chosen for publication. The anthology will go on sale at Anthrocon in Pittsburgh on June 30.

I'm always delighted and honored to have any of my work appear in a Patten anthology. He has a fine literary ear and his ability to assemble a good anthology has been honed from years of practical experience.

"To the Reader ..." is a 200-word piece of flash fiction and will be the opening story of the anthology.

Here are the opening three paragraphs. Purchase the anthology after June 30th for more:

And so you have found me.
 
What? After all this searching, you hesitate? You draw back? You searched for a god and now you have found one and yet you clutch your electric torch in fear.

Is it that I wear the mundane form of a fox? Or maybe you searched for a god of greater power, one who does more than sit in some great underground labyrinth surrounded by books and scrolls and clay tablets?