Winter in the City Update-12 January 2024

WINTER IN THE CITY: Editor’s Update 12 January 2024

Hello all!

I wanted to update you on the status of the anthology I’m editing for the House of Gamut called “Winter in the City.”

First, let me say it’s taken me longer than I thought to work through the slush pile. That was an overestimation of the available time split between the launch of House of Gamut, teaching my test class, the back-end necessities of running a non-profit, and the anthology. 

That’s on me. Fortunately, I’m now making up for lost time.

Second, I was overwhelmed by the fantastic response to our open call. We have nine invited authors and nine slots in the anthology that the open call was to fill.

As of this morning, we’ve had a total of 180 stories submitted for consideration.

You guys rock. You really do.

Let me share some upcoming deliverable dates with you as well as some statistics (as of today):

• The SLUSH Closing date for NEW requests is JANUARY 31, 2024. All those who have previously Claimed Cities still have until 3/31 to submit via Moshka.
• First-round SLUSH Rejections have started going out. The first round will be completed by 2 February 2024. One thing that I ask people to be cautious about is following the guidelines—especially:

• The SLUSH First round edits will be sent out by me no later than 29 February 2024.
• The SLUSH edits are due back to me by 15 March 2024.
• The SLUSH selection/final rejection notifications will go out by 30 March 2024. Contracts will be sent out that day to those stories selected for the anthology.
• The INVITEE due date for their story 1 is 31 March 2024.
• Final edits of the INVITEE stories will be discussed individually with the authors. The GOAL is to lock down the final stories by 30 April 2024.
• On 1 May 2024, all the final stories will be sent to the book designer.
• Also, on 1 May 2024, we will make the Table of Contents public for the anthology. Authors can now announce their participation on their social media platforms.
• We will send out ARCS for reviewers in JUNE (exact date TBD).
• A release date of 1 December 2024 is our target. Contributor copies will be mailed at that time.

Statistics as of 12 January

• Number of stories received via open call (slush): 180
• Number of Rejections/withdrawals/disqualifications: 58
• Number of Stories left to read: 78

One last note. I realize the information has been difficult to come by—certainly, a post on my author site is helpful, but moving forward, we have decided to spin up a “House of Gamut” discord server. We will link to that server beginning 1 February, and that will be the go-to for our readers, writers, and fans to gather as a community. Future updates will be posted on that platform.