One of my favorite things about editing and publishing the LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE series is the astonishing range of voices the stories present. During submission season, I honestly feel like I’m the richest person in the world because of all the wonderful stories that I get to read before anyone else! That said, every story is edited. Volume 3, whose theme was “The Color of My Vote” attracted a few first-time writers, which presented an interesting challenge: to edit the stories without killing what was unique about the stories—without quashing their voice. No crime seems as bad to me as killing a writer’s voice. Low Down Dirty Vote For example, one story came in full of extremely long paragraphs and used a lot of flowery language, uncommon in crime fiction. But the author writes in a tradition different from my own. His voice is deeply woven into the traditions of a different country and life experience from my own. And his unedited story had moved me deeply, sparked my imagination. So ...

~ Editor/Author/Publisher Mysti Berry is our guest at the Blood-Red Pencil today. ~ I’d like to share with you the most marvelous discoveries of my first adventure as a publisher. Editing a charity anthology LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE was my first time editing a collection. The process was a series of delightful discoveries punctuated by occasional fits of swearing at the software. I’ll spare you the swearing but share what I learned about crime writers during this madcap adventure.  Discovery #1: Crime Writers are Generous  Exhausted by my own pointless rage-tweeting and desperate to do something useful, I decided to publish an anthology of crime short stories to raise money to help fight voter suppression. I invited writer friends and writers who are barely more than acquaintances to contribute. Nearly all of them said yes. This astonished me, because most of the writers in the anthology are well published—he or she has something to lose if a story shows up in a low-q...