For the last three years, fans of steampunk culture have gathered just north of Baltimore, Maryland, for The Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, which has panel discussions, authors, and something called “Tea Dueling.”
The gathering also comes with a short story anthology from the good people at eSpec Books.
In the following email interview, eSpec’s Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who edits these anthologies, talks about what went into this year’s volume, An Assembly Of Monsters (paperback, Kindle).
To start, what is the underlying theme of An Assembly Of Monsters? What connects these stories?
The Forgotten Lore series — of which An Assembly Of Monsters is volume three — is the companion volume to a literary scavenger hunt held each year at The Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival. The convention is in its third year, and each year the event has been based on the works of a Victorian-era author. For year three they are featuring two authors: Bram Stoker versus Mary Shelley. For obvious reasons the focus of our collection ended up being monsters.
Where did you get the idea for this anthology?
The folks at Tell-Tale Steampunk chose the authors and we set the theme based on their bodies of work. With previous years the collections focused on one landmark work by the author, highlighting one iconic element they were known for. Volume one was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and the convention’s mascot is a crow, so we went with A Cast Of Crows because each story had to contain a corvid with a Poe-inspired name.
Volume two was based on Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, and in keeping with the first volume we went with A Cry Of Hounds, where each story had to have a different hound in it, mostly supernatural in nature, in keeping with The Hound Of The Baskervilles.
In the instance of volume three, Stoker and Shelley wrote about every classic movie monster we can think of today, so An Assembly Of Monsters fit the pattern quite well.
All of the volumes, of course, are sprinkled with easter eggs of the featured author’s life and works, beyond the theme itself.
Now, did the stories have to be inspired or influenced by both Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or could they be inspired or influenced by one or the other?
That really depended on the author writing the story. Some focused solely or more heavily on one of the theme authors than the other, and some sprinkled their stories will elements nodding to both authors.
So, were the stories in An Assembly Of Monsters written for this anthology, or were they preexisting tales you selected for this book?
Because of the nature of the project, the stories have to be written specifically for the book to match that year’s theme. Reprints just wouldn’t fit the project well enough because of the nature of the scavenger hunt. It is a lot of work, but very rewarding. Many of the authors attend the show, as well, so the anthology is a way to gain more exposure through the scavenger hunt and the book launch we hold for the collection at the event.
How then did you get the stories for An Assembly Of Monsters? Did you ask specific writers to contribute, did you ask for submissions and picked the best one…?
For the first year, A Cast Of Crows was a combination of authors I’ve worked with before and invited to the project, mixed with authors I was not familiar with, but who were attending the convention. For subsequent volumes the authors from the first anthology were invited back, and new authors I thought suited to the project were brought aboard.
Originally, the convention organizers were just asking attending authors to write a brief passage featuring a crow of a specific name and that was all it was supposed to be. When the concept was explained to me I pointed out that rather than just an excerpt, they could have authors write full stories and eSpec could publish them in a collection to be featured at the convention. That went very well and we’ve been doing it ever since.
Were there any story-specific parameters that you gave the writers? I don’t mean like word count or anything technical like that, but did you say anything like, “Please no stories in which Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster team up to fight crime.”?
Things were a little tricky with this collection. Instead of having one common element (crow or hound) in their story, the authors had to feature monsters.
Now the two most famous monsters ever were at play, but we did not want story after story with just those two monsters in them, so the authors had to choose a monster from a list of those found in one or the other theme author’s works. We allowed a little overlap by means of secondary monsters, but no monster could appear in more than two stories, just to make sure all the stories were different.
In addition to the monster aspect, the authors also had to make sure to include a steampunk element that was more than just window-dressing, because the collection (and the convention) are steampunk themed, after all.
And did anyone suggest writing a story in which a mad scientist brings someone back from the dead, but Igor accidentally grabbed the corpse of a vampire? Or was that another idea you rejected outright?
Not…quite. But close enough to make me laugh. There is a story that bears a slight resemblance to the one that you pose, but with a bit of a different spin.
Given the connections to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it’s obvious the stories in An Assembly Of Monsters would be Gothic in nature. And you mentioned that because the convention is steampunk, the stories had to be as well., But are there other genres in these stories?
An Assembly Of Monsters is Gothic and steampunk, as you point out, and at times a little pulpish, like the penny-dreadfuls of the day. Mostly that means the authors tried to capture the essence of the theme author’s work, and put a steampunk spin on it. Such as John L. French’s “To Feel The Sun Again,” where a relative of Viktor Frankenstein takes up his work, but seeks to create steam-work bodies to house resurrected brains, or Michelle D. Sonnier’s “The Lambton Wyrm,” where the white worm is not quite what it seems.
Michelle D. Sonnier, John L. French
Now, along with all the stories, you also have an introduction by author Dacre Stoker [Dracula: The Un-Dead], who is the great grandnephew of Bram Stoker. Why did you decide to ask him to write an intro to this anthology?
Um…why wouldn’t I?! With Bram Stoker as one of the theme authors I would have been grossly remiss not to at least attempt to bring him in on the project. Several of my long-time authors are a part of the horror writers’ community, and know Dacre personally. Those authors also happen to be involved in this collection, so when the theme came up, it just plain made sense to see if Dacre was willing to be involved. We had hoped he might have time to write a story, but sadly time was too short. We are delighted he was able to write us a wonderful introduction, though, that nicely brings both our themed authors together in a surprising web of connections.
Hollywood has made many movies based on Dracula and Frankenstein. Are there any stories in An Assembly Of Monsters that you think would work really well as movies in the vein of previous Dracula and Frankenstein films? And I’m thinking more in the vein of the Universal ones or the Hammer Horror series, not the more recent missteps.
I think of all of the stories, my favorite for screen adaptation would be David Lee Summers’ “The Last Priestess.” It is a unique take on Shelley’s The Last Man, through the lens of a medium conversing with a mummy with a connection to the Aztec gods, granting her power of her own. I don’t want to give the story away, so that is all I will share, except to say that a movie based on this would have exciting cinematic potential.
Hildy Silverman’s “A Sad And Bitter World” and Ef Deal’s “Notre Dame de Linceul” would also be chilling.
Really, I can’t think of one story in this collection that wouldn’t make a fun movie.
So, is there anything else a potential reader might need to know about An Assembly Of Monsters?
Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley are so well known for one particular iconic title, but both authors had extensive bodies of work and touched on many different elements of the supernatural and monstrous (both man-made and otherwise). We hope that this collection might encourage readers to seek out some of those lesser-known titles, both short fiction and long…and prepare to be astounded.
Finally, An Assembly Of Monsters is not the first anthology you’ve assembled. If someone enjoys Assembly, which of your other anthologies would you suggest they read next and why that one?
I’ve compiled many anthologies that I am proud of, including The Chaos Clock, which is a mash-up of cosmic horror and steampunk, and The Side Of Good / The Side Of Evil, which is a superhero / supervillain flipbook, with one side being all from the superheroes’ perspective, and the flip side featuring the villains’ perspective.
Of course, there are always The Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies, which are sadly out of print, [though] we preserved part of the series through the Best Of Bad-Ass Faeries anthology in hopes that we will be inspired to create a fifth volume in the series someday. This four-volume series (Bad-Ass Faeries, Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad, Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory,and Bad-Ass Faeries 4: It’s Elemental) was a forerunner for “faeries that were not all goodness and light” to paraphrase Brian Froud, and was even mentioned in a New York Times article about dark faeries when they first became most popular.
