Interview with Award-Winning Editor Deborah Sheldon

Interview with Award-Winning Editor Deborah Sheldon Deborah Sheldon is an award-winning and award-nominated author and editor. She produces everything from novels and novellas to short stories, poetry, and anthologies—of her own stories as well as multi-author collections. For her most recent offering, Killer Creatures Down Under: Horror Stories with Bite, Deb covered the whole process from concept through commissioning and selecting the stories, to editing them and arranging the final versions.  In the introduction to this collection, Deb says, “I’ve selected the ones that gripped me, unsettled me: stories that interpreted the theme in captivating, unexpected or shocking ways. You’re about to read an eclectic mix of disturbing tales that run the gamut from action to phantasmagorical to historical to futuristic to supernatural to psychological and more. My hope is that this anthology is the literary equivalent of a box of chocolates, assuming each chocolate is hazardous in its own delectable way.” I met up with Deb not long ago to congratulate her on the incredible variety in her ‘box of chocolates’, and to find out what is involved in producing an anthology. Deb, the quality and diversity of stories you selected for inclusion in this anthology is almost unbelievable! As the commissioning editor, what criteria do you use to rate each submission? Whenever I first read a submission, I’m wielding my mental ‘red pen’. I’m sensitive to blatant grammar issues, sloppy sentences, clichés, lazy writing choices. If I make it through the first few paragraphs of the story without overusing my red pen, I’m more inclined to relax and go along for the ride. My engagement, however, must last for the duration. If I’m reading a story and loving it, the closer I get to the end, the more nervous I become. I’m begging: Oh please, stick the landing!...
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