#RedditWriters and the TL;DR Anthology
There are plenty of writing circles out there that aim to support budding authors. I've always found most to be far to clique-y and hard to get into. Other avenues also seemed too detached and formal.
Luckily, David Sand appeared on Reddit one day and proposed that the members of the /r/writing subreddit band together to create a connected team of writers over social media. Thus, #RedditWriters was born.
I haven't really experienced such a tight-knit, yet expansive community before. Twitter is perhaps the best place to host it, too, as people are continually updating each other and encouraging each other. It's great to see lots of connected people supporting fellow writers on an almost-daily basis.
Amidst that flurry of activity, Joe Butler had an idea of creating an anthology of works from the #RedditWriters community. Thus TL;DR was born.
[I also highly recommend following Joe on his blog, where he writes scary stories and hides them in hotels.]
TL;DR is being produced, edited and published via a group of volunteers, with all proceeds going to charity Médecins Sans Frontière. A total of 48 entries came in, with more than 60,000 words written.
I volunteered as one of the editors of the project, and had the privilege to read and review some pretty great pieces of work. I also submitted two pieces of my own, which I'm happy to say have been accepted.
The anthology will appear over the coming months, after which I will be able to link to it. For now, though, a summary of my stories will have to do:
A Job to Die For - Life in a mega-city is hard, especially when you have to steal for a living.
A Bargain in Blood - In the aftermath of a devastating human-vampire war, a lone lawman arrives in a sleepy rural village.
Hopefully this will be just the first of many collaborations undertaken by the #RedditWriters community. In the mean time, here are some of the fine people involved you can follow on social media: