Hey you. Yes you. I want you to write a story for my anthology.

What fresh hell is this? Only the freshest of hells, my darlings: No Shit, There I Was. And yes, that sure is my name as the editor.

See, this one time at this one con, I was sitting in the bar with other writers, and we were doing what writers do, which is drink and cry about our life choices, when I mentioned how I thought there should totally be an anthology where every story started with the immortal line, “No shit, there I was.” Because where those stories go is always a magical and at times intensely horrifying place. And every time I mentioned this fictitious anthology, my fellow writers would always laugh and say hell yeah, they’d either write a story for that, or read the shit out of it, or both.

Then one day I hauled out my threadbare little idea when I was in a bar with Steven Saus. Which lead to him sending me an e-mail that basically said, “Hey, were you actually serious about that anthology idea?”

And here we are.

Okay, everyone who ever told me that you thought that sounded like hella fun and you’d write a story: time to do the thing. And everyone else? You should write me something too. Give me comedy, give me tragedy, give me both at the same time so I won’t be sure if I’m crying with laughter or sorrow, just so long as it’s speculative fiction. I want to see all the interesting places your characters can go when you take a step past the obviousness of the line.

This is going to be awesome.