It takes a great deal of commitment and effort to run a small press. Nick Bailey and Darren Bullock are two intrepid souls hoping to make a difference. Nick and Darren created Dust Publishing to bring stories from some of today’s brightest up and coming SFF, horror and supernatural writers. The Last City is Dust Publishing’s first anthology aimed at doing just that.
Welcome to SFFWorld, this is Dust Publishing’s first anthology. The contributing authors for the anthology features many well-known and influential indie names. From a marketing point of view, this makes sense but why have you also chosen to include new names?
Nick and Darren — As independent authors ourselves, we know only too well how daunting the writing world can be. So, with that in mind, we wanted to offer the opportunity for less well-known authors to get a new piece of work out into the world. Everyone in the line-up has got some published work available, some more than others. There are a large number of relatively unknown authors out there who are creating great works of fiction.
Where did the inspiration for the name “Dust Publishing” come from?
Nick and Darren — Ha, well, we were discussing what to name our press. We wanted something simple, but memorable and were wracking our brains for a while. Then we gave up, and got back down to discussing our next novel and I happened to mention dust gangs (there is a post-apocalyptic world in our universe, and the wastelands are called The Dust), and Darren blurted out “DUST PUBLISHING!” and right there, Dust Publishing was named.
Where did the idea for the theme come from?
Nick and Darren — We have a huge list of possible settings in our collective mind, this was just one of those things simmering away back there. It started off as a city on a world ravaged by an apocalyptic war, then we decided to isolate it even further by having the City literally drifting slowly around its home star system, and the whole star system to be a post apocalyptic setting. We liked the idea of a whole system being almost sterilised of human life. We wanted to build a basic framework that allowed the authors a great deal of freedom in what they wrote, but within that initial frame.
How difficult was it to select stories that met the theme?
Nick and Darren — It’s a pretty hard task, the worst part is telling people that we won’t be using their story. I actually didn’t realise how emotionally challenging that would be, knowing just how much work people put into a story, only to have to turn it down. It isn’t a nice feeling, and being writers ourselves, we know only too well how it feels from the author’s perspective.
The Last City promises readers a shared universe with stories from authors, Robert M Campbell, Jo Zebedee, Scott Moon, Juliana Spink Mills, Nathan Hystad, Jane Jago, E.M. Swift-Hook, Rosie Oliver, Chris Guillory, Samanda R. Primeau, Thaddeus White, and Stewart Hotston.
The Blurb
The City, built upon an asteroid, is the last stronghold of humanity in a star system ravaged by a long-ago war. Now, centuries after the apocalyptic conflict, the City thrives — a utopia for the rich, built on the labours of the poor.
From the home of five million souls come twelve stories of adventure, love and loss. Take a leap with Tinashe Arcaid, super-rich brat who thinks adventure is a trip to the dangerous lower levels; crawl through tunnels with Chthenia, a child ‘apprenticed’ to a scavenger who dwells deep beneath the City; or have a drink with Sam Nero, private investigator, dealing with gangsters on the mean streets.
Life in the City can be harsh, but the alternatives are far worse.
Jamie Glover is the artist who was tasked not only with capturing the reader’s eye, but also designing something which would stand out in a sea of covers.
Creating a cover is perhaps the most important thing when it comes to presentation. Certainly the most immediate. How did you come to the final image?
I’ve known Nick for years and Darren for a good while, and we share a lot of influences and our general outlook on life, which makes it a pleasure to work with them. I’d roughed out a few basic ideas and we met up on person to discuss where to take the cover. The book was always going to be about the people in the city, and I felt it should have a strong human element on the cover whilst also world-building the universe. After a couple of sketches it became clear that demonstrating this unique world from an inside visual perspective was going to be difficult as everything is fully enclosed. We settled on a view of the entire habitat with a human front and centre, and I added some storytelling to the scene with the cracked visor and escaping air. Hopefully it immediately sets the genre and tone of the book at a glance.
Bringing all the stories together falls to the editor, Samanda R. Primeau, who also has a story included in the anthology.
Compared to editing a novel, what’s the biggest challenge when editing an anthology?
The biggest challenge with an anthology is matching the conventions among all the stories from different authors. Sometimes it includes standardizing (or standardising) to either US or UK style, but in this case the publishers chose to leave each story in the style of its country of origin, in keeping with the variations seen in the denizens of the Island. Nevertheless, in order to make that work, it’s necessary to make the punctuation and such consistent throughout, and that meant adjusting a dozen different authors’ styles in a dozen different files, to make a cohesive whole.
Then there was the terminology peculiar to our particular little world: glides, for instance. That’s the primary mode of transportation for many of the people of the City. And the “throwbacks”, a sort of low-caste genetic subset stemming from an Old Earth generation ship. A number of things like these needed to be checked and made consistent.
However, the thing about working on a shared-world anthology is that everyone understands the need for that consistency, and they’re all happy to help make their story fit snugly into the world — in many cases, they’ve already collaborated with another author or two in the beta phase, to combine ideas and bind their stories together. And the celebrations at the end are times twelve!
Not that an author should ever come last in the process, but with twelve different stories it only seemed fair to find out a little more about them.
The theme of the anthology is broad, “The Last City”, how did your initial idea grow into the story featured?
Robert M Campbell – I wasn’t going to submit to another anthology this year, but I was lured in by the “levels” concept in The Last City. I’d just recently read Ballard’s High Rise and it was a similar concept but across an entire city. I dropped a little homage in there with my partying aristocratic dilettantes. I wanted to have someone from the upper levels thrown into a situation he was totally incapable of dealing with.
Jane Jago – My hero, Sam Nero, came into my head almost fully fledged. He is a tribute to nineteen-thirties film noir, only taken into the future. Imagine Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in ‘To Have and Have Not’ and you will understand the feel. Add in a hologram who thinks she is Marilyn Monroe and you will maybe see where the story came from.
Nathan Hystad – I read over the premise a few times, and I had an idea about an ID Tag ring a cop was sent to bust with a twist. I plotted the whole thing, but I was getting the sense there were a few stories of the same ilk, so I switched gears after about 2000 words, and came up with a new idea. I loved the idea of doing something off-asteroid. I wanted to add some depth to the universe. It was a what if story. What if a mining crew had something go wrong and had to land on another planet, and then found something that would forever change their lives? We get a different perspective on Strand, and how things operate outside the ‘safety’ of The Last City. It was a lot of fun to write.
Juliana Spink Mills – I thought it would be fun to write a story about a character that everyone underestimated. Pretty soon, I had a deaf main character and the start of a crime tale that very quickly turned into gruesome murder. As for the flesh-eating fungi, I actually have no idea where that came from! It definitely made for some pretty disturbing internet searches, though.
Chris Guillory – The original story was more of a lower level cop determined to solve a murder caused by an upper level citizen. Because of the victim being of a lower class, those in the upper levels were quick to sweep it all under the rug. The lower level cop remained, but instead of a victim, I introduced someone from the outside that nobody is prepared to handle. Not the cop, or those in the upper levels.
Stewart Hotston –I love looking at societies with pressures on them and thinking how do they really function. I love to peel away the systems of power and privilege and look at those who make the lights work, who take away the trash, who keep your water running and see what they’re struggling with because sometimes it’s even more epic than what the big cahunas are dealing with. In this case the idea that the city has been built out and on top of a gigantic rock immediately got me thinking about those whose lives hadn’t worked out. It’s not a new place, it’s a city that’s established, that’s got its ways of being and that means for each person at the top there are ten below them struggling to get by. How they manage when they don’t have the laser guns, the nanomachines, the robots – that’s what I wanted to look at.
Other than your own contribution, which of the stories included in the anthology stand out for you – and why?
Samanda R. Primeau – I have to mention Jo Zebedee’s “Small Causes”, since I borrowed one of her characters. It’s a moving and memorable picture of the bleak life in the lower levels under the Strand regime, and the undying hope that lives in the hearts of rebellions everywhere.
In fact, that resilience and determination are what make every one of the stories an experience to remember. Many of the characters will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page — the investigators and police, the scroungers and facilitators, the spacefarers and adventurers, and even the aristocrats; it’s a collection of humanity representative of every era from the beginning of time to The Last City.
E.M. Swift-Hook – Flat out has to be Sam Nero. He is such a cool character. To begin with you think he’s just a regular PI, but it soon becomes apparent that there is a lot more to Sam than meets the eye.
Thaddeus White – Can I go meta? I’ve read a couple of other stories, and what I really like is that the anthology’s unifying theme is tighter than usual. It’s not just a concept, but a specific place. I haven’t read all the stories, but the ones I’ve read so far hint that, together, they’ll be more than the sum of their parts.
Jo Zebedee – So far, I’ve read two others and loved them both. Thaddeus White – whose writing I love – was a really nice take on what it’s like to return to a city from the wilderness, and how it feels to give up your freedom for necessity. I enjoyed how he’d thought out the plot and tech, so everything fitted well together. I’ve also read Sam Primeau’s, who always does really nice character work, and it didn’t disappoint. I found myself drawn in (and I loaned her Petre for a while, too, which was nice – to see a character have a life outside of the author’s imagination) and very much enjoyed her story. As to the others – I’ll curl up when the book is alive and have a good read over them.
Jane Jago –E.M. Swift-Hook’s Star Dust is a clever twist on the way the media shapes how we view our world, and could be seen as a metaphor for our own relationships with the world
Indie publishing is well known for the negatives, having work published by a new indie press high on that list. What are the positives for an author?
Robert M. Campbell – Some of the best stories I’ve read in the past two years have come from indies. There are strong benefits to publishing independently, on a small press. Anthologies are a great way to gain cross promotion, an excellent opportunity to work with some of your peers (virtually or otherwise) and most importantly, the exposure in a successful anthology can do wonders for a writer’s “author rank”. Every release counts and moves you up the charts in the almighty algorithms.
Stewart Hotston – Short stories are hard. They’re a completely different discipline than longer works. Sure, in both every word needs to count but in short stories…well that’s true like ten times over. For me working with indie publishers is often fantastic because they want new ideas, they want something to stand out and they want to work at it to make it happen. It can be energetic and enthusiastic in ways that I’ve found bigger outfits can’t manage to sustain. Most of all, at its best, the experience is joyous because everyone has this idea they want to deliver.
Nathan Hystad – As someone who started an indie press in the last two years, I know how hard it is to sell books. But at the same time, we have to strive for the highest quality we can as publishers, and as indie authors. It stems from great writing and leads into getting great covers, editing, proofing, blurbs, marketing, promotion, and all sorts of other things. The one thing I will say about the indie writing community, and not just the SF one, is a lot of them have each other’s back. I made collaboration one of my top mantras over the past few years, and seeing my own anthologies do so well, and having new ones pop up, like Dust Publishing, with many of the same ideologies, is just great.
E.M. Swift-Hook – I don’t really see any negatives. As an indie author putting my work in different collections and anthologies can only lead to more people potentially finding it a good read and taking a peek at my novels.
Samanda R. Primeau – I’m excited to work with indie presses because of the fresh ideas and the interesting author lists. This is the second time I’ve been involved with a shared-world anthology as a debut for an indie press, and the energy is amazing. The way the authors get involved with the world, tossing ideas back and forth and working off each other, is something to see. You won’t get that from a big publisher.
Aside from fresh air, what would you miss the most if you were placed on a floating asteroid city?
Thaddeus White – Freedom. In The Last City, the political atmosphere is a weird sort of corporate feudalism, and that doesn’t sound very appealing. Unless you’re the President, of course…
Jo Zebedee – I think the sea. I have lived by it all my life, and that missing expanse where the sea meets the sky would leave me a little bereft.
Chris Guillory – Not being able to look out of a window that framed a sky on either a gloomy rainy day, or a bright sunny one.
Samanda R. Primeau – Apparently, grass. Which is not at all in keeping with my indoor, introvert persona. But I’m pretty sure real books would be in short supply, too.
Nathan Hystad – I would miss the big blue sky. I’d also miss seasons. As someone from the Canadian Prairies where we have a solid four seasons, each so different from the last, I would miss that a lot. (and golf… I need golf)
Juliana Spink Mills – Sunlight! The City in the anthology has no natural day/night cycle, and as a good Brazilian, I do love to curl up in the sunshine.
Thank you all for taking the time to answer my questions. The Last City is available now from Amazon, visit Dust Publishing’s website to discover more, or find them on Twitter. @DustPublishing.
© Shellie Horst – SFFWorld.com Jan 2018
