Anthologies generally don’t make a writer lots of money. Instead, their best functions are 
networking, marketing, and validation. Participation in an anthology introduces you to the writers and editors involved. It can also introduce your work to the readers of other participants in the anthology. And it can get your foot in the door with convention organizers, librarians, writing retreats, and publishers.
It Came from the Great Salt Lake is an anthology of horror stories all tied to the Salt Lake valley. In good horror fashion, many of these are tales of terrifying justice and the universe righting itself. I don’t know all these writers, but having read the stories I’ll keep an eye out for them now.
My favorite tales include:
- Not one, but two stories of vengeful, spirit-infused teddy bears (who knew?), by E.J. Harker and Jaren K. Rencher.
- John M. Olsen’s claustrophobic tale of a collapsing cave.
- Johnny Worthen’s re-reading of Salt Lake’s notoriously bad air quality (the valley is a bowl, and in the winter air can’t escape, so the smog piles up) as a story of consequences and reckoning.
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This last Sunday I was in Denver and my friend Mario offered to take me shooting. He was too kind to say this, but I think he’d read some of my stories with cap and ball pistols in them (
and Army caliber. He taught me to load them with pre-prepared paper cartridges as well as with loose powder and patch (I think my big omission in my stories was to leave out greasing the cylinder (we used mutton fat), which Mario did with a period-authentic spatula).
Blood Curse
The Year’s Best
