Today on the blog, we are so honored to have bestselling author Jeff Wheeler here to tell us about OHB’s first Kickstarter, Deep Magic Volume III Deluxe Edition. He’s one of the founders of Deep Magic e-zine and has been publishing short stories and anthologies since 2002. Take it away, Jeff!
I still remember the first time one of my stories got published. It was something I’d written for a creative writing class in college and my instructor had encouraged me to submit it for publication. When the acceptance letter arrived (in the mail…this was a long time ago folks), I felt validated, delighted, and encouraged. A few years later, I founded an e-zine with my friends called Deep Magic and we began to publish family-friendly short stories in the genres we loved so much – fantasy and science fiction.
Being on the other side of the acceptance letter was one of my favorite things. I know how it feels to write with a feeling of being in total obscurity and then to have someone pick it out of the slush pile and deem it worthy. For many, it was their first publishing credit. For myself, Deep Magic was a huge opportunity for growth. Because it was my magazine, I got to interview some of my heroes in the genre—people like George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb. I also got to meet hundreds of authors both new and established and helped get their stories to a worldwide audience.
Because of Covid, we had to shut down Deep Magic. And with the advent of AI, most magazines are finding it almost impossible to manage their slush piles because of the sheer volume of submissions—not all of which were actually written by a human. For these and other reasons, creating a quarterly magazine just wasn’t possible. But I wanted to be able to continue Deep Magic somehow, to provide a place to publish authors who might not get noticed as well as showcasing the brilliant talent that exists in the genre.
So I pitched the idea to Tanya at OHB to do a Kickstarter for Deep Magic’s third anthology (Vol 1 and 2 already exist and OHB acquired the rights to re-publish them). Not only that, but the authors would share in the profits from the campaign instead of getting a nominal per-word amount common in the industry. Plus, doing it as a Kickstarter meant that we could create not just an e-book version or a paperback version. It meant we could do a deluxe edition, in hardcover, with two color foil stamping on the cover, and custom artwork. These are special editions you can’t buy on Amazon. And again, through Tanya’s generosity, we would share the profits with the authors so that they’d earn long term royalties on these collections. My college-age self would have gone wild to know that one of my stories would end up in such a collection. Whether you’re a die-hard fan of the genre or it’s just your first taste, digging into well-crafted short stories by a cadre of talented authors (including myself, Charlie N. Holmberg, Maria V. Snyder, Ken Liu, Anthony Ryan, Allison Anderson, DK Holmberg, Carrie Anne Noble and many, many more!) will take you on journeys to worlds you can’t even imagine. It’s why I founded Deep Magic in the first place. We all need, at times, a way to escape this world and explore something beyond our imagination.
Want to learn more about the newest Deep Magic anthology? Check it out below:
Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jeff Wheeler took an early retirement from his career at Intel in 2014 to write full-time. He is a husband, father of five, and a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff lives in the Rocky Mountains.
To learn more about each of his worlds, his advice for new writers, and which series to start reading first, check out his website! http://www.jeff-wheeler.com/
You can also find him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Bookbub!
