Hello, everyone—the happiest day of the pre-winter (or fall, as it’s sometimes known) is here.
Click here to see the new SSAC in all its glory, and to order your copy.
The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar contains stories by Melissa Broder, Thomas King, Naben Ruthnum, Colin Winnette, Hilma Wolitzer, and so many more.
A peppermint-fresh box design? Check.
Another limited edition with all-new original artwork? Check.
The beginning of another looooong countdown until December 1 finally rolls around? Check check check.
One of the questions we get pretty regularly about the calendar is: How do we make it? Considering how many pieces there are to the SSAC, especially compared to your average anthology, how does it actually come together?
Let’s go through the year together.
In January… well, nothing happens. That’s when Nat and I recover from the previous year’s calendar, which commanded the bulk of our combined time and attention pretty much the entire month prior. This month is reserved for tying up any loose ends with our warehouse, getting a handle on our other lives as freelancers, and checking in with each other—vaguely, generally, with no expectation of actually doing anything about it just yet—about ideas for future H&O titles.
By February, though, the wheels are already starting to turn again. That’s when I start the process anew for the next edition of the calendar, finding stories and authors who might make sense for our particular brand of short fiction. We’re talking: scouting online magazines and journals, looking at story collections published in the past handful of months that I might have missed, putting out feelers with a couple of agents, and getting back in touch with authors whom I wasn’t able to land the previous year. Once I’ve got that list going, I start amassing email addresses and digitally introducing myself.
The idea in the early stages is to cast as wide a net as possible, because you never know what might happen. Sometimes I receive multiple stories in a single day that are all home runs. But just as often I’ll hit a cold patch where ten writers in a row don’t respond to my emails. It happens. Unfortunately, each year I also have to turn down a number of solicited submissions that, for whatever reason, don’t quite fit for us. I always feel badly about this. But at the same time I can’t apologize for having high standards, because if I can’t 100% stand behind a story I know our readers won’t take to it, either.
In all, it takes a longlist of around 75 potential writers to wind up with the 25 stories that make up each year’s calendar.
(And, really, that doesn’t even include the sprinkling of older, holiday-related stories that I mix in alongside the contemporary ones. Those begin life on their own spreadsheet, and are a whole other story.)
By far the hardest part of the process, though, is in finding the right mix of stories. If it were simply a race to 25, my half of the process would be done and dusted in a matter of weeks. But I’m keenly aware—maybe a little too aware—of how individual stories talk to one another, and one of my biggest jobs as editor is making sure the overall reading experience maintains a pleasing rhythm, day over day.
I’ve likened it to making someone a mixtape. There are rules involved, even if the recipient doesn’t consciously clock them. You want to start off strong (OK, that one’s obvious). Then you want to establish certain expectations in the first handful of pieces. Then you want to go ahead and subvert those expectations in the next handful, but in a way that feels exciting rather than jarring. Then of course you’ve got to end by building up to another high note…
It’s a process, and sometimes a strange one. In 2017, I remember having to break the news to Marie-Helene Bertino that we couldn’t use the first story she submitted because, as it happened, we’d already published a story about a fridge full of frozen Nazis. As you do. (Luckily, Marie-Helene submitted the excellent “Edna in Rain” as a replacement, and we were off to the races.)
The process in 2023 was largely the same as ever, but with a new wrinkle to deal with: for the longest time I was stalled at 24 stories. One short. So close, and yet so far.
This put a lot of pressure on that final piece, and no matter how many stories I read, back to back to back, I just couldn’t find one that felt right.
Partly that was because this last piece had to contend with the stories already locked in. How would it fit in alongside Hilma Wolitzer’s portrait of romantic entanglements in the 1970s, or Naben Ruthnum’s plummy evisceration of art therapy? What if, tonally, it was a little too close to Colin Winnette’s wry vacation-turned-absurdist-nightmare? On a smaller level, this final piece probably couldn’t mention the same central object as the one in the brand-new story by Thomas King, which recasts Pope Francis’s recent visit to Canada in a surreal new light.
(The only thing I was confident in was that it wasn’t going to overlap with the story I had from Melissa Broder—that was the sort of piece only she could have written.)
Weeks ticked by. The snow on the ground in Edmonton melted, then re-fell, then melted again.
And then, finally, I found it.
I came across our last story serendipitously, while doing something completely unrelated. When I found it, I couldn’t believe it. This piece ticked all the boxes—in fact, I liked it so much I decided to re-sequence the entire collection so that it could have the final spot on Christmas morning. All I can tell you about the story now is that it’s from a writer who’s been in the SSAC before, it’s festive (in its own way), and it involves a briefcase in the woods. Man alive, it’s such a fucking good story. I can’t wait for you all to read it.
Now it was May, and the 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar was complete—or my half of it, anyway. Next came the handoff. I sent the fully sequenced list of stories over to Nat, and as the weather warmed up for good she worked her usual design magic from her studio in Calgary. In the summertime we hired Argentine illustrator extraordinaire Marcos Farina to come up with some original artwork for our limited edition, and then we got our colleagues at Friesens and Hemlock to fire up their printing presses for another year. As I’m writing this, the finished calendars are sitting on Hemlock’s shelves, neatly packed and sealed, waiting to be shipped off to their new homes.
Like I said, it’s a process. But at this point, nine years deep, it’s hard to say what we’d do without it, and I’d rather not find out.
The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is on sale now. On behalf of Nat and I, we hope you like it.
—Michael Hingston, editor and co-publisher
Bundles are back!
The only thing better than one Short Story Advent Calendar is two of them. That’s why this year we’re pleased to once again offer a bundle deal, combining our new adult edition with our beloved all-ages set for younger readers from 2021.
Order a 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar, and save $25 when you also purchase a copy of the Kids’ Short Story Advent Calendar.
While we’re on the subject, this feels like as good a place as any to acknowledge the reality that the cost of mailing things both within and from Canada has skyrocketed in recent years. You’ve probably noticed this, too. It’s a bummer all the way around, and we’re doing everything we can to keep those costs as low as possible.
One way to mitigate higher shipping fees? Order more than one title! You’ll see significant savings on postage when ordering in bulk, while also helping spread the joys of short fiction to your corner of the world.
Find this year’s bundle in the H&O store, while supplies last.
Harvest Book Fair
Finally, if you find yourself in Edmonton, Alberta, I’ll be running a booth for H&O at the inaugural Harvest Book Fair on the weekend of October 14–15. Drop by, say hello, pick up a couple of titles—we’ll have 2023 Short Story Advent Calendars for sale, plus all of the backlist titles available from my office cupboard—and check out the other great vendors in the house.
Hope to see you there!
H&O Titles Still Available
The 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar (H&O 017)
Kids’ Short Story Advent Calendar (H&O 015)
High Profile (H&O 014)
Sweet Bananas, by Jack Pendarvis (H&O 013)
Projections, edited by Rebecca Romney (H&O 011)
Jerry and Marge Go Large, by Jason Fagone (H&O 010)