Category: News

Posted on by

Atthis Arts at Gen Con 51

Chris and Emily at Gen Con 51
Chris and Emily at Gen Con 51

We just got back from a busy week at Gen Con 51 in Indianapolis. Emily signed books and met readers in Authors’ Avenue, and I (Chris) spent time at the Gen Con Writers Symposium meeting authors and writers and moderating panels.

About Gen Con

If you are unfamiliar with Gen Con—Gen Con is the original, longest-running gaming convention in the world. It attracts about 60,000 unique visitors, taking over Indianapolis for 4 days of gaming, cosplay, entertainment, family events, and the Writer’s Symposium: one of the largest and fastest growing professional events for speculative fiction writers in the world.

Games

Here’s a secret: We especially love Gen Con because we love games. Emily and I grew up playing board games with our families and friends, and the idea of gathering around the table still brings us all the feels. We talked to a few of our favorite game creators: like Jason Anarchy of Drinking Quest fame and Jason Tagmire of Button Shy Games. I also stopped by and got a demo of Root by Leder Games and Lucky’s Misadventures by Great Northern Games, both of which we had backed on Kickstarter to play with our kids. We also picked up a fun game from Deep Water Games and managed to get a little time away to play it in the lobby—where Emily was happy to see some of the readers who had stopped by.

Do you play table top games anymore? If not, you should! It’s great fun for friends and family.

Panel Discussions

I loved moderating panels at the Writer’s Symposium this year. I had such a fun time meeting people, and I picked up new reads—I listened to Robyn Bennis‘ The Guns Above on audiobook on the way home, while Emily worked edits for our upcoming titles.

I also learned some new things about Fantasy, that made me think about our current projects at Atthis Arts. I moderated a panel titled “What Makes a Story Fantasy” with Tor/Forge editor Chris Morgan, author and English professor Gregory Wilson, and best-selling author Erin Evans. This panel brought out a fascinating discussion on fantasy fiction that doesn’t rely on action and violence, but instead explores a non-violent approach to conflict resolution. Greg referred to this sub-genre as “Quiet Fantasy.”  I had never heard this term—and I believe Greg coined it during our panel.

It got me thinking about how different some of our approaches are to the genre. And if you’re interested in more, I invite you to check out Diamondsong. 🙂 I think Emily is out there pushing boundaries on non-violence themes and the social impacts of progressive world-building, and I’m proud of her for being passionate about taking that risk.

For me, the clock resets—only 358 days until Gen Con 52! Maybe we’ll see you there?

Chris

Posted on by

Introducing Our Fall Catalog: Now Live on Kickstarter

2018 Atthis Arts Fall Catalog Kickstarter

We have a big announcement:
Our first Catalog campaign, using Kickstarter.

We’ve used crowdfunding over the years to help with the initial production costs needed to make the high-quality artistic products that we believe in. We’d still appreciate your help by pre-ordering these products. However, we have so many wonderful things coming out that we’ve decided to combine them – a big ol’ party and we’d love for you to join us. : )

Here’s how it works: Go to the campaign page and look through our upcoming titles at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/atthis-arts-catalog-2018/

Follow the instructions there to select an author and reward level. (You won’t have to only pick one author, just pick one for now.) Then when the campaign is over, you’ll be able to add more titles by other authors (only if you’d like to, of course). We promise we are doing everything we can to make this easy and low-hassle for you.

We hope you’ll give all these great titles a look! The details are at the link, but it includes both adult-level speculative fiction (and ok for teens) as well as lower and upper middle grade fantasy (meaning great reads for elementary and middle school students).

Thank you so very much for your support. We know you don’t need to go out of your way to pre-order these titles, and we are very grateful for that support. We’re trying to make things happen for our small press so we can continue to publish unique, artistic writing and amplify important issues and voices—and this campaign is a big step in that process.

Thanks and please let us know if you have any questions!

The Team at Atthis Arts

Posted on by

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

A commitment to diversity and inclusion are fundamental tenets at Atthis Arts, LLC. Our company is founded on the strength of an author’s individual voice and the strength of those diverse voices coloring artistic spaces.

As a company, we affirm our commitment to respect and support writers and readers of all genders, orientations, attractions, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, abilities, and bodies. We respect people of different religions and of no religion. We reject oppression and supremacy. We respect individual ethics, causes, politics, and viewpoints, except those promoting intolerance counter to our tenets.

In order to balance these ideals against the voice of the author, works that we publish may contain content that some find problematic. We continue to ask contributors to consider how their writing and messages may impact others. For our anthologies, we will do our best to enforce a “no harm” policy, rejecting content that is negative toward any of the above groups.

We are always interested in amplifying voices from underrepresented groups, and as a submitting author you are welcome to, but not asked to, let us know how that applies to your writing.

As for speciesism and non-human treatment, while the owner is a committed pro-intersectional vegan, she recognizes that other viewpoints and lifestyles are still in the mainstream of our global society, and so while content from E.D.E. Bell will be dedicated to these ideals as well as the reduction of leveraging violence for entertainment, we do not generally exclude content from contributing authors based on these issues.

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact us at [email protected].

Posted on by

Diamondsong live on Kickstarter!

Diamondsong is an epic fantasy tale about power and identity, released as a series of ten novellas. Read the details of this fun new series by E.D.E. Bell on the Kickstarter Page.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/diamondsong-escape/

Share the project on Facebook and Twitter:

Share

Posted on by

As Told By Things: Unique, Fun Anthology

Our anthology, As Told by Things, will be on Kickstarter in March. We hope you’ll stay tuned to order and enjoy this light, fun, and quirky collection of short stories and flash fiction told from the perspective of inanimate objects.

As of 1 March, As Told by Things submissions will be accepted for limited consideration through 14 March, 2018.

We are particularly interested in submissions based on calls for expanded representation, including writers of color and/or marginalized writing groups, but all writers are welcome to apply – just please understand this is a limited submission period and no more than a few additional entries will be accepted.

Thanks so much to everyone who submitted their stories. We value all your time and love and are sorry we could not take all of your submissions. We hope you’ll look for more calls and collections from Atthis Arts in the future.