Last week I told you guys about my first dip into non-fairytale fantasy short stories with Ancient Enchantresses. This week I continue with Year’s Best Fantasy 2, an anthology from a totally different editor and publisher.

I had an awkward moment at the end of July. If you follow me on social media, you may remember it.

I was in a local used bookstore perusing sci-fi and fantasy. They were on sale for $1 each or 6 for $5. I was trying to pick up a dozen because I couldn’t cut my pile down to six and I’m a sucker for a deal on used books. Ultimately I rounded out my dozen with four anthologies. I’d thought about these books earlier in my browsing, but my gut reaction was “Nah. I don’t like short stories.”

Then I realized that, aside from classic fairy tales, I couldn’t think of a single fantasy short story. Not one. The bulk of my short story experience was English class. In my mind, short stories were “the boring things in textbooks that teachers make you read and analyze.”

That couldn’t be right, could it? There had to be other short stories out there—these anthologies proved it. And so began my short story reading adventure!

I’ve been meaning to write this review for several months, but before I could adequately review these books, I needed to put their content into practice. Then I had to decide when to be done. How deep did I want to go in outlining? How would I know if my outline was any good before I finished drafting the book again? Ultimately I decided to write this after finishing my outline and character profiles and before starting the next draft of the book—because NaNoWriMo begins in two weeks and you need time to make an outline.

The end of the quarter always sneaks up on me. Has it really been three months? Yes. Yes, Lydia, it has. When I look back, it’s easy to see why it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long; I’ve been so busy! Sickness, moving, blogging, cooking, cleaning, family stuff, appointments, church stuff—I’ve hardly had time to sit down (except when writing).