In recent weeks you may have seen me retweeting about an interesting short fiction project that is due for release late this year.
Chinese Whisperings is a conceptual anthology created by Australian writer Jodi Cleghorn and Scottish writer Paul Anderson. Each anthology is a collection of interwoven short stories by emerging writers from across the English-speaking world. Unlike other anthologies, Chinese Whisperings is created in a sequential fashion.
The Red Book, the first of the anthologies to be produced through Chinese Whisperings, has each successive writer taking a minor character from the preceding story and telling their story as the major character in the next story. Each writer also references events from the preceding story to tie the ten stories together.
A number of the contributing writers have already been introduced on the website, along with teasers of their stories to whet the appetite before release. The glimpses of each story have showcased some intriguing characters and interesting situations. Perhaps most striking is the distinct feel each story has, while the concept calls for these seemingly disparate tales to all be linked together by their characters.
As a writer I find the idea of an anthology of short stories by individual authors featuring characters that share a consistent world to be an exciting one. The unique perspective of each author and their character within the framework of the collection seems set to create an engaging and alternative take on the short story collection. Chinese Whisperings – The Red Book will be available in both traditional and ebook format in November of this year.
Check out the Chinese Whisperings blog to read the many teaser passages and be sure to leave a comment or tweet about the project to enter the weekly draw for an exclusive Red Book Reversed ebook.
Dan Powell 
5 Responses to Chinese Whisperings
Thanks for the review of the collection. As a participant in the Red Book, I found the concept truly unique and I think readers will find that as well. It also stretched my writing abilities and I thoroughly enjoy the stories that came out of the collaborative process.
From another of the Chinese Whisperings authors thanks for including this review. Writing for the anthology was not always easy but it was a good learning experience and I’m glad I could participate in this.
Thanks for popping over and commenting. I plan to review the collection here as soon as I am able. Looking forward to reading the whole body of work.
Glad to see both Paul S and Tina have been here to give their thanks.
My turn now as one of the editors to say thank you so much for giving CW airtime on your blog and for all the link love you’ve been sharing through Twitter.
Believe me as soon as we’ve got it all prepped up we’ll get you a copy. At this rate we might actually publish ahead of time… but we’ll just see how both October and November pan out.
I can’t wait to hear reader’s reactions to it – given I’ve been neck deep in this project since January and lost any perspective on the potential impact of the uniqueness months ago.
[…] selected to write a story for the second collection, producing This Be The Verse for The Yang Book. I have blogged in some detail already about the intriguing concept of CW and the writing process involved. As the launch date of the paperback editions approaches I will […]
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