As many of you know, for the past eight months I have been involved with the second set of anthologies coming from the Chinese Whisperings brand. Last year’s debut anthology, The Red Book, was an exciting event consisting of 10 authors from around the world. It is a great book and has generated a lot of interest in the project. (You can read about The Red Book or buy it here!)

Today, the second Chinese Whisperings project launches!  Initially planned to be called “The Jade Book”, this follow-up anthology project was expanded to include 22 authors from around the globe and became two separate but interconnected anthologies known as The Yin Book and The Yang Book (or the combined The Yin and Yang Book). Again, you can learn about or buy these great anthologies right here!

The blurb for the two anthologies only tells a little of what happens in the books:

In the international terminal of a large European airport, Monday morning is about to get a whole lot worse. At 7.35am Pangaean Airlines, one of Europe’s major carriers, is put into receivership grounding all flights, stranding thousands of passengers and impounding tonnes of luggage. But all is not as appears on the surface and the sliding-doors moment of one woman deciding to abandon her suitcase will ricochet through the lives around her.

The cover art, by Mr. Lucas Clevenger, is fantastic.

The Yin Book, edited by Paul Anderson, has the following 12 stories:

• Prologue—Jodi Cleghorn (Ed)
  
• The Guilty One—Emma Newman
  
• Excess Baggage—Carrie Clevenger
  
• Where the Heart Is—Tina Hunter
  
• The Other Side of Limbo—Claudia Osmond
  
• Freedom—Laura Eno
  
• Cobalt Blue—Jasmine Gallant
  
• The Strangest Comfort—Icy Sedgwick
  
• Lost and Found—Jen Brubacher
  
• Kanyasulkam—Annie Evett
  
• Double Talk—Lily Mulholland
  
• Epilogue—Paul Anderson (Ed)
  

The Yang Book, edited by Jodi Cleghorn, has the following 12 stories:

• Prologue—Jodi Cleghorn (ed)
  
• Three Monkeys—Paul Servini
  
• Three Rings—Chris Chartrand
  
• Dogs of War—Tony Noland
  
• This Be the Verse—Dan Powell
  
• Providence—Dale Challener Roe
  
• No Passengers Allowed—J.M. Strother
  
• Thirteen Feathers—Rob Diaz II
  
• One Behind the Eye—Richard Jay Parker
  
• Chase the Day—Jason Coggins
  
• Somewhere to Pray (Kurush) —Benjamin Solah
  
• Epilogue—Paul Anderson (Ed)
  

The combined anthology’s cover is also beautiful:

The books are currently available in electronic formats (pdf, epub, mobi) and should be available in paperback form in December, 2010.

If you have time, you should go to the Chinese Whisperings website and look around. There are author bios for each of us, 750-word excerpts from each of the stories, “behind the scenes” commentary posts from the authors and much, much more!

As an emerging writer, I want to say that it has been a great honor to work with such a talented group of authors from around the world, not once, but twice. I thank the editors for inviting me to participate, for not running away screaming every time I’d email them with questions, edits or new drafts, and for all of their hard work to bring these projects together. I thank my fellow authors for putting so much of their time and effort into writing some fantastic stories. I have learned a lot from interacting with each of them and hope to continue the relationships we’ve built for many years to come.