One Dozen Roses

One Dozen Roses was a collaborative writing project organized by Melanie E in September 2020 and published through Big Closet Top Shelf in January 2021. The resulting anthology featured twelve inter-related stories by seven authors including (in order of publication) Patricia Marie Allen, Cheryl Bishop, Nuuan, Rosemary, Melanie E, Aylesea and Andrea Lena.

Summary
''Join a dozen Roses as they attend the SWEET Conference (South Western Exposition for the Embetterment of Transwomen/Transpeople, depending on who you ask.) Rose Gallagher is a registrar for the conference and notices that there are 12 Roses in attendance. On a whim, she contacts them and suggests a meeting of the Roses to share a bit about their choice of the name Rose.''

Seven authors collaborate on one story to tell us about One Dozen Roses.

Background
Statement by Patricia Marie Allen:

One Dozen Roses (published on Big Closet Top Shelf) was a labor of love for the seven of us.

This concept was Melanie E’s brain child. On September ninth, she put up a blog post entitled: One Dozen Roses: Calling Interested Authors! She told us about a fictional TG convention where 12 individuals named “Rose” happened to be in attendance. She was looking for six to twelve authors to contribute to the collective work telling their collective stories. The trick is, unlike other anthologies written on a common theme, it was to be, collectively, a conversation in a tucked away bar.

We met in a group PM to hash out just how this patchwork quilt of Rose stories would come together. She set December as a tentative publishing date. It was to be a stretching of our skills to not only write a story in a given theme, but to make them interactive and a cohesive part of the whole. We had nine authors show an interest. However real life got in the way and when the dust had settled seven of us, including Melanie, began producing parts of the whole.

Writing Process
Statement by Patricia Marie Allen:

As we bounced ideas around we got to know each other better. It’s been a great, and greatly diverse group. Seven different writing styles and seven interpretations of just how it would come together. By October first, a short month later, we had sent 371 individual posts and had an inquiry from a tenth possible author. In order to include that person, we started another PM.

We discovered different skills in our group and different assets that could be pressed into service. We ended up making use of Google Docs belonging to one of the members (thank you Rosemary) to post stories so that each of us could proofread the others stories and in that way learn from each other as to how to make this whole thing work.

We each submitted drafts of our stories for all to pick apart. Having six other experienced writers proofreading and commenting on just what should be going on in your story can be a humbling experience.

Then came the task of homogenizing the various stories to have the same look and feel without infringing on each authors individual style. Several drafts followed and ideas surfaced to give the work some polish. Since it was a rose theme, each author chose a rose to represent their story or stories (some of us contributed two) and the graphics were created.

Being that there were seven authors involved there was a need to create link that allowed readers to comment directly to each author about each story. Then there was the need to navigate through the work since it was to be posted in a single posting. So a functioning interactive Table of Contents was created that included the reader having the ability to not only jump to each story, but also go to each authors page so they could read other stories by each of the authors.

This was far more than just twelve stories cranked out and posted. We hope the finished product was a good read and everyone enjoyed their time with us in The Tomb. Kudos are always welcome, but there is no way to give individual authors kudos so we urge you to send a private message to the authors whose story you like.