Fablewood Q&A: William Ward

Fablewood is an upcoming fantasy anthology from APE Entertainment and the editor of the book, William Ward, was kind enough to do a Q&A after sending me a preview. Here’s the Q&A along with some preview images from the book. Look for a review here closer to the release date.

JB: So William, let’s start with introductions, can you tell a little bit about yourself and your career/experience thus far in the comic industry?

WW: Like a lot of aspiring creators, after years of reading comics, I started flirting with the idea of making my own. I started out doing fan comics on Penciljack.com and eventually thought to myself, “Why not try something of my own?” I published my first short story in the British small press Anthology, Futurequake. Once I held that book in my hand, I was hooked. Since then, I’ve published several short stories and after some time, I began working on Fablewood.

Regarding Fablewood specifically, how did this project get off the ground?

Originally, Fablewood was just meant to be a small forty-eight page project that I intended to publish Print-On-Demand. However, when I started recruiting artists and writers, people were much more interested in the concept than I had originally expected. I suppose it really got off the ground because people kept saying, “Yes.”

How did you end up with APE Entertainment?

I actually ended up connecting with Ape Entertainment after reading an article on Newsarama written by Dirk Manning, the author of Nightmare World. He wrote an interesting article about contracts and the state of independent comic book publishers, which portrayed the company in a very positive light. I was looking for a place willing to support new creators and after looking at their line up, I decided to submit.

How much of the book did you have together at that point? I have to imagine having APE's backing really got things moving.

When I sent in the original submission I had 100 pages, and we ended up with a 144 page book and nearly enough material to fill another 144 pages. It was definitely a jumpstart, first because we had a publisher, but also because Ape was very supportive and has a very nice community of creators. We were lucky enough to gain a number of submissions from creators who have their own book at Ape, or have books forthcoming from the publisher.

There are a wide variety of stories found in Fablewood. Were there any where you had to suggest changes or alterations because they were too similar to one another or is the subject matter broad enough that things kind of worked themselves out?

I made editorial suggestions, to some degree, on almost all of the stories in Fablewood, though very rarely concerning content. There was one story that I suggested the Creator might change the time period in which the tale took place, but it was more brainstorming than editorial mandate. I believe people do their best work when they have control over their ideas—lucky enough with Fablewood the stories were very original and ranged in style so the issue of changing content really never came up.

How did you go about getting together the talent involved? There seems to be a good mix of indy up-and-comers as well as relative unknowns (I assume) getting their first big break.

All my original recruiting was among friends. After we decided to expand the project, I recruited writers with an open call for scripts. Having spent a lot of time on comic related message boards, I also contacted writers whose work I had enjoyed in the past. Once I had enough scripts, I started pitching them to artists I had met. Once we had enough finished work to show samples, I started recruiting creators who I believed would enjoy the work we had done. It was really like a snowball rolling downhill, it started slow and picked up speed as the project moved along.

What kind of place do you think anthologies have in today’s comic market, especially given the success of the Flight series in recent years?

There are a lot of quality anthologies in the market today. Metal Hurlant, Flight, The Popgun Anthology are just a few examples of anthologies that have really captured people’s imaginations. Flight may be my favorite anthology and I am really excited about having J.P. Ahonen and Sarah Mensinga, two flight alumni with contributions in Fablewood. Anthologies really deserve a bigger place in the market as far as I am concerned—and it is nice to see them succeeding lately. Flight was a big inspiration and I just hope that we can enjoy a small percentage of the success it has seen.

Are there plans for a direct follow-up in the works or are you working on something else in the meantime? Or both?

Both! We experienced a reasonably high volume of submissions and we are planning on putting out a second volume immediately following the first. I was also just hired to write a mini-series in a shared fantasy setting recently. It is my first paid work and I am very excited about that and the subject matter. Can’t really share a lot on that yet, but hopefully down the road I’ll be able to come back here and talk about it.

What is your one-line “hook” for Fablewood? Why should people check it out?

Featuring thirteen complete fantasy stories, from sword-and-sorcery to slice-of-life, Fablewood features the creations of Ryan Ottley and Manny Trembley, Flight alumni J.P. Ahonen and Sarah Mensinga, and Chris Studabaker with his Day Prize-nominated tale which Dave Sim called "evocative, austere and expressionistic".

When is it scheduled to come out, when we will see it solicited?

Fablewood is $19.95 and features a cover by Flight creator, and story contributor J.P. Ahonen. The PREVIEWS IN STORE DATE is 10-24-07 and the FABLEWOOD ON SALE DATE is 01-30-08.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to field some questions William. Best of luck and I look forward to seeing Fablewood on the shelves early next year.

-Justin