Pandora's Closet

INTRODUCTION

If the shoe fits… there’s a story in this anthology about it.

Garments and accoutrements have played key roles in fact and fiction throughout the ages-Cinderella’s glass slipper, Superman’s cape, Abe Lincoln’s top hat, Sherlock Holmes’ coat and pipe-none of which you’ll find here, but I use these as examples. I’ve no intention of spilling any proverbial beans and ruining the authors’ surprises in this simple introduction.

What you will find tucked inside the following pages is an incredible collection of stories featuring clothes, shoes, jewelry, and more… things that you might discover in some fantastical closet hidden away in the minds of our tale-spinners. Some stories are linked to history, some to beloved fables, and some spring from the authors’ own worlds. All of them should either bring a smile or send a shiver.

Hmmmmm… just what did Quig find?

And what is the opposite of solid?

The collection of talent is amazing-from Hugowinning veterans to promising newcomers who reached into Pandora’s closet and pulled out something that turned into their first professional sales.

The stories are worth rereading. All nineteen of them.

That’s quite a few tales for one anthology, and it’s due in part to the calculator I pulled out of the closet in my office.

I dutifully jotted down the word count of each story as it came in and double-checked it with Microsoft Word’s wonderful word tallier. Next, I added all of the individual stories’ word counts with… that calculator from my closet. Horrors! I was short on content. So rather than use Word’s wonderful word tallier, as I hadn’t yet started stringing the stories together, I contacted more authors to see if they had something interesting in their closets that they might write about.

And I used… that calculator… again.

Still short.

One more author.

One more…

Before I started putting them all together for the publisher and returning to Word’s word tallier.

Uh-oh, I guess I wasn’t as short as I first thought.

Now, I’m not saying the calculator out of my closet didn’t work properly. I well and truly could have hit the wrong buttons every time I used it. I have been known to unbalance a checkbook. But I tried it again a moment ago and got the same result. So that malfunctioning calculator (or my defective finger) is responsible for you holding a slightly thicker book in your hands and getting to read so many great stories.

I’d prefer to think that Pandora had a hand in putting this collection together.

Enjoy,

Jean