What is Tales for Canterbury?

Tales for Canterbury was a short story anthology loosely themed around survival, hope and the future. It raised 4,132.00 for the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal.

It featured stories by RJ Astruc, Philippa Ballantine, Jesse Bullington, Anna Caro, Cat Connor, Brenda Cooper, Debbie Cowens, Matt Cowens, Merrilee Faber, AJ Fitzwater, Janis Freegard, Neil Gaiman, Cassie Hart, A.M. Harte, Karen Healey, Leigh K. Hunt, Lynne Jamneck, Patty Jansen, Gwyneth Jones, Tim Jones, Kim Koning, Jay Lake, Helen Lowe, Kate Mahony, Tina Makereti, Juliet Marillier, Angel Leigh McCoy, Linda Niccol, Ripley Patton, Simon Petrie, Grant Stone, Jeff Vandermeer, Mary Victoria and Sean Williams.

 

The end result

Final figures are now in!

– We sold 97 ebooks and 285 paperbacks
– After legal deposit, 11 paperbacks remained unsold. We donated one to the Red Cross and ten to the Christchurch Writers’s Fesitval
– We raised a total of $4,132.00 for the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal

With the cheque en route to the Red Cross, this project is now at an end. Thank you for coming on this journey with us; we’ve learned and experienced a lot, and are grateful to all who donated their work, bought copies, promoted the anthology, and provided support and encouragement along the way.

The New Zealand Red Cross is offering a number of grants to Cantabrians, including help for heating damaged houses, relocating and storing belongings, and for costs associated with injury and disability, so we have no doubt that this donation will be put to good use.

Once again, thank you for being part of this.

Cassie Hart & Anna Caro

Sales now closed

Sales of Tales for Canterbury are now closed. We’re in the process of totalling up the final amount raised, but our guestimate-meter points to over $4000 being raised for the New Zealand Red Cross earthquake appeal.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped us along the way – writers who donated their work, our cover artist, those who volunteered to proofread, our designer, everyone who spread the word, and of course everyone who bought a copy. We’ll update with the final numbers once we have them.

 

Drawing to a Close

Tales for Canterbury is onto its final week of sales. At the end of the month, we’ll be totaling up the money raised and passing it on to the Red Cross, with thanks to all of you who have helped along the way.

We have just a small number of books remaining, so if you haven’t a copy, or want another, this is your final chance to order.

Something else exciting happened this month – Tales for Canterbury won the Sir Julius Vogel award for Best Collected Work. Cassie blogged in more detail, complete with picture, here. This was an honour to receive for what was very much a team effort. Huge thanks to all of you who helped us along the way.

-Anna

Two weeks left!

Hello!

We know we’ve been pretty silent lately, and apologies for that. However sales have been ticking along and we’re close to the point where we should have a final figure soon.

Which is part of the point of this post. There are only just over two weeks (that’s til the end of the year) to buy the ebook version of Tales for Canterbury.

We can sell the paperback for a little longer, but only the current print run. We’d definitely love to sell that out though, so once again, here’s where to buy them from. We do offer gift wrapping, so last minute present buying? We’ve got it covered.

Thank you for all your support over the past months – you’re fantastic, you really are – and do pass this blog post along if you can.

An interview and an article

Hi folks 🙂 We hope that Spring is treating you well so far. I, for one, am pleased to see a little more sunshine around the place.

Anyway, just a quick post to share a few more links with you.

Recently, Kate Krake of Vivid Scribe featured an article she wrote about Tales for Canterbury. It’s the first article I know of that’s been written, and Kate was a pleasure to work with.

Also, Kerryn Angell posted an interview she did with me (Cassie). If you haven’t picked up a copy of Tales for Canterbury yet, she’s actually giving away a copy, so why not head over and see what you need to do to be in to win?

Back in stock!

Hey folks, it’s been awhile since we’ve given you an update – sorry about that. Between the flu, school holidays and other fun stuff, we’ve been a little out of the loop. However, we just wanted to update you and let you know the first print run sold out a few weeks back, and we now have the second batch of books back in stock. So if you still haven’t picked up a copy, now is a great time to buy!

A few weeks ago Anna did an interview with one of the contributors, Tim Jones. You can have a read of that here; it gives some great behind the scenes insight into the project.

We’re still maintaining a 4+ star rating over at GoodReads, and if you need more convincing to go and order your copy I strongly suggest checking out Helen Lowe‘s ‘A Peek Inside Tales for Canterbury‘ series. So far she has posted snippets of her own story The Fountain, Tim Jones’ Sign of the Tui, Janis Freegard’s The Magician, Mary Victoria’s The Daughter of the Khan, and Juliet Marillier’s Juggling Silver. All great stories! What are you waiting for? Get reading!

Media round up

Hey folks! Well, it’s been a few weeks now since we released the digital and print versions of Tales for Canterbury and so far the feedback has been great! We thought we’d pull together the bits and pieces we’ve seen around the internet and share them with you.

First up, we have a couple of reviews. One from Goodreads, and the other over at LibraryThing. Both said really lovely things about the anthology, so thank you! It’s really great to get feedback, so if you have read the anthology why not write a few words about it? We’d love to hear what you thought.

Two of the contributors, Matt Cowens and AJ Fitzwater, talked to Lynn Freeman from RadioNZ, and the interview was aired on the 12th of June. If you missed it though, you can go to this page and download it 🙂

Also we’ve done a couple of interviews on blogs. I did one with Anna Scott Graham, which can be found here, and Anna and I both answered some questions for Wen Baragrey here.

If anyone else wants to help spread the word by hosting an interview or something, please drop us a line – with a resurgence of quakes in Christchurch, and yet more damage dealt, there is a huge need to raise funds. As you can see, we’ve reached half of our goal, but the more money we can get down there, the better.

Once again, a huge thanks for all the support!

It’s so pretty!

I got my print copy of Tales for Canterbury a few days ago now and am thrilled with how well it’s come out. Anna and I have been staring at bits and pieces of this book for months now on screen, so to see it in the flesh (a real live print book!) was surreal and amazing. I loved the cover on screen, but on the book? Oh, it’s just gorgeous.

See for yourself:

I think that all the pre-orders are in the mail now, so hopefully many of you have already got your copy – if not, they shouldn’t be too far away. And if you haven’t ordered yet? Go on! It’s a gorgeous book, for a great cause.

Paperback Update

We’re very pleased to say that the paperbacks are now printed – and they look very shiny indeed.

It will be a few days before they’re all sent out, but not long now.

And paperbacks will also be on sale at Context next weekend – so if you’re around, go ahead and get one – or more!

Ebook Release!

We’re very pleased to announce the release of the ebook version of Tales for Canterbury! Yep, 34 excellent stories all waiting to be read.

If you pre-ordered, follow the link in the original email to your detailed invoice, where you can download your copy. If you haven’t ordered go ahead and do so now.

Thanks everyone, you’ve been amazing. And we’ll update on the paperback soon.