Dull Pencil Anthology: of YA short fiction by hitherto unknown writers

Once Upon a Time there was a Golden Age of Storytelling, when stories were shared freely around an open fire, to entertain, to educate, to warn, to seduce... or just for the hell of it. Those that were deemed worthy by their audience were passed down from generation to generation, told and re-told through eons spanning rise and fall of empires and relentless evolution in storytelling medium. Sometimes, they would even cross borders and cultures like red poppies, pick up indigenous genetic material, and take root in their new homes as familiar, yet unique, manifestations of the original. Yes, those were the days. Days when there were no gatekeepers to storytelling. No suit-wearing hoity-toity claimers of good taste and superior judgment who demanded fine arts degrees and knowledge of the secret handshake before allowing one to pass through its vaunted gates, as if storytelling was a rigorous technical discipline, like nuclear engineering, that requires stringent credentialing of its practitioners to avoid unfathomable catastrophe. Dull Pencil Anthology is an attempt to bring back a modicum of that Golden Age of yore. Though the open fire has been replaced by the glow of computer screens and the genre is limited to YA, the stories are freely told (well, the first 150 words or so anyways) and are judged directly by their intended audience on an unassuming website named dullpencil.com. Those deemed worthy then found their way into print, in this modest volume, to be shared and spread through the ages like wildfire on the plains of the Serengeti.