A Long Time in the making: Anthologist Trysh Thompson on Covalent Bonds

by Trysh Thompson

It was early 2015, and I was sitting in a World Weaver Press editor meeting, reviewing a list of possible anthology topics. I scanned the list, and some of the ideas were clearly drunken fodder, but one stood out to me.

Geeks.

As someone who has worked in the software industry since graduating college (despite running away from my computer science major screaming bloody murder), I’ve worked with my fair share of developers. Dear Lord are they adorably awesome in their awkwardness. Some of them are downright hot and they don’t even know it, their noses buried in code most of the time.

I immediately threw my hand in the air. “I’ll take the geeks.”

No one really fought me for it. Victory was mine!

Victory that was a long damn time coming.

Submissions for Covalent Bonds opened in mid-March 2015 and ran for nine months. In that time I received 45 fantastic submissions and I learned the true meaning of heartbreak as my cursor hovered over the send button of rejection emails time and time again. Believe me, there are some fabulous pieces that you didn’t get to see. I hope those pieces find homes elsewhere, because they were fantastic.

Just when I was paring down a table of contents, it was announced that Red Moon Romance (WWP's romance imprint) was closing, and Covalent Bonds was cancelled.

My geeks were cancelled.

I had worked with many of these authors during the long submission window to perfect their stories, so I was attached to the characters, the stories, and these authors. I hated the idea of letting them down.

Through some kind of miracle (nah, we all know what it was—new editor-in-chief Sarena Ulibarri), a few days after cancellation, Covalent Bonds was back. All of my authors were sticking with me.

That blew my mind. This was my first anthology and I admit I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but they were willing to stick with me. Maybe I was doing something right.

We’ve been sitting on Covalent Bonds for a long time, and I’m so glad it’s finally going to make its way into the world. It deserves to be out in the world, and I’m pretty proud of it.

There are so many types of geeks represented—comic book geeks, hackers, table-top gamers, online gamers, even a grammar professor. Furthermore, there are so many different types of romances. Geeks don’t conform to societal conventions, and neither should their romances. I’m all for bending rules and testing boundaries, and I’m proud to say that this anthology is no exception. In this book, there are traditional romances, meet cutes, and even a mystery with a romance budding in the background.  Just like I cover different types of geeks, there are different types of romance.

Oh, and the snark. Anyone who knows me well knows that snark is what I do best. So the easiest way for any author to wiggle into my cold, black heart is to make me laugh. All of these managed to do just that.

These stories make me happy. I’m so honored to have compiled this collection, and to have my name associated with these nine fantastic authors. I’m so proud of how this turned out.

The geeks shall inherit the earth. Covalent Bonds is the first step.

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Trysh Thompson has written just about every form of non-fiction you can think of—everything from news, movie reviews, magazine columns, marketing hype, software manuals, and was even an editorial assistant on a gardening book no one has ever read (The 7-Minute Organic Garden—see, you’ve never heard of it, have you?). To keep from being slowly and torturously bored to death by her day job, she turned to fiction as means of escape—reading it, writing it, and editing it.