Anthologies!

As my post of last week might imply, I love anthologies ... and one of the things I would love to do (some day!) is put one together. This is something of a pipe-dream, but I figured I would have fun thinking up some potential concepts. Here's a couple:

The Impossible Crime: Fantasy / mysteries are "in" right now, and more importantly, they're something I adore. This theme would be stories where the crime is committed by supernatural means - somehow impossible in the mundane world. For fair play to apply, of course, the stories would have to be very upfront about the "rules" of the settings. Tricky to balance without giving the game away? Probably ... but isn't that the fun?

Things To Do In Fantasyland When You're Dead: Since I can't use this for the title of a (serious) novel, how about a humorous anthology of characters after they've died ... whether we're dealing with a trek through the underworld, a character who discovers - the hard way - that they come back to life the next day, or a reincarnating demi-god. Actually, I would like to see this as a not-specifically-comic anthology, which I guess would mean ditching the title again. Drat!

One Line: I've seen the concept of "The story must start with this line" before, but what about a group of stories where the line can be incorporated anywhere, as long as it's somehow important? I wonder whether this would work better if the line was revealed in the intro ... or if it were left for the reader to discover. (EDITED to add: Put it at the end, so people who want to "spoil" themselves can?)