Market Monday: Speculative Coffee Reprints

Listing: COFFEE: 20 Speculative tales of the fantastic

Each story must somehow involve coffee as a major plot element. It’s not enough if an unrelated story is set in a coffee shop. I will also consider a few TEA stories as well. These stories must feature an element of the fantastic (fantasy, SF, light horror). No literary fiction please.

For the moment, I will only consider reprints. If you published a story that you feel might fit the theme, please e-mail it to me at ufopublishing at gmail dot com. Please include information as to where and when it was first published, and confirm that the rights have reverted to you.

Market Monday: Love Free or Die

Yearning for Your Submissions: Love Free or Die anthology

Writers with romantic intentions, come hither. The fourth volume of New Hampshire Pulp Fiction is lounging languidly on a velvet divan, making eyes at you. It’s time to make your move. Submit your stories of love lost, passion fulfilled and unrequited devotion — all deeply embedded in New Hampshire places and culture — to Elaine Isaak at nhpulpromance@gmail.com and perhaps you too can be a part of this local publishing phenomenon.

Story length: 8,000 words or less
Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2013
Planned for release: before Valentine’s Day, 2014

Got a market notice you want listed in future Market Mondays on Speak Coffee to Me? Send along the link with the words "Market Monday Plz" to @EileenWiedbrauk on Twitter.

Krampus Anthology to Take Submissions

Gorgeous Krampus art from a book
I have absolutely no association with
other than drooling over the art:
Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom.

Specter Spectacular II: 13 Deathly Tales closes to submissions on Saturday, but don't despair you writers of the macabre! Also on Saturday, June 15, Kate Wolford will start reading submissions for a Krampus based anthology as part of a joint venture between World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine.

Description: 
You know the Jolly Old Elf of Christmas, right? Of course you do. You can’t avoid him. Yet, Santa Claus isn’t just a kindly old expert at breaking and entering and leaving gifts he didn’t actually buy for the children of a house. At least he isn’t in Austria and many other parts of Europe.

In these ancient places, where, perhaps, the old, old gods still add a touch of mischief, Krampus is the angry, punishing sidekick of St. Nicholas (Santa’s counterpart in much of Europe). Known for his willingness to punish rotten children, Krampus might even be considered Santa’s dark side or evil twin.

Krampus is the sort of guy more and more North Americans want to explore. He’s definitely having a moment this side of the Atlantic. To that end, World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine are pleased to announce a joint venture: An anthology of Krampus short stories.

Although the book is yet to be named, we hope you’ll explore every possible Krampus angle via short stories. He’s a nasty old dude, and we hope your imaginations will get the better of you.

Anthology editor Kate Wolford ran a mini Krampus story contest for Enchanted Conversation last Christmas where there was lots of interest -- it was certainly the first time I'd heard of the Krampus! -- and gives her insights on what she's looking for in the upcoming anthology: “Krampus taps into a kind of ancient darkness that captures the spirit of winter. He also seems to lend himself to humor and horror and maybe, a bit of magic. I think the story possibilities are endless and intriguing.”

Guidelines and instructions for submission.

Kate Wolford is editor and publisher of Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine at fairytalemagazine.com. She teaches first-year college writing, incorporating fairy tales in her assignments whenever possible. World Weaver Press released her annotated anthology, Beyond the Glass Slipper: Ten Neglected Fairy Tales to Fall In Love With, in April 2013.

World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, dedicated to producing quality works. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to publish books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.

Getting the Ghost

I'm editing a second Specter Spectacular anthology for World Weaver Press. Submissions are open now through June 15, 2013 (details). The first anthology was subtitled 13 Ghostly Tales and this time it's 13 Deathly Tales, allowing us to still include some awesome ghost stories but also expand beyond the spirit trope.

The inbox is seeing a lot of moment-of-death stories, and I encourage writers to look beyond that to the ... beyond. I've been pretty vocal about looking for some great stories of psychopomps (literally meaning "guide of the souls" but I also love the "death midwife" description), and I still want to see more such submissions. I'm also encouraging relevant connections to current society whether that's funny grim reapers glued to their cell phones, displaced Valkyries, parallels between a callus Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx with unscrupulous coyotes shepherding people across the border, or modern folklore retwistings.

The Truth of the Slush Pile

A recent article by David Cameron published by The Review Review poses an intriguing concept: the writer took a story printed in The New Yorker, supposedly THE magazine when it comes to literary short fiction, and submitted it to other magazines as part of an experiment to see if the story was empirically "good."

That is, would all the other magazines jump to accept the cream of the crop story on their desk?

Answer: not a one.

It should be noted that not a single one of those Top Tier or Second Tier literary magazines sent him a rejection saying this was already published in the biggest magazine in the country, who do you think you're trying to fool?

Not a one.

What does this say about literary magazine publishing? Three things:

1. People who buy into the idea that there is a TOP magazine for short fiction are buying into a myth. There is no empirical standard for a "good story." 
2. Not everyone who reads fiction reads the same magazines. But we should have already known this, otherwise there wouldn't be more magazines published each month than any person could possibly have time to read. 
3. Making it to the top of the slush pile is one part good craft, one part interesting story, one part dumb luck.

"Slush sucks," Cameron says. It's a good summation. In my editorial experience, it's all about hitting the right editor on the right day with a story they're going to want to fight for. If yours is the third ornithologist with marital issues story they've seen that day, they're not going to cut you any slack. If they've just lost a family member, your piece on death that starts crass and ends poignantly isn't going to be read all the way through. There's a lot about the slush pile and the editor that you can't control or even predict.

Although the bigger the magazine or anthology I worked on, it mattered that a story ended up with the right editor eventually, but it almost mattered more that it first was shuffled to the right slush reader who read it on the right day while in the right mood and found themselves so taken with the story that they wanted to fight their editor and the other slushers to see the story got printed. When I've slushed for larger operations, I've found stories that I've passed up to the lead editor because they were good enough for a second read, or because they were my editor's "thing" even though I didn't particularly care for it. I've also passed stories on up with the note You're going to publish this one! It wasn't a threat. It was a promise. And it came true.

How do you find the right slusher? The one who's going to write the note that says publish this, who then campaigns for your story at the editorial meeting? You don't find her. At every magazine I've worked on, stories were assigned randomly to slushers.

But this is the mechanics of the slush pile, not the truth. 

The truth is that catching the right editor on the right day when she's in the right mood doesn't even touch on the fact that what each of us considers a "good short story" differs. It's not empirical. If it was, there would be only one magazine in the country and we would all read it and slobber with love over each word it printed.

Pick Yourself Up and Start Again

This essay (article, post, whatever you may call it) is going to be about writer's hope, direction, perhaps even the implementation of  some self-discipline. It's about embarking on a new project -- or more precisely, embarking on the finishing of a project, the project itself isn't exactly new just the stirring desire to finish -- with positive, patient persistence. (For hopefulness about writing, read on...)

How I'm going to convey that feeling isn't something I've planned out. Perhaps this is indicative of the fact that I've not much planned my project -- all I have is a feeling to spur me on. But I try to think of these posts as short essays (blog posts are always better when they draw some sort of conclusion that echos the opening, no?), and as I try to implore my writing students, essays are nothing more lofty than an attempt to communicate your personal thinking on some subject, the term "essay" coming from the French essayer (v), to try. Or essai (n) a try.

An essay is an attempt at expression. It may meander, it may be cut and edited, but it shouldn't be overly rigid in construction and planning, otherwise how can you make great discoveries of self and thought while you essay? Save your structure and fact and organization for editing, well after you've essayed your way to some truths.

And so I am trying.

At this precise moment, I'm trying to stay positive, not sick to my stomach as I watch the pest control guy spray just part of the nearby apartment building. Just part? I understand how that's cost effective, but not how that's get-rid-of-the-pest effective. Ug. Another great reason to keep cats: they find the pests before you do and, usually, eat it before you're the wiser.

But the man with a can of pressurized chemical spray isn't the only thing which should be dragging on my sense of direction and hope, yet isn't. For starters, the Attack of the Back has devastated my past week.

The non-compliance of my body to respond to my commands in a useful manner meant that on this past Saturday it took me twenty minutes to go from reclining to standing, unassisted. And then once I was standing it was less than twenty minutes before Attack of the Back protested so loudly that I was forced back into the previous, reclined posture. I am currently on the mend. Mend-ish. I may actually have to give in and go see a chiropractor. You know, get over that aversion/advice I was previously given that once you start going to a chiropractor you can't ever stop. Because hey, isn't that also true for dentists? And because hey, these Attacks of the Back are painful and they don't look like they're ever gonna stop coming to visit me either.

So I'm upright again. Sorta. I had big 2013 dreams of punching out a lot of words starting on January 1 and not stopping until ... okay, just not stopping. But the reality is that the punching out hasn't started. Half-way through the month and I'm still working to get my feet under me (figuratively) from the whirlwind end of 2012 and (literally) from the Attack of the Back. Newyness aside, there's no reason that my self-discipline and goals have to be pegged to calendar start and end points. So sally forth! I say. And tallyho! Cowabunga! And other similar cries which indicate a rush of activity!

No, no, that's not what I want.

If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I am prone to manic writing. Followed by furloughs of no writing. Some of which is deadline driven -- oh baby, there ain't nothing like the sound of a deadline whooshing past to get me on task! -- but some of it is an intensity issue. Frenzied activity in general is easy  to get on board with. It's Day One of the exercise routine/diet where you're super good, followed by week two when you can't even remember that you're on a routine/diet because you just can't take the super good intensity anymore. You're like, dude, chill out with this craziness and get me a cupcake. I need moderation and discipline. Not a celery stick and ice cream pendulum. Not the frenzy that follows the cry of tallyho, but the deliberate fox-stalking which precedes it.

Instead, a gentle push to get me started:

Today I received a lovely, personal letter from a magazine which I respect telling me that my story was well written and interesting, and then telling me all the reasons why it wasn't going to be published by them. What a great big happy-sad feeling that produces. I adore the fact that they took the time to talk to me about the story. I'm pleased with their compliments. But I'm sad to have failed in the endeavor of getting them to publish the story.

"Bittersweet" doesn't really begin to describe the conflicting emotions this particular letter invokes. "Bittersweet" describes previous such letters I've received -- letters which I usually don't blog about because I don't usually feel the desire to make such things public. This time I'm far too happy and far too sad, simultaneously, to reconcile the two into any nameable emotion.

It is however a spur. A gentle push to get me started. Along with all the things the letter said, I take away this: they're eager to see what I send them next. So on to the next. A brilliant nudge to get me to complete edits on a short story I've let languish for eighteen months. And get it done now. Using the short goal to achieve a sense of action and purpose, to garner momentum, enough to pick myself up and start again.

---

Note: I couldn't find a way to work it into the above essay, though I did try, but I wanted to point out another lovely post on writer's hope, direction, and discipline that I read today. Rebecca Enzor's "Give Them a Chance to Say Yes" inspired by a beautiful tweet by Amalia Dillin. Her direction is more focused on submissions than creation, but still terribly hopeful. Autumn MacArthur's blog is also great for these sort of inner-looking hopeful-writer-rants which I love.
Top photo credit: "by Stik" By Feral78 via Flickr.

Northville Review call for submissions: YouTube

In addition to my April A to Z blogging challenge, I'd like to share the following from Northville Review:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/jNQXAC9IVRwFirst video uploaded to YouTube: April 23, 2005

YouTube: The planet’s third most visited website, where the averageuser spends 15 minutes per day, every day. Where memes live, andnaivete dies. And, at last...the subject of The Northville Review’sSummer 2012 issue!

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:
-- Look for “Summer 2012” on our Submishmash page. It’s toward the bottom.-- Send us a story, a poem, an essay that is somehow related to anembeddable YouTube video.-- “Somehow related to” is deliberately very open-ended. If youretrofit a video to something you’ve already completed, that’s betweenyou and your deity.-- “Embeddable YouTube video” is not open-ended. Click “Share” andthen “Embed” to make sure the video is embeddable. Submissions withoutthis will be rejected.-- Include a link to the YouTube video and a bio in your cover letter.-- Work selected for publication will run underneath the correspondingembedded video.-- PLEASE NOTE: If your submission is accepted and your video goesdead on YouTube before the publication date, so does your work. Choosewisely. Tip: It’s probably not a good idea to send anything relatedto Prince.

DEADLINE: June 30. This is NOT a top secret project. Feel free tospread the word.

QUESTIONS? northvillereview@gmail.com or whatever social media works for you.

Perseverance, part one

There are many forms of perseverance needed in the writing game.  And one of them is to keep submitting our work to new editors.

I, apparently, have an unusually thick skin when it comes to submissions and rejections.  But here's what I know: C.L. Moore submitted her first short story, "Shambleau" -- the first short story she had ever written -- to Weird Tales in 1933.  It was her favorite magazine.  They accepted it, and subsequently published almost all of her early fiction.  Moore, in a candid essay in the back of a 1960s edition of her collected early stories, said that if the Weird Tales editor hadn't accepted her story on the first try, she probably would have stopped writing.

I'm not C.L. Moore.  You're not C.L. Moore.

And I don't say that meanly -- Moore's work is intriguing but there's a reason she occupies an important space in the history of science fiction and not in the literary importance of the genre.

I say I am no C.L. Moore because I have sent out one story.  And it was rejected.  And I did not stop there.  I sent it out again.  And again.  And again.  And, on at least two occasions, I'd given up on a story or poem and then had an editor contract the work.  I am no C.L. Moore because if the editor doesn't accept the story on the first try, I don't stop trying.

And that is why I encourage everyone reading this and hoping to make it as a writer to not be C.L. Moore.

Last summer, I was encouraged to make 100 submissions.  Be they short fiction or novel queries, I was to complete 100 of them.  It was suggested that 100 was a reasonable goal; that if you set your sights for 100 it was a high enough number that you would be in the mental game for the long haul while also likely to achieve some sort of publication before reaching the 100th submission.

The next day I was asked to give a goal for the upcoming year, so I said 100 submissions in a year! Meaning: I want to be published by this time next year!


That's when I made this little chart on the outside of a file folder and tacked it to the wall over my desk.  100 Submissions by July 15, 2011 it says.  The white area is a 10 x 10 grid to which I affix a star (or a hello kitty sticker) every time I send a story out on submission.

Below is a manila envelope for the rejection slips.  Seems practical.  Don't be depressed by rejection slips.  It's like being depressed by dog poop.  You own the dog.  You enjoy the dog.  You have this bond, this friendship.  It will, at some point, poop.  You can't be a practical person and a dog owner if you are depressed by poop.  Likewise, you can't be a practical person and a writer if you are depressed by rejection slips.

If you haven't already noticed, it's June and my chart has a lot of white spaces on it yet.  There are only 15 stars (save you the trouble of counting).  But I'm proud of those 15.  And there will be more before July 15.  Progress is progress -- progress is perseverance -- and I love my chart.  I also love the square that I colored in yellow in the top row.  Yellow background means the submission got published.

This chart hits several motivating factors for me: it's prominently placed so that I see it every day, it's colorful, fun, and it is interactive.  If not sparkly star stickers, what motivates you to keep going?

Adolescent me does a happy dance

So I don't normally post about when I make a submission to a journal or anthology -- there's all sorts of reasons why. Everything from the superstitious don't wanna jinx it to the vanity based don't wanna look stupid if I don't make it comes to mind. And I especially don't blog when a submission isn't picked up.  However, this post isn't about making a submission to a market or the market's reply, it's about how damn, amazingly geeked my thirteen-year-old self is right now.

When I was about thirteen, somewhere in that seventh to ninth grade range, I read a lot of Sword and Sorceress anthologies. They were all short fantasy stories focused on heroines -- right up my alley. I particularly remember the S&S anthology with the cover at left. I'm absolutely certain that was one I owned not I borrowed from the library or theLiz.

Back then, Marion Zimmer Bradley was still editing these anthologies. After she died, the series went on a little hiatus and I lost track of it.

A year or two ago, I found out that the yearly series had been revived by Norilana Books, with Elisabeth Waters as editor. And perhaps what was even better was that I found their submission guidelines. I made a promise to my thirteen-year-old self that I would submit a story to S&S.

The month-long submission period came. And went.

I changed my promise to I'll submit ... someday.


I'm here to report that someday is today. My thirteen-year-old self would be reporting to you, except she's too busy doing a happy dance.

Of course I would love to be published in this anthology, but for the moment, the act of sending in a story is far more important. Sending in the story means that I'm now engaging a world that brought me joy as a reader.

I think I lose track of that sometimes -- we all probably lose track of that sometimes. In the race to get published, then the race to get more -- more readers, more prestigious markets, more publication credits -- it's easy to submit to markets that we've never read. Some would even claim it's necessary. But there's undoubtedly something warm and fuzzy about submitting work to a market that has, at any point in your life, brought you joy.

Rapunzel based fiction contest

Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine is running a Rapunzel themed contest starting tomorrow, April 1, and ending April 8.  The story or poem must be under 2,000 words but can be any variation of "the maiden in the tower" tale type.

The contest coincides with the release of the first issue of the second volume of Enchanted Conversation: the Rumpelstiltskin themed issue which featured my epistolary short story "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle--On Sale Now!"

And in case you're like my mother and think that "on sale now" means you can go buy the issue, don't reach for your wallet just yet. The issue is free! But my story is about a mail order company -- and yes, they're running some sales.

Quick news post for writers, Firefly geeks, and fairy tale fans

Nebula Award nominations are up.

There's talk of  Firefly returning to TV, which would be awesome! although dealing with the story lines of the film and the two comic series would prove interesting.  Although the one series is pre-TV show timeline-wise; no idea about the Shepherd Chronicles (Dark Horse).  Mostly I'd be concerned how they deal with you-know-whose death at the end of the movie.  Soooo did not see that coming.  

Locus came up with a short list of awesome Tor.com stories, so Tor.com went and bundled them here. Just so we're all on the same page, Tor.com is an online magazine which is affiliated with TOR-Forge press (book publisher).  Poor undergrad in my graduate class on publishing flubbed that one big time when he mixed up the two.  I didn't have the heart to point out the difference in front of the class -- thank goodness I was a student and not the teacher in that situation.

Donald Maass' The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success is available as a free PDF.  Which is great, because I'm fairly certain it's out of print otherwise, so grab a copy now.

And last bit of news: Enchanted Conversations is open to submissions until Thursday at Midnight.  They've recently recreated themselves as a much better looking website, and a pro-paying market (10 cents per word) -- but they're only accepting stories within four day windows, fit the theme (Rumpelstiltskin, this time), and are under 2000 words.  I figure that weeds most people out, but if you have a less-than-2000-word Rumpelstiltskin story, here are the much lengthier submission guidelines.  

And yes, I do so happen to have an under 2000 word Rumpelstiltskin story, I am writing a folk tale inspired MFA thesis after all.

The slush plie process

To add to yesterday's discussion, I give you this illustration of the submission process courtesy of Defenestration, an online magazine for humor on the web.

Click through to their site to see it bigger, or to just plain be polite and check them out.

Death of the slush pile?

(Hehe, I almost wrote "death in the slush pile" while typing the above title ... that might just be a more interesting, though macabre post.)

Check out this essay posted on the web last month.  It suggests killing the slush pile and moving on to something better.  Then in the comments, editors freaked out.  The writer calmly pointed out that no writers had freaked out over his response.  To oblige, I will now, as a writer, freak out:

The proposed killing of the slush pile involves writers posting their work online and editors sifting through the internet's slush rather than the slush of a specific magazine (I'm badly paraphrasing here, so read the link before taking me at my word or slaming me).  As a writer I now control who gets to look at my work -- that is, I get to control which editors and which magazines have the opportunity to print it.  If my work is up on the internet just waiting for an editor to come along and scoop it up, then how am I to know that Podunk Magazine's offer is really the one I should take?  The New Yorker hasn't made me an offer.  Would they?  At least with the slush pile system I am able to know with certainty that The New Yorker won't publish my story because I offered them the chance and they sent me a terse rejection note.

Besides, if we killed the slush, then we'd be killing SlushPile Hell.

TIBAL: (No) Simultaneous Submissions

The "Things I've Been Asked Lately" series of posts (TIBAL) is exactly what it sounds like. People ask me questions in real life, on the blog, or on the forums I follow and I endeavor to do my best to answer them. This is, of course, all IMHO.

What should I do when I find a market that says "no simultaneous submissions"?

I'm later getting around to this post than I thought I'd be but I did not forget about it! Last month I got into a discussion with a writer who was frustrated because her story had been tied up in a "no simultaneous submissions" market for the past four months. I'd be frustrated if I were her, too.

First off, the phrase "no simultaneous submissions" is one used by literary magazines and it means that if you submit your story to them then they don't want you to submit the story to any other magazine while they're deciding whether to accept or reject it.

Having your would-be partner demand an exclusive relationship right out of the gate is a bit daunting. Especially when you're trying to make your first sale. The good news is that very few markets make such strenuous demands.

Is it really a strenuous demand? Yes. I read in a Poets&Writers profile of an up and coming writer whose first story was rejected from forty markets before it was finally published. Last spring I had a member of faculty tell me that a story of mine was ready to send out and I "wasn't to change a thing until it's been rejected fifty times." A overheard a fellow student in my program congratulating another on his recent publication -- it was reject sixty-two times before the acceptance came and then twice more even though he'd withdrawn it from those markets. When you consider that stories are being rejected between 40 and 70 times before they find homes and should you only submit a story to one market at a time and each market takes 3-4 months to respond ... you're looking at your story getting published ten years after you begin the submission process (and that's the optimistic numbers).

For the most part, the only markets demanding you get exclusive are well respected, highly funded, highly ranked journals with long histories and name recognition in their favor. They're the kind of journals that get so many submissions in a year that they're only open for a few months anyway. My theory is that they ask for no simultaneous submissions to thin the herd. Their rate of rejection is already high, but if they can convince writers to not send them everything they've ever written then they're saving everyone a lot of heart ache and frustration.

Now, the big question: do you ignore the "no simultaneous submissions" request?

Ploughshares is one of those good reputation journals who says "no sim subs" and if you state in your cover letter that the story has been submitted elsewhere your story will be returned to you unread. And yet I've heard from those associated with the journal (when speaking as writers giving advice to other writers) to ignore the "no sim subs" request.

I've heard of people getting snarky letters when they withdraw work that was simultaneously submitted on the down low. And while I suppose that could damage your relationship with a magazine I have doubts that they're keeping blacklists.

So my answer is that there's no easy answer. It's all up to you same as it was before. Do you have a relationship with a magazine that you don't want to jeopardize? Do you really want to be published by one specific journal and are willing to wait? Are you absolutely unwilling to wait? Odds are that the "no sim sub" market will reject you anyway. Odds are that every submission you send out will come back as a rejection.

The advice that's been given to me by people better versed in the industry than I am has been to ignore the request. And my personal take on it is that any market that is going to hold your story for over a hundred days doesn't deserve the ability to command an exclusive relationship.

Grab Bag

Our fabulous Third Coast interns have begun their series of blog posts over at the TCBlog. Their ideas focus on revisions and the novel as a franchise.

J.D. Salinger passed away this week (or as my composition students tend to write "past away"). Thing is, no one knows if he spent the past forty years continuing to be a literary genius or just suing people for infringing on his one act of genius.

I got a rejection letter in the mail yesterday from a journal I don't remember submitting to. More pertinent, I suppose, is the fact that I didn't even know there was a journal by that name. I had to dig around in my records to find out who they were and what I'd sent them. Am I on overload, or am I pathetic?

I've only sent out two submissions this month because I've been engaged elsewhere. Actually, I've only sent out five submissions in the past three months because I've been engaged elsewhere! Does this spell doom or some other four letter word?

I loved this short story "Last Son of Tomorrow" by Greg Van Eekhout. He never uses the name 'superman' but if you were so inclined to call it "the life and death of the superman you thought you knew and understood" then you'd be highly ungifted at titling things but not far off in your meaning.

"Last Son of Tomorrow" is part of Tor.com's list of short things it's published that are eligible for the Nebula award. Things are listed here (and free to read) but you have to qualify for membership in the SFWA to vote for Nebula winners making this like the SAG Awards. Bummer.

Steve Jobs claimed years ago that Apple wasn't going to get into the e-reader race with Amazon and Sony because "people aren't reading." This week they unveiled the iPad which is a giant iTouch that functions *gasp* primarily like an e-reader. Of course they unveil this right after I get a brand new iTouch (the iPod type not the very expensive phone type). Reading on it is great, except it's too damn tiny. I can read on its default most of the time, and for webpages I can enlarge the font but it creates a peculiar side to side scrolling effect that I'd rather not have. Thankfully I'm in my twenties and can deal with this sort of eyestrain (unhappily dealing but physically capable). The iPad and similar devices are going to be necessary as I get older. Glad technology will keep up with me as my body deteriorates.

In related news I tried on some reading glasses to see what I'd look like in twenty years, and I'm happy to say that I actually look quite cute with readers.

And Google proves that a story can take the form of any medium. A painting, a photograph, a series of letters, or a search function. (see video below)

TIBAL: How Many Short Stories Should I Have Out at Once?

The "Things I've Been Asked Lately" series of posts (TIBAL) is exactly what it sounds like. People ask me questions in real life, on the blog, or on the forums I follow and I endeavor to do my best to answer them. This is, of course, all IMHO.

How Many Short Story Submissions Should I Have Out At Once?

As many as you can juggle.

Whenever I get asked this, people seem to have expectations that there is a magical number to aim for. Often they expect it to be ten. Sometimes four. And as best I can tell the number correlates with the amount of time they've invested in writing for publication.

The number of stories you can keep out, of course, depends on the number of pieces of fiction that you have finished and ready to be published. Not sort of ready or close to ready, but ready to go to print right now. Magazine editors do not make substantive edits; they are content seekers. They will copyedit and they will occasionally make edits to the prose or story (and often the title), but they'd really rather find work that doesn't need all this extra tweeking so that they can get back to their families and work at their paying jobs.*

[*Magazine editors are rarely ever paid for their work.]

In an ideal world, you only submit to magazines that you have read several issues of.

I say the ideal world because, honestly, I do not have the time or the money to subscribe to that many journals and read them all. I choose a couple each year to whom I give money for a subscription (often coupled with a contest fee), and I occasionally browse online content.

What I try to do is that whenever a rejection letter (or email) comes in, I take a look over the story and then send it out to one to three other markets. You can see how this tends to increase the number of submissions out. For a while, I would keep upwards of thirty-five submissions out between five stories and three poems. I let this slide at the end of last year and now I have 11 submissions out between three stories and one poem.

Whatever you do, you need a damn good way of tracking all this.

I have a two-fold approach. First is the submissions tracker on Duotrope.com and the second is a three ring binder that contains a sheet for each story title. On the sheet I have marked possible markets, (then when it gets sent) a date next to the actual market, and a big fat line through it when it comes back with a 3x5" slip of paper.

I will say that it used to be a lot more work to keep multiple story submissions out. Now many of my submissions have never touched an envelope. I go to a magazine's website, use their database uploader, type in all my information and send off the story with a click of the mouse. If I've sent them the wrong copy of a story, I can just withdraw it, also with the click of a mouse. Even those magazines to whom I'm sending hardcopies have fairly streamlined processes: I can find all their wants, desires, open reading periods and contact information right on their websites. And websites like Duotrope.com organize the magazines so that I don't have to sift through webpages in a Google search to find the right one.

So much easier than using the four inch thick Publisher's Market Place. (Yes, I did used to use that. Research with it took days.) Although I hear they have a CD/computer version now. But I never used the copy that came with a CD because I always checked mine out from the public library because of the expense.

September

It's a new month and it already feels like fall. The past few days have only been in the 50s and low 60s here in southern Michigan, an odd but welcome shift in weather. Just when I was beginning to think of it as fall the radio tells me that it'll be back in the 80s by the end of the week.

With September comes thoughts of school. Many places have already started back up, but I'll not return to the classroom until after Labor Day which means I am loving this extra week I have. And no, my syllabus is not written.

What September also brings is the opening of some of many print literary magazines. Some begin in September to overlap with the school year (and therefore with their slush readers) and some do it simply to limit submissions. Either way markets all over the place are going to be popping open.

The best advice I've heard is to submit as close to the beginning of the reading period as possible (assuming you have something ready to go) because this will get you the quickest response time. Essentially, it's getting your Christmas shopping done early to beat the lines and the crowds. Although there's two sides to beating the crowds; you may hear back quickly if you submit early, but it'll most likely be a rejection, and you'll have to wait for an acceptance. Of course, getting a rejection quickly means that you can pick up and keep going ... still, it comes with a certain amount of pain and makes the whole process smack of masochism.

I'll try to focus on the happy cappuccino instead.

All Over the Place

As I write this I am answering an email, considering another email which I should have already answered. I'm hanging a coat rack, putting together a resume and trying to keep my cat from pulling stuff off the cork board by my desk. Ug. Scatterbrained.

What I would like to share is this article, "Research, Track and Conquer: How to Research Short Fiction Markets, Track Submissions, and Ultimately Get Published" written by Joseph Thomas editor of Ramble Underground.

In the article he suggestions using Newpages.com as a tool for journal discovery. What interests me about what New Pages has to offer are the Literary Magazine Reviews. I thought I would like their blog but it turns out it is mostly a page redirecting you to other (possibly) relevant content on the web.

Their organization is lacking in their "listings" (journal and schools are often listed by who has paid to advertise and then everyone else) and they do not have the search/sort features you can find on Duotrope.com nor do they have Duotrope's awesome submission tracker which I highly recommend. For searching for MFA programs I recommend using the AWP's database.

Summer Holidays

My Fourth of July was unremarkable. Given where my apartment is I tend to lay low during anything that can be considered a "drinking holiday." Fourth of July isn't so bad although there was plenty of weirdness that woke me up at 3:00am but I hold to the principle that when one lives in a building primarily with 19-23 year-olds most holidays are drinking holidays. All I have to say about St. Patrick's Day was I was glad I didn't live on the first floor or I would have put plywood up over my windows.

I tried to do some writing, finished about 1000 words between two different projects and spent most of my time tinkering with edits on the pieces I'm sending out on submissions. I have sent out just over a dozen submissions in the past week. This is timely because about two months prior I had a flurry of submission activity which resulted in a flurry of rejection slips the past two weeks. My adviser has told me that I'm not allowed to change my story "Cake" until I get thirty rejections and I'm not allowed to be discouraged until I receive fifty. Working on it.

People set off all sorts of fireworks around here. I couldn't see any of them but I could hear them. The cats woke up from their perpetual naps and sat wide eyed with ears twitching for the first hour after dusk. There was this rumbling, rolling, ominous stretch that really had me on edge. It was easy to believe in those moments that it was more than just fireworks outside. And the rolling--approaching--nature of the sound gave weight to the question in my head is this what it sounds like when there's actual fire fights? But it stopped quickly enough and I retreated back into my mentality of suburban safety.

The big confrontation of the week came earlier when my father asked his new Canadian girlfriend if Canada Day (July 1) was a lot like the American Fourth of July, and she told him no: The Fourth of July is a lot like Canada Day. My father suspects she's something of a nationalist -- no reason that she shouldn't be. But do I tell her that the only three Canadians I can name are the governor of Michigan, comic-fantasy author Tanya Huff and the Bachelorette?

Journal Submissions

Fogged Clarity, a Michigan based online journal is seeking submissions. Particularly they feel that their submissions do not adequately represent their home state of Michigan.

elimae journal (also online) has the world's fastest turn around time between submission and rejection. My highly unscientific findings place this one man show in a league of his own. Time submission was out: under 10 hours.

And this intrigues me greatly. Blackbird is looking for video essays. Blackbird is an online lit mag to begin with, and they see nonfiction naturally moving over into the video medium. Their guidelines are ambiguous in part because the genre is ambiguous. Written non-fiction covers memoir, personal essay, lyrical essay, critical essay and others. And a video essay? It appears that they want more than just a Vlog entry. They mention image and narrative overlay. But what else? What else? I can't figure out if the possibilities intrigue me or frustrate me. I will consider.

But I will consider after semester ends. But still, I've been itching for an excuse to use the nice video editing software I had to buy last fall.