August 2014 ~ Stupefying Stories Magazine

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Cross-links are live

By ~brb August 24, 2014 No comments

Every day, we get a little closer to what we're trying to achieve. Today, it gives me great pleasure to announce that we've got the cross-links working.

Which means that if you open the Amazon.com page for the Kindle edition of Scout's Honor, you'll find a link to the paperback edition, and vice versa. Better yet, the reader reviews and ratings are now shared across both editions. Likewise, if you open the Amazon.com page for the Kindle edition of Five Stars, you'll find a link to the paperback edition.

Best of all is this little bonus, which you'll find over on the right side of the Amazon.com pages for the paperback editions of both books:

If you buy a new print edition of this book (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for FREE. Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. Learn more.

An actual book to read when you feel like reading ink on paper, plus a Kindle version to read on your phone or tablet when you're on the move, all for the price of the dead-tree copy alone? How cool is that?

BOOK RELEASE: FIVE STARS

By ~brb August 22, 2014 No comments

Title: FIVE STARS: Five Outstanding Tales from the early days of STUPEFYING STORIES
Contributors: Aaron Bradford Starr, Rebecca Roland, Guy Stewart, David W. Landrum, Ryan M. Jones
Editor: Bruce Bethke
ISBN: 978-1-938834-35-6 (print edition)
ISBN: 978-1-938834-34-9 (ebook edition)

FIVE STARS is the new STUPEFYING STORIES sampler package.* These five carefully selected tales from our earliest issues are all outstanding examples of the kinds of stories we're looking for, because these are the kinds of stories we love to publish. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes brimming over with adventure and excitement and other times simply dripping with terror, these are the sorts of stories that made us fall in love with fiction in the first place, back when we were reading just for the fun of it, and long before we ever dreamed of becoming professional writers or editors.

Whether you're a new friend who's wondering whether to start following STUPEFYING STORIES, an aspiring contributor who's wondering what sort of stories we'd like to see, or an old friend who just happened to miss these tales the first time around, check out FIVE STARS.

Featuring:

"First Impressions" by Aaron Bradford Starr
"Sennacherib" by David W. Landrum
"Teaching Women to Fly" by Guy Stewart
"The King of Ash and Bones" by Rebecca Roland
"Return to Earth" by Ryan M. Jones

_______________________

* Personally, I think of FIVE STARS as our Greatest Hits EP, but whenever I say that, I end up having to explain what EPs were, which always segues into a discussion of my theory that short stories are the Top 40 hit singles of the literary world, and pretty soon we've gone so far off-topic that we've completely lost the trail of breadcrumbs and that dicey-looking gingerbread cottage is beginning to look like an attractive place to bed down for the night. It's a sampler, okay?

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!

By ~brb August 19, 2014 No comments

After more "learning experiences" than I like to think about, our first print-on-demand book, Scout's Honor, is finally debugged, finished, approved, and ready to go. Today you can get it at this link (https://www.createspace.com/4958544) but over the next few days it will be percolating out to Amazon worldwide, and then out to distributors, bookstores, and...well, basically, everywhere.

Wow. The mind reels. Good thing Henry's already finished the sequel, Scout's Oath, and we're working on releasing that in September.

And yes, this means from that this point forward (and retroactive back to STUPEFYING STORIES 1.12), everything we release will come out in Kindle, epub, and print formats. In time we'll even make it to releasing books simultaneously in all formats.

I now consider myself a fully qualified expert on the subject of converting author's manuscripts to p.o.d. books, and am available for consulting at modest rates.

Book Release: The Book of Judith: Sixteen Tales of Life, Wonder, and Magic by Judith Field

By ~brb August 16, 2014 No comments

Featuring:

"The Prototype"
"The Night the Cat Crept In"
"Psychopomps"
"The Great Grampando"
"Leaky Magic"
"The River Bride"
"Lindow Five"
"The Tap-Washer Talisman"
"Stitch in Time"
"Novichok-452"
"The Finnegoid"
"Diva"
"The Way to a Man's Heart"
"Transit of Mars"
"Full Fathom Five"
"And then there were three"

__________________________

Introducing Judith Field...

One of the secret pleasures of editing a short-story magazine is that you get to meet some very talented writers, long before they become well-known names. Sometimes you watch them develop slowly, as they learn the craft and develop their skills, while other times they just sort of erupt, and produce a string of great stories right from the start.

Judith Field is that second kind of writer. I knew I was seeing something special the first time I read "The Prototype," but then, when she followed up with "The Night the Cat Crept In," "Leaky Magic," "Diva," and "Full Fathom Five," I realized she was only getting started.

It's the nature of the short-story form that writers eventually outgrow it. Sooner or later, some major publisher is going to sign her to a nice big contract for a big fat novel, or some television producer is going to discover her Cleopatra Court stories and make her rich and famous, and then we'll be left saying, "Ah yes, Judith Field. I knew her when..."

But right now, today, it's my pleasure and privilege to present these sixteen stories—fourteen never-before published, and two reprints of stories you may have missed the first time around—that show the range of Judith's story-telling talents. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes romantic, sometimes disturbing—sometimes all four in the same story!—but always a good, solid, entertaining story, well-told.

Enjoy!

—Bruce Bethke, Editor

STUPEFYING STORIES

Book Release: Stupefying Stories 1.13 (August 2014)

By ~brb August 16, 2014 No comments

Featuring:

"Personal Space," by Alison Pentecost
"The Great Work of Meister VanHocht," by Auston Habershaw
"Rainbow Spores," by Jamie Lackey
"End Times," by S. R. Algernon
"Her Symphony and Song," by Sarah Frost
"Happy Valley," by Garth Upshaw
"Memory Makes Liars of Us All," by Eric Dontigney
"Meat 2.0," by William Ledbetter

________________________________

And we're back!

Again.

If you've been following us on Facebook, you know that for the crew here at STUPEFYING STORIES, this past year has been one filled with challenges and changes. If you haven't been following us, never mind: what matters now is that with this issue, we begin our fifth year of publication, with new tools, new technologies, some new people in certain key positions, but with the same dedication to bringing you the best stories we can find, delivered directly to your e-book reader, phone, tablet, mobile device—or rolling out very shortly, to your mailbox, in the form of printed, bound, assemblages of paper!

(We've been told they're called "books." How quaint.)

To those of you who have stuck with us through the "interesting" times, we say: thanks for your patience, understanding, and support. And to both longtime fans and those who are just discovering us for the first time, we say: welcome aboard and buckle up! We have insanely ambitious plans for Year Five, and it's going to be an exciting ride.

Per ardua ad astra!