Talking Shop

“To Be, or To Be Someone Else” • by Bruce Bethke As new books move into the copy-editing and production phases, an old question keeps coming back up. “Should I use my real name, or a pseudonym?” The answer, as is so often the case, is, “That depends.” When I first started writing, I made the decision to publish everything I wrote under my real name, mostly because my...

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Bad Imitation Lovecraft Contest Update

Yay! We’ve got some entries! Read ‘em and then try to beat ‘...

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The Son of The Friday Challenge Returns Again for the Last Time...Again!

Okay, I know, I said we were never going to do another Friday Challenge... But then, last week’s discussion of Lovecraftian horror got us talking. What if what the world needs right now is yet another writing contest? Specifically, a Lovecraftian horror writing contest? But not just any contest, no: what we want to do is go full Bulwer-Lytton on this thing. Ergo, Rampant...

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The Book, and its Contents

I continue to be surprised by the analogies between writing fiction and performing music. Putting together an issue of Stupefying Stories is exactly like working up a set list for a bar band. You want to open with a bang, to get the crowd’s attention—get ‘em up off their butts and out on the dance floor, at least in a metaphorical sense—mix it up good, alternating fast...

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The Book, and its Cover

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Everyone says that, but does anyone actually believe it? Yeah, sure, there may be a few edge cases out there who ignore the cover art and withhold judgment until they’ve actually read a good portion of the content—and of course, there’s the National Library Service braille and audio book library, which I wholeheartedly support—but...

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Status Update: 10/23/2018

With the 2018 reading period all wrapped up, we’re deep in the throes of book production. If you submitted a story to us in 2018 and have NOT received either an acceptance or a rejection from us by now, please query, as it means something has gone off-track. If you’ve received an acceptance from us and have replied to it, the next step is that we will send you a contract....

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And that’s a wrap

“...good luck placing it elsewhere. “Kind regards,“Bruce Bethke“editor, Stupefying Stories” Hmm, hmm, re-read it one more time to avoid the ohnosecond*, looks okay, click Send, and... We’re done! Okay folks, we have now responded to every short story submission sent to us in our 2018 reading period. With a few exceptions—and if you’re one of those exceptional people,...

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Letters to the Editor

Quentin Walker writes: “I am a writer in my free time and an avaricious reader [...]” (Good opening. We like writers, and always need more readers. And if you’re a writer who writes without also reading, you’re probably going to be a lousy writer. I think you meant voracious, though, not avaricious.) “When submitting short stories, do you accept anything with horror...

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Talking Shop

  Op-ed • "Horatio Alger Got It Half Right," By Eric Dontigney • Hard work matters for anyone trying to make a living as a writer. Hard work matters a lot. You can’t phone it in day-after-day. You can’t do it just when you feel like it. You have to show up every day and put in a real effort. This is the basis of the Horatio Alger stories and the foundation...

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Status Update: 10/15/18

Just a few metrics for you this morning. Of the more than 800 submissions we received during our 2018 reading period—I don’t have a solid final number at this moment, as we had some issues with submission tracking and stories being sent to old email addresses and such that we didn’t get fully nailed down until June—we are down to the following numbers. ACCEPTED - 52...

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SHOWCASE: “Playing God,” by Matthew A. J. Timmins

The bio was just a bright orange marble rolling around in her backpack. I probed it with a finger. It was soft and sticky. I rolled it back and forth, but when I pulled my hand away a pseudopod stuck to my fingertip. “Ow!” I pulled my hand out and the bio came with it, dangling from my finger like a booger. “Hey,” Lumi hissed. She pulled the creature loose and tossed...

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SHOWCASE: “Bootleg Bees,” by Laura Jane Swanson

The bees were dying again, dropping like the proverbial flies all over the garden and the yard. “Metzger must have gotten some fancy new seeds again,” Emil sighed. It had to be Metzger; Hammond and Anderson down the road were too cheap to keep buying crazy upgrades that grew their own pesticides. Bad enough that the whole neighborhood had to keep upgrading their bees...

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SF/F Writers in the Real World

Eric Dontigney found and posted an interesting article on our facebook page yesterday. If you missed it, here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/StupefyingStories/posts/2348861001822526 The original article is on syfy.com, and the subject is, “Does your science fiction or fantasy world have to be woke? Experts debate at NYCC.” It’s an interesting question, and one...

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Status Update, 10/10/18

(Using the illo of a P.O.’d cat in a pink bunny suit, just because I haven’t used it in a while and want to see if facebook picks it up.) Ten days after the end of our 2018 reading period, we’ve got things pretty close to settled down. Out of the more than 800 stories, novelettes, and novellas that showed up in our inbox in the past six months, we’re down to selecting...

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Talking Shop

Op-ed • "Why Short Fiction Is Harder to Write than It Looks," By Eric Dontigney • Most professional writers will tell you that writing a good short story is substantially harder than writing a good novel. It sounds far-fetched, doesn’t it? Science fiction and fantasy novels often run 100,000-words, give or take. It’s the rare magazine that takes short stories longer than 5,000 words. If your short story is only 5% the length of a full-blown...

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“The Avenging Tree” • by Patrick Hurley

Just outside a small Tennessee town, amid the rolling hills and lush valleys, there stood a young apple tree who’d sprung up in a holler a ways away from where her mama had first let her crab apples fall. Though their roots had never quite touched, the young tree loved being near her mama, watching that great tree sway in the breeze, offering shade and fruit to travelers...

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Talking Shop

Op-ed • "Developing Writer Discipline," By Eric Dontigney •                                                                                        ...

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Status Update 10/1/18

Our 2018 open reading period is now over.   Stupefying Stories is now closed to unsolicited short story submissions until April 2019. For more information about Stupefying Stories, including new book releases, editorial changes, thought-provoking articles, and of course, great free fiction every Saturday in SHOWCASE, follow this web page (there’s a convenient link in the left column, down the page a bit), follow us on facebook, or better yet,...

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