The State of the Loon Address: December 28, 2019

Well. What a year it’s been.  I’ve been writing and rewriting this column for at least a week now, trying to figure out what I’m trying to say while simultaneously fighting the feeling of having said it all before. Our existence has definitely taken on a Groundhog Day quality lately, as in the sense of the Bill Murray movie, not that business with that oversized marmot...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #7

It’s been a challenging month here at Rampant Loon Press. We had a major computer malfunction in early November that locked us out of the RLP email acounts—and more disturbingly, the RLP bank accounts—for a couple of weeks, but fixing that didn’t get my full attention because my wife was back in the hospital again. The good news is that we finally have a clear diagnosis and an effective treatment plan in place for her, and she’s being discharged...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #6

STUPEFYING STORIES IS NOW CLOSED TO UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS Repeating that message to make sure it’s loud and clear and front and center. And having done so... We had a medical emergency in the family which began to develop in mid-September, became a crisis in the last week of September, and has since evolved into something nasty, complex, and with longer-term implications than the doctors thought at first. Yesterday was my first day back in...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #5

STUPEFYING STORIES IS NOW CLOSED TO UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS If you’ve sent us a submission recently, you should by now have received our “acknowledgment of submission received” reply, which includes your manuscript tracking number. If you haven’t received our reply, please query, as it most likely means we never received your submission. In the past we’ve had writers wait patiently for ridiculously long periods of time, hoping to receive our...

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It's Go Wide Week! (Annoucement #2)

Rampant Loon Press is exited to announce that Henry Vogel's critically acclaimed space opera trilogy, THE RECOGNITION RUN, THE RECOGNITION REJECTION, and THE RECOGNITION REVELATION, is now available on Rakuten Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, and in the Apple iTunes store, at these links! » On KOBO » On NOOK » On Apple Books Personally, I love the way Apple Books processes...

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It's Go Wide Week! (Announcement #1)

Rampant Loon Press is excited to announce that Henry Vogel’s bestselling space opera trilogy, THE FUGITIVE HEIR, THE FUGITIVE PAIR, and THE FUGITIVE SNARE, is now available on Rakuten Kobo at these links! » THE FUGITIVE HEIR » THE FUGITIVE PAIR » THE FUGITIVE SNARE Watch for lots more announcements are “Go Wide Week” continues and we roll out more books on more platf...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #4

Twelve weeks into our 2019 reading period, things aren’t quite where I wanted them to be, but on the whole, I’m cautiously optimistic. New submissions continue to show up in an unsteady stream: we’ll see fifteen new stories one day and two the next. The weekends are particularly submissions-intensive. Thus far we’re mostly keeping up with the flow. As of this morning there...

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Discovered entirely by accident...

...while trying to figure out why we can’t sell print books in Australia: 1. That Stupefying Stories #1 is now a valuable collector’s item selling for a ridiculous amount of money. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LP7K1BO (Psst. We still have a crate of copies in the warehouse. Anyone want one?) 2. That Maverick is now a valuable collector’s item, which I guess makes...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #3

Six weeks into our 2019 reading period, we’ve settled down to a pretty consistent average of seven new submissions daily. Of these— • 60% are first-round no-comment rejects, for any of a number of reasons. • 10% are set aside waiting for me to write a personal rejection, because the story deserves more than just a “Thanks, but we can’t use this story at this time.” •...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #2

Three weeks into our 2019 reading period, things seem to be progressing nicely. Submissions slowed for a few days but then returned to their normal pace, and we’re still on-track to receive between 200 and 250 new stories this month. I’m pleased to report that thus far we’ve been getting every new submission received into the hands of a first reader within 48 hours, and...

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It’s like déjà vu all over again.

Funny, how fast things can change. Thursday morning everything was more or less under control and we were moving forward. Friday morning I woke up, poured myself a cup of coffee, opened up my laptop, checked my email—and wham. This. HP Enterprise to buy supercomputer pioneer Cray Given that all our plans for Rampant Loon Press are based on the assumption that I will...

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Submissions and Slush Pile Update #1

Two weeks into our 2019 reading period, things are going about as expected. At the present daily rate we should receive between 250 and 300 new submissions this month. Of these stories, statistically, we’ll be able to buy and publish about 15. These aren’t hard numbers, mind you. They don’t take into account story length, and in fiction publishing, word count is a minor...

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DemiCon 30 • After Action Report

We’re finally (mostly) recovered from spending the weekend at DemiCon 30, the Des Moines SF/F convention. This was sort of a trial run for us. Karen and I have been off the con circuit for quite a few years and are now beginning to ease back into it, starting with a few small regional cons. Many thanks to Amanda for inviting us and Amanda (the other one) for finding some nice...

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Re Submissions

Here’s one more thing we’ll be adding to the Submission Guidelines ASAP: Please do not send email with HUGE (multi-megabyte) attachments to our submissions email inbox. Such submissions just overflow the inbox, clog up the pipes, and end up being deleted unread. If we want to see your author’s photo in all its glorious 16MB hi-res beauty, we will ask for it after we’ve accepted your story and put it under contract, and then you’ll be directed to...

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As criteria go, this is not a bad one to embrace. ...

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Rampant Loon Press Status Update • by Bruce Bethke

Hang on. This gets very personal. Funny thing, how you can spend most of your life with someone and still wind up with very few photos of the two of you together. We have lots of photos of one of us in someplace interesting, doing something with one or more of the kids or grandkids. But photos of me and Karen together, in the same place, at the same time? They’re pretty...

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State of the Loon

Eric here. So, you might be wondering what the heck is going on with Rampant Loon. There was a whole flurry of activity right around the end of last year with the publication of Stupefying Stories #22 in November and The Midnight Ground right around New Year’s. Incidentally, The Midnight Ground has gotten nearly universally positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads if you were on the fence about it.  There was talk of a new issue of Stupefying...

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A Quick Status Update

This is just a quick status update, for those wondering what’s been going on with Rampant Loon Press and Stupefying Stories. The short version is that in Real Work World the huge software release that was scheduled to go out on February 28 did ship on time, just barely, but by the end it turned into Project Deathmarch, and as of today I’m still cleaning up wreckage. The long version requires much use of four-letter words, so I’ll spare you that. Stupefying...

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Book Release: THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, by Eric Dontigney

Just released: THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, by Eric Dontigney. Available now for Kindle and also in trade paperback. Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MP673WJ Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1938834194 (The two pages are supposed to be cross-linked, but that hasn’t happened yet, because Amazon.) Here’s the jacket copy:  “As middleman to the magical...

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