Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.
The no-attributions Q&A format I’ve been using for the last few columns seems to be working well, so I’m going to stick with that this week. Getting right to the Q’s, then…
Q: I thought you always posted new content at 6 AM North American Central time?
A: That’s the general plan. New posts go live on this site at 6 AM daily. The schedule was knocked slightly askew by the events of the last two-plus weeks, but we’re settling down and getting back on schedule again. Today’s post was delayed by my attempting to stay up late and write it last night, a bad habit I developed in college and have never been able to shake off. I should know better than to try to do that. I’m far more positive when I write in the morning and far too surly when I try to write late at night.
Q: The banner card on the Stupefying Stories site says, “New Free Fiction Daily.” What happened with that?
A: Hmm. Why so it does. We’ll have to change that. In fact, I need to change all the banner slides, as they’re out of date. They’re also a pain in the neck to code, which is why I haven’t yet done so. Site metrics indicate more people go straight to the specific pages (usually stories) they want to read, rather than to our front page, so we need to reconsider the work/return tradeoff.
As for what happened to new stories daily: economics. We still aren’t hitting the $500/monthly support level we need to maintain SHOWCASE, so we’ve had to cut back to five stories weekly. We may need to cut back further.
We’re also finding that one new post daily is it. If we try to publish more than one new story daily, readership for stories published later in the day drops off exponentially.
Q: You accepted my story [title] on [date]. When are you going to publish it?
A: Short answer: “Sometime between now and the end of June.”
Longer answer: Now that we’re done with our open reading period, we’re putting together the SHOWCASE schedule for the next few months. One of the things we’ve discovered when considering the stories en masse is that they fall into natural themes, which makes long-range planning easier. For example, last week was unofficially “timey-wimey week,” and next week, in honor of Earth Day, it will be “It’s the end of the world!” week.
Right now the schedule for this week and next week is:
4/18 “Echoes,” by Sean MacKendrickHowever, titles and dates are subject to change, as we’re still waiting on a few authors for updated bios and payment information.
4/19 “Without Fulvia,” by Anatoly Belilovsky
4/20 “The Room on the Other Side of the Plexi,” by Emma Burnett
4/21 The Week in Review
4/22 “One for the Road,” by Sean MacKendrick
4/23 “Is There Anybody Out There?” by L.N. Hunter
4/24 The Never-ending FAQ (subtitle TBD)
4/25 “The Heartbeat of Ashentown,” by Michael M. Jones
4/26 “Ragnarök on Ice,” by Probert Dean
4/27 “The Last of its Kind," by Nyki Blatchley
4/28 The Week in Review
Does this help, to have a published upcoming publications schedule? We could include links, as we already have them, but are afraid that doing so would cause confusion, as the story links don’t go live until 6AM North American Central time on the scheduled publication date.
Q: That’s all well and good for SHOWCASE. What about the magazine?
A: We’ve finally settled on a plan for issues #27 and beyond. Basically, we have the budget to do four issues this year, and it takes at least two months to do a new issue. So Stupefying Stories seems to be destined to become a quarterly, but for 2024 we’re looking at releasing new issues in June, August, October—no, we’re not doing another horror issue, that was an expensive learning experience and we’re never going to make that mistake again—and December.
If you submitted a story for issues #27 or #28, acceptances and contracts will be going out this week. If you haven’t heard from us by Monday, 4/22, please query.
Q: I’ve heard rumors that a new season of The Odin Chronicles is in the works. Is this true?
A: Why, yes, this is absolutely true! The Odin Chronicles is coming back for a second season, and we’ll be revealing more details very soon. In the meantime, if you missed Season 1 of The Odin Chronicles, you should start binge-reading it right now, so that you’re all caught up by the time Season 2 premieres. If only there was a single link you could click on to find all 30 episodes of Season 1 of The Odin Chronicles…
In a story conference yesterday Pete Wood asked if there were any particular characters from Season 1 that readers would like to see brought back in Season 2. I personally think that while he didn’t appear onstage in Season 1, we’ve already established that there is something very peculiar about the cats on Odin III, and that hallucinogenic mushrooms are native to the planet. Therefore it seems clear and obvious to me that Mr. Ruffles needs to step out from the shadows in Season 2, and we need to establish the link between the universe of Odin III and The Many Tails of Mr. Ruffles.
For what it’s worth, we’ve already begun long-range planning for Season 3. The challenge is that in true Netflix original fashion we need to figure out exactly how to totally f*** up Season 3, change or kill off all the characters the fans love, undercut everything people thought they knew and liked about the story, and deliver a series finale that leaves loyal fans muttering for years about how good Season 1 was and WTF were they thinking when they did Season 3? That, we figure, is the crucial key to selling The Odin Chronicles as a Netflix original TV series.
P.S. Pete Wood has asked that if you have any ideas for characters you’d like to see return in Season 2 or situations you’d like to see further developed, that you put your ideas either in the comments here or in an email to me. I’ll forward your messages to Pete.
Q: You promised to talk about stories you see too often. Where’s that?
A: That’s the first reason why I tried to stay up too late writing last night and ended up getting too grumpy. Maybe next week.
Q: What’s your position on the use of A.I. by writers and artists?
A: And that’s the other reason why I tried to stay up too late writing last night and ended up getting too grumpy. I’ve been living with “the growing A.I. menace” since the days when A.I. meant LISP code on punch cards, and it turns out I have quite a lot more to say about the subject than I thought I did.
Perhaps we can make a whole week out of “the growing A.I. menace?” We certainly have enough stories now in inventory to do so. We’d probably have to end it with “Not So Artificial,” by Eric Fomley. Should we do that?
If you like the stories we’re publishing, become a supporter today. We do Stupefying Stories
out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as
in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we
need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than doing so with
pledge breaks or crowd-funding campaigns, we’d rather have supporters. If just 100 people commit to giving $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we can raise more, we will pay our authors more.
Story conference does sound more impressive than "avoiding work by talking about the rise and fall of Robert Heinlein" for half an hour. But, yeah, we did eventually get around to talking about Odin and other projects.
ReplyDeleteA lot of good stuff coming, y'all!