The Never-ending FAQ: Looking Ahead, Part 2

…continued from Part 1…Okay, yes, distributing through Draft2Digital makes our e-books available worldwide on Kobo, Nook, Apple Books, Smashwords, and a dizzying variety of other e-book platforms, but this wide distribution concept continues to remain more theoretical than real. At the end of the day—actually, at the end of several years of trying different strategies to push...

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The Never-ending FAQ • Looking Ahead: The Next 7 Months

We’ve been having a lot of conversations lately, about the future of Stupefying Stories in particular, the future of indie publishing in general, and the future of writing SF/F in broad and sweeping terms. Rather than try to shoehorn these conversations into our usual Q&A format, today’s column will be more of a free-ranging discussion of what we’ve talked about and decided,...

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“Courting Controversy” • by Bruce Bethke

I subscribe to quite a few marketing newsletters, in hopes of figuring out how to grow the readership for Stupefying Stories. Simply “publishing good stories” doesn’t seem to be sufficient; our readership numbers fluctuate wildly from day to day, and it seems as if it wasn’t published this week, it may as well never have been published at all. We have hundreds of stories out...

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The Never-ending FAQ: Addendum

Welcome to this week’s addendum to 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...

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The Never-ending FAQ: What happened?

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...

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MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 14: Another Player “Believes”!

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me… “We [at Karman+] want...

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“Claws” • by Gareth D Jones

  Smoke drifts, red lights glare, sirens blare. Metal creaks as the ship continues its tortured roll. Silence. Silence from the crew, passengers, scientists. No voices, no answer. Only the noise of metal groaning, loose items rolling across the deck. Metal cupboard, barely bigger than a cupboard. Andjela cowers, knees pulled up against chest, arms wrapped around...

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“The Last Guardian of Tarugal” • by Kai Delmas

I drift onward through the endless night. My belly filled with fire keeps me warm and alive in this cold, dead space.As I drift, I sleep. I sleep the long rest of the guardians. And as I sleep, I dream. I dream of Tarugal. I spread my leathery wings and fly over its craggy mountains, its dense forests, the wide open seas. I breathe in the fresh and salty air alike. I...

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The Week in Review • 12 May 2024

Welcome to The Week in Review, the weekly round-up for those too busy to follow Stupefying Stories on a daily basis. This week we turned control over to Pete Wood, to present the winners of The Pete Wood Challenge “Tristan da Cunha” contest. Pete’s challenge this time was pretty simple: to write a flash fiction story of no more than 175 words in length, set on the island...

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“The Potato Singer” • by Ian Li

Johnny knew he didn’t have the voice for it, but he dreamt of becoming a singer nonetheless. St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s deemed his voice unsuited for hymns, and the Albatross Bar didn’t do much live music (or that was their excuse when he asked anyway). His mum even forbade him from singing at home, claiming it disturbed the peace. “Why not pick a normal occupation?”...

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“The Sirens’ Salvation” • by Kimberly Ann Smiley

A pod of her sisters raced towards Elder Pesinoe, disturbing her daily vocal exercises. “Elder, we have news!” said a young siren, her skin flushed a deep green. “Men have left the island in a boat. Lots of them!” The Elder had been ready to admonish the others, but this was worthy of interruption. “Show me!” The sirens darted towards a tiny island, called Tristan da Cunha...

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“A Quiet Where Magic Can Grow” • by Kai Holmwood

Benny had heard the joke all his life: Tristan da Cunha is so quiet you can hear the grass grow. It sounded like something from one of his books about dragons and knights and adventures, but of course there was nothing magical on Tristan da Cunha. He, along with everyone else, really did hear it when an unfamiliar sound of something growing came from near the peak. Those who...

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