Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session. 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.
Attribute it to my quirky sense of humor. I actually have such a phone, and to my surprise, once I put an RJ-11 plug on the end of the cable, I found that it works mostly* just fine on modern land lines. Good old Ma Bell. Maintaining backwards compatibility into the 21st Century and beyond!
* Except for the ringer. Apparently modern phone lines don’t carry enough voltage to power the servo-actuated ringer. I vaguely remember old phone land line installations having an AC adapter plugged into a wall outlet somewhere in the system, usually in the basement, but I’ll have to talk to my brother, the retired telco lineman, to confirm that.
And speaking of the 21st Century…
Q: When is the deadline for the Space: 1999 short story contest?
A: The deadline is Labor Day, September 2nd. If I’m going to start running these things the week of September 9th, I need to have them in-hand at least a week earlier. Even earlier would be better.
This wasn’t meant to be a contest. I was thinking of it more as a role-playing thought exercise. IF Friday, September 13th, 2024, is indeed the 25th anniversary of the day the Moon was blown out of Earth’s orbit and launched across the galaxy—
We’ve received a bunch of great stories already, but don’t yet have enough to fill the entire week so we’re looking for a few more. Details here: Space: $19.99!
Q: How do I get my book onto your Friends of Stupefying Stories list?
A: That’s easy. Tell me about it. Sending me an email usually works best. Include the Amazon link (or books2read, or whatever) if you can.
The F.O.S.S. list isn’t a one-shot deal. Our intention is to update this monthly. But before we can do that, we need to know about your book—and especially about any upcoming releases.
Yes, we’ll be happy to look at ARCs, either electronic or print. Query first.
Q: You contacted me a while back about getting my permission to reissue the book that contains my story. What’s going on with that?
A: The idea of building up our back catalog by reissuing some of our currently out-of-print books turned out to be a flop. Too many of the writers we contacted said “No,” or “No, unless you’re willing to pay me a lot more,” or didn’t deign to reply at all, so we decided it was a stupid idea and circular-filed the project. The reissues are not going to happen.
Q: What’s going on with SHOWCASE?
A: Right now I’m working on the three stories scheduled to run tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday, and then I’ll be working on next week’s run of Pete Wood Challenge finalists. After that we have stories in the queue through the end of September, but by the end of September we will have used up our current inventory of SHOWCASE stories.
We’re continuing to watch the SHOWCASE readership, comments, and click-through numbers very closely. Somewhere around mid-September we’ll decide whether to reopen for submissions or to try something else.
Remember, the whole point of SHOWCASE is bring in new readers. If the readership numbers stay flat or decline, we’ll do something else. If you like a story you read here, tell your friends about it! Share the link! Especially, if you’re the author of a story published here, tell your friends about it! Likes are nice, but shares and retweets boost the signal!
Honestly, I continue to be flummoxed by the number of writers who don’t seem to be interested in promoting the publication of their own story.
Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories magazine?
A: The reason why we’re trying to get the SHOWCASE publication queue as front-loaded as possible is to clear time in our schedule to get a next issue of Stupefying Stories finished and ready for release. Right now we have the funding to put out four more issues of the magazine, so that’s what we’re going to do.
Our plans remain in constant flux, as if that wasn’t obvious. A year ago we were planning to make issue #27 our “Cyberpunk 2.0” issue, in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the original magazine publication of “Cyberpunk,” but that anniversary has come and gone. So should we make issue #27 the 40th anniversary of the original book publication of Neuromancer?
Yeah, thanks for the suggestion, no.
To be blunt, the spectacular commercial flop of Stupefying Stories 26 nearly put us out of business. I still don’t understand why the book didn’t sell. It’s a great collection of stories by a great ensemble of authors.
Maybe it didn’t sell because October of last year was a bad time to be releasing a collection of horror stories, what with the world being preoccupied with the real-life horror show that began on October 7th and continues to this day. In any case, even with the book now free on Kindle Unlimited, SS#26 continues to fail to draw readers. Stupefying Stories 25 continues to draw new readers, albeit not in huge numbers.
But taken together, what the sales of Stupefying Stories 23, 24, 25, and 26 continue to tell us is that original novels sell. Short story collections don’t.
So in the remainder of 2024, what we’re planning to do is to release Stupefying Stories issues 27 through 30, but we’re giving up on the idea of doing theme issues. The contents of these books will comprise the stories we accepted for the “Cyberpunk 2.0,” “Clankalog,” and “Heroes” issues, intermixed as seems fitting.
As for our plans for 2025: ask again in late November.
And with that said, I’ve run out of time. All the Tools & Tradecraft questions in the FAQ queue will have to wait until next week.
Ciao,
Bruce Bethke
Editor, Publisher, and Executive Cat-herder-in-chief
Stupefying Stories | Rampant Loon Press
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