Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The Never-ending FAQ • 19 March 2025



I’ve heard from a lot of people since last Saturday’s announcement that we’re going to be striking the tent and closing the circus. The first thing to remember is…

Oh, I bet you can guess.

To reiterate: if you have a story under contract with us, we will publish it, unless you choose to withdraw it.

The exact nature of that publication may vary. Some of the stories we originally bought for the SHOWCASE web site will be sliding over into books. We plan to stay in the book business.

Our original novels sell. 

 

Well, most do. I still can’t figure out why we’re having such a hard time generating interest in EMERALD OF EARTH.


Henry Vogel’s latest novel, THE PRINCESS SCOUT, is a finalist for the Imadjinn Award.


Matthew Castleman’s PRIVATEERS OF MARS continues to sell in batches. (It’s odd. We’ll sell a bunch of copies in two days, and then nothing for weeks.)


Eric Dontigney’s novel, THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, hasn’t sold many copies lately, but it’s turning big KENP numbers on Kindle Unlimited.


But as for Stupefying Stories, the magazine… 


Have a Kindle? Find out what you’ve been missing!
Buy the four latest issues with just one click!

(Or buy just one, if that’s what you’d really prefer.)


Even with it being FREE on Kindle Unlimited, we can’t seem to give the thing away. So it’s time for me to do something else. 

I’m more than a bit saddened by this. We’ve poured a lot of time, money, and energy into it over the past fifteen years. For personal reasons I was really hoping Stupefying Stories would make it to issue #30. 

But in the past 15 years it’s gone from being a chaotic effort produced by a collective of eager volunteers (hence my onetime job title, “Executive Cat-herder in Chief”), to being a mom-and-pop operation run by me and my wife with a rotating cast of helpers and first readers, to being a grandma-and-grandpa boutique operation…

I really appreciate all the kind comments I’ve received in the past few days from people who have found a sense of community here, but I can’t continue to run this thing as a one-man band.

§

We—meaning me and my financial backers—considered a lot of options. We talked about putting the fiction content behind a paywall, or moving the site over to substack or something like that. Until a few weeks ago the plan was to cut over to a new web site at the end of this month, and to rebrand as StupefyingSF.

But for some reason the spambots took that name to mean we were about to open a new restaurant in San Francisco—seriously—and all the email addresses associated with that domain were spam-bombed into rubble by people trying to sell us restaurant fixtures and kitchen supplies. Then the schedule for moving over to the new site was thrown into complete chaos by The Remodeling Project That Would Not End, And Still Hasn’t…

So the good news is, we’ve abandoned the plan to move to a new web site anytime soon. This web site, https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/, will continue to exist well into summer. This will let us finish publishing most of the stories we have accepted for SHOWCASE.

(“Most of?” someone asked. The rest will go into new books. I’ll explain in a minute.)

I hope you noticed yesterday’s post, REPRISE: “The Prediction of a Horrific Crime” • by Humphrey Price  

Over the past few years we have published hundreds of stories in SHOWCASE. Since we’re going to be keeping this web site going for a few more months, we’ve decided to go spelunking through the archives and resurface what we’re calling The Best of Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE

Some will be stories you probably have read before, as they drew thousands of readers. Others will be stories that were unfairly overlooked. All will be stories united by one common characteristic: they’re the stories that I think represent the best of what we’ve published online. 

I hope that in the months ahead, you’ll join me on this journey of exploration.

§

Finally—no, not really finally, I’ve lots more questions in the mailbag but have run out of time to answer them today—the burning question on many people’s minds: What about The Pete Wood Challenge?


The quick answer is that Pete and I are in discussions on the subject, and there will be a THE LAST PETE WOOD CHALLENGE, but the specifics are not yet settled. Stay tuned. 

More to follow, bye for now, and remember: BUY SOME OF OUR DAMN BOOKS, OKAY?



Tuesday, March 18, 2025

REPRISE: “The Prediction of a Horrific Crime” • by Humphrey Price


“I figured I had about an hour before being arrested by the Pre-Crime Police…”

SYNOPSIS: In a rigidly ordered and nearly crime-free society, where everyone everywhere is under the constant surveillance of the government’s Precog AI network, how can one person hope to commit an utterly horrific but absolutely necessary act of defiance against the system? Space systems engineer Humphrey Price shows us how, in “The Prediction of a Horrific Crime.” » READ IT NOW  


 


Humphrey Price
is a space systems engineer who has contributed to robotic exploration missions to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. His goal is to introduce interesting plausible ideas for space travel, aliens, and the future of the human race through highly realistic hard science fiction stories. Information on his writings can be found at humphreyprice.com.

 

 



A lone space explorer, shipwrecked on a forgotten world.

A lost human colony, fighting to survive.

Heroes. Villains. Sword fights. Airships.

If you liked Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels, you’ll love—

SCOUT’S HONOR

Book 1 in Henry Vogel’s best-selling Terran Scout Corps series. Available now on Kindle or in paperback

 

Monday, March 17, 2025

Feeding the Muse • Living Well on a Writer’s Budget

Editor’s Note: This column was first published on 3/21/2018. With today being St. Patrick’s Day—or as we call it around here, The Day Before Corned Beef Briskets Go On Clearance Sale—this seemed a good time to resurface this one. Karen always wanted to reboot her “Feeding the Muse” series but that never got the chance. Here’s hoping you enjoy this one. Bon appetit!

—Bruce Bethke 

Recipe • Traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage • by Karen Bethke



Now is the time to buy corned beef. Just as the Monday after Easter is the best time to buy a ham, the Monday after Thanksgiving is the best time to buy a frozen turkey, and the Monday after Christmas is the best time to buy a beef roast or prime rib, all the grocery stores that stocked up for St. Patrick’s Day are now eager to move all their unsold corned beef brisket, so if you shop around you can find some great prices.

Corned beef briskets come in two basic styles: the flat cut, which is usually more expensive because it looks more attractive, and the tri-tip or point cut, which is exactly the same piece of meat but triangular in shape, because it’s the part of the bottom sirloin that’s trimmed off to make the flat cut look so nice and rectangular. Of the two, tri-tip is usually considerably cheaper, but the difference is entirely cosmetic. You can also sometimes find whole briskets, which are the flat cut and tri-tip still attached to each other, but that’s a huge hunk of meat. In some markets you may also find what’s called “New England” corned beef, which is again the same cut of meat, but has a disturbing grayish color because it hasn’t had nitrates or nitrites added to the brine to keep it pink. 

In all cases, corned beef is just a big slab of bottom sirloin that’s been packed in heavily salted brine for a good long time, to preserve it for long ocean voyages, and coincidentally to make it nice and tender. If you’ve ever run across the term “bully beef” in your reading, that’s corned beef.

For that matter, pastrami is basically just corned beef that’s been spiced and smoked. Every now and then Bruce gets a notion to try putting a brisket in the smoker to make his own pastrami, but so far hunger and impatience have always won out.

The great thing about buying corned beef right now is that it’s a.) really cheap, b.) freezes well, c.) can keep for a long time if properly refrigerated—remember, this stuff was made to stay edible while kept in barrels on long ocean voyages in the age of sailing ships, though I wouldn’t recommend doing that now— d.) tastes great if prepared right, and above all, e.) is one of the all-time great fix-and-forget meals for a working mom to prepare in a slow cooker.

So here’s how I prepare it.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

AWARDS NEWS! Congratulations, Henry Vogel and Barbara V. Evers!

We’ve just learned that Henry Vogel’s latest Rampant Loon Press novel, THE PRINCESS SCOUT, is a finalist for the 2025 Imadjinn Award for Best YA Novel, which will be presented at Imaginarium 2025 this coming July.

We’re pretty pumped about this. Two years ago Henry’s previous novel, THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING, made a strong run for the Imadjinn Award, only to be beaten in the final round by a big-budget novel co-written by a pair of NY Times and USA Today best-selling authors and published by a major publishing house with a HUGE advertising budget. This year he’s facing no such competition, so we don’t want to jinx the thing, but we are, as they say, “cautiously optimistic.”

BUT WAIT! IT GETS BETTER!

It doesn’t stop with THE PRINCESS SCOUT. This year Henry is also a finalist in the category of Best Graphic Novel, for ARISOCRATIC XTRATERRESTRIAL TIME-TRAVELING THIEVES COMPLETE COLLECTION! (Try saying that three times fast!) We’ve been slow to plug this one, as a.) we didn’t publish it; Critical Blast did, and b.) the book is a bit pricey and weighs three pounds in hardcover, and made an audible thump! when it landed on the porch. But now that the book is available in a somewhat more affordable and considerably lighter paperback edition, you should check it out!

MEANWHILE, LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

Stupefying Stories contributor and former slush-pile reader Barbara V. Evers is also a finalist for the Imadjinn Award this year, in the category of Best Short Story, for “Kaleidoscope,” which I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about as I don’t know where it was published. I can tell you though that Barbara is already a two-time winner of the Imadjinn Award in the category of Best Fantasy Novel, for her Watchers of Moniah trilogy, so you owe it to yourself to check out her website. She’s been busy since she moved on from writing columns for us!

UPDATE: Barbara’s story, “Kaleidoscope,” is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Magnificent-Display-Marvelous-Wonders-JordanCon/dp/B0CWZW98QM 

Wow. Not one but three award finalists. It’s been a busy day and I haven’t even had my second cup of coffee yet. I wonder what the afternoon will bring?

~brb

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Status Update • 15 March 2025


I’ve been thinking a lot about inertia and entropy lately.

This two-month hiatus wasn’t planned. While it’s tempting to blame it on the Never-ending Repair & Remodeling Project, that was only the inciting incident.

Previously on Stupefying Stories: Last summer’s destructive hailstorm made major repairs to the house necessary, which subsequently mushroomed into The Remodeling Project That Would Not End. A “minimally invasive, three days tops” sub-project that began in January eventually required my moving everything out of the front half of the house, and nearly two months later, that sub-project is still only “mostly” finished. From time to time a worker will show up unannounced to put in a solid half-day of chaos generation, and then vanish again, leaving only debris behind.

On the positive side, the primary contractor has yet to bill me for any of this. Perhaps they’ve forgotten I exist.  

§

The insidious thing about inertia is that it’s so tightly coupled to entropy. The longer a body at rest stays at rest, the harder it is to get it moving again, as rust and rot set in. All my best analogies on this topic come from my many experiences with old British sports cars, and with the delusional owners of barn finds who imagine their rusty piles of junk are restorable classics when they’re more likely to break in half if someone tries to hook them up to a tow truck and pull them out of the mud into which they’ve sunk up to their door frames…

But I’m speaking to an audience of writers now, so let’s couch it in terms of writer’s block—which in my experience is an imaginary condition that results from a writer beginning to write a story with no clear idea of where it’s going to go or how it’s going to end.

When we began the Stupefying Stories story fifteen years ago, we began with an overabundance of enthusiasm and ambition and no clear idea of what we were trying to do or how we’d ever know if we’d done it. The idea that it might someday end never even occurred to us. After a few very promising early years, though, Karen’s cancer took control of the narrative, and we spent the next decade scrambling to find ways to keep Stupefying Stories moving forward while learning far more about oncology and the cruelty of hope than we’d ever wanted to. 

As regards publishing fiction, we tried a lot of things. We went off in a lot of different directions, often simultaneously. We learned a lot of lessons, some fun, some eye-opening, and some painful and expensive. 

What have we learned?

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, an observation. Two years, three months, and twelve days after she died—after a lifetime of being one half of “we”—I’m still finding it really difficult to think in first-person singular again.

§

A lifetime ago I was working for a company that was doing contract software development work for a Really Famous Musical Instrument Company. The new product we were helping them to develop was very impressive, and later went on to be incredibly successful in the market, but at the time we were working with the prototypes, the deeper we dove into them, the more we noticed some…peculiarities. Seemingly designed-in limitations. Things that made us wonder why they did it that way, instead of in some other way that, while admittedly a bit esoteric, would make the instrument far more useful for professional musicians. So we pulled together our list of questions, concerns, and suggestions, and presented them to RFMIC. 

Their response was both disturbing and enlightening. They didn’t intend to sell this thing to professional musicians. They shared their data with us, which showed that the entire world-wide “pro” market was far too small to be worth pursuing. They could afford to give their instruments away free to well-known working professional musicians, because there were so few of them; in fact, doing that was part of their marketing strategy. The real money was to be made in selling to the student market, because parents will pay stupid amounts of money to encourage their kid’s budding talent, and to the semi-pro “aspiring amateur” market, who always believe they’re just one more expensive purchase away from cracking the secret of how to make it big and become rich and famous. RFMIC wasn’t really in the business of making and selling musical instruments. They were in the business of selling the dream of success to sufficiently affluent and somewhat talented amateurs. 

So thanks for your input, but stick to the spec, okay? The changes you’re suggesting will only make it more confusing for, and thus harder to sell to, the amateur market.

A lifetime later, I must admit: they were right. Dammit. At the time I was taken aback by their naked cynicism. Ultimately, they sold four times as many of those instruments as there were working professional musicians then working in all genres in the entire world. 

§

A decade or so later I was on the board of directors of SFWA, and in the process of learning a related lesson, although I hadn’t quite put the pieces together just yet. In particular I was paying a lot of attention to the Nebula awards; how works got on the ballot, how the voting process worked, how many ballots were sent out, who returned their ballots, etc., etc., etc., etc. (The actual ballots were secret, of course, but the organization did a great job of tracking who bothered to return their ballots. Surprisingly few members did.)

Slowly, it dawned on me. The then-currently active successful working professional writers—the Big Names, who were always a very small minority of the membership—just plain didn’t have the time to pay serious attention to the Nebulas. They didn’t have the time to read enough of anyone else’s work to make more than a few token recommendations; they didn’t bother to vote in significant numbers on the preliminary ballot; they didn’t even have the time to read only the works that made it to the final ballot, much less to vote on it. Thus, by the time the results of the final ballot came out, what it really reflected was the collective opinion of all the deadwood, has-been, wannabe, never-were, and enthusiastic newbie members who made up the vast majority of the voting membership—and especially the opinions of those newbies who engaged in aggressive campaigning and Nebula-vote log-rolling.

Decades later, I can’t say things have improved. Just a few days ago a writer I know put out a desperate plea on social media for people willing to accept a review copy of his latest novel, no strings attached, in hopes that they might consider giving it a review or rating. What he received in return were lots of comments from all his writer-friends, who began with really encouraging words, but then segued into, “Unfortunately, right now I’m too busy finishing my own latest [novel, story, whatever] to look at it.”

§

Fifteen Years Later: What We’ve Learned, So Far


1. Writers are not readers.

A. They typically begin as readers. Students and aspiring writers will read other writers’ works, but only until they start getting published themselves. After that their interest in reading or promoting other writers’ work tapers off rapidly. It’s the very rare writer who will help to promote any work but their own. Some writers won’t even help their publisher promote their own work. They’re too busy writing their next thing and trying to find their next publisher.

B. There is something really wrong with the way we teach literature. Children love to read stories, but by the time they’re teenagers most have had that love beaten out of them—except for the few who have embraced the dream of becoming a writer.

C. We’ve done an intermittently good job here of building a publication that draws the interest of writers. Unfortunately, see Point 1, above.

2. New original novels sell.

A. Reprints of old out-of-print rights-reverted novels don’t.

B. Readership-over-time drops off very rapidly. There’s too much new content streaming out constantly and competing for the reader’s attention. The window to get readers interested in a new publication closes faster than the drop of a guillotine blade.

C. Series novels sell much better than standalone novels. Readers like to follow the characters in a series, not the author—and definitely not the publisher!

3. “General Interest” short story collections don’t sell.

A. General interest collections appeal to general interest readers, which are mythical creatures, or at least now extinct in the wild. See point 1B, above.

B. Strongly themed collections can sell, but only with aggressive and carefully targeted pre-release advertising.

C. Standalone novellas can sell, but only with aggressive and targeted pre-release advertising. Effectively, these are original novels for people with short attention spans.

D. Reprint collections are a very tough sell, unless they have both a strong theme and at least one famous or award-winning story. Mostly they’re vanity projects.

E. The primary market for the existing general interest short story publications appears to be students and aspiring amateur writers who hope to sell to those publications, and that market is very small. Smaller even than the market for professional musicians.

4. There is nothing older than old science fiction.

A. If it’s any good, Street & Smith already owns it and has sold the reprint and film rights at least a dozen times over.

B. Eric Frank Russell would never get published today.

C. Newly written “vintage style” stories aren’t cool or retro, they’re just faux old. They’re prose karaoke. They’re Franklin Mint collectible plates. They don’t appeal to older readers, who already have shelves full of the original stories in the form of Street & Smith-licensed reprint collections, and they don’t appeal to many younger readers either, because they’re old.

5. Speaking of old SF styles and forms, online serials don’t draw readers.

A. Amazon proved that with Kindle Vella.

B. Online multi-part stories aren’t read. If readers don’t get hooked on the first part within the first two weeks of publication, they’ll never go back to look at it later. See point 2B, above.

C. Online fiction readers have very short attention spans. A thousand words tests their patience.

6. Free content on a web site does not drive click-throughs to book sales.

A. Therefore, why are we doing SHOWCASE?

B. In fact, why are we doing a web site at all?

7. Our fundamental approach has been wrong since Day One.

A. If we want to reach writers, we should forget publishing fiction entirely and start selling the dream that you can become rich and famous while also losing weight and having a great sex life by writing best-selling fiction—but only if you buy our series of “how to write real good” self-help books and sign up for every single one of our series of “bestseller secrets” webinars.

B. But if we want to reach readers… See points 3A through 3E, above.

8. In retrospect, I should have put a lot less time into actually publishing fiction and a lot more time into establishing myself as a tastemaker/influencer and making the case for why “Stories That Impress Bruce Bethke®” is a valuable endorsement readers should seek out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, coulda woulda shoulda. Hindsight is always 20/20, except when you’re considering someone else’s failures and shortcomings, in which case it’s closer to 20/15.

9. This is a terribly fraught time to be working in publishing.

I’d thought things would settle down once the 2024 election was over. Then I’d hoped things would settle down after the inauguration. Now I’m beginning to feel like I’ve fallen through a time warp and am stuck living through 1969 again. If you’re too young to remember that year; trust me, it was not a good time, and 1970 was worse.

Lately I’ve been running into a lot of people in publishing and the publishing adjacent spaces who shouldn’t be writing for publication or active on social media at all, they should be talking to their doctor about Zyprexa®.

These people make me… nervous. And there sure seem to be a Hell of a lot of ‘em on the loose now.

§

Being forced to move everything out of the front half of my house for a few weeks was therapeutic, I guess. There were things in there I hadn’t touched in years. There were rooms I’d scarcely entered since Karen died. Cleaning out her office was bad enough, but cleaning out her sewing and craft room was worse. There were so many creative projects she’d begun with such great enthusiasm…

But then another set of metastatic lesions would pop up in some new place, all her hopes, plans, and dreams would get shoved aside while she went back on the treatment treadmill, and in the end, all that was left was the sad evidence of an unfinished life.

Through it all, we clung to the dream that we could make Stupefying Stories work. We both loved to read. We both loved the same kinds of fiction. As the cancer slowly stole her life, one piece at a time, reading and talking about stories remained one of the last things we could still do together. With each new treatment plan, we clung to the hope that this time it would work, and buy us more time, and we’d have a chance to get back to something like a normal life. 

“A chance to live longer…”

I really hate those commercials. I no longer scream obscenities at the TV when one in particular comes on, but considered in hindsight, that’s what her doctors were selling us: the hope that the next treatment might succeed where all the others had failed. Until the last one, which not only accelerated her death, but robbed her of what little remained of her dignity.

The women in that particular commercial look so happy, though. Why, they don’t even begin to look like Stage 4 cancer patients. They look like… actresses.

Is that an acting career specialty? Looking like a happy cancer patient living life to the fullest in a pharmaceutical commercial?

§

For the last few years I didn’t worry too much about the business side of Stupefying Stories, because I was considering it more akin to occupational therapy. If it was losing money, so what? It was keeping her intellectually engaged. We never talked about how we might wind down and end Stupefying Stories, because the very idea of endings was terrifying. 

But now her story has ended, and looking at all the stuff cluttering up the place around here, it’s clear that it’s time for me, first person singular, to outline my plan for how the Stupefying Stories story ends.

» I could just end it cold, with a hard cutoff, but I won’t do that. I have too much stubborn pride to do that. I’ve promised people I will publish their stories, and dammit, I’m going to publish their stories! If you have a story under contract with us, it will be published, unless you choose to withdraw it.

» But, there doesn’t seem much point in continuing Stupefying Stories as a general interest magazine, either. There’s too much competition, too few readers, and whatever goodwill we may have accrued in our early years was pissed away in our later years, as we struggled to get issues out while fighting increasingly desperate rearguard actions against cancer. As our most recent promotion with SS#26 proved, we can scarcely give the magazine away now.

» I have the financial backing lined up to put out four more full issues. Strangely enough, though, while when it was my own money I didn’t worry too much about it, now that it’s my investors’ money, I feel obligated not to spend it stupidly. I guess that’s capitalism for ya.

» In light of lessons learned 2B, 3B, and 3C, then, here’s what I’m going to do:

• We have a standalone novella in the works right now. In a just world, it would be at least a Nebula finalist. Getting it out on schedule in time to make this year’s eligibility window is a top priority.

• I’m recasting the stories we accepted for Stupefying Stories issues 27, 28, 29, and 30 as at least three theme anthologies, to be released under the Stupefying Stories Presents aegis. Cyberpunk 2.0 is an obvious theme, as is Cyberpunk 2.1. I’m still developing unifying themes for others. “Clankalog,” while apt, is too much of an inside joke. Once I firm up the themes I may put out a very selective call for submissions, if I find I’m coming up short.

• I was planning to wind down the stupefyingstories.blogspot.com site by the end of this month; however, that was before I lost about four working weeks due to not being able to get into my office. We have content in the queue for the web site and will be running it out through at least the end of April now.

• Concentrate on pre-release marketing like you wouldn’t believe! In the past we could just fling books out there and hope they were found by readers. That’s over. Going forward I’m going to market the Hell out of books before they’re released, in hopes that we’ll get decent sales in the two weeks before the guillotine drops. 

• This is the difficult one. In light of lesson learned #8—well, I am not by nature an arrogant extrovert, but I can perform the part, for a few hours, about once a month. So I’m going to give that a try. Let’s see how it works.

• And in six months we’ll reevaluate, to decide if we (now meaning me and my financial backers) want to continue into 2026.

» Of course, lesson learned #9, pardon the expression, trumps all else, so I do reserve the right to torch the social media accounts, throw away my cell phone, go dark, and hide out somewhere in the north woods until the civil war is over.

Submitted for your consideration,

Bruce Bethke

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

The Never-ending FAQ • 26 February 2025


First news: I’ve shut down our crowd-funding campaign.

Or rather, I’m trying to. While I’ve emailed everyone on our (pathetically short) list of supporters, some folks still have monthly automatic credit card payments set up. To them I say, thank you for your continued support, but going forward I’m going to refund your automatic payments anyway, so you may as well shut them off now.

Our attempt at doing crowd-funding has been a failure. We have never come even close to raising the amount of support needed in order to meet the continuing monthly operating expenses of SHOWCASE.

Understand: I don’t really need the money. In terms of raw cash, it was a paltry amount. But it was also a very good indicator of the level of commitment of our readers, and if fewer than 5% of our readers feel Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE is worth throwing the equivalent of a dollar a week in the tip jar…

Well, then we are not providing a service people value, and it’s time for us to do something else.

§

Rampant Loon Press and Stupefying Stories will continue. Our original novels continue to do well, although not as well as we might like. Eric Dontigney’s paranormal thriller, THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, for example, continues to draw new readers daily, although they’re mostly Kindle Unlimited readers, not e-book or print book buyers.


Henry Vogel’s two main series, THE FUGITIVE HEIR


And SCOUT’S HONOR

Continue to sell in e-book and paperback, and to find new readers on Kindle Unlimited. (Henry’s latest book, HEART OF DORKNESS, is so new I don’t even have a banner ad for it yet. You’ll just have to click the link.)

However, we do have a really nice banner ad for—


I continue to hear from people who’ve read PRIVATEERS OF MARS and want to tell me how much they love it, and ask when the next book in the series is coming out. 

Don’t tell me how much you love it. Give it a rating or a review on Amazon or Goodreads!

§

In sum: our books do well (mostly). 

Publishing free online fiction doesn’t. It draws very little reader support, and it’s a constant struggle to keep our readership numbers up. Worse, the entire raison d'être for Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE was to try to draw in new readers to this website, in hopes that while they’re here, they might also decide to take a look at some of our other books. 


That’s not happening. There is no detectable link between SHOWCASE readership and book sales, or even Kindle Unlimited page reads. Readers aren’t even crossing over to take a cursory glance at the e-book edition of SHOWCASE, which is free on Kindle Unlimited.

  

Therefore…

I’ve become reluctant to posit deadlines. Perhaps it’s the result of spending the last two months living in the midst of this “minimally invasive, three days tops” house repair and remodeling project that is still only “mostly” done. But the plan d’jour is to wind down Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE gracefully, running out the remainder of the content we already have in-hand and under contract through March, and then to cut over to our new website on or about April 1st.

Our new website will be focused on selling books. That’s why Rampant Loon Media LLC exists: to publish and sell books

As for Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE: I’m sorry to say that it no longer helps us do that, if it ever did. So now it’s time for us to do something else.

Any questions? You know how to reach me.

Kind regards,

Bruce Bethke
Executive Cat-herder in Chief
Rampant Loon Media LLC

Friday, February 21, 2025

Wrapping up “Stories You Probably Missed” week

The destruction/construction crew showed up a half-hour before dawn this morning and they’ve been hammering and sawing away ever since, trying to get the job finished today, so my ability to concentrate is not quite what it might be. The plan for today was to wrap up “Stories You Probably Missed” week with the last of the stories we published during the period when we couldn’t get into our social media accounts to promote the publications, but the more I look at “Scavenger Hunt,” by Jeff Currier


Jeff Currier is another writer you should be watching. He doesn’t write a lot of stories, nor does he write the sort of long stories that make writers’ reputations, but the stories he’s sent us so far are all quite good, and we have more in the queue we’ll be publishing soon. If I had to pick just one story that I think you should read right now, because it showcases Jeff’s talents so well, I’d point you to—

 “A Curse and a Blessing”

Jeff wrote this one last September for 1999 Week, and he really took the idea and ran with it in a completely unexpected and delightful direction. Looking back: all the stories we published in 1999 Week were good, but this one was truly outstanding.  » READ IT NOW

After you’ve enjoyed “A Curse and a Blessing,” you might also want to look at:

 “The Fate of Time Travelers”

 

“Temporal Avoidance Game”


“The Foulest of Them All”


And of course, at the story that prompted this post:

“Scavenger Hunt”

Enjoy!

Thursday, February 20, 2025

“(re)Visions in the Jar” • by Sophie Sparrow

Continuing with this week’s theme, two weeks ago we published “Visions in the Jar,” a beautiful and heartbreaking little story by Sophie Sparrow. Unfortunately we did this during the period when we were temporarily unable to access our Facebook, X/Twitter, or Bluesky accounts, so we were unable to promote the story, and thus the readership numbers were not what we feel this story deserves.

» Read it now: “Visions in the Jar” • by Sophie Sparrow

Sophie is an author you probably should be following, as she writes fantasy fiction and humour. Her work has appeared in PseudoPod, Arsenika, Mad Scientist Journal, (Dis)Ability: An Anthology, and previously in Stupefying Stories, in “Angels,” “The Ghost of Moscow,” and “Dangerouser and Dangerouser.”

Sophie has worked as a content writer, transcriptionist, and software tester, speaks Russian and French, has previously been paid to wander around film sets, and is now quite tired of writing about herself in the third person. She likes cats and red wine, though not in the same glass. Keep up to date with what she's doing at www.writersophiesparrow.com

 

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But if you’ve already read this story, why not take a look at this new book we just released, also during the period when we were unable to access our Facebook, X/Twitter, and Bluesky accounts?

Heart of Dorkness & Other Stories, a chapbook of short stories by best-selling author Henry Vogel, is a fun and lively little collection you should get just to read the cover story, “Heart of Dorkness”…

If this book does well, though, you should know that it’s just the first in a series of little book projects we have in the works for release in 2025.

Check it out! Convince us it’s a good idea to release more books like this and Privateers of Mars!

 


 

In the meantime, I’m back in the shop today, for more follow-up work made necessary by things discovered during my 1-year post-surgery eye exam. So as much as I’d like to be able to say, “See you later,” I probably won’t be able to. 

Maybe tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

A puzzling thing happened…


…during our span without access to Facebook, X/Twitter, or Bluesky. Christopher Degni is usually one of our most popular writers. We’ve been publishing his work for years, beginning, I think, with “Life and Jacq and the Giant and Death.” 

(Actually, going strictly by chronology, we published “Merry-Go-Round” first, but I believe we accepted “Life and Jacq…” for publication first.)

New stories by Christopher Degni typically draw hundreds of readers. For a long time his story, “The Infinite and the Infinitesimal,” remained near the top of our all-time most-read list, having drawn close to a thousand discrete readers.

But when we published his most recent story, “A Visit to the Recycling Center,” two weeks ago, it struggled to reach a hundred readers, stalled out at 102, and has been stuck on that plateau ever since.

Therefore, for today’s post, we’re going to reintroduce you to “A Visit to the Recycling Center,” and then present a handy index of all the Christopher Degni stories we’ve published in recent years. Personally, I think my favorite is “Upgrade,” but read them all, and decide for yourself.

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But if you’ve already read all these stories, why not take a look at this new book we just released, also during the period when we were unable to access our X/Twitter and Bluesky accounts?

Heart of Dorkness & Other Stories, a chapbook of short stories by best-selling author Henry Vogel, is a fun and lively little collection you should get just to read the cover story, “Heart of Dorkness”…

If this book does well, though, you should know that it’s just the first in a series of little book projects we have in the works for release in 2025.

Check it out! Convince us it’s a good idea to release more books like this one and Privateers of Mars!

_____________________

“A Visit to the Recycling Center”
If you’re old enough to join AARP,
this story should make you shudder.


“A 125-Word Story About Writer’s Block in the Style of Italo Calvino”

 

“The Six Stages of Grief”

 

“Jimboree”

“Signs of Life”

 

“Upgrade”

“Green Shoots”


“Life and Jacq and the Giant and Death”

“Merry-Go-Round”

 

“Reflections on Carnival-by-the-Sea”

 

“Treasure Hunting in the Old City”

 

“The Infinite and the Infinitesimal”


“My Name is Static”


_____ADVERTISEMENT_____

But if you’ve already read all these stories, why not take a look at this new book we just released, also during the period when we were unable to access our X/Twitter and Bluesky accounts?

Heart of Dorkness & Other Stories, a chapbook of short stories by best-selling author Henry Vogel, is a fun and lively little collection you should get just to read the cover story, “Heart of Dorkness”…

If this book does well, though, you should know that it’s just the first in a series of little book projects we have in the works for release in 2025.

Check it out! Convince us it’s a good idea to release more books like this one and Privateers of Mars!