The Slush Pile Survival Guide

"Twelve Tips for Making A Good First Impression"

by Katherine Karr, Editorial Minion

---

When you send a submission to STUPEFYING STORIES, the very first thing that happens is that it's received by a kindly, somewhat gray-haired, grandmotherly type woman -- in other words, me. Some mornings Bruce beats me to the inbox, but most morning's it's my job to:

• receive the email
• download the attachment
• run it through our anti-virus and anti-malware filters
• verify that the story file is actually openable and readable
• log the submission into our tracking system
• send the author an email confirming receipt of the submission and providing the tracking number
• and then and only then do I put your submission into the review queue, for consideration by the first readers and editors

Since my mother taught me that it's always important to make a good first impression, here's what you can do to make a good first impression on me.

1. Keep your anti-virus software up-to-date. If my anti-nastyware filters find a virus or trojan in your submission, it's dead on arrival.
   
2. Make sure you're sending us the story you want us to consider. You wouldn't believe how often a submission arrives with one story title given in the cover letter, a different title as the name of the attached file, and yet another title in the manuscript itself. I have no way of knowing whether you decided to change the title of your story or sent us the wrong file by mistake.
   
3. Make sure you're sending us a file we can read. Whatever else you may have heard, .rtf files are best, Word 97-2003 (.doc) files are the next-best, and Word 2010 (.docx) files the nextest-bestest. Bruce has a philosophical attachment to Open Office and its friends, but .odt files often prove troublesome. Don't send us Apple .pages files, PDF files, or Word Template or Macro files or anything like that.
   
4. Send us a file, not a link to a file-sharing site. Email accounts get hacked or spoofed all the time and we receive an unbelievable number of email messages that ostensibly are from names we recognize, but in fact contain a link to a Belorussian malware site or something. All such email messages are deleted immediately.
   
5. Be careful about putting web links in your cover letter. If you include too many, our filtering software may decide your message is spam and can it. Just this morning I fished such a submission out of the trash. The author had included so many links to other sites where his fiction is available, our filters decided it was spam and trashed it.
   
6. ARTISTS! If you're hoping to get a cover assignment, send a query first, and preferably send it directly to Bruce. If you try to email your portfolio to the submissions address, it just overflows our inbox and takes me offline until Bruce can go in and manually delete your messages from our email server. He gets very crabby when he has to do that.
   
7. Put the name of your story on the subject line. Including your name is nice, too, but don't go overboard in either the TMI or minimalist directions. I receive a lot of submissions that try to pack the author's entire c.v. into the subject line, but even more with the subject line, "Story Submission." When I have to search through several thousand email messages to find a particular one, meaningless subject lines make me cranky.
   
8. Send one story per email. If you send one email with three story files, it complicates my job and according to Bruce is a pretty good indicator that you've just discovered us and decided to dump all your old trunk stories on us. Multiple submissions go straight to the "short shrift" pile.
   
9. Write some kind of cover letter. You don't have to give us your entire resume, your philosophy of literature, or a detailed synopsis of your story, but whenever I receive an email with a blank subject line, no body content, and an attached file named "story.docx," it gets put into containment until Bruce has the time to examine it thoroughly and verify that it's safe to open.
   
10. In the body of your message, be sure to include your name, your pen name if used, the title of the story, and whether this submission is exclusive to us or a simultaneous submission. This is important because exclusive submissions go to the top of the pile. This may only mean that your story gets rejected faster, but still, the editors will look at your story sooner rather than later.
    
11. If you've sold to us previously, be sure to include that in your cover letter, because submissions from previous contributors also go to the top of the pile. (It's a big pile. There's a lot of room at the top.) Don't count on me to recognize your name, because as much as I wish I knew each and every one of your personally, I don't. I mean, how often does your own grandmother have trouble remembering whether your name is Katy, Kari, or Kathy?
    
12. Finally, if you send a query about your story or a withdrawal because you've placed it with another publisher, please include the story title and the tracking number we sent you when we received your submission. It makes it a lot easier for me to track down your submission and keep our tracking database up-to-date.

Thanks for reading this, and I look forward to seeing your submissions,
Katherine

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2013: The Year in Review, So Far

Good grief, is it the end of March already?

I was doing some unnecessary grumbling the other day, along the lines of why am I so tired and where has all the time gone, when my wife simply said, "Look at your planner." So I did.

Oh yeah, that's right. I've been on The Kick since the second week of February.

The Kick, if you're not familiar with it, is a distance-runner's term for the last leg, the last lap, that last chance to change the outcome of the race. It's the moment when you dig down deep within yourself, find every last reserve of energy you've been holding back, and pour it all out in one enormous burst, to leave everything on the track and save nothing for whatever may come after you've crossed the finish line. Which, in case you've wondered, is why so many distance runners celebrate finishing a big race by immediately keeling over and barfing.

I don't run anymore, thanks to a downhill skiing accident some years ago that made hamburger out of the cartilage in my right knee. I do however work in software development, and the last weeks before a big software release have more in common with the end of a big race than you might imagine, except that distance runners generally don't carbo-load on Dr. Pepper and Nacho Cheese Doritos and programmers generally attribute their keeling over and barfing to having had too much fun at the release party.

One software release, I could have taken in stride. Two releases would have been doable. But I've wound up running the anchor leg on three different software releases in the past two months, and something had to give. I'm sorry to say it was STUPEFYING STORIES.

Some things are going very well. The changes to our submissions process have proven effective: we're now getting much faster turnaround on first and second reads, and the Fearless Slush Pile Reader Corps is back to keeping pace with new submissions. The submissions audit has gone mostly pretty well: we still have a few stories in the Curios & Relics bin, but are largely caught up to about 60 days ago. At present there are 44 stories in the "Well, do we buy it or not?" bin, 54 stories in the "Let's buy it now!" bin -- (although there are some issues here; more about that in a moment) -- and 24 stories currently awaiting rejection. Sorry, I don't have the aging data handy at the moment.

The contract audit has gone rather less well. After several rounds of, "It was filed where?", we've decided to start over and reissue new contracts for everything we currently have under contract but not yet published, save for those folks who've asked to be released from their contracts. I'm somewhat disappointed that some writers have lost faith in us, but honestly, can't fault them for doing so. Our publishing schedule has been wildly erratic, and is likely to remain so for the next three months.

Ergo, if you're waiting for us to send you a contract, or waiting for us to send you the renewal for a contract that's either expired recently or is set to expire soon: please bear with us just a little longer. We are getting this straightened out. The mess was just plain bigger and more complicated than it looked at first. Particularly if you're one of the 54 authors in the "Let's buy it now!" spaghetti bowl bin: we're still figuring who's been sent a formal acceptance and now needs a contract; who's been sent a message saying they're going to be receiving a formal acceptance Real Soon Now but hasn't actually been sent an acceptance letter; and who still hasn't even been notified that we're holding their story for a second read, much less that we like it and want to buy it.

And, if you're one of the many authors who's sent me a query lately asking one thing or another: no, I'm not ignoring you. I am keenly aware of the stack of unanswered email sitting in that bin, and it gnaws at my conscience...

But I have a few more mods to check-in for the big software release that's scheduled to go out at the end of this week, and once I get them all buttoned up and ready to go, I can get back to getting caught up on answering email.

This is not where I wanted STUPEFYING STORIES to be at the end of March. I'd hoped to have at least two new books released -- preferably four -- and be in position to announce some of the big changes that we've been working on behind the scenes for the past few months. But Otogu the Insatiable is a capricious and sometimes whimsical taskmaster, and once again our plans ha' gang agley, as aft they do. Always learning and evolving, we are.

Stay tuned,
~brb

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In lieu of a column today...

Here's a golden oldie from the archives of The Friday Challenge. The challenge was:

It's a few years in the future. You're a freelance writer working for some publication whose nature you're free to define, and you're writing a review of the controversial new children's book: Heather Has Two Mommies, Three Daddies, A Pig's Spleen and a Baboon's Heart. What do you want to tell your readers about this book?

Herewith, one of the more unforgettable answers.

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The Slush Pile Survival Guide

"The Trouble with Advice"

by Bruce Bethke

---

Thirty-five years ago I was living in Los Angeles, shopping my demo tape all over Hollywood, and trying to take my musical career to the next level. Auditions and callbacks were few and far-between, though, so I spent a lot of time either in my apartment or else down at the beach, watching the nonstop freak show, scribbling away in my notebook, and doing my best to follow in the unsteady footsteps of Jim Morrison. In my mind's eye the images from those days remain remarkably razor-sharp: I can still see the shape and color of the inside walls of that small apartment, and the way the cockroaches danced and scattered when I flipped on the lights, and the faces and houses in the surrounding low-rent but not altogether unpleasant neighborhood -- and the best places to go for cheap but still edible Asian or Mexican food -- and the near-miraculous way the smog would sometimes lift, sometimes for entire hours at a time, and the skies would clear enough for me to see the mountains, a thousand yards off in the distance. I can still remember all the different back ways and side streets I used to take to walk or bike down to the beach...

Many years later a business trip brought me back to Los Angeles, and one morning I found myself at loose ends in Hollywood with a nice rental car and a few hours to kill. On a lark I decided to drive back to my old neighborhood, to see if anything had changed.

Oh, it'd changed, all right. It was now not so much a low-rent neighborhood as the exterior daylight set for some low-budget post-Apocalyptic sci-fi movie. The ghetto bars on almost every window weren't all that much of a surprise to me, but I didn't expect to see the coils of concertina wire on the perimeter fences and rooftops of the remaining businesses, or the gang graffiti tags on pretty much every flat vertical surface, or the knots and clots of young men standing around on the sidewalks and street corners, glaring at me with narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide whether I was worth the effort of car-jacking or if they should just bust a cap on my fool ass for trespassing on their turf.

I took a few heartbeats to soak it all in, then hit the gas, found the nearest freeway entrance ramp, and just about kicked the accelerator pedal through the floor in my desire to light up the afterburners and get the flaming flying hell out of there.

_____

L. P. Hartley once wrote, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." This is not merely a truism but a serious problem for those in the advice trade, both those who would like to give it and those who hope to receive it. Maps both physical and cognitive are constantly changing, and the best we on the giving side can do is tell you what the landscape looked like when we last went that way.

To those who hope to receive advice, remember: any advice you receive from someone who's already been there and done that is by definition old. It may be useful as-is. More likely it will require some straining and filtering to be useful in the here and now. Much of it might be completely irrelevant, and some of it -- such as the mental map of a certain neighborhood in Los Angeles that I drew back in the 1970s -- might actually get you into serious trouble if you were to try to apply it now.

Case in point, when I first decided to get serious about writing science fiction for professional publication, about thirty years ago, there were six "pro" magazines on the newsstands, perhaps two dozen good-paying semi-pro mags, and at least a half-dozen book publishers with healthy lines of mass-market paperback originals. The typical editorial response time ranged from four to six weeks, and if you lived reasonably frugally it was possible to pay the month's rent with one decent short-story sale.

Since I wasn't haven't consistent success at first, I decided to sponge up all the advice I could find from the established Old School pros. It took me years to realize that their advice was in turn rooted in a time when there were two mail deliveries daily, no paperback originals market, a lot of pulp magazines on the newsstands -- for that matter, a lot of newsstands -- and far fewer writers competing for the available publication space. Back in their day, if you lived in New York, it was possible to mail a story to Astounding in the morning, get it back with comments from John Campbell that afternoon, rewrite it overnight and remail it the next morning, and have Campbell's check in-hand the following evening -- and that was at a time when 5-cents per word was serious money.

Now? There are, what, three major pro magazines left? A vast plethora of minor pro and semi-pro markets ranging from brilliant to awful, a paperback originals market that's coughing blood, an entry on the Endangered Species List for "neighborhood bookstores" tagged Believed Extinct in the Wild, and a good short-story sale might... Pay your cell phone bill for a month, and leave enough left over for lunch at Taco John's?

So how much of the advice that I sponged up from the Old School pros -- or even that I developed myself, from my own experiences in the 1980s and 1990s -- do you suppose is relevant now?

_____

There is no going back to the way things were. Heck, there's not much point in going back more than a decade. When I first decided to revive The Slush Pile Survival Guide, I thought, "This will be easy. I've been writing this kind of stuff for twenty years! I'll just go back into the deep archives, exhume my old columns, and -- "

And discover that the world has changed in the years since then, far more than I imagined. True, many aspects of good story-telling haven't changed since the Neolithic age, but the business of selling your fiction and getting it published has changed almost beyond recognition in just the past ten years. A few of my old columns are still useful as-is, and a few more contain nuggets of information that might conceivably be reworked into something useful now, but most are now better off taken to the county hazardous waste site and left for safe disposal.

That is the challenge you face, when you read advice from any established old pro. You must be a discerning reader; you must weigh and evaluate what you see and determine what's relevant to you. I can't tell you with absolute assurance how to break into publication in today's fiction market, because I didn't do it, and I'm not the one who's trying to do it now.

Remember, I became a successful and award-winning fiction writer in a different century. And in a foreign country.

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The Slush Pile Survival Guide

"About That Secret Handshake"

by Bruce Holland Rogers

---

Pity the poor writer who feels that he or she is perpetually this close to selling novels or short stories. There is no discouragement quite like hers. She has studied her craft, she has tried her manuscripts out on test readers who have helped her sharpen her stories, and she has researched markets to make certain she's sending her work to the editors who publish that sort of thing. Yet her manuscripts keep coming back, either with form rejections or, sometimes, with rejections that offer a word or two of praise without ever saying, “Change the last word to nimbus and I will buy this story.”

Pity that writer, because she is being worn down in a particularly painful way. She has done all the work, has created something that she puts her name on as a way of saying, “Here is my say, my contribution to the conversation that is literature, that is art,” and the reply she gets time after time is, “Sorry. We can't use this.”

Because she feels close to breaking through, a writer in this position begins to think that there must be something right under her nose, some riddle that, once solved, would turn those rejections into acceptances. As the editor of STUPEFYING STORIES once wrote to me, “I hear from a lot of aspiring writers who seem to be searching for that special person who's going to whap them on the head with a magic wand and turn them into a Real Writer, or teach them the secret handshake, or reveal unto them how to decode the secret language of rejection slips.” That last bit is especially common. Tea leaves never get as much close scrutiny as a personalized rejection slip. However, efforts to find the special person, to learn the handshake, to decode the secret language are doomed to failure. I say this as a writer who craved those very things with every fiber of my body for years and years.

I once had a conversation about this with the late and much-lamented Damon Knight. Besides being a wonderful writer, Damon had also edited twenty-one volumes of the influential anthology series, Orbit. “What those frustrated writers need to understand,” Damon said, “is that the rejection message, 'I can't use this,' is actually a secret code that means: 'I can't use this.'”

The message of a rejection slip really is as straightforward as that. Even a rejection letter that says, “I especially liked the ending” is still a rejection that comes down to, “I can't use this.”

Consider this metaphor. The editor is a carpenter. Instead of assembling a magazine or a publishing line, he is framing a house. With the job partly finished, he's looking for some more lumber with which to finish the job. And here is the writer, now a supplier of wood, and on the bed of her truck rests the most beautiful block of polished mahogany ever seen.

The carpenter looks at the block of mahogany and may say to himself, “Wow! That is beautiful! Look at the subtle colors! Look at the grain!” But the carpenter is also going to say, “Sorry, but I need studs and joists and beams. This is beautiful, but it's the wrong shape. I can't use it.”

That is very often what an editor is saying. “I don't have a place for this in the issue I'm putting together. I already have a story too much like this one. I already have a novelist on my list whose topics are too similar to yours.”

In fact, with work that is competently written, that is almost always what an editor is saying. The work may be publishable elsewhere. With different timing, it might have been publishable here. But what the writer is offering isn't a match to the editor's current needs.

Now, that doesn't mean that most of what an editor rejects is gorgeous mahogany with subtle color and intriguing grain. Many unsolicited submissions are twigs, loose sawdust, bent boards or rotten logs. That is, many submissions come from beginners who haven't mastered the first principles of sentence composition or storytelling. But those aren't the writers who are longing to learn the secret handshake. The writers sending wood shavings to the carpenter are full of self-confidence and delusion, and they are either going to discover their defects and start correcting them, or are going to quit. The writers looking for the secret handshake are definitely not quitters.

So what should those frustrated writers do?

First, they should make certain that their work is delivering the effects they intend. They should test their manuscripts on honest, articulate readers; readers who don't have a reason to say, “Um, it was fine!” in order to avoid hurt feelings. But by the time writers are craving the secret code of rejection letters, they have probably been testing their work out on trusted readers. The problem probably is not raw quality. The problem is one of matching the manuscript with the right market at the right time.

There are only so many elements in this formula: suitable manuscript, right market, good timing. So the most obvious answer to the writer is: persist. Keep writing, keep investigating other markets, keep circulating the manuscripts. If you are writing round pegs, you will eventually find the corresponding round hole that isn't already occupied by someone else's manuscript.

Of course, persistence does you little good if you are writing square pegs and there just aren't any markets that are square holes. Or, to return to our block of mahogany, persistence will do you little good if you insist on trying to peddle your mahogany block, as-is, to the carpenter who is framing a house. But if you can be honest about the carpenter's needs and clear-eyed about what you have, then maybe you can saw your block up, glue it in sections, and offer the carpenter a mahogany roof beam. Alternatively, you can admit that your block, which gorgeous, isn't suitable for the carpenter. You can display it in your living room for friends to admire. You can try building your own museum of fine woods and charge admission.

What the writer shouldn't do, however, is imagine that there is a secret or a magical solution, or think of editors as gatekeepers who are deciding who gets into the A-list club and who gets to stand on the sidewalk all night with the other peasants. Editing decisions aren't personal. Even though we're talking about the acceptance or rejection of art, editorial decisions are as objective as lumber purchases.

I said above that the pain of literary rejection wears writers down. It does. What we write is the work of our hearts. But to keep writing and maintain some sanity, you need to arrive at a place where you put your heart into your work as you write it, and then turn around and treat it like lumber. If you can do that, you'll be living in the real world.

---

Stories by Bruce Holland Rogers have been translated into over two dozen languages and have won two Nebula Awards, two Micro Awards, two World Fantasy Awards, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches fiction writing at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and is the author of Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer. 

To learn more about him and see more of his work, check out his website: ShortShortShort.com.

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2012: The Year in Review (Part 3)

...continued from Part Two...

Otogu Speaks

It is said that somewhere in the Far East, in the mist-shrouded K'themai Isles, there stands a great temple, built by the now-vanished K'bab peoples and dedicated to Otogu the Insatiable, Devourer of Days...

If you've been hanging around any of my blogs in the past few years, you probably know that Otogu the Insatiable began life as a mere acronym—OTOGU—that I got in the habit of using whenever I needed to explain why I wasn't blogging this week. It meant simply that work on fun things had been interrupted by Other Things Of Greater Urgency, and as such was an outgrowth of my First Rule, which I've stated in many ways over the years but usually put something like this:

The First Rule of Being a Professional Writer is:
Paying work on deadline always takes priority.

A few of you might even have heard me cite the Zero Rule, which states simply that the needs of your family always come first, even before the demands of the First Rule.


The First Rule in Action

It's common for writers to fantasize about someday getting their Big Break. When it happens, they imagine they'll quit their day jobs and forever after do nothing but be brilliantly literary, 24x7, for the rest of their days.

Me? Been there, done that. And after having been in the position where my ability to make the house payment hinged on whether the guy from Simon & Schuster was telling the truth this time when he said the check was in the mail, all I can say is: never again.

Unlike most writers, I actually like my day job. Some days I even love it. I'm proud of the work we do and the things we build, and grateful for all the help and support the company has given me and my family during the Zero Rule events of recent years.

Still, Otogu dished up more than the usual share of work-related First Rule situations in 2012, and when DARPA tells you they're sending some people over to see what you've been doing with some millions of their R&D dollars, you drop everything and give them your undivided attention, for as long as they want it.

Which definitely did chew up some significant time in 2012.


The First Rule (Modified): The 2012 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award

Given everything else that was already going on in my life, it was probably an idiotic act of hubris on my part to accept being named to the 2012 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award jury last March. As a past winner of the award, though, I felt an obligation to "pay it forward."

Ten months and 100+ novels later, I feel confident that that debt is now paid in full, at loan shark's interest rates and with an extra pound of flesh and some fries on the side. You can see the list of finalists here, but beyond that, I am sworn to secrecy until after Norwescon 36.


The Zero Rule

Most of you already know about my big Zero Rule situation. (If you don't, go back and read Part 2.) There were others as well: for example, in October my mother had a serious medical emergency, which put her in the hospital for a month and then opened up a whole new series of elder care issues that we're still in the process of solving.

Not all Zero Rule situations are bad. Some are delightful, and the highlight of the year was the day my youngest daughter married her handsome young lieutenant. They make a wonderful couple together, and if Fate is kind, I'll be meeting my first grandchild sometime later this year.

This, in case you're curious, is the stage of life that I am at.

Many years ago, at some now-forgotten sci-fi con, I ended up sitting in the hotel bar with a bunch of my peers, listening to them swap divorce horror stories. After awhile the topic turned to the mystery of just why the writing life is so toxic to marriages, and as I listened to them talk, it began to dawn on me that they had it all backwards. It isn't that being a writer is toxic to marriage. It's that each of them had, for the sake of his or her writing career, made the value judgment that it was more important for them to be in the hotel bar at some forgettable sci-fi con than at home with their spouses and children. The men, especially, had decided—by default, if not by conscious choice—that it was perfectly acceptable for them to let their children be raised by their ex-wife's next husband.

That was when I began to realize: perhaps these people weren't my peers after all.


So, in the copious spare time left over after all that...

For us, 2012 was a year full of valuable learning experiences. (As in, "Oh God no, not another valuable learning experience!")

We learned that our original lean-staffing model was hopelessly inadequate, and that we needed to recruit a lot of extra help. We learned that the half-life of a slush pile reader is about a hundred stories, and after that they either burn out or need a very long rest. We learned that we didn't need to worry about receiving enough stories; rather, we needed to fight writers off with a stick. We learned that custom covers are beautiful and everyone loves them, but they're also budget-busters—and worse, sometimes schedule-destroyers, when you plan an entire issue around a specific cover story and then the artist fails to deliver. We learned not to pay artists in advance. (Somehow that one seems kind of obvious in hindsight.)

We learned that our original email service wasn't up to the volume of traffic we were generating, and ultimately ended up changing not just email services but ISPs and broadband providers as well. We learned how to change the process of beginning with raw submission files and ending up with a bug-free e-book from being something mysterious and magical to being a documented and repeatable procedure, which took us until August, but once we finally had it cooked down to a procedure it yielded dramatic gains in our ability to produce and release books. In September we cut over to a new server dedicated solely to handling submissions; we're still finding stories that supposedly were moved to the new server then but in actuality weren't. To all the authors affected: Sorry!

We learned that the publishing world is full of succubi and incubi who will promise to do all sorts of wonderful things for your sales and cash flow, if only you make a few small changes to what you're doing: more of these sorts of stories and fewer of those; more stories by these writers and fewer by those; tilt your editorial stance just a little this way to appeal more to this religious doctrine or that political belief. In the end, we rediscovered the wisdom that Jon David put into the mouths of the mice in "We Talk Like Gods:"

We just want to tell stories.

We learned that splatter and slasher movies have a huge fan base, and far too many self-identified horror submissions are not so much spine-chilling as stomach-turning. We learned that a significant portion of the submissions we receive are instantly and obviously rejects, either because of the author's amateurish writing skills or because of his (mostly his; rarely her) complete contempt for the concept of guidelines. We learned that hard science fiction written by someone who actually understands science is a very rare bird indeed.

We learned—and relearned, and learned yet again—that the critical factor limiting the growth of STUPEFYING STORIES is the amount of time that I have to put into it, and most of the things we tried to do in 2012 to change that didn't really reduce my workload, they just changed what I was doing from being something fun and interesting to being something irksome and managerial. We learned that 40- to 45K words is a comfortable size for the kind of book we want to produce, and that STUPEFYING STORIES sells best when we have a new one ready for release promptly on the first day of each and every month. We learned how to hit that target consistently—

But we also learned that to do that, and release novels, and release theme-issue specials, was just slightly beyond the realm of what was realistically possible for us at this time.

Right up until mid-December, we still believed we could do it. We had five books in various stages of production, all of which we were still busting chops to get out the door before the end of the year. Then one day—the 20th, I believe—we stopped short, looked at each other, and said, "This is nuts. If we keep going at this pace, we'll burn out.

"We need to make some changes around here."


...Tomorrow: the exciting conclusion(s)!...

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2012: The Year in Review (Part 2)

Public Service Announcement: The long delay between Part 1 and today's post was not an intentional pause for dramatic purposes. This was a "Holy Cow! This new strain of flu is as bad as they say it is!" pause. Take the public health warnings seriously, folks. Even I get sick from time to time, but it's been years since a virus knocked me on my backside for five days straight.

Continuing from Part 1, then:


What We Did Not Accomplish in 2012

While we accomplished a lot in 2012, when measured against our goals, what we did not accomplish is instantly obvious: we published about half as much fiction as we'd originally planned to publish in 2012. Why?

The answer requires a brief detour into history, a certain amount of whining, and the presentation of excuses. So put on your wellies, stand by for venting, and here we go.


From Pre-History to Modern Times

I've been involved in various electronic and small-press publishing experiments and pilot projects since the mid-1990s. About a decade ago I even pulled together a group of prospective investors with the intention of buying and revitalizing one of the famous old pulp magazines that had fallen on hard times. After studying the issue thoroughly, though, we concluded that trying to reanimate Hugo Gernsback's corpse one more time would be a great way to waste a lot of money, but in the end we'd still own a dead magazine.

So we broke up the band and went our separate ways.

A few years later, advances in technology made the idea worth reconsidering. When we founded Rampant Loon Press and incorporated Rampant Loon Media LLC it was with the understanding that we were going to take several years to study the issues, to learn, experiment, and produce test-bed projects and prototypes, and to grow the business slowly. Our original intention was that we would not have this company fully up and running until about five years from now, when I'd be ready to begin thinking about retiring from my current career and taking up running Rampant Loon Press full-time.

Similarly, when we first launched STUPEFYING STORIES, it was envisioned as a quarterly print publication, which we would take a few years to experiment with and fine-tune until we got it right.

Unfortunately, literally between the day we signed off on the printer's proofs for the first prototype and the day the bindery delivered the finished copies, my wife and primary business partner was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. This immediately put all our plans on hold for more than a year, as she went through surgery, chemotherapy, the discovery of four more secondary tumors that proved inoperable, and subsequent months of radiation treatment.


Introducing STUPEFYING STORIES: Take Two

When we re-launched STUPEFYING STORIES in 2011, it was with a new vision, inspired largely by all the time my wife spent in clinics and doctor's waiting rooms, reading books and magazines on her Kindle. This time out STUPEFYING STORIES would be a monthly direct-to-ebook-only publication, with all the money we'd previously spent on printing instead going to the people who actually wrote the stories we were publishing.

We had no idea just how popular this vision would prove to be.

Since our re-launch in October 2011, STUPEFYING STORIES has been evolving at a breakneck pace. The flow of incoming submissions jumped exponentially in a matter of weeks, and the book itself is now averaging 135% of the size of the first editions. For the past year we've been on a high-speed rocket-sled ride without any rails, discovering what works, what doesn't, what we didn't know that we didn't know, and what "everyone knows is true" that just ain't so. Many of the missteps, mistakes, and overreaches we made in 2012 can be attributed directly to our desire to make up for lost time, our sense that we didn't have much more time to waste, and our attempts to compress what originally was planned to be a seven-year development cycle into three years. We had a nasty scare in September, when one of my wife's follow-up tests returned a disturbing result, but after further diagnostic work it was declared to be a false alarm.

Four weeks ago, we celebrated one year of remission. Now it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and reassess our plans.

...to be continued...

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STUPEFYING STORIES 1.11 RELEASED

Hard to believe it's December 2012 already. Depending on who you listen to we only have about three weeks left before the world ends, either from magnetic pole reversal, crossing the galactic ecliptic, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, a collision with Planet X, global warming, global cooling, the return of Quetzalcoatl, President Obama and Speaker of the House Boehner joining hands, flooring it, and going full Thelma & Louise off the edge of the fiscal cliff, or the regrettable and wholly inexplicable failure of the Ancient Mayans to invent the perpetual calendar.

In any case, as we were putting together this book, we thought: what better way to go out with a bang that with a bunch of great stories exploring the end of the world—and what might come after? From ecological catastrophes to alien invasions; from tyrannical overreaching central governments to dangerous unfettered cowboy capitalists: It's the End of the World, As We Know It!

And the stories in this book will make you feel just fine.

STUPEFYING STORIES 1.11 (a.k.a., "the December edition"), is edited by award-winning writer Bruce Bethke and features:

   "We Talk Like Gods," by Jon David
   "Tiny, Tiny Hungers," by Mark Wolf
   "Moonbubble," by Eric Cline
   "The Relic," by Lou Antonelli
   "Mr. Non-Existent," by Paul Malone
   "Blue Stripped," by Gerry Huntman
   "HoPE," by A. A. Leil
   "Avocado Rutabaga Aubergine," by M. Bennardo
   "In the Shadows of the Empire of Coal," by Shaun Duke
   "Measure of Intelligence," by Torah Cottrill
   "The Gods of Sand and Stone," by Joel V. Kela

Now available for Amazon Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at these links!

US  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFYXAX0
UK  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AFYXAX0
DE  https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AFYXAX0
FR  https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00AFYXAX0
IT  https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00AFYXAX0
ES  https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00AFYXAX0
JP  http://www.amazon.jp/dp/B00AFYXAX0

Now available for Barnes & Noble Nook and Nook Reader apps at these links!
US  unnecessarily complex URL
UK  Amazon helpfully supplies all links. B&N makes you hunt. Check back later or let us know what it is, if you find it.

Coming soon to the Apple iTunes iBookstore!

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STUPEFYING STORIES 2.1 (1.10) RELEASED

From the Editor-in-Chief’s Desk
By Bruce Bethke 

Along with discovering new writing talent, another part of our mission at STUPEFYING STORIES is to find and foster new editorial talent. Therefore for the November edition, we turned the reins over to promising newcomer M. David Blake, who has long been playing several crucial roles behind the scenes here.

The result is our first double-length book, which includes some of Mr. Blake's latest experiments in e-book design. We wanted to call it STUPEFYING STORIES 2.1, but our distribution channel had trouble with that, so we ended up having to give it the parenthetical designation of 1.10. And with that preamble out of the way...


From the (Guest-)Editor’s Desk
By M. David Blake

Welcome to Stupefying Stories 2.1

That's it, really. A dozen syllables tell you all you need to know to enjoy this issue. Those who want to ignore the preface and skip ahead to the stories are entitled to do so.

Still here? Since I am as well, I'll share a secret. Several months ago, when our chief editor asked if I'd be willing to assemble the November issue on my own, I wasn't going to accept. He lured me in by dangling a budget and a deadline in front of my face, with the promise of complete autonomy.

He gave it to me, too. No one else has seen all of the pieces, as they were being assembled... and that includes the regular Stupefying staff.

Autonomy is a nice concept, but it comes with a price. In all likelihood, no other combination of our associate editors would have selected these same stories from the (deep!) slush I processed. My instructions were simply to produce the best issue possible, given the available resources and time. “Best” is a subjective valuation.

While approaching that task, I had the privilege of working with an incredibly creative group of writers. To the extent that you enjoy the result, all the credit goes to them.

On the other hand, if you notice any typographical errors, or if you are unable to suspend your disbelief long enough to get through the next sixty-four thousand words, that’s my fault.

There is no guarantee you will enjoy all of these stories. But here’s another secret: I love each of them. Should you wind up seeing any of the same inscrutably beautiful things I did, I’ll feel pretty good about my selections.

There is one other thing that makes me feel good about this collection: I think my grandfather would have enjoyed reading it. He introduced me to science fiction, and to fantasy, and he loved this world.

Today would have been his ninety-third birthday.

— M. David Blake, 16 November 2012 

STUPEFYING STORIES 2.1 FEATURES:

Beauty & Loss (I)

• “Queen of Sheba” by Samuel M. Johnston
• “Wednesday’s Child” by Damien Walters Grintalis
• “Snatching Baby Delilah” by Travis Daniel Bow

Lore & Speculation

• “Nonsense 101” by Gary Cuba
• “Lucky” by Bill Ferris
• “The Ants Go Marching” by Sarah Pinsker

Folk & Superstition

• “Lover’s Knot” by Ada Milenkovic Brown
• “Girl Without a Name” by Courtney Valdes
• “Toilet Gnomes at War” by Beth Cato

Loss & Beauty (II)

• “Moondust” by Elizabeth Berger
• “Citizen Astronauts” by Holliann R. Kim
• “Heartbreath” by E. Catherine Tobler

Angels & Demons

• “Revolver” by Clarence Young
• “Office Demons” by Christie Yant
• “Number Station” by Alex Shvartsman

NOW AVAILABLE AT THESE LINKS:

For Amazon Kindle: 
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AAPC1CU
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AAPC1CU
DE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AAPC1CU
FR: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00AAPC1CU
ES: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00AAPC1CU
IT: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00AAPC1CU
JP: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00AAPC1CU

For Barnes & Noble Nook:
Worldwide: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stupefying-stories-m-david-blake/1113834598?ean=2940015769166

Apple iTunes iBookstore and other links coming soon!

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STUPEFYING STORIES 1.9 RELEASED

STUPEFYING STORIES 1.9, originally scheduled for release on October 15 but delayed for three weeks by Forces Beyond Our Control, is officially released today. We still don't have live links yet, but when we do, we'll post them here. With this edition we add India and Japan to the list of countries where STUPEFYING STORIES is available, so here's hoping Amazon resolves their technical issues soon and Barnes & Noble doesn't follow their usual pattern of taking four times longer than Amazon.

Featuring the awesome cover story, "The Jade Box," by Stephen G. McDonald (and correspondingly awesome original cover art by Aaron Bradford Starr), as well as new stories by fan favorites Chuck Bordell, Jamie Lackey, and Gary Cuba, STUPEFYING STORIES 1.9 presents thirteen original tales of ghosties and ghoulies, spirits and specters, and things that go bump in the night, by an outstanding assemblage of American, Canadian, Irish, and Swedish authors. Including:

• "Between Life and Oblivion," by Samuel R. George
• "The Florence," by Chuck Bordell
• "Door in the Darkness," by David Steffen
• "Streaming," by Sharon Irwin
• "The Flint Indenture," by Tim W. Burke
• "Not Everything Goes Bump," by Robert W. Hobson
• "Ashes to Diamonds," by Jamie Lackey
• "Blood and Saltwater," by Cassandra Rose Clarke
• "A Homeowner's Dilemma," by Mark Hill
• "The Ghost Train," by Fox McGeever
• "The Jade Box," by Stephen G. McDonald
• "Going Out With a Bang," by Gary Cuba
• "The Old-Fashioned Way," by Thomas Pluck

From a haunted hotel room in Seattle to the waiting room of the afterlife; from a quietly chilling meditation in a country cemetery to an ambitious plan to revive entire dying cities with industrial-scale necromancy; from a heart-breaking tale of a love that lives on after death to a side-splitting story about a funeral gone horribly wrong that, as one early reviewer said, "puts the black in black humor," you'll find it in this edition of STUPEFYING STORIES.

Enjoy,
~brb

Now available for Amazon Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at these links!

US  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A1WYKEO
UK  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A1WYKEO
DE  https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00A1WYKEO
FR  https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00A1WYKEO
IT  https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00A1WYKEO
ES  https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00A1WYKEO
JP  http://www.amazon.jp/dp/B00A1WYKEO

More links coming soon!

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At last, we have a Barnes & Noble NOOK link

Stupefying Stories 1.8 for NOOK

I have no idea why it takes Barnes & Noble four times as long to process a new book upload as it takes Amazon, but it does. Of course, as soon as I start counting on that delay...

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STUPEFYING STORIES 1.8 RELEASED!

From the Editor’s Desk

By Bruce Bethke

You know, I wrote a very thoughtful, serious, sober, and long keynote editorial for this book, describing in great detail what we intended to accomplish this time out. But hey, let’s be honest: this is the October edition, and around here, October really means just one thing:

HALLOWEEN!

So let’s skip the commercials and cut right to the exciting conclusion. This edition is really all about—

Vampires! Werewolves! Mummies! Living Fossils! More Vampires! Mad Scientists! Fiendish Laboratory Creations! Flying Saucers! Treacherous Aliens! Strange Little Towns Where No One And Nothing Is At It Seems! Even MORE Vampires! Zombies! Giant Prehistoric Reptiles Stomping The Daylights Out Of Tokyo! And Even MORE Aliens, Plotting To Conquer The World!

Featuring:

• "Father Pace" by Samuel Marzioli
• "A Wolf Like Leroy" by Gef Fox
• "King of the Giant Monsters" by Michael D. Turner
• "Darcy and the Gill-man" by David C. Pinnt
• "Dark Illusions" by Evan Dicken
• "Legacy of an Unwanted Titan" by Ryan Creel
• "The Wrong Side of the Rainbow" by Bill Bibo Jr.
• "On Main Street, After Closing Time" by S. R. Algernon
• "Night Shift of the Living Dead" by Tyler Tork
• "Our New Benevolent Overlords" by Andrew Kozma.

Now get yourself a big bowl of popcorn, settle back into your favorite chair, and give your sense of disbelief the night off. STUPEFYING STORIES 1.8...

IT'S ALIVE!

Bwa-ha-haaaaa!

Bruce Bethke
Editor, Stupefying Stories

---

Now available* for Amazon Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at these links: 
US http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009JWHG2U
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009JWHG2U
DE https://www.amazon.de/dp/B009JWHG2U
FR https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B009JWHG2U
IT https://www.amazon.it/dp/B009JWHG2U
ES https://www.amazon.es/dp/B009JWHG2U

* Or so Amazon claims. At the moment, while the web pages are there, they don't seem to be fully functional.

 More links to be posted as they go live.

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STUPEFYING STORIES 1.7 RELEASED!

What, a new edition already? Yes!

Edited by award-winning writer Bruce Bethke and featuring stories by nine outstanding Canadian, Australian, and American authors, the STUPEFYING STORIES "Pirates & Dragons" edition is chock-full of all-new tales of dastardly pirates, lonely dragons, quarrelsome petty gods, meddlesome slimy aliens, and profoundly philosophical chickens. Featuring:

• "Riddle Me" by Richard Zwicker
• "Corsairs of the Concrete Sea" by Thoraiya Dyer
• "The Thundering Dragon of Heaven" by Michael Matheson
• "God Mic" by B. Sanford
• "The Thirty-Ninth President and the Fourteenth Tentacle" by Theodore Carter
• "Thief of Hearts" by Auston Habershaw
• "In the Castle of the Assassins" by Melissa Embry
• "The Lord of Flocks" by Alison Pentecost
• "The Little Thief" by Phil Temples

From a road in the middle of nowhere to the day after tomorrow, from a shattering tale of First Contact to the long-suppressed story that finally makes it possible to make sense of the events of the past thirty-five years, you'll find it this time out in STUPEFYING STORIES!

Now available for Amazon Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at these links:
US   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0094WYB9G
UK   https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0094WYB9G
DE   https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0094WYB9G
FR   https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0094WYB9G
IT   https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0094WYB9G
ES   https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0094WYB9G
Coming soon to Amazon India!

Now available for the Barnes & Noble Nook at this link:
Nook - all markets

More links to be posted as they go live.

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Labor of Love Weekend Promo

This weekend only, and for the Kindle only (sorry, Nook and iPad fans) we’re practically giving away STUPEFYING STORIES 1.6 at the low, low price of just $0.99! It’s all part of the LABOR OF LOVE promotion cooked up by Elle Lothlorien, with assistance by Michele Winkler, author of “Family Magic” (which not coincidentally, you’ll find in SS 1.6), and a cast of.... many!

Tell your friends! Tell your mom! Tell everybody!  

 

 

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STUPEFYING STORIES 1.6 ESCAPES!

Edited by award-winning writer Bruce Bethke and featuring stories by twelve outstanding American, British, and Irish authors, the STUPEFYING STORIES "Weirder Homes & Gardens" edition is filled to overflowing with all-new tales of the fantastic, funny, and frightening things that can happen in that most mundane of places: the home, with attached garden. Includes:

• "No Onions" by M. Bennardo
• "The Growing" by Sylvia Hiven
• "Family Magic" by Michele Winkler
• "Mission Accomplished" by Peter Wood
• "Helen Went Beep" by Erin Entrada Kelly
• "The Prototype" by Judith Field
• "Colorful Caps" by JC Hemphill
• "Lifesource" by Barbara V. Evers
• "The Centaur Bride" by Eric J. Juneau
• "Rooting for You" by Michael Heneghan
• "Security" by Chris Bailey Pearce
• "The Garden" by R. L. Bowden

From practical advice on raising homunculi to the difficult magic of raising a happy family; from things that go bump in the night (or in this case, the kitchen) to things that go beep in the bedroom; from the magical, mythical distant past to two very different visions of our technological future; and from the primal temptation to be found in a stolen paper clip to a tale of lost love that can't be described, only read: you'll find it this time out in STUPEFYING STORIES!

Available now for Amazon Kindle and the Kindle Reader App:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008YPRBCI
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008YPRBCI
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B008YPRBCI
https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B008YPRBCI
https://www.amazon.it/dp/B008YPRBCI
https://www.amazon.es/dp/B008YPRBCI

UPDATE:
The Barnes & Noble Nook link is now live!
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stupefying-stories-bruce-bethke/1112531290?ean=2940014909570

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