The Long Haul Burn To Space

Earlier this evening I sent in my 500th submission to any market. I thought it was my 499th, but my log sheets don't lie. 500. Friday 1 June 2012. And just eight days shy of ten years since I made my first submission.

It took 1427 days after 9 June 2002 to get to the first hundred submissions on 6 May 2006, 725 days for my second hundred on 30 April 2008 and 689 days to the third hundred on 20 March 2010 and 532 days to the fourth hundred on 3 September 2011. And now, largely due to last year's sabbatical, just 272 days for the fifth hundred.

75 completed stories sent out 500 times, with 19 publications including two reprints. One recent sale awaiting publication.

Wow.

Dr. Phil

In The Time Honored Traditions Of April The Oncest

We give you the April Fool's Collection for 2012:

LocusOnline had two stories:

"Dirtiest Nebula Campaign since 2015," says SFWA President
-- Sunday 1 April 2012 @ 11:20 am PDT by Paoli du Flippi -- DATELINE: Hollywood, March 1, 2018 -- This year's campaigning for the coveted Nebula Award given by the Super Fantastika Writers of America has been marked by "lies, disinformation, nasty tricks, vicious personal slurs, impossible promises, bribes and actual physical assaults," says SFWA President Jennifer Lawrence, in a recent interview conducted during a bit of downtime on the Tinseltown set where she is finishing the filming of The Hunger Games VI: Daughter of Katniss versus the Borg: The Mashup Reboot, based on the polymath star's own novel that earned her admission to SFWA and its presidency in the first place...

Margaret Atwood Launches New SF Magazine
-- Sunday 1 April 2012 @ 11:09 am PDT by L. Ron Creepweans -- Toronto: Today Booker Prize-winning novelist Margaret Atwood announced that she was launching a new science fiction magazine, Loquacious Cephalopod...

And Tor.com had two as well:
Mary Robinette Kowal pens an exhaustive essay
-- Sword and Sensibility: Conan Creator Robert E. Howard's Lesser Known Collaboration...

Covers Revealed for John Scalzi’s Manga Fantasy Trilogy
-- The Shadow War of the Night Dragon series by John Scalzi...
(Truly inspired artwork -- John rhapsodizes here.)

And then there's the British Library:
Unicorn Cookbook Found at the British Library
-- 01 April 2012 A long-lost medieval cookbook, containing recipes for hedgehogs, blackbirds and even unicorns, has been discovered at the British Library. Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project described the find as near-miraculous. "We've been hunting for this book for years. The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling." ...

And other assorted writerly personnel:

My favorite Roman comic artist has an Exciting new project in the works
-- 1st-Apr-2012 01:40 pm Your humble artist fell off the thrice-weekly schedule, and even the sketch-of-the-day updates, because of intense work on a new Great Big Project. All those pages and character designs from Big Project have to be put to some sort of use, and it's such an easy step from the genteel plantations of the south to the humid jungles of South America-just add more water and alligators and/or crocodiles. So those pages are being recycled into a completely genteel story about a young lady explorer of the alternate-steampunk 19th century travelling through monster-infested swampland who encounters a hidden tribe of love-starved octopus-men, as one does. True romance ensues...

Jay Lake goes for A change of direction
-- 2012-04-01 07:46 I'm redirecting my efforts toward something that better reflects the current circumstances of my life, and offers me a greater shot at economic success. From now on, I'm going to be writing nurse romances...

Mary Robinette Kowal is a pen name
-- Sun 1 Apr '12 My actual name is Stephen Harrison. I teach history at Vanderbilt and am getting my PhD, and yes, I am a man. The woman that you have met at some conventions is my sister. I hired her to be "Mary the writer." ...

Diana Rowland is "utterly thrilled to announce that my agent has sold stage rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber for my White Trash Zombie series!"
-- Facebook Yesterday at 6:20am My Life as a White Trash Zombie: The Musical! will be produced and directed by Webber, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, of Wicked fame. Current casting includes Kristin Chenoweth as Angel, Hugh Jackman as Marcus Ivanov, and Tom Wopat as Angel’s dad...

And the March 32nd Review would not be complete without some newfangled can't-live-without-it invention
-- Apr. 1st, 2012 at 11:07 AM As readers of this blog know, I'm a great believer in technological innovation. So great is my belief, in fact, that I dabble in inventions for the betterment of mankind. And now I've found it. The ultimate tool for authors with writer's cramp! Bow down in awe as I introduce: The self-signing book...

And, of course, Google had their piece on the Google Autonomous Driving NASCAR racing car. (snert!)

I'm sure there are others, and I'll update when I run across them. But these have been archived by Yours Truly so that the guilty cannot claim innocence later -- and these are certainly enough to entertain you for now. (grin)

Oh, And Dammit:

My posting on 1 April 2012 is totally legitimate (DW)! There really is a new and proper military SF story up on GigaNotoSaurus for you to read.

Dr. Phil

Sabbatical 1.36 Report -- December 2011

In the last month since I reported on my sabbatical progress (DW), I managed just 10 submissions. All told I made 112 submissions since the 29th of July. 1 sale (DW) to the Rocket Science anthology. Plus an Honorable Mention and a Silver Honorable Mention (DW) from Writers of the Future.

I had five new stories to add to my Invenstory in 2011 -- three of them during my sabbatical. Though that's not a record for new stories, but it is a huge record for total new submissions. I even added fourteen new markets to the mix.

Did I accomplish my goals for not quite half a year? We-elllll, no. Not really. But there were a lot of extenuating circumstances -- things that I could take the time to deal with without leaving either students or job in the lurch. I came up with a new workflow for getting stories out. I'm going to call this a win.

And you know? I may be teaching two classes this winter, but I manage to find time to write. And I have a lot of notes for new stories and I have that new novel to work on.

It's 2012 and I already have three new submissions. And no new rejections. Not bad considering how many editors and slush readers were working over the holidays. (grin) Can't sell if don't submit. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil

An Anthology Sale to the U.K.

In all the work and hubbub of this month, I'd mentioned how I'd written one last new story at the last minute for an anthology -- and then later mentioned that it'd sold. Hell, I've even been paid. Now that I've had a chance to sit down for a few minutes, I can dole out more information.

"The New Tenant" by Philip Edward Kaldon to appear in Rocket Science, edited by Ian Sales and published by Mutation Press. Expected to be released in April 2012.

They have a cool graphic of the Table of Contents over on the Rocket Science News blog. It breaks the stories into locale -- "The New Tenant" is listed under LEO, Low Earth Orbit, for example, since it's set on the International Space Station at the end of its NASA service life.


I've a limited number of near-term SF stories, though of course my WOTF XXIV story "A Man in the Moon" is one, so when I ran out of stories to sub, I wrote one more over a weekend. And it sold. You never know... except if you don't submit, you can't sell. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Realms of Fantasy Closing

I've already written this obituary -- twice -- here and here. This has gotten convoluted enough that I missed posting about RoF's sale, though I did post about their impending (past tense) switch to e-subs.

Ian Randal Strock reports some details on SFScope today, announcing "The third death of Realms of Fantasy". He includes this posting from the latest owners:

When we purchased Realms of Fantasy last year we truly thought that we could succeed in publishing the magazine for the foreseeable future. We were unable to realize this goal, have been losing money, and we must regretfully announce the closure of the magazine.

During our time with the magazine we picked up without missing a single issue and were lucky enough to produce the 100th issue. We were able to introduce poetry and bring back the table top gaming column. We have been truly amazed at the positive feedback on the issues we have produced from all of the fans. This is what makes this decision so painful for us.

As we were considering closing the magazine we thought it was important for the October 2011 issue to be released in print for the fans. We did this knowing there would not be a return on the investment, but did it simply because we felt it was right. This does mean the October 2011 issue will be the last issue. The issue did go to newsstands and we have copies for those who are not active subscribers.

Since the October issue shipped late please allow until November 15th before contacting us about lost mailings. International subscribers please allow an additional two weeks.

We are currently trying to work with other magazines to assume the subscription list. This will ensure that subscribers get something for the portions of the subscriptions not fulfilled. This does mean that we will not be issuing refunds unless we are unable to secure a deal, at which point we will follow our posted refund policy. We will update you when we have more information.

If there is anyone interested in purchasing the magazine we will listen to all offers. Those interested should send an email to support [at] rofmag [dot] com.

We would like to thank Shawna McCarthy and Douglas Cohen for all of your support and help. You have both been wonderful to work with during the last year. We would also like to thank all of the remaining staff for the quality columns and attention to detail. Lastly, but definitely not least, we would like to thank all of the fans for your support and encouragement.

Please direct all further inquiries to support [at] rofmag [dot] com.

William and Kim Gilchrist
Damnation Books LLC

As the deja vu-ness of this all unfolds, we have farewell editorials (again) by Shawna McCarthy and Douglas Cohen, whose closing comments included:

There is of course that small voice in the back of my head, saying, “Maybe you’ll rise from the dead again!” Hey, maybe we will. But as I said to Shawna, “Each cancellation has felt a little more final than the last one. This one feels like the end of the road.”

If it is, we’ve had a final year we can be proud of. We’ve won a Nebula Award, and we were nominated for another one. Our longtime fiction editor, Shawna McCarthy, was honored at this year’s World Fantasy Convention as the Editorial Guest of Honor. Artwork we’ve published has received some wonderful honors. We reached issue 100, and with this latest issue we’ve managed to publish 600 stories in RoF’s lifetime. We published poetry for the first time, and in my admittedly biased opinion, the work our nonfiction columnists delivered was second to none. There’s a lot to be proud of in this final year, and I’m glad we and the magazine managed to have it. It makes for a fitting end. It’s time to move on, and I’m excited at what the future holds for me in this field.

As I said in January 2009 and October 2010, I'm not much of a fantasy writer, so it's not that this is a market that I submit to. But it's one I've read from time to time, and a lot of the writers I know DO write fantasy. So I know this will affect some people.

Is this REALLY the end? Dunno. Lots of people tell me that the glossy physical magazine is dead in this e-world -- and "no one" has figured out how to make money in said e-world. Dunno about that either. Still, someone else might pony up and restart RoF again -- nothing would surprise me. And copy-and-paste is making this easier each time. (sad wry grin)

Dr. Phil

All Those Years, All Those Entries

I was on a friend's blog the other day and happened to notice a sidebar mentioning their successes -- Honorable Mentions, Semi- and Finalists -- in the Writers of the Future contest. And I realized that I should do more than just provide stats. So I created a webpage of Dr. Phil's WOTF Results Summary. And it's a lot -- might even be some sort of a record, certainly in the "modern" era of the contest.

Since June 2002, I've submitted a story to the Writers of the Future contest every quarter. But Dr. Phil, if you were published in WOTF Volume XXIV, from the 2007 Q3 contest, why are you still submitting? Excellent question! My story, "A Man in the Moon" was a Published Finalist and not a winner -- and as I currentlt only have two SFWA-eligible pro sales, I still have contest eligibility left. With 30 out of 37 submissions receiving some level of recognition, WOTF Contest Director Joni Labaqui thinks this may be some sort of a record, although there don't appear to be complete stats over the lifetime of the contest.

Someone else might consider my lack of winning as beating my head against the wall. But I don't see it that way. After all, if you just consider WOTF as a market, it pays better and has higher visibility than most. Why wouldn't you send new work to them?

Every ninety days.

The Results:
Rejected 6
No Call  1
Finalist 3 (1 published in WOTF XXIV, 2 in one year)
Semi     2
Quarter 10
H-M     15 (Quarter+H-M = 25)
Total   37
Subs    38 (WOTF Q4 2011 in)

Post-WOTF:
Published    6
Readings     3
Website      1

It might seem strange that only six stories from all these have been published. But only about half of my finished stories have gone to WOTF -- and often these were the first versions. It is, after all, a numbers game. For WOTF stories the publication rate is 1 in 5.5 stories, for all my stories it's 1 in 4.5. Pretty close. And whether any story fits what an editor -- or a judge -- wants at any time, is a matter of preference. And yes, I rewrite everything when it comes back.
Me? I'm pleased.

You can see all the stories and what happened to them on the webpage It's complicated enough that I even missed a publication in my first iteration. Now if I could just win this damn thing. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Context For Choice Of Words

In yesterday's post, announcing the publication of my military SF short story "Hail to the Victors" at Abyss & Apex, I was talking about the history of the story and included this quote from my notes:

04/27/05 23:24 Wed

Hail to the Victors Version 1.0

okay, this is the opposite of a happy winning warrior story – the humans are too stupid to quit

After I posted, basking in the glory of having a new story out in the world, it occurred to me that someone might take exception to the phrase "too stupid to quit". That I was making fun of or mocking the military. Actually, I wanted to deal with a war on another world in which the humans were losing, or at least not winning -- and attrition was taking this to the sort of end game you rarely see in chess matches. You know, where you are left with too few pieces to win.

If I was mocking anyone, it would be the University of Michigan, from whom "Hail to the Victors" is the title of their omnipresent fight song. (evil grin)

A Bit Of A Backstory

I once worked with a man who, it turned out, had fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Actually, one of his buddies outed him. His response? He'd lost his best friends on either side of him during the fighting. Then he told me, "We weren't geniuses or heroes. We were just too stupid to quit."

That phrase stuck with me for a long time. I've often thought about what it would be like in a long, drawn out, desperate battle. How do you go on? I know that when I wrote that note six years ago, that "too stupid to quit" was shorthand for a whole lot of things going on.

Anyway, go read my story. I think you'll see I meant no malice.

Dr. Phil

A Novel Contest Which Might Be A Little Too Novel

This is burning up on a number of sites, including John Scalzi's Whatever, and these two blogs

Anyway, First One Publishing is holding a contest for first novels of up to 65,000 words for digital publishing. No genre restrictions. An open call for new writers. What could be so bad about this? Well, I see four red flags off the bat:

(1) The contest fee is $149 per entry. $149!

Sure, there are contests with entry fees. But this one is steep and the thought is that they only need to get 34 entries to cover the $5000 Grand Prize award. After that, the contest becomes "profitable" to them.

(2) The contest rules include some rights grabbing language -- sounds like ALL entries become the property of the publisher to do with as they wish. Wait, you mean if you DON'T win, they STILL get to keep your story? How's that work again?

(3) Other people have noted some other details -- or in some cases lack of details -- regarding how much of a publisher or how much experience this operation has. In other words, they say they're offering a great opportunity to non-professional writers, but we just have to trust them? Um-mmm, no. Legitimate operations don't work this way.

Also they don't guarantee that anyone will actually win the Grand Prize. This is supposed to be an example of quality control, one thinks, but it also makes things worse for those who enter.

(4) Then the publisher, Karen Hunter, showed up on Absolute Write to defend First One Publishing's contest and didn't do a great job of explaining the rationale for the problematic aspects of the contest or a real understanding of what professional writers and people in the publishing business were objecting to.

Whatever is telling you that something is amiss, is lying to you. And we accept your apology because you are wrong as it relates to the contest. To judge a book before you've read it is unfair. Let us launch the contest (Feb. 11). Join it. And if you have a problem, then you have a right to criticize. But it's not even officially launched yet.

Since when is quoting the relevant sections of the rules and pointing out what the language is saying tantamount to lying? And accepting an apology for said lies when they weren't lies and those who have objections are not apologizing? What kind of fantasy world does this person live in?

And to say that the contest hasn't even started yet and to hold off objections until February 11th is pure nonsense IMHO -- because you put the contest announcement on the Internet a month ahead of the contest opening so that you will have people working on their manuscripts to have something to submit. A month from now is NOT the time to start a discussion about whether you should have wasted your time on such a project or not.

All In All...

... at best this person is very naive about how publishing, contests and contracts should work, in which case one would be advised to stay away and not invest $149 in an unprofessional operation OR it really is a rights grabbing, money sucking scam operation, in which one would surely be advised to stay the hell away from it. At the very, very least this contest does not pass the smell test today.

We shall see how this develops. But for now I'd strongly recommend staying away from First One Publishing's contest. Money is supposed to flow to the writer -- schemes where the money flows the other way (with the exception of the option of reasonable entry fees) are either scams, vanity presses or both.

Dr. Phil

This Has Been Roiling Around The Internet For A Day

This isn't about SF publishing, but it is a cautionary tale about publishing and the Internet.

Nick Mamatas started the ball rolling when he alerted his minions that something was afoul with Cook's Source -- a freebie print magazine which makes its money on advertising and apparently doesn't think it needs to spend money on content. Certainly not content they found on the Internet. Here's a link to the original author and a truly pathetic reply by a clueless editor:

"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

Bet you didn't know that everything on the Internet was public domain, did you? Yeah -- I didn't know that either.

Oh, and about all that editing? Apparently the original article had archaic words in Old or Middle English, or something, which the editor "helpfully" corrected. Clue. Less. Fail.

Well, Nick updated this morning as to the Internet shitstorm which has fired up. Among others, John Scalzi had posted "The Stupidest Thing an Editor With Three Decades of Experience Has Said About the Web Today".

This free publicity managed to send people to write comments on the Cooks Source Facebook page and they even started a Discussion Topic on The Cooks Source Editor's complete ignorance of copyright laws.

Behold the power of the Internet -- All shall tremble before me and fear!

Really -- People Can Be This Clueless

One of the things that keeps many new SF/F/H writers from publishing their works is the fear that if they submit a story to an editor, that rather than buying the work someone might steal it for their own. This rarely happens because people eventually figure it out. Same with cowards who simply plagiarize someone's work and submit it as their own -- the truth will eventually come out.

This is more of a warning to anyone who thinks they can start a website or e-zine and stuff it full of other people's good stuff. This is a case of someone whose business plan may actually be based on criminal plagiarism of copyrighted material. Bad, bad behavior -- No cookie for you and you've left yourself open to a whole lotta legal troubles. Because as one of the commenters observed, this can hardly be the first time they've done this is the editor -- with three decades of experience -- assumes the Internet is all public domain. (It isn't.)

Dr. Phil

Realms of Fantasy Closing

Didn't I already write this obituary? Apparently yes. But from multiple sources, I got the link to Warren Lapine's farewell.

As I said in January 2009, I'm not much of a fantasy writer, so it's not that this is a market that I submit to. But it's one I've read from time to time, and a lot of the writers I know DO write fantasy. So I know this will affect some people.

I wasn't quite sure if Warren was the right person to run RoF, but he had it and there were some signs of life -- including writing checks to people -- and there was even some controversy about covers and such. So at least RoF was splashing around noisily in the pool and not being a wallflower. But still.

Intriguing Postscript

Towards the end of Warren's post, he did mention the following:

Should there be any interest in purchasing the magazine I will gladly sell Realms to a responsible party for $1.00 and give them the finished files for the December issue.

Does this represent true love for RoF? Or a quick way to pass on a magazine's debt load for a buck? Or does it even matter? If anyone really wanted to keep RoF going, if Warren is good to his word, then he would not be an impediment. It will be interesting to see if anyone takes him up on this.

Of course Nick Mamatas nihilistic_kid pointed out that "I'm tempted. A shame this wasn't announced last month, when an enterprising person could have had the December issue out for World Fantasy as a pick-up."

Alas, if Real Estate is all about location, then Publishing is all about timing.

Dr. Phil