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Lightspeed Magazin: submissions open, 15 - 30 June
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Good luck with it, Alex!Need some help maybe? Some of us are pretty invested in your short and maybe SF&F colleagues would want to help somehow. I'm a little worried that you take days off and missing deadlines -:)
thx!help? yea, it would probably be a great help if you all wouldn't post really interesting, relevant and thought-provoking threads that i can't help but feel compelled to reply to.
but then again, there's that thing called self-control that i keep mentioning to my daughter.
The only thing I would mention/suggest--and I'm sure you already know this--is to read the 'submission guidelines' and be sure to follow them. I've heard people complain their manuscript was rejected because they used the wrong font. That just tells me they did not read the submission guidelines. It also tells whoever is reading the submission that the author did not read the guidelines and they will toss it. And with good reason: why should they take the time to read the submission when the author did not bother to, or chose not to follow, the guidelines? :-)
Good luck with it!
I like this magazine! I read one of their stories and just tweeted it, "Four And Twenty Blackbirds." I could not stop reading it!
I like this magazine! I read one of their stories and just tweeted it, "Four And Twenty Blackbirds." I could not stop reading it!
cool. Salto Mortal was very good too. it took a little while for me to get into it, but then its subtle realism caught me and the pace quickened.
The Daitengu's Swordi'm up to 3100w. don't think i'm going to make the 30 June deadline.
i decided that the daitengu is going to be a high-tech recruiter and the male MC is the target.
Alex G wrote: " don't think i'm going to make the 30 June deadline."No giving-up! -:)
I'll have to read Salto Mortal. A lot of more cutting edge writing is in magazines.Yes, keep going! Even if you miss that deadline, there is the next one and you'll have a completed story!
M.L. wrote: "I'll have to read Salto Mortal. A lot of more cutting edge writing is in magazines.i agree! even in previous decades before the internet, many authors used short stories as springboards to a larger work. Fahrenheit 451 grew out of 2 previously published short stories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenh...).
Yes, keep going! Even if you miss that deadline, there is the next one and you'll have a completed story!"
definitely my line of thinking.
up to 3300w now and the daitengu and the male MC finally meet. the next scene is making the deal. however, there's no way i'm going to meet this deadline in a couple of days, so i'm going to switch gears.
i got enough beta feedback on my 1500w story, The Smothered Earth, that was rejected. so i'm going to edit that and submit it to lightspeed b/c lightspeed isn't always open to submissions.
I didn't know they were not always open for submissions. Do you think they are open now because it's summer? It's a good source for stories.
M.L. wrote: "I didn't know they were not always open for submissions. Do you think they are open now because it's summer? It's a good source for stories."i don't know if it's b/c of summer; their website states that when they catch up in their slush pile, then they open it up.
I submitted my newly edited version of The Smothered Earth to lightspeed magazine. it's 2200 words now (up from 1500).next is clarkesworld. i'll be going back to The Daitengu's Sword
Nik wrote: "Good luck!"M.L. wrote: "Good luck!"
thx!
so, now i have 3 shorts in-progress that i round robin for submission:
1. Fantasy - The Smothered Earth (2200 words, 1 rejection/2 submissions)
2. Horror - Homo Sapiens Regener (7500, 1/1)
3. Fantasy - The Daitengu's Sword (target -> 7500, 0/0)
i started writing shorts back in early March, so i average about 1 short/5 weeks.
Not bad.Any plans to switch from sprint to marathon distance afterwards?
Alex G,Thanks for providing the URL. I checked it out. Submissions are closed right now.
When I start writing a story, I don't know if it will be a short, novella, or novel. I tend to use the first two for freebies--found in the "Steve's Shorts" category on my blog or WattPad.
I'm just an old storyteller (see the pic of the Blarney Castle at my website), so I give away a lot of stuff. Not novels, though--I have production costs to recover.
I was involved with eFiction at one time (another online zine) and published two shorts there. Many shorts eventually end up in a collection--that probably happened with those two.
r/Steve
PS: BTW, submission guidelines are often misleading because they're the minimum the author has to follow. One should always read some of the stories because they reflect the editor's slant--and there always is one!
Your writing & publishing history is interesting. Yep, many ezines recommend reading their crop of stories and I did that. The first one (#2 in the list) I submitted had to do w/ zombies & they're persona non gratis in many of these ezines--but it was too late b/c I had already started writing it for some friends when I first got wind of the submission opportunity. The 2nd one, The Smothered Earth (#2), I submitted seemed to have too much action & was perhaps too long really for flash fiction, which I realized it afterwards & now it will probably get rejected again even after I reworked it but it had a faster turnaround than #3 which is more attuned to these ezines' preferences. But while I wait for the rejection on #2 ( 6 working days), I'm back to working on #3.
Alex,Your experience explains why I went with eFiction--it had a wider spectrum. Since my two stories with them, they have created zines for special "genres," so I lost interest. One of those stories, "The Bridge" (now also included in the collection Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape), is my ONLY zombie story, BTW. ;-)
Sounds like you're writing is moving along fast. I love to see that. When you come up for air, consider doing an interview on my blog--I love to help other authors. BTW, some of my father's best friends when I was growing up in CA were Issei and Nisei. At IU, our best friends were an interesting couple, a Palestinian whose family lived in Jordan and a Sansei Peruvian. Small world. CA has always been a diverse state, though.
All the best,
r/Steve
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/abo...
i didn't make the 15 June deadline for their PoC issue, but I'm going to continue working on the same work (about a tengu and the multiverse) and submit it in this time period. Its working title is The Daitengu's Sword. It's at 950w and i'm not even done w/the intro of the 2 main human characters.